Another Year Home

One year ago today, I came home from my surgery.  One of the first things I noticed upon getting off the plane was the humidity.  After spending a week and a half with very little of it when I was away, I was amazed at just how much of it I and most other New Yorkers consider to be normal. 


That flight home was the first--and, so far, only--time I've flown first class.  It will probably be the only time.


So what's the difference between now and then?  Well, it seems that ever since I've gotten back, Charlie and Max simply can't get enough of me.  They're still treating me as if I just got back.  Both of them have always been very affectionate; they seem to have become even more so.  I always had a feeling they liked women better than men.  Hmm...I wonder what they would have thought of me before my transition.


If I felt as if a layer of skin had been stripped away a couple of months after I started taking hormones, I felt I shed another layer after my surgery.  So much affects me,and sometimes I feel as if I can look directly into people.  The nice thing about that is that the people I love, I now love even more.  But the other side of this is that I am less tolerant of bullshit than I used to be.  That accounts for some of my ranting about my job and about a particular person who's not in my life anymore.  


And somehow my perceptions about time--at least as it relates to my own life--have also changed.  As I've said, much of my recent past seems so distant now:  Things that happened two years ago could just as well have happned two centuries ago.  And the future seems so much more immediate.


What would the past year--not to mention my life--have been had I not had the surgery?

Riding Home

I rode to work again today.  I must be regaining my form, or  something, because men were slowing down their cars as they passed me.  Three different guys complimented my legs.  And a woman in a BMW said she liked my skirt.


All right.  I'm making small steps toward one of my goals:  that of becoming the best and most stylish cyclist in the world. Both are terribly subjective judgments, I know.  But just about everything I do is based on, or evaluated by, subjective judgment.  What would my life be like if more of it were measurable in ways that could be rendered into statistics?


Let's see:  I rode about ten miles to work and another nine to get home--on my 1968 Raleigh Sports women's bike.  It's a 21 inch frame on 26 inch wheels, with three speeds in a Sturmey Archer rear hub.  My skirt--I won't tell you what size it is!  Now I'll be merely factual:  It's a skirt made up of three tiers of a crepe polyester material that's covered with a pretty interloc print in shades of purple/magenta, coral/peach, brown and a shade that's somewhere between cream and gray.  The bottom of each tier is ruffled. When I wear it, as I did today, with my deep pink jewel-neck top and purple overshirt with three-quarter sleeves, people say that I look as if I'd lost weight.    But that's not the only reason I wear that outfit.


I left work at 6:46 this evening.  I took a slightly shorter route than I did in going to work because I wanted to get home before it got dark--or rained.  I did feel a couple of drops as I pedalled from Jackson Heights into Woodside, about a mile from my place.  The drops turned into a sprinkle by the time I crossed underneath the Amtrak line near Northern Bouleard, then stopped just before I crossed underneath the elevated tracks for the "N" and "W" lines.   On the other side of those tracks--on 31st Street and Broadway in Astoria--is Parisi's Bakery, where I bought a small "twist" loaf.   It's only three blocks from my apartment, so I was no longer worried about getting caught in the rain.


The ride home gave me an odd sense of deja vu that had nothing to do with my familiarity with the route.  Rather, I found myself recalling rides in which I'd dodged, or remained one or two steps ahead of, rain. I've done plenty of those in coastal areas in which I've lived, and I've also done them on the multiday (and multiweek) bike trips I've taken in France and other places.


Now I shudder (or, on occasion, laugh) when I recall how much time I spent "playing chicken" with, or simply dodging, one thing or another.  In those days, I was running from, even when I was going home, wherever and whatever happened to me along the way.  


Tonight, at least I made it home, even if I had been finishing something that someone else started on a bike that I didn't have last year.  Even though the fit still isn't perfect, it felt just fine.

Six Months: The Paradoxes of Coming Home

Exactly six months ago today, I had my surgery.

I'm thinking now of that conversation I had with Marilynne's daughter just after Christmas. We agreed that on one hand, it seems that the time has passed very quickly, but on the other, it seems like a very long time has passed. Somehow that paradox seems to relate to another: That we lived the vast majority of our lives pre-op-- and even pre-transition-- and now so much of my previous life is fading, or has already faded, into the background.

And there is yet another paradox: Knowing that there are things I did because I lived as a guy named Nick, yet realizing that while I was doing them, I was Justine. As an example, I had relationships with women who were attracted to that guy. Yet I know now that even though I was repressing myself, I was--at least in some way--just as much a woman as I am now. And that is exactly the reason I felt the need to make my transition and have my surgery.

Some day relatively soon, Marilynne's daughter will have lived the majority of her life post-op. Given my age, that day is not likely to come for me. Still, there are times when it feels like this part of my life is the longer and greater part--that, in fact, I feel somehow as if I have always been post-op, or at least the woman who entered new stages in her life with her transition and operation.

Spending time with Dwayne after work accented the feelings I've described. For me, that makes sense, as he is the very first person to whom I "came out." He has never called me anything but Justine or used any pronouns but female ones in reference to me. In other words, he knows about my previous life but never saw it. So, even though that part of my life was much longer than my current life, he knows only a summary of it, if you will, and it is the point that came before the starting point of my current life. You can say that, I suspect, about anyone who meets and develops a relationship with you in the middle of your biological life.

When Dwayne and I embraced upon meeting, I felt in some way as if I'd "come home." I told him that, and he said he felt the same way. Oddly, that's what I felt the first time I met him, which is the reason I was able to "come out" to him.

Then, I knew I'd come home but had practically no idea of what that meant. Now, I am learning about my surroundings, if you will, but everything I learn--whether it's about my body, or about the ways I experience what's outside my body or within my mind and soul--feels inevitable and organic, if not predictable.

What I'm learning makes complete sense even if it's not what I expected. And that's the reason I'm learning it. That can make time go very quickly and make the past seem even further in the past.