I Hope It Doesn't Take This To Make You A Man (Or A Woman)!

In other posts, I have described how I, and other trans people, were motivated to transition by moments or incidents in which we realized that our only other choice was death.  

Other trans people have been motivated to transition by near-death experiences:  They realized that they would have been memorialized and buried in the gender to which they were assigned at birth rather than that of their true selves.

But Thomas Page McBee's near-death experience caused him to "come out" as transgender.  As the author of Man Alive tells the story, he was mugged by someone who pereceived that he was presenting himself as a man.  But, in the course of the attack, the attacker came to believe that a then-pre-transition McBee was not presenting as a male and let him go.

"I had a gut feeling that this had to do with me not being perceived as a male," he says.  That sense was later confirmed for McBee when the attacker went on to kill another man in a very similar kind of incident.

That experience, terrible as it was, helped him to unravel his gender identity and masculinity. He soon realized that the way other people were perceiving him wasn't the same as the way he was perceiving himself.  Soon afterward, he came out as transgender.

Here, he talks about the experience with Ricky Camilleri:

What We Couldn't Share

By now, you've read of Leelah Alcorn's suicide--whether from me, another blogger, the media or some other source.

The pain she expressed in her blog--which was deleted at the request of her mother--is all too familiar.  The tragedy is, of course, that she was so young and couldn't see any light at the end of the tunnel.  But what angered me, and many other people, is the way her family, especially her mother, denied who and what she was in death as they did during her life.

As terrible and familiar as her story is, there are many other trans people who've killed themselves, not because their families and friends wouldn't accept them, but because they couldn't "come out", sometimes even to themselves.

"Calie" returned from a long absence from blogging to relate such a story about someone she knows:  "He was a good boy and had become a good man." 

So why did Calie use male pronouns in referring to her now-departed friend?  Well, the person in question never revealed her gender identity to anyone--not even to her family or to Calie--in life.  Only the note she so carefully left behind (It wasn't spattered with her blood) told of the conflict and pain he was ending with the bullet in his head.

But one thing makes this story even worse than any other I've heard before:  The young person who committed suicide was the child of a transgender parent.  A macho-guy father, to be exact.  Of course, you know why he was such a macho guy:  the same reason I trained and played sports as hard as I did for so many years, or why other would-be trans women become cops and soldiers or get involved in any number of other "manly" undertakings.

Of course, a day may come when he realizes he can't keep up the facade anymore.  Then, he will have two choices:  transition or die.  I am not exaggerating:  I had such a moment thirteen years ago.  I knew that in transitioning,  I could lose my life as I knew it and I had absolutely no idea of what could be in store for me were I to transition.  But I also knew that I would not live for very much longer if I didn't transition.  

I had that moment at age 43.  I don't know how old Calie's friend or his (I'm using the male pronoun in the same way Calie used it) father were and are.  I suspect the father is close to the age I was when I had my moment of truth.  If he is, I don't know how he's gone on for as long as he has.  I don't know how I lived as long as I did with my conflict.  When I came out to my mother, she said the same thing.

And now, again, I'm remembering Corey.  I spent what would be the last night of his life with him.  We were both in our mid-20s at the time; when he called me, I knew he was in a very bad way.  Even though we were good friends, I didn't know what I could possibly offer him that someone else could have.  But he insisted that he simply had to talk to me.

You might say that night is the one thing for which I haven't forgiven myself, and probably never will.  Of course, at that time, I wasn't "out" to anybody, including myself.  But he wasn't waiting for me to come out:  He just knew.

From what Callie says, her friend never knew that his father is trans.  Corey knew I am, just as he was.  I didn't know how to acknowledge, much less do anything, about it.  Or perhaps I was just too much of a coward.  Whatever the explanation, I think of what Corey and I could have shared with each other, and how he might be alive--as a she, of course--and I might have spared myself decades of frustration and pain.

All I can do now is to hope that the father of Calie's friend will end his pain and frustration, though not in the way his child did.  And I hope Calie and all of the other people who can't, for whatever reasons, be who and what they truly are will one day be free.

R.I.P. Leslie Feinberg

Sad news:  Leslie Feinberg has died.

Of course, she is best known as the author of Stone Butch Blues, the first coming-of-age story about an LGBT person many of us read.  But she also became the sort of scholar I admire most:  an independent one.  While her writings on gender identity and gender politics (Her last words were: "Remember me as a revolutionary communist!") are widely cited in academic circles, she herself was never affiliated with any university.  In fact, she stopped attending school around the 10th grade, but would still receive her high school diploma.

