Avery's Story

Sometimes I wonder what kind of person I might've become had I not been bullied, or bullied others, because of what I am or what others perceived me to be. 

I wonder what my life could have been like had I the courage to be who I am at an earlier age.  

Of course, the world was a much different place--at least in its attitudes toward gender nonconformists--from what it's becoming today.  There was barely even a language to express what many of us felt, especially if we didn't fit into the stereotypes about being transgendered that early trans people, probably unwittingly, helped to perpetrate by living up (or down) to societal and cultural expectations (not to mention some pure-and-simple prejudices) about how people are supposed to live in one gender or the other.

I mean, how could anyone have understood that I loved sports just as much as I loved dresses, and that I prized nice accessories for my bike as much as I cherished fabulous accessories for my outfits?  Or that, as a female, I was still attracted to females?  (Even those who "didn't have a problem" with lesbians couldn't understand that!)

That is why I find it so heartening to see young people proudly announce who they are--and their parents supporting them.

One such child is Avery, whose story was posted the other day on YouTube:

This Journey, With Apologies To James Wright

Whenever I ride a long road or path along an ocean--or just about any other body of water, for that matter--I can't help but to think about some of the earliest long rides I took, as a teenager in New Jersey.

Some said I was a lonely kid. Truth was, I simply wasn't thinking about the things most other kids my age were.  Truth was, I couldn't.  Oh, I worried about which college, if any, would accept me and ran different career paths through my mind.  Truth was, I was doing those things because other people said I should.

Truth is, I was on a journey on which no one could accompany, let alone guide, me.  I wanted to ride my bike across counties and countries when my peers wanted to get their licenses and pick up dates who would be impressed by such things--or being picked up by one of those new drivers.

And that was just one way in which I wasn't on the same road or path as my peers.  If you've been reading this blog--or even some posts on my other one--you know another one of the ways in which my life--or, more precisely, the way in which I saw my identity, my self--differed from almost anybody else I knew.  And I would not learn a language to express it for a long time.

But cycling was, and remains, a means of communication between my body, my spirit and all that is essential to them.  That is the reason why, even when I have ridden by myself, I have never felt lonely while on two wheels.  Some might have said I rode because of alienation.  When I didn't know any better--in other words, when I didn't know how to express otherwise--I believed something like that in the same way people believe the most plausible-sounding explanation for just about anything because they don't know anything else.

Perhaps that is the reason why I am drawn to the ocean, or to any other large body of water, when I'm on my bike.  It was while pedaling along the Atlantic Ocean between Sandy Hook and Island Beach--and along the bodies of water that led to the ocean--that I first realized that I would often ride alone, but I would not lack for companionship.  I had my self, I had my bike and at times I would have a riding partners who understood, or who at least simply wanted to ride with me. Or, perhaps, I would simply want to ride with them. 

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