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.

The Day After (The Snowstorm)

Today the college felt like a ghost town, at least in comparison to how it normally feels. About half of my students didn't come to my morning classes. However, I had nearly a full house for my final class, late in the afternoon. Still, the halls seemed emptier. And I know a number of professors didn't come in: I saw the signs announcing the cancellation of their classes.

And I did something that piqued the curiosity of a few of my co-workers: I wore my red pumps. No, I didn't wear them outdoors: The soles are too slippery for that, and I don't want to ruin the shoes (and possibly my feet!) by stepping into a slush puddle. I changed into them when I got to my office. It just happens that they complement what I was wearing today: a jewel-necked knitted top with black, bronze, white, gray and red stipes; a black cardigan (actually, half of a twinset) over it, a tan corduroy skirt and brown tights.

Some people think you're supposed to wear drab colors on drab days. That seems counterintuitive, or at least counter to my intuition.

I wouldn't mind the cold and the snow at all if the aftermath of them wasn't slush. Actually, the scene was quite lovely yesterday: Somehow, snow swirling over brick houses makes the glow of those sunset-orange bricks seem even warmer. And I just happen to live in one of those houses. Small things make me happy.

I wish we'd had today, rather than yesterday, off. Getting around in the aftermath of a snowstorm is actually more treacherous, at least sometimes, than getting around in the storm itself. When the snow is falling or being driven by the wind, it's still that: snow. But now some of what's on the ground has turned to ice and slush.

And it really feels cold. I know I've been out--for hours, on my bike--on days much colder than today was. But I really felt it today. Perhaps it has to do with my relative lack of physical activity. Or it could just be that I'm getting older. Still, I wonder if the operation has heightened the sensitivity to cold I seemed to have developed while taking hormones. I can remember going outside in shorts on days colder than today. There was no way I would've done that today, even if I didn't have to make myself halfway presentable so I could go to work.

At least I know one thing: Charlie and Max are happy to see me. The feeling is mutual; and they feel especially cozy and comfortable when they curl up with me on nights like this!

Sleep And Body Heat

Last night I fell asleep while reading a student's paper. That should not be taken as an assessment of the student's work: I probably would have fallen asleep had Angelina and Brad walked into my apartment and done whatever it is Angelina and Brad do.

Anyway...When I woke up--nearly ten hours later--I was stretched out on the couch, with Charlie curled up by my feet and Max by my left side. I had been sitting up when I started to doze off; I cannot remember stretching out on the couch. And I didn't notice when Charlie and Max climbed onto the couch. Then again, it's not the first time I've awakened with them by or on me.

What's more, I didn't dilate before I went to sleep. So yesterday was the first day I didn't. I'm guessing that one day in six months won't ruin what's come to fit me so well. Also, I didn't take a warm bath, as I have been nearly every night. To fall into such a sleep without my bath, I must have been really tired.

At one time, I would have berated myself for being so tired and falling into such a deep sleep without having ridden my bike long or hard, or having exerted myself in any other way. Yesterday, I simply taught my class, read some papers, ran an errand, ate and read some more papers. My body had its own reasons for being so tired, I guess.

Yesterday was the last day of the class. I told my students that I'd be in my office this morning. Fortunately, as it turned out, only one student was looking for me, and she wasn't upset. We managed to find each other this afternoon, a little while after I arrived on campus.

It was a bit odd to have started the day and work after ten hours that were a blank. And I didn't have the excuse of anaesthesia or other forms of induced unconsciousness. Heck, I haven't had a drink in more than twenty years or smoked pot for even longer than that. No, my body shut down--shut me down--all on its own. Not that it's anything to celebrate. I just haven't fallen asleep so suddenly or deeply for no particular reason in I don't know how long.

At least I felt rested today. And Charlie and Max didn't seem to mind. Nor did I mind them sleeping on me. I have to wonder, though: Do they like me only for my body heat? Or do they really like me because, well, I'm their human.

What if some scientist were to find out that people hug each other only because we are drawn to each other's body heat--that is to say, only to keep warm. Or that our impulse to hug is rooted in an old survival mechanism. What did Miguel de Unamuno write? Nos morimos de frio y no de oscuridad: We do not die from the cold, not from darkness. Could Senor Unamuno have been a gato in his past life? Or, perhaps he was un gato que vive en un cuerpo de hombre. I used to tell my cats that's what I was; now I tell them I'm in un cuerpo de dama. And, of course, they always greet such comments with that look that says, "Whatever!" Cats perfected it long before humans came up with the word and sullen teenagers started sputtering it.

