Riding On Race Memory

The other day, I took a ride I hadn’t taken in a long, long time.

I ended up in Long Branch, New Jersey, as I’d planned.  I rode there back in December.  But I made a wrong turn just as I was leaving the industrial and post-industrial necropolis of north-central New Jersey took a very different route from the one I’d planned.  I didn’t mind: It was a very satisfying ride that took me away from the traffic streaming in and out of the shopping malls that day, the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend.

But Sunday I took the route I rode so many times in my youth, through the weathered Jersey Shore communities that line Route 36 from Keyport to the Highlands.  So much was as I remembered it from the last time I rode it, twenty years ago, and the first time I rode it, twenty years before that. Then I crossed over the arched bridge that spans the Shrewsbury River where it empties into Sandy Hook Bay and drops into the spit of land that separates the river and bay from the Atlantic Ocean.  

At the top of the bridge, the ocean stretches as far as you can see. Whether it was bluer than any eye or stone I’ve ever seen, or grayer than steel, nothing made me better than seeing it and descending that bridge.

Here is something I wrote about the experience of doing that ride for the first time as a woman named Justine—after many, many journeys as a boy and man named Nick:

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Yesterday’s ride brought back memories of the race.

I did not make the turn.  I could not.  I did not for many, many years.  But yesterday I did.

Either way meant pedaling uphill.  To the left I went.  Two hills, instead of one.  Between them, a brief flat, where I could regain some of the momentum I’d lost.

But the climbs were neither as long nor as steep as I remembered.  I forgot that I’m not in as good shape as I was the last time I did this ride, this race, more than twenty years ago.  

To get to the ocean and back.  That was all I had to do in those days.  To the ocean and back before dark, before the air grew as cold and night as false as the water, as the reflections on it:  my reflections.

All I had to do was get back for dinner.  At least, that’s all I was told to do.  Sunday; you simply did not miss dinner.  You couldn’t even be late for it.  So there was only so much time to get there, to get to the ocean and back.

I am pedaling on memory now.  My body’s memory:  the only kind.  The first time I did this ride, when I was a teenager.  The last time, twenty years later, twenty years ago.

Before the memory, I knew nothing.  I could only move ahead, I could only pedal.  Gotta make it.  I could not stop. My memory of this ride, this race, could not, could not let me.  You will.  I could not hear; when you’re in this race, you can’t.

On that flat between the climbs, a woman walked toward me.  She says something; I can only see her.  She knows me perfectly well; I don’t.  She does not stop me; I cannot.

She would climb these hills many more times.  You’ll make it!  How does she know?  I have no other choice.

The climb is easier when you have a memory of the race.  It’s inevitable.  You couldn’t go any other way.  There is only the race, the climb, that ends at a bridge that you’ll cross because there is no other way over the bay, to the ocean.  

Because I made the turn. Because I couldn’t have gone any other way.  Not when a teenaged boy’s elbows and knees slung him forward on his saddle and up the hills.  Not when the memory of a woman in late middle age, the electricity in her flesh—his flesh—guides the wheels beneath her, beneath him, over the bridge and to the ocean.

The day is clear.  Reflections of the sun pulse; she moves the weight of his bones down a narrow strip between the bay and the ocean all the way to the end.  His end, where he turned around for the race.  He would have to get there and back while he could; she knew he would but he could not.  He could not have known.  He could only push; he could only pump.

The sunset is even clearer.  Weathered houses stand ready; the abandoned ones lost to the tides.  I am pedaling into the wind but my bike rolls as easily and smoothly over cracked asphalt as boats, sails like wings fluttering between ripples of water and clouds. 

They will reach their shores, whoever is guiding them, whoever guided them years ago.  I came to the end of yesterday’s ride on my memory of a race:  the teenaged boy who first followed these roads, the young man who did not know how to turn; the man who would not—and, finally, twenty years later, the woman who could not.  She crossed the bridge to the ocean. 

Yesterday I rode on the memory of that race, the race that I am.

Forgotten--Or Incognito?

Today I’m going to write about something that was, perhaps, inevitable.

About a month ago, I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen in at least fifteen years, or about five years before I started my transition.  We used to teach at the same college; in those days, this person was an adjunct instructor who was working on a PhD.  For a brief time, we shared an office; after that, our offices faced each other but we didn’t see each other much, as we were on different schedules.

I met this instructor at a workshop that was held on another campus of the university system in which both of us teach.  This former colleague of mine is still at the same campus in which we worked together so long ago (or so it seems).  Since we last met, the now-professor finished a PhD, got tenure and is now director of the college’s Writing Center.

Someone with whom I now work introduced us.  I didn’t need it, as the now-director of the Writing Center looks like pretty much the same as in those days, just a bit older.  Besides, this person has some physical characteristics that time could not have altered, and an accent only slightly diminished.

But—need I say this?—I’ve changed a bit since then.  I think I still had a full beard the last time I saw this instructor before last month.  Hormones and age have altered my face and body at least somewhat and, needless to say, I was dressed in a way I never would have dressed—for work, anyway!—in those days.

“Happy to meet you,” my former co-worker said.

“The pleasure is mine.”

It was, really:  this person seemed calmer than—and as gracious as—I recalled.  Still, an unease tinged my pleasure:  Did this person with whom I once shared an office, and a lunch or two, not realize who I was?

