Lunch With Bruce, 30 Years Later

Today I went to lunch with Bruce at SoHo Natural, a restaurant around the corner from his workplace. We'd gone there once before and liked the food and ambience; today, the latter was a bit different as the place was more crowded and louder. But that didn't stop us from enjoying our food and each other's company.

It also didn't keep me from enjoying the waiter's, um, professionalism and service. Well, he was a really good waiter: He was helpful yet unobtrusive. But I wouldn't have minded if he'd been a little more obstructive.

We glanced into each others' eyes the moment he started to walk us to the corner table where he seated us. And he gave me one of the most winsome smiles I have ever seen.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bruce grin knowingly while my eyes followes that waiter's stocky yet nicely-proportioned body to the kitchen. And when he returned, he was practically cooing when he apologized that the restaurant didn't have any more tilapia filets for the dish I'd ordered. So, back to the reception area to bring back the menu. Another opportunity to do some, er, sightseeing.

If the boy next door had been a cross between a surfer, a New Zealand rugby player and a classical actor, he would've been this waiter. I don't know how he was seeing me, but I think I looked pretty good (at least for me) in my long flared Victorian/hippie floral print skirt in various shades of purple with a sort of parchment hue, my purple camisole and cardigan and a long scarf with bands of lavender, lilac and violet. I twiddled my rope-wedge sandals by their violet canvas cross-straps as Bruce and I talked and ate--and that waiter and I played stare-tag.

After he brought us our check, I turned to Bruce. His knowing smile had become even more knowing.

"He's cute," I cooed.

Bruce nodded. I've known him for close to 30 years, and I don't think he's ever heard me say something that was more obvious. "The moment we walked in here, I could see you were attracted to him."

"You won't hear any denials out of me. Just don't tell Dominick," I deadpanned.

Now I'm thinking of all those times he and I went to restaurants, galleries, theatres, stores, parks and a beach and looked at women. Sometimes we liked the same ones; other times one of us noticed someone completely different from whom the other saw. But deep down, I knew that he had more passion for his attractions to women than I ever would. Not to say he was obsessed; he simply was, well, straight--albeit a sensitive and gentle straight--man while I have always been, as he said, "uncategorizable" and my sexuality has always been "fluid."

In other words, he--like my mother--knew that I wasn't a straight guy. They knew that long before I came out to them--to my mother as gay simply because I didn't know how else to describe myself, and to Bruce as bisexual because I was trying to hold on to the myth I told myself about my heterosexuality. And, of course, much later, I would tell each of them the truth.

And it brought me to that visit I had with Mom and Dad last month. And to lunch with Bruce, where he caught me in the act...of flirting with a guy.

One thing hasn't changed: The hugs Bruce and I give each other upon meeting and departing. Wait, I take that back: I enjoy them even more now. They feel even more tender than they did before my transition. I don't know whether it has anything to do with my gender. But I can tell you this: I appreciate his friendship now in ways I never could before.

And I guess if it could survive all the mendacity on my part, well, we really are friends. He helped me to get to where I am now.

And, ya know, he's cute, too. But he's taken. And so am I. But we're still friends. It seems so much deeper yet safer now.

Running Away

This morning I pedalled to work under skies overcast with herringbone clouds that, paradoxically, posed no threat of rain. The air was pleasantly cool, so I hardly worked up a sweat even though I was dodging and racing taxicabs, minivans and assorted other vehicles driven by people taking kids, stuff or themselves to school or work.





In some ways, it's the most pleasant kind of weather condition for cycling: neither heat nor sun saps moisture from your body. And, I would be tempted to ride without my sunglasses, even though my opthamologist says I should wear them any time I'm outdoors during daylight hours.





So why am I mentioning the ride and weather conditions? Somehow, this morning in particular gave me what I like to call a sense-memory. Such recollections are not about specific people or things; they are more about what I felt--whether in spirit or body--at the time I'm recalling.





Today, in my mind, I was riding along the ocean again--on a late-summer day some time after graduating college and living away for a couple of years. I believe it was the briskness of the air against my skin that brought me back to that day.





I had gone to visit my parents--my mother, really, as my father and I were barely talking to each other. They were living in New Jersey, and the ocean was only a few miles from their house. I often took that ride, along a none-too-fashionable (but I didn't care, still don't) stretch of the now-famous Jersey Shore.

I reached the ocean from the bridge at Highlands, just south of Sandy Hook. There, only a couple hundred yards (or meters, for all of you non-Americans) of land seperate the ocean from the Shrewsbury River, which empties into the New York Bay and the ocean at Sandy Hook. When you cross from the ocean to the river, there are only a beach, a seawall, two lanes of Route 36 and a row of houses. This little strip of land extends down to Sea Bright, where the Shrewsbury turns from being an inland river to an estuary that opens to the sea.

You ride down 36 through Sea Bright, Sea Girt, Elberon and a couple of other towns before you reach Long Branch. As you proceed, the expanse of land to your right side grows: Here you are on flat land that ends in the sea rather than a mere shoestring of sand and rock seperating one shore from another. The houses stretch further along the horizon: less weatherbeaten than the ones in Sea Bright and Elberon, but--at least in those days--dingier and sadder-looking. Then, finally, you'd see the sign for the Carter Hotel--Johnny Cash's East Coast pied-a-terre and the unofficial city limit of Asbury Park.





In those days, it was still Springsteen's Asbury Park, only more run down. The boardwalk/arcade was all splinters and spattered glass; even the gaily-painted wooden carousel could not make it less forlorn. (If you see Louis Malle's Atlantic City, you will get a sense of how the place felt in those days.) People went there--much less took their kids--only if they couldn't afford someplace else, or had no one to go with them.

At that time, I fit in the latter category. Of course: Why would anyone want to accompany someone who finds comfort in melancholy? All right, I stole the last three words of the previous sentence from Joni Mitchell, but they're an accurate description of how I lived in those days. I rode there at such a pace that I couldn't tell my skin from my sweat from the breeze from the spray of the ocean. I still love that feeling; that is more or less how I was riding this morning (without the ocean or salt air). I was riding as if I was riding as fast and as far as I could, from something...something that I would never talk about with anyone.





Really, running away that way isn't so different from an escape through alcohol, drugs , sex or saying "Fuck You!" when your purpose is, well, running away. Some people do it with their jobs or careers; others (or sometimes those same people) with their families. And, of course, there are those who do it with sports or other forms of competition.





The method doesn't matter as much as the motive, which in my case was mendacity. I had to run not only from who I am, but also from who I presented to everyone else. I guess I was living a myth whose storyline was something from the Allman Brothers' Midnight Rider: I owned nothing; I owed nothing and nobody would--or could--catch me. There are days when I still miss living out that fantasy.





And that is exactly the reason I miss it: because it's a fantasy. Those emotional Edens to which people want to return are never as pristine as they are in memory. Or, in my case, I wasn't nearly as fierce and independent (much less fiercely independent) as I imagined myself to be. I was not flying free as a bird; the wind whipped me around like a kite.





But this morning I had something to go to: my job, which is, of course, to teach people how to write. (Of course I don't tell them that I'm still learning how to do that myself!) And I was riding briskly because I wanted to get there with time to spare while still having time to stop at a bakery and pick up something to eat when I got there. Which I did--just in time to see a woman about my age pulling sfogliatelle, sfingi, croissants and other pastries out of the oven at La Scala bakery on Grand Avenue in Maspeth. I bought a half-dozen of those nice sfogliatelle--a seashell-shaped flaky pastry filled with ricotta and egg and touches of lemon and vanilla. It's exactly what I'd want for my last dessert. Or breakfast. I knew I wasn't going to eat six, but, as I joked with the woman, "I'm going to teach those people at work what real food is!"





I had no particular reason for buying those sfogliatelli I brought to the office. I just, well, felt like it. Funny, how that's something you say when you're running away. But, I believe, the fact that I was buying those sfogliatelli and had someone to bring them to was a sign that I wasn't running away, at least not from what I used to run from or in quite the same ways I used to run.





