CHAPTER 39
Imagine
KEEPER OF THE HOUSE
I remember back to the warm summer afternoon.
In the massive forest that I called my backyard.
It seemed so huge, unthinkably huge
Perhaps because I was so small.
I remember the acres being painted with light and
Infinite shades of greens and yellows.
My father would stand among a pile of stumps and logs,
The crisp smell of sawdust still lingered.
His grey sweatshirt decorated with wood-chips and paint.
His hands were scraped at the knuckles, and the sun
Bore down on his neck, leaving a bruise of red heat.
—Jonas
Kelly and Wayne continued to be amazed at the pace of maturity in Jonas after a difficult period of emotional highs and lows. Yes, he’d spent nearly the entire previous year holed up in his bedroom, reading, listening to music, or playing his guitar, but he was slowly coming out of his teenage shell. During the summer after his freshman year of high school, he took four weeks of college-level classes in ocean studies, won a poetry contest, and was part of the school’s winning Model United Nations team. Jonas had become a deeply reflective person. He loved and respected his parents for all their hard work, but he wondered how it all added up. He knew he wanted his own life to mean something substantial, and he couldn’t yet see that meaning in having a wife or raising children or working at some job every day. Instead, he was in love with big ideas and exploration, and had a yearning to travel. His life to this point had been largely circumscribed by the travails of his sister, and he was just now beginning to feel the contours of his own individual being.
In May 2014, Jonas wrote a short story about the former gangster Legs Diamond, imagining him confronting his own mortality. In it, Diamond sits and talks with the character of Death, who can’t take his eyes off the Depression-era thug. But when Diamond asks what his life meant, Death is not at all obliging.
People, nowadays, always expect others to solve their problems and answer their questions. It’s juvenile….Who would know more about your life’s ultimate meaning than you? Think about it. Every choice you make, every thought that runs through your head, they are all yours. Every instant of your life is determined by you.
So much of life is unpredictable—Jonas, like Nicole, Kelly, and Wayne, knew that all too well—and everything is earned. Meaning was something to be sought, struggled with, fought for, and ultimately found. And it was precious.
When Wayne was asked to be a keynote speaker for a Civil Rights Day program at Memorial Middle School in South Portland, he asked Jonas if he wanted to come along as his “roadie.” Jonas looked sharp in a tie, and as he set up his father’s laptop for the PowerPoint presentation, he couldn’t help noticing a gaggle of girls loitering nearby. They were actually Googling his name on their smartphones. It was flattering. Wayne spoke for half an hour, then took questions from the students. One girl raised her hand.
“Can we ask your son some questions?” she asked.
“If he wants to, that’s fine with me,” Wayne answered.
Normally Jonas didn’t like taking part in these presentations. He was entirely supportive of Nicole, but like his mother, public speaking wasn’t his thing. Nonetheless, he politely obliged.
“What was it like growing up with a transgender sister?” the girl asked.
Jonas took a moment to reflect.
“Imagine,” he said, “what it’s like for kids, teachers, adults asking you about your sister being transgender and you’re trying to explain it all with a sixth-grade vocabulary.”
Wayne was struck by Jonas’s self-awareness, his ability to parse an experience so finely, to see it and understand it so acutely. It was uncanny. Jonas had a preternatural ability to understand not only his own mind, but the thoughts and feelings of others. He was exquisitely sensitive in that way, which is perhaps why it was inevitable he would rediscover acting. It had been one of his and Nicole’s chief pastimes as children. Nicole loved being on a stage, the center of attention. Jonas, though, shied away from school theatricals, especially after the sixth grade. That’s when he’d landed the lead in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but he’d messed up, fooling around onstage during a performance. Wayne had been so embarrassed by his son’s behavior that night he apologized to the play’s director. Jonas couldn’t explain why he’d been disruptive. Maybe he just wasn’t ready for the responsibility or public attention. Whatever it was, he swore off theater.
Now he was feeling different, more confident, and he auditioned and won roles in productions each year at Waynflete, both comedy and drama. He played Reverend Hale in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Vice Principal Douglas Panch in the musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. He was one of the two stars in Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and played the part of Will Shakespeare in William Gibson’s A Cry of Players. He loved the language, he loved moving an audience, but above all he loved the storytelling, immersing himself in a role. It was, in some ways, the best kind of therapy for a kid whose biggest role in life so far had been being someone else’s brother. All the major events in Jonas’s life had been framed by Nicole’s experiences, but onstage, as part of an ensemble, he defined the experience. He was in control. “Theater works for me,” he liked to say.
—
ON JUNE 12, 2013, Jennifer Levi, representing the Maines family, argued the appeal of the Superior Court’s summary judgment in front of Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court, referred to as the Law Court in its appellate role. She’d driven up from western Massachusetts in her Nissan hybrid the day before, which was a good thing because it was cold, windy, and rainy the morning of the hearing—the same weather she and Ben Klein had encountered in Bangor nine months earlier. They hoped their luck would be better this time. It was Levi’s turn to make the argument before six justices of the Law Court—the seventh had recused himself for unknown reasons. Levi wasn’t used to arguing a lot of cases because her work is so specialized. As a transgender rights lawyer, she covered a wide range of issues, from healthcare access to employment discrimination to rejection of bank loan applications, but it wasn’t often that those cases made it to court. This was different. Only one other bathroom accommodation discrimination case involving a transgender person had ever reached a state supreme court, in Minnesota in 2001, and the plaintiff lost. If Levi and Klein prevailed, they would set a precedent.
