A New Mystery

Early this evening I went out for a walk. I followed 34th Avenue, which intersects the street on which I live, to 21st Street, which is one of the main commercial strips in this area. I'd planned to stop at the Dunkin' Donuts for a cruller or croissant and to walk some more.

Well, just a few steps away from DD, a man slightly taller, and a few years older (I guessed) than me, smiled and said "hello."

That in itself may not seem so unusual. But it seems that in the past week or two, I've passed this man on the street every day. No matter how hard I try, I cannot recall having seen him more than a week or two ago, much less before my surgery. Yet, each time he and I passed each other, I tried, in my mind, to locate him: Something about him seemed familiar, especially when he turned, gave me a wan little smile (which I wasn't expecting from him) and said "hello."

Tonight the greeting led to a conversation. He is an inch or two taller than I am, neither thin nor fat. In other words, he's neither imposing nor frail. A shade lighter than mocha, I guessed him to be a Caribbean-Asian mix of some sort. As it turns out, he's from Guyana, and of black and Indian origin.

And he told me more about himself: how working for a small bank became a career and forced retirement from Chase after it acquired the bank for which he'd been working, how he made and lost money through lucky investments and unlucky business ventures and an even unluckier marriage, and about his dilemma: his desire for material comfort and his need for spiritual nourishment.

"Isn't that the basic human dilemma?" I wondered aloud.

He paused. I wasn't sure of whether he wasn't expecting my almost-rhetorical question--or, perhaps, whether he simply wasn't expecting it from me. Somehow nothing I'd heard from them surprised me--or, more precisely, hearing it from him

And so we queried each other further. He's one of those people who is, even in his most mundane details, mysterious. Oh, no, I said it: The M word.

Dr. Jennifer: My First Visit With The Gynecologist

Today I had my very first visit with a gynecologist. Well, Marci Bowers is a gynecologist, too, but today's appointment was the first time I visited a gynecologist specifically because she's a gynecologist.

If Marci had been born with the XX chromosomes and had been gay, she would have been something like Dr. Jennifer Johnson. Like Dr. Bowers, Dr. Johnson instisted that I call her by her first name. Also like Dr. Bowers, Dr. Johnson knows exactly what she's doing and has the benefit of all of the best tools, technology and experience. But, also in common with Dr. Bowers, she knows that those aren't all her patients need: For good, holistic health, people like me need a good, empathetic human being as well as the most efficient machines modern medicine has.

And that is why I have had complete confidence in both of them from the moment I first came into contact with each of them. They know that your womanhood is not just about the shape of your body's organs; it's a state of mind and a manifestation of the spirit. I think that even back when I was cynical (or faking it, anyway), I could have seen that quality in either of them.

If Marci took me over the bridge to femaleness, she and Jennifer have been welcoming me into that land in which I have always been a citizen but in which I have only recently begun to reside. You might say that I was born and lived as a female exiled in prison or in a prison of exile. And now that I have entered into the country of my spirit, I have guides and allies in people like Marci and Jennifer.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, then, that Jennifer was not only evaluating my condition; she was admiring the work Marci did on me. As well she should. Even though there's still some swelling and the scars are healing, I can see the artistry of her work. It's not just a matter of the shape of my labia looking proportionate or symmetrical or the feeling I'm starting to have in my clitoris.

I think now of what Michelangelo said about his work: He chipped away at the stone until the David that was always within it came to be. Marci didn't simply fashion a vagina for me: She worked with the materials I had until the vagina that was always within me found its way. I realized this during my session with Jennifer, when I caught a glimpse of my new organs in a mirror wondered how there ever could have been anything else between my legs.

Really, it's no wonder--if I do say so myself--that within the first minute or so of my time with Jennifer, she exclaimed that I was "positively glowing." I replied that after the surgery, I felt as if a huge weight had come off my shoulders. That burden was, of course, the overlay of a masculine inversion. I mean, really, when the wall is chipped away, when the blinds are turned outward, what else streams in but light? And how can anyone who is suddenly filled with it do anything but "glow?"

The funny thing is that she wasn't the first or last person to say that I was "glowing" today. And I didn't even leave the house except to go to my appointment with Jennifer!

I'm going to see her again on Thursday. She said that everything looks fine and is doing what it's supposed to be doing, but that I was showing the first sign of a mild infection near the bottom-most suture. She said it wasn't anybody's fault; it's just a result of some of the discharges that people normally experience after surgery. Marci said I might experience something like this; that is one reason why she recommends a gynecological appointment two weeks or so after the surgery.

So...Everything is where it's supposed to be. And I'm meeting people who are even better versions of the people I need and want. Is this a life, or what?