If And When Heroes Meet

I'm not the only one who thinks this semester and winter have been long. "We're only four weeks into the semester, but it feels like ages," another prof told me.

At least the sun shone today. Still, profs and students alike looked tired. I don't think I'm projecting, as I felt pretty energetic. I can't believe that Spring Recess will start in about three and a half weeks. Mom and Dad are still talking about coming up this way from Florida, if Mom's foot heals sufficiently. And Marilynne and her daughter have also talked about coming to town. It makes me wonder what it would be like if they all met. What would the parents of transgender kids talk about? Or would they?

Marilynne and her husband have called their daughter and me "heroes" for...well, being who we are and going through our transitions. I'll admit to feeling flattered--at the same time I feel a little bit humbled. In some ways, the transition and surgery were the easy parts of my life. Yes, they took a lot of work and commitment, and I had to give up some things and people, including a relationship with someone with whom I anticipated spending the rest of my life, as well as relationships I once had with certain members of my family. Still, they weren't nearly as difficult, at least emotionally and spiritually, as what I lived through before I left those things and started to build my current life. Or, at least, I could find some reward for myself and not merely approval, or the appearance thereof, from other people.

As far as I am concerned, the "heroes" are my mother, Marilynne and any other parent who supports her or his kid in any way when the kid does what he or she needs to do. So are other family members and friends who stand with someone who's living the life he or she needs to live. So Millie and Bruce would be included in my pantheon.

I wonder what it would like for all of these heroes to meet. Somehow I suspect that I would be more in awe than any of them would be. One thing I've learned is that people look up to you when you don't know they're doing it. And sometimes they look to you for strength and other resources you didn't know you had.

Lives Begin And End With The Old And New Years

Today, over lunch, Bruce pointed out, "This will be your first year in your new life."

As he's been in my life for longer than any other friend I have, it was especially gratifying to hear from him. And Charlie, the proprietor of Bicycle Habitat (where I bought my two Mercians as well as a bunch of parts and accessories) said the same thing, almost verbatim, when I stopped in his shop.

On the penultimate day of this year, it's difficult not to think about the upcoming year--or the one that's passing, or the ones that have passed. In some small but odd and interesting ways, they all intersected today.

I've known Charlie and Hal, his ace mechanic for only a couple of years less than I've known Bruce. I used to work for American Youth Hostels, when it was located on Spring Street: just around the corner from their shop on Lafayette Street.

Today, when I went into Habitat, I saw Esta, Charlie's wife, for the first time in about twenty years. She concurred with my perception of time: Our last meeting was shortly after the elder of her two sons was born, and he's twenty-three years old now, if I'm not mistaken.

Of course, the last time she saw me, I was essentially a different person. She said as much. Actually, she said that she doesn't recall me, as I was then, so well. I didn't mind that, actually. But then she also said that even though she couldn't recall my male incarnation that well, something was "familiar" about me when she saw me today.

She's not the first person to say that upon seeing me again after a long absence. I didn't ask what she meant. It might have been my speech, my body language or any number of other things.

I've encounters with people I hadn't seen in some time and even though I couldn't very well visualize the way those people were in earlier times, they were also "familiar" in some way.

I don't know what she was picking up on. But I know that I tend to remember people by something more essential, if I do remember them. It could be some glimpse I had into their characters, or even their souls.

Getting a glimpse of somebody's soul, however, isn't always as wonderful as it sounds. Indeed, nothing can be more terrifying sometimes--especially, it almost goes without saying, when you see darkness there but have no language for expressing it or any other means of defending against, or fighting, it. That is what sometimes happens to children.

And it happened to me more than a few times as I was growing up. Perhaps the most extreme example came with a longtime family friend. Something about him had always given me the creeps; I knew, for reasons that I could not explain, that neither I nor any other member of my family was safe around him.

Tonight my mother explained at least part of that man's dark essence: "He was manipulative. That's something you had to understand if you were going to spend any time around him." Yes, that was something I felt when I was a very young child, even though that word wasn't yet in my vocabulary, much as the language of self-help books and pop psychology wasn't part of most people's everyday parlance at that time.

He always managed to get people to do things that were not in the interests in their well-being. That's how he was on a good day. On a bad day, he'd wreck something in your life without your seeing (at least not immediately) his hand in it. Then he would offer his hand to help.

By now, you might have guessed what he did to me. Yes, he sexually forced himself on me. I'm still not exactly sure of when was the first or last time he did it. I know that the first incidence of his forcing himself on me that I would recall--when I was thirty-four years old--took place when I was about nine years old. Though it was his first sexual exploitation of me that I would recall, I know it wasn't the first or last I experienced with him.

When he "finished with" me that day, he made me swear I wouldn't tell anyone. I kept that promise for about twenty-five years. The truth was, for many years afterward, I wouldn't have known what to say, or how to say it, even if I didn't have any fear of what he "might do to" me.

So why am I mentioning him now? Well, I was talking to Mom a little while ago, and she told me she found out, the other day, that he died in February. She learned of this from someone else he manipulated and took advantage of, though in very different ways from the way he abused me.

In one sense, I am more fortunate than that person who gave my mother the news: I haven't seen the man in more than thirty years; he was in her life until near the end of his.

So how do I feel about his death? Well--as terrible as this is to say--not a whole lot. Not having seen him in so long, I am past hating, and even fearing, him. Whatever rage I felt over what he did to the child I was is gone now: That child, by necessity, has become me. He cannot harm that child again, just as he cannot harm me now, or anyone else who came into contact with him.

I am not being hyperbolic when I say that he didn't improve the life of anyone he met. In fact, I'd say he wrecked a few lives and derailed a few more. But, at least now he can no longer hurt anyone.

I can't say I feel relief or an urge to sing, "Ding dong, the witch is dead," or anything like that. All I know is that another chapter of my past is done, on this penultimate day of the year that started in one life and ended in another.

My Bikes And My Cats, As I'm Healing On The Coldest Day Of The Year

You've heard the old joke: "It's so cold the politicians have their hands in their own pockets." Perhaps we could update it by substituting "hedge fund managers" for "politicians." Anyway, that's how cold it felt today. As the weather forecasters promised, it was indeed about 25 degrees colder (on the Farenheit scale) and the wind blew about 25 MPH harder than what we experienced yesterday.

Sometimes I think cats know when it's cold outside even if the houses in which they're living are warm. It's as if felines have internal almanacs and thermometers. At least, all of the cats I've had seem to have been that way: They've curled up with me more at times like this than during more temperate days. It's no surprise, then, that Charlie is curled up on my left side and Max is on my right.

I went out briefly today. When I came back, I caught a glance of myself in the mirror. My face was even redder than it would have been if I'd spent the day out in the sun! Fortunately, I didn't have to deal with the pain and other after-effects of a sunburn.

Oddly enough, I started to think about bike riding. I haven't done any since Thanksgiving. I didn't want to ride today, but I was thinking that I'd like to get on my bike again soon. That big, ugly bruise and the swelling are all but gone now, and so is the pain from that mishap I had the day before Thanksgiving. On each of the rides I took last month, I adjusted the saddle position a little bit. I suspect that I'll have to ride some more before I find the "right" position for me. Before the surgery, that's what I had to do any time I got a new bike. (Well, OK, my "new" bikes weren't always new. Nor is the old Raleigh three-speed I bought last month.) Now I have a new body--or part of my body is new, sort of, anyway.

Filigree has suggested that I would want to ride in a more upright position. Actually, the three-speed is designed to be ridden in a more upright position than either of my Mercians. But I don't intend to ride it for long distances, which I can't imagine doing in a completely upright position. I doubt that I'll swap my road bike handlebars for cruisers, but I may experiment with the position of them. The nice thing about road bars is that they offer a variety of hand positions, so you can go "aero" for speed or when you're pedaling into the wind and slide upward a bit more when the going is a little easier, or when you want to go easier.

I don't think I'll be riding to work when I start teaching my winter session class next week. But I hope that some time early in the spring semester, I'll be able to do that. I was getting tired of having to ride the trains and buses. I haven't had to do any of that in a week. But next week, I'll be on the subway once again. Actually, I will take the train tomorrow, when I meet Bruce for lunch.

At least I don't feel bad about that, in a way: The day will start off cold and end with rain and/or snow, according to the forecasts. Time was when I would have biked in such conditions. But the times, they are a-chaingin', as Bob Dylan sang. And I'm sure they will by the next time I get on a bike.

On Nurturing

At least the November Overcast turned into rain, though not very heavy. But some strong wind came with it. That took out one thing I was going to do today: a bike ride. Under normal circumstances, I might've gone out for a bit. But I got back on the bike less than a week ago, and I don't want to put too much strain on parts of my body that are still pretty tender.

The weather, however, was not responsible for cancelling another thing I'd planned for today: lunch with Bruce. We missed our lunch date because he wasn't feeling well. Something--the way I know Bruce, to be precise--told me that he was making his malady seem less serious than it was. My hunch was right. Now I wish I'd called him during the week.

He has pneumonia. He told me he's been sleeping through much of this week and when he's awake, he coughs a lot. In a way, it may be just as well that I didn't call, for he certainly needs whatever rest he can get. At least that's what he said when I called him today. But I wish I'd gone with my hunch. I'd've caught the next train and showed up at his door with a large vat of chicken soup (home-made, of course) in my hands.

Carolyn has been coming by, he said, and she'll be there this weekend. That's good, and not surprising--they've been together for at least fifteen years. Still, I want to go and help him. He says he just might take me up on my offer to come by his place during the week. I hope he does.

Bruce has said that my transition brought out a "maternal instinct" that, he said, I always had, even thought I didn't want to acknowledge it. And he's said that the surgery seems to have further accentuated it. Marci never told me that would happen!

Speaking of maternal...Yesterday, on my way to class, I saw Anne for the first time since May. She is a biology professor from France who's conducted genetic research and has worked with a leading researcher in her field on trying to find out whether and to what degree transgenderism and homosexuality are congenital.

This semester, she's on maternity leave. She gave birth around the same time I was having my surgery. During her pregnancy and just after I had my surgery, she expressed her belief that we had a common bond: We were both bringing a new life into this world. "I am giving birth to someone who will always be part of me," she said. "And you are giving birth to your self."

Although I believe I have been giving birth to myself, I wouldn't have made that comparison myself. I don't disagree with it; I just wasn't sure that I would've placed what I was doing on the same plane as bringing a brand-new life into this world. "But that is exactly what you are doing!." she averred.

OK, she said it. So did Regina. So did a few other women I know--all of whom have given birth. I guess I have to go along with them. But I'll fight it real, real hard. ;-)

I don't mind thinking of myself as someone who brought a life in this world or has the capacity to nurture herself or someone else. Still, I am somewhat reluctant to compare myself to any woman who's given birth, whether or not she gives me "permission" to do so and includes me in her world. After all, I still can't even fathom what it must have taken of my mother for her to give birth to, and raise, me. I can't imagine that whatever struggles I'm having in learning about this new life, my new home, can compare to what my mother did for me.

All I can do, I suppose, is to give myself, and anyone else who loves and trusts me, the best of whatever kind of care we need. Yes, we have a "sacred duty," as Helmer says in A Doll's House to our families. But, as Nora says when she's leaving him, we also have "another duty just as sacred" to ourselves. If we don't tend to that, we can't help anyone else.

I know. I haven't said anything new. Sometimes I just have to remind myself.

I Can't Be A Ninety-Day Wonder

Today is ninety days.

If you've been reading this blog, you might be thinking, "No, that was last week." Yes, last Monday came ninety days after my surgery.. (Wednesday marked three months, if you count that way.)

But today was the ninetieth day of my sobriety. At least it was twenty-three years ago.

If you've ever been involved with any of the twelve-step programs, you recall that the program leaders always recommended that you attend ninety meetings in ninety days. I know I exceeded that: On one Saturday alone, I attended five meetings! In this city, there's a twelve-step meeting available at literally every hour of the day or night.

Ninety days is often considered, if not the first, then one of the first milestones in sobriety. Most people who make it through ninety days make it through a year. And most who make it through a year make it through two. And so on.

As I recall, for me, there was no question of not "making it." I simply didn't know what else I could do. Even though I'd tried to become clean and sober twice before, somehow I couldn't see not sticking with "the program" that third time. Although I couldn't see any reason why, I knew somehow that I had to survive. I didn't--and still don't--believe in a supreme being in the sense that most organized religions represent him. (Yes, most do represent him as male.) And Kevin, whom I would ask to be my first sponsor (and who would accept that sometimes-thankless task) advised me to stay away from religion but to believe in something greater than myself. He agreed that AA's description of "Higher Power" sounded suspiciously like the Judeo-Christian God, but said, "There's really nothing wrong with believing in it. Just don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you what it is."

For a guy who "never saw anything beyond Fordham Road before they shipped me off to 'Nam" and who, before becoming sober eight years before I met him, "saw guys die in the jungle, then in my uncle's bar," he could give most philosophers a run for their laurels!

The funny thing is that he understood me in a way that no man besides Bruce ever had up to that point in my life: He knew that I have always been very, very emotionally vulnerable, almost to the point of brittleness and fragility at times. But he, like Bruce, also knew that it was the key to any sort of spiritual growth I needed to make--including sobriety. And that, he later told me, is how he knew I would "make it": "Your soul was crying out for it. And you finally admitted that you had a soul, so you couldn't do anything but listen and care for it."

This, from a guy who came to meetings clad in black leather and on his motorcycle.

"I just knew you were no ninety-day wonder," he said.

From a guy whose best buddy got blown to bits just feet away from him--in fact, from any soldier--that's a rave. Somehow I think he also knew what I knew then: I had no choice; I couldn't have been a ninety-day wonder even if I'd wanted to be one.

Such is my situation now. Good thing I knew that before I started my transition. I mean, things have gone well and having the operation had given me what I'd hoped to have, in a spiritual as well as in a physical sense. But I knew--even before that day I met Jay and told her what seemed, at least to me, the first true thing I'd ever told anyone about myself-- that I was a "lifer;" that not only could I not turn back even if I'd wanted to, the thought of doing so wouldn't and couldn't present itself to me.

There was simply no way I could be a ninety-day wonder. And there still isn't.

Twenty-Five Years Ago in Soho

Today I had lunch with Bruce. He works in Soho and we went to a very Soho-like restaurant that featured high ceilings with lots of wood and brick. It's a bit like standing in one of those mirrors that makes you feel taller because it makes you look skinnier but is only about six inches wide.

It's a pleasant, if sometimes noisy atmosphere. And the food is also pleasant, or sometimes even better: a dozen or so varieties of Asian noodle soups. Bruce had an Indonesian curry; I indulged myself in a fragrant Vietnamese soup with beef and bean sprouts.

Afterward, we walked along Spring and Prince Streets to Broadway. Along the way, we passed a lot of trendy shops and recalled the days when they weren't. At the northwest corner of Spring and Broadway is a kind of sidewalk mural that looks a bit like something Keith Haring might have done had he picked up a chisel. According to Bruce, there is a series of such murals on various corners in the neighborhood that are aligned with each other. They were done by an artist that neither of us has seen in about twenty years.

That artist used to hang out with me, Bruce and a writer who used to work with me in the Poets In The Schools program when Bruce was the program manager. That was back in the days when one could run into a prostitute along one of those streets, as I sometimes did when I was going to leaving my job at American Youth Hostels when it was on Spring and Wooster Streets. Many of those stores were studios, some of which housed the artists themselves as well as their work, as well as galleries.

The writer who used to hang with us was ostensibly an art critic as well as a poet. I don't recall whether the guy who did the sidewalk murals had a day job. Anyway, we--sometimes all of us, other times some combination of two or three of us--would go to the exhibits and openings that lined those streets the way sales line them today. Our writer friend could get us into the more "exclusive" ones with his press credential: the one and only thing that made me believe he might actually be an art critic.

We would spend some time looking at the paintings or sculptures. Bruce, although not always as outgoing as I sometimes am, would get into a conversation with an artist or some other interesting person. Meantime, the writer and I would load ourselves up with wine and cheese, and then some more wine. Then, another glass of wine in hand, the writer would hit up on some woman who had absolutely no interest in him. I might spend more time looking at the paintings or sculptures, but I would definitely drink some more.

Then, we--or I alone--would go to Fannelli's, which was still something of an Italian-American working class bar that just happened to be frequented by some of the artists. Some of those artists had tabs (Remember those?) there.

After Bruce and I parted, I realized that those days were now a quarter-century past! In other words, we've all lived (assuming the artist and writer are still alive) another lifetime in addition to the one each of us had lived up to that point.

But I didn't find myself becoming, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, woozy with deja vu. It's hard to do that in Soho these days: So much has changed! But more important, there didn't seem any point to it.

That's not to say I wasn't remembering some of it warmly. Soho certainly had an interesting "vibe" in those days and you could actually do quite a bit on little or no money. And, in working at American Youth Hostels, I got discounts on equipment and airline tickets. So, even though I wasn't making much money, I managed to take a bike trip from Italy into France that September and another trip to California at Thanksgiving.

But today I was neither pining for those days nor trying to forget or disavow them. I am not proud of everyting I did: Even the trips I did were a form of running away from what I actually needed (and wanted) to do; I guess I don't have to say that all the drinking I did in those days was a form of escape as self-medication.

Yet I found myself, today, wanting to embrace, to hold, that person who did those things. No, I don't want to be him again. Rather, I found myself valuing him for the things I was able to learn from having lived his life. It made me into someone who would like to see that writer and the sidewalk-carver again, just to know that they're safe and well--and, hopefully,doing interesting, productive, creative and helpful things. And, of course, I came out of that life as Bruce's friend, and with Bruce as a friend. Both have left me a very privileged person.

Yes, I am happy to have had my operation. I'm even proud of it: For a change, I didn't back down from something I needed to do. But I realized today that I have even more pride in the person I'm becoming. And I feel even more privileged to be her, to be Justine, to be myself.

After all, I had to live, literally, another lifetime after those days as a young man who drank and let his friends chat up artists and chase women. And I've had to learn that to move forward in life, there is no choice but to love whomever you have been, or lived as, as well as those who were part of the life you lived.

And then, after all that, I went to work: I was talking about poetry with my students. I love poetry because it is, and my students because they have helped to define the person I am and am becoming. After all, I didn't have any --nor did I imagine I would ever have any--hope of becoming who I am in those long-ago days in Soho.

Le Cafe Perdu

Today Bruce and I went to lunch at the Red Egg, a Chinese restaurant on a part of Centre Street that sits in a nether-world between Chinatown, Soho and the Lower East Side. It's hard to get any sit-down meal in Manhattan, much less one as good as we had, for seven dollars (before tax and tip).

Today I had Red Egg Curry Chicken. It was so good that I was scooping up and downing what remained of the sauce after I'd finished the chicken, asparagus and okra that made up the rest of the dish. And Bruce's General Tso's Chicken, which I sampled, was as good.

We've eaten there a couple of times before, and I'm sure we'll go back. The decor is a cross between a Soho bistro and a Chinese restaurant in Queens. That is to say, it's made up of sleek red and black lacquer and blondish wood.

A good sign is that the place was full, or close to it, each time we've gone. And, at least half of the customers were Chinese. Also, they set your table with chopsticks. I'm not sure that they have western-style utensils: I didn't see anyone using them.

After we finished, Bruce had to return to work. So, after we parted, I wandered across town on Spring Street to the Bowery, then up toward Cooper Square. The day was mild but overcast; everyone rightly believed that we would get the rain that was forecast for the early evening.

On a day like this, which feels like an early spring day except for a touch of damp chill, flesh and bright colors peeked out the way the sun does as it moves through layers of clouds. Near Bruce's office, in a building sandwiched between two boutiques, young women fluttered about in shorts with brightly-patterned tights or skirts over sheer hosiery. Some of the young men weren't wearing coats or jackets, or even sweaters, over their T-shirts. Back when I was young and full of testosterone (and alcohol), I would have done the same.

