Episode #4 (49 min): Our guest, Wayne Maines, is the father of Nicole Maines – actress on The CW Network series, Supergirl, where she portrays the superhero Dreamer (Nia Nal).
Nicole has also appeared in Royal Pains, D.C.’s Legends of Tomorrow, and starred in the comedy horror film, Bit. Wayne is also the father of Jonas Maines, whose has some acting skills of his own – including several stage credits.
Wayne is a terrific guy and he has lots of great parenting advice to share in this episode. In addition, Wayne talks about the unique situation that led him and his family to the Maine State Supreme Court, and how – through this journey – he grew as a person and a father.
Nicole on Instagram: instagram.com/nicoleamaines
Nicole on Twitter: twitter.com/NicoleAMaines
Nicole on Cameo: cameo.com/nicoleamaines
Jonas on Twitter: twitter.com/truejonasmaines
Transcript likely contains some errors. Enjoy the episode!
Jonathan V.: Starting out, Wayne, could you tell me what it’s like to be the dad of a superhero?
Wayne: Yeah, it’s pretty surreal. First time, I remember we went to the premiere in Hollywood and we went to big thing with Warner Brothers Studio and people were really cool. And the day before they asked us to actually do a talk with all their management and what we thought about the role of LGBT community in Hollywood from a parent’s perspective. And that was powerful. I know afterwards there were a lot of tears and laughter and they said, we wish we had filmed that. And so then I had all these new friends, every time we go somewhere and we do a talk, I walk away with some new family members. So we went through that and it was just seeing your kid on a big screen. There were a lot of happy tears. It was pretty powerful. But when we watched the show, we see little glimpses of our Nicole. Cause that’s really Nicole. She’s a tough nut to survive because she’s tough.
Jonathan V.: That’s awesome. That must be a, quite an experience, quite a feeling to see that, especially what you have come through as a family.
Wayne: Yeah, it is. It’s pretty great. And then the rest of the time we slap her upside the head and say, don’t get cocky.
Jonathan V.: Keep your feet on the ground.
Wayne: That’s right. So even when, when you have a transgender child, you know, there’s all these challenges and you start maybe treating them differently with thick gloves. And we finally realized we couldn’t do that anymore. We had to say to her, Oh, you have [inaudible] You’re transgender. You need to freaking follow the rules. There’s consequences. You know, that pays off because every kid needs to hear that.
Jonathan V.: Right. Yep. Rolling back the clock. Could you tell me just a little bit about yourself? Where are you from originally? What were your interests? What were you like as a young man?
Wayne: I grew up in upstate New York in a small mill town that all the mills had died. There were leather mills mostly, there was still one kind of active down the street from my house and my uncles and my grandfather. They all work there. They’re true old mill workers. Half of them had missing fingers because of the nature of their work. But everything I did was basically sports and hunting and fishing. You know, everything that I harvested, we ate. And I was an okay student, but I didn’t really have any, any desire to go to college. Nobody in my family had ever gone. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I was always a hard worker. So I joined the Air Force. I worked for dentists and oral surgeons. And then that’s where I got the confidence to go on and go to college. Even then my career started out. I wanted to be a wildlife biologist or Forester and it just didn’t work out. So, I was at a NRA shooting sports camp and I met a faculty member from West Virginia University and he offered to pay for my Master’s Degree and my PhD in safety field. And I said, sure, why not? I have nothing else going on. So I’ve been doing that the last 40 years, safety specialist, helping people be safe and protect people.
Jonathan V.: That’s quite an achievement. And what was the Maines house like when the kids were young?
Wayne: When they were babies, we lived in New York and we bought an old farm. It was kind of Norman Rockwell like, the kids, you know, everybody, we had the biggest house. They came for our house for Thanksgiving, lots of animals around and lots of woods and two big dogs. And it was just like any other happy family. It just, I worked a ton of hours, but Kelly, we restored the farm over 10 years. It was a labor of love and it was good. It was a great place to raise kids. Right near my parents on a Lake.
Jonathan V.: Sounds picturesque.
Wayne: Yeah. There just weren’t many jobs. That was the big challenge.
Jonathan V.: That’s what prompted you to move to Maine?
Wayne: Yeah, it was a new job. But at that point we knew something was going on. That Nicole was gender nonconforming. And I didn’t think it was going to work out where we were and it was a good job. So we packed up. I remember I told my parents Easter Sunday, my mother was so mad. She didn’t talk to me for a week. Cause I was taking her grandbabies away. That’s hard. But you got to go where the jobs are.
Jonathan V.: And that was Arno Maine, is that right?