And, even though I didn't get nearly enough sleep last night, I was practically bursting with energy when I entered that first classroom at 8 am. And the students, as tired as they were, responded to it.

Maybe I learned something besides a couple of languages and a couple dozen sexual positions from running away, after all: If you settle down because you are who you are and can (and don't want to) be a
anyone else, people actually do respond. They don't have to know that running away brought me to them!

Not to mention that I learned how to cook a few things, fix bikes and--to the degree that I know how to do it--write. Worse things have happened, but I now have better reasons not to keep on running. But pedalling as if I'm running away is still the best way to go.





So that's how I got to work today. And here.

After Yesterday, Being and Becoming

What does a gender transition do to your sense of time? More to the point, does it change the way you see your past as well as your present?

These are questions Mark, who also became a full-time prof this year, asked me a couple of days ago.

I don't recall how the topic came up--or, indeed, what the topic, if any, there was to our conversation. All I remember now is that he was asking about this blog, which he's looked at, and suggested some ways in which it might be useful.

He wondered about how I see myself in relation to the events, past and present in my life. I said that of course I see myself now as Justine, and in the narrative that runs through my head, Justine is talking to someone, Justine just finished a class, Justine is eating her lunch, Justine is riding her bike, etc.

But somewhere along the way, the story became one of Justine attending high school and college, taking those trips to France and Italy and England and California, even the ones during which I was living on my bike. Maybe it's because when I was away, something in me was freed up and I became more approachable. And the glimmerings of my caring, curiosity, passion and vulnerability all came through. In other words, I felt more as if I were relating to those complete strangers (mostly) I met through my emotions and nuance rather than power and persuasion. Actually, those forces were always at the core of my being, whichever name I was going by.

The stories of my interactions with people I lived, talked, ate, drank, fought and loved--and had sex--with now also have Justine as their protagonist. Justine grew up with three brothers, even though they saw her as their brother--albeit, one not quite like them. Justine went to college, worked at all kinds of jobs--the strange ones, the odd ones, the frustrating ones, the boring ones, the challenging ones and the stimulating ones. Justine in the military; Justine teaching in the Orthdox Yeshiva and serving as an altar boy at her brother's First Holy Communion mass and some relatives' weddings.

And the friend Bruce has had for nearly three decades has always been Justine, whether I was scared, stubborn, wishing long, working hard or anything else. And especially when I was feeling vulnerable and he helped, and sometimes even protected, me.

All right. You probably think I'm reinforcing 1950's gender roles by saying that. However, the best men are vulnerable, in good ways. So are the best women. And sometimes it takes a vulnerable man--or woman-- to protect a seemingly strong and imperterbable human being.

But I now realize, after a conversation I had with him the other day, that the reason why I've been his friend all of these years is because I am Justine, and always have been. I simply didn't have that name yet, and wasn't living by that identity, for most of the years he's known me.

Really, I could say the same thing about my entire life. Even when I wasn't presenting myself as Justine, I was. Even when I didn't have my name, I was her. Even--perhaps especially--when I was very, very young.

Of course, as my mother understood the day I "came out" to her, that was the source of many difficulties I've had, and caused other people, in my life. As she very astutely realized, knowing I am one person but living as someone else was a major--if not the major--reason for all those realationships I had that never worked out. Or my inability to settle on anything, or make up my mind about day-to-day matters. And, of course, of my drinking and drug abuse.

But something of me always came through, I think. I remember Tammy telling me that it was that person to whom her relatives who liked me were responding, even though I kinda sorta acted like one of the guys. And then there was something Amy, a teacher I met when I was doing poetry workshops with kids.

We met at one of the schools where I was conducting those workshops--one of them with her third-grade class. I found her to be funny, intelligent and interested in all things French. And we became who we are after similar sorts of backgrounds in blue-collar Brooklyn neighborhoods.

Anyway, I went to dinner, movies and plays with her. We even went shopping: She claimed that I picked better clothes for her than she chose for herself! And we shared confidences.

Seeing this as a possible opportunity for "redemption" as a man, I asked her out. I will never forget her response:

Well, Nick, I like you a lot. A lot. You're very kind and considerate, and one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. But that kind of relationship between us would never work. Please, don't take this the wrong way, but you're really more like a woman: You're emotional and you like refinement. I like those things about you. But I don't necessarily want them in a man.

If she'd only called me "Justine," she would've had me pegged perfectly. Of course, I didn't want to acknowledge that at the time.

We met a few more times after that, then disappeared from each others' lives. I wonder where she is now. Then again, I'm not entirely sure that she'd want to be friends with me now, possibly because I'm even more Justine than I was back then.

Sometimes I think that my mother knew who I was even though she was raising me as a boy, mainly because neither she nor anyone else would've known what else to do in those days. Tammy once remarked that my relationship to my mother--and, in some ways, to my father--was more like that of a daughter. One thing I can say is that my relationship with them is different from anything my brothers had.

And now they have Justine, completely. It's all I ever could've been, really.

Boy to Man, Man to Woman, Woman to Man, Woman to Woman

Hanna brought us buckets and buckets of rain today. At times, you could just barely see ahead of you because the rain was so dense. But it wasn't as windy as the forecasters expected; it seems that, as miserable as the weather has been here, the storm actually dissipated most of its power after leaving Haiti.

This afternoon, during a seeming lull in the rain, I took a walk down the couple of blocks to the bridge that connects this neighborhood with Roosevelt Island. That bridge looks like two birds some kids built with their Erector sets (I had one of those when I was a kid: The irony is almost too thick!) and painted by whoever painted the Golden Gate Bridge, after they got misanthropic and drunk in their old age (or drunk on the misanthropy of their old age). Therein lies the charm of the structure.

That, and the fact that it spans the so-called East River. I say so-called because it's really an inlet of the ocean. Why does that matter? Well, sometimes, when you cross over the bridge, the water under you seems to be running south (downtown to us New Yorkers) toward the Brooklyn Bridge, the tip of Manhattan and the Upper New York Bay. But, at other times, it's surging in the opposite direction: toward the Triboro Bridge, the Bronx and Long Island Sound. In other words, it's not a river current, it's a tide from the ocean.

Anyway, one of the things I like about the bridge is that, well, it's a part of this place. And it connects this place to Roosevelt Island, which might well be the oddest part of New York. One can't walk, pedal or drive to Manhattan from it, although it's just as close to the island as my neighborhood in Queens is. And the people who live there are not like other New Yorkers. In fact, most of them are not New Yorkers at all, literally and spiritually. Many work for the UN or other international organizations and come from just about every country you can think of. But they are different from other immigrants because they neither live in enclaves with people who share their native culture (as immigrants do in other parts of the city) nor are assimilated as New Yorkers. They are possibly, at once, the most urbane and the most xenophobic of all New York City residents.

Anyway, I sometimes go there on Saturday mornings for the farmer's market. However, I woke up late today, and by the time I got there this afternoon, it was gone. Or maybe they didn't hold it today. But at least the post office, which stays open until 4 pm on Saturdays, was available. So I went in to mail a package.

It's a bit like a small-town post office: The employees seem to know everyone on the island. They also know, or at least recognize me, for I've gone there a number of times. They're among the friendlier postal employees I've encountered.

Today Mora, born in this city of Puerto Rican parents, helped me. It was a slow day, so we chatted a bit as she weighed and stamped my package. As so often happens in conversations, one topic led to another and she was telling me about the physical abuse she suffered from her first husband.

"How are you doing now?"

"Better. That was a long time ago. But it took a long time for me to do anything about it. "

"You felt guilty?"

She nodded. "He said he loved me. I thought that's how he expressed his love. But it got really bad..."

"Until you realized that someone who loves you wouldn't do anything like that."

Another nod. "That's what my friends, my mother, my therapist told me. But it took me a long time to pay attention."

"Well, you did, and here you are."

