Becoming Nicole

by Amy Ellis Nutt

  The family had been contacted by StoryCorps, the oral history project that records the conversations and memories of ordinary people. Some of those stories are highlighted on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. The producers of StoryCorps had heard about the Maineses’ unusual journey and wondered if they could come up to Portland to record the family interviewing one another. Kelly and Wayne liked the idea of their voices being held in perpetuity in the archives of the Library of Congress, so they agreed. The StoryCorps staff lugged their recording equipment to Portland, and the family sat down for several hours. Kelly and Wayne interviewed each other, then Nicole and her father, then Nicole and Jonas. Prompted by the facilitator to ask certain questions, Jonas asked Nicole where she saw herself in ten years. She said, hopefully in acting school, but also visiting Jonas and going to his wedding.

  “Your wife will throw the bouquet and I’ll plow down several people trying to catch it,” she said. “I see myself probably still single. Probably working my hardest to get my acting career going.”

  Jonas probed some more. “Obviously being twins shaped our lives a lot,” he said. “If we hadn’t been twins, where do you think we’d be?”

  It was a question Nicole couldn’t answer. For that matter, neither could Jonas. “No one knows us as ‘Jonas,’ and as ‘Nicole,’ ” he said. “They know us as ‘Jonas and Nicole.’ We’re the classic never-apart twins.” It was true. They were so close, and yet they’d each fought so hard to have their own lives.

  “You’re so closely knitted together and when both of you are struggling for that independence, there’s so much clashing,” Jonas said. “So much wanting to be your own person.”

  Yet, when it came down to it, when Jonas asked Nicole what was her most special memory of being an identical twin, Nicole said she remembered a time that seemed like it could only have come before memory. Jonas seemed to remember it, too.

  “We were babies, we were sort of like a tag team,” Nicole said. “Our parents would set us down for naps. We didn’t want to sleep, so we’d climb up over the bars [of our cribs] and, of course, I got up and over and you kept falling back down. So I climbed yours and helped you over.”

  Of course: One helping the other, up and over whatever obstacles lay in their way, always together.

  CHAPTER 42

  Transformation

  Who we are is the story we tell about ourselves. The self, says philosopher Daniel Dennett, is the center of narrative gravity, “an abstraction that is, in spite of its abstractness, tightly coupled to the physical world.” Nicole knew that she was more than the sum of her parts—that her heart and mind defined who she was, but her body gave her context. Bodies hold our stories. They connect us to the world because they are the instruments by which we experience the world. Nicole finally needed to make that connection right. She regretted that people who don’t understand what it means to be transgender focus so much on the surgical part of transitioning. It was for her just a final step, but a necessary one, and the chance, finally, to be conscious of her own body in a good way.

  —

  HEADING INTO HER SENIOR YEAR in high school, Nicole was eager to have her surgery the following summer, before she started college. Dr. Spack recommended a Philadelphia plastic surgeon. The operation would be expensive, about $20,000, but Wayne and Kelly had set aside the money from their portion of the $75,000 that had been awarded the family in its lawsuit against the Orono School Department. After paying GLAD and the remainder of the money they owed their first attorney, the Maineses had about $44,000 left.

  A couple of weeks before the operation, a miscommunication between the surgeon’s office and the Maineses regarding presurgical protocols put the entire operation on hold. The family hadn’t realized Nicole needed to stop taking her estrogen a month earlier, a necessary precaution because hormone treatments increase the risk of blood clots. The clock for the operation would now have to be reset, but in order to still complete the surgery in time for Nicole to heal before heading off to college, the family had to find a different surgeon. Luckily, there was one just outside Philadelphia, Dr. Kathy Rumer, a nationally recognized transgender surgical specialist, and she had an opening in her schedule at the end of July.

  Months before the operation, Nicole underwent numerous laser treatments for the removal of all her pubic hair, since a portion of her scrotal and penile tissue would be used to form her new vagina. It was an excruciating process she likened to someone flicking a rubber band against her skin, then injecting the spot with a hot needle.