Wayne: Arno Maine. Yeah. Little tiny town. The University was on an Island between the Stillwater and a Penobscot river, beautiful country.
Jonathan V.: Oh, I bet. Lots of outdoor sports for you to do there as well.
Wayne: There was and we bought the last decent size piece of land, a little barn and a pasture and 80 acres behind me with all kinds of deer hunting. We had tree stands there.
Jonathan V.: That’s wonderful. And how old were the twins when you moved to Maine?
Wayne: They were maybe five and a half, six.
Jonathan V.: So, you said that at, around that age or I guess that’s by the time you move. So prior to that, Nicole was already gender nonconforming. What does that look like at that age?
Wayne: Well, I mean, there was a lot going on before she could talk that I didn’t, you don’t really recognize the signs, but when she was old enough to talk, I remember very clearly Kelly was down at the bar and I was making a new bathroom in this old farmhouse. And we had a claw foot tub and I was putting some wainscoting in, and the kids had their little play hammers Toolsets, Jonas went out in the living room and Nicole was in there with me and we took a break for some animal crackers. She looked at me and said, daddy, I hate my penis. When will my penis go away? And hit me like a ton of bricks. And I picked her up and I said, [inaudible] that’s her nickname? I said, everything’s going to be okay. And the tears were just rolling down my cheeks because now I knew I couldn’t hide it anymore. Next thing you know, Jonas is in there and I’m holding Nicole crying. Now he’s crying. So I picked him up and I slide down along the wall, and I got both kids in my arms. And I’m kind of crying and Kelly peeks her head in the bathroom and goes, what’s going on in here? What the hell? Later I told her and she goes, Wayne, I’ve been trying to tell you but you wouldn’t listen.
And that’s when we started to at least have some discussions. It still took me two years to figure it all out after that. Not that I wasn’t supportive, but people need to understand when we started this journey, we were like the first and any counselor had never dealt with a gender nonconforming child. And when we went to them, they tried to tell us to stay neutral. They’ll grow out of it, all those things. And then transgender is persistent and consistent. If you talk with people from eight to 80, they’ll tell you the same thing that Nicole went through that they always knew. Now, some of them got beat out of them, the older trans folks. And they hit it for a while, but there’s a whole new generation of parents out there that aren’t willing to do that. And that’s why you’re seeing so many kids. They were always there, they are just now being allowed to be what need to be.
Jonathan V.: It sounds like that may have been the point. I think that you said beyond that instance, there was still a couple of years before you got there.
Wayne: Yes. So we started working on, we moved to Maine. Kelly found some counselors. I was still in denial in a lot of ways. And then Jenny Boylan, she wrote a book called She’s Not There. It’s pretty great book. Kelly brought it home, sat in the living room. I wasn’t going to read it. You know? And then finally she put it in the bathroom. So then I picked it up and read that book. And then I met Jenny Boylan after University. She was coming to speak every year. And I took Nicole with me. And that was really special. And then it was easy to do it at home because when I, we let her be who she needed to be at home. All summer, she would be wear dresses and be a girl. And then when school started, she’d have to change. And I’m not an idiot. I mean, I could see the difference in her behavior and her demeanor, and the things that people say that when you don’t let a trans kid be who they need to be, they come outside. When they have anxiety, cutting, and self-harm. When we let her be who she needed to be, there was very little of that behavior. Her challenge has nothing to do with being transgender. Her challenge was had everything to do with society, not letting them be who they need to be. And that’s why I have anxiety and low self esteem. So, and so that was little things like that. And then when people attack your kid locally, State, and Nationally, that’s when I said, you know, nobody’s going to do this to my child.
Jonathan V.: What was the first time where it seemed like it was explicit bullying?
Wayne: Well, you know, you go to McDonald’s and your child’s name is Wyatt Benjamin. She has long hair and wearing a dress, right. They give Kelly a break. We would go to McDonald’s on Sundays. And you know, the ball play pits there, you know, play land in the middle of it. Jonas comes down and I said, Hey, it’s time to go. He went back up and he came back down, they’ve got Wyatt trapped up there and they won’t let him down. And now they’re being really, really mean. Just to know people get angry [inaudible] use Nicole’s dead name, but it’s sometimes it’s hard to frame a story if they don’t and she’s okay [inaudible]. And I just lost it. I said, you go up there. I mean, I don’t. And I did that to Jonas a number of times, cause that’s how I was raised. Brothers took care of their sisters. I really put too much responsibility on his little shoulders. And I said, you go back up there and you tell him you’re going to do whatever you got to do to get her out of there. And if not I’m coming. And the two girls came down and they were really giving me the evil stare. And then they went over to their parents and they were whispering. And the next thing you know, they’re all looking over at us. And then they knew who we were because we were the [inaudible] for me. Nicole came down, she was ready go after him. I said, let’s just get out of here. That kind of stuff happened all the time after that, we couldn’t go to sporting events. We couldn’t go to the movies without people pointing and whispering. The kids didn’t always see it. But I did.
