Returning To Where I Don't Have The Choice of Anonymity

I can't believe so much time has passed since my last post on this blog.  The new semester is already a month old, which means that about a quarter of it has passed.  All of the class sizes increased by 25 percent this year, but it seems that I'm grading twice as many papers as I did last year.  


Apart from the beauty and energy of Prague, another thing I loved about my trip there was that I was utterly anonymous.  I didn't know a soul when I got off the plane there; nobody knew me.  I met some people and disclosed my past to three of them.  Two of them, Martina and Eva (Weird, how that name always seems to pop up in my life!) are a couple and, really, I didn't have to tell them anything; they knew.  And Spencer, the guy at the bike rental shop talked about gay friends and acquaintances and just seemed like a safe person to talk to.


At the Pride March, I didn't tell anyone about myself, but some of them had to have known.  After all, why else would I have marched with them?  To tell you the truth, it really didn't matter there, anyway.  Actually, it didn't really matter anywhere I went in Prague.  The people I met elsewhere extended the same sorts of courtesies to me that they would extend to any middle-aged woman in that city.  Perhaps I was the proverbial old lady in tennis shoes.


But now that I've been back, I'm around lots of people who know that I've transitioned.  Maybe that's why I sometimes feel as if I'm in my past, as if I were in high school, or even junior high school, again.  The difference is that nobody I see every day can be a role model for me.  Actually, nobody in my pubescent and teen years could have done that for me, either, but at least I could still live the illusion that such a thing was possible.  No, that's not quite right--I just did live that illusion, to the degree that I could.  I didn't know, and nobody else could have shown me, any other way at that time.


What this means is that, apart from having a job and whatever satisfaction I can gain from interactions with my students, there really isn't anything else for me on my job.  I cannot rise to any higher a position than the one I now have, and it's not likely that I'm going to teach any different courses or get involved in any different projects from the ones I've already done.  And the idea of going for another degree--at least another academic or a law degree--has absolutely no appeal for me.  Been there, done that.


Here is something I hadn't anticipated:  People who met me during some early or middle stage of my transition are (that is to say, most of my co-workers at York College), I find, far more presumptuous in their dealings with me than those who've met me recently or who knew me when I was still Nick (the ones who are still in my life, anyway).  I find that when I'm among some of the co-workers I met when I first started teaching as Justine, the spectre of my transition still hangs over everything.  Sometimes it's mentioned, though not by me.  


Plus, I notice that a lot of people, particularly in the administration, are imposing their religious beliefs on the life of the school at the same time they're using the students, whom they despise, to help them trump up charges against profs they don't like.  For one thing, I don't know how they're getting away with so much public religiosity in a state-sponsored institution.  For another, as they are behaving in the ways I've described, I can only imagine what else might be going on "behind the scenes."


How do you represent an institution of education, or the institution of education itself, when the people who run it--who are supposedly educated themselves--behave in such ways?  And, oh, should I mention that they're utterly homophobic.  They've stifled every attempt to start an LGBT organization on campus, and they don't want any public discussion of the issue.  I offered to take the "Safe Zone" training, at my own expense if necessary, so that I could make my office space a "safe haven" for students.  They said it was "too controversial;" never mind it's done at every other college in New York City.


Right now I just want to be in some quiet place, not in conferences and seminars, not behind a podium and talking to a bunch of people, not having to flatter people with whom I have absolutely nothing in common and who aren't listening. Better to be anonymous, even invisible.  

You Do It So It Won't Be A Big Deal

I'm still thinking about the experience I had the other day at my new part-time (one class, to be precise) gig.  There is an irony to it that I'm seeing just now:  In some way, my gender reassignment surgery didn't make that much difference--at least in that situation--and that is what I wanted.


And that is the very reason why I made the changes I've made.


In other words, I was able to have a teach, walk around, have a snack and sit in the summer afternoon sun among hundreds of young people--and I was nothing more than a middle-aged woman, if I was noticed at all.  If any of them noticed me, he or she might've thought I was a professor, simply because I am older than them and wasn't wearing a uniform of some kind.  Actually, that happens even when I'm not working:  People often take me for an educator of some sort, or a writer, and I don't try to project either.


But I realized that what I was experiencing was, in at least some way, the point of my surgery and all of the things that led up to it:  I wasn't seeking a different life so much as I wanted simply to experience life as the person I am, in a body that is a reflection of it.  And that is exactly what happened the other day.  I wasn't explaining, or apologizing for, myself--and nobody demanded those things of me.  


