TOM BLISS:
So, if you could say your name and spell your name.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
All right. My name is Jay Kyle Petersen. J A Y, K Y L E capital P E T E R S E N.
TOM BLISS:
Thank you so much, and we're very excited to share your story. I know you wanted to start off by giving an explanation of what it is to be born intersex.
00:00:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Sure
TOM BLISS:
Would you like to talk about that?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Sure. Intersex is inborn, it's created in the womb. There's about 40 variations of intersex, it depends upon the cause. There's about five causes, including unknown cause. Most are genetic, but not all. Many are inherited, but not all.
00:01:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Biological sex differentiation occurs in that first trimester. My genetics physician believes that through a combination of hormonal influences in my development as a little fetus and genetic that very likely it was a single gene change.
00:01:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
They're working on more testing for that. When I was born, I was born intersex. It's physical intersex, it's not transgender. That's a completely different diagnosis. For me, I was born ... Well, at the time, we didn't know what it was because it was 1952. Oh, they didn't even have technology.
00:02:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
They probably had two names for me because that's how it was back then, because you don't know -- surprise! -- what you're going to get. I came out and it was really a surprise. It was very likely that I was the first intersex baby that that rural physician had ever seen, and probably would ever see again, because I was born in a county hospital of 10,000 people.
00:02:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Real ultraconservative, real small. My anatomy, when I was born, some of the intersex characteristics were visible and some were not, and then some were going to make themselves more manifest in puberty. It kind of goes like that. Some variations don't make themselves fully known until puberty, just depends on what the variation is. For me, I was born 46 X X, S R Y gene, negative Male.
00:03:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
We came to all that conclusion through a whole lot of testing, genetic testing, all kinds of testing and research. Dr. Laukaitis came to that conclusion about two and a half years ago. I've had so much genetic testing, it's not even funny, but that's just part of the process to rule in or rule out.
00:03:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Sex is on a spectrum, and intersex is somewhere in between. Most folks are at one end of the pole or the other end of the pole, but we're somewhere in between. For me, I was born more male-appearing with the small phallus, inside of which was a severe chordee, which is like a white fibrous band inside
00:04:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
that was not going to allow my small phallus to erect. But I don't even know if I was checked for that because I was told in 2001 that all my birth records had been lost. I called the hospital and that's what they said, so I don't have a clue who looked at what, who did what, I have no idea. Nobody was talking and I never found out. People have died, and I'll never know.
00:04:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Small phallus somewhat unfinished underneath, and that's typical when there's a severe chordee, and then hypospadias of perineum, which means that I had to sit to void because my urinary tract opening was below what would be the scrotum area. Dr. Laukaitis believes it's likely I had some testicular tissue in what appeared to be male-appearing urogenital folds. They weren't connected,
00:05:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
but they were a little thicker, hung lower, kind of like something interrupted the process, because there was, she said, signal going on for male development. And then the XX, it was kind of like, who's gonna win out here. And voila, it influenced all the development. You had those things going on. Then what you couldn't see, unless they examined me, and I don't know, but still there was a vagina and there was a cervix,
00:05:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
there were ovaries, but what nobody knew, and I didn't even find out till 1985 when I had them removed because I wanted to, and I was very relieved. They were full of cysts. According to a scientific article, I read in 2016, the scientists that are really studying the 46 double X Male, SRY negatives, these would have likely become cancerous.
00:06:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
So I'm glad I got them out anyway, for my head. But they didn't know that, because that was like, nobody knew. The testicular tissue was going to be invisible to the eye. I had androgen producing tissue, nobody knew that, couldn't see it. My cortisol was normal, so I didn't have congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and I was negative for that, for those genes.
00:06:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
So I appeared more male and that's how I came out of the womb, that way. Everything was normal. I was
[inaudible] properly. But everything about me was normal, anatomically and physiologically, there was nothing wrong with me. I just happened to have looked different because I was created differently. Fortunately, nobody did any surgery on my genitals. Nobody cut off my small penis,
00:07:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
nobody created what their idea or whose ever idea of female genitalia, which happens a lot to little intersex infants, against their will. They don't have a choice. Fortunately, nobody tinkered with me or messed with me. The scalpel was removed from the picture, thank God, or I wouldn't even have this talk with you. I'd have killed myself. I mean, come on. With everything else I went through? It's traumatic, for those folks.
00:07:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I didn't have that. I did not have that trauma. I had enough other stuff. That's how I came out. Then my folks had to pick a name and they had to tick a box. Because in this country, you still only have two boxes to tick from, an M or an F. Somebody decided to tick the F box, and away we went with the girl name, which was wrong.
00:08:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
The invisible core gender identity of girl, which was wrong. And the binary female body, of course, which was wrong because I was intersex. That put me off on a veered branch, a script, script of the certified registered being, as Appel would say, law school in Washington.
00:08:30TOM BLISS:
Do you have any idea why they decided to choose a female gender?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
No. Nobody ever talked about it. I have some guesses. See, it was 1952, we lived on a farm. Things were isolated. We had no internet, no libraries, no information. I don't even know if they knew about Johns Hopkins, which is probably a good thing, because we'd have been called hermaphrodites.
00:09:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I'm guessing because there were several churches, in the village of 120 people close by our farm, and because it was rural area, thinking of the time, it was like community pressure. You had to be binary something. Maybe having the chordee, which held down my little, slightly unfinished phallus saved me from getting it cut off. Maybe they just thought it wasn't enlarged,
00:09:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
something. I don't know what they were thinking. Maybe they thought, okay, this kid's got a vagina. We got to pick something. We don't know if this child can void out the end of this little penis, so maybe because it's going to have to sit to pee, maybe that's the best choice for it for elementary school. Also, maybe they thought I'd be less bullied that way, or less picked on. I don't know. Nobody knows. It was never talked about.
00:10:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
My grandmother knew. I was named Judy, the girl, but my grandmother called me Jude, the male form, always. That's all she called me. She knew I was a boy. I think if she'd had her way, she would have fought for me being assigned a boy core gender identity and the male body, and then fought for me against churches and school, whatever other neighbors, what other people think, all that pressure,
00:10:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
because there's economic pressure. I mean, my folks could have been pressured and had to sell out the farm. Where would they go? You know what I'm saying? There's people gotta live, that gotta buy food, pay your taxes. So they may have thought that was the best alternative, but she did not. She fought for me.
TOM BLISS:
You grew up in Pipeline, Minnesota.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Pipestone.
TOM BLISS:
Pipestone, sorry. What was Pipestone like?
[Crosstalk] talk about it a bit better.
00:11:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Very conservative. It's still is very conservative. It was about 10,000 people at the time.
TOM BLISS:
Sorry to interrupt you. But if you could repeat the question in your answer, that way we can get a full clip. So if you can say "Pipestone was," that would be great.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Pipestone, Minnesota is located in Southwestern, Minnesota near the Iowa South Dakota border.
00:11:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
It's the county seat of Pipestone county. At the time I was born in 1952, there was about 10,000 people in the town and surrounded by farms, but 160 acres, typical rural farms, very conservative. It happens to be the home
00:12:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
of the Catlinite red peace pipe, the ones you've seen in all the old Western movies, where too many white guys are playing Indians. I mean, it was just terrible. Anyway, that's where the red peace pipe Catlinite quarry, it's the only one in the world. I find that very ironic, where I was born, very conservative, anti-gay, anti-anything except binary
00:12:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
whatever, and I'm born there, and that quarry's there. Which eventually, of course, they gave back to the native Americans. But I just find that whole thing bizarre because it's still so red as a beat back there, conservative and shrinking. By the way, Pipestone is nine miles from our farm where I grew up, 160 acres small family-owned dairy farm,
00:13:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
we farmed soybeans, alfalfa, corn, and then a small herd of dairy cows, 12, then a hundred head of hogs, and chickens, a hundred chickens for eggs, and then a hundred roosters. My mother chopped off their heads every spring and dressed them, because we grew most of our own food. Pipestone was not that far, and our farm is not that far from Walnut Grove, which is the Plum Creek area.
