The World Didn't End Today

Late this afternoon, I went out to shop. Not a single cloud hovered in the sky; the breeze flickered the ends of my hair ever so slightly. Some people wore jackets and scarves; others, like me, dressed only one step away from the beach. My denim skirt fell to just above my knees, and a dark lilac-colored t-shirt clung to my chest but, thankfully, not my belly. And I stepped along in one of my most comfortable pairs of shoes: a pair of Keen flip-flops with soles like sports shoes, and a lilac-colored nylon thongs that curved from behind my toes to surprisingly graceful toe guards.

Along the way, I stopped at for some chicken and basmati rice from four guys who work out of a truck in front of a supermarket. They have won the Vendy awards, which are referred to as the food vendors' Emmys. The leader of them, who wears brightly printed pants and hats with food motifs, had his first grandchild last week, even though he looks younger than I do. And he and the guys were their usual friendly and funny selves.

And the chicken was the best I've had from them. That's saying something. To use a cliche, it melted in my mouth. Better yet, it filled my mouth with its tender yet spicy flavor that oozed from the moist, succulent flesh.

All right, so I'm not Gael Greene. I never said I was a food writer. But that chicken rivalled the best I've ever eaten. What amazes me is that those guys make such good food and keep everything so clean while working from a truck. Once, when I commented on it, they said it was because they're halal. I'll admit, the halal restaurants and stores in which I've eaten were clean and served mostly good food. (Then again, I'm a fan of Middle Eastern and South Asian foods.)

It's funny--Sometimes you know that plate of chicken, that bowl of soup, that bottle of beer (I haven't had any in decades), is going to be special, even though it's a brand of beer you've drunk or something you've eaten from a kitchen or restaurant from which you've eaten before

.

Could it be that the chicken was really that good? Or did it have something to do with the kind of day it was?

Very few days were ever prettier or felt nicer than today was. Nothing special happened; it was just one of those days in which you just can't even imagine hardship or evil, even after what you've heard on the news or read in the newspapers during the preceding days.

Everywhere you went during the past few days, people were talking about the economy. Of course. The stock market has just had the worst week in its history, and there's even talk about a depression. I know--I've written articles about--how what's happening now is a result of pure and simple mendacity and profound disrespect for other people. If you have any respect at all for someone, you don't lie to that person to get him or her to buy something he or she can't afford, much less shoot at him, her or anyone else who's never done any harm to you.

It's odd: When I was learning about the Great Depression in school, I somehow got the idea that Black Thursday was the "dark and stormy night" and that the days--years--that followed featured heavy gray skies and dust. Maybe it has to do with those grainy black-and-white photos. I never got the impression that the country--and much of the world--plunged into its economic abyss on a day like this one. I guess most people can't imagine Camus's "le mort en pleurait du ciel claire." I think (I hope) I'm remembering that passage from La Peste right: something about death coming out of the clear blue sky.

What I've just described--that expectation of terrible things happening under storm clouds--is exactly the reason to enjoy a day like this one. If wars, economic crises and such happen independently of nature, what is the point of not enjoying nature when it's to your liking? Also, if the storm on the horizon is going to strike where you live, you may as well prepare, and have some fun if you can.

For me, that joy came after I'd bought a pair of sneakers and was walking down the shopping strip of Broadway in Astoria. Walking toward my house means walking toward the East River--westward. Which means seeing sunsets. I could practically feel myself floating, even flying, in spite of--or maybe because of--everything. No matter what else has happened, at the end of the day there was still that glow of colors in the cloudless sky and a gentle breeze that makes my skin feels like delicate wings that are still strong enough to carry me lightly over what I have walked. I was weightless because, at least for a few moments, I could feel my own weight; I could feel my own weight because so much weight that wasn't my own--the inherited anger, the borrowed rage--has been lifted from me.

When I lose those emotions, I feel sorrow--yes, sometimes for myself-- at least until I find something to learn.

I don't know exactly what I've learned, at least not yet. Maybe it was just another lesson in living in the moment--which isn't always the easiest thing to do when you're looking forward to something. But, really, none of us has any choice but to live in the moment, if not for it.

And today I--and millions of other people--were able to live under a nearly cloudless sky and weather that only the most committed nihilist couldn't love.

Best of all, it was the moment, and I was the person I am--Justine--living it.

A Friendship Between a Man and a Woman

Today Bruce and I went to a Thai restaurant near his office in Soho for lunch. We often meet on Fridays for lunch, and we'd been to that restaurant before. The food's always been good and the place is cozy enough to be comfortable but not too compressed for a claustrophobe like me. And, it seems, whenever we go there, one of us shares some story or another that reveals, or more exactly, confirms something one of us always suspected of the other.

Today Bruce told me of how his intervention may have saved a young woman's life, or at least kept her from even more harm than she suffered. Four young men were hanging out on the block where Bruce lives. They all were dressed in the same outfit, with some sort of logo. The young woman in question was walking down the block, toward a club around the corner. Bruce was on the opposite side of the street, walking to his house.

The young men stalked and tried to accost the young woman. But Bruce crossed the street and walked between those young men and the young woman to the corner. Then, a split-second after he turned away and started to walk back to his house, he heard her scream.

One of those young men grabbed her. As she explained afterward, she thought he wanted her purse, so she slid it down her wrist so he could take it easily. But he didn't touch it. Instead he struck and grabbed her, and banged her head against a car.

Well, Bruce charged at the guy and scuffled with him. He ended up with a cut and bruise on his upper lip and a few other scratches and cuts. The young man took off and joined his cohorts, who, it seemed, were hiding behind a car. They made a dash through the parking lot of a supermarket across the street, and disappeared into the night.

Bruce made no attempt to portray himself as a hero, which is typical of him . Rather, he said that it was the only thing he could do, ethically and practically.

I thanked him, on behalf of that woman. "I've never met her, but you did something for me when you helped her." He seemed to understand what I said. I've known him long enough to have smake sense of things that made even less sense.

Somehow I felt more like a woman--specifically, his female friend--as he told this story. Of course, this has to do with how I felt for the young woman I've never met and most likely never will meet. But more important, something I long suspected became absolutely palpable: his unique combination of a strong sense of himself and empathy.

In other words, he doesn't do things like helping that young woman to affirm his manhood or to exact vengeance against anyone or anything. After he related the story, I realized that this is the reason why I've always felt safe--even protected--with him, even though for much of the time we've known each other we were doing the sorts of things male buddies do together. (Yes, we've been to a sports bar together. And we once pursued the same woman, who finally chose "none of the above.") In other words, what he did for her was utterly characteristic of him, and I know he'd do something like that for me because, well, he has. No, he didn't face down a would-be attacker, at least not physically. But at various times, he has defended me against verbal and psychological bullies and was, well, there for me when I felt weak and vulnerable.

And so, as a woman, I really appreciated what he did for that young woman I most likely will never meet. On the other hand, if I'd heard it when we were younger, I probably would've cheered on his heroism or some ther such quality I wanted to find in myself.

So, while he has never been physically imposing, there are few people around whom I've felt more protected than I feel around him.

In other words, even though I've never had, and probably never will have, a romantic relationship with him, there are very few people around whom I've felt so safe and, in some way, protected. That, of course, is a major reason why I've been able to talk as freely as I do with him, and why he can telll me stories like the one he told me today.

It's as if he's always known what I, as a woman appreciate--even when I was acting like "one of the guys."

Nine Months

Last night I fell asleep in my chair while watching the Presidential debates. That's my excuse for not writing yesterday.

I also fell asleep during the Vice-Presidential debates. Might there be a pattern here?

