That Prof Didn't Have To Stand an Egg On End This Semester

Today is officially the first day of winter. The solstice came at 12:47 pm, our time. I didn't try to stand an egg on its end, so I don't know whether you really can do that on the day of a solstice? Or is that on the day of an equinox? And if I got an egg to stand on its end, how would that affect my life? Or would it?

Why would I try such a thing, anyway?

OK, so that was a bit of a digression. But can you start with a digression?

Anyway...I've been finishing up the semester. I don't know how I'll see this semester if I think about it in the future. In one sense, I can't imagine how I won't think about it: After all, it is my first in my new life. On the other hand, not much particularly noteworthy (for me, anyway) has happened. I worked; I did the best I could by my students and colleagues. A few students loved me; a few hated me; lots more saw me, if they thought about me, as just another prof--or as that prof.

What does it mean to be that prof? For one thing, lots of students stop me in the hallway to ask what I'm teaching next semester. Now that my courses for next semester have filled up, some students are asking how they can get into my classes. I guess there are more masochists in this world--or at least in the college in which I teach--than I ever imagined! ;-)

To be fair, I can understand why someone would think of me as that prof. For better or worse, I am one-of -a- kind in a number of different ways. For one, I'm tall and blonde (well, sort of) in a college in which 80 percent of the students are black, 10 percent are Asian and most of the rest are Latino/as. Plus, I'm bigger-boned than the average female of any race. And I'm the only faculty member named Justine. (If they're not calling me that prof, they're calling me Professor Justine--which I like.) And, of course, most of the school knows my story by now--or one part of it, anyway.

Hey, I'm even more of a minority than people who can make eggs stand on end! Or, for that matter, people who can touch the tips of their noses with their tongues (something I can do, by the way).

But I was that prof even before this semester. So, in that sense, this semester wasn't remarkable.

Maybe we can drag Marlo Thomas out of retirement to play me in a new series--That Prof. She's a few years older than I am, but that's all right. Plus, the fact that she's not much of an actress doesn't particularly trouble me. I mean, after all, outside of the college in which I teach, my circle of friends and my family, how many people have any idea of what I'm like? So they won't know whether or not she's portraying me accurately.

I think now of what one of the Medicis--Lorenzo, I think--said when people told him that a portrait (painted, if I recall correctly, by Botticelli) didn't resemble him. In essence, he said that 100 years after he died, nobody would remember what he looked like. But they would still have his portrait which, he correctly predicted, would be seen as a great work of art.

Now, of course, that's not to compare Marlo Thomas with Botticelli or any Medici--or any of them with me, for that matter. But imagine what someone could do with an idea like That Prof. If Meryl Streep had a lobotomy, she'd still be a better actress than Marlo Thomas. So, for that matter, would Helen Mirren or Simone Signoret. But, really, would you want to see any of them playing a middle-aged transsexual professor? Especially if said middle-aged transsexual prof is me? Streep, Mirren and Signoret can all play weighty roles. But none of them can do comedy. Well, I've never seen Mirren or Signoret do comedy, and the one time I saw Meryl Streep doing it--in She Devil--she didn't look right. Then again, opposite her, Roseanne Barr was playing a "serious" role. Whose idea was that?

And, let's face it, whether or not it was her intention, Marlo Thomas was funny. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks that way. Or maybe my view is skewed because That Girl ran about the time I was entering puberty. Her voice changed pitches more often during one segment of that show than mine did during my entire puberty. And she seemed to have as little control over it as I did over my voice changes.

I don't think anyone's going to make a series like that. So for now, if you want to see that prof, you have to come to the college in which I teach. And you'll find out that I'm just like all the others. Really.

OK, so believing that is a bit of a stretch. But save for the fact that I returned from surgery, and didn't have the physical stamina I normally have, this has been a fairly unremarkable semester. That's probably a good thing.

Mrs. Dalloway? Clarissa Vaughn? Myself In An Inverse Mirror?

Have you ever seen yourself in an inverse mirror? Or a photograph negative of yourself? Or, simply, what you would be in an alternative, if not parallell, universe?

I feel that I experienced all of those things last night. Yes, in the same person. And this person's friend made me think of what sort of friends I might have had had I been a hippie.

