Always The Same: Revelations And Changes

Parisians and psychotherapists disappear for the month of August.  Sometimes I think of myself as a Parisian in spirit,even though I haven't been in eight years, but I have no illusions of being a psychotherapist.  So what's my excuse for being somewhat conspicuously absent this month?

Well, I've managed to be busy with other things, including writing projects.  Hopefully they'll remunerate me; for now I find them rewarding.  And, frankly, when I haven't been doing those things--or riding or playing with my cats--I've felt drained, spiritually and emotionally exhausted.  The pastor of the church I started attending a few months ago says I'm healing. She's right.

Still, I've managed, in the past week, to ride to Point Lookout (Nothing like a few hours riding Arielle to make me feel lithe!) and to take a few shorter rides--and to record a few things along the way.

I'll start with something I saw on my way home from some volunteer work:

Sometimes I think archaeology is the step between destruction and forgetfulness.  At least, that's how things seem to work in New York. Sometimes, when a building is torn down, a long-concealed sign,  like the one in the photo, is revealed.  

What particularly intrigued me was the bottom inscription:  "Separate Waiting room for women."  Talk about a relic!  My undergraduate college went co-ed only four years before I enrolled in it.  And, boys and girls entered my Catholic elementary school through separate entrances:  a practice that was abandoned a couple of years after my family moved away.

Given that I lived as a male until ten years ago, it's hard for me not to wonder and imagine what my life would have been like had I entered through the girls' and women's doors.  Of course, had I lived in such a world, I would not have attended the college from which I graduated.  In fact, I might not have attended any college at all.

In those times, I probably would not have witnessed this:

The stretch of Brooklyn waterfront between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges has been turned into a lovely park.  Not long ago, it was off-limits, as the neighborhood around it--DUMBO--still consisted of functioning and recently-ceased manufacturing and warehousing.  This stretch of waterfront, like so much of the rest of New York's shorelines, was used in various ways by those industries.  In fact, most New Yorkers had little or no inclination to spend any time by the water, as it was associated with rough trades and characters.  Fifth Avenue became Manhattan's most-desired address in part because, of all of the island's avenues, it is furthest from the East and Hudson Rivers.

Ah, but some things don't change:

That's one reason why I--and Arielle and, on occasion, Tosca--like to take a spin to Point Lookout.

Healing In The Mist

I climbed the arc of the bridge from the Queens "mainland" to the Rockaway Peninsula, a long strip of land wide enough for only two roads that run its length.  One skirts the bay; the other, the ocean. Between them is an elevated railway that's part of the city's tranist system.


However, I could see none of it from the arc of that bridge.  I know it's all there only because I've cycled there so many times before.  


Sunshine accented the thin, wispy clouds that streaked the sky as I left my apartment for my ride.  But as I rode closer to the bridge, clouds gathered and thickened until the sky was overcast and the air filled with cold mist.  I've spent enough time around seashores to know that, in spite of the dense sky, there was no danger of rain.  The air and sky often grow gray--actually, almost silvery--by the ocean, especially at this time of year.


By the time I reached Rockaway Beach, a spring day had turned almost wintry.  That's not unusual at this time of year, because even though the temperature reached 68 F (20 C) today near my apartment, the ocean temperature is still less than 40F (5C).  That difference in temperatures was, of course, the cause of that mist that braced my skin.  


For the past eight months, I've been keeping myself warm and have swaddled myself in soft, cushiony layers.  That, I am told, is normal after surgery, even in the summer.  And of course we are now just emerging from winter. 


Still, I enjoyed feeling the cold mist against my face.  I didn't even mind when it grew denser and became a fog thick enough that I could just barely see the railings, let alone the sand or the ocean, as I pedalled along the Rockaway Beach boardwalk, or that I could only see a couple of cars from the Wonder Wheel when I was asecending a ramp only a block away from it.  


And I didn't mind that everything had turned gray, for it was a silvery, if not steely, hue.  It was actually very pretty, especially when I could see ocean at Coney Island well enough so that I could see the white of foam dissolving into the silvery mist as the tide spilled onto the beach and rolled back into the sea.  


The cold, gray and mist felt like a sort of healing.  It may have had to do with the way it all felt against my skin:   astringent, but not stinging, much less painful.  It was as if something was leaving my body, and spirit and a kind of serenity, if not joy, was taking its place.  


True healing is not all sunshine and rainbows and puppies and kittens.  (And, yes, those are a few of my favorite things:  No apologies to Julie Andrews, or John Coltrane!)  It is uncomfortable at first but, once it's underway, bracing.  And it opens as it cleanses; thus, one has to be willing to be opened in order to be healed.  At least that's been true in my own life.


And my gender transition has been about healing myself from a number of things, including the scars from the sexual abuse I experienced as well as the ways in which I internalized, and expressed, the hate that was part of my life.


