Stories of Men And Women

Nobody's a hero; nobody's decorated.  Nobody's remembered...at least not the men, anyway.  Now that everybody who was related to me--that I know of, anyway--is gone, I hope nobody on this block remembers me, either.  It's a privilege I could've claimed for myself the day I left, no matter where I went next.


But of course I didn't have to.  That may be the one advantage I have as a result of growing up here:  I've never had to claim privilege; I've never had to pull rank on anyone.  At least, I've never felt any such need.  You might say that I'm not impressed with people or with anything they do; I'm even less awed by men and their stories.  That isn't to say that I fear no one:  I simply have a pretty good idea of who can or can't, or who will or won't, do what, and to whom or what.


So there're lots of things I've never had any use for.  Like most of the things they tried to teach me in school--or, more precisely, most of the things they were supposed to make gestures of teaching me and I was supposed to make them think I'd learned--and everything I heard in church.  The canons of the academies and monasteries echo thousands of lies and even more exaggerations and misrepresentations.  No one you will ever meet is like anyone you read about in any history book or any epic tale, whether it's Beowulf, The Deerslayer or All Quiet On The Western Front.  The ballads I had to hear and the paintings we looked at in textbooks and school trips to museums were all about generals, emperors or mystic visionaries:  all about solitary men leading lonely young men to their deaths, in the fields or in the trenches, or at their own hands.  No man like any of those characters or figures ever came from this block--or, for that matter, any other blocks like this one that I've seen or heard about.


Who's ever written an opera about a woman and her cat?  Or a woman and another woman, or a woman and her children?  About the latter, there's the story of Mary and Jesus.  Of course!:  two people who never could have existed on this block.  Not only is he too good to be true, she...well, let's say she contradicts one of the few relevant facts that's ever been taught in any science class!


Why can't we have a religion--if we have to have one--based on the story of a woman and her cat?  At least someone could get that one right, I think.  I don't believe anyone could set down the story of a woman and her child, and whenever anybody's set down the story of a woman and a woman, it sounds like a man's fantasy.  (Trust me.  I know the difference:  I've had lots of time--and more opportunities than anyone should have--to learn.)


But about a woman-and-her-cat tale:  If someone could write it, that person is not me.  I've never kept a feline, at least not long enough to have such a relationship.  The one time I had one--a gray, smoky shadow I never named--I ended up giving him to an old woman.  It just didn't seem fair to make that cat dependent on someone like me; it was no more fair to the cat than my dependence on my mother, for so many years, was to her.  Since then, I've done my best to avoid creating any need for me in any other living being.


Even if I'd had a cat, a child, or any other permanent companion, I couldn't have written about me and him, her or it.  Maybe, as people have told me,  if I'd stayed in school, I'd've learned how to put some experiences--my own and those of others--on a page, or even between the covers of a book.  There's so much I never learned.  As a kid, I asked myself, "Why should I?"  "So I could write the kinds of things they made us read?," I wondered.  "Or to play what they taught us was music, or how to say their prayers?"  


So now I have practically no education and, as far as most educated people are concerned, I'm illiterate, or close to it.  Still, I've managed to read a bit since I stopped going to school.  I've even finished a few books, a couple of plays and a whole bunch of poems:  something I never accomplished when I was in school.  I'm not going to explain or analyze anything I've read:  Anything I could say about them isn't that important and probably has already been said.  I don't know.  Maybe I'd've stuck with school or "done something with" myself if I'd've known, while I was still in school, that such pieces of writing existed.  Let's just say that they're not about war heroes, and they're not the sorts of things that give men excuses for belieiving that women are neurotic.


I don't think anybody on this block has read them.  Living on this block isn't like being in one of those neighborhoods where people spend their Sundays talking about what was in The Times Book Review over brunch.  (I had never heard of brunch when I was growing up!)  I don't think even Mrs. Littington--who'd seen more of the world than most of us and spoke at least two languages--had ever read them.  (I can only hope that she didn't have to read some of those really awful books and even worse translations they tried to shove down my throat:  their Bible, for instance.)  


As far as I know, the male gender has produced three real poets--at least, when it comes to writing about other men.  One of them--who actually could create convincing female characters, too--wrote Othello, The Tempest and Macbeth, and of course a whole bunch of sonnets.  Another wrote some fine poetry and Les Miserables. And, finally, there's the one who wrote about Don Quixote.  I'll pass on the rest.  Just for once, I want a story about a woman opening--or closing--her window.