So why am I upset to have missed yesterday's posting? Well, I realized today that yesterday marked exactly nine months until my surgery.

Nine months. We all know what happens during that time: a woman carries the one to whom she will give birth at the end of it. Of course, barring any really major advances in medical technology, that's something I'll never be able to do. And that's one thing about which I might feel sad (if I can, or want to, do such a thing) when I'm dying.

I don't regret not having fathered a child. Friends and family members probably thought I was afraid of responsibility: two women with whom I had relations said as much. But, if not how messed up I was, how I was messed up. At least, that's what I told myself it was then. In reality, I was dealing--actually, not dealing--with my gender-identity issues. All I did was to hate myself over them, and that self-hatred took over much of my being. If there was even the remotest chance that I could pass anything like that on to a child, I would be a criminal for taking it, I told myself. I still believe I made the right decision, if for the wrong reasons.

A few monts ago, Faria, who teaches at the college, said that I'm giving birth to myself. I thought: That's a great way of looking at my transition! For as long as I can remember, I was carrying, within me, the person whom I'm becoming. You might say that, even though my journey is not as physically arduous as that of the mother-to-be, I've been living my nine months, so to speak. Except that those nine months, if you will, have lasted for forty-five years. For a long time, the embryo I still am didn't grow; other times it evolved ever so slightly.

And now, here I am, at the beginning of the literal nine months. Somehow I expect those months will go by quickly but will be very intense. Actually, I think their intensity will make them go quickly. That alone may be a reason to be glad that I'm undergoing this transition now, rather than having experienced it earlier in my life. When we're younger, the time seems to go by more slowly and we have fewer ways of dealing with whatever comes our way.

I wonder if mothers-to-be imagine what they will be like--that is to say, how they might change--after their babies are born. Not that I would know, but I have a hard time imagining that someone is not changed--and I don't mean only physically--by bringing into the world a life she had been carrying within her.

One thing I know is that even though the surgery is a culmination of the changes we experience in our gender transitions, the transwomen I know changed in some way or another after their operations. They see people differently and have, in some cases, a confidence about themselves they never before had. I know that for some it is a disappointment, usually because they went into it for the wrong reasons. But the ones I know who've had the surgery have experienced happiness, or at least fulfillment they never had before. How could they not? That's what becoming whole does to you.

And I've heard any number of women say that they felt whole, or at least more so, after giving birth. Those nine months are really starting to sound good now. Here I've come!

What the Guys Try

Another day, another class, another meeting.

All right, it doesn't have quite the ring of "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow." But, thankfully, I'm not Macbeth, either--or even Lady Macbeth. At least, I don't think I am. And I hope I'm not.

Anyway, I had to take minutes at the department meeting. It's one of those jobs that ranks right up there with cleaning the bathroom. All right, it's not as dirty as that. But nobody, it seems, wants to do it. Including me.

And then, in class, two students who missed the previous two classes were trying to get out of the work by claiming that I didn't explain the assignments to them. Well, I can't explain it to you if you're not here, I told them. I may have broken a few laws in my time, but not those of physics.

Now, as to how any of this relates to my gender transition...Those students were young males. They probably are working, as everyone else in the class is. But somehow I don't get the impression they're working to keep rooves over their heads. If they were, they probably wouldn't act as they did.

I made a joke with one of them: "You know, if I could grade you only on your cleverness and creativity, I'd have to give you an 'A' for your efforts to get out of the assignments." He grinned; a few of the other students tittered. And the other student claimed that he e-mailed the assignments "a couple of weeks ago." Uh-huh.

One thing I can say with near-certainty: They probably don't try things like that with their male professors. They are both young and cute, but not in the ways they think. They're used to charming women, mostly younger than me, into giving them what they want. And, of course, if they know I'm trans, that's probably all the more reason (in their minds) for them to try and get over on me.

I know, because young men like them didn't try to play those games with me when I was still teaching as Nick. Now, I know that a few female students tried, and succeeded. But I was also younger then, and being full of testosterone, I was generally hornier. Not that I would ever do anything sexual with a student, of course. But I'll admit that a few batted eyelashes and crossed legs, shall we say, influenced me.

And that's the reason why I have to throw back at those guys whatever they give me. To tell you the truth, if I were younger and I'd met them in another situation, they just might get what they want from me. That might not be such a good thing for either of us.



So, you say, males and females are equally manipulative. You're probably right. The difference between them is this: The males go about it, as they do so many other things, with a much greater sense of entitlement than the females have. The way the young women turn and twist their bodies and wink or blink show, at least to me, that on some level they know, or at least believe, that they don't deserve whatever they want from you. The guys, on the other hand, hold their bodies and talk like they have it coming to them and it's your job to give it. Maybe that's the reason why their game is, for me, more ennerving than what the females play.

Not only that, the males--at least the ones I've been describing--really think that you're stupid and can think only with an organ that most of them have never seen. It's really the same kind of mentality that got Sarah Palin nominated for the vice-presidency. Yeah, us sisters are all joined at the hip and will reflexively pick the same thing. Or, if they don't think you're dumb, they think we're like their mothers, or what they wish their mothers were. On the other hand, females see male professors (or males in general) as kind of powerful, or at least influential. And females, particularly the young ones, use their relative vulnerability to appeal to a male's power or influence, or his unspoken sense that he has them.

Now, this is not to say all males or females are as I've described. But there are those who just use whatever charms they have to try to manipulate members of the opposite (or sometimes the same) gender into giving them what they want. And when you're a professor, you see at least a couple in every class. But now I see it's the male students. Don't they realize I lived as one of them?

Denials from Their Child and Grandchild

Today a sadness set in. I was working on my bike, which can get me meditative sometimes. (As if I need to be more meditative!) It rained last night and this morning, and most of the day was overcast and rather chilly. It's the downside of fall.

I was thinking about Grandma again. The other day was the anniversary of her death. Strange, isn't it, that she died two days after her 68th birthday and Grandpa died on his 72nd birthday.

For about two or three years after her death, I went through one of the most prolonged periods of severe depression I've experienced. For me, that's saying something, because I was essentially clinically depressed from some time in my childhood until I was 44 years old. But during those years immediately after her death, I was about as bad as anybody could be without being confined. Maybe I was sick enough to be criminally insane and simply didn't get caught.

As I recall, I had been drinking enough to float away a few islands (except for the one--me--I really was trying to float away, or float away from) and doing a fair amount of drugs. And I was sleeping with people I wouldn't go anywhere near now--and having unprotected sex. Around the time Grandma died, almost nobody outside the Village or Castro had heard of what would come to be called AIDS. And those who knew were still calling it "gay cancer." So, I reasoned (sic), I wasn't going to get it because I wasn't gay. (Which, of course, I'm not: I'm a bisexual woman who's functioning as a heterosexual one.) Never mind that my sexual partners included men. But they were not the majority, and none were more than one-nighters. And one was part of a menage a trois with the woman with whom I was about to break up and the guy she would marry about a year later, so that didn't count because it was kinda sorta straight.

OK, you can laugh at my logic, if you want to call it that. I do now. But I also understand something about the down-low. In other words, I know why men deny that they're anything but straight while they're sleeping with other men. It's always an "experiment" or some such thing, even though it's the 45th time it's happened. I said things like that to anyone who asked. I mean, it was terrifying enough to admit that I was bisexual, never mind gay or transgendered.

It was during that dark period after my grandmother's death that I went to a therapist for the first time. I skipped our second scheduled appointment, ostensibly because I didn't have the money. Actually, that was true: I wasn't making much money (not that I do now!) and I was often broke, or close to it. So, she scheduled a session for the following week, for free, and said we would discuss fees. Then she offered me a very reduced rate. I took her up on it for a couple of weeks.