  Wayne and Nicole had both met Dr. Rumer a year or two earlier at a transgender conference in Philadelphia, so there was already a good rapport with the doctor. She explained the procedure to the entire family, telling them that although Nicole would be losing her penis and testicles, sensitive parts would be retained to create a clitoris, enabling sexual arousal. She’d have to learn how to position herself differently to urinate, and over a period of months would need to use a device to expand and maintain the shape of her new vagina. Most reassuringly, when Nicole was fully healed, it would be almost impossible to tell, from outward appearances, that she hadn’t been born with female anatomy.

  A week before the scheduled operation at Pennsylvania’s Delaware County Memorial Hospital, Nicole was in a state of nervous anticipation, part fearful, part excited, knowing that the upcoming surgery was a kind of light at the end of a very long tunnel, and yet understanding there would be real-world differences, and complications, with this new body. She worried especially that the surgery would reignite old feelings of dysphoria. Over the last seventeen years, she’d become accustomed to what she called her “boy parts,” and now, having made peace with them, she was going to replace them with new, unfamiliar “girl parts.” What if the disorientation about her body came back? She wrote down some of her thoughts:

  I’ve been having realizations that surgery isn’t going to be the magic fix to everything like I thought. I think that I already knew that, but it’s still a hard feeling to accept. I’ve always been afraid of dating, with the way my body is now—but it’s still going to be scary because of the way my body used to be. I’m also still going to be unable to have a child—which is something that has always intensely bothered me. Even if I change my body and even if I look like I was born a natural woman—there is always going to be that reminder that I wasn’t—and I think that that’s something that I’ll always have bad blood with.

  Despite her worries and concerns, Nicole also knew this was the only option, and the only way to complete her transition: a final piece of the puzzle finding its rightful place.

  If not for me, I feel like I need to do this for Wyatt. I need to do this to make up for everything that he had to put up with. I need to do this to apologize to him. I need to do this to show him that it was all worth it. I need to do this to thank him for not giving up and for giving me a chance….He always remembered that there was something to be gained from putting up with everyone else’s nonsense—he was going to have the body that he always felt like he deserved and was meant to have. And that made it all—the harassment and the bad feelings and the discomfort and the awkwardness—worth it.

  I feel like I need to have surgery because I promised him.

  A few days before the operation, Jonas was also thinking about the significance of this moment for his sister and wrote on his Facebook page:

  So we leave tomorrow for Philly where Nicole will undergo the Sex Reassignment Surgery that she has been waiting to have her whole life. Chances are the next couple of posts I make are gonna be sappy and long, but I can’t help it. This is the conclusion to a very long struggle and very enlightening journey for Nicole and I want to thank all of you guys (you’re all probably Nicole’s friends, since you’re my friends, and the whole twin thing, you get it) for being there to support her and show her love and kindness….I’ll try and keep you all posted. It’s going to be a VERY exciting week for us, and a little emotional, so before
you ask I’m not crying I’m just allergic to touching moments.

  P.S. If you have any ideas of what I should write on a cake let me know because there is SO much potential there.

  On July 28, 2015, on a humid, foggy morning, the entire Maines family arrived at the hospital outside Philadelphia in the dark. It wasn’t quite six yet, but Nicole already looked wrung out. She was wan and her hair hung limply across her face. In a loose-fitting pale blue shift and canvas slip-ons, she shuffled down the hospital corridor supported by her parents. She hadn’t eaten solid food for forty-eight hours and had had to endure an enema that morning, all in preparation for the operation.

  The night before she’d felt so weak, in fact, she’d laid down on the bathroom floor in one of the patient apartments above Dr. Rumer’s office, where up to four sex-reassignment patients at a time stay as part of their recovery. She would live there with Kelly for a week after her own surgery, and that’s where they checked in the day before the operation. Wayne and Jonas were staying at a nearby Hilton Hotel, but they were all there in the apartment, just twelve hours before the surgery, and Nicole was dizzy, hungry, and feeling vulnerable.

  “I can’t do this,” she moaned from the bathroom floor, just a bit melodramatically.

  “You don’t have to,” Kelly told her. “We can cancel the surgery right now if you want.”

