Riding On Race Memory

The other day, I took a ride I hadn’t taken in a long, long time.

I ended up in Long Branch, New Jersey, as I’d planned.  I rode there back in December.  But I made a wrong turn just as I was leaving the industrial and post-industrial necropolis of north-central New Jersey took a very different route from the one I’d planned.  I didn’t mind: It was a very satisfying ride that took me away from the traffic streaming in and out of the shopping malls that day, the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend.

But Sunday I took the route I rode so many times in my youth, through the weathered Jersey Shore communities that line Route 36 from Keyport to the Highlands.  So much was as I remembered it from the last time I rode it, twenty years ago, and the first time I rode it, twenty years before that. Then I crossed over the arched bridge that spans the Shrewsbury River where it empties into Sandy Hook Bay and drops into the spit of land that separates the river and bay from the Atlantic Ocean.  

At the top of the bridge, the ocean stretches as far as you can see. Whether it was bluer than any eye or stone I’ve ever seen, or grayer than steel, nothing made me better than seeing it and descending that bridge.

Here is something I wrote about the experience of doing that ride for the first time as a woman named Justine—after many, many journeys as a boy and man named Nick:

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Yesterday’s ride brought back memories of the race.

I did not make the turn.  I could not.  I did not for many, many years.  But yesterday I did.

Either way meant pedaling uphill.  To the left I went.  Two hills, instead of one.  Between them, a brief flat, where I could regain some of the momentum I’d lost.

But the climbs were neither as long nor as steep as I remembered.  I forgot that I’m not in as good shape as I was the last time I did this ride, this race, more than twenty years ago.  

To get to the ocean and back.  That was all I had to do in those days.  To the ocean and back before dark, before the air grew as cold and night as false as the water, as the reflections on it:  my reflections.

All I had to do was get back for dinner.  At least, that’s all I was told to do.  Sunday; you simply did not miss dinner.  You couldn’t even be late for it.  So there was only so much time to get there, to get to the ocean and back.

I am pedaling on memory now.  My body’s memory:  the only kind.  The first time I did this ride, when I was a teenager.  The last time, twenty years later, twenty years ago.

Before the memory, I knew nothing.  I could only move ahead, I could only pedal.  Gotta make it.  I could not stop. My memory of this ride, this race, could not, could not let me.  You will.  I could not hear; when you’re in this race, you can’t.

On that flat between the climbs, a woman walked toward me.  She says something; I can only see her.  She knows me perfectly well; I don’t.  She does not stop me; I cannot.

She would climb these hills many more times.  You’ll make it!  How does she know?  I have no other choice.

The climb is easier when you have a memory of the race.  It’s inevitable.  You couldn’t go any other way.  There is only the race, the climb, that ends at a bridge that you’ll cross because there is no other way over the bay, to the ocean.  

Because I made the turn. Because I couldn’t have gone any other way.  Not when a teenaged boy’s elbows and knees slung him forward on his saddle and up the hills.  Not when the memory of a woman in late middle age, the electricity in her flesh—his flesh—guides the wheels beneath her, beneath him, over the bridge and to the ocean.

The day is clear.  Reflections of the sun pulse; she moves the weight of his bones down a narrow strip between the bay and the ocean all the way to the end.  His end, where he turned around for the race.  He would have to get there and back while he could; she knew he would but he could not.  He could not have known.  He could only push; he could only pump.

The sunset is even clearer.  Weathered houses stand ready; the abandoned ones lost to the tides.  I am pedaling into the wind but my bike rolls as easily and smoothly over cracked asphalt as boats, sails like wings fluttering between ripples of water and clouds. 

They will reach their shores, whoever is guiding them, whoever guided them years ago.  I came to the end of yesterday’s ride on my memory of a race:  the teenaged boy who first followed these roads, the young man who did not know how to turn; the man who would not—and, finally, twenty years later, the woman who could not.  She crossed the bridge to the ocean. 

Yesterday I rode on the memory of that race, the race that I am.

The Real Jersey Shore

Today I had lunch with Mom and Dad in Jersey.  As it was cold and windy, and they're not used to this sort of weather anymore (and, shall we say, a few years older than I am!), we didn't do much else.  Normally, when they come up for a visit, we go for a walk on or by the beaches, and perhaps shopping.


They spent Thanksgiving with my brother and in-laws.  As I'm not invited there, and Dad doesn't want to drive into the city (for which I can't blame him, frankly), we usually meet as we did today.  Although our meeting wasn't very long, I didn't mind, as I was in a really good mood, as they were. Plus, I'm going to spend Christmas with them.