When she opened her bright yellow legal folder to begin her argument, Levi looked over her typewritten, highlighted list of facts taped to the left side of the folder, and, taped to the right side, questions she anticipated the judges might ask. She’d spent more than a thousand hours on this case and had made countless trips to Maine to visit the family. She’d even researched the biographies of each of the judges, hoping to gain an insight or an edge. Levi wanted to make sure the judges understood that Nicole had been forced to use a separate restroom and that even the school’s own staff had deemed the boys’ restroom inappropriate for her. Most of all, it was important for the court to see Nicole as the girl she was.
Levi and a member of the Maine Human Rights Commission spoke first. Then the defendant’s attorneys. There were questions from the judges as well as rebuttals by both sides. After the hearing, Levi told the media, “We have a strong case here of a young girl trying to go to school and learn, and the school failing to protect her. I feel confident that we got a fair hearing from the court, and I look forward to their decision.” Outside the courthouse, in a driving rain and standing next to her parents and brother, Nicole spoke to the press as well:
I want all transgender kids to be able to go to school and not have to worry about being treated unfairly or bullied. I’ve been very lucky to have a family that’s stood by me and stuck up for me, and I’m really grateful for them.
On August 12, 2013, California’s governor Jerry Brown signed in
to law AB 1266, and in doing so, broke new ground as California became the first state to establish a law aligning bathroom use not with sexual anatomy but with gender identity.
A pupil shall be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.
Brown’s signature came after months of public controversy and attempts by various conservative and right-wing religious groups to stop the bill’s passage. Even afterward, one of them, Privacy for All, launched a petition drive to repeal the legislation, writing on its website that it was wrong to use
laws to frustrate and deny great natural and moral truths. One such truth is that men and women offer unique and complementary contributions to human flourishing. Society is better served when those contributions are encouraged, not when the uniqueness of being male and being female are stripped from societal norms and we’re guided into a genderless future.
One vocal opponent of California’s AB 1266, as well as other state and federal attempts to expand civil rights protections to transgender people, was Brandon McGinley, the field director of the western region for the Pennsylvania Family Institute. In October 2013, he argued in an online essay that relying on “disgust, discomfort, or another visceral reaction to carry the day in opposing such progressive legislative innovations” was a fool’s errand.
We could affirm that gender is distinct from sex, and even that its contours are complex, fluid, and partially socially-construed, without affirming the radical view that our biology is irrelevant to our gender….
We need not go into detail to observe that men and women have different experiences in restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-segregated places because of the differences in their anatomy. Separating the sexes in these facilities allows for distinct physical accommodations proper to the needs of men and women, but more importantly it allows for camaraderie among those who share the whole life experience of manhood or womanhood—among those who are the same.
For Kelly, Wayne, Nicole, and Jonas, the theory simply made no sense. They argued that the female experience, the “life experience of manhood or womanhood,” was exactly what had been denied to Nicole by Orono Middle School. Using the girls’ restroom, combing her hair, and gossiping with friends: These seemed like small things, but they were all a part of being a teenage girl and that’s what was being denied to Nicole. She didn’t want a genderless society; she just wanted to be recognized for the gender she knew she was, the one that allowed her to have all the same experiences of being female that other teens girls enjoyed. No one could argue that equal rights for all religions would result in a religionless society. It was about the law, and the law should be blind to differences when it comes to handing out rights and privileges. The experience of who we are is a celebration of what makes us human, and one of those experiences is being male or female—or something in between.
CHAPTER FORTY
Our Story
THINGS THAT I’D LIKE TO SEE HAPPEN
September (2013)—Start eleventh grade
October—Turn 16
2014:
September—Start twelfth grade
2015:
GRADUATE!!!
turn 18
Be accepted into a fantastic Acting school
Have [sex reassignment] surgery
2018:
Turn 21 and party hard!
2019:
Graduate from College with a masters degree in acting…move to the west coast to better my acting career…buy a pretty house.
2020–2030:
Find someone who loves me and get married
—Nicole’s journal, 2012
The Maineses were an average, middle-class family—and at the same time they were not. They were acting as they believed families should. They loved and supported one another. And Wayne and Kelly did everything they could so that their children would flourish and live long, productive lives.
In December 2013, Wayne decided to send out the family Christmas card with a letter inside for the first time since 2006. He’d given up shortly before Wyatt became Nicole, at a time when he couldn’t face the fact that his child was transgender. When he announced his intention to Kelly, she simply laughed and said, “Have fun!” He did.
