Nik Wickerhauser

In the Chasm

Go Together

When I arrived in Beijing, China, in August of 2018, the first thing I noticed was that the airport didn’t have air conditioning. I wore a gray t-shirt and wasn’t thrilled about the idea of meeting eighteen other students with big dark circles under my armpits. No matter. At that airport I met the group, one of which was Wes, a 5’7” fair skinned neuroscience major and gymnast, who showed off their biceps in tight men’s t-shirts and was in desperate need of a haircut. Our Chinese teacher told us on day two that we “go together,” probably because we both looked like screaming lesbians. 

Around the Tree

Our study-abroad group of nineteen students listens to the villager tell us about the tree. It’s majestic, with a sort of fairytale stature, but its shade barely protects us from the October sun. We are standing on dirt. The entire village is made of dirt. It must be awful when it rains. “Walk around the tree three times and think of something that you want. Boys go around this way,” the tour guide motions clockwise around the tree, “and girls go around this way,” counterclockwise. Wes and I walk next to each other, counterclockwise. The man cuts in front of us and blocks our path. “You are going the wrong way,” he tells us. I am simultaneously pleased and embarrassed. I tell him we are, in fact, not going the wrong way. He stares for a moment too long and walks off.

Names Have Been Changed

In medical anthropology class, we must write an illness narrative– a story of someone’s illness with a focus on how they conceptualize both the diagnosis and themselves with it. I write mine about Wes, interviewing them for over an hour on their gender dysphoria, which they call “body dysphoria” because their transness is still too far out on the horizon to recognize. I take notes on how Wes wished they’d get breast cancer as a kid and have an excuse to get a mastectomy, how one time their gymnastics team took them to Victoria’s Secret to get a “real bra” and it ruined their whole week, how sometimes even a shower feels like too much. I sniffled throughout the whole interview; I had a bad cold. By the end, they looked exhausted. I closed my notebook and apologized. I got an A on the assignment. 

Bathroom Attendant

Wes is at a crowded bar in Nashville. They go to the restroom with their friend Neeshali. There are only two options, both gendered. Neeshali enters the woman’s bathroom first and Wes follows close behind. A woman stands up from her chair against the wall and steps in front of Wes, saying “nuh-uh-uh!” Wes starts stammering, not sure how to prove their sex. Confusion, then understanding, crosses the woman’s face. “Never mind, go ahead,” says the bathroom attendant. She sits back down, amidst her mints, tampons, and perfume.

Chinese Bathroom

I am in a hotel lobby and I need to pee. The men’s and women’s restrooms are facing, close enough to spit from one into the other. There is a Chinese woman with a yellow bucket and mop cleaning the area between the bathrooms. I open the door to the women’s restroom when the lady starts saying “Ah, Ah,” to get my attention, and then points behind her to the men’s restroom. I lift my large breasts, bringing them to prominence through my t-shirt, and walk into the women’s restroom without looking at her face.

My Father

I bike to my father’s house in June of 2020. I sit inside his living room on a white couch and pull from my backpack a letter from a therapist saying that I have “clinically significant gender dysphoria,” whatever that means, and that it would be appropriate for me to pursue hormone replacement therapy or gender confirming surgery should I want to. My father reads it out loud, his voice getting quieter as he continues. When he finishes, he asks to keep it. He also asks me if I had sex with my high school boyfriend—and, if I did, how could I not want to be a woman? He asks me what dysphoria feels like, and I read him a poem I wrote. He expresses sympathy. I brush it off and ask him for money. He tells me that supporting my surgery would be akin to him committing suicide. I tell him that he should be more careful with his words, that he doesn’t have to pick a position right this minute. When I was younger, he was vehemently opposed to me piercing my ears. I leave his house unsurprised. 

Alt-J Ticket

I am in line for an Alt-J concert with my friends, so stoned that I can feel parts of my body I usually can’t, like my joints rubbing together and my intestines crunching. I wear a purple shirt with overlapping leaves on it that I got at Avalon and once saw a frat boy wear. I don’t really like the shirt, I just bought it because it was cheap. What bothers me most about the shirt is that the colors are brighter on the inside than on the outside, as if it was inside-out. The outside doesn’t look washed out enough to be like that on purpose. While in line to show my ticket, the usher calls me “sir.” I smile.

