Nina Here Nor There

by Nick Krieger

  “Honey, my way may not be right, but it’s how the world is,” she said in the tone a parent reserves to tell a child that life isn’t fair.

  So put down your seven iron and make change, create a better place for your kid, the old bitter part of me wanted to say. But by flying out to be with me, she’d taken a huge step. And as we set a record for a discussion without escalation, I took my own huge step by appreciating our relationship without complaint. I felt so lucky to have her there in my home that after she held my hand this week, she could ride her golf cart off into the sunset. She’d earned it, passed on to me a life of privilege—there’d been no restrictions on my dreams, even the one to have top surgery. But she’d have to forgive me for leaving my own golf clubs in storage and expanding my interests; having my own needs fulfilled made me want to help those with fewer opportunities and greater challenges, the people who weren’t like us.

  I slept fitfully that night, with on-and-off thoughts of Bec. As a guest, he’d slept in my room on the eve of his surgery, back before I’d moved in. He’d once told me how he’d tossed and turned, couldn’t sleep—he was too excited. He felt like he was going to Disneyland. It was about five in the morning when I woke up for good, wondering if Disneyland would be as magnificent as I imagined it to be.

  My mother drove our borrowed car to the surgery center in the touristy Union Square. Within fifteen minutes of arrival, I’d completed all the forms, received my last “good luck” text from Ramona, and left my mom, whom the staff called “The Boss,” to wait for me in the prep area. In the privacy of a bathroom, I changed into my gown, compression stockings, booties, and cap. I moved slowly, forcing deep breaths, and carefully placed my clothing in a locker. I would’ve tossed my Frog Bra in the trash with a “good riddance,” if I hadn’t known of Big Brother programs, or hadn’t acquaintances in great need of pricey binding devices. I washed my face, my locker key bracelet clanking against the sink. On the other wrist, I wore a disposable medical ID. I dried my face with a paper towel and looked into the mirror, holding myself with my eyes. “You can do this, buddy,” I said aloud.

  Behind a curtain, I sat in a reclining chair, more La-Z-Boy than hospital bed, while a nurse fed me through an IV. My mom remained quiet. She looked like she’d eaten bad sushi, which made me feel like I’d eaten bad sushi. Just as I started to wish my two friends were there to pet my head, coddle, comfort, and warm me with heartfelt words, my mom jumped up. “Excuse me,” she said to the nurse, pushing her out of the way with the determination of a New Yorker claiming a rush hour taxi. “I just want to give her a kiss.” My mom planted a big wet one on my lips, and a surge of emotions poured out of my eyes.

  The nurse handed me a box of tissues just as Brownstein pulled the curtain aside. “Tears already?” he asked.

  I wanted to punch him and his infamous bedside manner.

  “I hope those are tears of joy,” he said.

  “Don’t worry. All his patients do great,” the nurse said to me.

  Brownstein offered my mom the opportunity to leave before he marked my chest. I started to nod yes, trying to spare her any extra pain, but my mother shook her head no. While Brownstein undid my gown and drew a dotted line down my sternum, my mother remained with her library book open on her lap. I watched her, jaw clenched, head down, her eyes focused on the page, pretending to read. That’s where I got it all, I thought. All of the strength and courage it took to arrive here came from that itty-bitty woman.

  When it was time, I walked myself to the operating room, dragging my IV on wheels. I hopped up on the table in the freezing cold room, and before I could be concerned about all of the shiny metallic surfaces and high-tech equipment, the anesthesiologist knocked me out. I opened my eyes to a wall clock that read 12:30 and a nurse asking me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten with ten being severe. I said two or three. Then I asked for more pain meds. The nurse asked me for another rating. I said one or two. I asked for more meds and she gave them to me. I was floating, breastless and euphoric.

  The “congratulations” came in waves, through e-mails, flowers, and cards, including one from my yoga teacher Rusty, which Greg had thoughtfully brought to class for him to sign. Within two days, I weaned myself off the Percocet, because it made me feel emotionally unstable. I was in more discomfort than pain, and it was a consolation to know that the occasional stabbing twinges, like razor blades in my binder, would end. My suffering, the true torture, had come from the constant fight with myself over whether I could, should, or would have this surgery, and had ended the moment my date was finalized.

  For the next four days, I melted into the couch, my only goal to rest, not just physically, but also from my thoughts, feelings, and hopes for my new body. Conscious that anything I experienced immediately after surgery was most likely a response to the event itself, I focused only on my DVDs, recuperation, and the distraction from boredom by my visiting friends. Most were meeting my mom for the first time, and watching them help her rotate the plates of gourmet food in the microwave added to my celebration for an event that brought together many of the people closest to me.

  By the last day, my mom’s surroundings must have sunk in, because she returned home from a walk, sat down in the living room next to a bouquet of tulips and a lone spotted orchid, and asked, “Is everyone in the Castro gay?”

  “What makes you think people are gay?” I teased.

  “I don’t know. The hand holding, the couples. I can’t be sure. But they are, right?”

  “Yes, mom. I was just giving you a hard time.”

  “I’ve never been anywhere like it,” she said. “It’s just different is all.”

  I was too tired to talk, but I was committed to showing her, someday, that difference was just a matter of perspective. I’d share with her the history of my people, all that I’d discovered in my books, because with an awareness of the past, the legacy of gender variance uncovered, the identities and expressions of me and those around me weren’t outlandish or all that different; it was the secrets kept, the stories buried, the trans folk who had to hide their pasts for safety or chose to for other valid, personal reasons that made us seem invisible.

  We would have time to talk more now that my mom was with me in the passenger seat, next to me, by my side. “I’m going to go by a new name,” I said, lifting my eyes from my white athletic socks.