After those things, it's almost odd to say that I was healing from my surgery, as that was part of my healing.  

Mine: Becoming Mine

Neither the students nor I can believe that the winter session is almost over: just two more days of classes. This means, of course, that the year is more than two weeks old. Is it still a "new" year?

It is for me, in a way. After all, this is my first year after my surgery. A lot of things still seem new. What that means, of course, is that they're still in flux. I realize that when I look at my new body parts: They are becoming what I envisioned, only better. Still, they seem to be different every time I see them. I guess that even though the major healing is completed, what Marci created is still developing and, I guess, taking shape to my body. In other words, it looks like a vagina; it is a vagina and it's becoming my vagina.


That may be the first time I've used the "v" word three times in the same sentence. Then again, I'm not Eve Ensler. (That said, her play is canonical, as far as I'm concerned.) It's funny that I now feel, upon using it, what kids feel when they use a "forbidden" or "bad" word. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the v-word (!), but it's funny that it's still novel for me to use it in reference to a part of my own body. I guess I'm still getting used to the idea that what it refers to is mine.


My vagina. Through all of those years, I wanted a vagina rather than what I had. I guess that was the only way I could think of her. (At times like this, I wish my first language was Italian, French or Spanish: It seems so weird to call such an intimate part of one's self "it.") I had seen enough women's genitalia to know generally what they looked like--though, I must say, I still have no idea of whether what I saw represents a fair cross-section of what the world's women have. I just knew that I was meant to have one of those.


What I didn't know was what mine would be like. I'm not sure that, save for her origins or a couple of things she'll never be able to do, she is so unusual. I mean, the size is about right for a woman of my proportions, and her folds are in all the same places. Even my clitoris is like others I've seen, and has a "hood." The hair is still growing around her: I don't know whether this rite of puberty is progressing at more or less the same rate as does for other females. Or am I developing slowly? If that's the case, I guess it would be appropriate: After all, it took me a long time to get to where I am now.


Whatever...The development is happening at my pace, and not someone else's--certainly not that of the boy who was experiencing the puberty he so dreaded. I'm talking, of course, about me when I was about thirteen or so.


I never felt that same sense of ownership over what developed then as I do over what's been developing for the past six months. Perhaps "ownership" isn't quite the word: It commodifies whatever I'm talking about. Somehow claiming ownership of something is not quite the same as saying that it is mine: I take ownership, but something becomes mine in an inevitable, even organic, way.


And I know that my vagina is becoming mine by the way it feels in my body: At times I can feel the tension and energy of muscles and tissues that have been growing together and working with each other in ways that, while seemingly natural, are still new. Other times, I just feel--comfort is not the right word; perhaps inevitability is. Though my vagina is only six months old, I find it hard to believe that there was ever anything else in that part of my body. Even her color, a sort of pale pink, seems more of a match with the skin of the rest of my body than the tone of the organ I had before.


My vagina is mine because she's becoming mine. And I expect--and hope--she will continue that way. She's still new, after all, even if she's always been a part of me.

Wrinkles and Folds

Today I noticed every line in my face, and every ounce of flab on my body. Maybe it's because I'm tired. Or maybe I am old and fat. It seemed that everyone--even the old profs at the department meeting--had smooth faces and lean bodies. What's happening to me?

Am I buying into society's expectations about women? If I'm wrinkly and flabby, I won't get a date, much less my book published, even if I have the mind of Virginia Woolf or Marie Curie, or the soul of Gloria Steinem or Dorothy Day. At least, that's how things seem.

Yes, every one of those lines around the corners of my lips looks like a crack in a weathered tenement building. And the swelling around my left side has subsided, but is still there--what, almost three weeks after my mishap. The doctor said that all I can give it is time, and that the baths I've been taking for other reasons are the best thing I can do for it.

But when a prof who's been at the college since the day it opened and another who's my mother's age and survived a stroke three years ago look younger than I do--or seem to--what does that say about me?

Someone once told someone--I forget who--that she "earned" every one of her wrinkles. Nice thought, but I wish I hadn't done so much to merit them. It's like when you go through a difficult experience--like, say, not knowing where your next meal is coming from-- and someone tells you it's building your character. Yeah, OK, I always want to tell such a person. But I'm not ready to have such depth yet. It would be nice to have what other people have, just for once.

Like being, if not young, at least youthful. Or looking it. I mean, some of my best friends are old (or at least older) women. But I don't want all of my friends to be just like me! Well, maybe that isn't so bad, now that I've accepted that I'm turning into my mother--or that I already am like her, and have been like her for as long as I can remember, at least in some ways. That's not such a bad thing, really, when I consider who my mother is!