00:13:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
If you think about that, bizarre as well, they're in Plum Creek. To me, the story gets stranger all the time. More interesting all the time.
TOM BLISS:
What was the farm like? How many people were on the farm? What was your family like?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Our farmhouse was a two story older farm house, which my mother's father gave to my parents as a wedding present.
00:14:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
It was loaded up on a flatbed and hauled by tractor, across gravel roads, many miles and plopped onto the area of the farm, where that's where it stayed, right across the driveway, on the same farm as my grandma, grandpa Petersen's two story farmhouse. So there were two farm houses on our 160 acre farm in close proximity. My parents and I, in our two-story farmhouse,
00:14:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
with no locks, by the way, no privacy, and then my grandparents' in their house, which was an oasis for me. We had no, none of us, both in our house and theirs, we had no indoor toilet, no indoor bathroom facilities at all, no hot or cold running water, no plumbing. To get our water, we had to prime it out of a hand pump from a cistern next to the house. We used an outhouse
00:15:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
behind the house next to the summer garden and the sweet corn patch, we used that for going to the bathroom, and tore out single sheets to wipe with, from a Sears Roebuck catalog. Occasionally, I had to use dried corn cobs, which doesn't feel good by the way. And then at night to do our business during the winter time we had a metal pot.
00:15:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
One roll of toilet paper for two adults and a child. Of course, my grandparents had the same situation. That's how it was back then until I was nine years old, I had no telephone until I was nine years old, and the one we did get was a black plastic model that had stickers we stuck on the wall. My grandparents had the same model and it was connected to a wire between our farm houses.
00:16:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
We buzzed each other to alert each other that there was a phone call. Ours was two shorts and a long, and then they'd go pick up this plastic receiver and we'd talk, and that was it. It was a few years later that we got the party line connecting all the farms. That was interesting because people listening on each other's calls. We didn't have a television till, I don't know. I was not six years old or something, and we had one TV station.
00:16:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
My parents' newspaper was the Sioux Falls Argus Leader. Sioux Falls, South Dakota, pretty much rural news, and then a small local rag for Pipestone newspaper, with pretty much just who did what kind of thing. The one radio station, which pretty much, was Country Western Music,
00:17:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and the local hog belly reports and steer reports. It was very isolated, clean, isolated and poor, but clean.
TOM BLISS:
What was the family culture like? Did you have conversations? I imagine a lot of time was spent doing farm work, but what were you doing when you weren't doing farm work?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I played by myself. In those days, people didn't talk much.
00:17:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
My dad, he never talked much, seriously. The guy just didn't talk. He drank beer out in the barn and he grazed, that's kind of how he coped. My dad was a World War II veteran, which I'm extremely proud of him for that. I love him for that. He told me, he said one thing, he was almost captured by the Germans in France, and that's all he would say.
00:18:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I'm here in Tucson and we're hearing jets going over. In our farmhouse, we had five well-oiled, ready to fire guns in the house, at all times, and ammunition in his army metal container that was handy for my dad. By the way, I slept with a loaded rifle under my bed at night my entire senior year,
00:18:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
because I was so terrified of things that had gone on in our farmhouse, on my mother's side of the family. Loaded rifle under the bed for a year. My mother, there weren't conversations. In those days, my mother had to do a whole lot of jobs because in the culture, it was pretty gendered. My dad never cooked. He couldn't even boil water.
00:19:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Mother did all the cooking, all the cleaning. She washed and cleaned each egg by hand, perfectly. Sold cases of perfectly cleaned white eggs. The ones that are blemished are the ones that we got for breakfast. By the way, there was no antibiotics, no nothing. I mean, the food was extremely nutritious and healthy. The milk my dad brought up from the barn was never pasteurized,
00:19:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
homogenized. Hey, I'm healthy, it's nothing wrong with that. The cream was fresh. I mean, there's nothing like fresh cream, you can't beat it. Nobody talked. My parents, I didn't see them have conversations. They just didn't talk much. My mother was loud, her voice was very sharp. It was very pointed, it was mean,
00:20:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
was abusive and was very forceful. She did everything she could to boss me around to try to conform to a girl, female gendered lifestyle. Nobody talked about my intersex variation. Nobody ever talked about it in our farmhouse. She made fun of me. She made fun of my dad. She never said she was sorry about nothing.
00:20:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
She grew up in an abusive house. People didn't have recovery in those days. They didn't have any options except church. She was a very church-going person, Sunday school teacher for, I don't know, forever. Ran the Sunday school for 22 years.
00:21:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
The harder she tried to discipline me or bring her own life into some sense of perfect order, the more she got into what I call a toxic Jesus. I was made to memorize all the books of the Bible. I was made to dress in perfectly starched dresses. There was a big investment in our home looking perfect on the outside, painted perfectly. Looked perfect.
00:21:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Didn't matter on the inside, it was crumbling. We were all wounded people, but on the outside, we were to present perfectly. A lot of pressure for me to achieve. She enrolled me in Four H projects, they're called, like how to set the table perfectly, like I gave a shit, how to make little lunches and all these things, to prepare me for marrying the first man who asked me,
00:22:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
because that was the culture. Of course, I didn't have any interest in that. She trained me to be perfect, in my diction, in my stance, my presentations, to win. It was winning at all costs, extremely competitive. She herself had gone to the Minnesota state fair, got there with her beet cooking project,
00:22:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
but she said it blew up on her on the stage and she was disqualified. But a big achievement oriented household. My dad went along with whatever mother wanted. She wasn't
[inaudible] woman, she didn't drink. She said she couldn't. She said it made her loopy, whenever that meant. But she worked too hard and too long of hours, and she eventually got sick. I had no siblings till I was about 15 and my brother was born.
00:23:00TOM BLISS:
What was going on inside of you during that time?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Could you repeat that a little louder, please?
TOM BLISS:
What was going on inside of you? Did you think you were a girl?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I knew by age four that my invisible core gender identity was a boy. I mean, I was playing outside
00:23:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
in the grass behind our farm house, because I played a lot. I played by myself, I entertained myself. There weren't any other kids to play with. So I grew up that way, you know, a lot of imagination and creativity and playing by myself. But getting back to the topic I always knew that by age four my core gender identity was a boy because it just intuitively came to me.
00:24:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
My priest and I have talked about this. It was, like, an intuitive knowing. It's like, oh yeah, I'm a boy. Okay. It just made perfect sense. And I just went on playing in the backyard. My body made sense to me, except I felt ... Because I liked my flat chest. In those days, we had comic books, and in the back they had like ... God who was it? Charles Atlas, in the bikinis, doing the poses,
00:24:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and I'd do those in front of the mirror and my chest made sense. My body made sense. Except I didn't even think about that I had to sit the void because I didn't know the difference, so it was no big deal. But I sensed that my anatomy was unfinished. There was a hole down there, I would pray to God on my knees every night, as a child, to finish the job.
00:25:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I'd say that, "Dear God, please finish making my body into a boy's body." Because there was a hole down there. I didn't know it had a name, vagina, nobody's talking about anatomy parts, just finished the job. I go to bed happy and I'd wake up the next morning and nothing had changed. I would look at my poster on the wall of the first original seven astronauts, and I'd wished that my father was like John Glenn, his eyes seemed so kind,
00:25:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and he seemed like he wouldn't hurt anybody. I'd look to them, like he was my hero, for hope and go to bed and wake up. Nothing had changed, the next morning. By the age of nine, I thought God was deaf, had abandoned me, didn't care, and I went into a serious depression. That's about the time my dad introduced me to alcohol, by the time my grandfather introduced me to nicotine, and about the time that my androgens started kicking in.
