I knew that my situation, whatever it was, was a crisis of some kind. I could tell that from my parents' false, cheery behavior and from our speedy exit from home. Still, no one had said a word to me yet. Milton and Tessie were treating me exactly as they always had-as their daughter, in other words. They acted as though my problem was medical and therefore fixable. So I began to hope so, too. Like a person with a terminal illness, I was eager to ignore the immediate symptoms, hoping for a last-minute cure. I veered back and forth between hope and its opposite, a growing certainty that something terrible was wrong with me. But nothing made me more desperate than looking in the mirror.

I opened the door and stepped back into the room. "I hate this hotel," I said. "It's gross."

"It's not too nice," Tessie agreed.

"It used to be nicer," said Milton. "I don't understand what happened."

"The carpet smells."

"Let's open a window."

"Maybe we won't have to be here that long," Tessie said, hopefully, wearily.

In the evening we ventured outside, looking for something to eat, and then returned to the room to watch TV. Later, after we switched off the lights, I asked from my cot, "What are we doing tomorrow?"

"We have to go the doctor's in the morning," said Tessie.

"After that we have to see about some Broadway tickets," said Milton. "What do you want to see, Cal?"

"I don't care," I said gloomily.

"I think we should see a musical," said Tessie.

"I saw Ethel Merman in Mame Mame once," Milton recalled. "She came down this big, long staircase, singing. When she finished, the place went wild. She stopped the show. So she just went right back up the staircase and sang the song over again." once," Milton recalled. "She came down this big, long staircase, singing. When she finished, the place went wild. She stopped the show. So she just went right back up the staircase and sang the song over again."

"Would you like to see a musical, Callie?"

"Whatever."

"Damnedest thing I ever saw," said Milton. "That Ethel Merman can really belt it out."

No one spoke after that. We lay in the dark, in our strange beds, until we fell asleep.

The next morning after breakfast we set off to see the specialist. My parents tried to seem excited as we left the hotel, pointing out sights from the taxi window. Milton exuded the boisterousness he reserved for all difficult situations. "This is some place," he said as we drove up to New York Hospital. "River view! I might just check myself in."

Like any teenager, I was largely oblivious to the clumsy figure I cut. My stork movements, my flapping arms, my long legs kicking out my undersized feet in their fawn-colored Wallabees-all that machinery clanked beneath the observation tower of my head, and I was too close to see it. My parents did. It pained them to watch me advance across the sidewalk toward the hospital entrance. It was terrifying to see your child in the grip of unknown forces. For a year now they had been denying how I was changing, putting it down to the awkward age. "She'll grow out of it," Milton was always telling my mother. But now they were seized with a fear that I was growing out of control.

We found the elevator and rode up to the fourth floor, then followed the arrows to something called the Psychohormonal Unit. Milton had the office number written out on a card. Finally we found the right room. The gray door was unmarked except for an extremely small, unobtrusive sign halfway down that read:

SEXUAL DISORDERS AND GENDER IDENTITY CLINIC

If my parents saw the sign, they pretended not to. Milton lowered his head, bull-like, and pushed the door open.

The receptionist welcomed us and told us to have a seat. The waiting room was unexceptional. Chairs lined the walls, divided evenly by magazine tables, and there was the usual rubber tree expiring in the corner. The carpeting was institutional, with a hectic, stain-camouflaging pattern. There was even a reassuringly medicinal smell in the air. After my mother filled out the insurance forms, we were shown into the doctor's office. This, too, inspired confidence. An Eames chair stood behind the desk. By the window was a Le Corbusier chaise, made of chrome and cowhide. The bookshelves were filled with medical books and journals and the walls tastefully hung with art. Big-city sophistication attuned to a European sensibility. The surround of a triumphant psychoanalytic world-view. Not to mention the East River view out the windows. We were a long way from Dr. Phil's office with its amateur oils and Medicaid cases.