Then again...part of my healing is developing wrinkes...at least in that part of my body. It's funny, isn't it, that part of being a healthy woman means having wrinkles--or folds, anyway--in that at least that part of your body? Now there's something no man will ever understand!

I Can Be Healed; I Wish I Could Heal Them

Today I saw Dr. Jennifer again. Every woman should have a gynecologist like her. And I really hope that some day she teaches somewhere: She is so good at explaining--and, even more important, anticipating what you might want explained.

She says I'm "almost there." About my healing, she says, "Everybody's should be like yours." The bacterial infestation is gone and now I have to wait for the perineum area, where most of the pressure would be, to heal. That is the reason why she still recommends that I follow Marci's advice and not have receptive sex or ride my bike for another month. At that time, I will see Jennifer again and, if my healing progresses as it has been, I should be "good to go."

Having Marci do my surgery and Jennifer for my gynecologist makes me wish I were better at things like biology and chemistry. Both Marci and Jennifer insist that I should not wish for such things; they both say that I'm a "lovely" and "beautiful" person. But they perform miracles: They help people to live, live well and live better. In my case, Marci helped to make possible the life I always wanted--no, was always meant to live--and Jennifer has been helping me through its earliest days.

I wish I could do for someone else what they've been doing for me.

That's how I always feel when someone heals or nurtures me. I don't think that anyone can do anything more important or beautiful. Of course that is the reason why nobody will ever be as important to me as my mother; after her, in there are Marci and Jennifer, Bruce, Millie and Kevin (my first AA sponsor) and every cat I've had. There are other people who, for brief periods of time and in smaller ways, helped me to get better or to develop in some beneficial way. But I simply don't have the capacity to do for anyone what they've done for me.

It's not just a matter of the gaps in my education or talents, although, as I said, I would need to have more aptitude for science to do the kinds of work Marci and Jennifer do. What I lack is what some people would describe as a "touch": I might feel someone else's pain, but I don't always do the right thing for them. And, as much as I aspire toward the spiritual, I am not any sort of medium or holy person.

I'm thinking again of the course I took last semester: a PhD level (whatever that means) English class called "Literature, Gender and Sexuality." I was going to take a course in Mandarin, but a couple of people suggested that I take a course like the one I took. After the momentary thrill of deciphering convoluted essays and books, I couldn't think of anything that I gained by taking it. And I still can't think of how it will benefit me, much less anyone else. I mean, if reading those unreadable texts couldn't change my life, how could I use them to anyone else's benefit?

Even if you enjoy solving things that are made to be puzzles but needn't be so, the sheer pretentiousness of the enterprise and the people involved in it can choke you. Any of the people I named earlier are far more intelligent than anyone I met at the Graduate Center of CUNY, where I took the course, and Marci is the best at the kind of surgery she performs and has been named one of the 100 best doctors in the United States. If someone like her can explain complicated ideas and procedures without condescenscion, or if she or anyone else can respect my humanness as I struggle to learn one thing and another, why do I need to be around people who can't offer me much more than their attitudes and jargon.

As long as I understand something, I can explain it in plain English. And that's all I've ever done for most of my students. For a few others, I have listened to whatever they've entrusted to me. One such person is Sarah, who "came out" to me last year and, when she saw me in the hallway at the college--for the first time this year--ran up to me and hugged me. I am glad she felt so confident, or at least comfortable, with me. But I wish that I could help her with the pain she's endured--some of which she described, and still more that I could simply see.

In other words, I can give someone like her relief and solace. I can also give those things to other people. But I don't have the sort of hands, if you will, that can transmit healing and create nurturing.

At least, I don't think I have them, or the sort of intelligence one needs in order to use them for healing. I'm not talking only about the academic knowledge; I'm also talking about a kind of spiritual intelligence.

At least I get to experience it in other people. That I have such people in my life is certainly reason to be grateful. But that doesn't stop me from wishing...

Phantom Senstions and My Field-Of-Vision

Every six months I have a vistit with my opthamologist. It usually begins with a field-of-vision test. I sit in front of a device that looks like a cross between a flight simulator and an arcade game from my youth. There's a "cup" where I rest my chin; the opthamologist's assistant stretches places a patch over one of my eyes.

Then she flips on a switch and tiny points of light flash at irregular intervals across the screen. I'm supposed to press a button when I see one of those lights. Sometimes there is a short, intense pulse, like a disco strobe light, in the middle of the screen. Other times, there is a faint flicker around the periphery of that screen; sometimes I'm not even sure whether I've seen an acutal flash or an "echo" of one of those brighter pulses.

If you're my age or thereabouts, you're probably familiar with what I've just described. If you're younger, well, now you know have something else to look forward to.