Her life and work gave us important lessons on how we can, and how we must, evolve in our sexual identities and gender expressions.  Though she, for years, lived  as a "butch" lesbian, she later identified as a trans person, though not as a trans man. Near the end of her life, she said she had "never been in search of a common umbrella identity, or even an umbrella term, that brings together people of oppressed sexes, gender identities and sexualities".  Instead, she believed in the right to self-determination for members of oppressed individuals, groups, communities and nations.

Her philosophy was encapsulated in her use of she/zie and her/her for herself.  As far as I know, she did not try to convince other people that they should use the same pronouns, though which ones they use are important.  Still, she pointed out, "people have been disrespectful of me with the right pronoun and respectful with the wrong one".  

I find such comments particularly interesting because when I first read Stone Butch Blues, years before I began my own transition, I was struggling, as I had been for a long time, to find a language and other means to express my own gender identity and sexual inclinations.  They didn't fit into the terms I'd been given--boy/girl, man/woman, marriage, even love--because such terms could only be hetero-centric because they were taught to me, however unwittingly, in hetero-centric ways.  As Jess, the lead character (and, some would say, a stand-in for Leslie Feinberg herself) in SBB says, "I need 'butch' words to describe my 'butch' life".  Jess's girlfriend, Theresa, understood as much but needed to hear it from Jess, who has shut herself down emotionally because of the brutality and violence she's experienced.  To Jess, like others in the lesbian subculture of the time (early 1960's), that lack of emotion is her butch identity and what gets her "props" in that world.  But it also led to the breakdown of her relationship with Theresa.

Even if you don't identify on the "spectrum", the book is interesting in all sorts of other ways.  For example, the story begins in Buffalo, where--at the time Jess "comes out"--there were still many blue-collar jobs to be had, and butches like Jess worked in some of them.  Jess would leave that city and move to the other end of New York State, to my hometown.   Later, when she returned to Buffalo, she found that her lesbian friends had died, moved away or married men.  There was no more blue-collar work; instead, her old friends were working as store clerks or night managers, or not at all.  

Aside from the history lesson, SBB taught me (and many other readers) much else.  When I read Christine Jorgensen's autobiography as a teenager, I was interested in, but not absorbed by it.  Part of the reason was (what I felt) her very mannered way of telling her story.  But more important, aside from feeling that I was male only in my genitalia (which I hated), I found little in common between me and her.  Most important of all, I didn't get the sense of Ms. Jorgensen's evolution, much as I hate to use that term.  I never had a real sense of how she came to see herself as the female she was, let alone how she explained it to herself or anyone else.  What I couldn't articulate then was that she eschewing one proscribed role (that of a man of her times) and taking on another (a woman of the 1950's).  Of course, it wasn't her job to instruct me or anyone else on how to perceive and express our self-identity.  But I would not find any insight on how I could define, let alone express, what I knew to be true,--or intellectual or spiritual sustenance for the journey of becoming myself.  Ironically, one of the first places in which I found such things was in SBB, the story of a butch lesbian who later comes to understand her own version of her trangender identity.

Then again, Leslie Feinberg and I were more alike than I ever could have realized.  After all, we are both transgenders who are attracted mainly (actually, in Feinberg's case, entirely) to women.  She identified as a transgender lesbian; I think of myself as a trangender bisexual with lesbian tendencies, though my lesbian tendencies are decidedly of Feinberg's butch variety.

And I'll admit that the one and only time I ever met her, I felt attracted to her.  Yes, in that way.  I mean, why wouldn't I be?  She was smart:  my first requirement.  And she was--at least when I saw her--disarmingly warm.  Perhaps her warmth disarmed me only because I was expecting to see the "stone" character she portrayed in her book.  And, finally, I will never forget the way her face lit up I told her my name:  One of her characters is also named Justine.

Why Are Gay Families In Salt Lake City?

According to a recent study, the US city in which the highest percentage of itsr gay couples is raising children is in a state that I wouldn't expect to legalize same-sex marriage in my lifetime.  In fact, two of the next three cities with metropolitan areas  of a milion or more are in such states.

The winner in that category is Salt Lake City.   Next is Virginia Beach, followed by Detroitand  Memphis. Jacksonville, FL is another place where more than one in four gay couples is raising children..  Of those cities, only Detroit is in a state in which there seems to be any chance of legalizing same-sex unions any time soon.