Jonathan V.: What age roughly was that starting to occur?
Wayne: Nine years old because it all started, it started before that, but it hit the press when they were nine. We were on the front page of every paper. So those kinds of things happen all the time. And then when Christian Civic League came with lawyers and cameras, that’s when I became not only just a protector of Nicole and Jonas, Jonas actually in a lot of ways had it harder than Nicole because he was hanging around young boys and she at least had her girlfriends.
Jonathan V.: So that was kind of an inflection point for you. It sounds like when Nicole became the subject of hostility. So the first phase was your journey to understand that she’s not going through a phase. This is who she is. And then there was, how do you respond to this urging hostility towards her?
Wayne: And then there were actual just people that were just wanting to know and ask questions. And we had the weed out who really just wanted to know. I mean, it got so bad that, I mean, we lost family and friends, but I can remember people crossing the street and not walking on the same side of the street as we did. And then we started not getting invited to things, but at the same time we developed this whole new inner circle. And when we finally got involved in lawsuit and her court case, people from all over New England came to our aid and our family is so much bigger now, it’s which huge, the people that just come out of the woodwork, they help you.
Jonathan V.: That’s wonderful. Yeah. That’s really great. So as your family grew so to speak and you also became accepting of Nicole’s identity, were there ever times where you would join Nicole or take Nicole out to an LGBTQ event?
Wayne: There were a few things. I remember one time, remember don’t ask, don’t tell and Nicole, we had just moved to Portland. So she would have been seventh grade maybe. And Lady Gaga was coming to town and I heard about it on the radio and I just knew she was going to ask me to go. So we were at breakfast and she goes, daddy, Lady Gaga was in town. I said, yeah, you want to go? Kelly’s jaw almost dropped like, what? So we went and I’d never been to a rally my whole life and this wasn’t something I would have done. And of course now it was all purple here, nose rings, tattooed LGBTQ people. Before Lady Gaga got up. They had a female Colonel from the army helicopter pilot who was teaching at West Point and somebody outed her and she lost her whole career. After 16 years of service, and I was just crushed.
Jonathan V.: And four years short of hitting her 20 in retirement. Right?
Wayne: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you know what I mean, man. And then Lady Gaga comes out and she reads the military oath. And then when she gets at the end, she goes unless you’re gay, then everybody goes, how many veterans are there in the crowd? And, well, I think I was maybe one of two or like seven people there, you know? And Nicole’s up in a tree. She had climbed a tree so she could see better hanging out of the tree with like one finger holding her in the tree. Raise your hand. Again, I was in tears. I was ashamed of our country for doing that to these people.
Jonathan V.: So, you said some people were, seemed authentically curious and wanted to learn. How would you explain what it means to be transgender to them?
Wayne: I remember our next-door neighbor, he was an Iraqi war vet, Marine tank. I don’t think he was a tank squadron leader. Right? Played football at the University, your classic Mainer. I didn’t have to explain it to him because he was able to, his son, Logan was three or four years younger than my kids. And there was nobody else there. We live in the country. So the kid lived at our house. So they got to watch her transition. And sometimes you can do it that way with the people that just get to be around you. And you don’t even have to say a thing. They just, it becomes naturally. But the rest of the people, I would just say, you know, what do you want to know? There’s no, there’s no wrong question. It’s not going to insult me. Of course it always started with the bathroom. So that was easy to get out of the way. And I would just say to them, I mean, what do you think they’re going to use? Girl’s talking about boys.
And Nicole is just going to use the bathroom. She’s got things she doesn’t even want. You know, she’s not going to, they were all worried. Like somebody is going to show somebody something. I said, you got to worry about other people, not Nicole. And I said, what else do you want to know? And I said, Nicole knows who she is. I can’t tell you why. I don’t know a lot more about the science, but I sit at the time, every waking moment before she could talk until this day, she would tell us who she is and it’s in her brain and in her soul. And finally who the hell cares? You know, she’s a good kid. She’s protecting your kids. She’s going to school. I’m raising my children to be hardworking, loyal, and go to work, pay taxes and be a good American. You know, what else did I say back then? That was, that’s how I felt. And I was really proud of them. And you should be proud of them too.
