Always The Same: Revelations And Changes

Parisians and psychotherapists disappear for the month of August.  Sometimes I think of myself as a Parisian in spirit,even though I haven't been in eight years, but I have no illusions of being a psychotherapist.  So what's my excuse for being somewhat conspicuously absent this month?

Well, I've managed to be busy with other things, including writing projects.  Hopefully they'll remunerate me; for now I find them rewarding.  And, frankly, when I haven't been doing those things--or riding or playing with my cats--I've felt drained, spiritually and emotionally exhausted.  The pastor of the church I started attending a few months ago says I'm healing. She's right.

Still, I've managed, in the past week, to ride to Point Lookout (Nothing like a few hours riding Arielle to make me feel lithe!) and to take a few shorter rides--and to record a few things along the way.

I'll start with something I saw on my way home from some volunteer work:

Sometimes I think archaeology is the step between destruction and forgetfulness.  At least, that's how things seem to work in New York. Sometimes, when a building is torn down, a long-concealed sign,  like the one in the photo, is revealed.  

What particularly intrigued me was the bottom inscription:  "Separate Waiting room for women."  Talk about a relic!  My undergraduate college went co-ed only four years before I enrolled in it.  And, boys and girls entered my Catholic elementary school through separate entrances:  a practice that was abandoned a couple of years after my family moved away.

Given that I lived as a male until ten years ago, it's hard for me not to wonder and imagine what my life would have been like had I entered through the girls' and women's doors.  Of course, had I lived in such a world, I would not have attended the college from which I graduated.  In fact, I might not have attended any college at all.

In those times, I probably would not have witnessed this:

The stretch of Brooklyn waterfront between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges has been turned into a lovely park.  Not long ago, it was off-limits, as the neighborhood around it--DUMBO--still consisted of functioning and recently-ceased manufacturing and warehousing.  This stretch of waterfront, like so much of the rest of New York's shorelines, was used in various ways by those industries.  In fact, most New Yorkers had little or no inclination to spend any time by the water, as it was associated with rough trades and characters.  Fifth Avenue became Manhattan's most-desired address in part because, of all of the island's avenues, it is furthest from the East and Hudson Rivers.

Ah, but some things don't change:

That's one reason why I--and Arielle and, on occasion, Tosca--like to take a spin to Point Lookout.

What Became Of What Never Was

In my last post of the second year of this blog (and the last day in the year of my surgery), I included a poem.  After I posted it, I had a feeling I would change it. 

When you think about it, three years (actually, almost three-and-a-half) isn’t really a lot of time in a poem’s life.  Horace recommended that a poem should be set aside for nine years after it was written.  If, after that time, the poem looks as if it’s transcended whatever the poet felt, thought or experienced at the time he or she wrote it, then it’s ready to see the light of day, according to Horace.

Now, he might not think the poem I mentioned would pass the test.  However, I’ve revised it a bit, so I’m going to post it here:

The End of What Never Was

(To My Parents)

I never could have been the boy

Who climbed trees and played football

Like the one in the photo:  the one

Whose father stood proud, whose mother

Pinned stars and bars to his dress grays.

No, I never could have been a soldier

And I never could have been a sailor.

That young girl standing on the bridge

Exchanging vows under crossed swords:

She could not have known she would never be

My wife, the mother of your grandchildren.

I never could have given her anything except

Your name, and a name that was never mine.

After that, I could only lie to her again.

No, I never could have been her man.

She will never see me; she has never seen this day

The way you never could have foreseen today.

None of us ever could have known

I never could have been your son.

What You Don't Have To Prove

One of the wonderful things about getting older (Notice that I didn't say "old"!) is that confessions don't seem as self-conscious as they do when they're made earlier in one's life.  That may be the reason why they seem more organic, and simply truer, and why people who know you well aren't surprised--or, at least, aren't taken aback--when you make them.


And so it was when I talked to my mother today.  I said that some people--actually, two in particular--seem annoying, if not spiritually and intellectually vexatious to me now.  At one time, I was grateful for them--at least, that's what I told myself and others--because they at least talked to me and seemed to be making efforts at maintaining relationships with me when others fled.  But when I talk to those two people, I hear the same things over and over again.  Whenever I talk to either of them, they seem to have the need to show me how easily they can spot gay people and that they "have nothing against them" although they will adamantly insist that they themselves are straight.


About their claims:  I really don't care.  If they are straight, gay or whatever, it simply doesn't matter to me:  I'm beyond, or at least past, caring about that.  