Mind you, New York, San Francisco and Boston have larger overall numbers of gay couples raising kids. But the percentage of such couples is actually much smaller than the cities I've mentioned--or the California communities of Visalia and Porterville.

The researchers who conducted the study say that the main reason for this phenomena is that members of gay couples in Salt Lake City and the other seemingly-unlikely hubs were in heterosexual marriages before coming out as gay.  They had kids in those unions and brought them into their new domestic arrangements.

The terrible irony of this is that in such places, gay people often feel more external or internal pressures to get married and have children--whether to mollify members of their families or churches, or in an attempt to silence their own inner voices.  A young person who's grown up in Park Slope or Chelsea or Castro or the Back Bay is less likely to feel such pressures and thus more likely to come out earlier--and less likely to enter into a heterosexual marriage.  On the other hand, I can only imagine how it feels to grow up gay or trans in a place where the center of life is a fundamentalist church.

Now, I don't want to depict all of those places where gay people are raising kids as backward or imprisoning.  Rather, I want to point out that the very same social milieu that causes people to avoid living as themselves--or simply not to be aware of their true natures--is also, in many ways, more conducive to raising families than what we find in larger and more cosmopolitan cities.

One, of course, is economics.  One almost has to be very wealthy to raise kids in New York, where I live, or in San Francisco, Boston or Washington.  At least, one has to be wealthy if one wants his or her kids to be safe, attend good schools and get good health care--and find kid- and family-friendly facilities.  What that means, of course, is that one has to have independent wealth or the sort of career that both pays well and has policies that allow parents to take time off to care for kids and such without losing a day's pay--or risking his or her job.  Contrary to popular perception, not all LGBT people are in such careers.

Also, while there is more than likely plenty of homo- and trans-phobia in the smaller cities and towns, those kinds of hatred are not absent in the Big Apple, the Hub or the City by the Bay.  In fact, gay, lesbian and transgender people from other places have expressed, to me, their surprise at how much homo- or trans-phobia they found here.  One reason for that, I think, is that New York is a much more segregated city than most people realize.  Many people live in neighborhoods populated mainly by people who come from their country or culture, or share their religion.  And, in another contrast to public perception, there's religious fundamentalism in this city.  We may not have snake-handlers and such here, but there are people who belong to various fundamentalist churches.  And, of course, there are ultra-Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who, although they barely communicate with anyone else in this city, have a disproportionate influence on public policy.

(To my own surprise, in my early transition, I didn't encounter prejudice from religious Muslims or Catholics, even those who come from "macho" cultures.  The latter may have to do with my own Catholic upbringing and the fact that I speak Spanish.)

So, really, I'm not surprised that so many gay couples by the Great Salt Lake or along the Virginia coast or across the river from Windsor are raising kids.   To me, it means that simply legalizing same-sex marriage or adding protections for LGBT people to civil-rights laws--as important as those things are--aren't enough to ensure that any kid with gay parents (or, for that matter, LGBT kids) will have the same access to the benefits of a good family and community that their peers (some of them, anyway) have.  

Kudos to all of the people in those places--and in my hometown and the other gay "capitals"--who are doing what they can to understand (and, hopefully, accept and support) same-sex parents and their kids.  If they are doing so out of their concern for children, as I suspect they are, that is as good a starting point as any.  

Andy Marra: Moving Ahead With Two Families

For so many of us, the stories of our "coming out" and gender transition are inextricably woven with our families.  A few of us are actually encouraged by our family members to live our lives in our true genders; for too many of us, family members discourage or deter us from, or simply cause us to feel more inhibited about, doing the things we need to do.

Today I read a story from a young trans women who had both sorts of family influence.  Andy Marra was born in Korea but adopted, as an infant, by an American family.  She came out as a trans woman to her adopted family, whom she says were "encouraging", in 2003.  However, she would not begin taking hormones for many years because she also felt the need to meet her Korean family.  She wanted to see them--at least initially--as a male because she feared rejection if they met her as a woman instead of the man they would have expected her to become. 

One thing that further complicates her story is that fewer than three percent of Koreans who are adopted in other countries ever find their birth families. And, in fact, Ms. Marra almost ended her 2010 visit to Korea as one of the other 97 percent.