"I cried a lot."

"That's how we work through those things."

Her eyes lit up. "Yeah! Men just hold things in until they explode. Or they tell you everything's OK until they beat you. We let it out."

"We don't have a choice, really."

She looked at me, seeming to agree without knowing why. Or perhaps she knew exactly why, or didn't need to know why--or simply to explain, which many people, particularly in the academic world, confuse with understanding. We both knew exactly what she was talking about, even though I came to that knowledge in a way that was probably very different from hers.

It seems that the longer I live as a woman--and now, the closer I come to my surgery--the more I find myself in unsolicited sessions like the one I had today. Before my transition, a few women told me of abuse, rape or other forms of violence from the men or boys in their lives. Two girlfriends--including my last--related stories of incest. Four others, of rape. And all except one told me they'd been beaten or otherwise abused by men or boys they knew before me.

Even as angry as I was in those days, they told me their stories--or something of them, anyway. And a few other women related such experiences to me. I don't know whether they would've told anyone who was in my place or they simply saw me as a male who could, at least to some degree, empathise. Actually, I was relating to their anger through my own, and turning those experiences into yet more rationale for my rage.

But now I seem to have more of these conversations, and somehow I feel as the women who tell me such stories are relating them to me as a peer. I guess I first noticed this when, just days apart, Sonia, Millie and my mother rued, to one degree or another, the lives they've led. Sonia said the two things that disappointed her were her marriage and daughter; Millie said she married a good man but wouldn't do it again; Mom says she might get married but she would definitely still have kids, though fewer of them (She had four.) at a later age than she did.

Of course, they all know about my transition. But I don't think Mora does. And I'm not sure about the other women whose stories I've heard. Whatever they know or think, I do feel for them, and can understand how they feel. Whatever the pain, we experience--and respond to--it in similar ways now, I think.

Anxiety or Anger?

Got to the luncheon for new full-time faculty members late. Real late. As in 1:30 for something that started at 12:00 and ended at 2:00. There's nothing in my job description that says I'm supposed to go to things like that. But I figured that I'd better make at least an appearance.

Talk about bad timing! I came in as the provost was on the podium. So it was really hard to go unnoticed. And I all but tripped over the college president. And my department chair.

Oh well. If I don't have this job next year I guess I'll just have to...

How will I follow that ellipsis? Well, if I knew, do you think I'd've ended the sentence with it?



Anyway, even after all of the teaching I've done, I don't like to talk to large (or sometimes even small) groups of people. And the provost--who, I learned at that moment, knows my name!--called on me and asked me to talk about my (professional) self for half a minute.



Now, these days I really don't want to talk about myself with anyone who's known me for less than five years. I just don't see the point of it. I'd rather slink off into a corner and read, write or try out a new computer skill.

I heard one new prof talk about all the professional societies he belongs to, all the scholarly articles he's written and conferences he's chaired. My writing is, of course, not of the scholarly kind, and I haven't done all those other things academicians are supposed to do--except teach.

Actually, I'm not misanthropic or anti-social. In the right situations, I actually enjoy talking with people. I just don't like to be forced into it, especially with large groups of people who, it seems, aren't actually listening to what I say but are sizing me up.

And then I had to be part of a group picture. I probably wouldn't even have minded that so much, except that the person I most distrust in the college was taking the shot.

Who is she? The editor of the college newspaper. I will say that it is better than other campus papers I've seen. But the fact that, under her editorship, the paper has won awards gives her a standing with the administation that a low-level instructor like me doesn't have.

I learned that last year, when I complained about her to the administration of the college. For a year before that, she'd been stalking me and trying to get me to sit with her for an interview with me--about the fact that I'm transgender. Yes, she said that. Now, why would I want anyone to write an article solely about that aspect of me?

Then, toward the end of the year, she stopped me in the hallway to say that "someone"--she wouldn't say who, but I have some ideas as to who he/she might be--told her I was getting fired from my old job for sexual misconduct. Of course, she wouldn't tell me who, or what she wanted to know from me. I told her "It's not true." But she persisted. Finally, I snapped. "If you don't leave me alone--and if my name appears in that paper, for any reason at all--you will regret it."

Of course, the administration defended her on the grounds of "free speech" or some such thing. But doesn't the person being stalked or slandered have rights, too?

I dunno. Maybe it's a good thing all of this is happening. Then, after my surgery, I won't have--or be able-- to look back wistfully at this time.

OK, so I'm being faceitous. It's really not a bad weapon for dealing with stuff like this.

And, after the surgery, I probably won't see most of the people who were at that luncheon. Or that editor: She'll have graduated by then.

4 septembre

Monday the 1st--Labor Day--was the "unofficial" last day of summer. But today, the 4th of September, might be the first real day of fall, though you wouldn't know it from the weather we've had. The date sounds like the first day of fall, and you can practically see the skies growing dimmer and the days shorter when you hear of it. And the way most of the world writes it--4 September--looks and feels like the first day of fall.

In Paris, there's a rue 4 Septembre, which commemorates the date in 1870 on which Napoleon III was captured and le troisieme republique--still the longest-lasting French regime since the Revolution--was declared.

On la rue 4 Septembre, a very kind soul saved my cul. It was my second time in Paris, and I was drunk a good part of the time, as I so often was in those days. At some point during my second night there--I'm not quite sure of when--I lost my passport, traveler's cheques and some antique postcards I'd bought in Italy. And my cash, except for a few francs. Well, the American embassy couldn't or wouldn't help me because I didn't have any money or another ID. Mind you, this was long before the so-called War on Terror.

Well, I just happened to remember the number of the last traveler's cheque I cashed. And since I knew how many I'd bought and how many I'd used, I knew how many I'd lost. From there, I could figure out the serial numbers of the cheques I lost.

But being in the days before cell phones or calling cards, I needed cash to make the call--to Barclay's, in London. So I went to one of the cabines--places that looked a bit like check-cashing places but have cubicles and phones in them where you can make long distance calls and pay the attendant for them afterward. I'd hoped that someone could help me.

Inside, I met a woman who was probably about 40 and looked the way a less-glamorous, though still very attractive, sister of Leititia Casta might look. (In those days, though, nobody had heard of her yet.)

Bonjour, monsieur. Comment ca-va?

Pas bien, madame. J'en ai perudue ma monnie, ma carte et mon passepuerte.

C'est terrible! Je veux vous aider.

Merci.

The call to London would have been a few francs, at least. But she offered to dial it, and I promised to pay her after I got my money back.

She even offered to call the US, if I needed it , or any place else. Pas necessaire, I said. Merci beaucoups.

So she dialed Barclay's for me, and the next day they wired new cheques to the woman at the cabines. Then she called a French employee at the US consulate and explained my situation. The next day, my checks arrived. I tired to give that kind woman a gratuite, but she would not take it. Instead, I gave her a bouquet of yellow roses. Honestly, I would've married her right then and there!

I suppose losing my stuff was some sort of cosmic, karmic retribution for what I'd done the night before: I skipped out of a cafe without paying for the seafood quiche, salad, a bottle of white wine, a religieuse and espresso I had. Many years later, I went back to that place, across the street from the Gare de Lyon. By then, I had not touched any alcohol or recreational drugs for a few years. I'd just gotten off the TGV from Chambery, and later that night I would go to see friends I had yet to meet the night I helped myself to an unauthorized free repast. I ordered that same meal--That quiche aux fruits de mer and salad nicoise were even better than I remembered!--without the wine. When I paid, I gave the waiter an additional fifty-franc note.

Monsieur, ce n'est pas necessaire. He probably thought I was a tourist who didn't realize that you don't tip in France.

Oui, d'accord. Mais, vous et ce cafe m'en traite tres, tres bien. C'est un cadeau. Actually, he was an excellent waiter and it was a nice cafe. I knew that because I was leaving it happier than I was when I walked in.

Ah...

Vous me rendez tres heureuse...