00:26:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I started having male puberty by middle of nine years old, and blonde hair started appearing all over my body. I was like, oh, where'd this come from? Yeah, I guess it's cool, makes sense. It turned dark, and that's when everything started to change with puberty, and the depression never changed. The alcohol, sort of, took the edge off, but never was a solution.
00:26:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Nicotine never was a solution, but I smoked like a train. I was trying to find something; food, my mother was a terrific baker. Oh my God, from scratch, these caramel rolls that were so sinful, pecan, I've never had any better. Food then became a comfort, because she made all that extra food to make up for the fact that we didn't have enough vegetables. We didn't have enough fruit.
00:27:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
She canned, she froze, we just didn't have enough. The baked foods filled in, and that then became a comfort for me. I had three things going on that eventually became addictions and backfired, but the depression never lifted. I felt bad because, at the age of six years old, and I talk about this in my manuscript of the memoir, I had to ride the bus to school nine miles away,
00:27:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
almost an hour. That's how rural kids, us farm kids did. I remember every morning I'd have to walk out to the mailbox and I had to wear dresses because that's how it was back then. I hated it. Perfectly turned down, white anklets. I hated that. Girl's underwear. None of it made sense. I hated it. It was humiliating. I wasn't able to be who I was. I wasn't relaxed. I'd watch the school bus yellow metal box with the black
00:28:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
wheels getting closer and closer to me, to the mailbox, and I would feel increasing anxiety, terror, fear. They'd open up the door and I'd have to walk up steps that were too big for my little legs, at 5, 6, 7 years old, get into the school bus, and I was alone. I mean, I was lonely. It was painful. I didn't fit. I didn't belong in a girl's world, I was a boy. How the hell was I supposed to fit in their world, wearing dresses?
00:28:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
It was awful. It was horrible. So I ran away from our farmhouse as much as I could, to my grandparents' farmhouse, right across the driveway on the farm, and I took refuge with her. She just treated me like a normal kid. She just treated me like a normal boy, even though she knew my anatomy was different. We didn't have a name for it, she called me Jude, and I played cards with her and grandpa as much as I could. We laughed, carried on, I felt safe. I felt relaxed.
00:29:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
It was wonderful with them. She was the person, through all the moving parts of the universe, who can possibly figure that out, how that happened. She was parked there in that farmhouse at that moment, when I was born, to know that this was her grandson. She was put there for me. I believe God made her to watch out for me,
00:29:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
to affirm me, to take care of me and to protect me and to stand with me until she died in July of '93. We communicated with our eyes. It was like we were made out of the same material. We just vibrated completely together.
TOM BLISS:
Is this your dad's mother?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Yeah.
00:30:00TOM BLISS:
What's her name?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Alice Glendora Petersen. I devoted my book to her. I dedicated it to her. I'd like to take this opportunity to read you the dedication, because she was the insulation around my soul that built my resilience. She's why I'm here today.
00:30:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
She put up with really bad shit from my mom. I mean, it was bad, all her life, but she never said one unkind thing about my mother. She could have, she'd have been justified. She was such a lady. She was a remarkable person. And she was a human being. I'm not idolizing, she was a human being, but she was a remarkable human being. So I want to read to you this dedication,
00:31:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
if I can get through it without crying. "I dedicate this book to my grandma, Alice Glendora Petersen, my family, my lifelong ally, my friend, teacher and nurse's aide in the small town conservative hospital where I was born. Thank you, grandma for teaching me the values of excellence,
00:31:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
follow through, not to be afraid of things that are different, education, it's okay to make a mistake, humor, service, and the gift of wonder." I dedicated my book, A Comprehensive Guide to Intersex to her. I hope she's here today.
00:32:00TOM BLISS:
You talked about puberty. Puberty is a hard time for anyone, what was puberty like for you?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Well, puberty started for me around the middle of maybe when I was nine years old, when the androgens kicked in my body
00:32:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and the blonde hair grew all over my body, my arms, my chest, my legs, chin, face, and then it turned dark. I was like, oh. For somehow intuitively it just made sense. It was no big deal to me, but what was hard about it was because I was being
00:33:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
forced to have to live the life of a girl, which I was not, I had to shave it off. I hated that. My mother bought me this little pink girl's electric razor, which I hated. The razor would get clogged up, because it wasn't built for that, couldn't handle it. I had to start using different kinds of razors. See, our house had a complete makeover,
00:33:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I was nine years old, I don't know where the money came from. I mean, it got completely modernized, including an indoor bathroom, and an entire living room got built on, I don't know where all this money came from, I have a guess. I'd go into that bathroom with my dad when he'd be shaving, and he'd put shaving cream on my face, out of his shaving cup. He'd shave and I'd shave, with my little plastic yellow razor, and a little cardboard,
00:34:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
fake blade in it. I go in there and shave with my dad. As far as my face and my legs and my arms, I had to shave all that off to comport my training for girls, because in that culture, unlike some cultures, girls just didn't have hairy legs and faces.
00:34:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Then acne started around that age. Dr. Laukaitis said that that was just part of the virilizing process of my male puberty. My face got really oily and got really severe acne. We couldn't get that under control for years. Then around age 11, I think, I'd rather forget it,
00:35:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
but I think the female breasts started forming because the female hormones started to light up. I was like, what the hell are these things? Where's this coming from? It was a shock to me and it was humiliating, but my mother loved it. She got out this bra that she had purchased for me. In those days, they had the metal hooks on them. God, they were really uncomfortable. I was humiliated.
00:35:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I was a man, you know, a guy. It was bad enough having to shave off my hair, now I had to wear those things on my chest, it was humiliating. It just added to my depression and my anger. I had a lot of anger, and in our family, it wasn't okay to be angry, so I had to stuff all this. It was even more humiliating because I started to realize I was attracted to girls,
00:36:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
in elementary school, while I had to stuff those feelings. Here I am, a guy having to dress like a girl, shave off my hair and then wear brassiere and have tits. What the fuck is that? It was really awful. Shortly after that, I guess sometime after that, menses started. That was it. I didn't even know I had ovaries,
00:36:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and that they had cysts in them. I had no knowledge of this stuff. When that happened, I really sunk into a shithole of darkness mentally and emotionally. I felt that that was the worst of all. I had no God listening to me, this girl shit was happening. I was attracted to girls, couldn't do anything about it.
00:37:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I had to shave my hair, wear these clothes. From birth, your paperwork piles up; birth certificates, registration in your school, paperwork piles up. Sunday school, baptismal, all this paperwork piles up. So there's this pressure, the community pressure, to look good, to be that good, to be perfect. All this pressure, pressure, pressure. The relief I got was temporarily through booze, nicotine, and food, and then going over to my grandma's house,
00:37:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
which thank God for them. But that was horrible. At about 12 and 13, I started to grow my hair. Like the Beatles, Beatles haircut, the long bangs. I did everything I could to try to -- Like, I got rid of those stupid white socks and wore like a blue unisex socks. I didn't turn them down to my ankles.
00:38:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
We went shopping for clothes twice a year, that's how it was back then on the farm. Twice a year, you got clothes, and that was it. I'd try to get some, even though they were girls shoes, something that looked more unisex. I tried what I could to ... I'd order some clothes out of the catalog through the mail. I'd order like a heather blue kind of a sweater that could probably pass for a boy's sweater. I did what I could to try to
00:38:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
hang on to my male identity until 8th grade when my mother ... She started molesting me in 6th grade, but when in 8th grade, she attacked me one night out of the blue, knocked me down on the floor, pinned me down, took scissors and cut off my bangs.
00:39:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Then she took the plastic black comb, pointed edge, and kept sticking it in my head to try to make me behave, and put curlers in my hair. She was stronger and bigger than I was, and she had her motivations and whatever else was going on with her mind, because she was not a mentally well woman, and neither was her father.
