After The Losses: After The Guilt Has Passed

If you are now living in a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, you have most likely lost at least one relationship that was very important to you.  It might be the one you had with a spouse or partner.  Or, perhaps, family members have—or your entire family has—rejected you. 

Maybe longtime friends or professional colleagues have decided that you are less worthy of their esteem than you were when they knew you by your old name, in the gender in which you had been living.

I have experienced losses in all three categories.  My partner split with me when I started my transition.  (When I offered not to live as female for the sake of our relationship, she would not hear of it. “You have to do it,” she said of my impending change.  “I just can’t go there with you.”)  One family member has cut ties with me; others have kept some distance.  And one friend—whose PhD, interestingly, includes a specialty in gender studies—said and did the politically correct things until she lashed out at me over an imagined transgression.   Another friend, I now realize, simply didn’t have the courage to tell me to my face how he really felt.  Over time, he stopped answering my calls and responding to my e-mails. 

And then there was the former boss—the chair of a department in which I taught—who observed my class and wrote a glowing observation and sang my praises to his superiors and colleagues—when I was a guy named Nick.  After about a year of living as Justine, I asked him whether he would write a reference or recommendation for me.  He shook his head and gave an appraisal of me that completely contradicted the report he wrote about me and things he said to others, including the college provost.

I grieved all of those relationships.  I hoped that my former partner would become the friend she said she wanted to be after we split.  I hoped that blood would indeed be thicker than whatever hormones were coursing through my body.  And I hoped that my old friends would get over the shock of the person they knew as a guy named Nick becoming a woman named Justine and realize that I was still all of the things they used to say I was: caring, compassionate, intelligent and sometimes even funny.

My old boss has retired, and I’ve moved on with my work, so I am no longer concerned with his assessment of me.  Although I still recall some of the good times I had with her, I have long resigned myself to the fact that my former partner didn’t mean what she said about remaining friends with me.  I have a similar attitude about the gender studies PhD:  She was a really good friend once (She called me the night, long ago, when I’d traced a line on my left wrist; I didn’t draw the razor blade across it) but that—like the relationship I had with my former partner, is a memory.  And now I realize—if you’ll pardon the expression—that even after my surgery, I have more balls than that male former friend, if I do say so myself.

I have not only accepted that I will most likely never have relationships with them again; I have even lost my desire to re-connect with them.  I have also resigned myself to not being reconciled with the family members I mentioned, especially one in particular.  I even promised my mother that if that family member decides to speak to me again, I will listen and not question or accuse.

That promise still holds.  Lately, though, I’ve noticed that I’m losing not only my hope or wish, but also my desire, to see a renewed relationship.  If that family member calls or approaches me, I won’t refuse.  However, I don’t expect that to happen and don’t feel particularly troubled by it anymore.  I get the feeling that if we ever meet again, it will be at the funeral of one of my parents.  We will probably be the proverbial ships passing in the night; we might say the things relatives say to each other over the death of another relative, but I don’t expect to look to that relative for support any more than I expect to be looked to.

What I’m noticing now is that I’ve lost the sadness I felt over losing that relationship—and that I’m not feeling guilty about it.  Some might regard that as cold or heartless. Perhaps it is. But to me, it seems no more sensible to pine for someone who has rejected me—and who, in our last conversation, said that rejection is about that person’s “stubbornness” (Yes, that is the word that person used) is the reason for not acknowledging me as I am, let alone having any sort of relationship with me—than it is to wish I were 27 years old again.  It just ain’t happenin’, and I’m getting over it.

How Could I Ever Break Up Your Family?

If I recall correctly, one of the characters in Alberto Moravia's The Conformist (and in Bernardo Bertolucci's film based on the novel) says something to the effect that in Italy, people can rationalize anything in the name of their families.


That's more or less what any number of Italian-Americans (Remember, I speak as one!), from church officials to Mafiosi, have done.  However, in America, instead of one's own family, one can use "The Family" to rationalize all manner of prejudice and hatred.


To wit:  Nearly all of the opposition to equal rights for transgenders (or, for that matter, gays, lesbians and bisexuals) includes some group or another with the word "family" in its name.  It's happening now in Maine, where a group called the Maine Family Policy Council is trying to get the state to roll back some of the protections for transgenders it encoded in its laws.  The Massachusetts Family Council is trying to do the same thing in their state, and in Connecticut, "family" groups are trying to prevent that state from passing a gender-inclusive anti-discrimination bill.  Similar scenarios are playing out in other states that have passed, or are trying to pass, such legislation.


