Jennings - Being Jazz: my life as a (transgender) teen

Its a boynot!

When did you first know?

I get asked a lot of questions about my life, and thats the one that comes up the most. The answer is easy. Ever since I could form coherent thoughts, I knew I was a girl trapped inside a boys body. There was never any confusion in my mind. The confusing part was why no one else could see what was wrong.

When my mom, Jeanette, got pregnant with me, she was convinced she was going to have a girl. At her baby shower, her friends all crowded around her belly and did the necklace testthat old-timey trick thats supposed to predict what kind of baby a woman is going to have. You hold a necklace with something heavy attached to it, like a pendant or a ring, over a pregnant belly, and if it swings back and forth it means shes having a boy. If it moves in a circle, a girl is supposedly on the way.

This witchy little version of a gender-test ultrasound nailed it with every single one of my moms pregnancies. It just took a little longer for everyone to realize the fetus fairies actually got it right with me.

When Mom was pregnant with my older sister, Ari, she and my dad, Greg, had just moved to Florida so he could start his law practice. She only had a few new friends at the time, so she didnt have an official baby shower but still did the necklace test with her pals from Lamaze class. It circled around, and Mom gained a lot of weight (she tells me, mostly in her face and butt). When she got pregnant again with my twin brothers, Griffen and Sander, two years later and had an official shower, the necklace marched back and forth like a little soldier. With the boys, she barely gained any weight. No one could tell she had a bun in the oven if they looked at her from the back, which is especially weird since she had a couple of them in there!

I was a surprise. When my mom first started feeling sick less than a couple of years after the twins, she thought she had the flu. As soon as she realized what was really happening and began putting on tons of weight, she knew she was going to have another daughter even before her friends did the necklace trick for the third time in her life and it spun around in circles like crazy. Everything about the pregnancy was identical to what she had gone through with Ari, so she was completely shocked when the official ultrasound revealed a penis on my body.

My dad didnt really believe any of the old wives tales that my mom was into, but he always smiled and nodded along with what she said. Hes sweet like that. My parents have known each other almost their entire livesthey were neighbors growing up in upstate New York, and met when my mom was five years old and Dad was four! Their fathers were doctors who worked at the same hospital, and their mothers were good friends, but when Mom was little she just thought of my dad as the annoying kid who lived a few houses down, and she wanted nothing to do with him. As he got older he became kind of a troublemaker with a loud mouth, but he finally calmed down around age ten when his parents threatened to ship him off to military school if he didnt get his act together.

All the time my mom was ignoring him, Dad had a crush on her from afar, despite knowing they werent each others type. Hed sneak glances at her at the local pool, and when they were older and in high school he even loaned her his jacket one night when he saw her shivering at a soccer game.

They didnt get together until years later when Dads brother proposed to one of Moms friends. My moms parents were invited to the engagement party along with Mom, and both of their mothers sat Mom and Dad down at a table to look over a photo album with pictures of the spot in Europe where the proposal had happened. One by one, everyone got up from the table and left, leaving Mom and Dad alone. Mom was impressed that hed finally shaved off the mustache shed never liked, and it was obvious he had been working outhe no longer looked like the scrawny kid next door. They went on their first date that very same night after the party ended, and saw Bride of Chuckythe fourth and most romantic installment of the Childs Play killer doll film franchise. The movie must have worked its magic, because they moved in together not long after. When Dad got into law school in Columbus, Ohio, Mom agreed to move there with him, but only if he proposed first. So he did!

When I finally came along seven years later, they named me Jarona compromise between Jordan and Aaron. Dad was pushing hard for Jordan, but my mom had once dated a guy with that name, so she shot that down. For a while they settled on Owen, but then they switched to the Jordan and Aaron combo. It was conveniently gender neutral, which would come in very handy down the road.