00:39:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
By age 14, I had my first blackout with alcohol. I was clearly an alcoholic. Still trying to express my feelings toward girls. But in that culture in those days, having to falsely present as a girl, which I was not, even though I was a boy gender identity and my body had male features, if people didn't know any of that underneath my dresses,
00:40:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
how could they know? I mean, there's no tattoo on my forehead. I couldn't hand out business cards. When I even would plop my arm around a girl when I was drunk, because that was my excuse, "Well, I'm just drunk," that's how I'm going to plop my arm around the girl I'm in love with, they would call me a homo and other derogatory names. So I stopped all that, and I just lived as an alienated outcast,
00:40:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
until I was like, I dunno, a sophomore. I was lonely for my dad's love, wasn't getting it, and terrified of his PTSD outbursts, anger outbursts, unpredictable, and then having watched him do some pretty horrible things with some animals, like drowned a litter of puppies in the cow tank because he didn't want to deal with taking him to the vet to find homes.
00:41:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I saw a lot of shit growing up I never should've seen as a child. But getting back to this high school thing, I just wasn't able to do the things, to date the girls, to do sports or anything that I felt inside. Had to just stuff myself and conform, and alcohol became even more and more important to me, even though I was having blackouts,
00:41:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and nicotine and the food. Then I got into restricting with the food. My food has been a yo-yo, I have an eating disorder. It's much better now, but all those things backfired. All of it was unnecessary.
TOM BLISS:
I'm so sorry you experienced sexual abuse and the other abuse. What were the blackouts like?
00:42:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Well like the first one, all blackouts are the same. Your eyes are open, you're maybe even talking, you're maybe even walking around and driving, and you lose track of time. Like, let's say you and I were at a little party and we're drinking away, I'd go into a blackout and I'd be talking like this, then I go to bed that night. Next day I'd wake up and you'd say,
00:42:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
"Hey Jay, remember when you said this and did this and we drove around and we did all the things. I say, "No, I have no memory of that." So you're not asleep, you're awake and you're talking and you're doing things. My first one was at a New Year's Eve party with two girls, one of them I was attracted to, I was 14, and we got this older kid to buy us a fifth of whiskey. Our parents were at one of the girls' farmhouse,
00:43:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
playing cards. I started drinking whiskey in punch. I drank almost a fifth in less than an hour. I woke up, I remember I was upstairs and I said to one of the girls, I showed her the fifth and I said, "Hey, see how much I've drank this hour."
00:43:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I was talking to them, doing things with them, but I had no memory of it until I finally did. Then I passed out. But when you have a blackout, you're not passed out, you're still functioning like this. You just don't have any memory of it, so a lot of things can happen. But then I eventually passed out onto the living room floor and then got taken to the hospital, and my stomach pumped, because they said I almost died of alcohol poisoning.
00:44:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Then I shamelessly flirted with the nurse, and I loved it.
[inaudible] right here, nurse. I was like, yeah. My parents were aghast. Then all the shit hit the fan afterwards with shaming and hiding the whiskey bottle. But nobody talked about Alcoholics Anonymous. Nobody talked about that I had a drinking problem. It was all about shame and blame, and me being the black sheep, which I always was in our family. They didn't see what was happening to me as a big fat symptom,
00:44:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
that our family is dysfunctional, and I'm a boy and hey, I got a mixed anatomy, we gotta do something here. We gotta get to a university and get some help here, nothing like that.
TOM BLISS:
What did you think was going to happen to you in life, going forward? Did you think a university would be a place of salvation, in a way?
00:45:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Well, not until I got sober. Getting off the farm was a big relief to me. I did away with the girls clothes and just got into unisex stuff when I went to community college. Interestingly, by the way, that college had affiliation with one of the people in the cult.
00:45:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
My mother insisted I go there. That was a relief to me, but I was so lost. I had had so much abuse. I had been so traumatized, including having witnessed homicide as a child, and all that ritual satanic abuse, all these things. There was so much investment in so many years of having to act,
00:46:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
be something I was not that who I am, talking to you right now, is just buried, buried. I was still there and squirting out, but I didn't really see a way out of all this until I got clean and sober. Even then, with my grandmother's help,
00:46:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I was beginning to crawl out of a big hole. But even then it was difficult because we didn't have a name for what I was. We didn't know anybody like me. We were just plodding our way out of a hole in the dark, in faith. Took a long time to get the right name and a long time to get everything straightened out.
00:47:00TOM BLISS:
I'm wondering, it's so tragic, childhood sexual abuse. That sexual abuse that you endured from your mother, did that somehow turn into the ritual abuse that you experienced?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Well, she knew, and my father knew, one of the relatives that was in this ritual Satanic cult,
00:47:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and she and my dad would take me to this relative's house in Pipestone. This relative's husband, they owned a bank in a very small rural town. On, at least, three occasions, they left me with these people in their house. They had money, it was a very nice house, but they left me there.
00:48:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
My mother knew that they had money. It was never talked about, because it's a big secret society. I mean, I can tell you things a lot of people can't because I've been inside that. I don't believe my mother was among the hooded robed people in the different places that ritual satanic, I don't think so.
00:48:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I think her association with it was in the sense that she knew this woman, she knew they had money. My mother liked money. She never had much money. She liked money. Her father also liked money and he owned several farms. By the way, I've forgiven all these people, so I don't want anybody to think that ... I've forgiven them all because I understand.
00:49:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I've been through so much processing and 12-step work and working with my priest. I mean, let's face it here, every one of these people were born a good little innocent infants. There was nothing wrong with my mother or my dad or her father or the relatives in the cult, or the professional
[inaudible]. Every one of us are born little, good, innocent infants. Then depending upon things can go tragically wrong.
00:49:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Her father was beaten as a little boy. You see? So what does that mean about his dad? It's generational, and they didn't have any recovery. They didn't have a way out. He developed compulsive overeating and nicotine addiction and alcoholism, and he sexually abused me. He became a sadist and he drove his wife too into a nervous breakdown. My mother came from a family of 14 children. She was made to stay home in the 8th grade. She wasn't allowed to finish high school because she had to stay home with the kids.
00:50:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
She was a smart woman, she was talented, smart. She just didn't have opportunities. As far as the cult stuff, I don't know how much, other than what I've shared, or how much she never talked about, or maybe her unmet desires, or if she kind of sideways got money from them. I don't really know.
00:50:30TOM BLISS:
How did you process all of that? I know alcohol was one way, but what did you do with those events while you're growing up? Did you just stuff them?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Yeah. Yeah. Like her brother, she'd take me over to her brother's farm and then he'd walk me by the hand up the stairs
00:51:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and then have intercourse with me in the bed upstairs. I was a little kid and he was an alcoholic. I mean, he was born a good, innocent little infant too, and things went terribly wrong in the home he was raised in. That's what he became, and I've forgiven him. I don't have resentments for these people because; a) I can't afford it; b) it makes no sense anymore.
00:51:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I feel bad for them. With him, I remember I would stare at the window. I just would stare at the window to cope with what he was doing. With my mother's dad, I would kind of recoil inside until I was a middle teenager and then I told him 'no', then he stopped. With my mother,
00:52:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I just stuffed it. I was so shocked and humiliated because it's one thing to have your grandfather do it, or your uncle, but your mother. I mean, there's almost like that primal thing there, like your mother, she's supposed to protect you. Even whales do better than that. Come on, mom. So I stuffed it. With the cult, I think because that started at age five when I said 'no' the first time,
00:52:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and they were going to abandon me in that cemetery at night. Now, you're a little five-year-old kid, where are you going to go? It's terrifying. That's when I said, "Okay, I can do it. I can do it. I can do it." That's when I crawled into the casket, because that was the first thing they had me do, confinement torture. Told me to go crawl into a casket and then they would shut the lid because they did torture techniques, things that wouldn't show.
00:53:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I just became a non-willing participant, because they also threatened me, if I didn't say 'yes', they would hurt grandma Petersen or they would kill my cat, because cults are very good at knowing the things that matter the most to a child. These people are a group. You don't know them because they look good on the outside, so nobody suspects, and they have a lot of power and money and prestige and ways to cover up.