How, pray tell, does protecting the rights of LGBT people threaten the family?  If a man marries a man, or a woman a woman, I don't see how that undermines heterosexual families.  If anything, allowing same-sex marriages might prevent a few broken homes, as some young person who, not so long ago, might have entered into a sham marriage in order to "fit in" will have the option of creating a family on his or her own terms.  I think such a union would have a better chance than some marriage that's based on nothing more than guilt or misplaced familial or societal expectations.


And I don't know how making it illegal for someone to fire or evict me, or to commit violence against me, because I had an "M" on by birth certificate will break up anyone's family or persuade some kid to be like me unless he or she feels about gender identity as I did.


Finally, even if you define marriage as "a man and a woman," and believe that is the basis of a family, I still don't understand how I can be such a threat to it.  I never stopped any heterosexual couple from getting married or having kids, and I never broke up anyone's marriage or family. Well, I've been blamed for the latter, but I still don't understand how I came to have such power.


If anyone can explain how undergoing having undergone my transition, or loving whomever I love, is such a threat to the formation or stability of someone's family, I would be very interested in hearing it. 

Zach Harriington: Another Victim of Hate

As I said the other day, tis the season.


Gotta do this shit again:  Report on another victim of homophobia.  Another one too young.


Zach Harrington, a 19-year-old gay man, killed himself in his hometown of Norman, Oklahoma.  Like many young gay men, he endured verbal and physical harassment while attending his local high school. 


 If it wasn't enough that he was a quiet, passive young man, he was also 6'4".  That literally made him even more of a target than he would otherwise have been.  I can tell you that for a fact because that's what happened to a classmate of mine in high school.  Louis was 6-foot-7, and completely without physical grace.  When a coach/gym teacher tried to help Louis develop his coordination and other skills in the hope of turning him into a basketball player--something he had no interest in becoming--it only opened him up to more ridicule and harassment when the experiment failed.  


Anyway, Zach Harrington killed himself after attending a local city council meeting, where as "Towleroad"'s blogger so eloquently said, "the same sentiments that quietly tormented him in high school were being shouted out and applauded by adults the same age as his own parents."  That doesn't surprise me, and not because Norman is such a conservative place.  (That's what I've heard, anyway; I've never been there or anywhere else in Oklahoma.)  Rather, his experience reflects an aspect of my own:  People often assume that kids or the "uneducated" will be the most intolerant and cruelest; too often, the ones we expect to understand--especially those who potentially have any power to help us as allies--can be the most intolerant and even hateful.


Comments his sister and others made would have us believe that he went into that meeting with an unrealistic expectation.  That may have been the case.  But I suspect he may have gone in order to alert the authorities--who have the power to make policy governing the police and others entrusted with public safety--that the harassment we experience is not merely an inconvenience.  It is an infringement of the rights we have in common with everyone else--those oft-echoed Constitutional stipulations that we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 


Why do so many of us have to face beatings and harassment--or even to put our lives at risk--simply to do with millions of other people do every day, namely, go to school and work?   That begs another question:  Why do some people seem to act as if we don't have the same right to protection other people receive from violence, and why aren't those crimes against us taken as seriously as the ones against other people?  After all, we (or, in the case of teenagers, their parents) pay the same taxes as everyone else.


Whenever a young person dies, people always wonder what might have been.  Could the young victim have become a doctor, artist, scientist or educator?, they wonder.  However, that misses the real point:  A young person lost an opportunity to which everyone has a right.  That is the right to live, to love and be loved.  And it deprives--as in Zach Harrington's case--parents, siblings and others of someone they loved.  


Did it occur to anyone at that city council meeting that Zach Harrington was one of their kids, and that one of their kids could have been Zach Harrington?

What Came My Way--And What Came of-- Yesterday

Yesterday I had two surprises. One of them wasn't pleasant; the other might be.

First to the unhappy surprise: One of my brothers--the one who broke off contact with me after I "came out"--wrote an anonymous comment to this blog. One of the reasons I didn't post it is that he addressed it to me by my old name. If he wants to refer to me that way for the rest of our lives (assuming, of course, he ever thinks about or talks to me again), that is his right. As we say in the old country, he can call me whatever the hell he wants. But it would have been a bit incongruent, to say the least, to have something on my blog that's addressed to someone who does not exist.

