JB piece in NYT: "Maddy Might Just Work"

My story in the New York Times is up and online. The title they gave it is either, "Maddy Just Might Work," or "The Other Side of My Boyhood." The actual title is "The Sleepwalker." More on this piece is in the post directly below.

In the meantime, here's the beginning of the story as it appears in the "modern love" column, and a jump to follow if you want to read the whole darn thing:


"Maddy Might Just Work"
© Jennifer Finney Boylan
published April 26, 2009

IN the last year of my father’s life, he started to sleepwalk. I was 27, and back in my parents’ house to help with his care. In the middle of the night I’d hear his heavy footsteps coming up to the third floor, where I lived in a room locked with a deadbolt. He’d creep through the hallway and open the door to the spare room, diagonally across the hall from mine, and lie down on the guest bed.

After a while he’d start to snore, and I’d know he was O.K., at least until morning, when he’d wake up, confused and angry. “Where am I? What am I doing here?”

He didn’t know I was transsexual, or if he did, he never said anything about it. I doubt he even knew the words “transsexual,” or “transgender,” and almost surely could not have explained the difference between the two. But that’s O.K. For a long time I couldn’t figure it all out, either.

Once, though, when I was in high school...(to read on, click here)