And right, let’s have another beer. And normally it worked out, took some people, our neighbors across the street were developed Maine Baptist and they love our family and Nicole. Sometimes it takes really knowing somebody. So when I meet somebody that has questions, I said, go have dinner or go out with a beer, have a beer with a trans person or, know what we have in common. They’re no different than you and I, they just want to make a living and be left alone.
Jonathan V.: There was a lot in the book about some of the science behind it as well. Is there anything about that that you have found particularly compelling as you’ve learned more about the science?
Wayne: Well, for us, it started with having identical twins and I have an undergrad degree from Cornell University in natural resources and biology. So I know a little bit, I had the control group there, Jonas, right. And there are not that many twins. One’s trans and one’s cisgender Laverne Cox has a cisgender brother, trying to think of who else, some of the others.
Jonathan V.: And cisgender being, somebody whose gender identity aligns with their biological gender?
Wayne: With their biological gender. Yeah. And I got to watch and people of course used to say nature versus nurture. And it’s definitely nature. It’s not nurture you. You can’t, you know, couldn’t make Jonas be trans. I’s persistence and consistence. And every day they tell you who they are, whether it’s verbal or nonverbal. I mean, it really does happen in the womb. And there’s Amy did it so eloquently talked about epigenetics where there’s not all your chromosomes that decide who you are, but there’s these thousands and thousands and thousands of switches that impact how they develop. And that’s what makes people who they are. Even though, you know, you might look the same, there’s so many other things going on in your brain and your body.
Jonathan V.: Right. And while they both share the placenta, they both have their own unique embryonic sac, and environment.
Wayne: Yeah, personality, all of that.
Jonathan V.: The epigenetics is fascinating. And I think that a lot of people feel certainly there was a point in time where I did, that if two people that have the identical genetics that there’ll be identical. And I think any parent of twins would be quick to say are identical Twins are not identical in every single way. And their fingerprints are different. And epigenetics, as I understand it is the environment that can cause certain genes to turn on and off. So while you can have the same genetic code between two people. If some of the genes are expressed in one person and not the other and vice versa, then they’ll ultimately have different traits or personalities or other characteristics about them that are different despite the identical genetics. Is that a fair? Is that a fair characterization of it?
Wayne: That’s fair. And then there’s the mapping of the brain. You know, what’s a female brain mapped out to being, what’s a male brain and later in life, when they can do that, most often comes back. You know, it’s not perfect, but yeah, she has a female brain.
Jonathan V.: Yeah. That’s fascinating.
Wayne: It is. It’s pretty cool
Jonathan V.: Among the people that were had a more hostile reaction. Were there common themes?
Wayne: Absolutely. They use the bathroom. It’s always about fear. They want to reach to somebody’s fear. Now it’s sports. You know? Oh my God, don’t worry. It’s just sports. But it was the bathroom, and the Bible. I can remember going to human rights commission. And there were people in there that came from all over Maine, waving their Bibles and screaming. And they had so much hate and anger in their eyes. And I was just looking at them like, this is a nine year old kid. What are you guys doing? You know, I just wanted to go over and say, what are you doing? It was so hard to control my anger. And I would have liked to mix it up a little, but I didn’t because that didn’t help. And Nicole, we had to teach our kids the same thing. If you react in the wrong way or react or even react. And some instances, it just stirred. That’s what they want, right. Let’s [inaudible] and let’s do it the right way. And with honor, that’s what we did. Wasn’t always easy. Because nobody, took five and a half years. No judge in the nation wanted to be the one to make the decision.
Jonathan V.: And the crux of the core case itself was, as I recall, it was twofold. It was around access for Nicole to be able to use the bathroom that aligned with her gender identity and ensuring that she had a safe environment.
Wayne: Yeah. I mean, there were so many other things we could have went after, just the discrimination and hostile school environment. It’s so hard to prove in court. It was definitely there. These kids, all these trans kids live in hostile school environments, but it’s very hard to prove. What it really was the ability to use the bathroom with your gender identity and the ability to get the same education.
Jonathan V.: There was an instance. Could you recount that precipitated a lot of the bathroom controversy?
