What Became Of What Never Was

In my last post of the second year of this blog (and the last day in the year of my surgery), I included a poem.  After I posted it, I had a feeling I would change it. 

When you think about it, three years (actually, almost three-and-a-half) isn’t really a lot of time in a poem’s life.  Horace recommended that a poem should be set aside for nine years after it was written.  If, after that time, the poem looks as if it’s transcended whatever the poet felt, thought or experienced at the time he or she wrote it, then it’s ready to see the light of day, according to Horace.

Now, he might not think the poem I mentioned would pass the test.  However, I’ve revised it a bit, so I’m going to post it here:

The End of What Never Was

(To My Parents)

I never could have been the boy

Who climbed trees and played football

Like the one in the photo:  the one

Whose father stood proud, whose mother

Pinned stars and bars to his dress grays.

No, I never could have been a soldier

And I never could have been a sailor.

That young girl standing on the bridge

Exchanging vows under crossed swords:

She could not have known she would never be

My wife, the mother of your grandchildren.

I never could have given her anything except

Your name, and a name that was never mine.

After that, I could only lie to her again.

No, I never could have been her man.

She will never see me; she has never seen this day

The way you never could have foreseen today.

None of us ever could have known

I never could have been your son.

What We Become

Note:  You may have noticed that two previous posts (Fatigue At The Beginning And The End and Stories of Men And Women) were in italics.  That is not a silly post-modern affectation. Rather, as you may have figured, they're parts of a work of fiction I started writing before my transition and have returned to.   This post is also, for the moment, part of that work


On this block, even in this day and age, most women become mothers, sometimes by choice but usually by circumstance. Some become wives--many more, I believe, than ever would have chosen such a fate.  I always wonder whether I'd end up like them had I been born female.  Would I've had a child--like the one I once was?  Would I've wished him--given him--that long garden of childhood people always seem to remember--which is to say wish--having?  For that matter, what would I make of having a boy--or girl? That is to ask:  What would I have done if I'd had a child who didn't fall between his or her own nature and what teachers, priests, government authorities and other adults expect?


Long before I knew I could undergo the transition I'll soon culminate, I swore I'd never have children.  It's one of two resolutions--getting away from this block was the other--that I've ever stuck to.  I knew, even then, I couldn't justify bringing  anyone into this world to face he same kinds of conflicts I had, or anything like them.  Not that I regret them now:  the struggle and frustrations have turned me into a person who's embarked on, I believe, the most exciting, excruciating and enerving experience one can have other than giving birth to another human being.  Since I'll never be able to do that (barring a sudden advance in medical technology) even after I've completed my transformation, I'll never know for sure.  But, as I said, I still have no wish to bring the needs of another mouth, the longings of another pair of eyes or the rupture of another skin into being.


I still can only wonder how many mothers--including my own--actually chose the role born from their children...and the role by which they're always identified.


If you're a woman and you don't give birth to, or raise, children, then the world--most men, anyway--will fix at least one of these labels on you:  bitch, whore, dyke.  In this scheme, a woman can be a bitch and a whore, but any actual or perceived lesbianism overrides everything else:  Men profess more hatred, which is to say more fascination, for the other two. 


I wonder where I'll fit in that scheme.  Ultimately, it doesn't matter, in a way, because I won't have any more to do with men than I have to.  Hopefully, I'll never have to turn tricks again, but I know better than to say "never again."  What I hope, at least now, that I'll never have to be of use to anybody ever again, for any reason or in any way--whether for their real needs or their fantasies.  Then, whatever I become will be all right

What Motivates Him To Learn?

One thing I have to say for my students is that they have almost uniformly been good to me. My identity is known, and I think I'm no longer a curiosity:  I don't think anyone is taking my classes so they can find out what it's like to have "the tranny prof."  Now I'm just another boring professor--which, I believe is what they expect, and even want.


Anyway, one of my courses includes readings from science and history as well as a memoir.  Of course, the subject of gender has grown prominent in our discussions, especially in light of some of the writing we've read by female historians.   That leads the class, at times, into discussions of the differences between male and female.


One student seems particularly interested.  Other students have taken notice and have even wondered aloud why he's read as much as he has on the topic.  "How can you not be interested in it?," he implores them. 


He is a bit different from the other students.  For one thing, he's older than most of them.  For another, he's lived in a few more countries, and even served in the armed forces of one of them (not the US).  And, he has other experiences most other students don't have--and some that I may never have.


However, I rather doubt he is thinking about a gender transition.  It would even surprise me if he were gay, although I think he might have an issue or two when it comes to relationships.  (He's mentioned two marriages and children.)  Still, he is  better-versed in gender transitions and surgery than most lay people I've met, and seems interested in knowing even more.   