It was two or three minutes before we noticed anything out of the ordinary. At first the curios and etchings had blended in with the scholarly clutter of the office. But as we sat waiting for the doctor, we became aware of a silent commotion all around us. It was like staring at the ground and realizing, suddenly, that it is swarming with ants. The restful doctor's office was churning with activity. The paperweight on his desk, for instance, was not a simple, inert rock but a tiny priapus carved from stone. The miniatures on the walls revealed their subject matter under closer observation. Beneath yellow silk tents, on paisley pillows, Mughal princes acrobatically copulated with multiple partners, keeping their turbans in place. Tessie blushed, looking; while Milton squinted; and I hid inside my hair as usual. We tried to look someplace else and so looked at the bookshelves. But here it wasn't safe either. Amid a dulling surround of issues of JAMA JAMA and and The New England Journal of Medicine The New England Journal of Medicine were some eye-popping titles. One, with entwining snakes on the spine, was called were some eye-popping titles. One, with entwining snakes on the spine, was called Erotosexual Pair Bonding. Erotosexual Pair Bonding. There was a purple, pamphlety thing entitled There was a purple, pamphlety thing entitled Ritualized Homosexuality: Three Field Studies. Ritualized Homosexuality: Three Field Studies. On the desk itself, with a bookmark in it, was a manual called On the desk itself, with a bookmark in it, was a manual called Hap-Penis: Surgical Techniques in Female-to-Male Sex Reassignment. Hap-Penis: Surgical Techniques in Female-to-Male Sex Reassignment. If the sign on the front door hadn't already, Luce's office made it clear just what kind of specialist my parents had brought me to see. (And, worse, to see me.) There were sculptures, too. Reproductions from the temple at Kujaraho occupied corners of the room along with huge jade plants. Against the waxy green foliage, melon-breasted Hindu women bent over double, offering up orifices like prayers to the well-endowed men who answered them. An overloaded switchboard, a dirty game of Twister everywhere you turned. If the sign on the front door hadn't already, Luce's office made it clear just what kind of specialist my parents had brought me to see. (And, worse, to see me.) There were sculptures, too. Reproductions from the temple at Kujaraho occupied corners of the room along with huge jade plants. Against the waxy green foliage, melon-breasted Hindu women bent over double, offering up orifices like prayers to the well-endowed men who answered them. An overloaded switchboard, a dirty game of Twister everywhere you turned.

"Will you look at this place?" Tessie whispered.

"Sort of unusual decor," said Milton.

And I: "What are we doing here?"

It was right then that the door opened and Dr. Luce presented himself.

At that stage, I didn't know about his glamour status in the field. I had no idea of the frequency with which Luce's name appeared in the relevant journals and papers. But I saw right away that Luce wasn't your normal-looking doctor. Instead of a medical coat he wore a suede vest with fringe. Silver hair touched the collar of his beige turtleneck. His pants were flared and on his feet were a pair of ankle boots with zippers on the sides. He had eyeglasses, too, silver wire-rims, and a gray mustache.

"Welcome to New York," he said. "I'm Dr. Luce." He shook my father's hand, then my mother's, and finally came to me. "You must be Calliope." He was smiling, relaxed. "Let's see if I can remember my mythology. Calliope was one of the Muses, right?"

"Right."

"In charge of what?"

"Epic poetry."

"You can't beat that," said Luce. He was trying to act casual, but I could see he was excited. I was an extraordinary case, after all. He was taking his time, savoring me. To a scientist like Luce I was nothing less than a sexual or genetic Kaspar Hauser. There he was, a famous sexologist, a guest on Dick Cavett Dick Cavett, a regular contributor to Playboy Playboy, and suddenly on his doorstep, arriving out of the woods of Detroit like the Wild Boy of Aveyron, was me, Calliope Stephanides, age fourteen. I was a living experiment dressed in white corduroys and a Fair Isle sweater. This sweater, pale yellow, with a floral wreath at the neck, told Luce that I refuted nature in just the way his theory predicted. He must have hardly been able to contain himself, meeting me. He was a brilliant, charming, work-obsessed man, and watched me from behind his desk with keen eyes. While he chatted, speaking primarily to my parents, gaining their confidence, Luce was nevertheless making mental notes. He registered my tenor voice. He noted that I sat with one leg tucked under me. He watched how I examined my nails, curling my fingers into my palm. He paid attention to the way I coughed, laughed, scratched my head, spoke; in sum, all the external manifestations of what he called my gender identity.

