Golden Boy (15 page)

I
t’s Sunday before Mia calls. I hear the phone ringing as I return from yoga, and I rush to answer it.

‘Archie Verma,’ I murmur breathily, slipping my bag off my shoulder and sinking onto the armchair in the hall.

‘Why didn’t you tell me the victim was intersex?’ Mia blurts out.

‘I didn’t know what karyotype. I wanted you to tell me.’

‘Sneaky.’

‘Just easier.’

‘I’ll fax the entire analysis over to you. Did you get my email about the perpetrator?’

‘Yes, thank you. Did anything come up in the police database?’

‘The DNA wasn’t a match to anyone, no. Are you going to go to the police now?’

‘It’s a very tricky situation, and I sort of want to see how it plays out.’

‘Is this victim a minor?’

‘No. Sixteen now. I was hoping we’d find a match in the database. It would have made things easier. I really don’t want to do anything unless he asks.’

‘The victim identifies as male?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s too bad he can’t just go by intersex. You know there was a whole new shift a few years ago around what we’re supposed to call them? Seems like all they talk about is definitions.’

‘What are we supposed to call them? Not intersex?’

‘No, it’s still intersex. But now we call their variations DSDs.’

‘DSD?’

‘It stands for Disorders of Sexual Development.’

‘Oh. I don’t think I like that.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not sure. I suppose “disorder” sounds like it affects their health. I know it does sometimes but . . .’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ says Mia. ‘So what’s the plan?’

‘I’ll talk to him about the police again if he comes back in. I hope he will.’

‘Good luck.’

‘Thank you. Was there any disease in the large vial of blood I gave you?’

‘Nothing. It was clean.’

‘Great. That’s a relief.’

‘Well, let me know what happens. I’ll send you through the consensus for the redefinition of intersex conditions as DSDs, and a few other papers I found last night. Makes interesting reading.’

I put down the phone. Last night I read through my old textbooks, expecting to find a whole section I had missed, but there was nothing. There wasn’t even that much on sexuality itself. It came up in basic classes on endocrinology and anatomy, STDs were covered in infectious diseases, then erectile dysfunction was rather primly covered within sections on renal medicine, diabetes and drug side effects. Intersex itself seemed not to rate a mention in any of my books.

In my own lecture notes, there were a few references to genetic testing and genetics. It is perhaps too much of a specialist subject to cover in a medical degree, but it would be helpful in this case to know something about the psychology of growing up with an intersex condition, or the logistics of surgery, or support groups.

Suddenly I have a thought, and dial Greta Pettigrew’s number. Our young district nurse picks up her mobile and greets me cheerily, but although she only finished training two years ago, she admits to never having covered intersexuality in any real depth. As I go to ring off, I hear her voice calling me.

‘Wait, Archie? Archie?’ blares the phone.

‘Yes?’

‘Have you tried Googling it?’

‘I thought you might say that.’

Most doctors rely on Googling, but I am wary of the internet. Call me a technophobe, but it feels unreliable.

After changing and making myself a coffee, I sit in my office. About 3.8 million entries come up online when I Google ‘intersex’. I am overwhelmed instantly by the number so I navigate instead to an online bookshop, but when I check, there really aren’t any medical textbooks available on the site about intersexuality. I click guiltily on Wikipedia. I learn that the term ‘intersex’ came about in the mid-nineties as a result of activism. A large section of the article is dedicated to whether intersex conditions are normal or should be termed ‘disorders’, ‘maldeveloped or undeveloped’, ‘errors of development’, ‘defective genitals’, ‘abnormal’, or ‘mistakes of nature’.

I baulk at this, but read on.

One doctor emphasises that all of these conditions are biologically understandable while statistically uncommon. Wikipedia claims research in the 20th century led to a growing medical consensus that this was true, and then immediately begins to talk about the intersex condition’s redefinition as ‘Disorders of Sexual Development’, a term which seems to clash with their definition as biologically understandable. I am left confused.

I read about the history of hermaphroditism, I read about the Greeks, I read about Victorian-era hermaphrodites. I read about different approaches to gender norms, I read about surgery. I read that specialists in the UK began to advise the minimisation of childhood surgery in 2001. Max was born five years before.

In Max’s file there were five pages of writing about his parents’ reaction to his disorder and to everything the doctors said. They were encouraged to let Max be assigned as a girl, then later they were encouraged to assign him to a male gender. The notes stop two years ago. He was almost fourteen, and had just received a round of male hormones.

‘Was he a girl at birth then?’ I murmur to myself, scrolling through the Wikipedia page. ‘What karyotype did Mia come up with?’

I can’t wait until tomorrow, so I drive over to the clinic and let myself in with my key, quickly disabling the security system. There, in my fax machine, is the key to Max’s intersexuality. I boot up my work computer, type Mia’s analysis into a browser and click ‘search’. Three hours later, I’m still trawling through websites, rapt.

I print out each document I find, a mass of paper amounting on my printer tray. I absent-mindedly staple leaves together, bind others in hole-punched folders. I daydream about giving them to Max, going to his school, perhaps dropping by his house. I sit and I wonder how much he knows about his condition.

From our meeting, it seemed to me like he knew very little. I wonder if his parents plan to tell him when he’s older. I have a feeling that explaining everything to him would be for the best, but would it be going against their wishes?