Now, if either of them wanted to tell me he is gay (and, yes, I have my suspicions), I would be willing to listen and to give advice, if he wants it.  I've had students and other people "come out" to me, or simply confide what others may have already known about them.  One thing I've learned is that when someone like that confesses his or her deepest desires to me, he or she is looking for, or looking to me as, someone who will not be judgmental and who will simply accept what they say.  On the other hand, people like the two I mentioned aren't looking for anything like that:  Instead, they're trying to prove something they wouldn't have to prove to me if it were true.  No one has to prove that he or she accepts someone else; he or she simply accepts that person, or doesn't.  


Perhaps I am being harsh or cruel in thinking that the two people I mentioned--both of whom are known to everyone in my family--are annoying and, worse, willfully unaware of themselves, when they did, in fact, spend time with me early in my current life when other people abandoned me.  Perhaps I am being ungrateful for the small acts of kindness, or at least courtesy, they performed on my behalf.  But now I realize that not only are they annoyances; they can't be trusted.  Their behavior shows a lack of emotional, if not spiritual, integrity.    Being around them could actually be dangerous for me.


My mother told me not to feel guilty.  "You have a few really good friends," she  said.  "And you could make others, if you want to."


Maybe that's what I want.  I feel ready to make a few changes in my life.  My therapist suggested and my social worker (who is a trans man) said that a year or two (or three) after my surgery, I might experience something like what I've just described.  I know that in going through my transition and surgery, I have had to know myself in ways that most people don't have to know themselves.  Others have tried to tell me not to trust my perceptions; they--at least some of them--are the only things that don't fail me, ever. 


Someone told me that I have a kind of integrity that no one else in her life has.  Perhaps.  What I do know is that having had to ask myself some of the questions only I could answer makes the person I once was seem foolish to now.  And, having had to question absolutely everything in my life--and give up much of it--made me realize that the only thing that actually matters in life is life.  That is exactly the reason why I can't see living in any way but one that's true to who and what I am.  


As far as I can tell, the best definition of courage is a willingness to take a stand on one's own life.  I mean, if you won't stand up for that, what else will you stand up for?  I've also learned that truly courageous people don't have to prove their courage to those who have it, and don't expect it of other people.  Instead, it's something one lives by.  I guess I'm just losing my patience with those who won't.  That's the real reason why I find the two people I mentioned so annoying.

How Do You Do, Ma'am?

This is the third time I have come to Florida to see my parents as Justine.  And it's my first visit since my surgery.

Each of my first two visits lasted a week. This is my third (fourth, if you count my arrival) day of this visit.  And I noticed something that I noticed on each of my previous visits:  Everyone addresses me as, "Hello ma'am,"  "How do you do, ma'am?"  (Are they asking for instructions?  Little do they know...I can give them!)  or "Nice day, isn't it, ma'am?"  Once in a while, someone refers to me as "miss."  But every other time, I am presumed to be a woman of a certain age--which, of course, is what I am.

Now, I am long past the thrill of "passing."  In fact, I am grateful that even during my last visit as Nick--the one in which I "came out" to my parents--I didn't even get a second look, much less a squint or furrowed eyebrow, from anyone who asked how "ma'am" was doing.  You see, I have no idea (and, frankly, don't want to have any idea) of what could happen if anyone had any inkling that I was once a native of Mars, so to speak.

It doesn't matter whether I'm wearing a skirt and makeup, or whether I'm in baggy sweats like the ones I wore today.  I still get the same greetings and responses.  The women are almost invariably cordial, and the men are be polite, chauvinistic or solicitous.  Have I become who I am as deeply as I like to believe I have?  Or are people down here less savvy about these things?

Or am I just a parochial Yankee who still carries, in her mind, stereotypes about people in this part of the world?  If  I am, I apologize!

Moving Forward, Again

I feel better after taking a ride today.  Still, I am thinking about Janine and  something both my mother and Millie said yesterday:  "A lot of people have been dying lately."  They have never met each other, but they said, verbatim, the same thing.  That in itself is a little strange.


Then again, they're both, shall we say, a few years older than I am.  And my mother lives in Florida.  So I think that they're both going to see more people dying around them than I could expect to see.


And, yes, it is the very end of fall.  So some living things are supposed to die, or be in the process of dying, now.  


I guess that I could see those deaths as part of a cycle of change.  It's been going on since, well, there have been living beings and seasons.  I'd rather that no one else in my circle dies any time soon.  And that may well come to pass.  But change is unavoidable.  And I've known, ever since I started my transition, and have understood more fully since my surgery, that more is to come.  


Someone with whom I had to break off relations lamented, "Why can't things go back to the way they were before?"  Of course the person who said that is male:  Everyone who's ever said that to me, or whom I've known to say that, was of that gender.


