"Tea" Is The First Three Letters of "Tears"

Around noon today, I started sipping a large styrofoam cup of green tea. So what does that mean? Well, I guess I'm not Japanese because I used the wrong vessel and drank my tea alone. And I'm not British because I was drinking the wrong tea at the wrong hour. Oh well.

But I digress (already!). I was at one of the college's computers, working to create some materials that will help faculty advisors advise. I've done the more-or-less interesting stuff, so now I'm into such tasks as making tables and creating links. No writing or thinking involved in those jobs. Somebody's gotta do 'em, I guess.

Anyway, I was doing one of those chores that you don't go to graduate school for, and...what happened? I started to cry. At first, the tears were like the drops of rain that just barely touch a speeding train (think the TGV) because it's going so fast. Then the tears streamed like hot sea water mixed with lemon juice and vinegar. My eyes stung and dripped the tingeing liquid down my eye sockets and cheeks.

The stinging and tingeing actually felt refreshing, in some odd sort of way. It was not the first time my crying felt that way, but I didn't experience anything like it for the first forty-five years of my life. Not that I can recall, anyway.

So, you ask, did I break up with my boyfriend? Am I getting cold feet about the operation? Did someone die, or did I get some other kind of bad news?

No, no, no and no. (All right. It doesn't have quite the same ring as "Tomorrrow and tomorrow and tomorrow." What can I tell ya? I ain't Shakespeare.) Does that mean I have to spend another few hours and few hundred dollars on therapy for the answer?

Another no. And my therapist, doctor, social worker, friends and mother all say so. I didn't talk to all of them--or any of them, for that matter--today. But I've mentioned impromptu sobs like the one I had today to them, and they have all given me the same advice: Don't fight it; you probably need it. And, in fact, the therapist, doctor and social worker all predicted that I would have these low-grade crying jags after I spent some time on hormones.

I've been taking them for five years now. I don't mind the sobbing and tears: In fact, I often enjoy them because I feel so much better afterward. And, sometimes I even feel better while crying than I did right before the tears began to flow. But I wonder if I'll ever get used to it. Should I?

Again, everyone says not to worry. For one thing, I can get away with crying in public now, although I wonder how well it would go over in a professional situation. Today didn't count: I was working by myself. If you cry and no one's there to hear it...

The roses won't tell your secret. This morning, just before I left for work, The Jaynett's "Sally Go Round The Roses" played on the radio. It's my favorite "girl group" song because, well, it doesn't sound like the "I'm nothing without my guy" laments we heard from Little Eva and most other acts of their time. I grew up with that sort of thing. I kinda sorta identified with them because both they and I didn't have the love we longed for. The difference was, they lost theirs and I didn't have--and didn't expect to have--mine in the first place.

But "Sally" is something else. It's more like Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" than any of those other songs. "The roses, they can't hurt you. They won't tell your secret." If you have a secret and no one tells it...what? It means you can stay in the closet until someone outs you. If you have a secret and have no one to tell it to...it's still a secret. But what of it?

Actually, I wasn't thinking that deeply about that song, although it would've been worth the effort. I was simply responding to the feel of it: its obsessive yet subtle rhythm that seems to come out of nowhere, its call-and-response introits and refrains in gentle but persistent voices that don't quite grab you but get a hold on you anyway and don't let go.

But lemme tell ya: I've cried over songs that weren't nearly as good as "Sally." My doctor, therapist and social worker said that this is normal. And, not long ago, my mother told me she sometimes experiences spontaneous sobs like the ones I let out today. Not to seem sexist, but estrogen really does remove a filter between you and the world--one that I didn't even know I had until I lost it.

Mom says she doesn't cry when she's sad, necessarily; she cries because she needs it. That is, her body as well as her mind and spirit must cleanse themselves. You're flushing toxins out of you when you cry, she said. My doctor said something like that, too. The poison has been made; all you can do is let it out of you, mother says. Don't worry so much about what made the poison; it's in your past; it's gone now. "You're close to living the life you want; soon you'll be there. Just do what you need to do--including crying."

And my therapist said something like that, too. All right. So I have a crying spell when I'm alone or among friends; that's OK. But what do I do when I'm on stage, literally or metaphorically.

I guess I can excuse myself and go to the ladies' room. It seems to work for the other women in my life. And I can continue to drink my tea; it helps to bring on--and heal me with--tears.

Is this what the British and the Japanese had in mind? Tea for tears; tears for healing. Makes sense in some weird way.

Another Day, Another...?

Another day, another...?

Another day further into this year? Another day passed in my life? Another day closer to my surgery.

Well, duh, you might be telling yourself. The answer is, of course, "yes" to all of the above.

I've never before had a whole year to count down. When I was in school and couldn't wait to get out, graduation seemed far away and abstract, even though I'd seen others don their caps and gowns and walk up to a podium where someone handed them a rolled-up piece of paper tied with a ribbon. Maybe it was because nobody in my family had done it before me. On the other hand, I know people who've had gender reassignment surgery. In fact, I've known two "before and afters", and I met others post-surgery. While I can imagine the surgery itself only somewhat, I can somehow--"Visualize" is not quite the right word; nor is "imagine" --the experience of going through it, and what I might feel.

Empathise--maybe that's the right word. I'm empathising the surgery. I never could do that with a graduation or any other impending experience. Maybe it's because most of my peers have gotten diplomas from high school, many finished college degrees and some of us went on to higher degrees. Just in the sheer numbers, graduation is not such a special, unique experience. Nor is retiring, though that may change. So who else counts off their days? Inmates on death row? Now there's a real stretch for a comparison!