Wayne: Well, yeah, it was a grandfather just lived down the road from us and he was raising his grandson. I think his grandson had a crush on Nicole. He was a big kid. I think he had flunked a couple of grades is a big young man, but they came to a school board meeting with lawyers and Christian civic league executive director, this guy named Michael Heath, and the big protest. After that, see, we were doing okay to that point because we had worked with our school and that’s what happens all over the country. Everybody’s fine until there’s a problem. And then they allowed these complainer’s, that’s who they listened to. And of course the Christian Civic League threatened to sue them. And of course I said, well, you’re worried about the wrong people. And they didn’t believe it. Because my job was to do what they were doing, to protect their institution. Right. I said, this is what I do for a living guys. One of the things that took years later, you know, Kelly had such a hard road when I wasn’t [inaudible] and she did all the hard labor. And then later when we got to court and even with the advocacy work, those are my specialties. And I don’t think we would have won if I hadn’t documented everything. I mean, I had spreadsheets and our attorneys go, you got what? I said, Yeah, I got everything. Now I teach other parents how to do that. Make sure you have your ducks in a row. And I remember a few years ago, Kelly said to me, I forgive you. You know, we each came on this journey in our own way. And when you needed to step up and play in ways I couldn’t, you did. And you know, that’s pretty powerful.
Jonathan V.: So, she was shouldering a lot of the burden when you were still getting there, trying to come to understand what was going on and believing what was happening with Nicole was a real thing.
Wayne: She’s a strong, strong person.
Jonathan V.: And when you said you help other parents of trans kids. If one of those parents were listening to this, what are some of the things that you would say are important for them to document?
Wayne: Well, the first thing I would say, never go to a school meeting without somebody with you and do it casually. It can be a neighbor or your mother, don’t bring your attorney because that just shuts them down. But make sure you always have a witness because there are a lot of questions. A lot of times that we had met early on you can’t use your own spouse as a witness. You know, that just doesn’t work. But if your neighbors with you. After sending her down going to get groceries. I stopped in, I had this question last week, Johnny was having trouble in the bathroom. What are you guys going to do about that? And then now you got a witness, but then I tell them every time you need to go home and follow it up with an email and say exactly what was said to them. And then every time little Johnny comes home with tummy ache or a headache or misses school, you need to write it down. And they won’t always tell you why. You know, Nicole didn’t either, but now you’re starting to find all those nervous stomach and all those other things that happens to kids, anxiety. But you have every one of those cases documented, the bad dreams, everything just keep documenting. It might be nothing, but in the end you might need it.
Jonathan V.: Right. And that sounds like good advice for anybody whose child is having an issue with school, especially those who are the, you know, the subject of bullying or a whole variety of things that could be causing them to be singled out.
Wayne: Absolutely, special needs kids take a beating. You know, sometimes it’s innocent. And a lot of times it isn’t because, what we’ve learned in our journey is every kid is innocently accepting of everybody until they learn from somebody else. Yeah. That’s important for any parent and then parents need to get involved. I didn’t just go there to sue the school I’ve got involved in the PTO, they needed money. I wrote grants. And I needed to show everybody that we weren’t here to beat up the teachers. You know, we’re here to make things better. I’m really proud of the Supreme Court right now. So now we have protection for the LGBT community and employment, but we also need to pass the student nondiscrimination act, basically the student version of Civil Rights Act for adults and employment. I worked on that a number of years ago and I went to DC and did some lobbying. And when I, our attorney sent it to us from [inaudible] and I was reading it on the way to Washington. And I was just taken back that people are fighting for adults, but they’re not willing to fight for children. Like how can any politician look me in the eye and say, they don’t want to protect the kids. They did it. You know, the time’s not right. We’re working on it. These are kids.
Jonathan V.: Circling back a little bit. There was a point where due to the environment in Orono, your wife and kids moved to Portland. If I recall correctly?
Wayne: Yes.
Jonathan V.: And eventually landed in a school that seemed like it was a terrific fit for them, a private school and given your employment circumstances and also trying to support, I would imagine the cost for the school and court.
Wayne: Plus, Nicole’s hormone blockers were $1,600 shadow month. It wasn’t covered
Jonathan V.: For financial reasons, by necessity. You have to stay in the job in Orono for the good of your family so that you could provide.
Wayne: Yeah, I really did have to otherwise, one, I wouldn’t have had a job and we couldn’t leave Maine, and if we couldn’t make it in Maine, where were we going to go? Maybe California. And that’s a big, maybe even then, it was brutal. I mean, everything that was going on, there were so many times that I thought like, man, I’m the biggest failure in the whole world. I can’t even protect my own kid. I don’t have enough money, but we’re still catching up. I mean, that drains you to be in court and have two houses, the school, private school, but we never regret Waynflete, was the name of the school, they set the stage for the rest of the country. And Jonas and Nicole, a big part of who they are today is because of that high school.
Jonathan V.: That’s wonderful.
Wayne: But not every kid gets to do that. You know, our kids had some privilege luckily. And we had the resources to do it, but there’s trans kids living in little communities and trailer parks all over the United States. They don’t have that possibility
Jonathan V.: How did you change, or did you have to change your approach to parenting when the time that you have with your kids is suddenly limited, and it’s not something, I mean, it’s not something that’s a terribly uncommon occurrence, right? There are situations where one of the parents needs to travel a lot or like you may be even located during the majority of the week in a different place. So when you’re getting together, are you parenting in a different way, given that limited time that you have with your kids?