Talk about the subconscious! In French, all adjectives are masculine or feminine. Which meant that in those days, to express the contentment I felt, I should have said "heureux." Today, of course, I would say "heureuse." And, believe me, I use it far more frequently than I ever said "heureux," even though I had a lot more years to use it than I've had for "heureuse!"

But if that waiter didn't think I was a dumb tourist and was too polite to say so, he didn't notice or didn't care. So, as we parted he said, Merci. Au revoir. J'espere que vous reviendra.

Oui, je reviendra. Au revoir. A bientot.

Another thing about 4 septembre: On that date in 1985, I wrote what I consider to be my first worthwhile poem--indeed, my first worthwhile piece of writing, if I've ever produced any:

The Lies of Spring

Last fall we walked
along the bank of this river.
Somebody warned you
not to come here with me.

We saw our faces, calm and clear
on the surface of the water.
You leaped and disappeared
into the mud below.
I stood, blinded, in the twilight.

I did not jump
because you told me
the water’s very cold.


Today I walk alone
on this weathered shore.
A single lily pokes through
mud that is your bones.

You once told me: This flower
Is the first sign of spring.

That poem was published in a few literary magazines. And, when my students have asked about my own writing, if I'm feeeling inclined to show it to them, this is one of the poems they see. One student wrote to me a couple of years after he was in my class--he'd graduated and was working in another state--to tell me that he was going through some of his papers and found a copy of this poem. It meant even more to him, he said, than it did back when he was in my class.

He told me that since he'd had me for that intro to literature class, he had come to understand loss and grief --and the price some have to pay in order to achieve, or simply survive-- in ways that he never could've understood before. He related the specifics, which I won't get into here, and said that even in the "darker" poems-- like "Lies"--and in my presence, he saw a sort of light that has helped him to navigate the crises he'd experienced since graduating from school.

Mind you, he wasn't some pseudo-alienated wannabe artiste/trust fund kid. He was a business major, and graduated only two years older than I was when I completed my baccalaureate degree. (He'd worked and done some other things before coming this country, and to college.) I would love to see him again.

If any of you are thinking about teaching, at any level, this is the one and only reason to consider it. The kind of pay and benefits you get from teaching or being a professor are attainable elsewhere, and with less investment. You may not have your summers off because you may need more money. And education is the only industry in which the professional--the teacher or professor--is subordinate to the white- and pink-collar office workers. And they don't let you forget it.

In such conditions, giving whatever it is I have to offer to a student like the one I've just talked about is almost an act of defiance. So is, in fact, treating just about any student like a human being. I think of that scene in Jesus of Montreal in which the director charged with putting on a Passion play trashes a studio because, he says, he couldn't stand to see the photographers, director and other film-production workers treating one of the actresses with contempt.

Sometimes I feel as if I'm helping people navigate the fourth of September. Fall and winter are on their way, but as hard as they may be, they are simply two more seasons to survive. And other people--the right ones--and our inner resources, whatever they are, are all we have to take us through them--or 4 septembre.

Le 4 septembre sera passe; en allez. Yes, it is passing; it has passed: onward to the next season, whatever it will bring.

Coming Together

Just finished teaching another class and reading some more papers. You know, it ain't so bad.

OK, I know. I teach English so I ain't supposed to say ain't 'cause it ain't right.

Now I think of that old cigarette commercial (remember those?). What do you want: Good grammar or good taste?

Even with all that I've said about education, I realize that, if nothing else, I can make my classes into environments of intellectual and even spiritual integrity. Whatever else comes, I can teach things that are useful, relevant, interesting and even fun. And I've been told that sometimes my students find me useful, interesting, relevant and even fun.

It seems that yesterday and today, everything I'm doing in my classes is working. I haven't felt that way in a long time. In fact, in an e-mail to another professor (another one? I guess I am one after all!), I said I felt as if I'd done more good teaching yesterday alone than I did all of last year.

And, it seems that the people whom I thought were judging me aren't after all. Or maybe they're making different judgments from what I had assumed. That's what Mark, another new full-time prof, says. It seems that during the last couple of days, people are praising everything I do. In fact, even someone whom I kinda sorta rebuked had kind words for me.

It started when Michael announced that he was screening a film of Jesse Jackson's 1988 speech in his class, and invited others to come in. Sam, the longest-serving prof in the department responded with his objection to bringing politics into the classroom. Then, a few--including me-- of us put in our two cents.

I said that we shouldn't use our classrooms as bully pulpits. But, at the same time, if we're going to avoid political views altogether, we'd have to eliminate most of the works of literature in our curricula. I did it in a lighthearted, almost whimsical way. And I've gotten a lot of praise for it. Michael says he wishes he'd written it. Even Sam, who rebuked Michael for "being political" and me for "missing the point," at least saw the humor in it and another comment I made.

So this is what being a prof is supposed to be? Hmm...

Just when I was ready to give up, things are coming together, just as Mom and Millie said they were. I have my whole name now; in a little more than ten months, my body will be a reflection--or at least a more accurate likeness-- of who I am. And that person I am is, and is becoming, more whole than I was just a couple of weeks ago.

Now here's something that is making sense to me: "whole," "hale," "healthy" and "holy" all come from the same root word--hwalen--in Old English. To be whole is to be healthy. To be healthy or hale is to be healthy. And they are all wholly holy.

Also: "saint" (or "sainte", the feminine form) and "sante" have the same root in early French. "Saint" and "Sainte" mean "holy" or "blessed." And "sante" means "health." Tres interessant.

All right. You might say the hormones are making me feel this way. Maybe. But I think something else is acting on them, and me. Although I probably gained a pound or two after all that barbecue, I feel lighter. And I think other people are sensing it. Yesterday, Celeste, another prof said, "Hey, there's the Justine Smile again."

You want one, you got one. Yes, it's all coming together now. The ones who called me "sensitive" are right. And this is the good side of it--for them, and for me.

If this is what life will be like until my surgery, I'll take it. And I'll do the best I can to bring it all together.

I guess that's been the point of my gender transition and everything that goes along with it. And I think that those who've stood by me--Mom, Millie, Bruce and others--understand that, and that's the reason why they're being supportive.

All together now...

Summer Ends With Coney Island?

Labor Day. Classes have already begun, so what does this day mark?

Well, according to our grandmothers' arbiters of fashion, we're not supposed to wear white again for another nine months--until Memorial Day. Then again, I don't wear white very often anyway. I must admit, though, that being the mischievous soul I am, I just might wear white if I get married so that the people who know me best will get a good laugh.

But now I'll be serious. (Seriously, now, you've never known me to do that? Right?) Tomorrow I return to classes, so there'll be no denying that I--and my students--are in school. That, of course, means "fall": no more summer. However, it's hard to think of this as the "fall semester" when the weather is, and will be, bright and sunny and tomorrow's temperatures will be like today's: near 90F.




However, going back to school always accentuates--at least for me--the reality of one phase of life ending and another beginning. And I feel it more acutely than in years past. As I've mentioned in previous posts, this is my last Labor Day, the end of my last summer, before my surgery. Also, today I took a ritual bike ride to Coney Island. I may not be able to do that next year. The doctor said that two weeks after the surgery, I could go back to work but could not engage in any heavy physical activity. So I may not be ready to pedal again by next Labor Day.

Now, you might accuse me of transposing my mental and emotional state on the world when I say what I'm about to say. But here it is: I also realized that Coney Island, at least as I know it, is also ending. However, it has nothing to do with my impending surgery. Rather, it has to do with changes that are happening, and are about to happen, to the place.

I've been reading and hearing that Astroland will close and the rides will be torn down. Someone who wants to build seaside condos or some such thing bought the park a couple of years ago, and is letting the owners of the rides stay until their lease expires, which will be this fall. Or something like that.

Of course, that means that Coney Island will look very different from the rather funky old amusement park and boardwalk I have always known. I guess this change was inevitable: If someone saw fit to build condos and co-ops in Far Rockaway, then any of this city's waterfront is fair game. That inevitability, however, does nothing to lessen my sadness over it.

