A Spring Night On Grove Street

Is it true that in the Spring, a young bike's fancies turn to romance?  How does that saying go?

As the young would say...whatever!  I don't give advice about love and romance, but I'm willing to make recommendations for floral gifts:

Cherry Blossoms Bloom; I Exhale

Very few things in this world make me as happy as I am when I see cherry blossoms in bloom.

This year, they seem especially full and vibrant.  Perhaps it's because they opened their flowers a bit later than they normally do (or so it seems).  Or, they may seem so bright because Spring came late and the winter, though not exceptionally cold or snowy, seemed interminably gray.

Anyway, I didn't have my regular camera with me when I rode to work today.  So, I used my cell phone to capture the radiance of these cherry blossoms:

The End Of A Day At The Beginning Of A Season

During my ride home, I stopped at the Long Island City piers just in time for this:

And, in one sign that Spring is finally springing on us, I saw a willow just beginning to open itself to the sun that's finally warming it:

Off The Bike, Under the Papers

I really must have been paying for some past misdeed or another.  It's been an utterly gorgeous spring day and I can't ride my bike. Worse yet, I've had to spend most of this day reading papers, and tomorrow it looks like I will do the same.  


Eventually, I won't have to grade any more papers.   Eventually, I'll get back on my bike--or so I hope.   Dr. Jennifer is on a leave of absence, so I saw another gynecologist, Dr. Ronica.  She says to stay off the bike for now, but won't tell me when I can get back on.  Hopefully, I'll do that when my infection heals and, hopefully, it will heal soon.


She is something of a cyclist herself:  She told me she has two bikes and rides every chance she gets.  So, I take her seriously when she says she has seen other cyclists who developed a tear and an infection, as I have.  And I'm listening to another of her recommendations, even though it goes against one of my cardinal beliefs (at least, as pertains to cycling):  that I get one of those saddles that has a hole in the middle--and a softer nose than the ones I've been riding.  So, it looks like that means bye-bye Brooks and hello...Specialized?  Terry?


Oh well.  I used to think that real men rode unpadded leather saddles.  Now I don't have to worry about being a real man--especially now that I know that nothing in this world takes more balls than being a woman.  And that's one of the reasons why I wouldn't trade it for anything--not even to ride a leather saddle with copper rivets again!


Then again, if I never much cared for leather with studs on it, why should I be so focused on a saddle with rivets?


Once those papers are all done, the students have their grades and I'm back on my bike, I can think about other things.  Well, I'm thinking about other things, anyway.  That's pretty much what I've tried to do for the past few months.  Actually, I haven't tried; it's what I have done.  I never knew that would be a consequence of my surgery, or my transition.


Given what a workload I've had this semester, I think my students have done pretty well.  Some would say it's because I've done pretty well.  Maybe that's true, at least to some extent.  I guess I can say I've been a pretty good instructor, at least given the circumstances under which I've worked.   It'll seem better once I start cycling to work again, I'm sure.  I just hope that day comes soon, and that I don't have to miss riding on another day like today.

Early Spring Morning

Today I rode to work in vibrant but not overly bright sunlight and a light but very cool breeze.  It's the sort of day on which you can practically feel every pore and orifice of your body opening;  wounds in cold rain are not even memories:  they almost seem not to have happened. 


For some reason, an early spring morning like the one we had today brings me back to very specific moments in my childhood.  Somehow I remember some Easter Sunday as being like today was--one from a time when I may not have even known what was being celebrated on the holiday.  I have, thankfully, a few memories filled with that kind of light.  For a long time I had forgotten that I had ever experienced it; for another long period of time, I denied it because somehow the memory of that light was even more painful than the hurtful things I experienced.  


When I first started my transition, and in my very first days of living full-time as Justine, I found myself going back to those times, and to that light that became them, very often.  Rob, my social worker and a female-to-male, said that it was probably because my gender identity was less of an issue than it would later become.  I recall knowing that I am female--a girl--but it somehow didn't affect my life, or anyone else's, in the way it later would.  