Near the end of my fourth session with her, she declared, "First of all, you need to go to AA, or to do something like it that will help you with your drinking problem. And next, I think you need to see a gender specialist."

Talk about getting your baloon popped! With no conviction at all, I muttered, "Thank you." And I left her office, never to return.

It took me a few years before I acted on her first recommendation. And, about fifteen years after that, I took up her second. Sometimes I'm tempted to look her up and see whether she's stilll practicing (She may be retired by now.) I don't know what I'd say to her, or what she'd say to me.

Well, I could tell her I'm not on the down-low anymore. But she would know that, just by seeing me. Ditto for the drinking and drugs.

Grandma wouldn't have approved of those things. However, I don't know how she'd take my changes. I actually did "come out" as gay (mainly because I didn't feel like a straight man and the idea of being transsexual--the word we used then--was too terrifying!) to her when I was in my sophomore year of undergrad school. Because of her beliefs, she said, she could not give her blessings to it. But, like my mother, she would not deny me, for I was her beloved grandchild.

One thing she'll never know is that what she said has helped me, especially now. Always her grandchild and my mother's child. So don' mess wid me. ;-)

A Prism of Time

A few weeks ago I signed onto a website called classmates.com. On it are pages for high schools, colleges and other institutions (prisons? mental hospitals?). And, as the name implies, there are sub-pages for different graduating classes--including 1976 at Middletown Township High School in New Jersey.

Although I was very curious, I was hesitant to join at first. You might say that I was looking at the place, time and people in it through same the prism through which I saw them back in those days.

All right. I'll admit: That previous sentence isn't totally mine. It's something a very wise person told me.

And who was that sage? She was the first person to send me a message in response to what I posted on that site. Her name is Sue; back then I thought she was the "nicest" person in the school. It was the best word I --or nearly anyone else in that school--had for describing her. It's entirely accurate, but I think there was something else, too--which came out in the message she wrote to me.

What I think most of us meant by "nice"--in addition to her always-pleasant demeanor--was the fact that she was also the most non-judgmental person in that place. I take that back: She would tell us what we really needed to hear, but she did it in a way that you knew she was not judging your actions, much less you. Rather, she tried to show you things you didn't even know about yourself, and why you were doing what you did--and it was always helpful.

I used to think she could become the next Dear Abby, or someone like her.

Anyway, in her message, she congratulated me on my change (I wasn't expecting that of anybody!) and said, in essence, that high school can be a really tough time socially for some people like me, but that she thinks I'm very brave for doing what I've done.

To me, that's just stunning. I am thinking of her now as I saw her then: as someone I liked because she was, I believed, a much better human being than I could ever be, although she would never admit to such a thing about herself. Maybe I am brave--She's not the first person who has told me that--but on the way to becoming who I am, I have been monumentally cowardly, intensely angry and monstrously egocentric. Sometimes I still am those things. What's worse is that I have fought the impulse to be better than all of that, and forgetting the things that were done to me, because I didn't want to give someone else or another the gloating satisfaction that he or she got his or her way with me.

Some of that, of course, comes from looking at old experiences in the same way I saw them when I was experiencing them.

But it's still odd, at least for me, to think that anyone could call my doing what I needed to do for myself "bravery" or "courage" --or would say that in the first communication I've had with her, probably, since we graduated more than 30 years ago.

Speaking of the prism through which we see things: The person I was then would not have seen the person I am now as "brave" or "courageous." I would have hated her simply because I would have envied her too much. I take that back: I hated her because I envied her, and because I knew that she was keeping that young man alive then. Knowing that my dream, the one and only thing I really cared about, was to become Justine made me sad, angry and all sorts of other things because I didn't think I would do it because, well, I didn't have the courage.

It's kind of odd: Another person might have that person he or she always loved, that flame from youth that he or she never forgot. And sometimes that person and the old--and possibly unrequited, at the time--love reunite at a class reunion, after divorce from or the death of a spouse, or in a mid-life crisis. That old--sometimes first--love flickers, even seems to die, for many years until some void, or something, kindles that flame, or at least the memory of it. I think now of Miss Linde and Krogstad in A Doll's House. She married a man who could support her and her dying mother; he married a woman he never loved and, as he said, nothing else in his life worked, either. After the death of her husband, Linde comes to spend the holidays with the Helmers,when she sees Krogstad for the first time in many years. And, after they were catalysts, if unwittingly, of the Nora Helmer leaving Torvald and their children, Krogstad and Mrs. Linde decide to marry.

But for me, the person whom I always carried within me was the one I would embrace when after my attempts to embrace anybody and anything else fell apart: after Tammy (not the choreographer) was gone and others were long gone. I could never love them because I did not love myself. After the others were gone, there was only me--Justine. And she--I --was willing to love that person--Nick, the person who could not love her.

Some of us, I guess, are lucky enough to get second chances with first loves. Or even first friendships. That's what new prisms are for.

Losing the old game

Today I was dragged into something kicking and screaming. And I came out, well, on a kick.

I don't have classes on Friday, so I wouldn't have been going to the college. Except for this: One of the Deans decided to have a faculty orientation workshop, or some such thing. Since it was intended for new faculty, I thought it would include stuff about how to write syllabi, do lesson plans and such. Or, I thought, it would feature some senior faculty member or other talking about his or her latest educational theory. That stuff can get really boring. Yes, it's good to exchange ideas. But in the end, teaching is nothing more than clearly communicating something to someone. It ain't rocket science, ya know.

And the announcement did mention that there would be a workshop on grants led by the grants officer, whom I know a little bit. Again, I wasn't sure how useful or interesting it would be to me: After all, I'm just a lecturer, and there are no expectations of research from me.

So what did we get? Well, besides some cookies and coffee (What? No lunch!), we got a tour of the FDA laboratories that are just behind the campus. Now, I guess I can understand what the Dean who organized it was thinking: he's in the sciences, and so are most of the new hires. Not that I abhor science. But the tour of the FDA was, well, not as interesting as it could have been. That wasn't the fault of the people who led the tour. Instead, it had to do with timing: Today is Friday, so very few of the scientists, technicians or other workers were there. So we got to look at laboratories and equipment, but we didn't get to see anybody using them.

Then again, I did get to talk to a few of the new faculty members. Actually, one of them was, like me, an adjunct instructor who was working a full-time non-faculty job until she got a full-time faculty appointment this year. So I often saw and exchanged greetings with her. But, today, I finally learned her name--Debra. And now I think she's even nicer and smarter than I thought she was.

After the tour, we went back to the campus for a pep talk about the union and the grants workshop. But I was noticing something: Everywhere I turned, it seemed, a man was holding a door open or trying to help me with one thing or another. Although I still need to lose some more weight, I was feeling good about the way I looked. Several people, including my department chair, told me I looked "really nice" today. I wore one of the skirts I got when Dad took me shopping: a floral-leaf print in deep shades of blue and green that, even with those deep hues, looked and felt as if it floated over my thighs to my knees. With it, I wore a French blue boat-necked top with a dusty royal blue cardigan that's part of a twinset, and a jacquard silk scarf in deep shades of blue and green, like the skirt, with a hint of purple--my favorite color. And green and blue are the colors I like next-best. People tell me that those colors bring out those same hues that are in my eyes.

Have you ever found people responding positively to you and you don't know why? That's what was happening to me. I don't know whether anything in particular triggered it, but I realize now that something was practically throbbing through me in spite of my attempts to shield it with a scowl and foetal posture.

I won't say that I'm a saint or even wonderful person. Ever since I began my transition, a number of people have told me that I have a "light" or "good energy" that radiates from me even when I'm not feeling particularly good. It seems that they can sense it when I can't or don't want to.