I wonder whether he's found this blog.  Actually, it would surprise me if he hasn't.  After all, if you type my name into a Google search bar, you'll find an entry to at least one entry of this blog on the first page of search results.  If he's curious enough to learn what he's learned, I'd guess that he'd also be curious enough to do a Google search on me--and to check out this blog.


This could be interesting--for me and for the class, as well as for him.  

Finding The Moves Within

A friend of mine is teaching me Tai-Chi.  

I'll admit I'm a terrible student--in most things, not just Tai-Chi.  Really, I am:  I'm a very slow and very poor learner.  I'm neither proud nor ashamed of that fact, for it is simply that: a fact.

Anyway, this friend has come to my place for the last couple of Fridays because, as small as my apartment is, I can clear enough space for us to have our "classes."  She cannot do the same in her apartment.

Notice that my instructor is female.  She's a trans woman.  I really don't think I could learn Tai-Chi any other way, at least not at this point in my life.  It's not that I think being a trans person makes her better than other instructors, although I think she's pretty damned good.  Rather, I feel that my ability to learn the moves, and the ways of thinking and visualizing that underlay them, could only be tapped by someone who has had to relate to her body in much the same way as I have had to relate to mine.

For all of the training I did when I was younger, and especially considering the high level of physical fitness I enjoyed for a time in my life, I really felt that my body was entirely graceless.  I have always felt clumsy, and believed that my ability to pedal or run fast (at least, relatively speaking) for long periods of time was in spite, rather than because, of my body's (in)abilities.  

My friend insists that Tai-Chi moves are "natural."  They don't feel that way to me.  Perhaps they will, with time and practice.  She says that the body, my body, really wants to make the kinds of moves she is teaching me.  I want to believe her--no, I do believe her.   I somehow understand that those moves, and the ability to move through the world with more confidence, is within me, much as Michelangelo's David was, as he said, already within the block of marble he sculpted and all he had to do was find and bring it out.

I can say something like that about my femaleness.  I am sure that no one besides Michelangelo saw David in that block of marble before he started chipping away at it.  In fact, I'd bet that no one could have seen David until Michelangelo's work on that piece of rock was well under way.  Likewise, only a few people would have guessed that I was about to undertake a gender transition before I started; and it took some time before strangers addressed me as "Ma'am" or "Miss" even when I wasn't wearing makeup or feminine clothing.

Perhaps those Tai-Chi moves are within me, and my friend is trying to help me clear away all of those things that are keeping them from coming out.  At least, that's what I hope.  Could it be that underneath everything, there's a Tai-Chi Tranny just waiting to enter the world?

Chaz Bono and Me: Hey, You Never Know!

I'm thinking now of a man who was a colleague of mine back when I was the "before" photo.  Tall, portly and with an easy manner, he's one of those guys who's avuncular at 50 and is now almost grandfatherly.  I'm guessing that he's about 65, give or take a few years.


Anyway, back in January, I bumped into him.  We hadn't seen each other in about a dozen years.  He had heard about me because I stopped at the college where we used to teach and where his brother was still teaching.  His brother seemed more bemused, but he--I'll call him Jimmy--was actually quite sympathetic when I bumped into him.  "I was surprised, really," he said.  "I thought you were straight, you seemed pretty masculine and you were so athletic."


He thought for a moment and added," I guess you just never know who is."


I thought of that when I was talking with my mother today.  She saw Chaz Bono on a program--I forget which--on a cable network.  "She, I mean he, has such a big neck," she said.  


"I know.  It's a linebacker's neck."


"Yeah, you're right.  She, I mean he, really changed."

I then explained some of the effects of taking testosterone, and the fact that, because it's a stronger hormone than estrogen, the changes in female-to-male transsexuals are usually even more pronounced than those in male-to-females who take estrogen.


"But he really looks different from when he was Chastity!," my mother exclaimed.   Then, she paused in a way she rarely does; I guessed that she was trying not to mix up the pronouns.  "You know," she said, "Chastity was really cute."


"Yes, I remember her from those old Sonny and Cher shows."


Chastity, as I remember, really was cute, in an almost Shirley Temiple-ish sort of way.  But even then--about four decades ago--I saw something unusual in her.  I couldn't articulate what it was, but I somehow had the feelng it had to do with whether or not she would like boys when she got a little older.



And now he's one of them.  As they say in the old country, "Hey, you never know!"

OK Now

Yesterday I bumped into somebody I hadn't seen in about two years.  Suzanne and I used to work together; now she's working for herself.  She seems happier--or, at least more "centered", to steal from the lexicon of the so-called New Age movement.  

Some of our colleagues thought she was ditzy.  Truth is, she is, at least about tedious, repetitive tasks--which, I've learned, are the ones you have to do well if you want to win favor with superiors and, often, peers.

