The Last One?

The past year or so has been pretty strange.  Not bad, just unnerving.  Or I just don’t know what to make of it, or perhaps I’m not accepting something.

Of course I am still sad about John’s death.  Yesterday the mail carrier brought one of those “In Memoriam” cards with his photo and an inscription:  his birthdate, date of death, “Beloved husband of Mildred, father of Stefanie and Lisa, grandfather of Melanie and Steven.” And friend to me, to Joanne, to many other people.

I’m realizing that he’s probably the last male friend I’ve made in my life.  I can call him that because I never thought of him as someone I knew just because he was Mildred’s husband; he is one of the few men with whom I’ve felt comfortable.  In some ways, it seems improbable:  On the surface, we didn’t have that much in common.  But he, like Millie, knew the kinds of things about people and life that you don’t learn in classrooms, in seminars or seminaries, or in any place where people try to explain life in terms of theories or categories.  That, I believe, is the reason why they met me near the end of my life as Nick and became even better friends as I changed my clothes, my name, some of my surroundings, the way I think and, finally, my body.

I’m realizing that he may have been the last male friend I had.  Perhaps it was inevitable that, one day, I wouldn’t have any more male friends, if for no other reason that I never had very many.  Over the past year, I’ve met some men who have been nice, even kind, to me and didn’t seek anything in return.  Some belong to, or at least attend, the church that’s become part of my life.  At least two or three seem like they genuinely want to be friendly with me outside the eglesial walls, perhaps one of them might want to be in a more intimate relationship with me.  But I’m not ready for that, for him, for them.  To tell you the truth, I don’t want to be.  If anything, if I’m going to have such a relationship, I’d be more interested in having it with another woman, but even the prospect of that doesn’t interest, much less excite, me. 

For that matter, I don’t even feel ready to make new friends.  Actually, that’s not quite right:  I’m not ready to call anybody I’ve met within the past year, two years, a friend.  Perhaps it’s a matter of my age:  At this point in my life, I don’t think I can make instantaneous or even quick friendships. Perhaps it’s generational:  I didn’t grow up with the notion that someone I met only on some social medium is a friend.  (What can I say to someone who says he has 789 Facebook friends?)  It’s hard to think of anyone I’ve known less than ten—or, maybe, five—as a friend.

Someone might say I haven’t quite recovered from what Dominick or other men in my life have done to me.  They’re probably right.  Maybe I’m not ready to recover, whatever that means.  Maybe I can’t, or shouldn’t.  And, perhaps, it might keep me from thinking of myself as having made a new friend, especially with a man.

R.I.P John

Today I'm going to detour a bit, for a very personal reason.

In other posts, I've mentioned Millie.  I met her the day I moved to Astoria, in August of 2002.  She saw me as I unloaded boxes, bikes and two cats--Charlie I and Candice--into an apartment in the building next to her house.  She decided that she liked me right then and there, or so it seemed.  And, yes, I liked her immediately.

Well, over the years she's taken care of my cats whenever I've spent time away.  Two years after we became neighbors, I took a trip to France and she cared for Charlie and Candice, probably even better than I did.  Then, about two years after that, she took care of Candice when I went to Turkey.  Charlie had died a couple of months before that and, after I returned from my trip, I adopted a cat she'd rescued--and named Charlie.  A little more than a year after that, Candice died and another one of Millie's rescuees--Max--came into my life.

She's been as good a friend as I've ever had in my life.  So was her husband, John.

Referring to him in the past tense feels even sadder to me than the reason why I did so:  He died the other night, apparently, in his sleep.  Given that a tumor was causing his brain to play cruel tricks on him, that was probably the most merciful way he could have been taken from this world.

Millie has said she was fortunate to have married such a good man.  He could not have had a better companion in his life, especially in his last days.  And his granddaughter has told me he is one of her role models, for his honesty and kindness. I can vouch for both qualities.

The next time I have dinner, spend a day or a holiday, or simply sit with Millie--alone, or with her daughters and grandchildren--I will be happy, as always, to see her. Still, things won't be the same without John.

All I can do now is to thank him one more time.