He kept up the calm manner, as if I had come to the Clinic with nothing more than a sprained ankle. "The first thing I'd like to do is give Calliope a short examination. If you'd care to wait here in my office, Mr. and Mrs. Stephanides." He stood up. "Would you come with me please, Calliope?"

I got up from my chair. Luce watched as the various segments, like those of a collapsible ruler, unfolded themselves, and I attained my full height, an inch taller than he was himself.

"We'll be right here, honey," Tessie said.

"We're not going anywhere," said Milton.

Peter Luce was considered the world's leading authority on human hermaphroditism. The Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity Clinic, which he founded in 1968, had become the foremost facility in the world for the study and treatment of conditions of ambiguous gender. He was the author of a major sexological work, The Oracular Vulva, The Oracular Vulva, which was standard in a variety of disciplines ranging from genetics and pediatrics to psychology. He had written a column by the same name for which was standard in a variety of disciplines ranging from genetics and pediatrics to psychology. He had written a column by the same name for Playboy Playboy from August 1972 to December 1973 in which the conceit was that a personified and all-knowing female pudendum answered the queries of male readers with witty and sometimes sibylline responses. Hugh Hefner had come across Peter Luce's name in the papers in connection with a demonstration for sexual freedom. Six Columbia students had staged an orgy in a tent on the main green, which the cops broke up, and when asked what he thought about such activity on campus, Prof. Peter Luce, 46, had been quoted as saying, "I'm in favor of orgies wherever they happen." That caught Hef's eye. Not wanting to replicate Xaviera Hollander's "Call Me Madam" column in from August 1972 to December 1973 in which the conceit was that a personified and all-knowing female pudendum answered the queries of male readers with witty and sometimes sibylline responses. Hugh Hefner had come across Peter Luce's name in the papers in connection with a demonstration for sexual freedom. Six Columbia students had staged an orgy in a tent on the main green, which the cops broke up, and when asked what he thought about such activity on campus, Prof. Peter Luce, 46, had been quoted as saying, "I'm in favor of orgies wherever they happen." That caught Hef's eye. Not wanting to replicate Xaviera Hollander's "Call Me Madam" column in Penthouse Penthouse, Hefner saw Luce's contribution as being devoted to the scientific and historical side of sex. Thus, in her first three issues, the Oracular Vulva delivered disquisitions on the erotic art of the Japanese painter Hiroshi Yamamoto, the epidemiology of syphilis, and the sex life of St. Augustine. The column proved popular, though intelligent queries were always hard to come by, the readership being more interested in the "Playboy Advisor" 's cunnilingus tips or remedies for premature ejaculation. Finally, Hefner told Luce to write his own questions, which he was only too glad to do.

Peter Luce had appeared on Phil Donahue Phil Donahue along with two hermaphrodites and a transsexual to discuss both the medical and psychological aspects of these conditions. On that program, Phil Donahue said, "Lynn Harris was born and raised a girl. You won the Miss Newport Beach Contest in 1964 in good old Orange County, California? Boy, wait till they hear this. You lived as a woman to the age of twenty-nine and then you switched to living as a man. He has the anatomical characteristics of both a man and a woman. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'." along with two hermaphrodites and a transsexual to discuss both the medical and psychological aspects of these conditions. On that program, Phil Donahue said, "Lynn Harris was born and raised a girl. You won the Miss Newport Beach Contest in 1964 in good old Orange County, California? Boy, wait till they hear this. You lived as a woman to the age of twenty-nine and then you switched to living as a man. He has the anatomical characteristics of both a man and a woman. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'."

He also said, "Here's what's not so funny. These live, irreplaceable sons and daughters of God, human beings all, want you to know, among other things, that that's exactly what they are, human beings."