What can I tell you? I still have a contrarian streak, a voice that says, "It ain't all that." And then there were the bad experiences I had with various teachers and professors when I was in school: because of them, being a teacher was the last thing in the world I ever wanted. On top of that, I had constructed some pretty elaborate rationalizations for my hatred of institutions of educations. Some of those arguments, if I do say so myself, were valid and even rather elegantly explained.

But you know what? I know what my experiences are. But they're done; I've learned whatever I can learn from them, at least for now. My situation is different now. Therefore, it takes more and more mental energy and effort to keep up the anger and resentments I've had.

Maybe that's the reason why nobody buys my misanthropic pose. Of course, for a long time, I didn't know it was a pose, any more than my attempts to be a punk-rocker were. Yesterday, when my somewhat-nutty class was acting up, I asked them to be quiet and listen. To which one of my students intoned, "You're really not a yeller, are you? You just don't have that in you, right?"

I didn't tell her she was right. But I didn't deny it, either. Today nobody asked the question; everybody, it seemed, knew.

Anyway, everybody was being just, well, nice to me. And faculty members whose names I didn't know were coming up to talk to me. It didn't occur to me that they might know I'm transgendered, so I didn't think about the possiblity that they were curious. So I just let everyone do what they would: Debra smiling softly but sweetly in my direction; others giving me encouraging glances even though I wasn't looking for them.

And then, at the end of the workshops, some of the new faculty members with whom I hadn't spoken yet introduced themselves to me. One of them, Alex, is teaching geriatrics. I mentioned that I've become interested in how LGBT people age, and what effect it has on them. We even began to talk about a collaborative project.

Dawn, the Grants officer, overheard my conversation with Alex and said "You should apply for a grant, Justine. Come to my office some time."

And I'm going to talk to Alex. And Debra. I've lost my old game. What else can I say?

Now it's time to be, well, collegial. That doesn't seem so terrifying . So there I went, and here I am.

Thursday classes

Another Thursday, my longest day of the week. On "normal" Thursdays, I have a break in the middle of the day. But today I had a meeting, which took up much of that time.

Lemme tellya, it was tough going back after a couple of days off. But at least three of my four classes were really good. The fourth...well, let's just say they're in a different stage of development. The funny thing is, another class, all full of kids just out of high school. does the assigned readings and writings and is prepared to participate in class. And they're just, well, nice.

Not that the other class is--can be--nice, too. But, surprisingly, even though the students look a few years older, they are less mature. Of twenty students in that class, about twelve showed up, and three did the readings I assigned.

But the last class--they're great. It's one of the business writing classes I teach. Since it's an evening class, all of the students--all of them women-- come in from work. And I think only of them is under 35 years old.

Grandma's Birthday

Today I was thinking about my grandmother. Today would've been her 95th birthday. She died only two days after she turned 68.

A few years ago, my mother said, "I still think about her every day. And Grandpa, too. I don't know why; I can't stop." It's so untypical of her to speak this way: as someone who "can't" do something. As best I could, I reassured her that there's no reason why she should stop thinking about her mother and father, and that nobody has a right to put a timetable on her feelings. I don't know whether she believed it, but I noticed that it was one of those moments in which I could see our communication changing.

I think about Grandma all the time, too. She's probably the person who knew me best, besides my mother. And, of course, there were times when I felt that I could talk only to her.

Sometimes I wonder what my relationship might've been like if I started my transition earlier in my life, or if she had lived long enough to see it. When I thought I might be gay, simply because I didn't seem to fit into any of the other categories, I remember "coming out" to my mother--and her. My mother admitted that if it were true, it would disappoint her because I wouldn't give her grandchildren. (I never did, and one day five years ago, what I revealed changed everything more than possibly any grandchild, career choice or anything else could have.) And Grandma said that it goes against what she believes in. However, they both promised that I was their child and grandchild, and if I were indeed gay, that would not change. And it didn't.

Now, my mother has been nothing short of a saint since I revealed that I have been living by the name she would have given me, had I been given that "F" on my birth certificate. She will deny that she's been that good, but nobody could ever give me anything that means more to me than the emotional support she has given me and the material support she and my father have offered. And my father has been encouraging in ways that I never expected.

How might Grandma have responded? I can't imagine that, really, any more than I could anticipate the reactions of any number of people. She may have responded as she did to my first "coming out." Or she may have acted in some other way. I'd like to think that her unconditional love would have won out. But I never will know, will I?

I find myself thinking, at times, about what my relationships with people who aren't here now might've been like. I remember "coming out" to Uncle Sonny, too. He said, "Well, it was good enough for those ancient Greek writers. So you're in good company." Maybe he'd respond in a similar way. After all, he never seemed to have trouble in accepting people who were different in all sorts of other ways. Though he wouldn't watch a movie featuring "Hanoi Jane" Fonda, but he wouldn't miss a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. He was the world's easiest-to-figure-out enigma.

About other people, I don't know. Trying to resume one friendship with someone I knew before I started my transition didn't turn out well: That person wanted Nick back.

Of course, that has no bearing on what might have been with Grandma. The relationship I had with her was the best it could have been, given who and what I was at the time. But I still wonder what might have been.

Well, at least she was in my life until I was 24. That helped me to get through some of the emotional turmoil I had to experience without the skills, such as they are, I have now.

I shouldn't demean those skills. After all, she helped me to learn some of them.

Things I Used To, And Might, Do

Today I had the day off for a holiday I haven't celebrated in nearly twenty years. And the period of my life during which I observed that holy day was brief: the time I was with Eva. So, if I recall correctly, we observed three Rosh Hoshannas. (I still haven't learned how to spell those names!) And I didn't mark that time of observance before I knew her.

Ironically, among the 114 students in the five classes I teach at the college, there is only one Jew. And she's a Falasha (sp?), again who was born in the Senegal. As I remarked to my students, there are probably more Jewish faculty members than students at York.

So, I sometimes say only half-jokingly, we should also have off on Muslim holy days. And Hindu ones. And, oh, let's not forget the Yoruba, Shinto, Zen, Santeria and Voodoo days of observance, if they have them. And while we're at it, we can't leave out the Wiccans or any Native American creeds now, can we? After all, our schools and workplaces are closed for all sorts of Christian holidays.

But I digress. I guess I shouldn't complain about having a day off. Still, it's difficult not to notice the irony of it.

And it got me to thinking again about the things I used to do, the things I'll never do again and what things I do, have done and will continue to do, well, just because.

All right. I won't list them all. But it's hard not to see the surgery little more than nine months away and to think about what I did, didn't, don't, won't and will never do again.

Most people who won't undergo the changes I'm experiencing associate the surgery--if they think about it--with the most banal things you can and can't do again, like pissing against a tree. I don't think I'll miss that, as I haven't pissed against very many trees. (I have more respect for them than to do that!) I do admit that I might miss peeing while standing up, as I never relish the thought of having to sit on a public toilet. Yes, I cover them and do all the things you're supposed to do. But it still doesn't make the task pleasant .

But those aren't the kinds of things you live for. Yes, some things can make life easier or more convenient, but they don't make life worth living. Trust me, I know about that!

Today I continued to swap my spring/summer clothes for my fall/winter ones. It's the last time I'll do that before the surgery, and I'll make one more switch in the other direction before then. The other day, John helped me to bring the boxes from the storage room I rent, but I didn't begin to unpack them until today. Part of the reason for the delay is that I knew I'd have more time today. Also, I guess somehow I was subconsciously delaying the switch: Now I really know that yet another stage of my life is done: gone.

