Since We Last Met

On my way home last night, I bumped into someone I hadn't seen in at least a year.  Lucy was getting chicken-on-a-stick from a "street meat" cart next to the Capital One bank on Broadway.  So, I noticed, was a rugged-looking man who looked to be a couple of years older than her.

He's her husband.  He wasn't, the last time I saw her.  They met around this time last year, she said, and got married, in a very small ceremony, in September.  I'm not surprised that it happened so quickly:  I always figured that Lucy wouldn't have a long engagement after meeting "the one."  And, from what little I had seen of him, I wasn't surprised that he "fell" so quickly, either.  You know how it is:  those tough-looking biue collar guys can be, deep down, such softies sometimes.  Maybe that's the reason why the men who've mattered most to me in my life--save perhaps for Bruce--have all been blue-collar, in spirit if not in fact.  Somehow I think Lucy feels the same way.

It's a strange feeling, though, to meet a friend's spouse and realize that you've known that friend for longer than the spouse has.  You realize that, apart from the physical intimacy, there is something else that makes your friend's relationship with her husband different from her friendship with you or anyone else.  I'll describe it as best I can:   Although you are friends in this moment, your friendship is defined by its history.  On the other hand, if you are going to spend your life with someone, you have to be able to look toward the future, or at least forward from the current moment, with that person.  

I met Lucy some time during the first year I was living in Astoria.  I had just moved from Park Slope and the life I had with Tammy; I think she met me during the time when I was still going to work as Nick but was going to Manhattan and the LGBT Community Center whenever I could, as Justine.  I also believe it was just before I started taking hormones.  I'm pretty sure that I introduced myself to her as Justine, which would make her one of the very first people who would meet me that way.  


In any event, she recalled that she was nineteen years old then.  That sounds right; she was in her second semester of college--ironically enough, LaGuardia Community College, where I was teaching at the time.  Now she's twenty-seven and working with her husband, who is an independent electrical contractor.  


He talked about how he met Lucy.  The funny thing is that he said almost the same things I've said about her:  that she's pretty, but that's not what you notice about her.  It was "a light within her," he said.  And that, of course, is what I've always liked about Lucy:  that radiance from within.  "That's forever," he said.  "Someone who's pretty today might not be tomorrow."


Then, for no reason I could discern, he told me, "You must have been really beautiful when you were younger.  You're a beautiful lady now. But you really must have been something."


Lucy and I could only smile to each other.

Giving Up What I Never Had

The other day I was talking--about what, I don't recall-- with another faculty member.  All I know is that it had to do with things we were teaching because she related a story about something that happened to her in a class once.  And I mentioned--I forget why--that once, when I was conferring with a student about her paper, she blurted, "When you were teaching A Doll's House, you were teaching about yourself, weren't you?"


I hadn't mentioned it to anyone in a long time.  I also hadn't mentioned that I had that conference with that student during my last year of living as Nick.  In fact, not much more than a week after that conference, I took my first dose of hormones.  


All of that meant, of course, that the answer to that student's question was an emphatic "Yes!," even though I hadn't realized it until the student asked.  Just four months before I had that conversation, my life was different:  I had to leave it in order to do what I needed to do.  I had to give up relationships, a cozy living situation and a lot of other things in order to make my changes.


But as I was talking to that faculty member the other day, I had a really odd sensation.  I felt, not that what I gave up was insignificant now, or is less than what it seemed to be at the time.  Rather, it felt as if I never actually had the things I gave up.  


Perhaps I never had any of it.  At least, I never had--among other things--the love of certain people.  I lived under the illusion I did; so did they.  However, whatever relationships I had with them was built on a false pretense because I never was the person they thought I was.  And, ultimately, I never could be that person.