Then he disputed much of what I've said about the relationship I had with him and his kids. Of course we all see things differently, but I never said that I was a court reporter. Rather, I write more about how I have experienced one thing and another. I don't expect him or anyone else to have experienced anything in quite the same way as I have. He claims that I was making my relationship with his kids seem closer than it was. He is right about this: I didn't see a lot of his kids. But I always enjoyed whatever time I had with them, and I thought about them often between visits--as I do now. I never said anything more--or less--than that.

He also took issue with the way I "came out" to him and the rest of my family. Maybe, with that wonderful gift called 20/20 hindsight, I could see a better way of having done it than I did. But given all of our circumstances at the time, and with what I could discern from talking to other people who had to do the same, I made the best decisions I could at the time. Perhaps someone else would have done better. It just happens that I'm not someone else.

Also, he complained how much I revealed about him and his family and expressed his belief that it cast them in a bad light. The irony is that his comment revealed more about him and them than I ever could have. So, in keeping with his wishes to the degree that I can (I can't be his male sibling or go by my old name.), I didn't post his comments. I will say no more about him and his family unless he decides to be in touch with me again. And I will continue to harbor no ill will toward him or them.

The other surprise came in my e-mail box. After opening her message by introducing herself, she wrote, "I've been trying to find some old friends and for some reason, your name sprang to mind."

I'd love to know for what reason. She didn't mention money or children. The latter is not surprising, as we did nothing that could have made them possible. And, as far as I know, we don't have some common relative.

The tone of the e-mail was friendly, as she recounted some of the things she's done since we were last in touch, which had to have been at least twenty-five years ago. She moved, trained for a new career, worked it for about fifteen years, then lost it in the recent economic turmoil. Now she's teaching in what she described as a "career college."

In her message, she said that she followed the name by which she knew me until it became the name I have now. (Well, she didn't say it that way, but it's the best way I can summarize what she told me.) And voila!--She found out that the guy she used to know is now a girl. And, along the way, said guy got married and did a few other things that weren't quite in keeping with either the young man she knew or the woman I am.

She also mentioned that she's still single (I advised her not to be in a rush to get married.) and that she's undergoing a religious conversion. Ironically enough, it was through her old religion that I met her.

All right, now I'm going to reveal another secret: When I was in college, I became involved with a Christian fellowship. In fact, I got involved enough to write for, then edit, its newsletter and to be a housemate of its leader.

All the while, I identified myself as gay. I did so mainly because I didn't know how else to identify myself: I wasn't terribly attracted to women. I wasn't terribly attracted to men, either, though I had relationships with a couple. But, somehow I thought that if I had no real interest in being involved with a woman, I must be gay. And while the thought of it scared the shit out of me, at least it allowed me to function, in some way, as a male. Although I knew that I am female, the thought of doing what it would have taken--at least at that time in my life--to live at one was simply unfathomable. Translation: It really scared the shit out of me.

So I was looking for some sort of refuge and solace, you might say. Yes, I was in a lot of emotional and spiritual pain. Why did I have to live my life with the conflicts I had with my gender identity and sexuality?, I wondered. Actually, within myself, I screamed that question. And I screamed it at God, as I understood--and desperately wanted to believe--in Him. Others were beseeching the Lord for his grace and forgiveness; I was crying "Why? Why? Why?"

Plus, I still had that totally desperate wish for something better (translation: easier) than what I had and what I knew.

Desperate: Now there's a word that describes much of what I've done in my life. I was trying to hold the truth about myself at bay. All of those drinking games and physical contests with men couldn't keep it away. Nor could the love of another woman, or the desires of a man. Nor, for that matter, could immersion in the Scriptures or a life dedicated to the dictates of the Holy Spirit, whatever those were.

Interestingly enough, being part of that Christian fellowship probably got me, at least in some ways, through those college years. Because I was editing that newsletter, I was always in contact with some people who studied hard and weren't malicious. The fellowship's leader, with whom I roomed for a year, probably got me to study, or just to do something constructive, when I was ready to give up. (He talked me out of leaving school at least once.) And, even though I essentially renounced my gender identity and sexual self, the people in the fellowship probably kept me more intact emotionally than I might have been because, at least, none of the males would challenge me to beer-drinking or beard-growing contests, or goad me into raping women. I admit that I did more than my share of drinking "on the sly" and a couple of times the fellowship's leader brought me back to the house when I couldn't get there under my own power.

And, it was in that fellowship that I met Elizabeth, who would become my best friend for many years afterward. She wants to forget that now. But I can't really judge her: After all, if the woman who e-mailed me yesterday or anyone else I knew from those days had tried to contact me, say, ten or fifteen years ago, I wouldn't have responded. I was trying to forget those days and to make some kind of a life for myself among people who didn't know my past. If you've been reading this blog, you know how well that worked!