Wayne: I lost pretty much the kid’s critical teenage years. I only saw them if lucky a day and a half a week, all because of this. So I wasn’t there when Jonas needed me. And then when I was there, I was still fighting every second on the court case or something else, we were trying to protect the kids from being hurt. It was brutal. It was a war zone. And I feel guilty for not being there, but again, at the time you do the best you can and now I’m trying to make it up. And Nicole is here. She’s been here for most of the COVID thing. So it’s kind of cool having her around. Jonas is in Chicago, trying to make his way. And he’s a young man now. He doesn’t want his dad telling him, even though I want to. Don’t do that, we still have some ground to make up Jonas and I, I feel bad. And I know he has some resentment, which isn’t uncommon for a father and son a little bit, but not to the stage that I owe him so much. He taught me a lot because he’s so smart. So ahead of his time, you know.
Jonathan V.: What did he teach you?
Wayne: Well, when the kids were eight and nine, I mean, he would continuously say, dad, you never had two sons and that’s your daughter, get over it, you know? And just the way that he naturally accepted everything she did and taught other kids around him. And I got to watch that. And my 10 year old had more courage than I had. And I learned that from him. So he doesn’t understand to this day how much that he helped me grow
Jonathan V.: A challenging situation. As you mentioned before, feeling this responsibility for your sister while still being a kid and that can be a challenge for, I think, any brother who feels like they need to stand up for their sister, but in a situation where he was with Nicole, maybe feeling a greater sense of importance to live up to that role. I would imagine.
Wayne: Oh yeah. Years later he said to me, dad, imagine, he goes, I had teachers coming up to me in hallway wanting to know what to do and what was Nicole, who she was? And I had tried to explain to them what transgender meant and what we’re going through in the sixth grade vocabulary. So, you know, that’s pretty powerful stuff, he wrote some amazing poetry that was cut from the book. Cause you just, it was just too long. He got short changed in the book. I read it and I just choke up because they’re both really good writers. That’s one of the things that Waynflete did for them.
Jonathan V.: I would imagine this like any circumstance where you’ve got more than one child and one of the children has a special circumstance that it can require a lot of the parents’ attention, whether it’s a special need or maybe it’s an athletic pursuit or something else. Did you feel that that had an impact on Jonas? Were there things that you or your wife would try to do in order to balance the attention? Were there things you might’ve done different in retrospect?
Wayne: Kelly definitely did. And I tried, but I, again, I was in the middle of the war zone at that point, court case advocacy, I overdid the advocacy thing and it definitely helped Nicole in her career, but it didn’t really help Jonas. And I maybe, I should have backed off a little and had more special time with him. Now he has more interest with his mother and things that, he’s a writer and artist and music, plays a guitar. I remember when we used to Sunday mornings, we live in this little crappy college apartment and I would go get the Sunday paper and he would play the guitar on a front porch. I mean, I have such fun memories of that. And I went to his guitar lessons. We did that and he still got, he got short changed. And I think when you have a special needs kid, it does happen, but you got to figure out ways to at least try to balance it out a little more.
Jonathan V.: As Nicole gets older against this rather unique backdrop, that’s the life she’s living and that your family’s living, it seemed like she was also showing an interest towards acting. Was that something that you felt was important to her at an early age before she graduated high school? When did you start first seeing her interest in acting?
Wayne: Well, both kids, I have them on video acting out the three little pigs at like two and a half, three, and they’ve acted out every show they ever watched on television ever since that. And they still do. Jonas has a degree in theater. He’s quite the accomplished. He was more into acting then Nicole and she did some things. And of course she has a platform that raised her notoriety. So she has had more opportunities. He moved to Chicago to try to do some stage theater and then COVID-19 hit, and they both have always been involved. We didn’t really, it was Waynflete, one of the counselors or actually administrator there, Lowell, took Jonas under his wing and got him back into theater. He had got out of it for awhile. He’s phenomenal Shakespearian, he played Hamlet, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern did that all in high school. These are powerful long two and a half hour plays. I didn’t really have a lot of respect or understand theater until I watched them. Just the fact that they could remember all that, let alone pull it off with such power. I can, he did one play. And I remember a couple teachers. These are, you know, senior teachers saying your son moved me so much. And then I go, wow. You know, I gained so much respect for him. And then all of a sudden, Nicole, she just does it. She just naturally does it. When you get them together, they’re amazing, funny and quick way to miss just entertaining. It’s a lot of fun.