So the analogy to graduation wins, by default, I guess. Maybe I'm making that analogy to my situation because I received an e-mail from a website called "Find Your Classmates" or some such thing. I followed the links to a page from my high school graduating class.

Now, I've never had any nostalgia for any school I've ever attended, probably high school least of all. But I guess I felt like Primo Levi in "Si Questo Un' Uomo" (which, in America, was published as "Survival In Auschwitz": one of the grossest mis-translations in history), a book in which he recalls his internment and escape. One inmate he describes was a real wheeler-dealer: shrewd to the point of avariciousness, nonetheless capable of saving someone's life, however inadvertently, because his impulse toward self-preservation was so great. Of that inmate, Levi muses, "I would love to know what he's doing now, although I have no desire at all to see him again."

That's a pretty accurate description of how I feel about some of my classmates and others from my past. I don't want to bump into them, but I'm curious to know what's become of them. Why? I guess that it has to do with one of my oldest and most persistent weaknesses: my fondness for a story, any story. Of course I want a good one, but I'm even curious to know how the shoddily-constructed and improbable ones go. Maybe that's why I became a student of literature and a writer.

And the ones who turn out differently from what you expected: Why do they? Could, should we have known that they would? One of Allen Ginsberg's "angry angelheaded hipsters"--or a wannabe--was hoisting his baby grandchild up to the camera, doing something I never saw him do back in the day: smile. And it looked genuine. The way that baby looked, I guess I would've been happy, too.

Then there was my only namesake in that class. Of course, she wasn't my namesake in those days, but she would've been had I been born with a female body. Yes, my mother would have named me Justine. She told me that when I was about fourteen or fifteen, I think, most likely when I mentioned the girl with the name that should've been mine. At least it is now; I guess, when you think about it, it always was, after all.

The one and only kid with whom I kept up contact after graduation wasn't on the site. He and I haven't talked to each other in twenty years, at least. There was no falling-out, no rancor. It was just, I think, that one or both of us realized, a few years after leaving that school, that it was all we had in common anymore. Really, it was all we ever had in common: that school, or more precisely, the way we experienced it. And at that point, I was tired of talking about, much less remembering, it.

What would he think of what I've become? What would the wannabe hipster say? Or Justine?

Welcome to Transwoman Times

I have one year left.

When I say that, you're probably thinking retirement or--death.

Rest assured that neither is the case. I'm nowhere near old--or, for that matter, rich--enough to quit working. And, as far as I know, I'm not going to die, at least not in the immediate future.

You see, one year from today--on 7 July 2009--I will undergo gender-reassignment surgery. I plan to share my thoughts and feelings about my impending surgery every day, or at least every chance I get.

Sometimes people ask me whether I'm nervous about the surgery. I'm not, really: I'll be full of drugs and knocked out while the doctor does her work. I've been warned about the pain I'll feel afterward. That doesn't worry me, at least not yet: I'm anticipating it, but I can't imagine how or whether it will be similar to, or different from, other pain I've experienced.

Tonight I am writing after a day at work that was no different from others at this time of year. This day was another Monday after a long weekend: It's always difficult to return under those circumstances. But this weekend was different: It began with a Friday, the Fourth of July--which just happens to be my birthday. My fiftieth. That doesn't disturb me nearly as much as turning forty, thirty or twenty, possibly because of what I'm looking forward to.

Not long ago, a friend said that what I'm doing is as close as I can come to giving birth because I am, in a very real sense, giving birth to myself. She is mostly right: Since taking the first steps toward this transition some seven years ago, I have been in the process of being born. And during the forty years before that, I carried within me the person I am becoming. There were times when that girl, that woman, seemed dormant or even dead. And, believe me, I spent more time and energy than I can measure in trying to kill her.

She has cost me a lot, but she is making me a wealthier (and healthier) person now that I'm giving her--me--what she needs. I may not be a pretty woman, but the woman I am fills me with her light--which is still, at times, brighter than anything to which my eyes are accustomed--when I see her--me--in the mirror.

Nothing could have prepared me for becoming her, for her becoming me. And I don't know what, if anything, can prepare me for that day one year from today. I can plan, I can anticipate, and fortunately for me, my parents have offered to accompany me to the hospital when I go for my surgery. They were no more prepared--or surprised, really--than I was for the day when, for the first time in my entire life, I was entirely honest with them about who I am. And, although my therapist, former social worker (and current friend), and various other friends and friendly acquaintances have offered advice and various kinds of support, none of us can really anticipate what will come next. It's as if I've researched the country, learned its language and packed my bags for my trip. But, for all of my planning, will I be ready?

But then again, how much of my success or failure, memory and forgetting, tears and joys, were really the results of mine, or anyone else's preparation?

At least I know one moment, one year from now, won't be a continuation of the past, which is what most people mean when they talk about the present. There is tomorrow; there will be dying, and we will be born, all of us.

But we're different after we give birth. I know that much. The question is, how will I be different? If I pick an outfit to wear that first day after I leave the hospital, will I still want to wear it? Will I be like those mothers who, during their pregnancies, binge on foods they'll never touch again after their babies are born?

I know I'm getting ahead of myself. But this is the first time in my life that I know where I'll be and what I'll be doing on some specific date in the future. It's hard, for me anyway, not to speculate.

For now there is the journey. And there will be a birth: mine, and whatever else that brings.