Cyrus Grace

“A Year Without a Name” is an essay written by Cyrus Grace Dunham, published in The New Yorker in August of 2019. It details a person trying to decide on a name, and also pronouns, top surgery (double mastectomy with chest masculinization), and coming out. It is refreshing because it revels in the struggle of transitions, with uncertainty, with awkwardness, second guessing, with that hard mass in your stomach that takes away your voice, dysphoria. Grace eventually decides on the name Cyrus, which is what their parents would have named them had their sex been male. Impulsively, I email the essay to my mom, with the comment that I find it relatable. I didn’t intend to come out to her that way, but that’s how it happened. 

Aunt Trish

At my mother’s, I get a text from Wes. It is a screenshot of a conversation with their aunt. It goes like this:

T: Hey Wes. It’s Aunt Trish. I don’t want to meddle in your family business. I’m guessing you have not heard from your dad since you started back at school. (?) I talk to him almost every morning. I want to tell you he LOVES you more than life itself, he is struggling with things… but he is trying! Please just give him a chance…. give him time. I love you, accept and RESPECT you no matter what! <3 <3 <3 

W: I appreciate your support and love you too! You’re right I have not heard from him… 
what exactly is he struggling with?

T: Can you chat?

W: Yes

T: I’ll call
… but are you still Vegan????
Cuz THAT to me is weird!!! XD XD XD 
Lol

Trish thought that Wes had come out to their parents, George and Jennifer, as nonbinary, which was news to Wes. George was upset that Wes didn’t talk with him specifically, and told Trish that he doesn’t understand:  I was coming around with the gay thing, but why dress like a boy? Why change your name? It makes no sense and it’s hurtful to us. Trish wanted to smooth it over: I did some googling, and I learned about nonbinary. I told your dad that it’s like if you put on a dress and you’re like ‘this just does not feel right,’ it’s like that, that’s how you feel. You and I both know how conservative your parents are—but I’m more progressive than them. I lived in Chicago and I had a lesbian best friend, so I will be supportive and do my best with your new name and pronouns. After ending the phone call, Trish went to sleep imagining herself usurping her sister as the new favorite aunt. Wes asked a friend to come over and help stomp down the feeling of isolation.

Wonton Soup

While in China, Wes and I frequently went to a cheap wonton restaurant close to our dorm until we had the slimy dumplings so many times, just thinking about them made our stomachs churn in revulsion. Once, as we ate, a Chinese man at the table next to ours—only a foot or two away, it was a very small restaurant—began speaking to us. He was at least 70 years old and very talkative, excited to practice his English. Wes was sitting closer to him than I was, and was taking the brunt of the conversation. Ten minutes into talking to him, his eyes got large as he stared at my chest and exclaimed “You are girls! I thought you were boys!” Then he stared at Wes’s breasts, much less prominent but there if you looked hard enough. “I couldn’t tell until I saw your earrings,” he said to me. The conversation felt over.

Mothers

After visiting Wes and I in Kansas City, Wes’s mother Jennifer calls my mother Jasna. Jennifer unloads: “I’ve been using binary pronouns for fifty-two years, it is so hard for me to use they and them. I don’t want to be disrespectful; I hope that the girls don’t think that I’m being disrespectful. It’s just so ingrained.” Jasna agrees. 

Jennifer continues: “Wes Weske as a name sounds silly. Wes Weske. And it’s not even my name, it’s my husband’s name. I’m a Scott. Her name is Allison and she should be called Allison, or Alli. She wanted me to buy her an iPad for medical school and you can get it engraved for free. She wanted it engraved as Wes, I said absolutely not. You can get it engraved to say Allison or Weske, I wasn’t going to buy it to say Wes on it.”

Jasna says her daughter told her that she was going by Nik now but that she said, “Nasja is your name and I’m still going to call you that,” and Nasja said that’s fine. “It’s hard for me too with the new name. It’s not something that can be changed easily, she’s been Nasja for her entire life. Nasja is my mother’s name. When I was pregnant with her, I had a feeling that she was going to be a boy, and I didn’t even think it would be possible that I would have a girl. I didn’t have a name ready for her when she was a girl, but she looked like my mom when she came out so I named her Nasja.”

“There are different kinds of love,” Jennifer adds, “and it’s good to know that. You can love someone and not support a decision they are making. Alli’s siblings are not all happy with the changes, it’s hard for them to see that, too.”

Jasna concurs, says that her brother emailed her about a book called Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters as suggested reading. Jasna says that her husband “Patrick thinks it is the only objective view of the whole matter.” Jennifer then bought herself an ebook and a physical copy for my mother, which took a while to arrive. 

“This isn’t what I wanted,” Jasna reflects.

“I really thought they would both change their mind,” Jennifer adds. “I have good rapport with Nasja, though, she’ll talk to me and tell me what is going on. Allison doesn’t talk to me at all, I never know what is going on. I think I just need to focus on not worrying about these changes with Allison and instead focus on health, focus on my family.”