That question, paradoxically, makes two seemingly contradictory traits make sense, and seem entirely congruent with each other.  On one hand, men are said, or expected, to be more decisive and to move headlong in important actions.  On the other, they have a harder time making and keeping emotional commitments.  When you believe that you can return your (or the) past, whether the way it actually was or the way you wish it had been--and perhaps even feel entitled to do so--it's easy easier to take risks about things, but harder to do the same for people.


Women have never been able to "own" the past in the same way as men.  Until recently, they had to relinquish their own names--and most still do--upon uniting with a man.  And while men have typically experienced changes that affected their circumstances (a job lost or gained, for example), women have undergone more changes that fundamentally affect the way they see the world.  For example, most women give, or are at least capable of giving, birth.  And our bodies are more easily traumatized through sexual and other forms of violence.


It seems that for women, the only choices have been to move forward, or to live in the present or the Eternal Present.  Many who settle into lives as Mrs. Man end up doing the latter.  That's not likely to happen to me.  But the present, whatever that means, is also not an option, for it is gone as soon as it happens.  That leaves only the future, and I am just starting to see it now.

Coping

Janine's going to be cremated on Wednesday.  Of course I'm going to send cards to her other friends and family.  But I wish I could be there with them.


Although everyone has to die sooner or later, I can't help but to wonder:  Why her?  Why now?  After all, she's not even a decade older than I am. And she probably made more people happier than I ever will.


Someone once told me that life is the only response to death.  I guess that means that losing one friend means that I should make a new one.  It also means, I believe, that my life is changing, and will continue to change, in ways that I could not have foreseen.  Strange, though, that this is so hard to accept when there are people who are no longer in my life because they decided they didn't want to be after they learned about my changes.




She accepted; others have, too; I will find yet another.  Or so I hope.  I mean, I have some good friends now.  But it never hurts to have another, does it?  

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.

The Lone Cyclist

Yesterday I took a short and totally un-noteworthy ride locally through some local streets between my place and the World’s Fair Marina.   And I finally got the new phone –and phone plan—I’ve needed. 

Today, ironically, I found myself thinking—and talking—about cycling even though I didn’t ride and I spent the afternoon with my parents, who aren’t cyclists in any way, shape or form.

I met them at a place incongruously called Airport Plaza.  For years, it was the first stop for the bus that runs from the Port Authority Terminal, at the western end of Times Square, to the Jersey Shore.  Airport Plaza is one of those shopping plazas—It’s too old and small to be called a mall—that always looked rather forlorn and even a bit dusty even when business was booming.  It always seems to be filled with stores that started a couple of years too late and seem to hang on for a year or two longer than they should.  The Wetson’s restaurant that anchored one end of the plaza during the first few years my family lived in New Jersey may well have been the last of a chain that lost out to McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s about thirty-five years ago.

When Mom and Dad were living in Middletown, I occasionally took the bus I took today, and got off at Airport Plaza.  Other times, I pedaled to their house and spent a night or weekend with them.  When I was at Rutgers, the ride was about thirty or thirty-five miles, depending on which route I took; from New York, I’d pedal about fifty miles by the time I saw them.

Usually, I’d detour a bit through the areas just on the other side of Route 36 from Airport Plaza.  They were webs of streets that paralleled, skirted or ended at Sandy Hook Bay. 

Those streets wove through the towns of Keyport, Keansburg and a section of Middletown that used to be called East Keansburg, but is now called North Middletown.  They were Bruce Springsteen country before anyone heard of him:  Streets lined with houses that were everything from tidy to shabby, depending on the amount of money and time the blue-collar families that inhabited them could or would devote to their care.  Not even the best of them would have been considered for Architectural Digest; the worst looked like somewhat bigger and better versions of the shacks seen in rural Appalachia.

And, yes, it seemed that at any given moment, at least half of the late-teenaged and young adult males were torquing wrenches or strumming guitars or pounding drums in the garages of those houses.  Then, as now, American flags rolled and spilled in the breeze in front of many of the houses; some also had banners for whichever branch of the military in which the fathers or sons served.  Many of those houses also had boats and trailers parked in their driveways. 

In those days, I used to enjoy pedaling along that stretch of the shoreline because the views were actually quite nice and because, in those houses and the people who lived in them, there was an utter lack of pretention—even though I knew most of those people would disagree with me on just about everything. 

Also, while some of those people would swim, sail or do any number of other things in the water, they did not turn it into a commodity.  There was no status in living closer to the water.  So, riding along it was a calming experience.

Oddly enough, it was during those rides that I could most readily imagine myself living as a girl and, later, a woman.  The artist/romantic in me says it had something to do with the waters of the bay and the billowing sails on the boats.  What’s really strange, though, is that I could feel as I did in an environment that could be fairly called “redneck.” 

Along the shoreline, multistory condo buildings and stores have replaced the older one-and two-story, some of which, in their splintered and peeling condition,  looked as if they’d been left there by the tides.