  I could see the hard outline of my mom’s jaw through her cheeks as she clenched her teeth. “Do I need to know it?” Her gaze remained steady, focused on her ankles.

  “No, not yet,” I said, feeling the relief of my honesty as I spoke.

  Like nearly everything I’d given up in the past few years, I held on to “Nina” longer than I might have been comfortable, easing my grip slowly, even as I had learned that letting go of the old was what allowed for new possibilities. A couple weeks ago, my roommates had started to call me “Nick” around the house. It would take some time to get used to this name, develop a relationship with it and make it mine, but hearing “Nick” felt right immediately. I no longer focused on the why, didn’t stress about what changing my name would mean in the grand scheme of things, and instead trusted myself, the feeling I now recognized as peace.

  As I moved into the unknown, further into the trans-masculine realm, I didn’t see myself on the path of some big change. But I had less resistance to little changes, to a name that could be screamed in bed, to the male words that made me feel seen, to a chest that others might perceive as being of Man, to fighting my own desires as if for some higher cause, understanding now that I was of most value to myself and to others—women, lesbians, trans guys, lovers, my parents—when I was solid and secure in myself.

  The paradox will remain with me forever, the confusing choice to take on a guy’s name, even though I do not consider myself a guy. To let words like Nick, or even he or she, create my identity would give too much absol
ute power to them. I use words to express myself and yet they do not define me, cannot crystallize a life that is in constant flux. Words are tools for communication like gender is a system for organization. And even as I play into the system by choosing a bathroom, a pronoun, a box on a form, I see it as a framework built upon faults, an institution that oppresses us all with some victims suffering more than others, a juggernaut. Some people see it as a binary, a spectrum, a continuum, or a rainbow. But when I envision my own gender, it is with my eye to the lens of a kaleidoscope that I spin and spin and spin.

  Epilogue

  She kissed my stomach gently. I watched her head move up the center of my torso, felt her mouth press into my sensitive skin. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. My chest tingled with pins and needles, a static underneath the surface, raw and alive. Her lips glided along my healing incision, caressing the red, raised line. She pecked the pieces of white gauze still covering my nipples, my surgical pasties. “You’re not hurting me,” I said.

  My chest was tender, my whole upper body sore. That was my own fault, overexerting myself from two days of sex. The Boys had all said the same thing: “Wait, you have the rest of your life to enjoy your new chest. Wait until it heals.” But none of them had. What they’d failed to tell me, or what I couldn’t understand until now, was that I’d already waited most of my life, certainly my entire relationship with Ramona, for this freedom.

  She kissed her way up my center until her breasts lay on the flat table of my chest. She rested her face against mine. I felt the wetness on her cheek, but I did not ask my ex-girlfriend about her tears, same as she hadn’t asked me about mine. She was leaving in a few hours for six weeks, enough time for each of us to deal with the consequences of stealing this weekend and reimagining our past.

  Ramona nuzzled into my armpit and I nudged her head over, pushing it fully on top of me. “I don’t want to hurt you, Nick,” she said.

  “You’re not going to hurt me.”

  A light rain pebbled the skylight above. Her room was darker than I remembered, even during the day, her bed far from the lone window, facing the mirrored closet. After years of searching my reflection for myself, perhaps I would’ve found what I wanted had I looked now. Instead, I closed my eyes and felt it, my lover’s head resting squarely on my heart.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, Alex, for your insightful edits, persistent encouragement, and dedication. I am so proud to partner with you. Amy and the other folks at Beacon, thank you for your overwhelming excitement and the opportunity to work with such a remarkable press.

  Elizabeth, you were the first person in the industry to believe in this project, and with so much enthusiasm that I thought you had to be nuts. Thank you for being nuts, and for helping me shape my proposal into the foundation for this book.

  Lisa, for your vision, friendship, and unwavering belief in me. Jane Anne, for our Friday afternoons. Karl, for being a role model in every way. Stephen, Lewis, Deborah, Aaron and the Lone Mountain crew of my peers, thank you for the truly amazing gift of writing community.

  Dad, I hope the overriding sentiment you take away from this book is my love for you. Mom, thank you for supporting my writing despite your complete confusion as to how a creative person emerged from our gene pool. Bro, you are my best friend and that means everything.

  I am indebted to many friends for providing feedback on early drafts, keeping me as sane as possible during the later ones, and inspiring me: Derek, Sandra, J. P., Danaa, Meghan, Megann, Liz, Ryan, Molly, Zippy, Breezy, Tom, Dara, Melinda, Brody, Caitlin, Christine, Josie, Solomon, Thea, Betsy, Jody, and my A-gays. Although I am unable to name everyone here, I carry with me every kind and encouraging comment made about my writing.

  Janet and Rusty, your love and light are wondrous guides—thank you for breathing with me.

  And finally, Kristina, thank you for reading every draft, for your wisdom, and for putting up with me. To be as concise as you have always been: I am so grateful for you.

  Beacon Press

  25 Beacon Street

  Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892

  www.beacon.org

  Beacon Press books

  are published under the auspices of

  the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

  © 2011 by Nick Krieger

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  14 13 12 11 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Text design by Yvonne Tsang at Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Krieger, Nick.

  Nina here nor there : my journey beyond gender / Nick Krieger.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-8070-0092-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  E-ISBN 978-0-8070-0093-9

  1. Krieger, Nick, 1978– 2. Transsexuals—California—San Francisco—Biography. 3. Sexual minorities—California—San Francisco. I. Title.

  HQ77.8.K75A3 2011

  306.76’8092—dc22 [B] 2010050226

  This is a true story. However, the names and other identifying details of some of the persons (and one cat) have been changed to protect privacy.