On one hand, that was what I hoped.  Meeting me as Justine, and not recalling me as Nick, means that, in at least one way, my transition was as complete as I could have ever hoped it would be.  Plus, it would also mean that my onetime work-mate had forgotten some times when, frankly, I was an asshole.

On another hand, I felt a sadness that came back a few times over the next few days.  I wasn’t thinking about some relationship I could have had with this former colleague:  We were co-workers who were cordial and sometimes friendly to each other—which, I guess, is how such relationships should be.  I had no romantic feelings or sexual attraction and, as far as I could tell, this person didn’t have such longings for me.

Rather, seeing someone from my past who, apparently, only saw me in the present got me to thinking and gave me some flashbacks.  I couldn’t help but to wonder what it would have been like to have lived as Justine then, or before.  Perhaps I wouldn’t have worked at that college or, for that matter, in any college.  Would I have been one of those young women who were among the first in their offices, boardrooms, courtrooms or other workplaces, as many—who were around my own age—were in my youth?  Would I have become the writer, the artist, I had wanted—and still want—to be? 

Or would I have been some guy’s wife and the mother of his kids (some of them, anyway)?  If so, what kind of man would he have been?  Or would I have run off, by myself or with another, to live or work in some “womyn’s” collective?

Given the kind of person I—and the way the world—was, perhaps things wouldn’t have been that good.  Perhaps I would have spent some years walking the street where I would die.  Then again, I could just as easily have died on that same street—or some other—at someone else’s hands, or from bottles or needles.

For all I know, I might have been the colleague of that person I bumped into last month.  And we still might be working together in that same place, and I might be a professor—or have another position and title.

Of course, we never can know what kind of person we might have been.  But seeing someone I hadn’t seen in a long time got me to thinking about it.  What if she had recognized me?  What if she did?

Melting Away

This week, we’ve had the hottest weather we’ve had all year.  (Yesterday the temperature reached 100F or 38C.)  The weather, and hearing from a trans woman I haven’t seen in a while, got me to thinking about a particular part of my pre-transition life.

About three or four years before I began my transition, I started to go out “as” Justine (I had already chosen that name for myself.) on a somewhat regular basis—sometimes alone, sometimes with a companion.  Before that, I’d only been out en femme a few times, not counting the couple of times I spent Halloween “in drag”.

The trans woman who called me yesterday explained that she’s hardly been out at all—either as the person she is, or in male costume.  “It’s so much more difficult in this weather,” she exclaimed.  I agreed:  I remember what it was like when I wore wigs and had to cover more of my body because of hair or other features.  Also, I had to wear more make-up in those days.

She mentioned all of those things.  Her make-up and cover-up issue is even greater than mine was because she has very dark hair.  So her “shadow” is visible even after she shaves.  Also, because she has lost some of her natural hair—and, for various reasons, wears her remaining hair short—she needs to wear a wig or to otherwise cover it up.

I think, though, that a bigger problem for her is her lack of confidence.  I hear it in her voice and see it in her furtive movements.  Also, she still wears frillier dresses than just about any other woman I’ve seen:  They’re even more extreme than some of the stuff I wore before I started going out in public. And she feels she must wear nylon stockings or pantyhose, even when she wears sandals.

“When I go out in weather like this, the makeup just melts off me,” she complained.  I can relate to that.  If I wear makeup, say, to go to work or some social event when the weather is hot—especially if I ride my bike to get there-- I usually duck into a bathroom at my destination and sketch the liner across my eyelids and brush my cheeks with rouge or whatever I’m wearing.  I don’t want to look like Tammy Fay Baker with her mascara running down the rouge on her cheeks as she cried, “I am so-o in love with the Law-uhd.”

I tried to encourage my trans friend to get out more at this time of year:  She can be a great-looking woman (She has a model’s body and Kirstie Alley’s eyes.)  But  she’s afraid of melting away, like Frosty the Snowman. 

Remembering During A Summer Rainstorm

Today we had a long, heavy thunderstorm that dumped a couple of inches of rain on us.  As I didn't have to go to work today, I spent the day at home, doing some things I'd been procrastinating.


It was also a very warm day and, as you probably figured, humid.  In the course of my doings, I got to thinking about the way I used to dread the kinds of weather we had today. I'm still not crazy about it, but when I went out en femme in the days before my transition, this weather used to wreak all sorts of havoc on me.  My makeup would run off; mascara would run into my eyes.  Clothes would cling and sag in places where I didn't want them to.  And then there was the general fear I had about being exposed or having to endure the heat.  If I wore light clothing, I had the feeling that everyone could see through them; if I wore too much, I would sweat all of my makeup off.  


Now I just worry that everyone can see my fat.  You can never lose enough weight, or lose it fast enough, or so it seems.  On the other hand, I recall that the first time anyone called me "Fat Bitch" was on a day as hot and steamy as this one.  At the time, it seemed like a victory.   I guess the years are showing:  No one has called me that in a while. But they do call me "ma'am." That is better, definitely.  Still, I don't become as ecstatic as I once did on those occasions when someone calls me "miss".  I mean, sometimes I'd like to be young and female, and be what I couldn't be, as pointless as that wish is.  


It's been said that summer is a time of memory and fantasy.  The funny thing is that, through much of my life, the latter were more remote, and even abstract, for me.  Now, sometimes, they seem more or less the same thing. That is why there is only the present, which just happens to include the heat and humidity and rain.  At least I don't have to worry about losing what I am, any more than I can change what I was.