I've decided, though, that the next time I go out that way, I want to ride my bike.  I used to do that fairly often when Mom and Dad were still living in Jersey and my brother and I still had a relationship. It's about 40 to 45 miles one way, depending on which route I took.  So I would ride out on a Saturday (or Friday, if I had the day off) and ride back on Sunday (or Monday, if it was a holiday).  A couple of times, on summer days with long hours of daylight, I started riding at dawn or earlier and start riding home late in the afternoon.


When Mom and Dad were waiting with me for the bus I would ride home, I noticed something odd.  The place where the bus stops is Airport Plaza in Hazlet.  It was actually an airport, back in the early days of aviation.  Today it's a drab little shopping center that, as merchants come and go and the place undergoes one facelift or another, always manages to look, or at least seem, the same.  I say that from middle age, having seen the place ever since my teen years.


Actually, very little ever seems to change in that part of the Jersey Shore.  It's about ten miles from the ocean at Sandy Hook, but it's less than half a mile from Raritan Bay, which is an inlet of the ocean.  The funny thing is that if one crosses the bay, it's less than fifteen miles to New York.   But the irregularity of the coastline makes an overland journey, even on the Turnpike and Garden State Parkway, three times as long.


Some condos have been built along the bay in Keansburg.  But along the side streets that lead out to Route 36, one finds the same drab-to-shabby houses inhabited by, it seems, the same families who were blue-collar when I was living there and still are if the men still have their jobs.  As often as not, their sons don't have jobs and their daughters have either gotten out of the neighborhood or have had more kids than they could afford.  And, along Route 36, building-supply and furniture stores come and go with ice cream stands that are closed now for the season; between them, scrubby trees gnarl and bend on marshland that was drained and abandoned.


I wish I could have lived my entire life as female.  But I wouldn't have wanted to live it there.  Even the town where my family and I lived during my teen years, which is on the other side of Route 36 and more working-to-middle-class (and from which most of my female classmates went to college), was oppressive enough for any female, whether or not she was living in a body congruent with her gender.  So, for that matter, was the part of Brooklyn in which we had been living before we moved to Jersey.


To indulge in a cliche, those places and people helped to make me who and what I am now.  That is the reason I can return, but only briefly.  And you can return only because you've left.  

A Journey Through Change: It Remains The Same

Today I took the longest ride I've taken since my surgery. I pedalled about 40 miles and more or less reprised a ride I did once just before Memorial Day, and once again shortly afterward. I'll probably sleep very, very well tonight!

After crossing the Queensboro (a.k.a. "59th Street") Bridge, I rode up Third Avenue to East Harlem, where I traversed Manhattan on 119th Street. Then, I pedalled along the streets that box in Mount Morris Park and made another turn onto a street full of beautiful brownstones, which I followed to St. Nicholas Avenue. I used to ride that way often when I was working for Macmillan Publishing, on 53rd Street and Third Avenue, and living in Washington Heights.

With all of the changes that have overtaken the rest of Manhattan--Most of the places in which I lived and worked are all but unrecognizable--the St. Nicholas corridor looks much as it did long ago. The people all look either very young or very old; most of the buildings are sad and worn, though seemingly not much more so than they were back in the day. Among those sooty brick tenements, on the right side (as you go uptown) of the avenue, there's a place called Alga Hotel which, remarkably, looks as it did all of those years ago. Its exterior is painted an almost-tropical shade of electric blue, which is utterly incongruous with its surroundings but wouldn't look out of place in Miami Beach or some other place with lots of warm weather and Art Deco architecture.

It has been at least twenty-five years since I first saw the place. I don't recall it painted in any other color, and it never looks particularly worn or weathered. However, it has always looked sad. It's tempting to say that the place seems sad and forlorn in spite of its bright exterior. However, I think that hue actually adds to, or helps to create, the aura of gloom because it so belies what I imagine the inside to be like: I have no proof, but somehow I have always guessed that it was and is a welfare hotel or one of those places that charges by the hour.

Anyway, the neighborhoods are much as I remember them, save for Columbia-Presbyterian's research building, which stands on the site once occupied by the Audubon Ballroom--where Malcolm X was assassinated--and always seems to be expanding. A few more blocks up, I came to the entrance ramp for the George Washington Bridge's walkway. I don't think I can recall seeing so many cyclists or pedestrians, not even in May or June. Then again, I'm not surprised: The temperature rose to about 75 F (24C), the warmest we've had in months. Many of those cyclists were, I'm sure, on their bikes for the first time this year. I haven't ridden a whole lot more than they've ridden!

From the Jersey side of the bridge, I rode past immaculate and sometimes ostentatious houses and stores that had little charm save for the fact that they line the ridge of the Palisades and offer spectacular views of the Hudson River and the city. The streets full of those houses and stores climb the rock outcroppings and end in James J. Braddock Park, a rather charming spot that features, among other things, baseball fields, picnic areas and a pond. Until I Googled his name, I didn't realize Braddock was a boxer. (Then again, I know practically nothing about the sport.) He defeated Max Baer for the heavyweight title he lost two years later to Joe Louis.