However, on what would have been the last day of her trip, a police officer found her mother, who had been living about an hour away from the station. As a result, she extended her trip by two weeks.  During that time, she met other relatives, including a grandfather who bestowed a Korean name on her.  However, after a few days, her mother realized that Ms. Marra had to tell her something.  "May I offer a hint at what I am talking about?," her mother suggested.  "Please don't be offended by my hint. But I don't think you will be."  After Marra nodded with tense curiosity, her mother continued, "I think it has to do with how pretty you look."  

Marra hesitated again, fearing she would lose the mother she'd just met.  After her mother reassured her, "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere," Marra slowly and hesitantly explained, "I am not a boy. I am a girl.  I am transgender."

After a long silence--in part a result of Marra trying to communicate something that is not part of very many everyday conversations in English or Korean (or any other language, for that matter)--her mother responded.  "Mommy knew," she calmly said.  "I was waiting for you to tell me."

Her story has a happy ending:  Her "new" family accepts her, and she could return to the States to begin her transition with the support of two families on opposite sides of the world.

Now, if all trans people could have the support they needed, from their families or elsewhere, in whatever part of the world they inhabit...

Outings: From Mike Wallace To Ellen De Generes

Today, when you mention Ellen De Generes' name, people think of her talk show and Cover Girl commercials.  Some still recall her season as a judge on American Idol, in which she replaced Paula Abdul.

But I can't recall the last time I heard anyone refer to her sexual orientation.  I take that back: I am remembering the time she hosted the Academy Awards show in 2001.  It had been postponed twice in the wake of the 11 September attacks over CBS networks' concerns that a lavish show so soon after the tragedy would appear insensitive.  Finally, in November, it aired, after its producers and Ellen realized that it would need a more somber tone that would still take viewers' minds off the tragedy, if only momentarily. Her performance, which brought her several standing ovations, included her now-famous line, "What would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a pantsuit surrounded by Jews?"

It's hard to believe that only four years before that, in February of 1997,she caused a stir when she revealed her sexual orientation on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Two months later, on 30 April, her title character on her sitcom Ellen "came out" to a therapist played by Oprah. Ellen's viewership declined after that, and the show was canceled after the following season.  

So, only a decade and a half ago, Ellen risked her career by revealing, ironically, something that many people had already known, and many more had suspected, about her.  Still, her situation was better than that faced by some of the first gay people to appear on network television.  Three decades before Ellen's disclosure, when gay characters appeared on television series, they were almost always jealous, devious characters, or they lived in the fear of being blackmailed because of their orientation.  Lesbians and transgenders were hardly mentioned at all; the latter were likely to be conflated with transvestites.

In 1967, Americans were already getting much of what they knew (and believed) about a wide variety of topics from television.  In such an environment, a documentary about a controversial topic--as homosexuality was, and still is in some quarters--was bound to incite strong reactions.  It was in that milieu that, on 7 March of that year, an episode of CBS Reports on the topic would air.  The recently-deceased Mike Wallace hosted it.   

The program included interviews with several gay men, pyschiatrists, legal experts and academics.  Some of the gay men were shown in shadow or with their faces behind potted plants; some went by pseudonyms.  In fairness to Wallace, he presented some of the more pro-gay comments, not only from the gay men themselves, but from a Federal judge who suggested that the United States ought to re-examine its laws on homosexuality.  Wallace himself also discussed some of the legal aspects of homosexuality and noted that England was preparing to de-criminalize homosexual acts.  

However, Wallace undercut all of that with his own disparaging commentary of homosexuality, most of which echoed the prevailing notions of devious promiscuous gay men and most of the medical and psychiatric community's view of homosexuality as a mental illness or pathology.  (As late as 1995, he said that gays "could change their orientation if they really wanted to.")  

The result is--well, that depends on who you listen to.  At the time, the New York Times, Washington Star and Chicago Daily News praised the show simply for bringing up the issue. The Chicago Tribune and others trashed it for the very same reason.  A small minority--including George Gent of the New York Times--criticized the anti-gay bias of the show.  History has been less kind to it; in his 2003 book Unmasking the Truth:  Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth, LGBT activist Wayne Besen called the broadcast "the single most destructive hour of anti-gay propaganda in our nation's history."

There were no Cover Girl--or any other--commercials for anyone involved with the broadcast.  In fact, there were no advertisements of any kind on the broadcast:  No sponsor of the network's other shows wanted to be associated with a topic that was considered taboo.  Instead, the "commercial breaks" were filled with public service announcements from the Peace Corps and the Internal Revenue Service.  And one of the gay men Wallace interviewed lost his job after his identity was revealed. 