00:53:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
They all wear hooded robes. There's a lot of commonalities to all the ritual satanic cults, but each of them is made up of folks in that area or the region, which was what it was for me, and how they took me to the cemeteries and did things to me. In order to cope, I just ... If my mind is a CD, I just put them in another part of the CD inside my mind.
00:54:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I just shut it off. It stayed there until 1992 and I began to have memories.
TOM BLISS:
How did you get to 1992?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Well, I bottomed out with drugs and alcohol, at the end of 1976. Then in 1977, I went for a chemical dependency intervention in Minneapolis,
00:54:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
of which the joke is if you're asked to go to one of those, nobody ever shows up because no alcoholic addict ever wants to be intervened. Well, I did because I wanted help. I was seeing this wonderful lesbian counselor, Joyce. She was one of many people in my life and played a foundational part in my being here today. I did the intervention. I went to a lesbian construction workers house with her Labrador dog, perfect animal.
00:55:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
She was sober and clean -- I'm getting to your answer because this is an important piece of this story -- and I answered questions out of a book for myself. They were very progressive in Minneapolis in those days. They knew you had to answer the questions for yourself, because if you told somebody you're an addict or alcoholic, we'd say, fuck you, and we'd leave. So the person has to know it for themselves, because that's the only way it's going to ever make any difference anyway.
00:55:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I came to understand I was a drug addict for myself. I had a big a-ha, drove back to my dingy apartment in Minneapolis, my best piece of furniture was a dumpster rocking chair. Suddenly, out of the blue that morning, I was stopped in my tracks and I was suddenly elevated off the floor. We talk about this in the documentary, JAY, it's reenacted well. You have to piece together the parts because nobody is elevated off the floor.
00:56:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
But I was elevated off the floor and suspended by my heart chakra. I was put into an arched cross position and some invisible something put my arms out like a cross and suspended me in the air. And I could feel this energy, that I didn't even know I had on me, lifted off of me from my ankles all the way over my knees, my chest, up off the top of my head, and lifted up off and out of the room, taken away.
00:56:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I also felt a warm presence, and almost kind of like a light in the corner of the apartment. But as far as this invisible presence, couldn't see it, couldn't taste it, touch it, smell it, nothing. It was invisible. I remember saying, "What's going on here?" And then gently placed my feet back on the floor, gently allowed gravity to take over, gently allowed my arms go back to my sides, and then I stood there and went, "What just happened to me?" Then I just,
00:57:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I don't know, did the dishes or something, I dunno. I just went about my business. That afternoon, I suddenly realized I had no desire to do drugs, that it had been lifted off of me. I haven't had a desire since. That set me on a new path, that path eventually led to
00:57:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
treatment a month later in an outpatient chemical dependency treatment center in Minneapolis, Christopher Street, for lesbian and gays, because I couldn't afford anything.
TOM BLISS:
I wanted to just go back to this experience. Sounds amazing. Have you ever had anyone intervene in your life before or show that kind of help to you before? What was that like?
00:58:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Well, my grandmother stood by me from my earliest memory, she was the human being connection. We all need a human, she was. No one had ever lifted me off the floor like that before or done anything that sudden, profound, immediate? No.
00:58:30TOM BLISS:
The intervention itself, beforehand, who was that? What was that like? Because it sounds like there was so much silence throughout your whole life, and no one really had the words to say anything. Here's someone using words to try to help you in a very definite way. What was that like for you?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
You mean that experience?
TOM BLISS:
Of the intervention, yes.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
There were no words.
00:59:00TOM BLISS:
I mean the intervention that you had beforehand with, I believe it was a lesbian construction worker.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Oh, yes. Well, she had been sober and clean three years. The smart thing is when you do an intervention, you want somebody who's been sober and clean, because they've been there. They were keeping sober and clean. Like I said, Minneapolis was progressive. Minnesota is always known to be progressive in that chemical dependency sobriety realm.
00:59:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
The lesbian/gay community was progressive. I think we just laid down together on the carpet. She had beautiful refurbished Minneapolis house, black lab dog, everything was quiet. I just kind of sat there and would talk quietly, but then she'd flip the page and then she'd just be quiet, and let me read the questions for myself and talk to her and give her my own answers.
01:00:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
But she didn't talk a lot. That was the smart thing to do because you don't be telling an alcoholic addict this is you. I'd say, fuck you, and leave. She didn't talk a lot. She knew what she was doing. I didn't know it then, but over the years, these 44 years of being clean from drugs and 42 years sober from alcohol, and having been in enough recovery and around enough folks
01:00:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
who are new and in between and whatever, there's an energy when someone is clean and sober, there's an energy that they carry with them. I don't even think about it right now, but she had that energy because to stay clean and sober, it isn't just about white-knuckling or throwing this stuff down the sink. There's a spiritual component to that,
01:01:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
like there's three legs of the stool. There's a spiritual component, and that's part of the energy that helps keep a person free from the mental obsession to stick something in their mouth in the first place. Of course, then there's the body that is allergic , and that's in remission. So there's an energy brought in there, but I wasn't aware of it at the time. I didn't even know that was going on. All of this stuff is in reflection
01:01:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
of the brilliancy of that intervention. My grandmother, we didn't talk a lot, we did through our eyes. It's like we understood each other like you and I talking right now through our eyes, we could communicate a lot. We did talk some, of course, we did. We had a lot of laughs and we talked some, but silence is on the corn fields, on our farm I called it the green cathedral.
01:02:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I spent a lot of time out in the green cathedral laying on the black dirt, looking at the azure blue dome sky, no pollution, the warm earth. I spent a lot of time alone. There's been a lot of silence, almost kind of a strange contemplative life in a way that I never asked for. It's like I've had a lot of unusual experiences. Let's just put it that way,
01:02:30TOM BLISS:
So you had lost God, I think around age nine, when you were praying for God to finish the job -- was this spiritual experience that lifted you off the ground and removed your desire to drink, was this God?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I don't know.
TOM BLISS:
How did you go forward with spiritual beliefs from then on?
01:03:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
It was challenging because after age nine ... As a child, see, it's the same things you do as an adult, like as a nine year old, I didn't know that Dr. Laukaitis hadn't even been born yet. I mean, people that were going to help me. I lost trust in God. That was so painful. Yet, with my trombone, which I started to play at age nine, I would play a song like Abide With Me and other songs,
01:03:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
crying to this power, to hear me, to help me, through music or listening. Then it became the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves and the trees, brought me great comfort. I didn't have the word, God. Even after January 15th, 1977, all I knew was something beneficial had intervened. To this day,
01:04:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I don't have a name for it. I don't know what it was. Same thing happened in June 17th of '79, when the obsession for alcohol was removed. I had gone out for three weeks and drank because I didn't think I was an alcoholic, even though I had blackouts at 14, I don't know what I was thinking. I had this intervention again, in this dinky little church in Ault, Colorado, alone. The doors had been opened, so I had been going in there every day, writing music to Mother Mary,
01:04:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I'm not even Catholic. I don't know why I was writing music to her. I happen to think she's pretty cool. Suddenly, my knees were kicked out from under me, I dropped to the floor, when I was trying to wave high to this old man
[God] up there. I had no trust in God. I just knew there was something that cared enough about me that was keeping me free from the drugs. I knew there was something
01:05:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I was talking to, to say, "I got to go out and drink because I really don't know if I'm an alcoholic, please don't let me use drugs again." And I didn't. Then whatever, something put my knees out from under me, I dropped to the carpet, made my way like this up to the kneeling railing of this church, which I wasn't even a member of, and said, "Okay, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. I just can't take this anymore." Boom, I felt this energy being lifted off of me out of the room again, and that was the obsession to drink.
01:05:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I felt like a million bucks. I haven't drank since. I don't know if that was God, I really don't have any idea, Tom, to this day. I just know something gave a damn, something cared about me. I couldn't touch it, hear it, taste it, touch it, smell it, but it had happened. I haven't had drugs since January 15, '77. I haven't drank since June 17, '79. Something similar happened with the nicotine.