More to the point, I sensed something in the air, if you will. For the first time I can remember, I saw throngs of young people of the kind you expect to find in the stores and clubs along Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. The surliness they encountance is really just a pale imitation of misanthropy. I guess young people--I include myself, not so long ago--have always thought that saying "F*** You!" to the world, or seeming to, is somehow hip. But if you're really going to say "to hell with the human race," you had damned well better earn that right. I say this as one who never did--and now never wants to!

Of course, any realtor worth his or her license knows that when you see such young people--and the packs of German dudes with backpacks--that so-called gentrification is near. And, well, what can I say about gentrification? I love to see the sun rising and setting on the sea, and there are lots of people who can pay lots more money than I can for the privilege.

Then again, would I miss hearing bodies even more overweight than mine screaming curses at their kids because they had too many of them? Hmm....If I have to choose between them and the trust fund kids or German dudes...

All right. You probably think I'm being snotty and judgmental. You're probably right. But if you've been going to Coney Island for as long as I've been (more than 40 years), you'd see what I mean.

And you'd also notice this: You go to the candy/soda shoppes where they sell salt-water taffy, candied apples and such and ask for a cherry lime rickey.

"Huh?"

If you grew up in Brooklyn, you know what I'm talking about. It's made with seltzer, cherry syrup and either a lime slice or a shot of lime flavoring. It's the perfect balance: fizz, sweetness and a little bit of tang. Hardly anyone makes them anymore. If you can't get one on Coney Island....

Might I have had my last cherry lime rickey--unless, of course, I start making them for myself? That wouldn't be difficult to do. But there's still nothing like getting one from an old-time Brooklyn soda fountain--especially one in Coney Island.

Hopefully, I'll be able to find one soon, and after my surgery. I wonder if I'll have cravings then, and if this sublime libation will be one of them.

Will it be one of the things I'll find in my first summer of my new life? I hope so.

Anyway, until then....

Coming Together at the End of Summer

Just got back from a barbecue with Millie and John. It's great to have such good friends living right across the street from me!

I met Millie the day I moved to this block. Two weeks ago--the 17th--marked the sixth anniversary of that move and meeting.

That day seemed like the hottest in the history of the planet, and that summer still seems like the hottest I can remember. I came to this block with two cats: Charlie I (I now have another cat named Charlie.) and Candice. Since I moved them into the apartment before I brought in any of my belongings (Contrary to the delusion they believe, humans belong to their cats!), the first thing Millie saw when I moved in was me with my cat totes in my hands. I think that she decided right then and there she liked me.

That day, I had no idea that one day--not so far into the future, as it turned out--I would spend afternoons, evenings and days in her house, sharing barbecues, holiday dinners, my birthday and cups of coffee--and, after I made the switch, tea. Or that I would baby sit, however briefly, her grandchildren. Or that her any of her friends--like Catherine, whom she's known since they were children, and who shared chicken, ribs, corn-on-the-cob and lots of other foods with us today--would become a part of my life.

And I don't think that Millie or anyone else on this block knew what I would soon undertake. I am talking, of course, about my gender transition. That guy who moved onto the block is turning into a girl! Oh my!

But, as it turned out, I could hardly have met anyone more generous or loving than Millie or John. We always need people like them, but I don't think there was ever a time when I needed people like them more than at the time when I met them.

Some might say that they are like parents or an aunt and uncle for me. I wouldn't argue that. For one thing, they're only a few years younger than Mom and Dad. And Millie, in some ways, reminds me of my mother. She can seem fierce because she's often loud and strident. But her way is really a reflection of her passion and compassion. Also, she,like my mother, doesn't suffer fools well but also doesn't abandon people. And she and my mother are both Italian American. Even the foods they cook, and the ways they cook them, have their similarities--although there's still nothing like my mother's lasagna, chicken or eggplant parmagiana, or cheesecake.

But maybe the most important trait they share is this: Once they accept a person, they will accept just about anything about that person, for better or worse. Of course, I've known that about Mom for a long time, so while I didn't quite know how my gender transition would affect my relationship with her, I didn't expect her to banish me from the family. But I didn't understand that quality in Millie until she learned that I was indeed undergoing my changes.

And now, a couple of weeks after a nice visit with Mom and Dad, I am ending--at least unofficially--my "last" summer with Millie and John. It seems fitting somehow.

This is a disconcerting yet exhiliariting time of my life, one in which I feel both anxiety and joy, like the strangest yet most beautiful dream I've ever had. This is a time I never could have envisioned when I first moved to this block, or before that, because I can envision myself as the person I've always wanted to be. I'm drawing closer to her, to being her.

My mother and I were talking about it this morning. I now have a job that I long wanted, although I had given up hope of getting it. And, at the same time, I can look forward--not too far forward now!--to something I've wanted for as long as I can remember.

All right. I'll admit it now. I'm happy to be teaching full time and hearing people refer to me as "Professor." Yes, the education system can be a cesspool sometimes, and education administrators can be petty and arrogant. But that doesn't matter when I am in the classroom because it doesn't matter to my students. All they know is that I'm teaching them. And if they learn from me and like it, we're both doing our jobs.

Funny how, faced with having a full-time college faculty position for the first time, I fell back into denying that I wanted it, or that it is a good thing for me or anyone else. Instead of seeing myself as someone who can share my love of reading and writing, I saw myself as someone who'd become "the enemy."

In other words, I was denying an aspect of who I am. After forty-five years of negating (or trying to negate) my essential nature, I should know better, shouldn't I?

All right. I won't self-flagellate. (That's as bad as self-medicating. Trust me, I know.) I'll go with the opportunity to be who I am. Mom and Millie--who have never met, or spoken to, each other--both said the same thing: "Your life is coming together now."

My life coming together: That's what I wanted six years ago. Actually, that's what I've always wanted, and what I would guess everyone wants. Maybe it's happening in ways, and with people, I never anticipated. Then again, I never claimed to have any great powers of prognostication, and no one's demanding them of me now.

Coming together as my last summer ends. All right: Before I drag this blog into a probably-futile search for symbolism or other "deeper" meanings in that statement, I'm going to stop for tonight.

From Passing to Passing Through

So what happens when you're a transgender woman less than eleven months before surgery and you go into the city's most resolutely bourgeois (as opposed to merely affluent) neighborhood with four days of growth and wearing lipstick, a flared printed skirt and sleeveless blouse?

Well, if your four days' growth is anything like mine, nobody seems to notice. In fact, nobody seems to notice that you're a woman who's not young, but possibly youthful--certainly not yet middle-aged, though old enough to be.

People have actually told me things like that. I could practically read it on the mens' faces. It didn't matter whether they were professionals, shopkeepers or the construction workers who were ripping up a couple of streets. I don't know whether those weren't gender-savvy or simply didn't care. Or, perhaps they knew and like--or are simply intrigued by--trans-women.

Maybe I shouldn't probe for the motives behind courtesy, and simply enjoy it. I don't remember who told me that. Someone-most likely the same person--said that I am entitled to it, even if I am a newcomer to living in my gender. And the best way to honor anyone who's good enough to be courteous, in whatever ways, is to allow that person to extend the courtesy to you, and be grateful for it. Above all, don't abuse it. And don't see it as entitlement. I've seen more than one trans woman demand--whether with verbal or bodily language--that doors be held open for her.

One certainly encounters a lot of it in the neighborhood I mentioned: a stretch of Metropolitan Avenue that extends from Middle Village into Forest Hills. Along that stretch is the electrolysis school where I go for treatments. The place--for better and for worse--has a 1950's-suburban feel to it. The houses on the side streets are bigger than those in other parts of Queens, or the rest of the city. Some of those houses are surrounded by stretches of grass that might even be called lawns.