Anyway, I am very interested to see what, if anything, comes of the contact I've just had with a friend I hadn't seen or heard from since my days at Rutgers, nearly three decades ago.

I Don't Want To Recruit Them; I Just Want You To Love Me

Another visit with Dr. Jennifer. She said I'm a "poster girl for post-op recovery." Everything is healing even better than it should, she says, save for a slight tissue build-up in one area. I'm going to see her again next week; she's "playing it safe," and that's what I want.

I called Mom today. She was looking at houses with my brother. She's returning to Florida on Saturday and my brother will continue her search. I honestly don't think she and Dad are going to move. For one thing, they can't agree on what they want. For another, they own their house outright; all they have to pay are taxes and the usual expenses that come along with maintaining a house. I don't think they really want to take on a mortgage, or even rent payments, at this point in their lives. Besides, they've been in Florida for long enough that a readjustment to life in New Jersey, or almost anywhere north of where they are now, would be difficult.

One thing I noticed is that she doesn't talk as much, or as freely, with me when she's with the brother who doesn't speak to meas she does when she's with one of my other brothers or her own house. So, if I can't reach Mom on her cell phone, I can't call the home number of the brother who doesn't speak to me. When she's with another brother, I can call his house and at least he is brotherly with me; if my sister-in-law Barbara answers, she pretends to be nice but at least she'll let me talk with Mom or Dad on their phone.

When I was with Mom, Dad and Aunt Nanette the other day, Mom often mentioned the things the brother who doesn't speak to mehas done, and has offered to do, for her. She and Aunt Nanette agreed that he's a "really good son." I wouldn't disagree with that; in fact, I'd even say that he's a great father. I wonder whether Mom or Dad ever tells him that I say things like that about him. I'd love for him to read this blog, especially the entries in which I mention him. Even though he's cut me out of his life, I think he's a good man and want him back.

And, really, I didn't mind Mom or Aunt Nanette talking about how good he is. To be fair, Mom did mention that I've offered to move to Florida or simply to go there more frequently than I do. Aunt Nanette said that was very kind; Mom agreed, but added that because I don't drive, I can't help in the same ways my brothers could.

Another thing: My niece will turn 16 in October. Surely she knows there are gay kids in her school; just as surely, she's heard about (if she hasn't met) transgender people. What she knows may be rumor or exaggeration, but it's still more than people of my generation knew at her age. And I can't help but to think that she and her brother have asked what happened to me, and I can't help but to wonder what, if anything their parents have told them.

I don't know whether my brother or sister-in-law fear that I will try to "recruit" their kids. Really, I couldn't do that, even if I wanted to. You either feel that you were born into the wrong body or you don't. You feel that you should have been born as the sex opposite the one on your birth certificate, or you don't. And you have to think about your gender identity, or you don't. Nobody can make you do any of the "you don't"s. It really is that simple.

Besides, I have always loved my nephew and niece as they are. Why would I even want to try to make them into something I can't make them into, anyway? For that matter, I have always loved my brother, too, just as he is. And I still do. Why can't he accept that?

Someone--I forget who--once said, "People are afraid of being loved forever. Which are they afraid of: love or forever?

OK, I'll stop whining about my family now. Besides, loving my family members doesn't make me noble. About the best thing I can say for myself is that it's a sign that I'm grateful for the life I have. Now, I'd say my mother's love for me ennobles her, simply because of what she had to endure with me. And I say the same for Marilynne and her husband, and the way they've supported their daughter.

I don't see how I'll ever be expected, or have the opportunity, to love somebody that way. For that matter, I don't think I can even be as helpful to anyone as the people who've been with me during this time in my life.

All I want is for the people I love to love me. Most of them do. But I want those others, too.

The Fifteenth

It's rained through most of the day. The sun put in one of those appearances it makes when it's in the center of the storm, then the sky grew darker and heavier with the rain that resumed.


If this day were colder, it would have felt like the fifteenth of November. But this day nonetheless looked the part, with the sky I've mentioned and leaves that a week or two ago fluttered and swirled red and gold in the autumn breeze but were, today, brown and whipped about into brittleness by the seemingly capricious wind.

As warm as this day was--The temperature reached 69 degrees F, according to the weather report--it was unmistakably a prelude to winter. Even when the sun appeared, it did not light up the sky as it did even a few days ago. Rather, it--and all of the light of this day--seemed to be little more than a truce with darkness. And the cold.