01:06:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I did work the 12 steps of AA for that to happen. Then something similar happened with the debting. I was a debtor, financial debtor. In 1987, I walked into this Debtors Anonymous meeting. Walked through the doorway and I felt this energy being lifted off of me. I lost all desire to debt. I don't know what the hell it was. I don't know to this day. My concept of this God thing, I even hesitate to use that word because for me,
01:06:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
it's what my inner child feels safe with. Because if my inner child doesn't feel safe, nothing's going to happen. He's going to try to control everything. That's my great-great-great grandmother, Poptsma, for him, he feels safe with her. My teenager likes St. Michael, he thinks St Michael's pretty cool, and I'm still not Catholic. My adult likes Mother Mary. I was kind of like,
01:07:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
okay, Mother Mary isn't gonna like, yeah, she's cool. Then I have a lot of Eastern, stuff that I really like. Some native American stuff. It's complicated, I rarely use the word, God. It seems so confining. I don't know. I just don't really like the word. Although I have used it, that's about the best I can do there. I participate.
01:07:30TOM BLISS:
Congratulations on your recovery. That's huge.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Thank you. It is, I worked at it.
TOM BLISS:
In this period, you started painting. Do you want to tell me how that correlates to your getting sober? The art pieces?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Yeah. I never had any art training because when I was growing up we didn't have any art classes in the rural. I had a really good public education, but art was like
01:08:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
gluing pieces of popcorn to paper and making it look like a poinsettia or something. Never had any art classes in college. About maybe two months after the obsession was removed, for drugs, and I stopped drinking and I'd finished treatment successfully -- by the way, grandma Petersen came to treatment with me,
01:08:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
as my family concerned person, when my parents refused, and sat with me in groups, that was great -- suddenly, I think it was like maybe April or March of '77, I had this overwhelming feeling to paint. It came from the inside out and I thought, where's this coming from? I couldn't help myself.
01:09:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
A friend of mine bought me some art supplies, and she and her daughter and I were on our way to Apostle Islands in Wisconsin, to go up there, take a little road trip. I was going to paint up there. I couldn't wait, I started painting in the backseat. I couldn't help myself. It just came out.
01:09:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I finished it at Apostle Islands, sitting in the grass. Ever since then, I've been painting. There's been intervals, it seems like, when one addiction would get out of hand, like the nicotine, there'd be some interruptions, but essentially I haven't stopped painting since. I made the decision, and it was a very important decision to me -- I had this sense
01:10:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
that I was a very sensitive person, that I could be easily influenced, and I can be -- that if I was going to paint, if I was going to surrender to whatever this feeling, this sense was that I had to paint, I was going to do it with the power that was keeping me clean and sober. I made that decision. Then I knew I could relax
01:10:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and I could rely on that power, and together as one we would paint together. I've always done that. I've not stopped doing that ever since that first painting, I always prayed, I call it hooked up with the power that's keeping me clean and sober, as one. I feel this tremendous connection energy. I just talk to it and then we do the painting. I've never copied anybody's painting. I've never, ever copied. Every one of my paintings has always been completely original and new creation. Over a thousand paintings.
01:11:00TOM BLISS:
You have a lot of art shows, what was it like to start showing art?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
It was that first painting, and it got accepted in its show, in the very first show I ever ... I thought, wow, this feels pretty good. It was on exhibit and I felt great.
TOM BLISS:
You have a lot of support for your paintings, people buy your paintings. I know you do painting specifically for people.
01:11:30TOM BLISS:
How has the social aspect of that been like for you, and the 12-step, I have to say, growing up in such isolation?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Well, I don't paint Southwestern, even though I'm in Tucson, I've tried, it always ends up being something that looks like it's under the ocean or from above. I don't know. I just can't. What I'm doing is, with this beneficial power channeling,
01:12:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
something uniquely, accurately as the energies, the higher vibrations, bringing them down into a slower speed down here so they look abstract of the color essence and energy of someone's, could be their guardian angel or their guardians around them or their soul essence or deceased pets or living pets or places. I can channel the energy of anything. That's why I choose to work with my higher power so it's always accurate, and I'm led and guided for its accuracy, because the safety is really important to me.
01:12:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Socially, I can't say that I've been a big seller. There's been some galleries that have liked my work, but they have not been successful in selling them. The owners have liked them, but the people don't get it. So they said, "Sorry, we've got to give you your art back." I'm not represented in any gallery. It seems like most of the people who've ever bought my art
01:13:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
or hired me to channel their guardian angel or their soul painting themselves, or their paths are deceased relatives, most of those people have never set foot in an art gallery. They're just everyday folks. Very interesting. Just like you and me. They just get it, they just vibrate and say, "Oh, would you paint my angel?" Or "Oh, my mother died, would you channel her soul energy and guardian angel?
01:13:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I just need to know she's okay." I said, okay. Then I asked her permission and then I write my 'Dear God' letter. I called 'Dear God' letter, or 'Dear mother Mary', or higher power. We hook up and then I channel that energy. Paintings happen pretty fast, and I never fuss with them. I get a sense when they're done and I stop. The people always go, "Oh yeah, that's my mother. How did you know?"
01:14:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I go, I don't know. I just channel it with a higher power, and the person's permission, of course, because I don't snoop. I don't do anything without anybody's permission, because freewill is extremely important to me, and safety, and accuracy. I've had a big inventory because I haven't had a lot of sales. Although today, five of my paintings are being
01:14:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
fit for the walls at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall, Minnesota, and the library McFarland library with Pam Gladis, the librarian, who got it, said, "I want this art for my walls. They're bare." I said, yes. She was so pumped when she saw the art last night. She said she didn't even sleep. That's 40 miles from where I grew up, on the farm, so I feel really good about that. It's an alma mater, where I got my art degree.
01:15:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
So when somebody gets it, they get it. But a lot of what you would call typical art buyers, collectors, and galleries, they just haven't wanted it. I paint alone in the backyard here, looking at the trees. I'm hoping that I get more business, of buyers and commissions,
01:15:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
with the platform of my book, even this talk. I'm not very good at marketing because I'm an introvert, believe it or not. It's hard for me. But I love painting. It's a service and I really believe in service. I like getting paid for it, but it's a service.
01:16:00TOM BLISS:
If you could tell your nine year old self or your 15 year old self anything, right now, what would you say to them?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Hang on, buddy, because there's people that aren't even born yet that are going to be there to help you. Who are gonna help you, along with Grandma Petersen and a beneficial power,
01:16:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
to reclaim yourself. All this crap that you've gone through, I feel bad for you, I'm sorry you've had to go through it unnecessarily, but everything you've ever gone through is going to help people one day. You're so strong and such a kind person and such a happy little guy,
01:17:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and you care about people and the earth and animals. One day you will have forgiven those people and you will have so much recovery that the energy flowing through you and through your writing ... You don't know it yet, but you're going to be a writer, with a wonderful book, with wonderful people who are going to come forward, that you don't even know yet, in different parts of the United States
01:17:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and in the world are going to help you so that you're going to make a positive difference in this world. Your suffering is going to be greatly reduced. Your Grandma Petersen is going to stand with you through it all. We're going to have a name for what you are, and you're going to be able to live as the boy that God created you to be, sober and clean, without suffering. It's going to be a life worthwhile.
01:18:00TOM BLISS:
It's gorgeous. It's beautiful. Very moving. Is that what you would say to intersex children that don't know who they are and LGBTQ children and other types of marginalized children? And have you met intersex children?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Yes, I have.
01:18:30TOM BLISS:
What's that experience like? What would you say to them?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
The children that I have met who were born intersex, I met at a convention for intersex individuals and they were fortunately surrounded by 200 adults who were born intersex, so they were having a much more positive experience.