Mom, Dad and I had lunch in Ye Cottage Inn, a restaurant that, so far, has survived the changes.  But, even though it’s been updated and has some nice views from its windows, I have to wonder whether it will survive the changes I’ve described.  The food was pretty good, if unexciting.

The place was about a third full, which, I guess, isn’t bad for a Thursday.  However, about half the people eating there were part of the same group of senior women who seemed to be having their “girls’ lunch.”  And I was the youngest person eating in that restaurant.

Not that I mind older people.  Back in the days when I was riding down that way, I used to enjoy talking with two of my mother’s friends.  In fact, I preferred them to nearly all of my peers. 

But most of the people one sees in that area are very old or very young.  Those shoreline condos are, I’m sure, full of commuters who are young.  There is a ferry nearby that goes to the Wall Street area, so they probably don’t see much of the town besides their condos and the ferry.  When those young execs and execs-in-training are promoted, decide to have families or have some other life-changing event.  Will they stay?  And when those old people die, who will replace them?

Finally…Will anybody there take up cycling?  Although some of the streets are very cyclable, I cannot recall having seen, besides me,  anyone but very young children on bicycles.

If I pedal down there once again, will I be the Lone Cyclist?

Getting Used to Me

The other night, I was talking to an uncle of mine.  Actually, he's the last surviving uncle I have.  And he happens to be my godfather.

I haven't seen him in about a dozen years or so.  So, of course, he has not seen me since I began my transition, much less since my surgery. He's only heard about those things, from me and probably from other members of my family.  

Once during our conversation, he referred to me by my old name.  And, when my aunt called him for something or another, he told her, "Wait until I get off the phone with him."  He apologized; I told him not to worry and not to apologize ever again. "If I saw more of you, I could get used to it," he explained.

I understand what he means, but it seems so odd to me now that anyone would have to "get used to" the fact that I'm a woman named Justine.  I have always known myself to be female, and about a year or so into my current life, I stopped thinking of my old name in connection with myself in my past.  In other words, I would think about the day Justine, not Nick, split up with Tammy or about the bike tours Justine took in France.

What's ironic is that I think now of how much my uncle must have changed since the last time I saw him.  He sounds about the same over the phone, but I don't expect that he would look as he did twelve years ago.  Also, I wonder what he can and can't do as he did back in those days.  He's had some illnesses and was injured in a car crash.  I don't think those experiences have changed his core being, but I'm sure that they've made him different in ways I couldn't detect over the phone.

I wonder whether I might have to "get used" to him.

After Being a Transwoman

I was still fairly woozy for a good part of the day today.  I could stand up and walk, and by early afternoon, I was able to ride my bike to the farmer's market on Roosevelt Island.  It's not much of a ride, but at least I got some much-needed fruits and vegetables.  I'm still amazed at how plentiful and good the strawberries have been so early in the season.  My mother said that, according to the folks at her local farmer's market, the weather caused the crop in Florida to come in later and coincide with the California harvest, which usually comes a bit later.


Still, I can't wait for the local strawberries, cherries, blueberries and pears.  Local, here in New York City, usually means southern New Jersey, central Pennsylvania and upstate New York.


The other things I love at the Roosevelt Island farmer's market are the mushrooms and, in the summer, the corn.  The mushrooms--which include huge white ones as well as nice, meaty Portabellos--are, by far, the best available around here.  I think they come from Pennsylvania.


Whenever I buy mushrooms, I think of something Tammy and I visited in the Loire Valley:  Le musee du Champignon. I never would have believed such a place existed until I saw it, and I cannot imagine it anyplace in the world besides France--specifically, the part of France in which it's located.  So...If I were to die tomorrow, I'd die as a woman who visited the world's only mushroom museum.  Yes, my life would be complete!


I suppose that my transition and surgery have made my life complete, or as whole as they can be.  After all, I feel complete, or at least whole.


Maybe that's the reason why I'm writing less and less about my own transition, surgery or other things related to my gender identity, expression and formulation, if you will.  Maybe there is not as much to say about those things as there was a few months ago, not to mention a year or two ago.  I started this blog to "count down" the last year before my sugery; after the procedure I decided to continue it in order to document the beginning of my life as an "official" woman.  Now I'm experiencing fewer earth-shattering, life-changing events and fully experiencing (and writing about) utterly banal (Notice the last four letters of that word!) events like colonoscopies.