That's not to say that I want to leave everybody and everything I've ever known.  Some trans people do that after their surgeries, or even while they're preparing for it, and it doesn't always turn out well.  Plus, when you get to a certain age, it's not as feasible simply because it's more difficult to start over.  I want to be around people for whom my transition--if they know about it--will not be an issue. Such has been the case with my old friends who've remained with me as they were friends of Nick.  For them, there's not so much difference, except that I've been happier, so--as they say--they like my company more.  And, of course, my parents have been supportive even when they haven't been approving.  That in itself is a testament to what kind of people they are, and why I'm not going to leave them behind.  (Actually, I don't think I could, even if I wanted to.)


But then there are people--including some at my regular job--who see me only in terms of my transition, even if they never knew me as Nick.  And then there are the ones who really leave me confused and frustrated:  They were fine with me until either:  a. I got my current position there or b. I got my operation.  I've mentioned some of them, if not by name, on other posts.  As I've mentioned, they can be treacherous.   What I've learned is that they haven't changed:  I'm simply seeing a part of them I might not have seen otherwise.  


At least I know that it doesn't have to make a difference.  After all, I'm getting to live as the person I always knew myself to be.  I'll still have that when those people are no longer in my life.

Getting Out: Anonymity In Chelsea

Another gorgeous spring day when I couldn't ride and all I could do was read a bunch of papers.  So what's a girl to do?


Well, between papers, I did some saddle shopping.  It's scary to have to start over again, trying a whole bunch of different saddles.  Well, I hope I don't have to do that.  I'm looking at the ones with the cutouts:  what are sometimes called the "donut" saddles.  They're what Dr. Ronica recommends.  I want something that fits, but I don't want hideous graphics, either.  That was one nice thing about the Brooks saddles:  They always looked good.


It seemed like everyone in New York was riding bikes today.  Everyone except me, that is.


I took some time off (for good behavior?) to run an errand.  I sold two of my Brooks saddles on eBay and I promised the guys who bought them that I'd ship them tomorrow.  This semester, I've had some time late Monday afternoons when there weren't department or college meetings.  But then I remembered that tomorrow I have an appointment with the ophthalmologist after work.  So, I decided to go to the main post office in Manhattan to mail those saddles.  


That post office is the only one I know of that's open on Sundays.  Besides, it's a beautiful building, and it's right across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.   All you have to do is walk in any direction from it to find something to amuse, annoy, shock, entertain or endanger you.  


So I strolled down Eighth Avenue toward, then past, the Fashion Institute of Technology.  I taught there one semester--a geological age ago, it seems.  While there, I dated another part-time faculty member who was divorced and about a decade older than me.  Back in those days, I was the "before" photo:  a triangular torso and a shock of a beard along my jawline and chin.  I really fit in!


Anyway, one day, she and I went to an exhibit that was held at FIT.  I forget what, exactly, the theme was, but I recall seeing dresses from 200 years ago or thereabouts in France and England.  I pointed to one.  "That one's beautiful," I exclaimed.  Catching myself, I intoned, "I'd be interested to know how they made it."


"No," Lea said.  "You want to wear it."


That was the only time that my gender identity ever figured, in any way, into any of our conversations.  But, it seemed that it was rearing its head any time I entered or left the campus.  You see, it's near the end of Chelsea.  Because I was in such good shape in those days, I had at least one man approach me for sex any time I walked that stretch of Eighth Avenue.  


And, when I first started to venture out "as" Justine, some guy would hit on me.  Some of those men took me for a drag queen, if not a very glamorous one.  (Wearing lots of glitter never appealed to me.)  I don't think they were the sorts of guys who liked transsexual women:  It's been my experience that such men usually aren't gay.   The guys who were hitting on me in those days thought I was one of them.  I might've spent the night with one or two of them, but in those days I wouldn't simply because I didn't want to see myself as anything but a heterosexual male--albeit one who knew that A-line didn't refer to a segment of the New York City transit system.  


Today I walked down that way for no particular reason except that it's pleasant on a day like today.  (Then again, what isn't?)  I practically brushed elbows with dozens of gay men who were coming as I was going, or vice versa, depending on your point of view.  


Not one of them paid me any mind--at least not that I noticed.  What's really ironic, though, is that it didn't upset me.  At other times, I fret when I think I'm not being noticed, at least a little.  Lots of us go through that when we know we're aging and we don't look the way we once did.  Then again, I don't have a memory of myself as young and pretty.  I wasn't really good-looking as a man; whatever attractiveness I had came from my physical conditioning.


So...I walked down eight city blocks and not one man paid attention to me.  Funny, how that, in other circumstances, could be a source of sadness for me or other women.  Or it could cause us to feel relieved, especially if the streets were in a rougher neighborhood or the guys were drunk.  But today I experienced what may be the ultimate irony:  I walked by hundreds of men, and they walked by me without giving me a second glance, or even noticing me in the first place---and I took it as an affirmation of my womanhood.  Who'd've guessed that I could go to Chelsea to be sexually anonymous?!