The siblings return to their family home on Middlesex. Desdemona privately confesses to Cal that her husband is also her brother, recognizing Cal's condition and associating it with stories from her old village about children born of incest. As Milton's funeral takes place at the church, Cal stands in the doorway of his family home, assuming the male-only role in Greek traditions to keep his father's spirit from re-entering the home. Years later, Cal becomes a diplomat stationed in Berlin. He meets Julie Kikuchi, a Japanese-American woman, and tentatively starts a relationship with her after telling her about his past. Autobiographical elements Reporters and critics noted that many characters and events in Middlesex parallel those in Eugenides' life. The author denied writing the novel as an autobiography. In an interview by National Public Radio in 2002, he commented on the similarities: Eugenides blended fact and fiction in his book. Like Cal, the author was born in 1960; unlike his creation, he is not intersex or transgender. His family moved to a house on Middlesex Road in Grosse Pointe after the Detroit riot in 1967. Eugenides studied at University Liggett School, a private institution that served as a model for Callie's Baker and Inglis School for Girls. He tapped into his own "locker room trauma", an adolescent experience of being naked among many other nude bodies, and used it to develop Callie's self-discovery of her body during puberty. He based the name of the character the "Obscure Object" on a Brown University classmate whom he found alluring and to whom he gave that nickname. Eugenides married a Japanese-American artist, Karen Yamauchi, and moved to Berlin. Eugenides is of Greek heritage, albeit only through his father's side. Although his paternal grandparents were not siblings like the Stephanides, they were silk farmers like their fictional counterparts. Also like Cal, Eugenides learned some Greek customs to help himself understand his grandparents better. The Zebra Room and the bartender profession are other items shared by their grandfathers; Eugenides said the inclusion of the bar was a deliberate "secret code of paying homage to my grandparents and my parents." Several aspects of Chapter Eleven were based on Eugenides' elder brother, who withdrew from society during a "hippie phase" in his life. While revising and editing the book, the author removed information that could be offensive to his relatives. Not all such material was excised, Eugenides said: