Companions on Longtime Journeys

Today I did a brief bike ride along the industrial waterfront of Long Island City and Greenpoint and through back streets almost devoid of vehicular traffic.  One of them--named Rust Street--parallels railroad tracks that cut through silent factories and cling to the banks of Newtown Creek, which has been called the most polluted body of water in the United States.


Actually, I had a specific reason for riding that way:  On my way back, I stopped at Russo's bakery in Maspeth, which has--to my tastes, anyway--the best sfogliatelle you can get without taking the next flight to Rome.  I wanted to pick up a small box of the miniature ones and bring them to the barbecue at Millie's house.  Alas, they had only a couple of the larger ones left:  not enough to fill a small pastry dish.  Instead, I bought one and ate it right then and there.  I also purchased a small cheesecake topped with fresh fruit (strawberries, grapes and slices of apple and cantaloupe) drizzled with a light glaze.  Everyone loved it; I thought it was the best cheesecake I'd eaten in a long time.


Millie's friend Catherine came to the barbecue.  I like her very much, but I wouldn't call her a friend simply because I see her only at Millie's barbecues and lunches and dinners.  On the other hand, she and Millie have known each other since they were five years old.  I don't have a friend like that; I met Bruce, my longest-standing friend, during my senior year at Rutgers.  Then we fell out of touch for a couple of years and bumped into each other near Cooper Union late one summer afternoon.  That was in 1984:  I remember that because it was during the first year since my childhood that I was living in New York.  I also recall that I was leaving work, which at that time was at the old American Youth Hostels headquarters on Spring Street.  


Honestly, there are only a couple of non-family members whom I can remember from my early childhood.  Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to have remained friends with a childhood friend.  I suppose that in one way, at least, it would have been like other longtime relationships:  Knowing that person for so long could have been the very reason why such a person would have remained friends with me--or for wanting nothing to do with me--after I "came out."


Millie and her husband John knew me for less than a year before I started to live full-time as Justine.  Sometimes I think it's the reason why they accepted my change as readily as they did:  After all, they couldn't feel the same sense of loss that some members of my family and other people who knew me for a long time might have felt.  Plus, almost immediately upon meeting me, Millie decided that she liked me, and she tends not to change her mind about that.  


She reminded me that very soon, a year will have passed since my surgery.  Already!  And tomorrow I'm going for another bike ride.  Destination and itinerary are to be determined.

Three Months: One Woman to Another

I can't believe it's been three months since my surgery. Soon, I'm supposed to be more or less normal. That is to say, if my doctor and gynecologist give me the OK, I'll be back on my bike and able to have sex. I have the equipment for either pastime; for the latter, all I need is a suitable partner!

Tomorrow I see the doctor, and I see the gynecologist next week. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. At least I'm not using that as a birth control method--not anymore, anyway! ;-)

Now I feel a little guilty for making that bad joke. Last night, I talked again with the young student of mine who told me, last week, she'd just gotten pregnant. When we talked last week, I tried to give her both the "pros" and the "cons" of giving birth or having an abortion. What surprised me is not only how confident she felt in speaking to me, but also how confident I felt in listening to her and offering her advice.

In some way, I could feel--not only vicariously, but even in some visceral way--her pain. "I don't want to give up my child," she insisted. Although having a child wouldn't have been the "best thing for her"--at least in the sense most of us think of that phrase--I felt a lot of respect for her when she articulated her wish not to have an abortion. No matter what science says, there will always be people who think that life begins at conception. And science has been wrong before.

She was convinced that she had a boy growing inside her.

Of course, as an educator, I thought of how that young woman's life as she knew it would, in effect, end before she turned twenty years old if she had the baby. School would be out of the question for many years; she would also have to find a way to make her relationship with her boyfriend work, or raise that baby alone or with the help of family members. The only problem with the latter option was that, well, it wasn't an option with her conservative, religious parents. As for her boyfriend: They'd broken up a few weeks before the pregnancy, gotten back together, had sex once (one time too many, in her parents' eyes) and gotten pregnant.

She still hasn't even told her parents that she'd gotten pregnant. And she doesn't plan to, she says.

Which means, of course, that they won't know about her abortion.

When she talked to me last week, she told me that her boyfriend wanted her to end her pregnancy. She also told me he accused her of "getting emotional about everything."

"Well, that's one thing he never could understand. He doesn't have that embryo inside him. So his body, not to mention his spirit, could never feel to him the way yours does to you right now."