  “No! No! I have to have the surgery!”

  There was never really any doubt that she would. She knew it; Kelly and Wayne knew it; Jonas knew it. But neither twin had ever even been in a hospital before. The most serious medical procedures they’d had were getting their wisdom teeth extracted. But Nicole was going to have a four- or five-hour surgery, and she would be recuperating for several weeks. It was a long walk to the elevator, so a hospital attendant retrieved a wheelchair for Nicole, and Jonas took over, pushing his sister through the serpentine halls, then up to the sixth floor. Once there, Nicole seemed to relax a bit, but admitted her worries to her mother.

  “I wonder if it will come back,” she said.

  Kelly understood. Nicole was concerned, again, about the dysphoria, the sense of her body not belonging to her. She’d pushed back against her male body for so long, not wanting it, not recognizing it as her own. Kelly reassured her the feelings were natural. A lot of changes were in store, and what’s unknown is always scary.

  A nurse asked Nicole to change into a hospital gown and then went over some forms with her and her mother. As she closed the door on Wayne and Jonas, she told the two men they could find the waiting room down the hall and around the corner.

  “I’m staying right here,” Jonas said, as he sat down outside his sister’s hospital room and leaned his back against the wall.

  Over the next hour or so a steady stream of hospital personnel went in and out of the room: the duty nurse, the operating room nurse, the nurse anesthetist, the anesthesiologist, and finally the surgeon, Kathy Rumer. Before she left to prep for surgery, Rumer asked Nicole if she had any questions or concerns.

  “Let’s get this thing done!” Nicole said. “I’m hungry!”

  A long-sought relief settled over Kelly and Wayne as their daughter was wheeled into the operating room at 7:35 A.M. They were almost over this last big hurdle. In retrospect, Kelly thought Nicole’s meltdown the night before had, in a way, broken the tension. Her own emotions had been so high she’d been afraid of grabbing Nicole and telling her, “No! Don’t do this.” It wasn’t that she didn’t think her daughter wanted or needed the surgery. She did. It was that she hated the idea of one of her children being cut open. But this day had been out there so long, had been anticipated and planned for and dreamed about. Now she just wanted it over so that everyone could move on.

  All that was left was the waiting. Wayne had brought a kind of toolbox and worked on his new hobby, weaving small baskets from pine tree needles; Kelly checked work email on her laptop; and Jonas fiddled with his smartphone. He also posted to Facebook:

  Nicole is goin under!! It has begun.

  All during the surgery—and actually for days before and after the surgery—messages for Nicole had poured in through social media. She received “good luck” texts from family members, from Asa Adams school counselor Lisa Erhardt, even from the dean of students at the University of Maine. Lexie, her best friend from Waynflete, texted, “ARE U PSYCHED FOR SURGERY?” Nicole texted back, “SUPER PSYCHED—nervous—BUT PSYCHED,” to which Lexie replied, “U gonna look SO GOOD.”

  At 11:06 A.M., Dr. Rumer appeared in the waiting area.

  “She did great,” she told the family.

  The operation was completed in under four hours, and Nicole was just fine, she said. The surgeon was able to construct a five-inch long vagina and did not have to do a skin graft to find extra tissue, which was a huge relief. Kelly and Wayne embraced each other.

  Referring to the surgery, Wayne said, “This part was a good thing. It’s like a present, after everything we’ve been through.”

  Nicole was in the recovery room almost longer than the OR. The nausea from the general anesthesia was getting the best of her.

  “Can I just peek in to give her a kiss?” Kelly asked.

  No, it was against hospital privacy rules, since the beds in the recovery room were not partitioned. Kelly would have to wait a bit longer. Finally, at 2:35 in the afternoon, Nicole’s bed was wheeled down to the inpatient surgical unit, room 504. There was some irony to the room number: It was the same as the policy at Asa Adams that had both protected Nicole and then become a kind of albatross. Now it would designate the room where she’d recover from her final transition.

  Nicole slept most of the day, and Kelly, Wayne, and Jonas lingered in her room keeping a watchful eye over her. On Facebook, Jonas posted another update.