01:19:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
One of them, I carried in my arms, a little three old, going through one of those little dance tunnel things. I just held that little kid and just tried to smile to it and say welcome to the world, so glad you're here, so proud of you. Saying things like that, that I didn't hear. I didn't talk about any other things that might happen in the future.
01:19:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Yeah, "I'm proud of you. I'm happy for you and glad you got mom and dad here today. They're here to help you. This is great." Then two kids that were 10 years old, I smiled and said, "I'm really glad to see you, welcome." That welcoming, for who you are, giving them that good energy and smiling.
01:20:00TOM BLISS:
What was that process of reclaiming? You leave the farm, you're on your own and you start to reclaim your body and your sexuality.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Yeah, that was interesting because I couldn't wait to get off the farm. I ran down the graduation aisle, got drunk that night, of course, with a keg of beer, but I left all those girl clothes behind.
01:20:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I started buying unisex clothes because it was 1970, the American flag theme, shoes and belts. Even though I had to buy some girl pants and had to wear stupid bras, I had as much unisex clothing as possible. That gave me some relief. It was like I could be more of myself, but I still was getting drunk, of course, because I was an alcoholic, and smoking like a train.
01:21:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I was a little more bold in my approach to girls, but I did it drunk because I could use that as an excuse. Then I happened to pick a straight woman whose father happened to be police chief of a town. He was a drunk, that was interesting. I started getting involved with her, but there were always parts of my body that were off limits,
01:21:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
because those were girl parts, made no sense to me. I was a guy. What happened was she, along with other women that I would date, either were straight or were avowed lesbians who were divorced with children. I would pick these women because what I was really looking for was a wife, a home, living just a normal life and being a dad,
01:22:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and having kids. I mean, that's life I always wanted. I just always want to live a normal life with a wife and a home and adopt a kid. Just live life. My natural instinct was picking these women, and they'd get confused, because if they were avowed lesbians, they couldn't understand why they were getting involved with me, because what would happen is their relationships never worked. We'd always break up and they'd either go on the pill
01:22:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and start dating men, or get pregnant and have an abortion, or start dating guys. They were completely confused. When I got off the drugs and alcohol, I had a lot of amends that I made to a lot of people. Even though I didn't have a name for what I was, I went around and talked to a lot of people, some of them twice. When I got misdiagnosed transsexual in 1981,
01:23:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
at a major university in the Midwest, because nobody bothered to do any testing or any hormone testing or genetic testing, especially did not listen to me talk about my male parts, and no examination. When'd talk to these women, I'd say, I'm a straight guy and I was diagnosed transsexual, but of course, some of them already knew that I had male parts. They were confused, because nobody had the name intersex.
01:23:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
So some of them, I went around and made amends to twice. I think two or three of them, I think I even did three times, so they could get unconfused because it wasn't fair to them. None of this was necessary. If people were to have this book
[A Comprehensive Guide To Intersex - he shows his book to camera] and get educated, and doctors had courses in this, which they don't have, and if we all had human rights, the universal charter of human rights, if we all had human rights,
01:24:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and if the birth certificates didn't have two boxes, if they could just do fill in the blank, a lot of unnecessary pain and suffering and unhappy children could be avoided. There's murders, suicides. I thought about suicide for a long time, even sober and clean. I got through that. But when I got sober and clean, then I realized, in that lesbian treatment center, this wasn't right for me.
01:24:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
But I was still coming out of that fog, and grandma and I decided, better to be clean and sober and go to a lesbian treatment center because I could afford it, which was zero pay. We can deal with the other stuff later, even though we didn't have a name for it. Step by step by step, I was coming back home to myself and it was in short order. In the lesbian treatment center, on Saturday nights, we had to go do sober fun.
01:25:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Everybody had to learn how to do sober fun. We're all mandated to go to a lesbian coffee house and dance. Well, I didn't want to go to an all lesbian coffee house, but I had to go as part of my treatment. I would become part of the wall and watch the women. I could feel, within short order, I didn't belong in that world. I didn't belong in the lesbian world. I didn't belong there. It was like a numb foot was coming awake. More and more,
01:25:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I was coming home, connecting to who I was created to be, and more and more. It was like, I don't belong here. These calls aren't right for me. I don't belong in this world. But I'm attracted to girls, so what the hell do I do? I still have these tits, I still have this girl name, what am I supposed to do? I had no help, grandma and I didn't have no help. We were alone in this, which is really tragic. My parents were no help. They didn't want nothing to do with me.
01:26:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
The law was no help. I mean, the law wasn't helping a lot of people back then, unless you were straight and binary. By the last coffee house, Saturday night, they all took off their tops and their bras, and they started dancing in a giant circle, and I was going, oh my God, I haven't seen as many breasts ever. Oh my God. Look at all these women. I tried to just pretend I wasn't looking.
01:26:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
They asked me to join them. I said, I don't want to do this, and I just became part of the wall. I watched for a while and then I left. Gradually, over time, I started dating. I got a job on a Native American reservation, teaching music, because I had a Master's in Music Education. I could do it with a hangover. I still didn't know I was a real artist. I still didn't know I was a writer. All this was down deep,
01:27:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
it was coming out. I started dating the Special Ed teacher. She was straight. Then parts of my body were off limits for sex. The longer I was sober and clean, the more I wanted to kill myself or get drunk. I said, "I got to get help." She said, "I know." She knew I was a guy because my male energy was so strong, she said. She was confused. Her sister, her twin sister, was gay. She thought, well, maybe I'm just open-minded but no, you're a guy. There's all this confusion that we'd have to continue talking about with these women,
01:27:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
so that they wouldn't feel ... A lot of them felt nuts. Like, why am I normal lesbian with this guy? All this unnecessary stuff was going on through this process. But I just kept plodding forward, looking for a name, looking to get help and gradually, Mary and I, teaching on the reservation,
01:28:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
we finally just went and got help. But that's when I got misdiagnosed because they weren't listening to me. I had the wrong diagnosis, told my parents that, it shattered our family and never got put back together again. My brother was 12 years old, we've never gotten back together again. Yeah. He's now 50-some. Never. Because of the wrong diagnosis. Who knows what would've happened if they'd have said, Walter and Melba, we need you to come to Minneapolis, your child is, at that time, hermaphrodite.
01:28:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
It's not your fault, not transsexual. We want to help you get through this. We know he's a boy. You know what I mean? Who knows what would've happened with the family? If there could have been at least that piece, but there wasn't. Eventually, Mary and I went shopping, I started to dress like the man that I know I am, behind closed doors, and having to dress as a woman in the morning to go teach school and hear Ms. Petersen 250 times, because I loved the children and I wasn't going to yell at them or anything.
01:29:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Then go back home, in our apartment, at night, dress as I wanted to. Drive down to Nebraska for AA meetings, having to dress unisex because I couldn't come out via AA meeting, it was a fucking mess for how many years, until finally, 1995, I started to get some hormone tests that were confirming. Eventually in 2001, I finally got the right name, intersex.
01:29:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Finally. Finally. I was 49 years old. They still didn't know what to do with me, Tom. They kept prescribing ... See, I was overdosed on testosterone. I was on a lock-step transsexual male ... Let's see, female to male transsexual testosterone hormone plan was wrong for me. I was already making male androgens. I was overdosed. It screwed me up physically. It was messing with my head. I was overdosed.
01:30:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Nobody knew what to do with me till 2001, and they still didn't know what to do with me. They kept overdosing me and guessing. Finally, I got Dr. Laukaitis in 2012. She's my genetics doctor. I found her by telling my primary care doctor to fuck himself. I went around him and found her. She said, "This is what we're going to do. Would you be willing to go off that testosterone?" I said, "Hell yes." "So I can do a clean blood hormone test
01:30:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and find out what your body's doing naturally." She tested for over 10 hormones and she did a bunch of genetic testing. For the next three or four or five years, we kept doing this testing till we could figure out what my body was doing. The voice of my body that I was born with in the beginning, and get me on the right medical treatment plan, so I feel good. Then I was able to go back to work full time at age what?