At that age, my world was my parents, grandparents, a few other relatives and a girl who, as I recall, was the daughter of one of my mother's friends whom I'll call Lola. I always liked playing with her; the grown-ups probably thought it was cute that I had a "girlfriend."  I believe that I knew--of course, in a way that I couldn't articulate then--that my mother and grandmother somehow knew otherwise.  Or, at least they didn't mind my playing with Lola if it made me happy and I wasn't causing any trouble.

Then, it seemed, that bright, cool sky had enough room for everybody--including anyone I was, am or could be. 


I haven't seen Lola since I was about five or six years old.  She is one of the few people from my past whom I'd actually like to meet again.  There are a few others about whom I'd like to know where they are and what they're doing now, but whom I have little or no desire to see again.  But I'd like to meet Lola, even though we probably wouldn't recognize each other at first, if at all.


What would she remember from her childhood?  


At least I have a memory that could be echoed in a morning like the one I expereinced today when I was pedalling to work.  There weren't the echoes of thunder muttering through my sleep; there was just the sun and cool wind.  Those things can sustain my through a ride; sometimes they're enough to get me through a day, or a lot more.

Nine Months: A Season of Change

Three days ago, on Wednesday, it had been nine months since my surgery.  I am thinking now about when I was nine months from my surgery, back in October of 2008.  Funny, how that seems so long ago.  What's even weirder is that somehow I know I haven't changed much, if at all, except in my body.  But it seems that much, if not everything, is changing around me.

In one sense, that's literally true:  I'm living in a different place now.  It's not at all far from where I had been living, but it feels very different.  The block on which I had been living was definitely more blue-collar--although, ironically enough, the Noguchi Museum was on one end of it and Socrates Sculpture Park was less than another block away.  And the light was very different:  The combination of small brick and slate houses and apartment buildings along with the factories and workshops--some active--on the adjacent streets that parallel the river gave the light a quality that could seem as spacious as those lofts but as defined as the spaces between the sharp edges of the steel exteriors of some of the buildings that contained those lofts.  On a rainy or misty day, the light--an almost steely gray--could soften the edges of those buildings and make the horns of tugboats seem like serene echoes of the currents those boats plied while imposing a silence, like that of a Sunday during wartime, over the streets.  

Here, on the other hand, the light is more of a constant stream, like the traffic along the street on which I live during rush hour.  And if the street on which I lived had order, this one has more organization:  It's lined with townhouses, with apartment buildings near each end.  Around the corner is Broadway, along which I shop for food and household items, order and pick up Chinese, Mexican, Middle Eastern or Japanese meals, get my nails done and have my shoes cleaned and repaired.  Two blocks down Broadway is the subway; along Broadway is a bus that connects this street with the one on which I used to live as well as with two other subway lines and a few other neighborhoods.   Every morning, one can see the streams of teenagers headed in one direction--toward Long Island City High School, which is just a block and a half from the Socrates Sculputre Park.  And one will see another stream of people, mostly young, but some of whom are around my age, headed in the other direction--toward the subways and their jobs.  Most of them aren't dressed for blue-collar jobs:  Some are in suits, or at least white or light shirts or blouses, dark bottoms and dressy shoes, while others are in the sorts of outfits one associates with "creative" young people.  

In some odd way, this street and the ones nearby remind me a bit of the Paris neighborhood in which I lived.  I think it has something to do with the scale of the buildings and streets, and of the kinds of people I see coming and going.

But there has been more than a change in scenery during the past few months.  I've also noticed that people are relating to me--for better and worse--in ways that I hadn't expected.  As an example, James and I spent a good bit of time walking through the Village and Chelsea a couple of nights ago.  Our urban soujourn was interrupted every couple of blocks with spontaneous hugs.  He and I met several years ago.  I have always liked him, but I can honestly say that I've really gotten to know him just recently.  What I am seeing in him is--I hate to use this term, as it's been rendered so banal--an intensely spiritual but completely non-religious person.  In other words, he's turning out to be the sort of person with whom I can have a real conversation about things that matter.

When I first met him, he was just starting to transition into life as a man after living for more than thirty years as the partner of a woman who died almost two years ago.  He says he was one of a dying breed:  a "stone butch."  I must admit, I admire stone butches, although I cannot imagine myself as the lover of one, much less as one myself.  