And now here I am, months and years and streets and countries removed from...what?...whatever came before this journey I've undertaken.  There are some people to whom, and places to which, I couldn't return even if I'd wanted to.   I think now of the time I visited Elizabeth while she was teaching in a Turkish university.  Riding down the Aegean coast near Priene, I realized there was nothing to do at that moment but to ride down that coast, past the ruins of ancient cities that were once as important in their era as Florence and Venice were during the Renaissance, Paris through la belle epoque, London in the Victorian era and New York since World War II.  Priene, after Ephesus, on the way to Miletus:  there was only that march; so much else was behind them, behind us and before me.   I recall having a vague feeling that Elizabeth was already part of my past--that, actually, she had been for a long time, though I didn't want to admit that to myself.  She had been my best friend once; she was my best friend for a long time, and I went to see her because I wanted that person I'd met so many years before at Rutgers.  What's ironic is that she was the same person, really,and that ultimately would be the reason why she and I could not remain friends.


But for a moment, when I stopped at one particular spot--where a mountain seemed to drop directly into a cove--I felt, at once, that there was only a journey ahead of me precisely because so much was already behind me:  so much that simply could never again be as it had been.  That particular spot remains one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, and I said to the driver, only half-jokingly, that any man who wants to marry me has to propose to me there.


Yet, oddly enough, I felt a bit like Jean Valjean in Montreuil-sur-mer:  I had come to the edge of the sea, with nowhere else to run but, at least for the time being, no reason to run even if some part of my past--specifically, someone or something that could expose me--were within sight but out of sight, which was exactly the reason why that person or thing could be so dangerous.


They are all gone now, as is almost anything else that could have undermined my transition.  Gone, too, are the fear and anxiety I had about not "making it" or "reaching the other side."  Of course, I now worry some about what comes next, but I also know that so much is past.


In some odd way, one thing that is past, or is passing, is my life as a trans-whatever:  transgender, transwoman, transsexual.   A couple of days ago, a former student of mine, whom I hadn't seen since I had my surgery, asked me how I felt.  I told her I felt great, which is true.  Still, it seemed odd:  I had to think about what it was that I was supposed to feel good, bad or otherwise about.  Indeed, I had an operation.  I've recovered physically and I have female sexual organs that function in every way but two:  menstruation and reproduction.  Now, it seems, I am not someone who's had the operation or even who was once a man, or lived more or less as one:  I am a woman, albeit one who's had some experiences that differ from ones other women have had, and who might be a bit taller, bigger and uglier than most.


Whatever I am, I'm not quite the prof that student had last year. In other words, I'm not the tranny prof anymore:  I'm just another boring female faculty member. That student, when I saw her again, seemed to like me for the same reasons she did last year.  However, there are a few profs--including one whom I've mentioned before--who, ironically, have become more distant from me now that I have more in common with them than I had before.


It could be that they simply didn't want to accept me as a woman.  When they knew me as the tranny prof, they had an easy label for me.  Now, not so much.


Speaking of labels:  I expect this blog to contunue, at least for the time being, even though I no longer refer to myself as a transwoman.  Some who have known me as one will always see me as one and, among other LGBT people, I will probably have that identity as a T--unless, of course, they start to see me as an L or a B.  (Some people have called me another kind of "B" that rhymes with "witch.")  But I am still developing, and will probably continue to develop, in ways that have been shaped by my experiences as a transgender.  Plus, one might say that I am a transwoman because I have become a woman by means different from those of most women.  So, in that sense, I can still write about the times of a transwoman, even if those times are passing.

Nine Months: A Season of Change

Three days ago, on Wednesday, it had been nine months since my surgery.  I am thinking now about when I was nine months from my surgery, back in October of 2008.  Funny, how that seems so long ago.  What's even weirder is that somehow I know I haven't changed much, if at all, except in my body.  But it seems that much, if not everything, is changing around me.

In one sense, that's literally true:  I'm living in a different place now.  It's not at all far from where I had been living, but it feels very different.  The block on which I had been living was definitely more blue-collar--although, ironically enough, the Noguchi Museum was on one end of it and Socrates Sculpture Park was less than another block away.  And the light was very different:  The combination of small brick and slate houses and apartment buildings along with the factories and workshops--some active--on the adjacent streets that parallel the river gave the light a quality that could seem as spacious as those lofts but as defined as the spaces between the sharp edges of the steel exteriors of some of the buildings that contained those lofts.  On a rainy or misty day, the light--an almost steely gray--could soften the edges of those buildings and make the horns of tugboats seem like serene echoes of the currents those boats plied while imposing a silence, like that of a Sunday during wartime, over the streets.  

