DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — High on prescription drugs and four days without sleep, Michael Berke raced his Harley to the megachurch where he’d found a home. He barged in, wearing a mesh shirt printed with profanity. In his hands he held a picture of a curvy woman with long, red hair and pouty lips.
“This is who I used to be,” he said. “And this” — he gestured to his flat chest, bald head and red goatee — “is who I’ve become.”
He was born a man. After a lifetime as a social misfit, he had transformed himself into Michelle, a saucy redhead. Then, three months ago, he became Michael again.
He did it with the financial aid and spiritual encouragement of Calvary Chapel of Fort Lauderdale.
Now, he wanted to be Michelle again, and he blamed Calvary for making him the man he had become.
Berke wanted friendship — the kind women have. He dreamed of shopping together and gossiping in the bathroom.
“I always admired how girls can hold hands, girls can hug, cuddle, and there’s nothing abnormal about it. It’s not sexual,” he says. “The whole girl lifestyle is just so much more social and caring.”
He left home and a strained relationship with his parents at 19, living on the streets. He drank, used drugs.
Berke has never felt comfortable around men — he’s repelled by the angry, macho, emotionless male stereotype.
In 2003, at age 39, he became Michelle.
He spent about $80,000, maxing out his credit cards on surgery and women’s clothes. He got a nose job, brow lift and fat injections in his cheeks. He got hormones, and after a year he got breast implants.
Michael kept his penis; that surgery cost too much, and he still identified himself as a heterosexual. He still hoped to meet a woman with whom he could spend his life.
The transformation was a dream. But even as Michelle, the old problems crept in. “I was still the same person inside. Michelle was just the exterior,” Michael says.
She was depressed and suicidal and prone to cutting herself. She struggled with drugs and alcohol, just like Michael.
By 2005, Michelle had tried everything else, “so why not God?”
An evangelical church with about 20,000 members, Calvary Chapel has a local reputation for embracing the homosexual community. Michelle loved the upbeat music and the feel-good sermons. Her new friends showed her videos about a gay man who became a woman and then a man again, and married a woman with whom he had children and lived happily.
“They said, ‘You’ll be able to meet a wonderful woman and get married,’ and that’s what pulled at my heartstrings because I really wanted that,” Michael recalls. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
During an altar call, Berke found God. Several weeks later, Michelle told church leaders she wanted to become a man again.
Church leaders counseled Michelle. And they arranged for a plastic surgeon to remove her breast implants at no charge.
And just like that, Michelle was gone.
Michael, now 43, says he was cajoled into the decision to become a man again; he was the church’s “pet project.”
Craig Huston, a church employee, says Michael asked for the surgery and pressed to have it done quickly. “We encouraged him, but he initiated it,” Huston says.
Looking at Michael today, it’s hard to tell Michelle existed or that he longs for her. His head is shaved. He favors jeans and combat boots. His mannerisms aren’t feminine; his voice is low, his gaze direct.
He attends a couple of Narcotics Anonymous meetings a day, just to get by.
Realistically, he knows he can’t become Michelle again.
“If I do it again,” he says, “people are going to think I’m even more unstable.”