Reflections At The Beginning of The Year

Most new years have begun with a day that seemed eerily quiet to me. This New Year's Day has been no exception. The weather was neither unusually cold nor mild for this time of year, and it did not begin to rain until well into the evening. And, when I ventured out this afternoon, there were few people on the streets. And those I saw were uncommonly serene; I exchanged wishes for a happy new year with several of them, all of whom are strangers.

I guess everyone else was sleeping off a hangover, watching football, cooking or eating.

Later in the afternoon, I became one of the latter category, going once again to--you guessed it!--Millie's house. Her younger daughter, who will turn one of those round-number ages (I won't say which one!) in a couple of months, seemed happier than I've seen her in a while. And her other daughter, who came with her two kids, also was in an uncommonly good mood. And John, Millie's husband was exhibiting his usual (and sometimes wonderfully charming) combination of thoughtfulness to his guests and cluelessness about some of our conversations. It's not that he's stupid--far from it. It's just that there are some things he really knows nothing about. In that sense, I guess he's no different from the rest of us.

Also present was Catherine, whom I like very much. She and Millie are childhood friends who, somehow or another, have managed to live no more than a neighborhood or two apart from each other through more than half a century.

Sometimes I find myself envying that: Even before I began my gender transition, I had to uproot myself a couple of times. I have not been in contact with anyone I knew during elementary or junior high school for thirty years or so; I am in tenuous, sporadic contact with a few people I knew in high school and in college via Facebook and other online means. However, I have a hard time of keeping such relationships up. Or, more precisely, I am a bit reluctant to commit to them, as I know that each of us has changed during the decades we haven't seen each other.

I know it's very difficult to relate to someone who, in essence, is a different person from the one you knew when you and that person weren't present for each others' changes. I learned that when I tried to resume a friendship with Elizabeth after we hadn't seen each other for a decade or more: Even if Nick hadn't become Justine, it might not have been possible to be friends. On the other hand, Bruce and I have been in nearly constant contact for close to thirty years; we have seen each other go through crises and triumphs. I can only imagine what Millie and Catherine have experienced in all of the time they've known each other!

Yet, as we shared chips and salsa, antipasti, baked ziti with sausage, salad, roast pork, rice with peas and corn, I realized that I, too, have a friendship with a history with Millie, with John--with their family, in fact, and Catherine. I've known them for about seven and a half years: not as long as they've known each other, but, in essence for my entire life as I now know it. All of them, except for Catherine, met me during the last days I was living at least part of my life as a male. None of them ever mention that, even though I never asked them not to.

Plus, in my very earliest days of living full-time, I watched Millie's grandkids--who were then nine and six years old--when she had to go somewhere, and John and their daughters were at work. Now the grandkids are fifteen and twelve years old.

Now I'll admit that I have a self-indulgent, self-reflexive reason for talking about them and the friendships that have developed between us: In thinking about what I've experienced, I realize how far I've come, if I do say so myself. When I say "how far I've come," I am talking about what I've left behind me--whether by choice or other means--as well as what I've gained or simply come into.

Of course I have left various relationships; others have fallen by the wayside. That, I suppose happens in everyone's lives. In addition, I have abandoned--whether by choice or otherwise--various material possessions and a place I had, not only in a larger world, but in the lives of various people who were in my life.

What have I gained? Relationships, possessions and a place in the world and in certain people's lives. Naturally, the ones I've gained are, for the most part, very different from the ones I've left behind. And the people who've remained with me have changed in various ways, while remaining true to themselves.

And what have I come into? The pleasures gleaned from what I've gained, and a sense of my self that I never could have anticipated, much less pursued or seized, prior to my transition.

I must admit, what I've gained and come into have some ironic--and some purely and simply funny--consequences at times. (Yes, Ed McGon, God does have a wicked sense of humor!) To wit: Catherine, Millie and Stephanie, her elder daughter, were talking about something and somehow the subject of menopause came up. (The grandkids were, at that moment, in the living room and too engrossed in their video games to hear us.) They were talking about how a woman knows it's coming on (hot flashes, etc.) and I said, "Well, first, you miss your period."