I'm sure that Mr. Onzain, my first Spanish teacher--who was the best-dressed and -groomed man I had ever seen up to that point in my life--would be speechless at my translation. Whether he'd be speechless over my proficiency or lack thereof in his native language, or simply my audacity in attempting the translation, is an open question. Then again, I wonder what he'd think of that Unamuno quote.

I must still be tired if I'm rambling the way I just did. Oh well. Maybe I'll have another long sleep tonight.

Plenty of Fluids

I'm a bit under the weather. Actually, I have been for a couple of days. I've had a cold that, I hope, won't turn into something worse. So I've made a pot of chicken soup and am living on that and tortillas with salsa. Now, I don't think anyone has ever recommended the latter as a cold remedy, but I figure whole-grain corn (unsalted) and hot peppers can't hurt.

At least the chicken soup counts as part of the "plenty of fluids" prescription my doctor gave me. I can remember when "drink plenty of fluids" meant "party hard." If that's what "drink plenty of fluids" meant, then "carb loading" must have been a code phrase for "drinking beer."

As you might expect, I slept late today. I won't have a chance to do that through the week, or the coming semester. I've been teaching a winter break class that begins early in the morning; I will be doing the same next semsester. But I won't be teaching late-night classes, as I have been for the past few semesters.

I think this cold may have been the result of the re-adjustment my body is making to my new schedule, as well as to the sub-freezing temperatures and high winds. I guess I shouldn't complain: After all, I have been healthy through my surgery, recovery and what has followed. I've experienced nothing more than the fatigue as well as the loss of strength that follows major surgeries. I had been warned about those results of surgery, so I am not complaining. And I have experienced no pain in the parts of my body on which I'd been operated, or anywhere else--not even in my mind.

I guess I'm really lucky if I can feel as good as I've felt through as much change as I've experienced. When you experience a sea-change, the tides can hit you with greater force than you'd anticipated, and the results can be surprising, to put it mildly. That, of course, is one of the premises of Shakespeare's The Tempest, where the expression "sea-change" was first used. (It and A Doll's House are my two favorite plays.)

I guess if a cold is the worst physical problem I've had (apart from being struck by that door: something from which I seem to have recovered), I have no reason to complain.

I'll just prepare myself for tomorrow and get some rest, as per doctor's orders. And, yes, I'm drinking plenty of fluids.

Learning About The Cold

After this weekend's snow, the air has been filled with the kind of cold that seems to cut right through the skin and go straight to the bone. It is a windborne cold that feels as stark as the sky during the day and the twilight at the end of this, the second-shortest day of the year.

Ever since I started taking hormones, I feel the cold more than I used to. Not only do I sense it more; it seems to have a sharper edge to it.

The cold today is different from the cold one experiences, say, in Paris. There, it's the moisture rather than the wind that bears the cold. So, instead of piercing or slicing its way into the skin, the European cold seeps through every pore and orifice and seems to deposit itself, as if in layers, in the body.

Since I started my transition, I've been to Europe once--in the summertime. So I don't yet know whether, and how, the cold weather over there would feel differently from how it felt to me when I was full of testosterone (and, in my youth, beer or wine--or sometimes even stronger stuff!).

One thing I know is that over there, they don't see a whole lot of sunshine during the winter. The sort of day we had today--what someone, I forget whom, used to call C-cubed (clear, cold and crisp)--is unusual there. The gray layers of clouds mirror the cumulus stratified chill that builds in one's bones through those winter days in northern Europe. And, if you're not accustomed to it, you feel as if the cold will never leave. Those who are accustomed to experiencing it know that one day it will leave--with the season, or with one's own life.

Thinking about the cold, and the different kinds of cold, has brought back a memory of Cori. Until now, I hadn't thought about her today. It wasn't as though I was trying to forget her: After all, if you try to forget something, it's too late.

Anyway...This is the anniversary of her suicide. If the person that I am now could go back in time for her, I'd do everything I can to get her to see what I know now: That her depression, as bad as it was, and as all-permeating as it seemed to be, would be gone one day. And she wouldn't have had to die in order for that to happen.

Of course, that was something I didn't know at the time--and, truth be told, I don't think I could have understood even if the most empathetic soul showed me what I've just described. I felt the same way she did about her depression: It had permeated every atom of her being and seemed as if it would stay forever.

We had the same sort of conflict over our gender identities. We thought we could resolve it by doing all the things guys did, by wearing the "right" clothes and so forth. But the coldness and grayness just seeped deeper into our beings and pushed out any sunshine and warmth.