Gertrude Stein once said of T.S. Eliot, "He looks like the Fifteenth of November." Whatever Fifteenth she was talking about must have looked like this one, for as warm as today was, it was an uncanny spiritual reflection of the poet who was forgiven (at least by me!) many sins for having written "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

I grow old...I grow old..
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

The fifteenth of November is definitely a "precipice" date. You cannot pretend that you have just entered the fall; summer is a rather distant memory. And what are memories but the fictions our minds write for us?

And that is exactly the reason why people--I include myself, through most of my life--hold on to memories for dear life, sometimes at the cost of our own lives. I often feel that is the reason why people vote for reactionary politicians--or, worse, re-elect them, as they did with George W. Bush. (I can say "they" because I didn't vote for either of his terms.) Everyone wants to return to the Garden, whether of Eden of the Finzi-Continis, whether or not it actually existed.

On September 11th, everyone wished it was the 10th, or even a date before that. I've had Fourths of July (my birthday) when I wished it was the third, and any number of other dates I wished hadn't come to pass mainly because of the uncertainty that lay before them.

And on the fifteenth of November in 2003, Mom and Dad probably were wishing that it was the fourteenth. I'm sure they felt that way for many, many days afterward. Sometimes I did, too. Sometimes I wished for days even earlier than the fourteenth of that year, or an earlier year than that one.

Five years ago today, I came out to Mom and Dad. I didn't expect it to be easy for either of them: They knew, as well as I did, that we were entering a new and unsettled season in our relationship and in our lives. None of us knew what to expect, really: All I had was the hope that whatever I would have to endure in my transition would lead me to the happiness and spiritual fulfillment that had always eluded me, no matter how many people loved me and how many good things I did.

Even in all that uncertainty, though, I could sense that in some way they--my mother, at any rate--felt a sort of relief. For her--and for my father, too, although he did not express it overtly--my life finally made sense to them. I know it did for me, for the first time. All those relationships that didn't work--because they couldn't. The alcohol and drug abuse. The self-loathing. The things I started and never followed through. Of course. My mother said as much: "You had to spend so much energy fighting yourself."

For the first few months that followed, Mom, as compassionate as she was, seemed to feel anger that she couldn't quite place: Sometimes she was upset with me; other times she was upset with herself. Once she realized that it wasn't her "fault" that I am who I am, she chided herself for not knowing more and learning more quickly than she did. "I'm really trying to understand. Really I am."

"I know you are. And I'm not going to ask anything else of you. After all, it took me 40 years to figure it out."

I don't know how many times we had that exchange. But I also can't remember the last time we had it. The funny thing is that she had no idea of just how well she understood what I'd gone through, was going through and what I always wanted. I guess it's like that with the people who help you the most: They don't always realize what they've done for you.

The thing she didn't realize then, and perhaps she realizes now, is that she really was doing the best she could do, of herself and for me. And that I wasn't going to give up on her, any more than she would give up on me.

One thing never changed: We talked to each other every weekend, sometimes for an hour or more, by phone.

During those months that followed my "coming out," Dad was more enigmatic: He would send little gifts, such as pendants. to me but we'd barely talk at all. According to Mom, he also didn't want me to come down for a visit because there were friends and neighbors of theirs who knew me as Nick, and who knew how they'd react to me now?

But about a year ago, I noticed that I was talking more with him, though not nearly as much as with Mom. Still, it was an improvement from the previous three years. In fact, I'd say that we were--and are--talking to each other more than we did when we were living in the same house. He even congratulated me when I said I was seeing Dominick.

And he even took me shopping when I was visiting them in August. I never would have predicted anything like that. Yet in some way, it seems entirely "in character" for him.

Does he still sometimes wish I could be Nick, his namesake? Does Mom wish I could have been one of those eldest sons who makes his mother proud and who would have given her a grandchild who would probably be in, or getting ready to go to, college about now? Do they wish I could have pursued the careers, the lifestyles or anything else they had envisioned for me? I'm sure they always will. But they know they can no more wish that son into existence than I could be him. Actually, now that I think of it, I think they always knew that. Of course it would have been a more certain, and easier, road for them--and probably for me, too--had I been able to be that person they thought, or hoped, they had brought into this world.

They stayed with me on the Fifteenth of November, and the days that have followed. I could not have asked for any more. Out of the uncertainty has come joy that I never knew existed. And, I hope, that for them, a flower of that changing of the season is the understanding that while I may have become something they never could have envisioned, that I also love them in ways none of us could have understood on the fourteenth. Because I was honest with them, for the first time in my life, on the fifteenth.