Cal (Calliope) Helen Stephanides Timeline & Summary

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• Although Cal narrates the whole story, he isn't actually born until a good halfway into the book, when he's born to Milton and Tessie.
• He's also born a she: Calliope Helen Stephanides.
• Calliope's grandfather has a stroke the day she is born, but he still functions for a while, and the two of them spend a lot of time together.
• After the Detroit race riots happen, Calliope gets transferred to private school.
• There, she falls in love with a girl whom she refers to as the Obscure Object.
• On vacation at the Object's parents' home, Calliope has a sexual experience with Jerome, the Object's brother, and starts exploring sex with the Object in the middle of the night.
• When Jerome catches Calliope with his sister, he chases her.
• Calliope runs into a tractor and has to be taken to the ER. At the hospital, doctors realize that she possesses male sex traits.
• She is referred to Dr. Luce, a specialist in New York.
• Luce decides to perform sex reassignment surgery on Calliope in an attempt to synchronize her gender presentation with her sex traits.
• But Calliope reads his reports and realizes he has identified her body as primarily male. Rejecting Luce and her parents' decisions for her body, Calliope begins presenting as male, starts going by Cal, and hitchhikes to San Francisco.
• On the West Coast, Cal performs in an underwater sex show until police bust the operation.
• By this time, Milton is dead, so Cal returns home, as a man, for his father's funeral.
• He reunites with his family, mourns his father's death, and looks forward to the future.
• In the present, Cal starts a new relationship with a woman, Julie Kikuchi, with whom he comes clean about his gender, his family, and his past. Things are looking good for ol' Cal.