Her eyes widened. "Yes! That's one thing guys never could understand about us."

The funny thing, in retrospect, is that I didn't pause mentally when she said that. I also didn't feel as if I were acting or "faking it" when I went along with her. Somehow I could just feel her emotions so strongly that I can honestly say I understood her about as well as someone in my situation could.

But last night, when she said, "I just knew I could talk to you," I felt that I had to "come clean," at least in one way.

"Well," I said, "I was feeling your pain. But I'll admit that I never have been pregnant, and never can become pregnant."

"Really?"

I explained why. To which she responded: "I never would have guessed. But you are so wise and so caring. I'm glad I talked to you."

"And I'm here for you, even when I'm not your professor anymore."

"You always will be."

Thank you for reminding me of that, young lady.

By the way: Class went very nicely. Maybe it's just because I enjoy teaching that class--a literature course--more than I enjoy the course on writing research papers, which is what I was teaching the other day. The students in that class are fine; it's just hard to make that course, which students are required to take, enticing. It's lots of detail work, which doesn't draw upon my strengths and passions as a creative person with a conceptual mind. I can teach that course reasonably well, but I'm sure others could do it better. But when I'm teaching lit or other kinds of writing courses, the students are looking at my soul.

And that young woman spoke to it. I was describing my encounter with her to Jason, a trans man I know and whom I bumped into on my way home. "She would've come to you, no matter what," he insisted.

Three months since surgery...It's going to be interesting to see what happens after six months. Or a year. Or whatever comes after that.

Dr. Jennifer: My First Visit With The Gynecologist

Today I had my very first visit with a gynecologist. Well, Marci Bowers is a gynecologist, too, but today's appointment was the first time I visited a gynecologist specifically because she's a gynecologist.

If Marci had been born with the XX chromosomes and had been gay, she would have been something like Dr. Jennifer Johnson. Like Dr. Bowers, Dr. Johnson instisted that I call her by her first name. Also like Dr. Bowers, Dr. Johnson knows exactly what she's doing and has the benefit of all of the best tools, technology and experience. But, also in common with Dr. Bowers, she knows that those aren't all her patients need: For good, holistic health, people like me need a good, empathetic human being as well as the most efficient machines modern medicine has.

And that is why I have had complete confidence in both of them from the moment I first came into contact with each of them. They know that your womanhood is not just about the shape of your body's organs; it's a state of mind and a manifestation of the spirit. I think that even back when I was cynical (or faking it, anyway), I could have seen that quality in either of them.

If Marci took me over the bridge to femaleness, she and Jennifer have been welcoming me into that land in which I have always been a citizen but in which I have only recently begun to reside. You might say that I was born and lived as a female exiled in prison or in a prison of exile. And now that I have entered into the country of my spirit, I have guides and allies in people like Marci and Jennifer.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, then, that Jennifer was not only evaluating my condition; she was admiring the work Marci did on me. As well she should. Even though there's still some swelling and the scars are healing, I can see the artistry of her work. It's not just a matter of the shape of my labia looking proportionate or symmetrical or the feeling I'm starting to have in my clitoris.

I think now of what Michelangelo said about his work: He chipped away at the stone until the David that was always within it came to be. Marci didn't simply fashion a vagina for me: She worked with the materials I had until the vagina that was always within me found its way. I realized this during my session with Jennifer, when I caught a glimpse of my new organs in a mirror wondered how there ever could have been anything else between my legs.

Really, it's no wonder--if I do say so myself--that within the first minute or so of my time with Jennifer, she exclaimed that I was "positively glowing." I replied that after the surgery, I felt as if a huge weight had come off my shoulders. That burden was, of course, the overlay of a masculine inversion. I mean, really, when the wall is chipped away, when the blinds are turned outward, what else streams in but light? And how can anyone who is suddenly filled with it do anything but "glow?"

The funny thing is that she wasn't the first or last person to say that I was "glowing" today. And I didn't even leave the house except to go to my appointment with Jennifer!

I'm going to see her again on Thursday. She said that everything looks fine and is doing what it's supposed to be doing, but that I was showing the first sign of a mild infection near the bottom-most suture. She said it wasn't anybody's fault; it's just a result of some of the discharges that people normally experience after surgery. Marci said I might experience something like this; that is one reason why she recommends a gynecological appointment two weeks or so after the surgery.

So...Everything is where it's supposed to be. And I'm meeting people who are even better versions of the people I need and want. Is this a life, or what?