I guess being a man now disqualifies him from being a stone butch.  But there's another reason why the label may no longer fit:  I think he wanted whatever my hug could offer him.  I certainly didn't mind that:  Being the good stone butch, he certainly gave me pleasure when he embraced me.  I just hope he enjoyed it as much as I did, if that's what he wants.


Yesterday, when I went to see Dr. Tran, a new employee at Callen Lorde rode the elevator with me.  I didn't even know her name, but she embraced me as the cab arrived at Dr. Tran's office.  Should I ask what that was about?  


After my appointment, I rode down to Bicycle Habitat.  There, I placed an order for a wheel that Hal will build for me.  As I usually do, I spent some time there catching up with Josh, Sheldon, Pancho and the other employees there.  On my way out, I exchanged "good-night"s with them and Charlie, the owner.  As I was leaving, he picked himself up and hugged me.  


I've known him for about twenty-five years.  That's the first time he's done that.  While he's always been friendly to me, he never seemed to be particularly affectionate, at least not in physical ways.  So the unselfconscious suppleness of his embrace surprised me a little bit.  Well, now I know of at least one thing his wife likes about him!


And then, just a little while ago, I went to Hannah and Her Sisters for a manicure as well as my first pedicure of the season.  Tonight, Annie, who doesn't speak much English, did my manicure as Karen did my pedicure. While filing the nails on my left hand, Annie propped her head against my shoulder.  And, as she worked, I noticed that she was holding on to my hand a bit longer than she usually does.  Later, as I sat with my toes and fingers in the nail dryers, she rubbed her hands on my forearms and, again, propped her head on my shoulders.  And, finally, as I got up to leave, she hugged me.


She said something to Hannah, which she translated:  "You are a really sweet person."


Hmm... Spring really is in the air, isn't it?  It certainly is a time of change!

In The Flesh

On a warm, almost summer-like day, I am reminded of two things:  a.) Men are horny--I mean really horny--and b.) I have gained weight.


How are those two facts related?  Well, not by cause-and-effect, unless you or I are willing to believe that troubles with an ex led me to eat more than I otherwise might've.  That may well be, but it's even more true that I have been sedentary for such long periods of time during the past few months.  Just after my surgery, I didn't have much of an appetite and, actually, I was taking some fairly long walks. But as I got busier and the weather got colder, grayer and wetter, I did less of that.  And, after taking a few short bike rides (half an hour or less) in November, I did no riding until a few weeks ago. In the meantime, my appetite returned and there were dinners, parties and such.  


And so it happened that near the end of the day, I was sitting on a bench in a particularly lovely spot in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.  My Raleigh three-speed stood guard, keeping its stiff upper lip as I read student essays while basking in the sun.  Across a pedestrian path from me, cherry blossoms in ever-so-slightly-varying stages of bloom opened between me and the Unisphere.  As day descended into evening, the whites grew more satiny, like moonlight, and the pinks glowed more deeply as the sun began to set and the horizon behind the veil of blooms and the grids of the Unisphere filled with a radiance turned into itself as yellow rays turned orange, then red and finally to an almost lilac hue before paling the violet curtain that spread across the sky.


But the men who walked by weren't noticing anything I just described.  I mean, what kind of priorities do they have when they can totally miss such a scene and look at some fat middle aged woman who's reading papers through what the ex used to refer to as my "librarian's glasses"?    And, in crossing her legs, said woman could  only have revealed how pale and ungainly they've become.  


You mean to tell me they'd really rather look at her than at the beauty of a warm early evening early in the spring?  Well, I guess they need variety, right?  


Then again, I have often wondered how many men actually prefer those anorexic models they see in the media? Years ago, a former co-worker who was about the same age as I am now said that after her post-menopausal weight gain, she got--without trying to get-- more attention from men than she'd ever had before. Now, nobody would have said this woman was fat, or even overweight.  But she looked like she'd actually eaten within the previous few weeks.  So I'm guessing that she was rather skinny, if not exceedingly so, when she was younger.


Anyway, I wondered why she was getting so much more attention than she'd gotten when she was younger.  She was an interesting, intelligent woman, and I would have said that she was attractive, even sexy, because she had her own sense of style, as opposed to mere fashion.  But she had her own theory as to why men were looking at her:  "Well, if you believe that men are dogs, it makes sense.  All dogs like at least a little meat on their bones."


