*
From deep in the jungle, buzzing in, a mosquito skims past Luce’s left ear. It’s one of the jumbo models. He never sees them, only hears them, at night, screaming like airborne lawn mowers. He closes his eyes, wincing, and in another moment, sure enough, feels the insect land in the blood-fragrant skin below his elbow. It’s so big it makes a noise landing, like a raindrop. Luce tilts his head back, squeezing his eyes shut, and says, “Aye-yah.” He’s dying to swat the bug but he can’t; his hands are busy keeping the kid away from his belt. He can’t see a thing. On the ground next to his skull the penlight sputters out its weak flame. Luce dropped it in the scuffle that’s still in progress. Now it lights up a ten-inch cone of the mat. No help at all. Plus, the birds have started up again, signaling the approach of morning. Luce is in an alert fetal position, on his back, holding a twiglike ten-year-old Dawat wrist in each hand. From the position of the wrist he estimates that the kid’s head is somewhere in the air over his navel, lolling forward probably. He keeps making these smacking sounds that are very depressing to listen to.
“Aye-yah.”
The stinger’s in. The mosquito thrusts, wiggles its hips contentedly, then settles down and starts to drink. Luce has had typhus vaccinations that felt more gentle. He can feel the suction. He can feel the bug gaining weight.
A beacon of the future? Who’s he kidding? Luce’s work casts no more light today, it turns out, than that penlight on the floor. No more light than the new moon not shining above the jungle’s canopy.
There’s no need for him to read Pappas-Kikuchi’s article in The New England Journal of Medicine. He heard it all before, in person. Three years ago, at the annual convention of the SSSS, he had arrived late to the last day’s talk.
“This afternoon,” Pappas-Kikuchi was saying when he came in, “I’d like to share the results of a study our team just completed in southwestern Guatemala.”
Luce sat in the back row, careful about his pants. He was wearing a Pierre Cardin tuxedo. Later that night, the SSSS was presenting him with a lifetime-achievement award. He took a minibar bottle of J&B out of his satin-lined pocket and sipped it discreetly. He was already celebrating.
“The village is called San Juan de la Cruz,” Pappas-Kikuchi continued. Luce scanned what he could of her behind the podium. She was attractive, in a schoolteacherly way. Soft, dark eyes, bangs, no earrings or makeup, and glasses. In Luce’s experience, it was exactly these modest, unsexual-seeming women who proved to be the most passionate in bed, whereas women who dressed provocatively were often unresponsive or passive, as if they had used up all their sexual energy in display.
“Male pseudohermaphrodites with five-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome who were raised as females serve as exceptional test cases for studying the effects of testosterone and the sex of rearing in the establishment of gender identity,” Pappas-Kikuchi continued, reading from her paper now. “In these cases, decreased production of dihydrotestosterone in utero causes the external genitalia of the affected male fetuses to be highly ambiguous in appearance. Consequently, at birth many affected newborns are considered to be female and are raised as girls. However, prenatal, neonatal, and pubertal exposure to testosterone remains normal.”
Luce took another swig of the old J&B and threw his arm over the seat next to him. Nothing Pappas-Kikuchi was saying was news. Five-alpha-reductase deficiency had been extensively studied. Jason Whitby had done some fine work with 5αR pseudohermaphrodites in Pakistan.
“The scrotum of these newborns is unfused, so that it resembles the labia,” Pappas-Kikuchi soldiered on, repeating what everyone already knew. “The phallus, or micropenis, resembles a clitoris. A urogenital sinus ends in a blind vaginal pouch. The testes most often reside in the abdomen or inguinal canal, though occasionally they are found hypertrophied in the bifid scrotum. Nevertheless, at puberty, definite virilization occurs, as plasma testosterone levels are normal.”
How old was she? Thirty-two? Thirty-three? Would she be coming to the awards dinner? With her frumpy blouse and buttoned-up collar, Pappas-Kikuchi reminded Luce of a girlfriend he’d had back in college. A classics major who wore Byronic white shirts and unbecoming woolen knee socks. In bed, however, his little Hellenist had surprised him. Lying on her back, she’d put her legs over his shoulders, telling him that this was Hector and Andromache’s favorite position.
Luce was remembering the moment (“I’m Hector!” he’d shouted out, tucking Andromache’s ankles behind his ears) when Dr. Fabienne Pappas-Kikuchi announced, “Therefore, these subjects are normal, testosterone-influenced boys who, due to their feminine external genitalia, are mistakenly reared as girls.”
“What did she say?” Luce snapped back to attention. “Did she say ‘boys’? They’re not boys. Not if they weren’t raised as boys, they’re not.”
“The work of Dr. Peter Luce has long been held as gospel in the study of human hermaphroditism,” Pappas-Kikuchi now asserted. “Normative, in sexological circles, is his notion that gender identity is fixed at an early age of development. Our research,” she paused briefly, “refutes this.”
A small popping sound, of a hundred and fifty mouths simultaneously opening, bubbled up through the auditorium’s air. Luce stopped in mid-sip.
“The data our team collected in Guatemala will confirm that the effect of pubertal androgens on five-alpha-reductase pseudohermaphrodites is sufficient to cause a change in gender identity.”