But she is far more perceptive in other ways than her detractors could ever dream of being.  And, she does have a heart, even if it leads her to minor excesses.

So I wasn't surprised at her reaction when I mentioned that I've had my operation since I last saw her. Her face took on an expression I hadn't seen before:  a combination of joy and concern.  "That's great!," she exclaimed.  Then, literally in the next breath, "Are you OK?", as if I'd been through a long, painful night.   When I assured her that I've been fine, in some ways I've never been better, she gave me a long hug.  

Afterward, her question--"Are you OK?"--seemed even stranger to me than it did when she asked it.  Although the surgery, like any other, had risks, I felt that whatever I was enduring was less treacherous than just about anything I'd experienced before it.  Some of that, of course, had to do with the trust I had in Dr. Bowers and the staff at the hospital.  But the emotional distress I felt nearly every day before I started my transition was much worse, and in some ways more dangerous, because I had no idea of how or whether any of it would end. And I never saw the purpose of it:  I'm not so sure that it built my "character."  On the other hand, I at least knew why I was undergoing my transition and surgery, and had some idea of how to achieve what I wanted to achieve by becoming Justine.

Yes, Suzanne, I am OK.  I'm still learning about this new landscape I'm navigating, but it makes sense.  And, as you said, We have to keep on learning how to be ourselves.   Yes!  Thank you, Suzanne.

Along The Way

The strange thing about goals is that, so often, when you reach them, they turn out not to be goals after all.  You realize that they were just landmarks or mileage markers.  Or they were just check-points in which you had to get some imprimatur or another before proceeding.

I'm thinking now about the stages of my transition, and my early life.  I mean what most people would call my current or post-transition life.  Before I came here, taking hormones, getting my name changed, and various other events leading up to my surgery, seemed like destinations at which I'd arrived.  Of course, I always had a longer-term vision of how I wanted to live, as a woman.  But each of those events and accomplishments seemed, at least for the moment, to be like grand train or bus terminals.  Of course, for some people, they mark the end of their trips.  But, for many others, it's just a station on the way to someplace else.

One of the office assistants at work--at the college in which I'd been moonlighting last semester--helped me to realize what I've just said.  The surgery and the events leading up to it were just preludes or prerequisites to what I would do next.  They were not goals unto themselves.  


In talking to that office assistant, I realized that if I'm not at a goal or destination, I'm at least on the road I hoped to take.  Or, at least, it bears a strong resemblance to what I hoped to have.  


I asked her whether the department chair would think I was doing something shady when I talked to a young woman who'd come for an interview.  She was in the office; I asked if I could help.  I forgot what she asked, but I sensed that she just wanted to talk to someone who's encouraging, or at least friendly.  The assistant and the department chair both saw me talking to this young woman.  "I hope she doesn't think I was coaching her or doing something I shouldn't be?"


The assistant's looked at me with a touch of pity.  "We're not like that around here," she assured me.  I wondered if she knows about some of the experiences I've had at my other school.


"I'm sorry."


"Don't worry.  You'll get used to this.  Besides, I think what you did was nice.  And she seemed happy about it," referring to the young woman.


But something in that assistant's tone told me so much more.  I hadn't heard anything like it at work in a long time.  I realized, then, the real reason why I like this new school:  I don't have to explain or defend myself.  To her, to the department chair, to my colleagues and students, I'm just a middle-aged woman who's teaching there.   There aren't any qualifiers, from me or them. And, best of all, I haven't encountered the sort of people who wants me to talk about my history and share it with my students precisely so they can use it against me.  


Just a woman going to work.  Maybe this isn't the goal or destination.  But I'd hoped to come this way.  Even so, every once in a while I need someone to remind me of where I've come.  

A Wish At The End

Right now I want to be in Paris.  But not for all of the usual reasons.  Well, all right, I want to pedal along the quais and around the Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle to the Pont Neuf, and over to the Place des Vosges.  And, of course, to spend time in la Musee Rodin.  And la Musee Picasso.


But I really want to be there for Janine's sisters and friends.  Of course they don't need me.  But we've been exchanging e-mails, and one of her sisters said that she valued reading the things I said about her--especially that my e-mail contained words like genereuse and phrases like une force vitale.  She was especially happy to see that toutes dites comme ca:  People who have never met each other--that would be me and some friends she knew a lot longer than she knew me--were describing her in exactly the same ways, and had the same sorts of wonderful memories of her company and her cooking.


I wish we could have seen more of each other toward the end.  But she went from hospital to nursing home, and some days she barely had the energy to get dressed.  I know there wasn't much I could have done about that. But I wish that I could have spent more time with her in my new life, especially after she took my transition with an attitude that bordered on nonchalance.