And, along Metro Avenue itself, one finds the kinds of stores found in the "downtown" areas of so many towns all over the US about fifty years ago. Nearly all of them are small and family-owned. You can tell that the owners know their customers: I would bet that the at least one of the women's clothing stores I saw caters to women who went to school with the store's proprietors, and to the customer's children, grandchildren or neices. And there's even a soda shoppe that you might expect to see on a set for Happy Days. Eddie's Sweets--Now tell me, where else is there a shoppe with "Sweets" in its name?--has the counters and fountains that you've seen in all those pictures and movies made in and about the '50's. You can almost imagine your parents (or grandparents, if you're younger than me) sharing an ice cream soda in a fluted parfait glass. I'm told they make their own whipped cream for their Sundaes. I'll definitely have to check it out.

Hmm....an old-fashioned soda shoppe with old-fashioned courtesy. Is there a connection? ;-)

Anyway, I've gotten to the point where I don't miss a beat. When I first started to live as a woman, I used to pause and wonder what was going on when a man held a door open for me. I remember coming out of the Jeu de Paume. Marie-Jeanne and Janine were waiting outside. Marie-Jeanne gave a knowing, and slightly scolding, grin as I hesitated at a door held by a well-dressed man. After I finally walked through the door, Marie-Jeanne gently chided me: "Joo-steena, tu es en France. En france!"

And, when I went out with Mom and Dad on her birthday, Dad held open the door to the restaurant. Mom passed in front of me, but I waited and hesitated. That was the one moment when Dad looked frustrated with me. He was trying so hard to be what he thought a man should be to his daughter! (Hey, he even took me out clothes shopping two days before that!) But I think I reverted to Nicky's behavior: If Dad held the door open, Mom passed through first. Then, as I followed, I would wait a second for Dad to follow me, and I'd reach back to prop the door.

Funny thing is, now I don't even think about passing through a door held by a man (or boy) who's a complete stranger, or at least didn't know me before I began my transition. Same thing with the men at my job: The older ones invariably hold the door open, and I think nothing of simply walking through and softly thanking the man who held the door. The younger professors may or may not hold the door, but the male students--of whatever background, and whether or not they're in one of my classes-- extend those cuourtesies as often as the older men. In fact, the really "ghetto" young men--as opposed to the ones who are trying to seem "ghetto"--are just as consistently courteous an anyone else.

I know I'm long past the point at which "passing" as female is a game. And the days of "Is it a guy or a girl?" or "Which one do they think I am?" are , I hope, over. Now I'm just a woman of a certain age, as far as seemingly all strangers--and most people who know me--know or care.

Tomorrow's Another Year?

Ah yes. Tomorrow. Haven't dreaded an upcoming day so much in a long time. Well, what's coming next will last for another year, at the most.

After the exchange I had with the department chair yesterday, I don't know how I'm going to get in front of my students and, with a straight face, emphasize the importance of following directions. Or of just about anything else I might do with them in the classroom.

You see, I followed directions and then this department chair accused me of "going over" her "head." All I did was to follow the usual protocol, in this case for changing my name (Justine Valinotti will now be my primary name on all college-related documents and other materials.). I went to the department secretary, just like we're told to do. I filled out a form; she filled out another and told me to bring them to the college's human resources and payroll offices. That I did.

While at the HR office, I asked about my health benefits. Since I am switching from one payroll system to another, even though I'm remaining in the same college (Go figure that one out.), I thought I might have to fill out paperwork to make sure my benefits are continued in my new position.

The person in charge of benefits said she had no record of my being hired. That might've made sense, as I was hired later than the other new full-time faculty members. But then she asked whether the department had sent a PAF (Personnel Action Form, which makes new appointees official and puts them on the payroll). I didn't know, so she called the chair of my department.

Well, I got an earful from the department chair, who was convinced that I went over her head. I politely explained that I followed protocol, and that perhaps I had gotten some improper insruction somewhere along the chain.

"Well, you never go over my head," she huffed.

Once again, I very politely gave her my sincerest reassurance that I would never, ever dream of doing such a thing, and that I followed the normal procedure, which begins with the department secretary. Again, she insisted that I go to her first "for anything."

"Well, I followed instructions. That's what we always tell our students to do. And look where it got me."

"Well, I'm sorry you feel that way. Just remember to..."

"I know...Come to you first." "Yes" "And I'll try very hard to keep a straight face when I tell the freshmen how important it is to follow instructions."

The compliance officer insists that this treatment has absolutely nothing to do with you being who you are. (If it talks in code like a white liberal...It must be a white liberal!) Of course she'd say that. What else would someone who wants to protect her record for not having a discrimination lawsuit on her watch say?

Well, far be it from me to break her record. Don't want her record sullied. Instead, let's ruin mine. What the hell....I lived on pure and simple mendacity for the first 45 years of my life. What's another year in the classroom?

The Last Summer

Another summer's winding down. But not without a fight. Today was pretty warm, but very humid. This isn't quite late enough for the final heat of summer, but it shows summer's not quite over yet.

About which I have very mixed emotions. On one hand, I want this and the months that follow to just fly by. They're what's standing between me and the surgery. On the other, I know that this is the "last" summer. I use the quotation marks because I mean "last" in a metaphorical as well as literal sense: as a symbol as well as the reality.

It seems that there are always "last" summers. For one generation of Brits and Europeans, it was 1914; for the following generation, it was 1939. Perhaps in this country those terminal vernal seasons came in 1941 and 2001. (Actually, I feel very sure about 2001: After all, I lived through it.) And some Southern writer--I think it was Percy Walker--said that in his part of the world, it came some time around 1950.

I think for a lot of people in my generation--particularly those of us who are LGBT--the "last summer" might have been 1980 or 1981. Back then, some of us heard about young men dying from "gay cancer." But the disease had not become an epidemic; most of us who weren't living in the Village (Chelsea wasn't yet Gay Central) or the Castro district had yet to see anyone die in such an awful way--if indeed we had seen anyone die.

Ten years later, I would teach a college class for the first time. Then, I realized how much that "last summer" mattered. Anyone who came of age after it grew up with the idea that a careless or random--or any at all--sexual encounter could be lethal. In my day, we only had to worry about herpes and pregnancy. Not that either--especially the latter--is anything to sneeze at. But compared to AIDS--well, I don't have to say any more.

I recall a party I went to shortly after returning from living in France. At that party were nearly everyone with whom I was friendly during my undergraduate years.

In those days, I drank a lot and dabbled in a few drugs. So you might dismiss the perceptions I had. Hey, I dismiss most of them. But I had a premonition that I knew was stronger than any of the drugs or booze, or any other vibe at that party. Somehow it was revealed to me (I know. I hate that kind of language, too. But it's the best I can do in this situation.) that a germ of death had been planted and that someone--or some people--in that room carried it. And they, or others in their circle, would die from it.

Sure enough, within ten years, five people who were at that party would die from AIDS-related illnesses. I doubt that any of them knew he or she (Yes, a woman.) was infected: Almost nobody--not even a doctor-- outside a couple of New York and California neighborhoods was even thinking about the disease.

It's rather ironic that a party full of the proverbial sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'roll can seem almost innocent. How so? Well, what we did, we did in--if not ignorance, than at least unawareness. That was probably the last time all of thus in that room could not connect sex and death. All the young people in that first class I taught, a decade later, had been coupling the two almost from the day they knew what either was.

Anyway, I know I've gone off on another tangent, but there's a point coming up (and you should put a hat over it). It's about those "last summers": They were times when something in everyone's life was coming to an end, whether or not anyone knew it. Even if no one knew for sure, some of us had a sense that something was changing, possibly dying. It might be the people they know. Or that the place in which one lives, works or shops is about to be tamed beyond recognition.

And what's changing for me, besides whatever the gender will change. Stay tuned...

Sleep and Dreams

Got up late; got out late. I guess I shouldn't feel too guilty: after all, it's Sunday.

Strange, that at age fifty, I find myself going to bed and getting up later (when I can get away with it) than I did at forty. It's not like I'm going out dancing every night or even that I get to spend so much time with Dominick.

