Jayray Fiene pointed to a picture with yellow adhesive stains and smiled wide. A child with quick blue eyes gawked gleefully back through the years on the decomposing page.
The source of the child’s amusement appeared shining on the floor-a toy car.
“This is a kid who likes this toy,” Fiene said, raising his eyebrows matter-of-factly.
But his eyes shrunk quickly at the sight of another picture. He silently dissected the photo, stuck like an insect on fly paper.
“This is a kid who doesn’t like this outfit,” he said, nodding toward the photo where a child with heaving red checks twisted away from a striped dress-the source of the tantrum.
The child in photos was Fiene, but they called him Jean back then. They draped him in ruffles, wound his hair into curls and told him stories about princesses because, on the outside, he was unquestionably a girl.
Forty-eight years after young Fiene screamed in a dress, that changed.
Jeanne Rae Fiene began the sex-change process to become Jayray Freeman Fiene in June of 2008. His transition started at Western where Fiene is the director of the educational leadership doctoral program and department head of educational administration, leadership and research.
Weekly hormone shots administered at Health Services began sculpting biceps out of female flesh, dragging a high voice down and turning soft facial hair coarse 11 months ago. In April, Fiene underwent the first of two surgeries to complete his transformation.
But Fiene said an internal force acted against his femininity before the lens snapped on the next picture he pointed to in old photo album this November.
“I think this face is ‘why am I in this itchy dress,” he said with a deep chuckle, and turned the page.
Under Jayray Fiene’s finger, a red newborn gazed from under a hospital blanket. A nurse took the photo before Fiene’s mother, Esther Fiene, held her child for the first time, he said.
The birth incapacitated Esther Fiene for about two weeks, Jayray Fiene said.
He said this left his father, Raymond Fiene, to make the choice that would affect Jayray Fiene the rest of his life.
Jayray Fiene believes that his father decided his inter-sexed child would become a girl.
“He wanted a boy,” Esther Fiene, a resident of Downers Grove, Ill., said about her late husband. “He was really disappointed that it was another girl, but little did we know that she had the tendency not to be girly.”
Jayray Fiene has no medical proof that he was born with male and female sex organs, and he didn’t ask his father to confirm those suspicions before he died in 1990.
He said his childhood was proof enough.
“She never liked frilly things,” Esther Fiene said. “She liked marbles and baseball and G.I. Joe and that sort of thing.”
Jayray Fiene played easily with the boys in Downers Grove. He gravitated to his father’s world of Chicago Bears football and patriarchal duty, he said.
“If I thought about knights and princesses and things, it was about me saving her, not about him saving me,” Jayray Fiene said.
Boys in Jayray Fiene’s teenage years didn’t seem to mind his gallantry, and dates came easily in high school.
“I kissed … but anytime it came down to actually getting anywhere close to appendages, I was like ‘Oh my God, never,’” he said.
But his early discomfort with intimacy didn’t stop him from becoming engaged twice.
Jayray Fiene said both relationships were hopeless, but his determination to fit the female mold remained even when the form began to take the shape of a wedding dress during his undergraduate career.
He said the failed attempts hurled him into a confused state marked by a rejection of female expectations he couldn’t meet.
Toni Jo Croxton, one of Jayray Fiene’s roommates during his undergraduate career at Pittsburgh State University, said she remembered his masculine dress and mannerisms, which reached beyond the boundaries of “tomboy.”
Croxton, a resident of Wakefield, Kan., also remembered the moments when Jayray Fiene’s inner battle surfaced.
“She never seemed comfortable in her own skin,” she said. “When people would talk about relationships, every once in a while, there would be a sense of not quite knowing how she fit in.”
But Jayray Fiene found his a place as hero to a princess when he met his first girlfriend as an undergraduate. He said he jumped at the chance to assume a masculine role.
“We played house,” he said. “She wanted kids so I bought her a cabbage patch.”
But a man from Jayray Fiene’s girlfriend’s past entered their game and ended it with a wedding ring and the promise of children grown in a womb instead of purchased in aisle four.
Jayray Fiene began to move past the relationship when he started teaching at Wheaton High School outside of Branson, Mo., in 1986.
But there, after years of attempting to forget his own femininity, he experienced a violent reminder.
At 26, Jayray Fiene was raped and became pregnant.
“When I realized I was pregnant, I said, ‘Wow, I guess I really am a female,’” he said.
Thoughts of future questions from his unborn child haunted Jayray Fiene in the first weeks of pregnancy, he said.
He paused from telling his story. His eyes got lost out a window.
