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. 

Drownsiness In The Rain

Today everybody looked sleepy.  I could just barely keep my students awake, probably because I could just barely keep myself awake. About the only thing any of them will remember is a bad joke I made in one class:  As I was leaving my apartment, I saw the weather outside the window.  Then, I saw Charlie and Max curled up on my sofa , and wondered, "Which is the more intelligent species?"


Now they're curled up with me.  And I've been nodding in and out of sleep.  So if this post ends abruptly, you'll know

Palm Sunday During Wartime

Yesterday I took a walk "around the block" that turned into an eight-mile trek.  I started out late in the afternoon, knowing that there were still a few hours of daylight remaining and the possibility of more rain looming.  But the rain held out until I was literally around the corner from my apartment, and then the soft cascade turned into a torrent literally as I entered the doorway to my building.


Some girls have all the luck, eh?  


My walk took me through past the quiet facades of brick houses.  Inside many of them, families--some consisting of two or three people who may or may not have been related to each other by blood, others that were, in essence, miniature villages--were eating those Sunday meals that are neither lunch nor dinner because they encompass and eclipse both.  Nobody partakes in such a repast if he or she is living alone, and not many young couples or roommates do it.  In other words, it's not for those who "do brunch." The sort of Sunday meal I mean is, almost by definition, a family affair. And, as often as not, it follows said family returning from mass or some other religious gathering--especially one of a Sunday like yesterday, which happened to be Palm Sunday.


Even when the bustle spilled out of doors, the streets were still enveloped in that silence--proscribed and followed as if by some unseen, unheard command--that has sealed the people inside those houses away from the cries that, perhaps, they don't or can't see.  Or, by now those voices may be, as far as most people are concerned, mere background noise, like the shows that blare from their televisions during their meals.   


I first noticed that silence--that of damp Sunday afternoons--some time during my childhood.  It seemed to grow more intense, somehow, a year or so into the USA's invasion of Iraq.  By that time, armed Americans had been plying the valleys of Afghanistan for a few years, though it and the Iraq invasion seemed to have endured for far, far longer.  


Some of the funerals that resulted from those imperialist misadventures have, I'm sure, taken place in some along some of those streets I walked.  I saw more than a few flags and banners--and bumper stickers on the parked cars--that read "Support Our Troops" or "Semper Fi."  


What's interesting is that in those working-class Queens neighborhoods--home to many immigrants, some of whom are Muslims--one doesn't find the more overtly aggressive and violent messages (e.g., the bumper sticker that's a "license" to hunt terrorists and features a photo of Bin Laden with a target drawn over it) one finds in other areas.  Instead, people in the areas I saw today seem to have the idea that by "supporting" the troops (whatever that means) or "remembering" 9/11, they are showing that they are loyal Americans.  Given the political and social climate--and what it could become if the economy worsens--I can understand why they'd feel the need to do that.


So why am I talking about the wars or immigrants now?  I don't know.  I just got there somehow, just as I somehow ended up four miles from home on my walk yesterday.


Well, all right:  I think about those wars a lot.  The invasion of Iraq started not long after I'd begun to take hormones and was preparing myself to live full-time as Justine.  I recall understanding, for the first time in my life, that invading another country--especially if no citizen of said country has ever done anything to harm any member of the invading country--cannot be anything but an expression, on the part of the invaders, of profound disrespect for people who just happen to be different from themselves.  I understood, for the first time, that up to that point in my life, I had been part of the very structure--even if I were at the bottom-most rung of its ladder and owned almost nothing of its spoils--that not only carries out such invasions, but doesn't see them as such.


Of course, I wasn't thinking that during my walk--at least, not consciously.  There were only the silence of those streets, the dampness of the air and the rhythm of my steps, all of which somehow kept me walking.

Rain Again (!)

Rain today again. More people absent from classes. The ones who came looked tired. You can tell it's almost the end of the semester: Students are looking ahead to the holidays and dreading their final exams and papers. Soon I'll be competing with about 500 other faculty members at the college for the title of Public Enemy Number One. Then, after the semester is over, some of the students will return to liking me, if they ever did. What can I say?

Enough Rain, Already!

More rain today. So far, this has to be one of the rainiest autumns I can remember. And there was lots of rain, or so it seemed, this past spring, as I was counting the days until my surgery.

Does that mean that my new life is still a seedling and that one day, after all of this rain, it will flower?

All right...I'll spare you the hokey metaphors and imagery. I know that sometimes I can be as corny as Iowa in July and more syrupy than Vermont in October. I'll try to keep those evil twins bound to each other in a tight space!