And I find that either I can't sleep or I get the sort of sleep that even police sirens, thunder or anything else can interrupt. The cats can curl up at my side or feet and I wouldn't even notice until something else woke me up.

I wonder if the hormones affect my sleep, or if my changes in it simply are a matter of aging. Another thing I've noticed is that I seem to have more dreams closer to whenever I wake up--and that I have them even if I fall asleep in my big comfy chair for an hour. And, it seems, the dreams are richer in detail. I've never made any great effort to remember my dreams, but I find that I can do more of that, too. At least, I can recall dreams for a little while after I wake up. I could almost never do that when I lived as Nick.

Whatever sleep I get also seems cathartic at times. After it, I feel just about the same way as I feel after a fit of crying, laughing or giggling. I guess that's a good thing. After all, primal scream therapy wouldn't be so becoming of a lady now, would it? ;-)

I don't recall my doctor or anyone else telling me that hormones could affect my sleep patterns. I haven't done much research on it, but I suspect someone else might be wondering--or has experienced--the same thing. Maybe this is a gender difference: Many women I have known went to bed later than most men. Now, for women of earlier generations, it may have been because they stayed home while their husbands left the house every day to work. Or, like my mother, they couldn't iron clothes or simmer tomato sauce or do any number of other things while everyone else was awake.

Me...I find that when I forestall going to bed, I'm reading, writing or preparing something for the following day. Hmm...My writing is becoming more lunar. And the moon is usually seen as feminine: The moon deities of the Greeks, Romans and other people have, more often than not, been female.

Hmm...If I really wanted to be vain, I could call myself Moon Godess or some such thing. I'm your Venus...

All right. I'm not here neither to endorse nor malign one of Gilette's fine products, which I use myself. (Yes, I hope Google Ad Sense picks this up and my check is in the mail. ;-) What kind of woman does that make me?) Can you imagine me as the first transgender to publicly endorse a product? I'll be there, right next to Anna Kornukova. (Would I be expected to spell her name right?) Then, after they know whose razors and pantyhose (whichever ones are on sale) I use, maybe, just maybe, they'll want to know about the books I read, the music I listen to or the art I look at.

Dream on, you say. I'll take you up on that. Dream, dream, dream. Perchance to sleep. Sleep, perchance to dream. To dream.

I'll sleep to that!

Tastes

What're we gonna write about tonight, Brain?

The same thing we write about every night....


It's tranny and the blog,
Tranny and the blog.
One's changing gender
The other is insane.

Ah, yes...One of the finer artifacts of American culture: Pinky and the Brain. The hormones haven't changed my love of cartoons for children over the age of thirty. Besides P&B, there are Beany and Cecil, the Roadrunner cartoons, most of Bugs Bunny (especially the episodes with the Tasmanian Devil) and the short-lived Mighty Mouse series from Ralph (sp?).

And singing the "Pinky" song--and barking the "Narf!" at the end--makes me laugh even more than it did back in the cartoon's run. Yeah, I know, it's the hormones again.

So I still love this stuff and will defend it as much as I would Leaves of Grass, many of Emily Dickinson's poems, Rhapsody in Blue , the first Godfather film and almost anything from Thelonious Monk and Billie Holliday as great and important American cultural artifacts. I mean, what would this country be without any of those things and the Bill of Rights?

None of those tastes have changed yet. Somehow I suspect they won't. And I think my dislikes are even less likely to change. I mean, if I never liked The Three Stooges or understood the need for just about anything Clint Eastwood or Kevin Costner made, I don't see how I'm going to like them with a body powered by estrogen. (I'll admit that Swing Vote, which I saw with Mom and Dad, was good and I actually liked Kevin in it.)

So which of my tastes have changed? Which ones might?

Like many other people, I'm watching the Olympics. This is probably the first Games in which I'm paying much attention to the men's diving, water polo and track and field events. Bicycling, as you can imagine, has always interested me. But to the other sports I've mentioned, I've never before paid that much attention.

All right. Accuse me of looking at guys who aren't wearing much and who are flexing, bending, pumping, sweating and grunting. I'll make a halfhearted denial. After all, I have to preserve my reputation as a lady of refinement and taste!

But I also found myself paying very close attention to the women's beach volleyball. Now, if I were still a guy, you could accuse me of watching the tall women in bikinis rather than they game they were playing. But Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Tranor (How can you not love a sport in which an athlete has a name like that?) have a combination of power and speed that rivals that of the Williams sisters, in my opinion.

Same thing with women's soccer. But I got hooked on that when Mia Hamm and her wonderful team won the World Championships back in 1999. The funny thing is, I responded to their wholesomeness as much as any fundamentalist might have. For me, they were women who genuinely loved (or seemed to love) what they were doing and didn't engage in showboating, trash-talking or any of those other loathesome behaviors of too many major male athletes.

So what other tastes of mine will change, or remain the same? I've a feeling I'll be writing more about that in this blog.

"You're So Sensitive"

Let's see...Today I've been called "sensitive" four times: once with a positive connotation, two other times negatively and the other with a more-or-less neutral meaning.

It's not as if I haven't been called that--or worse--before. But I seem to hear it more frequently, and in other contexts, than in my past.

This morning Olga, who's the legal affairs officer at the college, not only said, "You're so sensitive," she also mentioned that it has been noted. Valerie, the English Department chair, said I was "sensitive to things lately" and, moments later, lauded me for being "sensitive" to students. And, during another electrology session, the young Italian-American woman who was plucking and zapping me said, "You're just, well, sensitive, in any way I can think of."

Blame the hormones! Why? Well, for one thing, Canada has nothing to do with this, so I can't blame a country that was honorable enough not to get involved in our current war. So "Blame Canada" won't work. However, there is lots of literature--and the words of my doctor--to tell me that taking estrogen can turn you into a seeming mass of nerve endings. I was warned of that when I started taking the hormones. And, just as everyone promised, I was crying over dopey songs I heard on the radio.

But, even though my dosage hasn't increased, I feel (pun intended) as if a new undercurrent of vulnerability is pulling me into another tide of emotion fueled by raw nerves. Am I going through a substage of the "second adolescence" one experiences when taking hormones?

Most of the time I enjoy the tears and laughter that wash over me like an afternoon shower and (usually) pass. But yesterday I felt so raw I had to put on a stone face and not look anyone in the eye--or look anyone's way at all. That's hard to do when you're sitting in a circle with about twenty other people, as I was at the workshop. I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could.



And one of my new colleagues in that circle seemed to be playing her own little game of stare-tag with me. She sat opposite me in the circle, and kept on staring at me. I could feel it. I was ready to bolt through her and the others to get out of that room.


Right now, I'm still feeling as if a layer of skin has been removed from me and I want to hide from--or bitch-slap--that prof and anyone else who might've been staring at me.


And they say I'm being sensitive. As if that were that were anything new!

Illusions

Today I went to the college for the meeting and faculty development workshop. Riding my bike there was great: A cool breeze tossed my hair and fluttered my skirt (Yes, I rode in a skirt!) under a clear blue sky. For at least some of the time, I could imagine that I was in Tuscany or Provence.



I think guys really like to see women pumping their legs. (Why else would they look at me?) Any time I ride my bike in a skirt or a pair of shorts, at least one guy slows down and/or shouts "nice legs!" More than one has tried to get my phone number and even more intimate details.



Yes, I'm an educated, independent, career-minded woman who loves flattery from men. Or women, for that matter. Call me an egotist or reactionary, but, hey, I guess it's less narcissistic to enjoy hearing that you're beautiful than it is to tell other people that you are.



And, when I got to the college, a few of my now-colleagues, and others I bumped into, told me I looked "really good." Ah, yes, the powers of relaxation. How long before I undo all the good that visit to Mom and Dad did for me?

Well, I didn't respond to any of those comments. Inwardly, I more or less dismissed them: They were just pro forma expressions of politeness. And I was in no mood for any of them.