Then again, I think she always knew me as Justine, long before I started to go by that name.  We had "girls' nights out" even before the "M's" changed to "F's" on all of my documents.  And she knew, even before I did, that she--to paraphrase Bruce--had befriended a human being, not a gender.  You really can't ask more than that of anybody, which means that you are all you can, or have to, offer or give.  


So, I have no regrets about our relationship, save for the fact that I didn't get to spend more face-to-face time with her toward the end.  I guess everyone who loves and is loved wishes for that. 

Names That Popped Into My Head

Every once in a while, the name of someone I haven't seen or heard from in a long time will pop into my head.  Time was, not so long ago, when I would quickly forget the name mainly because, really, there was no other choice.  But now with Google and all those other marvels of technology, we can look up the names of those people, if we want to.


I was doing just that before I started writing tonight.  Whose names came to mind?  A long-ago---and I mean really long-ago--girlfriend.  A prof I had at Rutgers.  A boyfriend from a time long before I would ever admit to having had one.  And a former co-worker with whom I socialized in part because I actually enjoyed her company and in part to quell some gossip, if only by starting gossip of another kind.


As I've probably mentioned in previous entries, sometimes I get curious about people even if I'm not interested in seeing them again.  I want to know where they are even if I don't care to go there myself.  I guess I really do value stories over almost anything else.


Anyway, it seems that the long-ago girlfriend settled into life in a small town somewhere between the Potomac and Savannah rivers.  Does that mean she has a Southern accent?  If she does, and she still has her looks, she could be quite a distraction for lots of men!


The former co-worker is a lawyer in or around Chicago.  That surprises me and it doesn't:  She didn't seem to have the mind, or the mindset, for law school or law.  But, as I recall, her father and brother, and other relatives of hers, were lawyers.  Following in the footsteps of family members is not unusual; nor is wanting an upper middle-class lifestyle.  For all of her surface style (All those years ago, I knew I wanted to dress like her!), and for all of her ability to talk about Kirkegaard and Wittgenstein, she is an utterly conventional person, at least by the standards of the milieu in which she was raised.  At the time I knew her, I was only dimly, if at all, aware of that.


I couldn't find anything useful about the former boyfriend.  He has a common name, at least by the standards of Middle America, though he's black.  And he was a lot older--twice as old as I was when I dated him--so he may not even be alive.


As for the prof, with whom I took two French classes:  I think his name popped into my head because the prof with whom I had the conversation the other day reminds me, at least somewhat, of him.  Both are rather diminutive in stature and had to be, in one way or another, the toughest kids (if not physically) on the block simply to survive.  That alone makes them smarter than most others one meets inside the Ivory Tower.


That prof, it seems, has been writing crime novels under a pseudonym.  His wife--who, it seems, died within the past year or two--also wrote under a nom de plume and they co-wrote a book under yet another name.  And it looks as if he lived in Hawaii or still has a place there, and is now living in Arizona.


After finding out those last couple of bits of information, I realized this:  Transition or no transition, probably none of those people would recognize me now.  And I might not recognize them, but not only because they've aged.  (The French prof was in his thirties when I had him; now he's at or near Medicare age.)  


The kinds of people we were back in the day, and the contexts in which we met each other, made possible the relationships we had.  And those people, and those conditions, are no more.  So I have absolutely no idea of what I'd say to any of them, whether in an e-mail, letter or phone call, if I had any inclination to contact them again. 


Plus, I've found that, in the one memorable phrase of Thomas Wolfe, you can't go home again.  Or at least you can't return to anything you've left, or that has left you.  I learned that in my attempt to rekindle an old friendship early in my transition.  She was really the first friend I had, unless you count my mother and grandmother.  And, for many years, she was my closest friend.  Until recently, there were things that only she, or only she and my mother, knew about me.  


I mentioned that the people I thought about today might have changed beyond all recognition.  On the other hand, the friend with whom I reunited had not changed at all.  She even looked as she did when we were Rutgers students!  


That is exactly what I had hoped for:  to reconnect with the friend I first met all of those years ago, when we were about the same age as the students in my afternoon class.  And, ironically, we couldn't remain friends for exactly that reason.  We were having exactly the same conversations, in our forties, as we had before we turned twenty. And she was getting involved with the same kinds of men, and playing them and getting hurt by them, as she was back in the day.  As I listened to her, I could predict practically every word of her complaints.  And now she resents anyone who has moved on with his or her life, much less gotten what he or she wants. 


Oh well.  She's become what she's become (even if it is what she always was) and there's nothing I, or anyone else, can do about it.  I guess I can say the same thing about those long-lost names who popped into my head tonight.