Jonathan V.: And was that something that you had an opportunity to support? It strikes me as the type of thing that some parents probably maybe inclined to work against just because it’s a very tough career?
Wayne: It is. I mean, they were so smart in math and science and they could write, I remember these two women moved across the street from us. One of them is a very famous video artist in the Guggenheim all over. Really. I can remember the show Facts of Life, where Dwayne, the handyman, I became their handyman. They had a little girl named Allison was like four and I would come over and fix things. And they took us out for pizza one night in Portland, Maine. And we got talking and I said, I just can’t believe they’re going into acting. And she was of course a video and her partner taught theater at Boden college. So they’re like Greenwich Village art. I remember I got this really nasty look, right? And then couple days later, she called me over to the house and explained to me where I was going awry. And I said, I didn’t mean it that way, but I worry, you know that they’re not going to find work. You got to have a day job. You know, not being a professional actor, being a superstar on Warner Brothers is like becoming a professional baseball player. The odds aren’t that great. So I still worry. I mean, it’s a tough business. She is doing well and she’s making her way. And if Jonas wants to do the same, I’ll do anything I can help him. We’ve always been that way.
Jonathan V.: That’s fantastic people that realize those dreams are only those, that take a shot at them.
Wayne: That’s right. That’s great.
Jonathan V.: So, you mentioned that when Nicole she’s living there now, when she’s not living there, what’s your relationship like with her now that she’s grown up?
Wayne: Oh, we talk all the time. Of course, she’s in Vancouver most of the time. And then she spends a month in LA and then we see her maybe a couple months a year. So we kind of help her with the business end of things. So we talk about that. Keep her on track. But before she got Super Girl, I used to have to help her with her auditions. It was brutal because some of those scripts were pretty racy. I would have to say some things to my daughter that I know, no dad wants to say, and keep a straight face. And it’s very stressful for the actors to do them. And you end up taking the abuse cause you’re the only other person in the room. And so auditioning, it sucks, that’s their living, you know, you got to do that. That’s what they have to do.
Jonathan V.: Good for you for stepping up. I’m sure that if she can do the part well with you as her audition partner, then it must make it that much easier to do it in the actual audition.
Wayne: Yeah, I think so sometimes, and then I say, Hey, when am I getting a role? I was great. Nobody else agrees, but in my mind, I’m ready.
Jonathan V.: Oh, and you said she’s in Vancouver?
Wayne: Vancouver. A lot of their shows are there. It’s cool. We’ve been up there. The cast is phenomenal. They’re all really. She couldn’t have been assigned to a better group of people. So we went up there and they treated us like we were their parents. And of course, they’ll tell you that she’s 10 years ahead of most 20 year olds. And she’s in a lot of ways is because of what she’s been through. They’re all 10 years older than her 10 or more. And they go hang out together. And we’re blessed that we don’t have to worry about that.
Jonathan V.: A quick closing questions. What are three words that you think your kids or your wife might use to describe your parenting style?
Wayne: Say it’s three concepts, hard work, self-esteem, and respect. I had a superintendent of schools when the kids were born tell me that the most important thing as a superintendent in school can do is to make sure that every kid has a love for learning. And if they have that, they will have a higher level of self esteem and you need both to be successful.
Jonathan V.: How did you cultivate self-esteem?
Wayne: Well, when every day when you’re being attacked, it wasn’t easy. But everyday we tell them how much we love them and hug them. And that you have to fight for what you believe in. It doesn’t matter that you’re 10 years old. I mean, we kept it simple at that point, but as they got older, you have a voice and we’re going to let you use it when it’s safe and we can’t be a victim, you don’t get anywhere being that. And you have to stick up for yourself and find people that can help you stick up for yourself the right way. And that’s where that whole community came together. And she’s been surrounded by those people and us and Jonas too. And that’s of course not easy. You got to do the hard work. And then you have to have respect for people, even your enemies on occasion.
Jonathan V.: And you mentioned hard work earlier. Could you think of a time where there was something you may have done to emphasize the importance of hard work?
Wayne: I remember there were a lot of kids used to come to our house and they would hang out. Waynflete, you know, it’s a private, upper crest school. So most of these kids, their boat houses were bigger than our house. Right? And they’re hanging out, down in the basement. They could do whatever they wanted down there. We would just throw some pizzas down stairs and get out of their way. I remember one night they were leaving. I said, where do you think you’re going? Dad, they got to go. I said, not till they clean up the basement. And Jonas and Nicole got so angry and embarrassed. And I said, get your asses down there. And one of the kids came up to me later and said Mr. Maines, I really like coming here. I go, why? Because we feed you? And he goes, no, I can get pizza anywhere because you make us do things.