What else won't I do again before the surgery? Well, I probably won't go to France or any other place further than Mom's and Dad's. Given my work schedule and other considerations, I probably wouldn't be going this year or next anyway. And somehow I get the feeling that if I go again, it's going to be very different, even from the trip I took to Paris four years ago. That one was very different from the ones I took only three and four years earlier, and I suspect that if I go again, there will be even more difference between that and my most recent trip there.

And what made the last trip different from the others? Well, for one thing, I wasn't running away. I also wasn't a lost soul in search of something; I'd found at least the beginnings of what I've needed all of my life. My only uncertainty was--and is--what will come next. But we never know that, anyway. Not knowing--or, worse, denying--who you are is much more of a handicap, I believe, than not knowing where you're going.

I already can't do some of the bike rides I used to do and I don't know whether I could even if I had the time and inclination to train properly. Maybe I will be able to ride even less, or less intensively, than I do now--or, of course, than I did ten years ago.




More important, I wonder whether there's some mental or emotional movement or habit into which I won't fall again, whether or not by choice. I know that people--the people I've known, anyway--think differently about one thing and another after life-changing events, like giving birth.




I even wonder sometimes whether this will be the last year in which I teach. Perhaps there's no rational reason--that I can see now, anyway--why I should stop, or be unable to, teach afterward. But even though it's been going well, I am not thinking about next year in the classroom, in a department meeting, or whatever.



Well, in nine months, I should start to find the answers. It wasn't so long ago that women--like my mother--waited without knowing the sex of the baby that would be born to them. Now I wonder...if anybody could see that I would have a guy's body parts and a girl's soul, what (if anything) would they have done?



Maybe no more than I'm doing now. Which is all I can do. Maybe I won't be able to do it tomorrow or nine months from now. But for now, it's what I am doing.

Giving Birth to the Present

Today I got to talk to Millie in passing. I mentioned that I have purchased a ticket to spend Christmas with Mom and Dad. I think I saw a tear well up at the corner of her eye.

I think the only time she was happier for me was when she found out that I'd scheduled my surgery and Mom and Dad said they would accompany me.

That encounter with Millie magnified, for me, a feeling I've had lately. I was further reminded of it when John, her husband, drove me to pick up a few things from the storage cubicle I rent. We were coming back through an industrial area that's was deserted, as it normally is on a Sunday. One of us mentioned that prostitutes frequented the area, which is not surprising. I recalled that during the first year I was living in the neighborhood--as Nick--I was approached on a couple of occasions.

When I said that, I felt as if I were looking at an old, fading photograph of that time, and those occasions. I could tell the most basic facts of the story: that I was approached by the streetwalkers. But I felt as if I were reciting some capsule summary, or an abstract of the narrative.

I recall now one of my professors at Rutgers who described his earliest teaching experience: in a military prep school. He said he taught some young men who would become some of the highest-ranking officers in the Navy. They would write summaries of various literary works, he said, and those summaries are probably all they remember of those works.

In other words, they didn't retain the poetry of the poems they read, or the human beings who are the characters of the novels and plays they were assigned. And the rhythms of the language were long lost, revivable only with a re-reading: something they would probably never do.

That is about as good an analogy I can come up with to describe how much of my previous life seems to me now. I can recall the facts, and I can even recollect some of what I felt. But--please indulge me this cliche--it seems almost as if another person lived through those experiences.

In some sense, it was a different person who lived my life--large parts of it, anyway-- until five years ago. I'm not the only one who thinks that, and I'm sure I'm not the first trans person to say something like that. But it's a disconcerting feeling. I sometimes feel as if Nick was a character I had to create for the sake of the story I was inserted into, and after he served his purpose, I dissolved him.

There came a time about three years into my new life when I mourned him. It didn't seem fair that he had to live parts of my life for me, and he couldn't partake of the happiness I'd found in living by my spirit.

Around the same time, something else began to make sense for me. I understood why I never really had any place to return to--no Garden, if you will. I have never been good about staying in touch with classmates, former co-workers or people I've known from one situation or another. Of course, some people I knew didn't want to remain in touch, or they or I said we would but didn't, for whatever reasons. And quite a few are dead now.

But even when I leave on good terms with supervisors, colleagues or anyone else, I never sustained the relationship. Somehow I always felt that nobody ever knew me, only Yeats' "tattered cloak upon a stick."

Even when I was with Mom and Dad last month, I didn't make any great effort to recall our pasts. It wasn't that being raised by them was so bad: In fact, given our circumstances (e.g., poverty, at least when I was a young child), they were very, very good. I think the fact that Mom and I have talked every week ever since I moved out, more than 30 years ago, says something.

Of course, there is much I wish I didn't have to recall, such as the molestations and other cruelties and violence I experienced--and inflicted. But neither Mom nor Dad was a cause or reason for any of that.

But even some of the more pleasant and recent memories are distant to me now. And, oddly enough, some of the experiences I had during my last couple of years before the transition. They all seem like part of some sort of fever-dream of which one can see only the shadow upon waking.

I haven't completely forgotten all of those episodes of my life. It's just that, at times, when I do talk about any but a few of them, I feel as if I'm relating someone else's experience, or a video of it.

In one way, this has all been good for me: When I'm around anyone who's known me for a long time, I don't try to settle into the past. Bruce and Millie are not simply people who've been in my life for a long time; they're good and kind people who enrich my life now. I say the same thing for Mom and Dad; there were memories in their house in Florida, though not of the kind that I'd have if, say, they'd remained in New Jersey or Brooklyn. But what matters is that they are caring and generous people, and are with me as I am giving birth to my self.

Of course! No one who has ever given birth, by whatever means or in whatever sense, is the same person he or she was before his or her progeny entered the world. Of course Mom would understand something like that; I think even Dad has an inkling of it.

And it also makes sense that my two ex-friends are, well, ex: For them, there is only the past, or at the part of my past which they've expereinced. Same for my brother who's not speaking for me.

The past is what they think they have. All I have, all anyone has, is the moment. It's the only point in time in which anyone can live. For me, that's a relief, really: It makes things easier for me.

Another Adolescence? Wisdom?

Drizzly and damp. Not quite the stormy day forecast for today. But it's been one of those days that keeps lots of people indoors, or keeps them from straying far from home.

So what did I do today? Laundry. Wrote an article. Cuddled cats. Cooked spaghetti. Real exciting day, huh?

Ironically, this day reminds me of a lot of days in the spring of 2003. It seemed that a lot of days that season were like this. It was my first spring in this neighborhood, after moving out of the place I shared with Tammy in Park Slope. Somehow, the gray, diffuse light was easier to live with than days of endless sun: I had been taking hormones for a few months, and felt raw and vulnerable--and a little scared, as I hadn't yet "come out" to very many people.

And on days like the one that just passed, and this night drizzled by the fine mist in the air, I find myself tending to things that need tending to, within as well as outside me.

Lately, I feel as if another layer of skin has been peeled away. I've been taking hormones for five years now, so I'm not sure it's the reason. Then again, it may be that back in the spring of '03, when I'd been on hormones for a couple of months, my body was reacting to that initial surge of hormones and I was like a child having her first growth spurt. But now, I feel something else is changing in me. I'm not so sure it's physical, although I think my breasts have grown a bit, and I feel that something around--or in--my eyes has become more female, if not more feminine.



A few weeks ago, around the time the semester started, I was feeling more senitive to--more easily hurt by--things people said. Of course, I went through something like this a few months after I started taking hormones. But now I feel like I've come to another level of sensitivity, or something.