Is it my duty as a doctor to tell him everything I know? I could tell him if he asks, but what if he never does? Is it better for him to go through life unaware, but relatively happy? Or does he only appear to be happy, but is silently searching for something, for a sense of belonging, of self, of home inside his own body?

I could give this all to Max and ruin his life. Or I could give this to him and he could feel relieved to know who and what he is. I might send his sixteenth year into turmoil, aggravate a fairly powerful local family, and ruin his vision of himself. What would Max want me to do?

A fortnight later, with the pile of papers in my office at the surgery still awaiting him, Max hasn’t contacted me again. I take this as a cue, and I regretfully put all thoughts of spilling his parents’ well-kept secrets to the back of my mind.

T
he middle of October is entrance exam time for Hemingway St Catherine’s, the private sixth form college. Other schools do them a bit later, but since I’m local, a space is reserved for me to take the exam early.

Everyone taking the exam has to go over to Hemingway St Catherine’s and sit in a big hall. The exam determines who gets in, so I need to do really well. I’m one of the top people in my year, academically, but I still get nervous about exams.

Well, that’s not completely true. I get nervous about the grades I’ll get after I’ve done the exam! Actual exams are pretty good, because:

1. You get it over with and if it’s a subject you’re not taking when you’re older, then you never have to remember what you’ve revised for again.

2. It beats lessons any day.

3. Because it takes a little time to get over to St Catherine’s and settle into the exam hall, you basically get a whole afternoon off from school.

I don’t, however, feel that great about today, because Hunter goes here. Despite the fact that his grades have dropped off this year and I know his parents are pissed at him about it, Hunter’s actually really smart. He scored ninety-eight per cent on the entrance exam when he took it.

We wait in the corridor and I watch out for him anxiously, but I don’t see him. I’m relieved as my group files into the big hall. We’re called in alphabetically, so when I walk in, amongst the last there, Sylvie Clark is already sat near the front, in the first row. I smile at her as we pass. I’ve smiled at her a number of times in the last few weeks, but she always looks away. It’s funny, outside of school she had no problem talking to me. Inside the school corridors, she seems to avoid everybody’s eyes. Today she has her hair in two bunches either side of her face. When I smile at her, her irises roll down to the page in front of her and she chews the tip of her pen. She’s wearing a grey skirt that’s pleated and hangs low on her legs, grey tights, and some badges in her black jumper. The girls in my school have to wear grey, the boys wear black. We all wear black jumpers because you can’t find V-neck grey jumpers and it’s too cold to go without. She twirls her ankle like she’s listening to music in her head.

I grin and whisper to myself, ‘Kook.’

My seat is the second desk to the very last in the whole hall, in front of Todd Z. Todd used to do pretty well in class but recently he’s been doing worse. So have most of the guys, because they’re all going out with other people now. Marc was mumbling about Olivia to me the other day. I think he wants to go out with her, after what happened at my birthday thing on Saturday.

They left when we all did, and she went back to his house for a bit. They didn’t go inside apparently, but they ‘talked’ outside.

‘Talked’ means made out, no matter how innocently Marc said it. I used to hang out with Olivia, so I think he feels bad. I don’t mind though. I did really like her, but I couldn’t go out with her properly, of course. So I told him it was OK if he wanted to, even though he hadn’t asked. Then Olivia hung out with me yesterday on the football pitch. She said she really liked Marc, hoped I didn’t feel bad, etc. I said that Marc really liked her, and she should go for it. I didn’t tell her I used to really like her. It would only make her feel guilty. I do still really like her, actually, I just don’t like to think about it. She’s really nice and funny. I always liked hanging out with her. It was fun. I felt a pang of regret when I said she should go out with Marc. But they both like each other, and they’re both free to go out, so. I said it wouldn’t make things awkward between me and Marc, that I was the one who said I couldn’t go out with her, so I couldn’t say anything. I told them both. We’ll see what happens.

The examiner tells us he’s going to wait for five minutes so we start on the hour. We have to sit in silence, so I rest my head on my hand and think about yesterday evening, when Daniel kicked off about the exam.

It’s then that I see him. He’s walking past the window. Somehow I feel him before I see him. He’s walking, talking to a friend. He’s wearing the uniform: black suit, white shirt, and black tie. His head turns towards me, as if in slow motion. When he sees me he keeps walking, but Hunter touches the knot of his tie, his lips part, and his brow changes minutely, his eyes narrowing, checking it’s me. Then he smiles.

I
only got angry because Max finds everything so easy and I find everything so hard and I think it’s unfair. I have to try all the time to ‘check my behaviour’, like Miss Jameson says, even though I don’t know what it is that they don’t like about my behaviour. It just makes me so angry, and then they don’t like that I’m angry, but how can I not be angry if they are going to be so stupid and treat me like a baby?

Then with this exam, Mum was saying how she was sure Max would do really well and go to the good school, and I just asked if she thought I would do the exam and go to the good school.

And she said, ‘There are lots of schools, honey.’

And I said, ‘I want to go to the GOOD school.’

And then Mum sighed at me like it was my fault I find things harder. I’m really good at Maths. I don’t see why I wouldn’t pass the exam. Then she said sorry for sighing, because she was tired and I shouted, ‘MAX never tires you out.’