Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out (22 page)

LaGuardia High School is a specialized school. It’s famous for music and art, and it’s just across the street from Lincoln Center. To give a general idea of the school, you know the movie
Fame
?
Fame
is based on LaGuardia. To get in, you have to take a test and do an audition. I think I’m smart, but I’m a terrible test taker. I auditioned for both music and art, but only got into art. I was doing fantasy art, abstract drawings.

At first I was pretty happy there. I had finally gotten rid of those awful middle-school girls. It was, like, “Good-bye I’m never going to see you again!” I tried to wear pretty shirts and stuff. I didn’t wear a dress, but I had nice pants, jeans. I tried to make my mom happy and just give “girl” a try. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t comfortable with this, so I went back to wearing neutral clothing — and back to feeling confused.

I wanted to study music too and thought,
Hey, I got in for art — I’ll figure out how to get into the music part later.
I told the music-school director that I played the violin and wanted to take classes. I played the violin, but I started at twelve, instead of the typical five, six, or seven. I said, “If I can’t play violin, put me in any beginner instrumental class.” Because I majored in art, the director told me that was impossible.

Every day I went to the office and asked to be put in a music class. I did that for a whole year. By my sophomore year, the director said, “Oh, you’re that person again? We’ll just give you it.” I went to a winds class and took tenor saxophone. It wasn’t the violin but, hey, it was a start.

I was getting 90s in winds and decided to push it a little further. I talked to my band teachers and asked about a teacher for strings. They recommended Dr. Washington, a very tough teacher. The tough teachers are the best.

She was the only strings teacher who asked me to audition. When I auditioned, I made a few mistakes, but I tried my best. She said, “I’ll put you in my orchestra.” So I was in her orchestra and her strings class. I was in Orchestra 6 and worked my way up to Orchestra 7, the second best orchestra in the school.

That was hard because I was taking both art and music classes. My school days doubled. I didn’t mind the long hours and hard work, but I was not comfortable with the student body. High school is a tough time when it comes to teasing, bullying.

I know — that’s what I say. You would think that they would understand me ’cause art people are supposed to be open. But everyone was very competitive. Everyone was against each other, trying to get their art displayed in the gallery. Some people would write that off as competition. I saw it as bullying. And in the music classes, to tell you the truth, I didn’t get a lot of respect. Most kids started playing early. They took lessons with private teachers. My family couldn’t afford that. One student violinist told me, “I’ve been playing for eight or nine years.”

“I’ve been playing for three or four.”

“How in the world did you get into this orchestra?”

“Because I just got in.”

Everything was getting really sexual in high school. Kids were saying, “Oh, having sex is great. I feel like having sex.” And I’m, like, I don’t feel anything. I was attracted to some people but not to the point where I would want to go to bed with them. Sex is still not high on my list.

Not only did the talk become sexual, but also girls were dressing in more revealing clothes. Even the guys tried to reveal more of their bodies. And I became more and more uncomfortable. I thought of myself as a mix of feminine and masculine, leaning more toward the masculine side. I said to myself,
I think of myself as a guy. But I don’t identify as a boy completely. So how in the world can I explain this?
It was confusing. It was confusing to say I’m neither gender.

I didn’t talk to my parents about it because I knew they would never understand. Everybody is used to two sexes. I was already called a freak, and I didn’t want to risk more. I started to learn about gay stuff, on my own. One time in my neighborhood, I saw one guy give another guy a kiss. What was that? It was so awesome, but I didn’t know the name for it. That’s when I learned more about gay stuff or LGBTQ stuff.

In my high school, we took special health classes to show us how our bodies were changing during puberty. I said to myself,
This is not how my body is changing.
Like, when a girl gets her period, that’s supposed to come when she’s around thirteen, fourteen. Right? Mine came when I was seventeen, and only once or twice. Also, I couldn’t lose weight. That’s when my mom took me to a series of endocrinologists to see what was going on.

I went to five different endocrinologists, three females and two males. The first doctor, a woman, checked my blood and gave me a physical examination. She gave me some kind of medication, but it didn’t work out, so we went to a second endocrinologist. She recommended a sonogram. To take one, I had to drink a lot of water. It was painful. She checked my ovaries and couldn’t figure out what was going on. They looked like ovaries, but they had an unusual white lining around them. She thought it might be testosterone.

The third doctor, male, gave me another sonogram. He said that I had PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). PCOS means that during my development in the womb, it wasn’t clear whether I wanted testes or ovaries. That’s how I understand it, but maybe a doctor will give you a better explanation. This third doctor said that I was a whole different gender. That diagnosis made perfect sense to me. In fact, it made me happy and relieved.

But it also created problems with my mother. After we left the doctor’s office, she went into denial mode and said, “Oh that’s a bunch of crap. You know how doctors are. They say this just to make themselves look smart.”

The fourth doctor said I might have ovatestes — that’s in between ovaries and testes.

The fifth one took all the information from the other doctors and said she agreed with PCOS, the third doctor. She said my ovaries didn’t act like ovaries. I was making more testosterone than estrogen. Males and females both have testosterone, but females only have a small amount of testosterone. As an assigned female, I was making way too much testosterone. She assumed I was a girl. She assumed I wanted to be a girl. So she gave me medication to bring down the testosterone down and boost up my estrogen.

No!
I didn’t know what I wanted, but that was definitely
not
it.

When the doctors confirmed that I was intersex, I thought,
Wow, I’m that whole other gender!
It proved what I had been feeling all along. I was not only emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually both sexes; I was physically both sexes too. This is who I am.

My mom was still in denial. She kept asking why I didn’t have a boyfriend.

In my sophomore year, I tried going to a GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) meeting. It turned out to be mostly a hook-up scene. I thought the Gay-Straight Alliance would be gay people and straight people trying to understand each other. No. It was mostly gay people and people who say they’re bisexual talking about sex. I saw it as complete bullshit. I was disappointed. I held my anger inside and pretended I was okay about school.

Meanwhile, my grandma forced us to go church every Sunday. I’m not saying I didn’t like church, but if I didn’t feel like going, why should I go? Not that I don’t believe in God. But if there is a God, maybe I was supposed to be born this way. There has to be a reason. But what is it?

I felt that I was bringing bad energy to what people consider a holy place. So I stopped going to church.

During this period, I tried to be more open. People say high school is when you really discover yourself. I said to myself,
Let me give it a try.
I explained to people that I was a third gender. When I tried, most people thought that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Or they thought of me as a joke. So I thought there was no point talking about this.

I began seeing a social worker my sophomore year. His name was John. He was a very nice guy. I explained how I felt, and he listened to me. I think it was hard for him to understand. To me, being a third gender makes perfect sense, but it doesn’t make sense to other people.