Jasna says she believes Jennifer will be able to be close with Alli again.

“It’d be great if my youngest went to Maryville and I could come up to St. Louis more. I could come over and we could talk about other things, like our own lives and what we are doing, or our other children.”

Deeply Unhappy

My family does not know that I had top surgery on December 18th, and I wear excessively baggy clothes when I see them afterwards to hide it. I visit home before I move across the state in January, and my grandmother asks to speak to me before I leave. She calls me down to the basement, where she has her ironing and sewing out. She knows I plan to have top surgery, not that I have had it. “Are you happy?” She asks me. I tell her yes, with a genuine smile. I am happy. “Good, well then you must stay this way, you clearly do not need to change anything to be happy. A person must be deeply unhappy to do something like that.” I realize how I’ve played into her trap. I say goodbye and leave. “Do not be offended!” she calls after me.

The Repair Man

Wes’s mother owns the condo we live in, so she finds a repairman to come reattach the kitchen cabinets peeling off our walls, along with some other things. The man Jennifer contacted online is white, maybe 65 years old, and has two much younger apprentices with him. He is friendly, making too much small talk and animating his words with goofy uncle energy. Every time he speaks to me, he calls me ma’am. After the third or fourth time, he stops mid-sentence. “Your mother Jennifer told me not to call you ma’am,” he says sheepishly. “She said you are non-binary and that if I don’t know what that is I should look it up. I didn’t know what it was, so I asked my neighbor, she’s seventeen, and she told me.” He is earnest, invested in the conversation. “Times have changed, this was never a thing anyone had heard of back when I was growing up. It’s good my father isn’t here today, he wouldn’t have any of this stuff. He would tell you, ‘Now sit down and listen up, you’re either a boy or a girl and it’s how you are born.’ Good thing he isn’t here. But I was taught to be polite, I don’t know what to say if I don’t say ma’am or sir.” I tell him that we did not ask Jennifer to talk to him about our gender, that he does not need to worry about how he addresses us. For the rest of the afternoon, he freezes and locks nervous eyes with me after every time he says ma’am. When he is out of earshot, Wes and I plan how we will ask Jennifer to not announce our gender to strangers, that in fact, it would be much better if she didn’t mention it at all.

Invasive Questions

Several times, my mother has asked me if Wes wants, or has had, top surgery. I always tell her that is not my information to discuss, which she infers to mean yes because if the answer was no I would just say no. She is with me as I come out of anesthesia for a knee surgery, happy it’s over and loopy with drugs. She asks me if I took care of Wes after they had top surgery. I am uninhibited, I tell her yes before I realize the weight of my admission. “Don’t tell Jennifer!” She says she won’t, and I believe her.

Easter Card

For Easter, Jennifer mails Wes a card. On the front it says, “Daughter, I don’t know where the time goes…” with a glittery picture of a bunny, and on the inside:

… but I do know

over the years

you’ve filled

my heart

with joy and love.

And every year,

I’m more proud

of the woman

you’ve become.

The envelope is addressed to an Allison Weske. Wes frowns after opening it, even though it has an Aldi gift card inside. “I think the worst part,” they say, “is that she must have gone out of her way to find such a gendered card.” The card sits on our dining room table for two days. I turn it over, not saving it, not throwing it away. 

Bidet

My father and I are in the bathroom in my new apartment where he is installing a bidet attachment on my toilet. His partner and mine are on the other side of the apartment, out of earshot. While crouched down looking at the pipes, he says, “You know, I get your medical bills. I know what happened.” He turns his head to look up at me, standing fully clothed in the tub. “I want you to know that it doesn’t change anything, and I still love you.” 

The Matrix

The Matrix is a movie made by two trans women and is an allegory for the transgender experience. Taking the red pill means acknowledging that you’re transgender, which means you have to deal with the difficult road ahead. Taking the blue pill means pretending you haven’t realized, swallowing your gut feeling down and continuing as you have been before. It’s easier to take the red pill if you know someone else who has taken the red pill or have someone by your side who will take it at the same time. The red pill is sour, sometimes, but has a much better aftertaste. 

Closing the Chasm

When Wes and I hug, our entire bodies can touch, with no separation.

Nik Wickerhauser graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in May 2021 with a BA in biology and a minor in writing. They have loved writing since they could hold a pencil, filling all cabinets and drawers in the house with half-filled journals. Nik wrote “In the Chasm” for their creative nonfiction class this semester, and they are honored to be able to share it with you.