  With Nicole! She’s sleepy, but she’s feeling good! She’ll be awake and kicking soon so I’ll enjoy the quiet while I can.

  I just want to thank you all again for all of your support. This is a huge day for Nicole and my family and you’ve all been so kind throughout our journey. Those of you who know me (hopefully all of you) know that this publicity “family story” stuff isn’t my jam. This week I’m making an exception. She has fought incredibly hard for her rights and the rights of others, and you all played a part in that, too. Pat yourselves on the back, champs. You earned it. She loves all of you and so do I. Thank you again and I’ll see if she’s up for a selfie when she wakes up.

  Two days after the surgery, Nicole ate a hamburger, made phone calls—to her grandmother Donna, to other relatives and friends—and received visitors. One of them was a trans woman she’d met at a convention and who lived nearby. They talked animatedly to each other while Kelly and Wayne and Jonas lingered in the room. At one point, Nicole said to her friend, “I kinda like having a twin brother, because now I can see I would have looked awesome as a man, too!”

  Her good friend Lexie texted, “HOW U FEELIN?” And then, “YOU’RE LIKE ARIEL,” the little mermaid who emerged from the sea in the form she’d always longed for.

  Nicole’s transition was now complete. She would still need to take female hormones the rest of her life, and she would never be able to have her own children, but she knew she wanted to marry a man someday and adopt. Everything else was still to be decided, which is how it’s supposed to be when you’re just seventeen years old.

  For Nicole, for Jonas, for Wayne and Kelly, nothing, of course, would ever really be over because nothing ever is until we take our last breath. We are, all of us, always crossing borders. Everything seems to happen all at once when we’re young, but as we get older we see that we are always moving away from one thing and toward another, never still, never without motion. We live in liminal time, each moment sliding into the next, the future into the present, the present into the past. We believe all things are possible, and that there are always more stories to be written.

  “Stories move the walls that need to be moved,” Nicole told her father recently. Nicole’s
story had started before she was even born. So had Jonas’s—in atoms and molecules, in liquid beginnings. One DNA, two souls, and a billion possibilities. “I believe we don’t choose our stories,” the poet and author Honor Moore once said. “Our stories choose us….And if we don’t tell them, then we are somehow diminished.” Kelly and Wayne and Jonas and Nicole were still in the middle of their stories, but they hadn’t backed away from sharing them.

  Nicole had searched for hers in mirrors, in her brother, in the world around her—and she’d found it with her family’s help. Nicole’s truth had always been impatient to make itself known. It was, in those first few years of life, unnameable. Kelly, Jonas, and Wayne helped her words find “a local habitation and a name.” There was no confusion anymore when she looked in the mirror. She’d solved her own great riddle and in the process helped her family solve theirs. They’d spun the stories of their lives. And when it was all unspooled it all made sense, and the knots in their hearts were freed.

  EPILOGUE

  As Long as She’s Happy

  Even in the time it has taken to write this book, the rights of transgender people continue to be recognized. The push for marriage equality in the past few years helped to galvanize the transgender movement, and there is clearly no going back. In a 1966 survey of medical and psychiatric professionals in the United States, an overwhelming majority believed transsexuals were “severely neurotic.” Today, eighteen states and the District of Columbia as well as more than two hundred U.S. cities and counties bar discrimination against transgender people. Worldwide, seven countries legally recognize more than two genders. And in July 2015, the Obama administration moved to lift the restriction from transgender people serving in the military.

  How far we have come—though there is a great deal more still to be done—is a testament to the acceptance of young people who are now growing up with marriage equality as the law of the land. How children spontaneously understand fairness and equality and accept differences in others was illustrated in a conversation among three third-grade students at Asa C. Adams Elementary School a few years ago. Lisa Erhardt, who meant so much to the Maines family during Nicole’s odyssey at the school, was giving a lesson about sticking one’s neck out for friends and classmates in bullying situations. At the end of the hour the third-graders were asked to draw a picture based on the lesson. Walking among their desks while they worked, Erhardt overheard several students who had taken a creative approach to the concept of sticking one’s neck out. That night, she wrote to the Maineses.