The last time I rode through that park, the sun was setting and it was Saturday night. As I pedalled through it this afternoon, the sun shone brightly and spring was beginning.

I continued my ride through North Bergen, Weehawken and Union City, where most of the signs were in Spanish and the air filled with the aroma of roasting meat and spicy sandwiches and tortillas. The next time I ride that way, I'm going to stop in one of those cafes.

Finally, I reached the Hoboken waterfront, where I slurped down an Italian ice--half wild black cherry, the other half vanilla-- from Rita's. They were giving out ice free samples, and the one I got was very good. I'll be stopping there, too, on my next ride.

I never saw that promenade so filled with people as it was today. It wasn't just an unusually warm and sunny day for this time of year, or simply the first day of spring; it was one of those days most people would have prized at just about any time of the year.

The waterfront promenade in Jersey City was also thronged. I could almost feel the Beatles' Here Comes The Sun playing in the background: People seemed joyful, or at least relieved. This winter, while colder than last winter, still was not unusually so. However, we had two blizzards and one other major snowstorm, and most of the weather between those snowfalls was simply dreary. If this winter was a war, people were acting as if they were seeing the Armistice when in fact today and the past couple of days might be more like a truce or a cease-fire.

After I left Jersey City, a fairly brisk wind began to blow from the southeast and into my face. I pedalled into that wind through Bayonne and over the eponymous bridge into Staten Island. Then, along Richmond Terrace, which winds along New York Bay-- where one can see rusted hulks of containers and the ships onto which they were loaded or from which they were unloaded-- until the road makes a sharp turn just before reaching Snug Harbor, a mansion owned by the Vanderbilts and surrounded by some of the most beautiful and interesting gardens one will find. When it's open, you can see more than 400 species of roses, among other plants, as well as one of the best views of New York's harbor and skyline.

Just past Snug Harbor was a donut shop where I've stopped on previous rides. The proprietor, an older Italian man who always seemed to remember me even when a long time passed between visits, always allowed me to use his remarkably clean bathroom even though an "Out of Order" sign always hung on its door and I saw him refuse other customers. And I would always buy a cup of tea and a pastry that looked and tasted like a cross between a pain au chocolat and a cinnamon roll for my trip on the Staten Island Ferry, which was only a couple of blocks away.

However, that donut shop is gone now, just nine months after the last time I stopped there. In its place is a "gourmet" food shop. Why does every other little convenience store have to call itself that?

And here is something else I don't remember from the last time I took this ride: the security measures you have to go through in order to get on the ferry. You're allowed through a checkpoint and ordered into a waiting area, which consists of a few benches in front of a security guards' booth, and a bicycle rack off to the side. All of this is ringed by fences, into which a guard brought what looked like a Labrador to sniff my bike. Other cyclists, who came a few minutes after me, got the same treatment. It all felt rather like entering an airport staffed by junior high school substitute teachers.

The ferry ride itself remains one of the best things in this world one can do for free. The boat docked at the ancient pier and gangplank, which led to a new ferry and subway terminal that had just opened not long before the last time I did this ride.

Now I wonder about some of the other rides I did regularly before my surgery. Will anything along those routes have changed during the months and seasons that have passed?

On Same-Sex Marriage And New Jersey

While I was enjoying my time with Dwayne the other day, something that disturbed him, me and many other people we know was happening on the other side of the Hudson River.

As many of you know by now, the so-called gay marriage bill was defeated in New Jersey. In many ways, that's a disappointment, but in still other ways, it's not a surprise.

Let me clarify something: I don't necessarily think that a law that gives a person the right to marry someone of his or her gender is itself a solution to the problem of inequality, simply because I don't think governments should be in the business of defining or sanctifying marriages. I don't understand how, in a country whose constitution specifies a separation of church and state, clergypeople have, in essence, the power to decide who is and isn't married. I mean, if two people are married by their priest or rabbi or whomever, those two newly-married people have over a thousand legal rights that non-married people don't have--all because of a clergy member's say-so.

In that sense, clergypeople not only decide who is married; in doing so, they decide on which people are first- and second-class citizens. That is to say, they're helping, wittingly or not, to administer a form of apartheid.

On the other hand, given the legal, political, social and economic systems we have, so-called "gay marriage laws" may be the best we can hope for.

One of the reasons why voters in several states and state legislatures in others have voted against laws to give someone the right to marry someone of his or her own gender is that the laws are written, and presented to the public, as gay marriage laws. Thus, some people think that gays are getting "special treatment" with a law that defines their right to marry. The reality is that gays who want to marry are simply looking for the same rights as those enjoyed by married heterosexual people.