Jonathan V.: Hmm. You mentioned a book earlier. She’s Not There by Jenny Boylan. And of course now there is Becoming Nicole by Amy Ellis Nut. The story about your family’s journey. Are there any other books or resources that you found helpful in parenting in general, or for parenting a transgender child?
Wayne: Well, not so much books, but there’s a couple support groups. It was probably seven years ago now they started the parents of transgender children, Facebook support group. And there are maybe 60 of us. There’s over 10,000 families. That’s the most important place where you’re going to get to hear from other people that are going through the same thing, and then find a support group within a hundred miles of where you live, where your kid can have a chance to be with somebody else that’s just like them and know that they’re not alone. I think the most important thing for dads is having the courage to explore your own weaknesses and open up your mind, follow your heart and open up your mind, and then it will get better. And then of course, last is you really got to talk to your partner. It was years later, we did a library of Congress interview. We talked about, they asked, I can’t remember what brought up the question, but Kelly said to me, remember when we first went to see Dr. Speck that first time at the gender clinic in Boston. It is a five-and-a-half-hour drive from Orono to Boston. And neither one of us said a word. She goes, you know what I was thinking, I go, I don’t know? She goes, is Wayne going to sign off on this treatment? And then I said, you know what I was thinking? She goes no, what? I said, I was worried about how we’re going to pay for it. That was years later. So you got to talk.
Jonathan V.: Yeah. So interesting. Yeah. With the benefit of hindsight. Are there things that you would have done differently?
Wayne: Yeah. I mean, for the first couple of years Kelly went to counseling with Nicole. I never went, that was one of my last two fears were counseling and dancing. So I’ve been to counseling since, go to counseling. So that’s important. Don’t be afraid of a little help. And they don’t, they’re not going to have all the answers. And obviously ours didn’t, but they were at least somebody that could listen and help guide you. So that’s one of the big things. And then for the other one is leave work at work. My whole life I’ve been a working machine and a lot of guys are built that way. And moms, she just got leave work at work.
Jonathan V.: That’s great advice, which is also another great segue. Is there any advice that you would give to other fathers in general or fathers of a transgender child or this case fathers of children that aspire to become, to pursue a career in acting?
Wayne: Well, the voice for a father of any LGBTQ child is go meet their community. There’s hunters and fishermen and firemen and lawyers and doctors. We have a lot community for some amazing musicians and actors and writers just go meet them. And if you listen to their stories, they’re the bravest people I’ve met because every day they got up and when they were going to have a bad day and they still went to school and then they want the college and things started to get better. So, that’s one, just meet the community. Don’t be afraid of somebody with purple hair and a nose ring. I remember I would go in my white shirt and tie to the University rainbow lounge at the beginning of each semester, each year. And I’d walk in and there’d be all these new LGBTQ freshmen. And they’d see this white guy in a white tie and I just start to cringe. And then I’d tell them who I was. And then I was like in the club. Everybody has a bias. Don’t judge a book by its cover.
So that’s that. And as far as acting goes, I don’t know if I have a great deal of advice, except that expose them to everything, dance and music and acting and poetry and debate. Cause all those things come into play. I remember one time Jonas was having trouble in history. No, it was Nicole and I, and she goes, what do I need to know history for? I’m going to be an actor. I go what? I said, what do you think most movies are about? History. But just expose them to everything and try to find a theater group that’s having a fun, almost all of them are. And you don’t get to be the lead every time, you got to have thick skin in that business. It’s all about hard work and perseverance and just keep plugging away and auditioning, sooner or later you’ll get a part.
Jonathan V.: Yeah. Yeah. I bet that that must take some serious perseverance, but it’s really exciting to see what your kids are doing now. And especially this opportunity that she has with Super Girl, beyond the other opportunities that she’s had. But that’s such a fantastic show, I think, going into its fifth season or going in?
Wayne: It will be going into its sixth, she’s been in four and five. Yeah. It’s pretty cool. It’s cool.
Jonathan V.: Is there anything else that we didn’t cover that you think would be helpful to share with other fathers who are listening to this podcast?
Wayne: I think I would, again, end with, we have to figure yourself out first before you can help your kids. Because once I did that, I was a better father, better husband, a better person, and a better leader at work. So yeah, just have the courage to take care of yourself so you can help everybody else.
Jonathan V.: That’s great advice. Wayne, thank you so much for finding time for this conversation.
Wayne: Oh, you’re welcome. Anytime that I can help a new way to get the word out. Thank you for getting it out there.