Here, on the other hand, the light is more of a constant stream, like the traffic along the street on which I live during rush hour.  And if the street on which I lived had order, this one has more organization:  It's lined with townhouses, with apartment buildings near each end.  Around the corner is Broadway, along which I shop for food and household items, order and pick up Chinese, Mexican, Middle Eastern or Japanese meals, get my nails done and have my shoes cleaned and repaired.  Two blocks down Broadway is the subway; along Broadway is a bus that connects this street with the one on which I used to live as well as with two other subway lines and a few other neighborhoods.   Every morning, one can see the streams of teenagers headed in one direction--toward Long Island City High School, which is just a block and a half from the Socrates Sculputre Park.  And one will see another stream of people, mostly young, but some of whom are around my age, headed in the other direction--toward the subways and their jobs.  Most of them aren't dressed for blue-collar jobs:  Some are in suits, or at least white or light shirts or blouses, dark bottoms and dressy shoes, while others are in the sorts of outfits one associates with "creative" young people.  

In some odd way, this street and the ones nearby remind me a bit of the Paris neighborhood in which I lived.  I think it has something to do with the scale of the buildings and streets, and of the kinds of people I see coming and going.

But there has been more than a change in scenery during the past few months.  I've also noticed that people are relating to me--for better and worse--in ways that I hadn't expected.  As an example, James and I spent a good bit of time walking through the Village and Chelsea a couple of nights ago.  Our urban soujourn was interrupted every couple of blocks with spontaneous hugs.  He and I met several years ago.  I have always liked him, but I can honestly say that I've really gotten to know him just recently.  What I am seeing in him is--I hate to use this term, as it's been rendered so banal--an intensely spiritual but completely non-religious person.  In other words, he's turning out to be the sort of person with whom I can have a real conversation about things that matter.

When I first met him, he was just starting to transition into life as a man after living for more than thirty years as the partner of a woman who died almost two years ago.  He says he was one of a dying breed:  a "stone butch."  I must admit, I admire stone butches, although I cannot imagine myself as the lover of one, much less as one myself.  


I guess being a man now disqualifies him from being a stone butch.  But there's another reason why the label may no longer fit:  I think he wanted whatever my hug could offer him.  I certainly didn't mind that:  Being the good stone butch, he certainly gave me pleasure when he embraced me.  I just hope he enjoyed it as much as I did, if that's what he wants.


Yesterday, when I went to see Dr. Tran, a new employee at Callen Lorde rode the elevator with me.  I didn't even know her name, but she embraced me as the cab arrived at Dr. Tran's office.  Should I ask what that was about?  


After my appointment, I rode down to Bicycle Habitat.  There, I placed an order for a wheel that Hal will build for me.  As I usually do, I spent some time there catching up with Josh, Sheldon, Pancho and the other employees there.  On my way out, I exchanged "good-night"s with them and Charlie, the owner.  As I was leaving, he picked himself up and hugged me.  


I've known him for about twenty-five years.  That's the first time he's done that.  While he's always been friendly to me, he never seemed to be particularly affectionate, at least not in physical ways.  So the unselfconscious suppleness of his embrace surprised me a little bit.  Well, now I know of at least one thing his wife likes about him!


And then, just a little while ago, I went to Hannah and Her Sisters for a manicure as well as my first pedicure of the season.  Tonight, Annie, who doesn't speak much English, did my manicure as Karen did my pedicure. While filing the nails on my left hand, Annie propped her head against my shoulder.  And, as she worked, I noticed that she was holding on to my hand a bit longer than she usually does.  Later, as I sat with my toes and fingers in the nail dryers, she rubbed her hands on my forearms and, again, propped her head on my shoulders.  And, finally, as I got up to leave, she hugged me.


She said something to Hannah, which she translated:  "You are a really sweet person."


Hmm... Spring really is in the air, isn't it?  It certainly is a time of change!

A Season Turning, Again

Tomorrow I go back to work, at the college.  It's been a while since I've read about Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  But I don't recall that it explained why time goes so quickly during holidays and vacations!


Yet it seems that so much time has passed.  In part, that's because the season almost literally changed from the time Spring Recess began until the time it ended.  The early part of the week was chilly and rainy; today was very much a spring day.  Actually, it would have seemed later in the spring had it not been for the trees that are just beginning to open buds.   It's as if they want and need to open themselves to the sunshine and the new warmth.  But it is difficult:  the dampness and cold and darkness have stiffened them--or, perhaps, made them simply reluctant and reticent, in the way of someone whose whose eyes are opening to the light they yearn for yet still feel the sting of the cold, like an old wound that's still fresh.


Trees like the ones I saw today inspired me--almost twenty years ago!--to write the following:


Magnolia

Buds throb red. Cold raindrops cling to bare branches after the first April storm. My fingertips swelling, my body pulses: the center of this old wound, still fresh. Still, I don’t pull off my gloves-- There are no leaves opening from this tree.

Each of the next couple of days will be progressively warmer, or so the forecasters say.  Then rain and chilly winds will return, and the weather will feel like early spring again by next weekend.  But, ironically, the leaves will be fuller, and there will be more of them.

