Nothing To Lose

I used drugs virtually every day of my life: cigarettes and booze by ten, pot by thirteen, then psychedelics, cocaine, and pain pills. When my pill sources dried up, I switched over to heroin. In my final year of using, I consumed a fifth of cheap booze, a gram of heroin, and eighty-seven milligrams of methadone a day.

I was thirty-nine when I finally decided I needed some help. Weighing 130 pounds and not having bathed in a week, I stumbled into a drug-treatment referral service. I expected to be placed in a nice detox center with clean sheets and plenty of medication, but I landed in an emergency room, where doctors offered to put me in what they called a “social-model” detox. I asked if I’d get any medications. They said I’d receive “support.” I wanted to know if that was the new green pill I’d heard about.

I told them I’d go to the social-model detox, though I had no intention of doing so. My real plan was to rob a liquor store as soon as I left. But while I was signing my release papers, they confiscated my car keys and paid for a cab to take me to detox.

I went through withdrawal in a dingy rooming house that had been converted into a long-term recovery center. By the third night I was sweating, shaking, vomiting, and cramping. My roommate was a recent graduate of the center who had relapsed. He coughed and hacked and cried over and over, “I just wanted to try it one more time.” Why does he have to be in here with me? I thought. Why?

And then a quiet voice in my head asked, So, what about it, Jimmy? You want to try it one more time?

And I knew: I did not want to try it one more time. I saw that I’d needed all the pain I had visited upon myself to lead me to this point. And I saw there was a loving order to the universe that had delivered me to this broken state. With nothing to lose but my pain, I surrendered and let go. I haven’t used since. That was fourteen years ago.

Jimmy Cioe
Albuquerque, New Mexico

I was born biologically female, but never felt comfortable in my body. As a child I was constantly mistaken for a boy and wished I could become one. At nineteen I came out as a lesbian, yet still I felt a nagging discomfort with my gender. People often mistook me for a man, to the extent that I was once threatened with arrest for using a women’s restroom.

When I was twenty-seven I saw a film about a female-to-male transsexual. He said sometimes you have to be willing to give up everything you have to get the one thing you have always wanted. I thought about this and began to consider transitioning from a female identity to a male one. The transition would involve hormone treatments that would significantly alter my appearance. When I talked with my girlfriend about it, she was furious. “I finally fall in love with a woman,” she cried, “and now you tell me you want to be a man?” Not willing to sacrifice the relationship, I told her I wouldn’t go through with it.

After we broke up, my desire to transition returned. My therapist didn’t know how to handle the issue and referred me to a second therapist, who said I must have a misogynous streak. Friends reacted nervously and told me I’d never find a partner. My parents were scandalized when a male acquaintance transitioned to female. My dad asked me, “You’re not going to do that, are you?” I assured him I was not.

Now, many years later, I find that the pull hasn’t waned. I’ve met others who have transitioned and are happy and complete in their male bodies. Many have partners and successful careers. Some have experienced hardship and lost contact with family members and friends, but none regrets his decision.

At almost forty years of age, I have finally made the decision to start testosterone injections. I worry that I might lose my job and my family and friends. I struggle with feelings of embarrassment and shame. Yet I’m finally willing to risk everything for the truth.

J.G.
St. Paul, Minnesota

Early one evening in 1972 I borrowed my parents’ Ford Fairlane to drive my best friend to the “big city” — Indianapolis, Indiana — to celebrate her eighteenth birthday. While cruising downtown looking for entertainment, I turned onto a busy thoroughfare, and a speeding sedan slammed into the passenger side of the car. Thankfully my friend and I suffered only bruises, but the car was totaled. We phoned my parents, who were relieved we were all right and told us to take the bus home.

By the time my friend and I had filed an accident report, it was midnight, and the cavernous Greyhound station was all but deserted. We sat down to wait for our 4:15 A.M. bus. Two young men with long, flowing hair, each carrying an army-surplus duffel bag, approached us. They were hippies, strange and beautiful, hitchhiking from New York City to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and they asked if we knew where they could “crash” for the night. We explained that we were not from Indianapolis, and told them the story of how we’d already crashed once that evening. They volunteered to keep us company until our bus arrived.

My friend and I found them fascinating, so unlike the strait-laced Midwestern farm boys in our brutally dull and backward hometown. After a few hours of conversation about their travels and adventures, the hippie boys asked if we would like to go to New Orleans with them. We said yes.

I could hardly believe what we’d just agreed to. I thought about our high school and its rigid rules for behavior and dress. I thought about my paranoid-schizophrenic father and his years of unpredictable violence, followed by even more years of drug-induced stupor. I thought about how I’d considered suicide at sixteen because I’d felt like an alien in my family, my community, my own skin.

By chance I spotted a boy I knew waiting in line to purchase a bus ticket to our town, and I asked him to deliver a copy of the accident report to my parents. Eyeing the two strangers by my side, he hesitantly agreed. That’s it, I thought. That’s the last of my responsibilities. The four of us then marched to the freeway on-ramp and stuck out our thumbs.

Kathleen C.
Elmira, Oregon

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