Becoming Nicole
After more than 30 years of teaching high school math, Nick Kintz turned his unrealized life as a woman into his most important lesson.
By Stacey Wilson
http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/issues/archives/articles/nick-kintz-transgendered-teacher-0610/1/It's an utterly dreary January night, and inside a community meeting room at First United Methodist Church in Southwest Portland, members of the local chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) are settling into folding chairs for their monthly get-together. A modest crowd of around 30 waits beneath the glaring ceiling lights for the evening's two keynote speakers. Tonight's topic: "Transitioning on the Job"—or, perhaps more to the point, how to come out as transgender in the workplace without losing your mind.
The crowd is made up of a few older gay men, gay teens paired up with their parents, and a smattering of men and women in various states of gender transition. More than a few of the burly, formerly male physiques are draped in anachronistic dresses from the early 1980s, clangy arm bangles, and costumey wigs (one recalling the muumuu-and-pearls-wearing title character played by Vicki Lawrence on the sitcom Mama's Family). One female-to-male attendee is dressed in a green T-shirt and Carhartt work pants. She later tells the group that she's worried about coming out as transgender to her boss—though it's hard to imagine it will come as much of a shock.