“I couldn’t fathom in my wildest imagination how to tell a child who finds you years later and asks you why you didn’t keep them, ‘You weren’t born out of love. You were born out of violence,’” he said.
Jayray Fiene terminated his pregnancy.
He drowned his pain in a new, sexually irrelevant role-workaholic.
Jayray Fiene said he became principal of Wheaton at 27, and in three years the average ACT score of students rose significantly. But whispers in the hallway didn’t focus on his success.
“There had been rumors or thoughts that I was a guy,” he said. “I watched my students try and decide if they should still like and respect me, or hate me because I might be a guy.”
Softly spoken words began to hit too hard for Jayray Fiene, and he left the school to pursue his doctorate degree in 1992.
“My biggest regret-I copped out when I should have stood up,” he said. “I should have fought that one, but I didn’t have it in me then.”
After 13 years at Western, though, he said he was ready.
Jayray Fiene flipped the pages of early childhood rhythmically, but flicks turned to slower thuds when his adolescent years appeared. The dresses, tire-tread imprints of feminine posturing, remained in the photos before him.
“The older I got the more unhappy I look,” he said, grimacing at a teenage version of himself stuffed in a pink dress before a high school dance. “I mean, dear God! Does this look like a happy person to you?”
But those were easy years, he said. They were years when friends came easily and menstruation didn’t start until age 17.
A new kind of puberty pulled at Fiene’s 48-year-old body now, an adult adolescence spurred by injected testosterone.
Jayray Fiene sat at his desk in October pressing his hands curiously into his arms, examining new muscles. Gray window light hit his silvering hair, slicked back and barely reaching the nape of his neck. He smirked as his hands moved to slide down his tie.
His new body was emerging.
Jayray Fiene thought back to the first part of the unusual adolescence. He dealt with hallway rumors before they could become campus gossip.
“In my mind, I could have lost my career,” he said about the moment in August when he decided to tell Western administrators about his transformation. “I could have lost my family, my friends.”
Jayray Fiene’s family found out after his first hormone shot.
This summer, one of his sisters asked offhandedly what he wanted for his birthday, he said.
“I want something that’s going to cost you more than it ever has, but it’s not going to cost you any money,” he said he told his family. “I want unconditional love and an open mind.”
Esther Fiene said a stunned silence hit the room first, but not one tear fell as Jayray Fiene explained.
“I had no idea at all,” she said. “Even as a parent I didn’t see it. I never thought about those things.”
Jayray Fiene’s sister Janice Osowski, a resident of Westmont, Ill., said she couldn’t have predicted his birthday wish either.
“She’d been my sister from the day she was born and it was hard to think about it and say that she would be my brother,” Osowski said.
But she said her mother and other two sisters had no problem granting the birthday wish. In their eyes, nothing had changed.
“I feel unconditional love from my family for the first time,” Jayray Fiene said. “I suspect it was always there. I just wasn’t open to it. If I couldn’t give it to myself, how could I get it from others?”
In August he began explaining his transformation to people in his professional world, including President Gary Ransdell.
Jayray Fiene said that Ransdell immediately had a question.
“He said, ‘Isn’t that going to hurt?’” Jayray Fiene said. “I said, ‘Yes it does-it does hurt, but the amazing thing is you recover, and it doesn’t hurt anymore.’”
Ransdell said he supports Jayray Fiene in his transformation but declined to comment further for the story.
Jayray Fiene said his co-workers in the education department astounded him with their similar support.
He said he informed about 50 people including Western and public school employees about the transformation, and not one responded negatively.
Jayray Fiene’s eyelids dropped, releasing a slow tear, when he recalled this unlikely statistic. No other recollection had made him cry.
After creating open lines of communication, Jayray Fiene said he ventured into one of the most dreaded parts of the awkward transformation years-the locker room.
In November, deciding which locker room to use in the gym presented a problem.
Jayray Fiene said his suits, strong jaw and short hair offended women who believed a man had entered their private quarters, and the tight clothing concealing a female chest concerned the men who wondered if a woman had entered their locker room.
Discouraged by constant stares, Jayray Fiene said he stopped going to the gym.
But he didn’t lose the opportunity for male bonding presented in the dressing room.
“Some of my colleagues now are coaching me like a big brother or big guy in the locker room, much like you do for one another as younger men,” he said last fall.
Bud Schlinker, associate professor of education administration, leadership and research, was one of those men.
“She didn’t know you could buy pants and jackets separately,” he said about the first time he discussed masculine dress with Jayray Fiene.
Schlinker gave Jayray Fiene a few ties and told him about best places in town to buy menswear.
“It’s not like you women think,” he said. “You don’t need nine sports coats. You just need two.”