Nicole has had a very full year and is growing into a beautiful young lady who is still interested in the Performing Arts, video games and civil rights work. She was in Cinderella and The Crucible at Waynflete. She again spent time volunteering at EqualityMaine and watched our state become the first state to bring marriage equality to our friends by popular vote.
Jonas is a tad taller than Dad, has a size 12 shoe and is typically impeccably dressed, just like his dad (NOT). He was a member of the Model United Nations Team that competed at Harvard, a member of the Mock Trial Team and he also joined the Performing Arts Club this year. He also played “Reverend Hale” in The Crucible.
He still loves history and was also selected to represent Waynflete in the state poetry contest. He continues to play the guitar and keyboard and drive his sister nuts! He was a guest performer at “Open Mic Night” in Orono this summer.
Kelly had a very busy year at work, solving problems, developing new partnerships for the Sheriff’s Office, while taking on many new duties. Of course the rest of the time she was keeping track of, organizing and driving the kids to their many events.
It is still a big challenge for us to find time together. Living in two towns is not easy….Outside of work I continue to teach others about transgender youth and how to support equal rights. Every time I speak I can see that I am breaking down barriers that have existed for generations. It is always emotional and often healing. Our story is a good story and hearing it in person is a powerful tool.
—
ON THURSDAY MORNING, JANUARY 30, 2014, shortly before noon, Wayne picked up the phone at work. It was someone from GLAD, and she had a message: “You won!”
“What are you talking about?” Wayne, not sure who was on the other end of the line, was confused.
“You won and we want you to go to Portland right away!”
Then it clicked. Wayne was nearly speechless and as soon as he hung up he called Kelly to confirm it wasn’t all a joke—or a dream.
“We won?” he asked her. “Are you sure? I don’t believe it.”
Kelly had just gotten off the phone with GLAD, too, and she’d already texted the news to Nicole and Jonas. At that moment both of them were sitting in the school auditorium at an assembly, and Nicole didn’t hesitate when she saw the exclamation points on her phone: She dashed to the front of the auditorium and shouted out the news to the whole school.
“Everyone was clapping!” Nicole texted excitedly back to her mother and father.
Wayne excused himself from work and drove eighty miles an hour down the highway to Portland. It would take him longer than the usual two and a half hours, because he had to stop a couple of times to do phone interviews.
“This is a momentous decision,” Michael Silverman of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund said in a press release.
“It sends a message to transgender students that their lives are valuable, that their education needs are important, and that schools have to provide them with equal educational opportunities,” attorney Jennifer Levi said.
The opposing counsel said the Orono school district would take every step to comply with the law, and that the court “provided helpful guidance about how to handle this issue that is becoming more and more common in schools around the state and the country.”
As Wayne pulled up to the house he was met by a TV crew and asked to make a statement.
“I haven’t even talked to my wife yet!” he told them. “As parents, all we’ve ever wanted is for Nicole and her brother, Jonas, to get a good education and to be treated just like their classmates, and that didn’t ha
ppen for Nicole. What happened to my daughter was extremely painful for her and our whole family, but we can now close this very difficult chapter in our lives. We are very happy knowing that because of this ruling, no other transgender child in Maine will have to endure what Nicole experienced.”
In other parts of Maine there was consternation. Michael Heath had resigned his top position at the Christian Civic League in 2009. Later he would write that others in the organization thought he’d become too “radioactive,” too opinionated about fighting homosexuality and what he referred to as transgenderism. In 2012, as the head of Helping Hands Ministries, Heath wrote on his blog that others at the league had questioned his “relentless advocacy to keep the ‘gay’ fight as the League’s number one priority,” which is why after leaving the league he turned his attention full-time to sexual orientation and transgender issues. In 2013, he wrote on his blog that he was continuing to try to hold back the “pro-sodomy” movement, because the “vile tide of perversion which these forces unleashed is now at a high-water mark, as sodomy and transgenderism have encroached on every institution in our state, in particular our public schools.”
When Paul Melanson heard the Supreme Court had decided against the Orono public school district, he was philosophical. He knew there’d be more fights about other issues, and he was determined to keep speaking his mind. That’s all he could do, win or lose, and he would keep doing it no matter what.
As for Melanson’s grandson Jacob, the legal fight had receded from his life after the sixth grade when he moved back to live with his mother in the town of Gilead. She worked as a hostess at a local restaurant, and he hoped to get a job in the metals trade, perhaps someday become a welder. When he thought about the case—and he didn’t much—it wasn’t about rights or bathroom politics or, frankly, even Nicole. He still believed it was wrong for someone born a boy to “pretend” he was a girl, but he did wonder what it was like for Jonas. He knew Jonas didn’t like him, but Jonas was the only person involved in the whole thing he could really understand. Jonas was a boy just like him. He knew who he was and was happy being male. What must it have been like, Jacob wondered, to be the brother of a transgender twin? He barely knew his own brothers, and he wondered if it had disappointed Jonas that Wyatt had become Nicole, that his brother had become his sister. It hadn’t, of course. Jonas was very clear about that.
Becoming Nicole Page 22