Wind In The Beginning of Spring

Last Saturday was balmy: I was riding in shorts and a T-shirt. Today I didn't go riding, even though the sky was clear. When I went outside today, I wore a bulky cardigan and my leather jacket.

A cold, windy day very early in the spring has long evoked a particular set of sense-memories for me. You might say they are all related to loneliness.

It has something to do with the fact that my the first couple of days my family spent in New Jersey, after moving there from Brooklyn, were much like today, if I recall correctly. We moved about this time of year: I recall that because spring break was beginning, as it is now. Also, Easter came early that year; on that day, snow and ice fell and covered the still-barren trees and sere grass that surrounded that almost disarmingly (at least for me) spacious house.

So, a day like today, in the early days of spring, makes me think of an empty suburban house with branches still shorn of leaves and a lawn sapped of its color. Some would see that emptiness as spaciousness and the relentless brightness of the sun unfiltered by apertures of leaves as clarity. But for a kid who's just moved from the one and only place he'd ever known, it's enough to turn him into an agoraphobic. On top of that--unbeknownst to him--he would soon enter puberty. For me, it was a kind of prison. Or, more precisely, it was like interment, except that I was alive but couldn't kick because there wasn't enough room. It was confined enough for me to hear the echoes of my own breathing yet just spacious enough for it to reverberate back to me and magnify my pain.

Fortunately for me, that pain--and that puberty--are memories now, evoked by the cold and wind we had today. Those memories include a house into which I could not fit myself, at least emotionally, and a body that would become more inhospitable to, and incongruous with, my spirit.

Another Day After

Today the weather was even nicer than it was yesterday. But I didn't ride my bike to work. I had a very early class. That wouldn't have been a problem: In fact, it would have been nice to ride even earlier in the morning than I rode yesterday. However, I woke up too late for that. I didn't set my alarm clock because I fell asleep while reading a student's paper. The funny thing is that I didn't feel tired immediately after getting home. I guess it caught up with me. Plus, dilating and taking my requisite hot bath afterward was probably not the best preparation for reading papers, or doing any other kind of work!

Well...at least I've ridden to work once this week. Maybe next week I'll make cycle to work a couple of times. The following week will be Spring Break. Hopefully, I'll get to ride some more then.

Maybe, once I lose some weight, I should move to Provence or Tuscany--or, perhaps, to some European city. Once I get my Miss Mercian, I'll be the most stylish cyclist anyone will ever see!

Actually, Provence and Tuscany are appealing after the kind of weather we've had this winter. I don't mind the cold or snow so much; some city blocks are rather charming in a Currier and Ives Christmas card sort of way when they're blanketed in white. But other parts of this city, like the campus and its surroundings, are rather grim in the winter.

And the college itself, save for the students, feels grimmer by the day. I'm starting to wonder whether--actually, doubt that--it will lift with the weather. The administration is trying to make the college a better place, at least academically, and I think that, at least to some degree, they're succeeding. But they're also running the place as if everyone is guilty until proven innocent. They accuse us of things we haven't done and, in turn, supervisors are treating their charges in the same way.

Plus, I feel more and more that I'm in junior high school without the friends--few though they were--I had during my first pubescence. Even the "cool" kids, whom people like me hated because we weren't among them, are absent. Instead, what we have, at least in some of the people there, are the kinds of people who bully because they got bullied when they were at that age. Sometimes I wonder whether education (or, at least, education administration) generally attracts those sorts of people.

Maybe I'll feel better about the place after Spring Break. At least, I still hope for that.

A Face of More Change?

I've got to get someone to photograph me. Perhaps that sounds vain, but I'm thinking that it might be important.

What got me to thinking that way? Well, when I was walking to my aprtment, I bumped into Sara and Dee. I hadn't seen Sara since some time around the holidays, and it'd been even longer since I'd seen Dee. I think of Sara as a kind of Mrs. Dalloway figure, and Dee as her lover. However, theirs isn't the sort of relationship that lovers or even partners have. As far as I can tell, they're just two people who love and need each other, for better and worse.

Anyway, they both remarked that my face has changed over the last few months. They're not the first people who've told me that. Jay also said it a couple of weeks ago; so did Beth, a prof in my department. As far as I know, Jay and Beth don't know each other, and neither of them knows Sara or Dee. But their comments echoed each others': They all said my face has "softened" and "looks more feminine." I hope they're right. Something seems to have changed, and I hope they all perceived it accurately.

If they're right, I can't help but to wonder whether it has anything to do with the surgery. Of course, Marci didn't operate on my face, but if nothing else, her work has helped me to feel more confident in who I am. Perhaps that's what's showing in my face.