It seems that lately, everywhere I look, someone wants to talk with me or some little kid wants to play with me. Sometimes the kids want to talk, too. Like the young girl I met while her mother was having an electrolysis treatment and I was waiting for mine. I had no sooner walked into the door than she introduced herself to me. Jasmine. And she just had to show me a toy that reminds me of the Etch-a-Sketch I had when I was a child. And her story book about race cars and drivers. I'm not sure what the moral of it is, but it was fun to hear her read and misread it.

Somehow I get the feeling I'll see Jasmine again. I don't know why.

It's not just kids, though. I've already had students "come out" to me and tell me about abusive boyfriends, difficulty in a marriage and with finances. One student, whom I'd guess to be about 40, told me about the her partner, whom she lost in the World Trade Center. She told me that to explain the fact she was missed class this 9/11.

Every time I've seen her, she was wearing black. I wonder if she's still in mourning. Even when I saw her smile, she looked kind of sad, though still kind. A few people--including Tammy-- described me that way in the years before I began my transition.

And I'm thinking of the lecture I attended last week at the college. I got in late, as one of my classes ended a few minutes before the lecture began and two students wanted to talk to me afterward. Upon arriving at the lecture hall, I took the nearest still-available seat, which happened to be next to a student I didn't know.

She kept on looking at me and smiling. I had no idea of how to take that. Of course, back in the day, it would've fed my ego: she was pretty. But now...Was she reading me?, I wondered. She seemed like a completely straight, if not narrow-minded, woman: I had a hard time imagining her attracted to other women, straight or otherwise.

Not that I would have acted on such an attraction if it were there, of course. But I quickly realized that it wasn't her attention: She was just a friendly young woman who was being nice.

Are you a professor here?

Yes, I am, I responded.

What do you teach?

English.

Oh, really. Which ones?

I mentioned that I am teaching Business Writing and Composition, but that I have also taught literature and research writing.

How can I get in touch with you?

I gave her my campus e-mail address and telephone number, and showed her where she could find my office.

I would like to see you again, she pleaded.

Of course. Now that you have my information, feel free.

I will. Thank you.

I haven't heard from her yet, but I've a feeling I will. About what, I don't know.

Hey, even cats and dogs I meet outside are walking up to me. It may well be that I'm growing more sensitive, or more understanding, as some people have said about me.

I mean, I'm not anything special or terribly unusual, really. I just wonder if people are sensing something else about me. A college staff member with whom I'm friendly said that I seem "more peaceful, more serene."

Well, yes, even amidst--or maybe because of--the craziness of a typical day, I do feel something calmer within me, within that sensitive skin of mine.

This is really odd, this combination of raw adolelscent nerve endings and the perception of wisdom, or something.

And another sign of change: I'm getting sleepy. G'night

Passages and the Rain

Rain, again. I mean, tonight. It started last night and has fallen nearly all day. And it's supposed to stop and start again tomorrow.

It's not as windy as the forecasts said it would be. But the wind, of whatever speed, drives the rain into your face, your eyes, and sinks its chill into your skin.

This is definitely the first autumnal rain. This is when you know that summer is really gone, and that any warm, sunny day after that is just an interlude. How they still get away with calling it "Indian Summer," I'll never know.

Somehow, on a cool, rainy, breezy night like this one, it really feels like the season has changed, irrevocably. Why am I making such a big deal of it? Most of this summer wasn't particularly memorable: I did lots of boring work and felt as if I had absolutely no reason to work in education.

But August included the sorts of "little things" that make a difference. At least they do, for me. One was reclaiming, for good (I hope!) my original last name, with the first name I chose for myself because my mother would've given it to me if I'd been born to an "F" on my birth certificate. And I kept my original first name--which is also my father's first name--for my middle name.

This is the first time in my life I've had a middle name. Not that it would matter, except that it's one I've chosen, as I have with my first name.

And, of course, there was the time I spent with Mom and Dad. I guess you could say I felt more like a daughter because they were treating me that way. Maybe that is why I came away from that visit feeling closer to them than I can ever recall feeling. I know it's pointless and even harmful to hold on to feelings, and sometimes even memories. But this one, I really don't want to let go of. It's even better than how I felt after getting my first poem published, or making it to the top of l'Alpe d'Huez, le Col du Galibier, il Colle d'Agnello, Aubisque, Hautaucam or Portillo.

All those climbs were conquests, really. Which, as I've said before, is a form of alienation: The conqueror never becomes a part of what he or she subjugates, and vice-versa.

And this rain, the end of the season, the beginning of a new one: There is no way to conquer these. Maybe that's the reason why I am so affected by them. And by the sea, and all of its rhythms.

Anything that finds its way to my spirit is something learned, truly. Those things called experience are only memory stored in the mind, in the ego. The sort of summer I would have wanted at another time in my life: a bike trip in Europe or days on the beach (which is not the same as being by the sea) would become experience. It's nice, and it's fun to think about sometimes--and, I'll admit, I like to use it for shock value when I tell people about what my life was like before my change.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm glad I have all of those experiences. They have had their positive effects on my life. But now they have passed, as the summer has, as this rain will. And then there will be a new stage, a new season: In this case, autumn. My last autumn (My last fall?--Would that it could be!) before the surgery.

And how will this autumn end? With my students taking exams--and another visit to my parents. I bought the ticket to Florida last night. Going on the afternoon of Christmas Eve; returning on the morning of New Year's Eve. Those weren't the travel dates I'd hoped to have, but with the schedule I have, there is no other choice. At least the fare isn't higher than it would've been if I'd gone on the 22nd and returned on the 29th, as I'd hoped I could.

Whatever, as some of my students would say. I don't know what this season will bring, save for some rain and some sun. And I know, if not how it will end, what occasion will mark another passage into another season.

Compartments

This cold. Yeah, it's all about that now. This cold, and the way my nose feels like someone poured epoxy into it and stuffed it with brown paper. I've been feeling drowsy, so I haven't gotten much of anything done.

But I did something interesting this afternoon. Millie and I went to a dance program at the LaGuardia College Theatre. My friend Michiyo Tamaka, a.k.a. Tami, choreographed a few pieces in which there's a wide range of music and visual imagery. And the dancers are of varying shapes and colors.

In one of the pieces, "Compartments," a particularly expressive African-American dancer shows the ways in which fitting in, and the pressure to do so, can warp our senses as well as our bodies. At the beginning of the dance, there are four cube/boxes that look like the milk crates we used to use for dorm furniture would look if their sides were solid rather than perforated. Those cubes--the compartments--were yellow, red, blue and purple. And, on a rack a few feet across the room hang dresses in each of those colors, and another in green.

When she enters the room, she's wearing a black bikini of the same kind of cut worn by the beach volleyball players in the Olympics. In her frenzy to--I'm not sure of what, and maybe that's how it's supposed to be--she tosses takes each of the dresses, except the green one, off its hanger and tosses it into the compartment of its color.

Then, she panics over what to do with the green dress, which is also longer and gauzier than the others. She tries to put it on, but it curls, snags and in every way defies her. When she finally pulls the hem down past her waist and to her knees, she clasps herself at her breasts, as if someone had seen her naked. And, after she turns around to walk out, we see that the dress is bunched up in the rear, exposing the rear of her bikini bottom.

Displacement. Trying to find a place. Trying to fit into. Sounds like the story of my life, or much of it, anyway. Trying to fit into the right compartment, the right box, only to find that you can't fit any of them. And then you try to fit something someone hands down to you, and that doesn't work, either.

That's how it is when you're transgendered, at least until you "come out." Then, at least you have some chance of finding a place where you can fit in--or better yet, of creating it.