Because of certain genetic and hormonal conditions, it was sometimes very difficult to determine the sex of a newborn baby. Confronted with such a child, the Spartans had left the infant on a rocky hillside to die. Luce's own forebears, the English, didn't even like to mention the subject, and might never have done so had the nuisance of mysterious genitalia not thrown a wrench into the smooth workings of inheritance law. Lord Coke, the great British jurist of the seventeenth century, tried to clear up the matter of who would get the landed estates by declaring that a person should "be either male or female, and it shall succeed according to the kind of sex which doth prevail." Of course, he didn't specify any precise method for determining which sex did did prevail. For most of the twentieth century, medicine had been using the same primitive diagnostic criterion of sex formulated by Klebs way back in 1876. Klebs had maintained that a person's gonads determined sex. In cases of ambiguous gender, you looked at the gonadal tissue under the microscope. If it was testicular, the person was male; if ovarian, female. The hunch here was that a person's gonads would orchestrate sexual development, especially at puberty. But it turned out to be more complicated than that. Klebs had begun the task, but the world had to wait another hundred years for Peter Luce to come along and finish it. prevail. For most of the twentieth century, medicine had been using the same primitive diagnostic criterion of sex formulated by Klebs way back in 1876. Klebs had maintained that a person's gonads determined sex. In cases of ambiguous gender, you looked at the gonadal tissue under the microscope. If it was testicular, the person was male; if ovarian, female. The hunch here was that a person's gonads would orchestrate sexual development, especially at puberty. But it turned out to be more complicated than that. Klebs had begun the task, but the world had to wait another hundred years for Peter Luce to come along and finish it.

In 1955, Luce published an article called "Many Roads Lead to Rome: Sexual Concepts of Human Hermaphroditism." In twenty-five pages of forthright, high-toned prose, Luce argued that gender is determined by a variety of influences: chromosomal sex; gonadal sex; hormones; internal genital structures; external genitals; and, most important, the sex of rearing. Drawing on studies of patients at the pediatric endocrine clinic at New York Hospital, Luce was able to compile charts demonstrating how these various factors came into play, and showing that a patient's gonadal sex often didn't determine his or her gender identity. The article made a big splash. Within months, pretty much everyone had given up Klebs's criterion for Luce's criteri a a.

On the strength of this success, Luce was given the opportunity to open the Psychohormonal Unit at New York Hospital. In those days he saw mostly kids with adrenogenital syndrome, the most common form of female hermaphroditism. The hormone cortisol, recently synthesized in the lab, had been found to arrest the virilization these girls normally underwent, allowing them to develop as normal females. The endocrinologists administered the cortisol and Luce oversaw the girls' psychosexual development. He learned a lot. In a decade of solid, original research, Luce made his second great discovery: that gender identity is established very early on in life, about the age of two. Gender was like a native tongue; it didn't exist before birth but was imprinted in the brain during childhood, never disappearing. Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French.

He published this theory in 1967, in an article in the The New England Journal of Medicine The New England Journal of Medicine entitled "Early Establishment of Gender Identity: The Terminal Twos." After that, his reputation reached the stratosphere. The funding flowed in, from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the N.I.S. It was a great time to be a sexologist. The Sexual Revolution provided new opportunities for the enterprising sex researcher. It was a matter of national interest, for a few years there, to examine the mechanics of the female orgasm. Or to plumb the psychological reasons why certain men exhibited themselves on the street. In 1968, Dr. Luce opened the Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity Clinic. Luce treated everybody: the webbed-necked girl teens with Turner's syndrome, who had only one sex chromosome, a lonely X; the leggy beauties with Androgen Insensitivity; or the XYY boys, who tended to be dreamers and loners. When babies with ambiguous genitalia were born at the hospital, Dr. Luce was called in to discuss the matter with the bewildered parents. Luce got the transsexuals, too. Everyone came to the Clinic, with the result that Luce had at his disposal a body of research material-of living, breathing specimens-no scientist had ever had before. entitled "Early Establishment of Gender Identity: The Terminal Twos." After that, his reputation reached the stratosphere. The funding flowed in, from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the N.I.S. It was a great time to be a sexologist. The Sexual Revolution provided new opportunities for the enterprising sex researcher. It was a matter of national interest, for a few years there, to examine the mechanics of the female orgasm. Or to plumb the psychological reasons why certain men exhibited themselves on the street. In 1968, Dr. Luce opened the Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity Clinic. Luce treated everybody: the webbed-necked girl teens with Turner's syndrome, who had only one sex chromosome, a lonely X; the leggy beauties with Androgen Insensitivity; or the XYY boys, who tended to be dreamers and loners. When babies with ambiguous genitalia were born at the hospital, Dr. Luce was called in to discuss the matter with the bewildered parents. Luce got the transsexuals, too. Everyone came to the Clinic, with the result that Luce had at his disposal a body of research material-of living, breathing specimens-no scientist had ever had before.