That was why she called me on the last night of her life, and why I went over to her place. I knew just how she felt even though I was years--decades--away from describing it to any other human being. I tried to keep it at bay, confined to some part of me I hoped I would never need to access. But of course, over the years, the cold and grayness just drew tighter around my being. I did not believe that there was an end to that seemingly-eternal winter of grayness and cold.

Now, of course, I have seen an end, and have seen how the cycle can begin all over again. Cori is long gone, so all I can do is learn from my experience and help others.

The cold and the grayness end, at least for a season. So does the wind.

Into--Or From--The Cold

The past couple of days have been windy. Yesterday, before I went to work, I heard the clatter of something brittle toppling and breaking. Turned out to be one of my landlady's planters on her porch.

And it has turned markedly colder. The weather had been mild, if rather gray, through much of the fall. Cold as it was today, the sun shone.

Why am I talking about the weather, again? Well, these days are reminding me of when I first began to take hormones. I took my very first dose on Christmas Eve; about a month or so later, I started to feel some of the effects. Among them were my increased sensitivity to cold. It seemed that around the end of January or the beginning of February, the winds grew stiffer and the air grew colder than anything I could recall from previous years. As a matter of fact, around that time, one of the most intense blizzards this city has ever experienced dumped nearly two feet of snow, as I recall. I don't know whether the weather actually turned significantly colder at that time. But it certainly seemed that way.

Other people have assured me that it has indeed been much colder during the past couple of days: They're feeling it, too. Still, I can remember when I would venture out on a day like this in not much more than a long-sleeved cycling jersey and a vest. Sometimes I even wore shorts. When I went out today, I was wearing my English duffle coat with the toggle buttons and a long scarf. It was warm enough, even though I wore a faux twinset that isn't as heavy as it looks underneath my coat. I felt a little bit cold around my thighs and knees: I wore a wide flared skirt that fell to my calves and boots that came up to about two inches above the skirt's hemline. But I didn't wear heavy tights; I wore a regular pair of dark gray pantyhose. What was I thinking?

Then again, I often find that whether I feel cold, hot or something in between is not always a function of how much or what I'm wearing. If I were an astrologer, I'd say that, as a Cancerian, I am affected by the phases of the moon and the tides on the sea. I probably am; I probably would be even if I lived in Nebraska. Barbara Kingsolver wrote about something like that in "High Tide In Tucson." Her daughter had some sort of amphibious animal, as I recall, in a terrarium. Even though they were about a thousand miles from the ocean, that animal--I forget what--was sleeping and sleeping according to the rise and fall of the tides.

Like her daughter's "pet," I have the lunar and littoral cycle within me. That is probably the reason why I have always been drawn to the sea, and why I would live by its rhythms even if I were far away from it.

At least, I think I have the moon's and the ocean's clock programmed into my body's mechanisms, if not my DNA. It's the most plausible explanation I can find for the sensations I have, which sometimes seem out of sync with, or at least independent of, external stimuli.

But today actually was cold. I can tell you that much.

The Cold--Already?

I couldn't believe how cold it was last night. I woke up to shut one window, then another. Finally, my place was hermetically sealed. Then I put on a pair of socks, a headband and an extra layer of clothes. It was easier, as I stumbled around with my eyes half-opened, to pull out my terry sweatsuit, socks and a headband than it would've been to unpack my heavier blankets.

I'd left my bedroom door open. So I should not have been surprised to find Charlie and Max curled up at each side of me when I woke up this morning: I think they were cold, too.

When I began to take estrogen, I was warned that I would feel the cold more than I did before. I used to be one of those guys who wore shorts if the temperaure was above freezing and no rain or snow was falling. Although I am still (or, at least have been) more resistant to the cold than most women, I still feel it (and temperature changes generally) more than I once did.

But I don't recall ever previously feeling as cold as I did last night, not even on camping trips in the dead of winter. I don't think I'm sick: I don't feel any aches, nausea or weakness, and after I was out of bed for a few minutes, I no longer felt cold. In fact, I was peeling off layers and, after I dilated and took my salt bath, I put on a lacy tank top and skirt and felt fine as I went for a walk and picked up a few groceries and a dinner of chicken and rice from those wonderful Palestinian guys who aren't merely bragging when they call themselves the "King of Falafel." If you're in Astoria, pay them a visit: I don't think you'll ever eat better street-cart food anywhere. In fact, what they make is better than most restaurant food.

It's late at night now, and I'm still not feeling cold. Maybe it has to do with the spices in that chicken and rice! But I wonder how I'll feel later tonight--or this winter. Could it be that the operation has further sensitized me to the cold?

I don't recall reading or hearing anything about that. Still, I wonder...