To digress for a moment: I share the hippies' (the real ones') distrust of authority and disdain for the pursuit of prestige and power, but for completely different reasons from theirs. To be honest, I came to mine mainly through my own anger at various authority figures in my life rather than through any principles. I still hold on to much of my distrust of authority in part because I've been part of it, albeit at its lowest levels. On the other hand, my disdain been replaced with the realization that I won't get anything I actually want in life, or help to make my world a better place, by pursuing power and prestige.

Anyway...about the two people with whom I spent last night: Sara is the latter-day hippie who is very interested in mysticism and believes in some version of Buddhism-- a belief system that I am not at all willing to dismiss. It makes as much sense as any other possible explanation of why I ended up in a male body with a female spirit.

I met Sara in the laundromat a few weeks before my surgery. We talked about lost socks, or some such thing that you might talk about with a complete stranger in a laundromat. We'd exchanged phone numbers, but neither of us called the other. I didn't think we'd meet again until I saw her about three weeks ago, when I was walking from the East River promenade into the Costco parking lot, which abuts Socrates Sculpture Park.

That night, two of her friends accompanied her. One of them, Dee, lives with her and stayed up half the night talking, talking and eating cheese and breadsticks, with us.

Dee and I are almost exactly the same height. We have a similar build and facial structure, and we both have the same reddish-blonde or blondish-red hair. Her eyes are blue; mine are blue-hazel. And our skin colorings--a pale ruddiness or a ruddy pallor--were all but identical. Saea noticed that we even have almost exactly the same freckle patterns on our arms!

Even more striking than our physical similarities was the inverse parallellism (Is there really such a thing?) that seemed to be our relationship to each other. You may have guessed it by now: She has always felt that she's male. And she acts the part, even in ways that I never did.

Is she what I would have been had I been born as a male in a female body?

Although I like Dee, I hope the answer is "no." She's a few years older than I am and, even if she could afford the gender-reassignment surgeries, she couldn't have them due to various medical problems.

So, while she and Sara were very kind, it was hard not to feel Dee's anger. She didn't direct any of it my way: I can simply understand that it's a large part of what she feels. But I could also see, in the little time that I spent with her, how that anger leads to some self-destructive behavior (Been there, done that!) and can make life difficult for Sonia, and perhaps other people.

During the course of the night, I learned that Dee and Sara have lived together for more than twenty-five years. I don't doubt that there is, or was at one time, some element of sexual attraction in it, as Sara describes herself as a bisexual who likes men and it isn't hard to see how petite, dark-haired Sara would appeal to Dee. However, I also doubt that they are sexually involved with each other now, or that they have been in a long time, if they ever were.

In an odd way, Sonia reminded me of Clarissa Vaughn, the character Meryl Streep played in The Hours. Vaughn is, and lives with, a middle-aged lesbian and is a doting friend to, among other people, "Richie" Brown, an AIDS-afflicted poet for whom she plans a dinner to celebrate an award he's just won.

By the way, I really didn't like the film at all. Yes, it had some great performances, like Meryl's (Nicole Kidman didn't convince me that she was Virginia Woolf, not even for a second!) and some nice cinematography. But I found it neither entertaining nor challenging, and felt that it made critics feel smart because it gave them the opportunity to recommend to the hoi polloi a film that ostensibly has something to do with Virginia Woolf. Never mind that said film avoided art, literature, politics, feminism, sex and all the other topics that one would expect to relate to Virginia Woolf and the people who read her works.

Back to Sara: One reason why she reminded me of Clarissa is that she is that same sort of doting friend. Also, and perhaps more important, is that undertone of de-sexualized (or, at any rate, sexually sublimated) lesbianism that seems to be a foundation of Sonia's relationship with Dee. That's what Clarissa's relationship what her partner seemed to have become. In the film, when it's even hinted that Virginia Woolf is a sexual being, she's always depicted as a kind of dyke manque, and that is presented as the driving force behind her relationships with people as well as her depression, work and suicide.

And, I think Sara herself would even admit that she was drawn in, and is now entangled by, someone who's an inverse image of me--or, perhaps, herself.