At least Ellen's career rebounded--or, I should say, took a new and more interesting direction--after the backlash against her "coming out."

 

Worse Than Their Homo- (and Trans-) Phobia

I like to remain optimistic.  Really, I do.  I don't like what I see in the mirror when I become a cynical bitch.

Still, I can't help but to think that there's no idea that's too farfetched, too illogical, too counterintuitive or too just plain wrongheaded to rear its ugly head from time to time.

One of those ideas is the ones that non-heterosexual, non-gender-conforming people can have their "deviance" beaten, shocked, prayed, hugged, drugged, jailed or talked out of them.  It seems that every few years, there's a spate of reports about "reparative" "therapies (something supported by US Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and practiced by her husband Marcus) ," "healing" "ministries" or some program concocted by the law enforcement/military/government complex in some country or another, that aims to change of us who love whom we're not supposed to love or don't live according to the "M" or "F" on our birth certificates. 

Almost none of those programs or ministries has been started, or is administered or practiced by, anyone with any sort of scientific or clinical background in anything having to do with the study of human behavior.  Such programs are routinely dismissed as "junk science" even by those whose religious or cultural beliefs might be in agreement with those who believe they are, in essence, performing or facilitating exorcisms. 

So why do they proliferate?  I don't think they get their impetus only from those who believe that they can "love the sinner but hate the sin" or from those, like Fred Phelps and his followers, who are pure and simple haters.  Instead, I think that the therapies, ministries and other programs continue, in large part, because of the anxieties too many of us in the LGBT community still have.

Thankfully, for more and more people today, "coming out" is a joyous occasion, or at least a relief.   However, in my youth, realizing that one was not attracted to members of the opposite sex (Yes, that's how we phrased it in those days.), let alone not the person idenitified by the name and sex on the birth certificate, was a cause for anxiety, at best, and more often, pain, loneliness, isolation and depression--which, of course, led too many of us to the bars, the bottle or a bridge.   So many of us didn't "come out"--or did so, and "recanted" later on.  Some of us entered marriages that fooled no one.  Or we pursued careers in the military or law enforcement and engaged in, or became fans of, the most "macho" sports and other endeavors we could find, while others paid extra attention to their hair, makeup and dresses.  

In other words, even if we didn't seek those "reparative" "therapies" or "healing" "ministries", or weren't forced into programs that would punish, if not change, us, many of us did those things to ourselves.  I think of the days when I trained athletically: I pedalled fifty miles a day, every day, lifted weights and did all sorts of other exercises; I pushed my body beyond its seeming limits in an attempt to pound it into submission.  All I managed to do was pull myself further and further away from any chance of meaningful community with anyone else, or myself.

These days, most rational people and those with any sort of empathy recoil at the thought of trying to "cure" homosexuality through electroshock, or even behavior modification or prayer and sermons.  So I don't think the Bachmanns and their ilk are nearly as much a threat to us as the fear and isolation that comes with trying to be "normal" and knowing that one can't.  As long as it's still possible to lose one's job, one's friends, family and community--in short, one's life as he or she knows it--too many of us will remain, and die, in the closet. 

What Do I Tell Them?

I had just left the allergist's office.  The rain had softened to a drizzle, and I was walking past the booths of some sort of craft fair or market that was set up in Madison Square Park.  I had walked past the last one, and was leaving the park, when someone said, "I've seen you on TV."

I furrowed my brows.  It's been several years since I did a community-access cable program, and I would be surprised to learn that anyone's still watching the show.  After all, I didn't do it for very long and, well, it was a local community access program.

"I know I've seen you before. Are you a lawyer?"

"Not the last time I checked." 

"Well, I've seen you somewhere before.  My name is Reeba."

"Hi. I'm Justine."

"Now I know...I've seen your blog."

She had just come from a session with her therapist she's been seeing for the past four years.  During that time, she began to take hormones and it shows in her breasts and in her facial lines.  But she still has a fair amount of shadow in spite of her electrolysis.

That may be a reason why she hasn't been feeling confident about herself lately.   Also, she said, she feels as if she hasn't "accomplished anything."  If I've learned nothing else, it's that life isn't about milestones; it's about what steps (or pedal strokes or paddles or whatever metaphor you want to use) you are taking on your journey.   So, I told her, the fact that she's taking a class online is worthy of respect.  It's her first class of any sort in decades, and she is looking at what might be a very long-term goal.  But at least she's doing something that will lead her there, or show her that she should take another path.