The styles may change, but they are re-enacting what seems to be a ritual I've seen for as long as I can remember. If we'd had a day like this a few weeks ago, it wouldn't have been seen as a prelude to spring: It would have been just an unusually warm day in winter. And so everyone would have been wearing coats and scarves and such.

Well, some people--young women, mostly--wore scarves, mainly as accessories. One in particular just oozed style with hers, in shades of champagne, lilac and dark pink. Its ends fluttered behind her as she pumped her Peugeot city bike--the kind they sell in France, not an export model--with fenders, a rack, generator light and all. She would have looked completely appropriate on the streets around Saint Germain des Pres or Montmartre.

She is me, in another life. If only...

Seeing her, and those downtown streets and buildings that criscross each other at mad angles, I started to get, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, woozy with deja vu. I recalled walking those same streets when they both more carefree and more dangerous than they are now. I knew of some of the dangers; others escaped--along with a lot of other things--my consciousness as I drank or intoxicated myself in some other way. I saw a place--Phebe's, still there--where I used to drink enough so that I didn't notice or care that the hamburger I ordered was burnt. It brought back images of other places, long gone, where the graffiti in the bathroom provided more debate on issues of the day, and larger questions, than just about any still-surviving magazine or other publication that has any sort of intellectual premise or pretense.

One place like that was Le Figaro cafe, which used to take up a corner of Bleecker and MacDougal Streets in the heart of the Village. Back before Starbuck's cafes started popping up like weeds after a rainstorm, Le Figaro was one of the few places where you could get something like a real espresso or cappucino rather than the burnt-coffee-bean-and-boiled-milk concoctions other places served. Back in those days, they served decent quiche Lorraine and some not-bad desserts. But those weren't the reasons to go there. Nor was the decor: If you can imagine an interrogation room from a '40's or '50's noir film wallpapered with copies of the eponymous French newspaper (ironically enough, one edited from a conservative, almost reactionary, point of view), you have a good idea of what the interior looked like.

From what I understand, Bob Dylan and his peers used to go there after playing at The Back Fence and other nearby dives. Of course, that gives it the same sort of cachet Dylan Thomas's patronage gives the White Horse Tavern. But the real reason you went to Le Figaro, or any of those old-time Village coffee places, was to watch people. So, it was always best (to me, anyway) to go on a day like this one, which would probably be the first of the season on which the sidewalk tables would be set up.

Today, a lot of those people I looked at back in the day are probably gone. As are one bartender and one waitress who used to work there. I had crushes on both of them that I probably wouldn't have had if I'd seen them in a New Jersey mall. A lot of other people probably did, too. That's how it was in those old Village (East or West) cafes and coffeehouses: They really didn't have a whole lot to recommend them except their locations, but somehow they transformed the people you met in them in much the same way that young people who just got off the bus from Iowa or Kansas or Oregon became bohemians when they opened up their suitcases or backpacks in that neighborhood.

Of course I would have liked to have been in one of those cafes as that young woman who rode her Peugeot today. However, neither she nor anyone else I saw today would, even if they could, choose to be a patron in one of those cafes I remember. Nor could I. As much as I feel I would have liked to experience those days and all of my past as Justine rather than as Nick, I know that if I had (if I could have), I may not be here today, little more than four months from my surgery.

I forget which feminist writer said that in the Sexual Revolution, women got screwed. And so it was back in those giddily serious days. Now I realize that the women, almost invariably young and fashionable in an arty kind of way, served as props for those guitar- and chess-playing young men of yore. Even fairly recently, cafes like le Figaro were mainly the provinces of straight people. They gays were on the western and eastern extremes of the neighborhood, and they had their own versions of the cafes, not to mention the bars.

Those cafes are gone, too, as are so many of the men who patronized them. Only the women--reincarnations of them, anyway--remain. Today Bruce had lunch with one who hadn't been thought of because she couldn't conceive herself in those days.