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Recently in Salon Health & Body

Column
I was a human crash-test dummy
For 15 years, a professor gave his body for human impact-survival research -- and lived to tell the tale.
By Mary Roach
[11/19/99]

Urge: Naked World
Naked suicide plague streaks across USA
Three recent unsuccessful attempts suggest a clothing-optional development in self-destruction.
By Hank Hyena
[11/19/99]

'Roid rage
Steroid abuse can cause everything from sexual voracity to violence; some people take them only for cosmetic reasons.
By Andrew Taber
[11/18/99]

Urge: Naked World
Japanese want baby girls; Indians choose boys
As parents coordinate their babies' sexes ahead of time, the male-female ratio gets even more skewed.
By Hank Hyena
[11/18/99]

Health Urge: Nancy Chan
Totems and taboos
When the IRS strikes, my favorite john wants to kiss me and my boyfriend refuses.
By Tracy Quan
[11/18/99]

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"More wine?" my waiter purred, gliding up with a bottle of Cabernet. Without waiting for an answer, he filled my glass for the third time. My stress, I realized, was showing.

I was jumping out of my skin. It wasn't just that my "date" was a half-hour late, or even that he was also an ex-boyfriend, who I would be seeing for the first time in eight years. The reason was that, in those eight years, Jean (not his real name) had decided he was no longer happy being the man he was. Tonight, for the first time, I'd be meeting my old boyfriend in his new incarnation: woman.

He'd contacted me by phone a few months earlier, for the first time since we'd parted ways back in 1989. We'd fallen completely out of touch after breaking up, so I'd been startled to find a message from him on the answering machine. His voice sounded odd and breathy on the machine -- familiar but somehow unfamiliar, too.

"Sarah ... it's Jean," the voice said. "I know it's been a really long time ... but I was hoping we could talk. I've ... been going through some big changes lately."

He'd gotten my number, he explained, from an old mutual friend he'd bumped into on the street. Immediately, I called this friend to find out more.

"Jonathan," I said, "why does Jean's voice sound so weird now? What kind of 'changes' are we talking about here?"

Jonathan sighed.

"I know, I should have called and warned you," he said. "I just didn't know how to tell you. Sarah, he looks different. He looks ... not like a girl, exactly, but ... kind of half like a girl."

"What do you mean?" I cried. "Which half?"

"No, no," said Jonathan. "I mean, he sort of looks ... like he's in the middle of some sort of metamorphosis. Like he's started the process of becoming a girl. But he's not totally there yet, I don't think. I don't know. I'm sorry -- I was too weirded out to ask."

I hung up feeling fearful and deeply unsettled. How could it be that someone I'd known so closely -- someone I'd slept with, for God's sake -- was undergoing something as massive as a sex change? And how would I deal with this change if I started corresponding with Jean again? He was someone I had warm, loving and respectful memories of, one of the few early boyfriends I could truly say I had no regrets about.

I wanted to think I'd be able to relate to him compassionately, the way I had with other friends who had gone through life changes such as parenthood or conversions of faith. But Jean's transformation was much more disturbing than those. I'd known him, and loved him, in a certain way -- as a man. If he was changing that, it was almost as though he were taking something away from me.

There had been warning signs. Jean's unhappiness with his sex had surfaced as early on as our sophomore year in college, when we'd been sweethearts. Halfway through our nine-month relationship, we'd moved into an off-campus apartment together; he was the first man, other than my dad, whom I'd ever shared a living space with.

Next page | Remembering when my clothing drawers seemed pawed through