Actually, I didn't feel much like talking or listening to anyone once I got inside the college. It wasn't just a case of "returning-from-vacation blues." Rather, I felt sick to be there: so much so that Ruth, a tutor who's just become an adjunct faculty member, heard the grinding and groaning in my stomach.

Valerie, the department chair, introduced me as a new full-time faculty member. I wished she hadn't, especially after the polite applause in the room. Most of the other faculty members know who I am, at least a little. But having all of their eyes on me, even if for a nanosecond, was more than I could take.

At the first pause in the discussion, I bolted out of the room. Anyone who noticed might've thought I'd gone to the ladies' room or something. Which I did. But when I came back, a couple of people curled their mouths upward the way people do when they want a baby to smile. Of course, it didn't work.

Afterward, a couple of faculty members asked whether I was OK. I wasn't, and told them so. I couldn't explain why. at least not to them, without getting into a longer conversation than I wanted.

I really didn't want to talk about the kinds of treatment I got while on my previous job at the college. Although no one at that meeting had anything to do with it, some of them are definitely part of the mentality that allows such things to happen: the white liberal mindset, in other words. And every one of them still has faith in the notion that education, or at least schooling, makes people more enlightened and tolerant.

Well, after the way I was treated by so-called educated people at the college last year, I don't think I'll ever have any faith--that's exactly what you need to be part of it--in the institution of education, ever again. I don't even know how I'm going to, with a straight face, get in front of a classroom full of students and act as though any of the work they do in my class, or any other, is going to work for them.

Oh, well. I got through every day of the first forty-five years of my life on mendacity. I guess I could walk into classrooms and do it for another year. So I'll just shut myself down, the way I did in that workshop today. And say what they want to hear, and portray myself in a way that allows them to flatter themselves. People respond to illusions, not reality, anyway. Just look at who gets elected to public office.

Let's Go, Already! KISS

Not much accomplished today. Oh well. I've still got another day of freedom left. On Wednesday, I have to go to a professional development workshop at the college. Then classes start next Monday.

I'm still torn between opening the windows during the next eleven months or barreling through those months on autopilot. Right now, I just want to get to the surgery already. The new job seems like an inconvenience, something that has to be endured. I already know a lot of faculty members--and the chair--in the English Department. But somehow I wish I didn't. I also wish I had a job in which I didn't have to spend so much time interacting with people. I'd like to be able simply to come and go. Why couldn't the provost have made me a paper-pusher? I could work by myself and not have to hear any more questions or comments about me or my life. I wouldn't have to be part of any duplicity or to live by any mendacity. All right, so I did that every day for 45 years. What's another year?, you ask. Just one more year of telling mellifluous (or as mellifluous as I can make them) lies. That's not much for him or anyone to ask of me, right? And, Malcolm, you only have to hear the "N" word one more time. Just one more time.

Of course Malcolm had it harder and faced it all with more courage than I ever could. So maybe I shouldn't liken my situation to his.

Right now I want only to be around people I know very, very well and trust completely. All the politicking, all the going along to get along (which usually doesn't lead to getting along anyway), all the aimless, mindless chatter is just a waste of emotional and mental energy. Most interactions with academicians, with the so-called intellectuals, are no more stimulating than listening to a Wall Street trader bark out an order. And even that's more enlightening than reading articles with titles like "The Otherness of the Other: Post-Structuralist Deconstruction of The Yellow Brick Wall."

Why couldn't I have reported to work on some job in which no one notices when I come or go? I could just ask HR for my leave time and come back after the surgery, with no one the wiser for it. As it stands, I'll go in on Wednesday and everyone will have something to say, or are afraid to ask directly, about my getting the full-time faculty position. And I really don't feel like talking about it with anybody. Nobody grills you that way when you have a desk job.

Not dwelling on the past has been a great help to me. Bruce says as much. At this time next year, do I want to be thinking much about this time? I think now of the chef who, when asked what he'd want to eat if he were going to die tomorrow, mentioned the foods he didn't like. "At least then I wouldn't be sad to go," he said.

That's sort of the way I feel. I don't want to look back wistfully. I want to move forward, to the next steps in the life I'm building. Nothing complicated, please.

Who Knew It Would Come To This?

OK, so what did I do on a wonderfully gorgeous Sunday that wasn't too hot?

You guessed it: I went for a bike ride: To Nyack and back, again.

One good sign is that I actually felt better, physically as well as emotionally, at the end of the ride than at the beginning. My legs actually ached early in the ride, as I was pedalling through the Upper East Side, Yorkville and Harlem to the bridge than when I was coming back, some fifty miles later. By then, I felt something I haven't felt in a long time: my bike disappearing under me. That happens when you're in good shape and you have a bike that's well-fitted and well-suited to you. At this point, I'd still have to give much more credit to my Mercian than to my training, or lack thereof. Kudos to the folks at Mercian Cycles in England who built the bike and to Hal of Bicycle Habitat who measured me and really listened when I described what I wanted in the bike!

Plus, as tired as I was at the beginning of my ride, I was in good spirits. The crepes I made for myself turned out well. Charlie and Max were being even friendlier than ususal. And Mom and Dad were very encouraging when I talked to them. Yes, even Dad, even after I nagged him. And Mom, being Mom. I described some of the anxiety I'm feeling about the job I'm about to start. "You'll be fine," she insisted. "You've come to this point. It'll all work out."

Now, my mother never, ever says things like that unless she means them--and knows what she's talking about. She knew I would stay sober. She knew, at various times in my life, that I'd find my way, whatever that means.

One good sign, according to her: My conversations with Dad are getting longer. It used to be that I'd spend half an hour on the phone with her and half a minute, if that, with him. This time he picked up the phone and I talked to him for twenty minutes--a record!--before spending the rest of an hour with her. That ended only because they were going out.

Mom and I had a good laugh, though. I mentioned that I'd asked Dad what he's been doing and how much he's been getting out of the house--and exhorting him to do even more, even when he's bored. Anything can get boring, I reminded him. But sometimes boredom is just a sign that you're dealing with something else. That's better--certainly for him--than wallowing in his Lazy Boy recliner and thumbing buttons on the remote control.

"He didn't know he would end up with a nagging daughter, did he?"

"To go with his nagging wife and everyone else who nags him!" she deadpanned. Both of us broke out into titters, which turned to laughs when my hormones kicked in.

Ah, yes. All those times we don't know what we're getting or what we're getting into. Like Mom learning that her daughter is named Justine (the name she would have given me if the "F" were checked off on my birth certificate). Or Dad taking me shopping. They survived and, I suspect, know that they still don't always know what they're getting themselves into. Even after fifty years of marriage. And their "son" coming out as their daughter. There may be no more secrets--or at least not very many more--but there are still surprises and mysteries.

Speaking of secrets: As we were talking about my new job and what it could mean, I confessed that when I was younger, I wasn't planning my future--not even when I was in college. Sometimes I'd say that I was thinking about law school or teaching or getting a job with a magazine, but those were half-baked notions, at best. The only constant was that I wanted to write; teaching or graduate school weren't even on my radar.

The truth was, I said, was that I simply didn't want to think about the future. I didn't think I'd make it there and, if I did, I knew that I didn't want the things anyone else wanted for me, whether it had to do with jobs, marriage or anything else. I didn't want the responsibility, I admitted, but I also felt I wouldn't be any good at being a professional and white collar worker with a wife and kids in a house in the suburbs.

The funny thing is that now I can sort of see myself as a professional of a sort, and that I can integrate writing into that life. And I may very well become a wife. I'd like that, really. Dominick says I'm a nurturing person and I actually like the role. Will I end up in that house in the suburbs? Who knows...especially with the so-called mortgage crisis.

Who knew that it would come to this? Not that I'm complaining. I knew I didn't want to be a husband or father, even as I was making some attempt to be the former. But I never knew that I'd actually get to live this life, the one I always wanted.

Who knew?