Still, I wish I could've given her better advice.  The truth is, much of what I've done has been as much a result of circumstance, necessity or luck--good or bad--as it was of any planning on my part. I could have done many things better than I did, and there are all sorts of things I would do differently.  And I will probably feel the same way some years hence, when I look back at some of the situations and choices I'm faced with now.

In thinking of her, I'm also thinking about Stana.  Coincidentally, her post today is about choices she has to make, and which could greatly affect the course of her life.  She's gotten the green light to work as the woman she is; her family is the only thing between her and her life as the woman she is.  On one hand, she believes they're not, and may never be, ready; on the other, she admits that she never asked them.   However, she adds, "Once that cat is out of the bag, there's no way to stuff it back in, so I am keeping that bag tightly shut."

She summed up part of our (I'm thinking of trans people who are deciding how to live, but I am referring to a lot of other people, too.) dilemma very nicely.  We want, we need, and there's no way back.  The thing is, once you make a decision of that magnitude, a multitude of other decisions will follow.   You "come out;" some accept, some reject; everyone is changed because his or her true self is exposed.  And, whether the outcome is happy or not, there is no way back.

My part-time job is offering me more work for next semester.  And I may have other work in another college.  Those of you who've been reading my blog probably know that I like the work I do, but I don't like my primary workplace.  I mean, I'm glad I have the job.  But it hasn't been intellectually or spiritually nourishing for me and, believe me, I seek those things actively.  That is not good for any educator or creative person, and I just happen to be both.  

Now that I think of it, it's not good for anybody.  I see it every day in the faces and bodies of many of the people there.  I think of the guest who, at a reception following a play at the college theatre,  remarked that he had never seen so many overweight people in one place.  And I've never seen so many people develop health problems in a workplace.  They include the former Director of the Office of Academic Advisement, who lost her gallbladder when she was there.  Others have died, in middle age, of the sorts of things usually suffered by older people.  As bad, or worse, are the truncated emotional and spiritual development I see.  One can see it in the duplicity, backstabbing and plain treachery one sees there. I see it in the faculty and administrators who encouraged me to make the effort to educate my students about experiences like mine, and denigrated or even complained to higher-ups when I did.

I wouldn't presume to tell Reeba or Stana what path they should take.  I would only advise them to consider what cats can't be put back in the bag once they're let out, and what kind of life they might live once the "cat" is gone.  While I would do my transition and surgery over again, I think I would do more and different things to prepare for them--including situating myself differently in terms of work and my  living situation, and even the way I "came out."  At least I am here, living with integrity. And I have a job, which is nothing to sneeze at in this economy.

So what do I tell Reeba and Stana?

What Would (Fill-in-the-blank) Do?

Yesterday I talked to someone with whom I hadn't spoken since I started living full-time as Justine. It was about what I expected: He kept an emotional distance--at least as much as he could--but not necessarily reserve. We didn't get into an argument, mainly because I didn't give him anything he could argue with me. And he said he would not mind maintaining a relationship based on phone calls and e-mails, though he has no wish to see me.

I didn't try to get him to understand how I feel or why I made the changes I've made. Actually, I think he knows more than he'd like to--and not only because I "came out" to him. He even said,"You did what you needed to do." But, he said, he cannot and does not want to see me as anyone other than the guy named Nick he knew for a long time.

I told him I could understand his feelings, at least a little, and that is the reason why I am not, and have not been, angry with him. And, I told him, I understand and respect his wish not to see me. I promised not to ask him to change his mind--or to ask him any other favor of any sort.

As you may have guessed by now, he is related to me. Why else would I have even bothered to call him in the first place? Two people who once called themselves friends have decided that they no longer wanted my friendship--in fact, one even denies that we ever had a friendship. I am not sure that I would be interested in resuming a relationship if either were to call. But for someone related to me, that is a different (and more complicated) matter.

So why did I call, you ask? Well, I really was wondering how he was doing. But, more important, I felt somehow that I needed to do it for myself. Have you ever forgiven, or otherwise reached out to, someone who utterly despises you (This is not to say that the person I've mentioned despises me.) or who has simply hurt you in some way, even though you know that your effort will make absolutely no difference to that person or the situation? If you have, you know that you're doing it for your own spiritual survival or, if you're lucky, growth.

