During junior year of high school, after I started taking hormones, I would constantly go to the bathroom to see if I was bleeding. But more than anything, I wanted my boobies. I felt soreness around my nipples, but no breast growth.



After a year on estrogen and progestin, my body was not responding as expected. Other than some minor things, like the production of more vaginal fluids, my body was the same. No period. No breasts.

While my body hadn’t drastically changed, my emotional state had. For the first time, I experienced a deep, confusing sadness. But clearly there were several contributing factors beyond the hormone replacement therapy: It was senior year of high school; I had received almost all rejection letters from colleges; my basketball career, to which I had dedicated my entire youth, was ending; and I was worried I had no way to pay for college. Through all of this I felt very alone. My body took a backseat — it was a medical matter beyond my control. My body belonged to the experts, and with the right medicine, everything would sort itself out later. Give me a pill and let’s move on. My concern was getting a higher education.

Once admitted into college, I did whatever it took to stay there. I took out student loans and picked up jobs at school. Then, second semester of freshman year, I met Tommy.

Tommy and I were together for all four years of college; our relationship became serious quickly. It became so serious, in fact, that during my second year he helped me take out a student loan. His credit was better than mine.

I told Tommy I couldn’t have kids and that I had never menstruated. After all, we were in college, and we weren’t planning to get married anytime soon. At that point, I had always openly talked about my body with most people because it didn’t take away from my desirability.

Tommy was into psychology so we would spend long hours in his dorm room, talking about my body and my chromosomal makeup and the fact that I never got a period. In one our many conversations, Tommy was the first person to tell me aloud, “You are a hermaphrodite.” My immediate response was a hesitant, combative no...but maybe?

We would also have long talks about where my femininity resided. He thought my face was very feminine, the way I moved, my gestures, my hands, my thighs... none of our conversations seemed to hinge on the size of my breasts. This was comforting. Nonetheless, for many months into our relationship I hid the fact that I hadn’t developed them.

In college, I explored my feminine identity away from the strict constructs of my family and their impositions. I would go to the extremes: dressing in hyperfeminine colors and styles. Pin-straight hair with all pink outfits. At one point I owned a pair of pink Timbs. Yet, naked and alone, I still longed for the breasts I was missing.

Tommy and I were both virgins, so sex was not easy for either one of us and it didn’t happen for a while. Several months into our relationship, I still wouldn’t take my shirt off or let him touch my chest. Even though he knew my body was intersex, he was under the impression that I had developed breasts. I hadn’t told him otherwise. One night, he asked me what was up with my resistance and I refused to tell him. We stayed up until 5 in the morning, arguing back and forth about trust, power, defense mechanisms, and my body. He began a guessing game: Were you in a fire and horribly scarred? Is one smaller than other? Did you have breast cancer?

Finally I broke down and scribbled "I never grew breasts" on a little piece of paper. I folded it up and handed it to him, then turned my back and I began to cry. The whole thing seemed so silly just seconds after. The following weekend I took my shirt off for the first time. And sex seemed so much easier. After a couple of months, he told me my body was affecting his own clarity about his sexuality.

“What does it say about me that I am attracted to your boyish frame?” Tommy asked me.

He encouraged me to get breast implants.