< Pidgeon Pagonis reveals a long held secret in 'Nobody Needs to Know'

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

Pidgeon Pagonis never liked their birth name, Jennifer. So they became Pidgeon. They felt an affinity to the birds when one snuck onto the same bus as them.

PIDGEON PAGONIS: It just made me happy the way that it was bobbing up and down the aisle. And I just found joy in that.

FADEL: Pagonis is intersex but was never told this by their parents growing up. They felt like they didn't belong.

PAGONIS: Like, pigeons don't belong in cities. They belong in the cliffs over oceans. So that's why they're always, like, under trains and pooping everywhere 'cause they're not tree birds. So like intersex people, I think they're kind of just misunderstood.

FADEL: Now Pagonis is out with a memoir about being raised a girl but not knowing they were intersex, not knowing why their body didn't go through puberty in the same way other girls did, not knowing what the medical procedures were really doing to their body. They remember being told by doctors that nobody needs to know, which is what they titled their memoir. And they told me that their family was used to keeping secrets.

PAGONIS: My family doesn't really talk about stuff, the hard stuff. And so I was never told anything either about myself, just the little bits that the doctors told them they could tell me, which was, tell your daughter she was born with cancer in her ovaries and that she can't have children when she grows up and won't have a period because we saved her life by taking those cancerous ovaries out of her body. That's how I grew up thinking I was a cancer survivor. It took a lot out of me, and that was - I was hiding a secret that really wasn't even true 'cause it was a cover-up for the real secret, which I found out later, in college.

FADEL: Right. I mean, one of the most profound moments of this book is you write about sitting in a classroom. The professor of the class is describing androgen insensitivity syndrome. So she's describing this syndrome that you've never heard of. And you slowly check each thing. No period. You don't have a period. Never have kids. You're never going to have kids. And you realize, wait. This professor is describing me. Could you read us a part of that discovery?

PAGONIS: (Reading) I felt my chest begin to tighten. It seemed like I was breathing through a pinched straw, like I was the only one in the classroom as everyone else faded away. I was in one of those weird-ass surrealist Dali paintings where the clocks start to do whatever they're doing. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream. It was all a lie. Everyone had been lying to me my entire life.

FADEL: I mean, what was that like, finding this out in a classroom?

PAGONIS: Honestly, I don't even believe it's, like, my life sometimes. But it was the most, like, earth-shattering thing I've ever discovered about myself. I had gone to an all-girls Catholic high school before that. I played on an all-girls softball team. I had a boyfriend. I had no idea there was anything not girl about me, you know? So I grew up just desiring so deeply to be normal. I just, like, prayed every night sometimes to just have a period. I remember literally praying all the time. Every time I went to the bathroom, sometimes, I would see it. I would trick myself into thinking there was blood in my underwear...

FADEL: Wow.

PAGONIS: ...Just to be normal, quote, unquote, "normal."

FADEL: Because you would never experience puberty like the other girls in your school.

PAGONIS: Right. I had to, like, secretly take pills, hormone replacement therapy, to go through puberty. And all it did was kind of change my body in a way. But it doesn't give you a period or anything like that. So I always knew there was something different about me, but I never had the language for what was different because no one wanted to give me the truth.

FADEL: And that started to change after that class that day. It's the first time you've ever met another intersex person in this class that you have at school...

PAGONIS: (Laughter) Yeah.

FADEL: ...Lynnelle (ph). And you still have this shame. You're like, let me walk far behind them...

PAGONIS: Yes.

FADEL: ...So that nobody associates me.

PAGONIS: Yeah.

FADEL: But that really changes. If you could talk about that arc.

PAGONIS: Well, I was lucky enough to get out of my smaller town. I go to college. I'm lucky because I meet queer people and queer community for the first time in my life. So when I met Lynnelle and Lynnelle was like, have you ever said your intersex before? - and I said, no, and I didn't want to. I was still in shock, and I didn't want to be different. And intersex to me just meant you're super different now, and you have a title for it. You know, it was just too much. And eventually, though, thanks to people like Lynnelle and thanks to being loved by other people in relationships - so, like, my first girlfriend who was queer. And for her to say she loved me still after I told her about me.

FADEL: 'Cause you were so afraid of not being loved.

PAGONIS: Yeah. I didn't tell anybody for a few years when I found out. It's weird because I don't even understand. Like, today, I don't understand that. But back then, it was so real that there's no way I could tell somebody, and they would still, like, talk to me, let alone love me.

FADEL: I mean, Pidgeon you literally wrote a book with the words the doctor told you, "Nobody Needs To Know." And it's all here for the world. And on top of that, it ends with you getting the hospital that did those surgeries on you to stop.

PAGONIS: Yeah.

FADEL: I mean, this is a triumphant book.

PAGONIS: Yeah, I know. It's a lot. I really don't know how to be anything but honest anymore (laughter). I think because I spent so long keeping secrets that there was a shift after I found out, and I - the truth became, like, my superpower.

FADEL: Yeah.

PAGONIS: But with this book, "Nobody Needs To Know," you know, it's tongue-in-cheek 'cause I'm telling everybody. I hope that my story can live in the book and can be shared and that I can now move away from sharing my individual story and talking about the broader issues and also my healing journey because I want to be a light at the end of the tunnel for other intersex people and for other people that are feeling different or shame. I want to just reclaim my life now.

FADEL: A looking forward way, no longer looking back?

PAGONIS: Yes, yes. Like, I can't keep telling my story. And so that's why I'm glad it's in the book. And pretty soon, like, I'm not going to tell my story anymore. It's going to be just uplifting the movement and other intersex people and organizations that are doing positive things and having wins and successes.

FADEL: Pidgeon Pagonis is the author of "Nobody Needs To Know." Thank you so much, Pidgeon, for sharing your story and for talking to us.

PAGONIS: Thank you, Leila.

(SOUNDBITE OF NELS CLINE'S "THE BOND")

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