That's not to say that your act necessarily makes you a better person or improves the situation in which you find yourself with that other person. It may not even be a learning experience--or, to use that odious phrase that was so en vogue a few years ago, a "teachable moment." (How can a moment be taught anything?) Rather, it's something that's simply necessary: In what sense, I couldn't tell you. It just is.

Of course, I didn't tell him that and he will know only if he reads this. The only other thing I could say is that I did it because yesterday was the first time I felt emotionally ready to do so. I really feel that I have become, oddly enough, stronger as I've become more vulnerable. Really, I've had to. I knew I could be hurt--in a non-physical way, of course--by my conversation with him. But I also knew I needed to take that chance in order to "move on," as they say.

Plus, there's nothing like hashing out the decision to transition and have surgery, much less actually doing those things, to show you what else you need--and want--in life and to make you feel less guilty or apologetic about going for them. I knew that there would be people who didn't approve of what I've done, and I anticipated that some would want nothing to do with me ever again. But I could not let them deny me my chance at living my own life and being my own person--and, to paraphrase Goethe, dying my own death.

The one I called yesterday referred to me by my former name and male pronouns. He seemed to make a point of doing so. On the other hand, when he said he couldn't take seeing me "act feminine"and I said it wasn't an act, he said, "Yes, I know."

Some might say that I should have asserted myself more. Perhaps. But getting into a battle over names and pronouns would have accomplished nothing--or, at least, would not have changed his mind. So, I thought, all I could really do was to call him and actually be myself, whether or not he wants to acknowledge it.

It's the best I knew how to do. But I'm still second-guessing myself.

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.

From The First Meeting To Lunch Next Week

Dwayne and I had planned on having lunch tomorrow. Alas, he cancelled. He'd suffered from double pneumonia last month and his partner is forbidding him from going out tomorrow, when it's expected to be about 25 degrees colder than today.

I was very much looking forward to our lunch date. We've rescheduled for next week.

So why am I talking about him and our lunch date? Well, he is one of the people who has made possible the life I'm now leading.

Around the time Tammy and I broke up, I made an appointment with the counseling services at the LGBT Community Center of New York. I'd previously been to two other therapists for other reasons, but I still didn't know where to begin or how to get over the fear I had in looking for someone else who might've been able to help me.

The day I went to the Center was the sort of summer day on which an air-conditioned welder's mask would have been most welcome. The truth is that I would've entered just about any place that would have gotten me out of that heat and glaring light, even for a little while. But it wasn't just the heat and glare from which I wanted shelter; I wanted a truce with, if not a resolution to, the conflict that had me ready to explode or implode--I wasn't sure of which.

Well, I got to the Center. Miraculously, the young woman working at the counseling services' reception desk said that, yes, someone could see me, even though I didn't have an appointment.

I'll give you three guesses as to who saw me.

Yes, Dwayne was my intake counselor. I don't know how long I talked with him, but by the time we finished, I felt as if I'd just read him War and Peace at the speed of light. I felt, for the first time in my life, that I'd told somebody everything. And, more important, I felt as if I'd told someone the truth about myself for the first time in my life.

Up to that day, I had never met him. When I went to the Center's counseling services, I had absolutely no idea of whom I would meet or what would result. However, I was never more certain as to what I was doing, and why I was doing it, than I was when I went to the Center that day.

I think Dwayne sensed all of that. Best of all, he empathised, and not only because he has lived outside of what our culture, or almost any other, expects from one gender or another. He usually describes himself as a "butch," but has told me that he would've liked to have taken testosterone and undergone the surgeries. He couldn't do those things, he said, for medical as well as financial reasons.

Later, I realized that I wouldn't have had to say a word to him and he would have understood exactly why I was in his office. I could have shown up in army fatigues and a crew-cut and he would have known why I was there. So it's no wonder that in revealing that first, most basic, fact about myself, I not only felt relief: I felt that some things were finally starting to make sense. Example: I knew that I had to stop drinking and taking drugs. But I didn't know why it wasn't all I needed to do, much less what my next step--never mind my long-term goal--had to be.

I had that conversation with him about a year before I began to live full-time as a woman or "came out" to anyone in my family. Perhaps I could have had that conversation with someone else. But as fate or luck or karma or whatever would have it, I had that conversation with Dwayne. And he was exactly whom I needed at that moment.

So I have Dwayne to thank. (Others would blame him.) We'll have lunch next week; I'll always have that day we met.