And now Luce had me. In the examination room, he told me to get undressed and put on a paper gown. After taking some blood (only one vial, thankfully), he had me lie down on a table with my legs up in stirrups. There was a pale green curtain, the same color as my gown, that could be pulled across the table, dividing my upper and lower halves. Luce didn't close it that first day. Only later, when there was an audience.

"This shouldn't hurt but it might feel a little funny."

I stared up at the ring light on the ceiling. Luce had another light on a stand, which he angled to suit his purposes. I could feel its heat between my legs as he pressed and prodded me.

For the first few minutes I concentrated on the circular light, but finally, drawing in my chin, I looked down to see that Luce was holding the crocus between his thumb and forefinger. He was stretching it out with one hand while measuring it with the other. Then he let go of the ruler and made notes. He didn't look shocked or appalled. In fact he examined me with great curiosity, almost connoisseurship. There was an element of awe or appreciation in his face. He took notes as he proceeded but made no small talk. His concentration was intense.

After a while, still crouching between my legs, Luce turned his head to search for another instrument. Between the sight lines of my raised knees his ear appeared, an amazing organ all its own, whorled and flanged, translucent in the bright lights. His ear was very close to me. It seemed for a moment as though Luce were listening at my source. As though some riddle were being imparted to him from between my legs. But then he found what he had been looking for and turned back.

He began to probe inside.

"Relax," he said.

He applied a lubricant, huddled in closer.

"Re lax lax."

There was a hint of annoyance, of command in his voice. I took a deep breath and did the best I could. Luce poked inside. For a moment it felt merely strange, as he'd suggested. But then a sharp pain shot through me. I jerked back, crying out.

"Sorry."

Nevertheless, he kept on. He placed one hand on my pelvis to steady me. He probed in farther, though he avoided the painful area. My eyes were welling with tears.

"Almost finished," he said.

But he was only getting started.

The chief imperative in cases like mine was to show no doubt as to the gender of the child in question. You did not tell the parents of a newborn, "Your baby is a hermaphrodite." Instead, you said, "Your daughter was born with a clitoris that is a little larger than a normal girl's. We'll need to do surgery to make it the right size." Luce felt that parents weren't able to cope with an ambiguous gender assignment. You had to tell them if they had a boy or a girl. Which meant that, before you said anything, you had to be sure what the prevailing gender was.

Luce could not do this with me yet. He had received the results of the endocrinological tests performed at Henry Ford Hospital, and so knew of my XY karyotype, my high plasma testosterone levels, and the absence in my blood of dihydrotestosterone. In other words, before even seeing me, Luce was able to make an educated guess that I was a male pseudohermaphrodite-genetically male but appearing otherwise, with 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome. But that, according to Luce's thinking, did not mean that I had a male gender identity.

My being a teenager complicated things. In addition to chromosomal and hormonal factors, Luce had to consider my sex of rearing, which had been female female. He suspected that the tissue mass he had palpated inside me was testicular. Still, he couldn't be sure until he had looked at a sample under a microscope.

All this must have been going through Luce's mind as he brought me back to the waiting room. He told me he wanted to speak to my parents and that he would send them out when he was finished. His intensity had lessened and he was friendly again, smiling and patting me on the back.

In his office Luce sat down in his Eames chair, looked up at Milton and Tessie, and adjusted his glasses.

"Mr. Stephanides, Mrs. Stephanides, I'll be frank. This is a complicated case. By complicated I don't mean irremediable. We have a range of effective treatments for cases of this kind. But before I'm ready to begin treatment there are a number of questions I have to answer."