I have another, slightly more scientific explanaton. My change may also have to do with the fact that I no longer have my testicular glands. So, my body has not been producing testosterone and I have not had to take Spironolactone to counter it. I can't help but to think that the fact that there isn't any testosterone to counter or suppress has to be changing something in my body. And, of course, the Premarin I've been taking since I started my transition is probably having more effect on me than it did when I had to neutralize my testosterone.

I'm neither a doctor nor a scientist, so take that explanation for what it's worth. I just hope my friends' and colleagues' observations are accurate.

Through My Skin

For the past few days, I've had a rather heavy cold. That, of course, has left me tired, which is one reason why I didn't post yesterday. It was the first time in a few weeks that I hadn't written an entry and I felt a little sad about it.

Today I realized that something I've been unable to describe--until now--has changed since, if not as a result of, my surgery. I don't have a name for it (Does one exist?), so I'll describe a manifestation of it.

Sometimes I feel as if I can sense something essential, or at least basic, about a person through and on my skin. You've probably said that someone or another made your skin crawl. Well, sometimes I feel as if some people have that effect on me. Or they make my skin tingle or burn or feel as if it's going to float, and I'm not sure of whether it will remove itself from my body or take the rest of me with it.

I felt something like what I just described--in a much less intense way--after I had been taking hormones for a couple of months. I used to say that I felt as if a layer of skin had been stripped away. Now, sometimes I feel as if I'm a mass of nerve endings. Sometimes that's wonderful: I experience joy like I've never known before. But at other times, I can feel the warning lights flashing without being sure of why.

The weird thing is that I feel as if I'm learning for the first time about people I've known for some time. Sometimes that's a felicitous, or at least a good, thing to experience. However, it can also leave me feeling unsafe around, or annoyed with, someone I once liked. That's how I feel about someone whom I considered to be a good friend not long ago.

Or, sometimes, I just feel no particular reason to talk to someone with whom I once conversed, sometimes at length. Maybe it's because I realize that I no longer have, or have never had, anything in common with that person. That's how I feel about a few people at the college. It's not that I dislike them; I just don't feel any particular connection to them apart from being a co-worker.

On the other hand, I also feel that I have something to talk about--or at least a friendlier "vibe" from people who seemed not to like me before, or whom I didn't think I liked. I'm thinking in particular of one colleague in my department. She started teaching at the college three years ago; from that time until this year, I thought she was rather snobbish or at least aloof. But we have become rather friendly. It may just be that she felt insecure as "the new kid in town": after all, she is young and had just recently finished her PhD. She had a couple of fellowships but, if I'm not mistaken, this is her first full-time faculty position.

But she's been friendly to me ever since I "broke the ice" early in the fall. Maybe she realizes that I'm not a competitor: We may both be in an English department, but the work we do is very different. And, I don't begrudge her that she's way more attractive than I ever was, am or will be. If nothing else, she has a very appealing smile, which I hadn't seen before this year.

Somehow I have the feeling she was intimidated by me. My first encounter with her came when she gave a sample lecture after being interviewed for the job. I was in the audience, among other faculty members and administrators. And I asked her a question--I forget about what, exactly, except that it had to do with the role of gender in a novel she mentioned--and it seemed to make her nervous. I wasn't trying to put her "on the spot;" it was simply a question that came to my mind.

I guess that if I were in her position, I might've been caught off-guard, too. But what she may not have realized at the time was that I was asking the question out of a complete lack of familiarity about the works she was discussing. And, of course, I didn't understand how or why she would be intimidated, at least a little, by that. If that's the reason why she kept her distance from me, I can understand.

Or, it just may be that she knew I'm transgendered: if she couldn't see it at first, she may have realized it from the question I asked. And, she may not have known what to make of that. She could very well been one of the many women who worried about what I'd do in a women's bathroom. (The funny thing is that I try to spend as little time in them as I can; I'm usually not noticing much else besides the cleanliness, or lack thereof, and I'm thinking about what I have to do at that moment and the moment after it.) By now, she's heard that I've had my operation, and she may feel less worried about me as a result of that. And I'm sure that even though she knows that I see her as an attractive woman--I've told her as much, as I'm sure many other people have--she knows by now that I'm not seeing her as a potential sexual partner. Maybe she knows, too, that I see she's really an OK, and rather interesting, person to talk to.

Now, these changes I've experienced don't mean that I'm getting rid of all of my old friends, as some trans people do when they transition. I've thought about making some changes in my life, to be sure--and, in fact, I've had to make one that I'd thought about making. But it will be interesting, at least to me, to see whether the way I feel about other people and things changes during the next six months, year, or few years. I know that happened a few months after I started taking hormones and as I started to live full-time as a woman.