Not one of them blinked. And one of them--Millie, I think--said, "Yeah, and after that you start having the other symptoms."

And the conversation continued as if nobody had said anything unusual or out of line. I wasn't trying to impress anyone or "fit in;" I merely stated, with confidence, a fact and was part of a women's conversation. John, who sat at the other end of the table from me, gave me a brief but knowing smile.

If that, and the rest of the time I spent with him and everyone else is a harbinger of what this year will be like, things ought to be good, or at least interesting--ironically, by becoming routine. At least I know I'm starting this year in the life in which I belong.

Moving Day

Well, I've got about a dozen and a half boxes--about half of them books, or things related to books--piled around my living room. I'm going to sleep here tonight, in a canyon between some of those boxes and the wall behind the sofa on which I'm sitting. It's not a bad sofa, if a bit worn: The landlady insisted on leaving it here with me. "It's very comfortable," she pointed out.

That means my futon is in my bedroom. It's a convertible, but I might just use it as my bed. Then I could fold it back up, if I wanted to, and use the space in my bedroom for--well, whatever. And it's a bigger bedroom than the one I left.

Plus, John--Millie's husband--pointed out, "If it works for you, why buy another bed?"

They helped me with my move. Now tell me they aren't friends: It's the day after Thanksgiving and they could be doing all sorts of other things. But they helped me. And it left me in tears for a time.

Now they're not living next door or across the street from me. We're only about half a mile, if that, apart. Still, I miss having them as neighbors: They're the best I've ever had.

And, I miss the place I left. Maybe it's not the place itself, which wasn't bad, but the things I associated with it. For one thing, it was the first place into which I moved as Justine. My life as I know it now developed there. Finally, I had my operation while living there.

I must also say that my landlady there treated me well most of the time. But in the four and a half years I lived there, I often wondered whether I'd have to move on short notice. And that's precisely what I've done now.

About a year into living there, her father's health took a dramatic turn for the worse. One day, someone from a social service agency informed me that I would have to move because he needed to live in my apartment, which was at the street level. He was in a wheelchair and couldn't climb stairs.

I was literally hours away from moving--I'd paid a security deposit at a new place and was in the middle of packing--when she said that her father wasn't moving in after all. Turns out that he needed care that neither she nor her mother could provide. So, she offered to give me the month free if I'd stayed.

It wasn't the only reason I stayed. I simply didn't want to move, as I had grown comfortable in that place and neighborhood. Plus, I was rather liking the arrangement of living on the first floor of a private house with the landlady upstairs. If nothing else, it meant that the house would be well-maintained. And it was, until recently.

A few months ago, I noticed cracks in the plaster on the ceiling. Then parts of it started falling down. I asked her to fix it. To do that, I had to remove the bed from my bedroom. I'd wanted to replace the mattress anyway, as I'd had it for a long time. So I tossed the bed, figuring that I'd get another.

A family friend who is the superintendent of a building in another part of Queens did the job. He convinced my landlady that the room--in fact, the whole apartment should be repainted. That was in early October.

Well, one thing and another came up, and he didn't do the job. And, in the meantime, a city inspector came to the house. It turns out that the apartment from which I just moved is illegal. The landlady claims the apartment, which was created by constructing a barrier, was there when her family moved the house.

She asked me to leave the apartment "for a couple of weeks" so that she could board up the bathroom, remove or cover the stove, sink and refrigerator and have a new inspection. Then, she said, she'd like for me to come back.

I asked her what I could do with Charlie and Max in the meantime. Or with my personal belongings: If I left them there, wouldn't an inspector know that someone was living there? And, I wondered where I was supposed to go. I mean, I have friends with whom I could probably stay. But, to me, the only reason to live out of a suitcase is if you're traveling.

So here I am in my new place. At least, this time I knew about the city Department of Buildings website, where I was able to check the status of this house. I just hope this all works out for me.

Remembering Other Friends and a Cat

It's a good thing I've been so busy the past few days. I know, you're wondering where I find the time to write in this blog. Well, I'll just say that until now, this blog hasn't recorded how much I've slept. Nor should it.