All that rain...No wonder Charlie and Max are curling up on me every chance they get. They seem to know when I'm about to sit or lie down. I wonder whether it has to do with my body language, or something else.

And it seems that ever since I've come home from the surgery, they can't get enough of me. I thought the novelty of me would wear off. I guess it hasn't, at least not yet. All I can say is: Keep it coming!

Millie and I talked about Thanksgiving today. For the past few years, I've spent the holiday with her, Johnny and their kids and grandkids. In fact, I've spent several other holidays with them, and this past Fourth of July was the first since I moved into this neighborhood that I hadn't spent with them. I had an acceptable excuse: I was leaving for my surgery that day!

Speaking of holidays...It seems that some of the stores have been decorated with, and selling, Christmas items for about a month already. It's as if they skipped over Halloween (not really a holiday, I know, but some stores have had interesting displays for it) and are forgetting about Thanksgiving. About the only acknowledgements of the latter holiday I've seen are at Parisi's Bakery, which announced that they are taking orders for pies, and supermarkets that are advertising turkeys.

The rest are hanging their hopes on Christmas. They all hope for the best, though a few proprietors and salespeople I know say they don't expect things to be good.

But all anybody can really do is to hope for the best, I guess. That's what we do when we undertake anything, whether it's starting a new business or new life.

So far, so good. I just wish this rain would let up.

Another Homecoming?

A gray, humid day has turned into a cool, rainy evening. That sort of thing doesn't happen in Trinidad, CO, apparently.

I never knew how happy I would be to see a day like this...until today. In Colorado, I really was happy to see those great expanses of sky, and long periods of time with scarcely a cloud in them. I also marvelled at those sudden, gully-washing rains that come and go like mirages or hallucinations. Florida has rainstorms like that most afternoons during the summer, but the mountains around Trinidad seem to make the coming and passing of those torrents seem even more intense, even when they're not accompanied by thunder and lightning.

Now tires are hissing on wet pavement as the breeze ripples curtains across my windows. Yes, this is an urban rain: The water here, even in the worst of storms, transmutes but does not slow down the pace of the rushing tires and pulsing footsteps; it refracts neon and incandescent light into a constellation of reflections one cannot see in the sky.

In other words, this rain, or more precisely, the water that hisses like a crystal serpent, diffuses the harshest sights and sounds of the city. It makes bearable the heat and humidity that precedes it by disappating them into flickering reflections and waves of chilly air that you can just barely feel unless you're moving. And, at this moment, I'm not, except to type these words.

Somehow I think that if the Spanish or French, rather than the Dutch and English, had settled this area, they wouldn't have named any body of water El Rio de Las Animas Perdidas en Purgatoire. That's what the river that cuts through Trinidad was named; today it is known as the Purgatory River. It was so named because of the explorers who were killed there and didn't have the Last Rites of the church administered to them. They thus became lost souls, sentenced to purgatory.

I doubt that anyone in this city, or in any large city in the northern industrialized world, thinks of lost souls and purgatory when he or she hears the rain or sees the river. It seems that in most such cities--I'm thinking now of Paris, London, Amsterdam, Boston and San Francisco, as well as the city I call home--the rain softens the sharp elbows and the angles of steel and glass. In the high mesa of Colorado and New Mexico, it seems that the rain is one of those edges, which, when it's over, makes the starkness of the landscape and the refulgence of the sun even more intense.

I think now of an account George Orwell wrote during the Spanish Civil War. Rather than New York with Trinidad or city with Mesa, Orwell was contrasting Spain with France. If I recall it correctly, he said that with every kilometer into France one travels, the light becomes more diffuse and the colors softer. On the other hand, as one ventures into Spain, the sun grows more intense and the trees and other life take on harsher, starker hues. The Spanish vista, he said, throws so many things into sharp relief; the French tableau softens them into memories.

Perhaps I am a creature of diffusion. As much as I loved the light and rain in Trinidad, I am now in my native sights and sounds. Yes, now I am home--and, now, at home in my body.

Funny, how I had to go to Trinidad to come home to myself, and to come home again. Maybe that's why I've ended every conversation I've had with Mom--and, yes, even Dad!--by thanking them and telling them I love them. I've been doing that for Millie and my other friends, too.

Could it be that I've just learned what a homecoming is? Is it a matter of coming or returning to whom and what you love? And, is that what allows you to love other things and people?

Hmm...If this is my reward for undergoing gender-reassignment surgery, I only wish I could've done it sooner. If only I'd been ready...

At least, as Bruce might say, I'm here now. Yes, I love you, too, Bruce.