Jayray Fiene said his fashion transition went as smoothly as his new morning shaves, but sharp cracks in his slowly changing voice made Sunday mornings more difficult.
He said his high soprano voice used to stand out clearly in his church choir as he experienced his faith through song.
But late this fall Jayray Fiene could no longer beg his tenor voice to hit soprano notes.
“Several people came up and expressed how much they missed my voice,” he said. “While I knew people meant it flatteringly, it was painful.”
This was the first change to catch Jayray Fiene off guard, he said. He squinted his eyes as he remembered the feeling of loss, looking like a high school basketball player after his final game.
“This is not a choice,” he said. “It’s an action, and I was ready to accept the consequences.”
It wasn’t the first religious sacrifice Jayray Fiene made for his choice to undergo a sex change, he said.
He and the pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, the Rev. Robert Weldon, decided he should step down from his church leadership roles, including his position on the church’s school board, Weldon said.
He said Jayray Fiene’s situation is different than most transgender people because Jayray Fiene believes he is correcting the human decision of his father rather than changing his God-given sex.
“Normally it would have been something that was seen as sinful behavior in need of repentance, but, in this case, it was more of a counseling situation than a condemnation,” Weldon said.
He said he welcomed Jayray Fiene to stay and worship with the church. But, because transsexuality is ultimately against church doctrine, he can’t have leadership roles.
“If there’s something that appears to be inappropriate or contrary to the confession of the church, then, for the sake of the church and those that do not understand, there needs to be a stepping aside,” he said.
Jayray Fiene continued attending the church, repeating the same prayer at every mass.
“Your will, your way,” he said he prayed in January, placing his transformation in the hands of God.
Jayray Fiene had recently selected the surgeon to perform the first part of his transformation.
Dr. Gary Alter’s tight schedule and Beverly Hills location, however, stalled Jayray Fiene’s hopes of completing surgery before the summer.
“Your will, your way,” he repeated.
Four months later, Jayray Fiene’s phone rang. Alter had a cancellation and called him to fill the spot.
Jayray Fiene reached the pictures in the album of himself after completing his doctorate.
His sisters had suggested he take glamour shots to celebrate his achievement. He sat under bright lights with his hands daintily curled under his chin and sequins reflecting on his rouged checks.
“God, they really look like drag queen photos,” Jayray Fiene said. “I really never liked them but I always thought it was because my teeth were crooked.”
He said he didn’t take many pictures after those and few pages remained in his book.
But there was space for a few future photos.
Jayray Fiene said he had been attending therapy sessions with Lisa Beavers, a certified sex therapist and gender specialist, since January 2008 to prepare for his transition.
All transgendered people must attend therapy and live as their chosen sex for a year before a surgeon will perform genital reassignment surgery, Beavers said.
After that point, she allows patients to determine when they are ready, she said.
“They are driving the bus, and I’m on the journey with them,” Beavers said. “It’s not my job to give anyone permission.”
Jayray Fiene’s first surgery, a double mastectomy, removed breast tissue and sculpted his chest into a more masculine physique, he said.
The second surgery, a metaidoioplasty, will reshape his female genitalia by creating a small penis and inserting testicular implants, he said.
He recalled the prayer that had become his mantra before he boarded a plane to California where Alter performed the first operation on April 10, he said.
Alter, assistant clinical professor of plastic surgery at UCLA, said he performs about 45 female to male transsexual surgeries each year.
Jayray Fiene emerged from surgery one mostly painless step further in his transformation.
“The reality is it’s surface,” he said. “It’s just skin and tissue.”
But what Jayray Fiene saw when he looked in the mirror for the first time after surgery went much deeper than skin and tissue, he said.
“I started to tear up,” he said about looking at his bruised body. “My sister asked what was wrong, and I said ‘I see me.’ For the first time since I was 12 or 13 years old I can look at me.”
Jayray Fiene pointed to one of the last pictures in the album. His father stood smiling and looking remarkably like the son he never knew he had.
Jayray Fiene didn’t know then that this summer he will close his album, throw away his remaining female clothes, pack less than nine sports jackets and take a position at California State University, San Bernardino.
There, no one will struggle with pronouns, he said. He won’t have to wonder what bathroom to use or what people will think of his new suit.
Western allowed Jayray Fiene to transform into himself, but California will allow him to live as himself, he said.
Jayray Fiene considered the picture of his father one more time before tucking away the photos of himself as a female.
“There’s my dad looking really goofy in a bow-tie,” he said, smiling wide. Then he considered the fashion statement more seriously. “I don’t think I’ll ever wear a bow-tie.”
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