01:31:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
62-and-a-half? It's just been a long freaking haul, but I've worked hard at it, and anybody who's come in my path, even you folks and your generosity, OUTWORDS, I've said yes to, because I want to have as high quality of life as possible and help as many people as possible. Stay clean and sober, whatever I can do to help, or help myself get more income, I would like that
01:31:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
because I want to live the truth, be who I am, and help people, educate.
TOM BLISS:
What is the importance of an organization like OUTWORDS that tells the stories of LGBTQIA elders? What is the importance of telling your story to a place like OUTWORDS?
01:32:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
So I'm not erased. I have one niece for a family, she's 27. She looked me up two-and-a-half years ago through the documentary. All the rest of the people don't acknowledge me. They're in silence. If you look on ancestry.com, I'm not even in the tree, it's painful. She has a sister who doesn't acknowledge me either. They didn't even tell Paige,
01:32:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
my niece, until she was 15 years old, that I existed. You see all that unnecessary shame, crazy thinking. As far as they're concerned, I'm erased. I never was born. I don't exist. That bothers me a lot because I was born. God did create me good. Or the beneficial power did create me as an intersex boy, to paint; to write;
01:33:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
to speak; to help people; to bring good energy in the world; kindness; plant trees; do good things. There's nothing wrong with me. My sense is that all those people who don't want nothing to do with me are just waiting for me to die. That way, the next generation won't even know, they won't even know I was here.
01:33:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
It's important that OUTWORDS document my story so it's preserved. It's also important for historical reasons and educational reasons. Because although I don't know everybody in the planet who was ever born, it's likely there are some folks that have had good experiences. Most of us older folks have not. We've been on the tip of the snowplow and people are walking on our shoulders.
01:34:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
There's people today, like those children I talked about, who have parents who are supportive, who probably will never have to go through what I went through, or have parents that will fight for them, or they'll have right medical treatment. It's important that people know what it was like, what happened and what it's like now, and that despite terrible traumas and tragedies,
01:34:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
If you could have one person, one human being in your life, one human connection, just one, that's all it takes to have a family, my grandma Petersen. One human being to say, "I'm in your corner". OUTWORDS is saying, "I'm in your corner." Now I have more than one. I've got friends, I've got more than one person in my corner who was cheering me on, was standing with me, was not afraid to hear the truth,
01:35:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
who's not running away. You're not shutting off the equipment. And who are going to get this out there for the world, because otherwise people don't know about us. Then a lot of false education, misinformation, fears continue to proliferate. That's not love, that's not the beneficial power. We're all one.
01:35:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
We're all individuals created from, I think the same stuff the same thing. I don't know what it is, but there doesn't have to be all this you and me, and these are my rights and yours, that's unnecessary. I'm hoping that this will help to educate people and give strength and hope and courage to people who have been ritually satanically abused, you can get out of it.
01:36:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I never went back. They abused me from the time I was 5 to 11, I never went back. They promised me the world, Tom, that I would want for nothing, political power, money, material goods, everything, I never went back. I walked through snow banks with holes in my shoes. Went on welfare in sobriety, never went back. All the money I have is mine. I was disinherited. It's my money, I've earned it. The debts I accumulated, I paid back.
01:36:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I've never expected people to do that kind of thing for me. I'm not entitled. I put in the work in recovery. People have helped me, but there's hope and courage. Despite traumas, even if you were operated on as an infant, you can get through that trauma and bring good things to the world and bring hope and kindness. I had things done to me at cemeteries,
01:37:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I'm a witness to homicide, as a child, terrible things, beastiality, terrible things. You can get through that. I put in the work. Dr. Judith Becker at the university of Arizona, a psychologist and her postdoc counselors, I put in the work. A higher power has been that third leg of the stool. I personally believe we need a spiritual something, whatever that is, a beneficial something to be the glue,
01:37:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
to really be the catalyst, to make this thing really cook. It's not enough to know just about the mind or the emotions or the body, we've got to have some kind of spiritual component, but that's my experience and not everyone agrees, and that's okay. I just think it's important to get this preserved; the history, the education, and the hope. You can be a kind person,
01:38:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
you don't have to do the things that those who are wounded ... The cult members were all born good, innocent little infants. There was nothing wrong with them. I have since forgiven them. Not as a pollyanna thing, I worked my ass off through recovery. I felt a lot of rage. I've expressed a lot of rage and all my emotions, nothing wrong with those, but I've done it in places and with people I could trust and who understood about holding a sacred space, that sacred space that love
01:38:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and that space will heal in time, and fill in those holes so that who a person is, who a person was created to be in the first place can come out, and you can be that to the best of your ability. So that when I die, I know that I will have made all the amends I need to make and leave the world a really good book, my art, planted trees,
01:39:00JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
and just been a decent human being who still can get pissed off or whatever. I'm not infallible, but just a human being who just tries to do his best and vote and get outraged and then get over that because I can't afford to stay that way, but I don't like what's going on politically at all. I can be angry and then
01:39:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I gotta take action and then get out of that place so I can stay clean and sober. Anyway, it's my recovery, it's a long answer. I'm grateful for everything, Tom, even all the abuse, because I think the depth of my pain is the depth of my love, and it's going to get deeper.
TOM BLISS:
That's beautiful. What a triumph.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
It's a triumph, it's a victory.
01:40:00TOM BLISS:
Our light has changed quite a bit, unfortunately, so we might need to wrap up. You can't see yourself, but it's gotten pretty dark in the room, but I see you.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
You want me to turn the light on?
TOM BLISS:
Well, I don't know if that'll match well. Astra, what do you think?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I got an overhead light with George Jetson lights, they're kind of muting.
ASTRA PRICE:
For me it just really depends on how much more you guys want to talk.
01:40:30ASTRA PRICE:
I think that if there feels like a lot of information and discussion points that haven't been talked about yet, I think we can try to turn on the lights. I mean, of course it won't match, precisely, but sometimes lighting has to happen.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I can open the blind behind me. It's got sheer curtains in front of me. Or I'm good, we can wrap up. Whatever you want. It's up to you.
TOM BLISS:
Yeah, that was beautiful. I feel like that was good. Yeah.
01:41:00TOM BLISS:
Thank you so much. We can stop.
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Can I cry?
TOM BLISS:
You can cry. We're here for you
[inaudible].
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
Work so hard. All these years. Sometimes I look at those Olympic people crying and I go,
01:41:30JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
I haven't done your thing, but I know what it's like to work really hard and you've got victory, and you're still a good person. You know what I mean? Still good sportsmanship. I've forgiven all those people because we're all just born good, innocent infants, and we all deserve a second chance.
01:42:00TOM BLISS:
We sometimes ask, what's your queer superpower? What is your queer superpower, would you say?
JAY KYLE PETERSEN:
What's your question? A little louder, please.
TOM BLISS:
We sometimes ask, if you believe there's such a thing as a queer superpower? I would extend that to intersex. Superpower, like beyond the norm, the binary norm. If you do believe in that, what's your superpower?
01:42:30JAY KYLE PETERSON:
Oh gosh, it's something with a big S. It's beneficial. It's alive. It's here now. But I can't touch it, taste it, smell it or anything. It's invincible and yet it's working, Tom, because time because I don't have a desire to do drugs. I don't have a desire to go out to Baskin-Robbins and bury my face or get credit cards. I think it's also working through willing people.
01:43:00JAY KYLE PETERSON:
I think it's also the work of my great, great grandmother and grandma Petersen, and through me. I think that it's energy from both ends of the spectrum, in some special, powerful place that's gentle, and yet it's here all the time. It allows us freewill.
01:43:30JAY KYLE PETERSON:
I don't know. It's pretty amazing.
TOM BLISS:
Yeah. Fantastic. Energy from both ends of the spectrum. That's great. Well I think this is a good place. Thank you so much, Jay.