My mother and father were sitting only a foot apart during this speech, but each heard something different. Milton heard the words that were there. He heard "treatment" and "effective." Tessie, on the other hand, heard the words that weren't there. The doctor hadn't said my name, for instance. He hadn't said "Calliope" or "Callie." He hadn't said "daughter," either. He didn't use any pronouns at all.

"I'll need to run further tests," Luce was continuing. "I'll need to perform a complete psychological assessment. Once I have the necessary information, then we can discuss in detail the proper course of treatment."

Milton was already nodding. "What kind of time line are we talking about, Doctor?"

Luce jutted out a thoughtful lower lip. "I want to redo the lab tests, just to be sure. Those results will be back tomorrow. The psychological evaluation will take longer. I'll need to see your child every day for at least a week, maybe two. Also it would be helpful if you could give me any childhood photographs or family movies you might have."

Milton turned to Tessie. "When does Callie start school?"

Tessie didn't hear him. She was distracted by Luce's phrase: "your child."

"What kind of information are you trying to get, Doctor?" Tessie asked.

"The blood tests will tell us hormone levels. The psychological assessment is routine in cases like this."

"You think it's some kind of hormone thing?" Milton asked. "A hormone imbalance?"

"We'll know after I've had time to do what I need to do," said Luce.

Milton stood up and shook hands with the doctor. The consultation was over.

Keep in mind: neither Milton nor Tessie had seen me undressed for years. How were they to know? And not knowing, how could they imagine? The information available to them was all secondary stuff-my husky voice, my flat chest-but these things were far from persuasive. A hormonal thing. It could have been no more serious than that. So my father believed, or wanted to believe, and so he tried to convince Tessie.

I had my own resistance. "Why does he have to do a psychological evaluation?" I asked. "It's not like I'm crazy."

"The doctor said it was routine."

"But why?"

With this question I had hit upon the crux of the matter. My mother has since told me that she intuited the real reason for the psychological assessment, but chose not to dwell on it. Or, rather, didn't choose. Let Milton choose for her. Milton preferred to treat the problem pragmatically. There was no sense in worrying about a psychological assessment that could only confirm what was obvious: that I was a normal, well-adjusted girl. "He probably bills the insurance extra for the psychological stuff," Milton said. "Sorry, Cal, but you'll have to put up with it. Maybe he can cure your neuroses. Got any neuroses? Now's your time to let 'em out." He put his arms around me, squeezed hard, and roughly kissed the side of my head.

Milton was so convinced that everything was going to be okay that on Tuesday morning he flew down to Florida on business. "No sense cooling my heels in this hotel," he told us.

"You just want to get out of this pit," I said.

"I'll make it up to you. Why don't you and your mother go out for a fancy dinner tonight. Anyplace you want. We're saving a couple bucks on this room, so you gals can splurge. Why don't you take Callie to Delmonico's, Tess."

"What's Delmonico's?" I asked.

"It's a steak joint."

"I want lobster. And baked Alaska," I said.

"Baked Alaska! Maybe they have that, too."

Milton left, and my mother and I tried to spend his money. We went shopping at Bloomingdale's. We had high tea at the Plaza. We never made it to Delmonico's, preferring a moderately priced Italian restaurant near the Lochmoor, where we felt more comfortable. We ate there every night, doing our best to pretend we were on a real trip, a vacation. Tessie drank more wine than usual and got tipsy, and when she went to the bathroom I drank her wine myself.

Normally the most expressive thing about my mother's face was the gap between her front teeth. When she was listening to me, Tessie's tongue often pressed against that divot, that gate. This was the signal of her attention. My mother always paid great attention to whatever I said. And if I told her something funny, then her tongue dropped away, her head fell back, her mouth opened wide, and there were her front teeth, riven and ascendant.

Every night at the Italian restaurant I tried to make this happen.

In the mornings, Tessie took me to the Clinic for my appointments.

"What are your hobbies, Callie?"

"Hobbies?"

"Is there anything you especially like to do?"

"I'm not really a hobby-type person."

"What about sports? Do you like any sports?"