Yet late at night, in the darkness of my fantasies, it was Richard’s face I saw, and her voice that ruled, that woman inside me. Never mind that I had someone to love who loved me back, never mind that the man I coveted was with my best friend. They shouldn’t be together, that voice commanded. But what about Ralph? You can’t be with him as the woman you’re meant to be. I tried to quiet that voice, but it only grew louder, like that dormant twin who, once awakened, needed to exert herself all the more, even if it threatened the life of her sibling and host. You’ve had your chance to live in the world, the beautiful woman inside me seemed to say. Now it’s my turn.

No one was aware of these thoughts—not Ralph, or Lenora, or Richard. There were many moments when I doubted myself in Richard’s presence, reasoned with the voice inside me. It was impossible that a straight man would fall for me, having known me for so long as a man, I told her.

But look how beautiful you are, the voice said. It was true that in the less than three months since I began to dress as a girl, men paid attention to me wherever I went. I couldn’t be in public for long without being approached, and I allowed myself to flirt, to accept drinks, to dance with these men, but refused to go home with them because of what they would discover. It was during these moments of thwarted desire that I began to ask myself whether it would be better to have a vagina instead of a penis.

It would be better to have a vagina with Richard, I found myself thinking one day. I had been too delirious to think beyond figuring out how to be with him, how to share his bed. With Ralph there was always talk about the future, that we would get married once that institution became legal for us, that we might eventually settle in England. With Richard there was only the present, as if the fever of love allowed me to only see what was just ahead, with everything else enveloped in fog. But if I had a vagina, then Richard and I could have a real life together.

From the beginning, I searched for signs. Unlike some people at MIT, who were polite but shied away from me as soon as I changed, Richard did not keep his distance. If anything, he went out of his way to see more of me, dropped by at the lab more often just to say hi, invited me to gallery openings and grad student parties.