In any event, all the activity has kept my mind off things that would normally preoccupy me on the 22nd and 23rd of every December. Yesterday, the 22nd, was the anniversary of Cori's suicide, as I mentioned in my previous post. And today is even more intense: three anniversaries, all of them deaths. One happened when I was very young; the other two occured on the same day in 1991.

Seventeen years ago, I lost Caterina and Kevin. Who were they? My first cat and my first AA sponsor. They both came into my life at about the same time: I met Kevin during my first few days of sobriety, and I adopted Caterina not long after my 90th day without alcohol or drugs. If any of you who've been in AA or any of the other twelve-step programs, you know that 90 days is your first major milestone: It's recommended that you make it to 90 meetings in that time (I beat that easily; I once went to five meetings one rainy Saturday.) and, after that, ask someone to be your sponsor.

I don't have to tell you that 23 December 1991 was one of the more depressing days in my life, and wasn't made easier with the knowledge that both were destined to die sooner rather than later, and that, if nothing else, their suffering ended. They were both very, very sick: Caterina was old (She was close to ten years old when she and I adopted each other.) , and Kevin's immune system fell apart so thoroughly that it took a long and particularly thorough autopsy to determine what, exactly, killed him. However, the cause of the pneumonia that finally took him was clear: AIDS. He was one of many people in the twelve-step programs who died that way during the late '80's and early '90's, which were the first few years I spent sober. John, my second AA sponsor, also died that way nearly four years later. So, between them, Kevin and John guided me through my first decade without intoxicating substances.

At least John, Kevin and Caterina died when I had developed some resources, however rudimentary, for dealing with grief. But the first death I expereinced on the 23rd of December came much, much earlier in my life, years before even Cori's death. Adam had also killed himself, though by different means and for different reasons (at which I can, to this day, only guess) from Cori's.

Adam, who lived alone, turned on gas in his oven. Perhaps I will seem callous in saying this, but it really is a minor detail: Once you're dead, it really doesn't matter how you died, does it? Well, I guess to some of the living, it does, although their interest is, more often than not, questionable.

And what of the reasons why? I guess the previous answer applies here: They don't really matter to the dead person, only to the living. And why? One of Albert Camus's characters killed himself because someone didn't say "hello" to him that day. Just about any reason you can think of, someone else has had and didn't kill him or herself. This, I think, is the reason why so many people--and the religions they follow--say that people who kill themselves are immoral and weak, and their act is as evil as (or even more evil than) any homicide.

Now, I'm no expert on the subject (How, exactly, does one become one?), but I think that the ostensible reason a person might have for committing suicide isn't actually the impetus for the act--at least not by itself. Most people don't off themselves because other people didn't greet them, or even over seeing the sorts of things Adam saw in Bergen-Belsen. Or, for that matter, over the same dilemma about gender identity that followed Cori over the edge and me to the brink.

No, I belive that people who kill themselves--or who think seriously about doing it--are, in some way, like cancer sufferers. People who off themselves, or try to, are almost invariably suffering from depression. Sometimes it is overt; other times it is hidden so deeply that people claim not to understand why their friend, classmate, brother, sister or whomever made thirteen loops in the rope looped around his or her neck, pointed the barrel to his or her temple or leapt off the George Washington Bridge as Rufus did in James Baldwin's Another Country. Rufus's depression manifested itself as anger much like the kind I used to carry; others hide it or sublimate it for as long as they can.

In spite of their efforts, they suffer a kind of mental and emotional meltdown analogous to the shutdown and destruction of organs in the cancer patient's body. It reaches a point at which neither they nor anyone else can reverse it; if other people notice, all they can really do is to keep that person from harming him or her self, and to do whatever possible to help that person gain the tools or other resources he or she needs to stay alive long enough for a cure or remission. Telling them that pain is temporary is like telling a cripple that he, too, will win eight gold medals if he follows Michael Phelps' training regimen.

Anyway...I do know this much: The two most difficult days of almost every year are almost over for this year. I had dinner with Dominick a little while ago; now it's time to pack and do other things I need to do to get ready for tomorrow, when I fly to my parents' house. That, too, will pass, if more quickly than I'd like.

If only Toni, Cori and Adam knew...