I guess that means I was a dog, and still am one.  Extremely thin people, of any gender or sexual orientation, never appealed to me.  In fact, at least a couple of women (and men!) with whom I  was involved could have been described as Renaissance or Pre-Raphaelite, if not Rubens-esque.


So why am I so worried about being fat?  Well, I don't want the health risks that go along with it.  Still, it's ironic that I am upset about my weight gain--and am beginning to harbor dreams of having a more feminine version of the athletic body I once had--when I was, if I do say so myself, rather tolerant of such things in other people.  Then again, I've always been attracted to people with dark or darkish hair but pride myself on my rather loosely-defined blondeness.  


You might call me a hypocrite.  I just don't see the point of being with someone who's just like me.  So does that mean that if I get skinny again, I'm going to date someone who's the "before" photo in a Jenny Craig commercial?

A Season Turning, Again

Tomorrow I go back to work, at the college.  It's been a while since I've read about Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  But I don't recall that it explained why time goes so quickly during holidays and vacations!


Yet it seems that so much time has passed.  In part, that's because the season almost literally changed from the time Spring Recess began until the time it ended.  The early part of the week was chilly and rainy; today was very much a spring day.  Actually, it would have seemed later in the spring had it not been for the trees that are just beginning to open buds.   It's as if they want and need to open themselves to the sunshine and the new warmth.  But it is difficult:  the dampness and cold and darkness have stiffened them--or, perhaps, made them simply reluctant and reticent, in the way of someone whose whose eyes are opening to the light they yearn for yet still feel the sting of the cold, like an old wound that's still fresh.


Trees like the ones I saw today inspired me--almost twenty years ago!--to write the following:


Magnolia

Buds throb red. Cold raindrops cling to bare branches after the first April storm. My fingertips swelling, my body pulses: the center of this old wound, still fresh. Still, I don’t pull off my gloves-- There are no leaves opening from this tree.

Each of the next couple of days will be progressively warmer, or so the forecasters say.  Then rain and chilly winds will return, and the weather will feel like early spring again by next weekend.  But, ironically, the leaves will be fuller, and there will be more of them.

Wind In The Beginning of Spring

Last Saturday was balmy: I was riding in shorts and a T-shirt. Today I didn't go riding, even though the sky was clear. When I went outside today, I wore a bulky cardigan and my leather jacket.

A cold, windy day very early in the spring has long evoked a particular set of sense-memories for me. You might say they are all related to loneliness.

It has something to do with the fact that my the first couple of days my family spent in New Jersey, after moving there from Brooklyn, were much like today, if I recall correctly. We moved about this time of year: I recall that because spring break was beginning, as it is now. Also, Easter came early that year; on that day, snow and ice fell and covered the still-barren trees and sere grass that surrounded that almost disarmingly (at least for me) spacious house.

So, a day like today, in the early days of spring, makes me think of an empty suburban house with branches still shorn of leaves and a lawn sapped of its color. Some would see that emptiness as spaciousness and the relentless brightness of the sun unfiltered by apertures of leaves as clarity. But for a kid who's just moved from the one and only place he'd ever known, it's enough to turn him into an agoraphobic. On top of that--unbeknownst to him--he would soon enter puberty. For me, it was a kind of prison. Or, more precisely, it was like interment, except that I was alive but couldn't kick because there wasn't enough room. It was confined enough for me to hear the echoes of my own breathing yet just spacious enough for it to reverberate back to me and magnify my pain.

Fortunately for me, that pain--and that puberty--are memories now, evoked by the cold and wind we had today. Those memories include a house into which I could not fit myself, at least emotionally, and a body that would become more inhospitable to, and incongruous with, my spirit.

The Trauma of The Beginning of Spring

Today everybody looked tired. I thought I might've been projecting, but a few co-workers told me, without my asking or prompting, that they indeed were as tired as I thought they were.

Maybe it had something to do with the rain, which started falling yesterday morning. It hasn't been particularly heavy, but it's been dreary. Although temperatures have been mild, the sort of rain we've had doesn't leave people with the sense that spring is on its way, much less present.