Rain and Earthquakes

The semester is just about over.  I'll be teaching a summer class, but I will have a few days off in between.  Hopefully, it will be enough time to regroup, or whatever you want to call it.


Not that it's been a bad semester.  At least, not for teaching, anyway.  And people at my second job have been treating me well, for the most part.  I really wish it could be my full-time job.  


But that job has been unusual in some ways.  I guess that's inevitable, since it was the first place in which I was hired after my surgery.  And it's also the first place in which I'm working without my history as Nick.  I have his expereinces and abilities (such as they are), but I have not been talking about them as much as I had been.  And, at the new job, I have not talked about my gender identity to my students, though some know about it.  I mean, out of a few thousand students, faculty and staff, it's hard not to believe that at least one hasn't typed my name into a Google search bar and come up with this blog, among other things.


Has it made me a better or worse instructor?  I'm not sure.  Somehow I feel, though, that in not disclosing the fact that I lived as a guy named Nick, or discussing some of the experiences that were part of it, my life has become subliminal source material  for my teaching.


And even though some people on my second job have been very warm and friendly toward me, I still am scarred by some of the things that happened on my other job, where I've worked for the past six years.  I have experienced various betrayals and back-stabbings and, every day, I have to walk by the security guard who sexually harassed me.  


In the meantime, I've had three students in one of my classes whom I would swear were sexually molested or assaulted.  Actually, I know one was:  She told me herself.  But for the other two, I can sense the violence so intensely that I'd be willing to bet that something happened to them, probably when they were children.  One of them, whom I'll call Rachel, wrote her paper comparing Desdemona's relationship with Othello, and Emilia's to Iago, with that of an abused woman to her abuser.  


The thing is, she seemed to know, very intimately, what it's like to be a battered spouse, or anyone battered.    And she has the painfully diffident look and manner of someone whose sense of herself is debased daily by those with whom she lives.


Rachel uncannily reminds me of a girl I knew in high school.  I'll call her Norma.  She had that same look and manner Rachel has.  Another trait they have in common is their intelligence:  Sometimes I think it must be painful to be as smart as they are. 


I hope to see Rachel again.  In some way, I'd like to reassure her that things--and she--are going to be all right or that, at least, they can be.  

Seeing By The Light of Othello

It's cold and I'm really tired.  Charlie curls up on me and falls alseep; I also find myself drifting off.

It's that time in the semester when you read papers from a stack and, just when you think you're finished, the stack grows.

Some things never end:  like LGBT kids getting abuse and worse from family members and school mates, not to mention teachers. Yesterday, one of my students talked to me about it.  She's ostracized  for wearing baggy men's clothing, and her conservative mother--who comes from a culture not noted for its tolerance of queer people--has been telling her "I wanted a girl, not a boy!"

She said something else I found interesting, in reference to a video of Shakespeare's Othello:  "It's so gay.  Didn't anyone else see that?"

She had missed the previous class when I mentioned that some commentators have suggested that Iago tries to destroy Othello's marriage to Desdemona, not so he can have her to himself, but so he can have Othello to himself, if you know what I mean.  I'm not the first one who's ever mentioned that possiblity:  One of my profs did, more years ago than I'll admit, and I've read that interpretation of Iago's motives elsewhere.

What's even more interesting, to me, is that the student told me that Othello, which she was reading for the first time, is the first work of literature she found interesting, and the first thing she was ever assigned to read in any class and didn't hate.

I believe her, if for no other reason that I simply can't imagine her flattering someone.  She is angry over the way she's been treated, and I can't say I blame her.  But, I know that whatever her quirks and flaws may be, she has integrity, and that she's not simply going through a phase, in expressing herself as she does.

All right...Maybe I'll take that back.  Maybe she was trying to flatter me, in a way:  Expressing what she feels about Othello may have been a way of getting my attention.  When she pronounced the "gayness" of the film we saw, I could tell she was looking to me for something--perhaps simply a non-judgmental ear--that she couldn't get from her family or peers.

Somehow I get the feeling that she's going to find other readings interesting and even entertaining.  And she'll know that she's going to need them, and the lessons she learns from them, to help her through one thing and another.    After all, I reminded her, she'll have to be smarter and better-informed about everything because of what she is.