So, even though laws defining the right to same-sex marriage may be the better alternative in this society, the drafting, voting on and passing or defeating such legislation is premised on a major flaw in the current marriage laws, and the way people think about them.

As I said earlier, current laws give undue power to clergy people. That, in turn, amplifies the power government has over a segment of people's lives: marriage. I, for one, happen to think that governments should have no power to decide who is and isn't married. Furthermore, I don't think any government should give people special privileges simply for being married.

The very same people who think that gays are asking for "privilege" are the ones who themselves enjoy over a thousand privileges the government bestows upon them for being married. A good number of those privileges are financial, courtesy of tax laws and such.

If governments are going to have any power at all over unions between people, it should be limited to the equivalent of civil unions. If two people want to hook up, that should be their right. But they shouldn't get any tax breaks or preferences for tying the knot or for having kids. After all, that is a choice. (Funny, how some of the people who take those privileges for granted claim that homosexuality--or transgenderism--is a "lifestyle choice.")

Of course, in order to realize the vision I have just described, an entire legal and economic order will have to be dramatically re-structured. And, until that re-structuring takes place, LGBT people will still be second-class citizens. So, perhaps, having laws that allow gays to marry is the best we can do until that change comes about.

Now, I want to offer some of my own thoughts as to why the bill was defeated in New Jersey.

My family moved to New Jersey from Brooklyn in 1971. I spent my high-school years in Middletown and went to Rutgers University in New Brunswick. My parents lived in 'Jersey for more than two decades before moving to Florida; one of my brothers lives in the so-called Garden State now. So I can say that I don't have the condescending, snobbish view that many New Yorkers have of the place.

People who aren't familiar with the state think that it's all part of the New York Metropolitan Area and therefore shares the Big Apple's social diversity and the social tolerance they attribute to the city. New Jersey does indeed have quite a few gay people. But most of them live in a few neighborhoods of Hoboken, Jersey City and Plainfield, and some spend weekends or holidays in Asbury Park. Even in those enclaves, gay people don't live as openly as they do in Chelsea or even in Jackson Heights. Part of that has to do with the fact that most of the gay residents of New Jersey are male and living in couples: People tend to live quieter lives under such circumstances. But there is also a largely unspoken and almost entirely unwritten expectation that they will live that way.

This expectation stems, in part, from the fact that New Jersey is, for the most part, a suburban state. People move there to get a little more space than they would have in the city and, very often, to stake out a part of the American Dream for themselves. The price of admission consists of their down payments and mortagages on their homes.

A large part of homeowners' time and energies--not to mention their incomes--is directed to their stake in the dream. For most, that is the sum total of their net worth. Such circumstances make people fearfully protective of not only their properties and investments themselves, but also of anything they fear will devalue that investment or encroach upon the status they have attained by building a middle-class family and home life.

Such a way of thinking can very easily, and often does, turn into a siege mentality: I worked for this. Nobody gave me any special consideration. Why should anyone else get it (I can't begin to tell you how many times I've heard that, almost verbatim.) In New Jersey, such fears and resentments are exacerbated by the fact that New Jersey homeowners pay the highest property taxes in the nation. Plus, there is the relatively high cost of living and, for many, the high cost of commuting to their jobs (and paying an additional tax if that job happens to be in New York). And, finally, if they have kids--which nearly all of them do--there is that cost.

People in that situation feel that they're working harder and paying more than anyone else, and are not getting any special consideration for it. So they look at gay people, most of whom don't have kids, and feel resentment. That homeowner who's raising kids somehow feels that his or her taxes are subsidizing the life of libertine privilege they imagine that gays live, just as those same suburban homeowners feel (rightly so, I might say) that they are financing the incompetence and corruption for which New Jersey's largest cities are famous.

In brief, they feel--with at least some justification--that they're paying for people who don't pay their share. To see anyone else share the privilege they enjoy is, to their minds, an affront to their hard-working, law-abiding ways.

In addition to the large swaths of suburbia, there's a part of rural southern New Jersey that actually falls below the Mason-Dixon line. The Ku Klux Klan had active chapters there and in other parts of the state before World War II, and New Jersey was believed to have the largest Klan membership of any state north of the Potomac. The Klan has had a resurgence there in recent years, and in recent elections has supported various candidates, mainly those who oppose immigration.

This isn't to say that New Jersey is Alabama North. But it isn't Massachusetts South, either. So, at least to me, it's not such a surprise that the state allows civil unions for same-sex couples, but not same-sex marriages. So, as is typical of governments, the New Jersey State Legislature applied the right idea (civil unions) for the wrong reasons to one group of people and, as a result, merely elevated them from third- to second-class citizens rather than to equality. And they voted against the solution that, in a corrupt and cumbersome system, was the best chance at achieving equality.