I'm starting to worry about something. Today I bumped into the head of the office of academic advisement, a very nice professor of social work and three Spanish professors who indulge my terrible accent when I speak their language. I hadn't seen any of them in some time, and they were all very friendly to me. In fact, the Spanish profs--all female, two of whom are, as best as I can tell, straight--embraced me warmly. Somehow, though, I felt lonelier after seeing them, as well as the social work prof and the director of advisement.

Lately, I notice that whenever I'm at the college and not in the classroom, or otherwise working with students, I feel like a stone in an ocean. Seeing the people I saw today made me realize that so much has passed and, in some way, I am a different person now because of it. It's almost as if they were talking to someone who doesn't exist anymore. In a very real sense, he doesn't. Nor does she: the one who followed him and preceded me.

Some people are committing all sorts of petty treachery. Others, I think, have tried to be friendly or at least have made gestures toward that. Somehow they are more more alienating than the ones who are hostile or treacherous.

Maybe I'm suffering from a kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. Memories bubble to the surface and I don't want to talk to other people, even if they ask how I'm doing. If I were going to tell the truth, I'd say that during the past couple of days, all I can think about are the people who were once in my life but are gone from this life. They were friends, lovers and relatives who, in one way or another, had to deal with their own sorts of pain, as I had to deal with mine.

In my case, I didn't know how much pain I was in until I wasn't in it anymore. That's something I don't expect most people to understand. My old social worker and therapist, on the other hand, probably would have understood. In fact, they both said that the experience of being in the closet, not to mention the prejudice and sometimes violence we experience and internalize, is a kind of trauma. And in that sense, they said, helping LGBT people is often like helping trauma victims.

It's the beginning of spring. But the harshness of winter is neither so far in the past nor from the surface. Or so it seems.

The Day Before, Again

Tomorrow is the first day of spring, at least officially. But the past couple of days have felt as if we were weeks into that season, and today was even warmer than yesterday. That made it rather odd to see that the trees are still bare and that there is only mud where flowers have bloomed and will bloom again.

The sunset therefore had an almost-otherworldly glow too it. It didn't have the deep refulgence of an autumn sunset, but it had its own life and warmth. I would call it "vivid" except that the oranges and mauves and reds smoldered rather than burned: Those pastel hues seemed almost to be a refraction or inversion of ashen winter skies.

More of the same is forecast for tomorrow. That may well be the only thing in my life that's so predictable right now.

Another Day After

Today the weather was even nicer than it was yesterday. But I didn't ride my bike to work. I had a very early class. That wouldn't have been a problem: In fact, it would have been nice to ride even earlier in the morning than I rode yesterday. However, I woke up too late for that. I didn't set my alarm clock because I fell asleep while reading a student's paper. The funny thing is that I didn't feel tired immediately after getting home. I guess it caught up with me. Plus, dilating and taking my requisite hot bath afterward was probably not the best preparation for reading papers, or doing any other kind of work!

Well...at least I've ridden to work once this week. Maybe next week I'll make cycle to work a couple of times. The following week will be Spring Break. Hopefully, I'll get to ride some more then.

Maybe, once I lose some weight, I should move to Provence or Tuscany--or, perhaps, to some European city. Once I get my Miss Mercian, I'll be the most stylish cyclist anyone will ever see!

Actually, Provence and Tuscany are appealing after the kind of weather we've had this winter. I don't mind the cold or snow so much; some city blocks are rather charming in a Currier and Ives Christmas card sort of way when they're blanketed in white. But other parts of this city, like the campus and its surroundings, are rather grim in the winter.

And the college itself, save for the students, feels grimmer by the day. I'm starting to wonder whether--actually, doubt that--it will lift with the weather. The administration is trying to make the college a better place, at least academically, and I think that, at least to some degree, they're succeeding. But they're also running the place as if everyone is guilty until proven innocent. They accuse us of things we haven't done and, in turn, supervisors are treating their charges in the same way.

Plus, I feel more and more that I'm in junior high school without the friends--few though they were--I had during my first pubescence. Even the "cool" kids, whom people like me hated because we weren't among them, are absent. Instead, what we have, at least in some of the people there, are the kinds of people who bully because they got bullied when they were at that age. Sometimes I wonder whether education (or, at least, education administration) generally attracts those sorts of people.

Maybe I'll feel better about the place after Spring Break. At least, I still hope for that.