Now, imagne that those pulses and flashes are tingles, twinges, pulses, throbs or jolts of pain, or simply of sensation. You know that you've felt some of them and respond or react. Others, you're not quite sure that you've felt them. Or you know that you've felt them, but you're not quite sure of what they are. Perhaps they are echoes or memories of some other pain or shock you once felt.

If you can imagine what I've just described, you understand something of what I'm experiencing right now.

Not that I'm complaining. I knew that after my surgery, I would have sensations that in some ways differed from the ones I had before the surgery, not to mention what I used to experience before I started taking hormones.

Back in the days when I was the "before" photo, I, like most men, would at times feel that surge of electricity in my crotch. And, well, you know what the result of that is: what I like to call the lightning rod.

But now I feel that surge coming from within me and, for a second, I expect to see a bulge through my clothing. But, of course, I don't have to worry about that. Instead, I feel the throb of my new clitoris and a pulsing--like the opening out of a beating heart--in the area around it. Once I reorient myself to this new sensation, I enjoy it, frankly. It makes me anxious to find out what my first orgasm will feel like.

Still, I wonder when I will no longer have the sensation- physical or mental--of a phantom penis. Or how long it will take before my consciousness will instantly, and without any thought on my part, connect those sensations with my new body parts. Hopefully, that day isn't far off.

I'll say this much: I much prefer all of those spastic physical sensations to all the rage I used to feel over events long past and people long gone. This isn't to say that I'm never, ever angry. But only recently did I realize the degree to which I was reacting to the "aftershocks," if you will, of my experiences. Until a few years ago, I was having the same kinds of arguments with other people that I used to have with my father when I was twenty years old. And I hated nearly all men because three of them molested me when I was a child and because various male teachers, coaches and others tried to "toughen" me up by humiliating, harassing or even beating me. Not to mention that I thought I had no choice but to live as one.

Being angry when whatever or whomever you were angry about is gone really can screw you up in all sorts of ways. I know that from experience. At least now I know that my phantom physical sensations are at least the first steps toward experiencing my own body, and a connection with someone else's, in the ways I've always wanted.

That much, at least, is as clear to me now as that short, intense burst of light at the center of my field-of-vision test.

Three Articles of Memory

You know that you're very, very lucky--or that you haven't much of a social life--if you actually look forward to seeing your doctor.

When you're recovering from surgery, you don't get out much, to say the least. Even though you might spend lots of time on the phone, as I have been spending, you don't get to see very many people.

Anyway, I saw Dr. Jennifer again. She is very pleased with my progress, she says, and she wants me to return in two weeks for a follow-up. I'm looking forward to it.

As for the part about being lucky: I get to see Dr. Jennifer. I was mentored, and had my surgery done by Marci. I've talked to Mom and Millie every day, and to other people along the way.

And I am having these experiences at this point in my life, at this point in history. I was reminded of the latter when, after my visit with Dr. Jennifer, I walked around in the Village and stopped in the LGBT Community Center of New York.

It's no surprise that they're dedicated to celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. All around the Center were exhibits containing photos, other kinds of artwork and copies of newspaper articles related to the history of the gay-rights movement.

One of the articles, and a photograph that accompanied it, reminded me of something that Jay told me: There was once a law that stipulated that anyone wearing fewer than three articles of gender-appropriate clothing could be arrested.

So let's see...I was wearing a feminine-cut lavender tank top, a denim skirt and..uh, let's see...oh, yes, I am wearing a girly pair of panties. Although my flip-flops were also kind of girly-looking, I'm not sure that they'd count as "gender appropriate." And we don't want to take any chances now, do we?

Seriously...under that law, there were many days when I could've been arrested. Like when I wore a bra (without padding, of course), lace panties and a garter underneath my chinos and button-down shirt. Or when I wore panties underneath one of those one-piece lycra cycling bibs.

I guess that meant that cross-dressers wore undergarments "appropriate" to their gender. I confess, I did that a few times--like the times I went "in drag" for Halloween. You have to admit, it is kind of funny to be wearing boxer shorts and a wife-beater underneath a dress. At least I was never strip-searched.

But lots of people were. Jay remembers. It's amazing to think that within my lifetime, places like New York still had laws on the books that were remnants of the Victorian era. I've told my students that when I was nine years old, interracial marriage was still illegal in Virginia and other states.

It's even more amazing, though, to think of how we were when we were younger. For me, it's still a shock to think that a little more than three weeks ago, my body was different. Yet I cannot imagine it; I cannot imagine my body any other way but the way it is now.

And people too young to remember the days of Stonewall and Jim Crow laws cannot imagine that sort of world: the one of which people like me and Jay still have memories.

Of course, we do not want people to forget history. I myself don't want to forget what I've experienced of it, such as it is. But now I wonder just how much of our own pasts we must remember, and which things are important.

I guess that will all become clearer in time.