Maybe that's why I always loved hearing and reading the stories of immigrants, of strangers in strange lands. I have been what most people think of as l'etrangere at various times in my life when I was living in another culture--that is to say, speaking another language--from my own. But even when I was with people who communicated in all of the ways I understood, and whose backgrounds mirrored my own, I felt like l'etrangere, the outsider.

And sometimes I really got into a frenzy over trying to fit in. Those compartments, no matter how big or what shape they were, never seemed to fit. And even when I covered myself, physically or metaphorically, I felt naked and exposed and wanted to run for cover.

I ran, and the only shelter I found were those comparments. That is exactly what those compartments were, and all they could ever be. They could not be homes, no matter what I or anyone else did to them.

So here I am, out of the compartment. At least you don't have to worry about fitting into the open air. And that is exactly the reason why sometimes it seems overwhelming: Freedom always is when you've known only dysmorphia and claustrophobia. The thing is, when you have only those conditions, you think they're your normality, which means you can't see them for what they are.

Out of the compartment and into the flesh, toward the spirit--my own, of course.

Could it be that leaving compartments that don't fit anymore (if they ever did) is the first requirement for giving birth to one's self?

Well, now that cold has got me in its grip. I'm really tired now. Back to a compartment--my bedroom, which is just barely big enough for the bed on which I can spread myself while I'm dreaming or otherwise escaping from compartments.

A Cold at the Speed of Light

Today my sinuses are more toxic than the Jersey swamps. Fell asleep for a couple of hours late this afternoon, woke up to blow my nose again. And to continue blowing every few minutes.

Forget those financial stocks: In the condition I'm in, you should buy shares of Kleenex. I take that back: I'm using Marcal tissues. Nothing against Kleeenex; just that Marcal costs less.

What will Google Ad Sense make of this? I still haven't gotten a check from them!

The weird thing about this is that even though I'm moving slowly, I don't feel that the world is moving quickly, in spite of everything that's in the news. It's like the unofficial slogan of the 1992 campaign: It's the economy, stupid. Investment banking firms are failing; the government is making token gestures (Really, that's all they can be) to save AIG.

They say this is the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Which means that it's news to anyone who didn't live through it, or any of the recent cycles in the economy. It's always the same thing, really: Lots of people putting their money into the same things, thinking the price can only go up and that they can continue to make money forever. Then one day, someone realizes that it won't, and the cards come tumbling down. People lose money, naturally, and many of them think that they were cheated out of their "right" to keep on milking the cash cow.

Now I'm no economist. But I know this: A thing is only worth what someone is able and willing to pay for it. There's no natural law that says House X is worth $800,000 or whatever, or that the value of it should continue to increase the moment I buy it. (As if I can, now!) If the money's not there, or people don't want to spend it, there's no way the price can increase.

Maybe this is the reason I never became an economist (aside from my utter lack of aptitude in such areas as mathematics). People don't grasp fundamental lessons or learn from mistakes, or even experience. If I'd understood that earlier in my life, I might never have become a teacher, either.

Anyway...The news is like a video playing in real time. Other things are proceeding at warp speed. Or so it seems.

Like this day. Not that it was so wonderful (or bad, either). It's well, Saturday, and as such is a day off. Except that I had to be sick and run a couple of errands. But Saturdays almost always go quickly anyway.

So has the time since I began this blog, and since I scheduled my surgery. The recent past seems to have gone by faster than a taxi you're trying to hail when it's raining. Five years since I began living full-time as Justine: It seems as if it began only yesterday, even though I feel as if I've lived entire lifetimes during those brief years. Whenever someone asks how long it's been, he or she is invariably surprised that it was "so little time" or "so recent." I've been on this planet for fifty years, but this part of my life is only a tenth of that total. And it seems to have gone by so quickly.

Naturally, time does go quicker when we get older. But I think that these five years have been further accelerated by my knowledge that I have fewer and fewer years left and my increasingly intense desire to live them--a desire fueled, in large part, by the changes I've made.

I don't have the physical strength or endurance I once had. That is due to my increasing age as well as the effects of the hormones I've been taking. But when you feel young, strong and invincible, there are things you don't notice. Like the ones who want you to love them, and who challenge you to love and be loved. I'm not referring only to romantic or sexual love, though they are outcomes of what I'm talking about. I also mean the ones whom you don't expect to become friends, allies and teachers.

Feeling--and sometimes falling to--my vulnerabilities has forced me to see the video, if you will, at the speed of its own light rather than through the illusion that I can or must run at, or faster than, its pace. I can't keep up with the light, much less see it at its own speed, when my focus is on making myself fit for such a task.

And so things go, at the speed of light. I hope my cold does the same!

No Choice But Both

So now I've about nine months and two and a half weeks until the surgery. So many metaphors, analogies and images present themselves to me about this time, and the coming months.

The funny thing is that I haven't been thinking much about the surgery itself. Sometimes, someone who knows about my situation will ask me whether I'm nervous, excited, or have some other feeling about it. The truth is that I feel all and none of those things, everything and nothing at all, all at once.

The thing is, the operation itself is really the hardest part of this whole process to imagine. I mean, for one thing, I'll be knocked out, so who knows what I'll experience. Will it just be blackness, or whiteness (as in Jose Saramago's Blindness)? Will I have dreams--And if I do, will they be any different from the ones I've had before? Or will they be different? More intense--or more banal(!)? Or will I have some kind of out-of-body experience?

I've had only one other surgery in my life: for a deviated septum, back in March of 1994. And, frankly, about all that I remember about the surgery itself was a Russian woman named Abromovitz who introduced herself and rasped, "I will be your anaesthesiologist."

"You're an anaesthesiologist?"

"Y-eee-s..." She looked baffled.

"So you put people to sleep for a living?"

"I do."

"So do I."

"Are you anaesthesiologist, too?"

"Oh, no. I'm an English professor."

At least I got to fall asleep to some laughter. Will that happen when I go for "the" surgery? Will I want that? Will I need it?

It won't make a difference, really. Once I'm out, I'm out. And, barring any problems, the surgery will begin.

But I have such a hard time imagining it. I know it won't be like the surgery to repair my deviated septum. But what else is even a remote comparison?

Maybe the fact that I can't imagine it is the reason why I feel a little nervous , and probably will feel more so as the date looms near, but I don't feel afraid. Somehow I wouldn't mind remaining in this frame of mind right up until I'm lying on the hospital table.

So what do I do now? I imagine what I'll be like after the surgery: I can even more or less envision (What's an emotional equivalent to this?) what a "new" orgasm will feel like. Or how my body might change in other, more subtle ways. And how I expect to feel more complete and more whole than I have ever felt. About that last one: The surgery won't accomplish that all by itself, of course: It will simply be a culmination of all of the things I've done, and that have happened to me, along the way.

That's about as much as I can say about it right now. So there's the present and future. For the latter, there are images, because all I can do is imagine it--even though, somehow, I can draw a clearer picture of it than I can of the surgery itself. In some ways, it will be like the past five years: the time I have spent living as a woman. I'll be using the same bathrooms and dressing rooms. I'm guessing that those who accept me as a woman now will continue to do so after my surgery. And those who don't--well, I'm not sure I'd want them, and if they decided to accept me afterward, I'm not sure I'd reciporicate.

As for the present: This is where the metaphors and analogies come in. Sometimes I see a train that's about to be taken out of service and is making its final runs, or a ship on its last voyages before it is decommissioned. You might call me a "lame duck" man, serving out "his" time until he "becomes" a woman.

But at the same time, there are so many things I want to do. I don't want to wait until after my surgery to get my novel published. And I don't want to put off any creative project, no matter how big it is and how long it may take to complete. But I also don't want to wonder what's next after the surgery: I want to leave myself something to look forward to--apart from having had the surgery and gotten into a nice feminine female portrait.

Waiting or doing? I have no choice but both.

Boy or Girl? Black or White?

Today a student who missed class last Thursday showed up. The first time I saw her, I took a liking to her: She seemed like an intelligent and sincere person. I also had the sense she wanted to talk with me about something that had nothing to do with the class.

Today she did that and confirmed my first impression of her. She started off by apologizing for missing class: She was shuttling between New York and Philadelphia, where her grandmother is being treated for cancer.

After we discussed her assignment, we proceeded to chat. She mentioned that she transferred from St. Lawrence University, in far upstate New York. That school is 97% white and gay people aren't "out." Furthermore, fundamentalist Christian groups have a heavy influence on the college.

Well, she's not only gay--which not everyone there knew about--she's also Hispanic. In a world such as that college, as she said, "It's not black-and-white. It's white and non-white."

In the middle of her only semester on the campus, she found a noose attached to her dorm-room door. Attached to the noose was a note that read, "Your kind don't belong here."

As calmly as she related this story to me, I was on edge and my skin was crawling. She talked about it further, and said that after she came back, she "came out" to family members. Her father and one of her brothers have disowned her; her mother and her mother's preacher-boyfriend think they can shock, pray, cajole or otherwise exorcise this "demon" in her. Probably the best reaction she got was from her pre-pubescent younger brother who simply doesn't understand why she's not interested in dating boys.

Well, as tenuous as my own situation at the college is, I realized how fortunate I am in the rest of my life. Yes, I lost two friends (of course, they weren't really) and one of my brothers isn't speaking to me. But my other two are and, as you know, my parents want to accompany me to my surgery and to let me stay with them as I'm recovering from it. And Bruce, my longest-standing friend (almost 30 years now!) and Millie, whom I met just as I was starting my transition, have been the best friends anyone could want.

I then understood something Sonia told me once: that I have a lot of resources, which include what I've mentioned as well as my talents, skills and education. And, really, what else can I do with them but to help people like that young woman, or people even less fortunate than she is?

I remember reading that Matthew Shepard wanted to do that.

Passing Through

Sometimes silly things make my day. Like the guy I passed while riding down Cross Bay Boulevard in Howard Beach. He was even more weatherbeaten than the bike he was riding, but still had some of that raw sensuality you sometimes see in ex-hippies, or men who look like they lived in the mountains and didn't care what people think of their facial hair. In other words, he was like a somewhat-less-glamorous version of Jerry Garcia, before he was destroyed by drugs.

As I pedalled alongside , for a moment, he said "hello."

"Hi. How are you doin'?"

"Not as good as you look, babe!"

OK. So he wasn't that waiter in that restaurant where Bruce and I had lunch the other day. I can't even say I was attracted to the guy, or that I was consciously flirting with him. But I figure that even if he says things like that to anyone who looks even remotely female, I'll take it.

Now, there's nothing like that first time you pass. And before you start to live the life of your real gender, you're grateful for those moments when someone calls you by your preferred pronouns and salutations, holds a door or simply doesn't notice you. Now I more or less take those things for granted. But a compliment from a stranger, even if he wouldn't make me forget Dominick, is always welcome.

The funny thing is that I almost never feel that I look good, much less pretty or beautiful, but I often feel proud of the person I see in the mirror now. Even in my darker moments I see a certain calm that was never there before, and people have told me they see "gentleness" in my face and eyes. Even when I'm in selling "to hell with it all" at work or in any other situation, someone tells me--without saying it--that I'm better than that; I don't do misanthropy terribly convincingly.

But I think that guy on the bike saw just a blonde pumping her legs and sweating. As I've said before, that's enough for some guys.

The first time someone calls you "Ma'am" or "Miss(!)". Or calls you those silly-cutesy names like "cupcake" or "doll." Or "mamacita." Even the first time someone calls you "bitch" is a milestone.

Of course, I'd probably feel differently if I'd been living as a woman, and dealing with men who see me as an object, all of my life. Now that I think of it, I don't know how I've come to this point after having been molested as a boy by three men (at different times).

Actually, now that I think of it, I know how I got here: I dealt with the abuse. This process has taken me many years, and getting to the point of starting that process took much, much longer.

Now I know that while men can do all sorts of brutual and awful things, I also know that the kind, considerate and sensitive men I know are not aberrations.

When you know them, you only have to be who you are. And other people respond to that.

Hey, maybe that's what "passing" is. And people--many, anyway--treat you well as you're passing through.

X and Y on a Quiet Saturday

A slow day today, as they say. Should I complain or boast about that? Probably not. It just turned out that way, and I needed it.

Why? So I could get stuff done, of course! Like laundry. And going to the farmer's market on Roosevelt Island. And cleaning up.

So slow days are for getting things done, and rush hours are when trains crawl and traffic comes to a standstill. I'm so glad I became an English teacher!

And what else did I get done today? Sleep. I even took a longer-than-intended nap. Actually, I didn't intend the nap at all. But I was nodding off in my chair, so I figured it was time.

On days like this, there is no past or future. I begin to understand why so many people live through what I like to call the Eternal Present. It's entirely different from living in the moment, or even for it. EP is, as near as I can tell, a continuation of some life you were handed and were taught never to question. Sometimes I think it's what causes people to get married and have kids, and goad you into doing the same even though they can't tell you why.

All right. I'm not going to re-write Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy, as great as it is. While life may be as banal as Macbeth seems to see it after one too many killings, I don't want to become that cynical about it. I mean, I'm never cynical, are I? Just ask anyone who knows me.

Anyway, I find myself now thinking again about how living as Justine has changed my perceptions of time. Of course, after you've changed your name and gender, you can't see life in the same way again, so EP is simply not possible. Some trans people I know have essentially revised their pasts: "When I was a little girl," etc.

Perhaps you think I've done the same thing in seeing my past experience as having been lived by Justine. Actually, there's a difference. I don't try to act as though I haven't experienced anything that I have experienced, and I don't turn all of my male experiences into female ones. I can no more deny that I have been an altar boy, Boy Scout and Army reservist than I can say that I had my first period when I was twelve years old. A former friend cites that last fact as "proof" that I am not, and have never been or will be, a "real" woman. This former friend is, simply, the female counterpart to the Angry White Man (remember him?): She thinks everyone else in the world got special privileges and favors she should have had because, well, she is and they're not her.

She has a Ph.D. in Gender Studies. Now do you wonder why I don't want to pursue anything like that?

No, I did not live as a girl or a woman until five years ago. But I feel that I have every right to say that Justine did all those things most people would still attribute to Nick. One reason is that my mother would have named me Justine had I not been born Nick. (She told me that when I was about fourteen years old, in another context.) So, in a sense, I have simply given my real name to my old experience.

You see, being Justine is not only about gender or sex: it's much more basic. The latter is mainly a matter of genitalia and actual (or perceived) body shape; my identity as Justine is at the level of all the fluids that make up a body. According to the tests I had before I started taking hormones, my estrogen level was almost three times as high as what's normal for a man. While that's still much lower than what any woman has naturally, it was enough to affect my perception of myself without my even knowing why or how.

But even that is not the whole story. Of course, if you go deep enough, you find my maleness: the X and Y chromosome. That will not change. However, I feel that, in me, those two chromosomes were always at war, and I gave all the ammunition I could to Y.

So there were X and Y, going at it with each other, while my body fluids--and my emotions--were rising and ebbing, just like the tides, to the moon.

I suppose the conflict will always be there. All I know is that it had a lot to do with making me Justine, even before I took that name and began to live by it. Even when I was out of place and time, I was Justine.

And today Justine had a quiet Saturday, sort of like the ones she had when she was a boy.