Getting Used to Happiness

Eight more months. They're what stand between this day and my surgery. Or between me now and the person I will be, whatever that may be.

These past few days have gone by more quickly than I imagined they would. Maybe it's because I've been in such a good mood. Mark, a colleague in the English Department, says that he hasn't seen anyone as happy as I've seemed (actually, have been) lately. He even used that "r" word--radiant--to describe me.

It's all kind of odd when I think about it. I mean, for one thing, I thought I was getting used to being at least relatively happy a good part of the time. Now, it's unequivocally so, most of the time. I mean, I'm excited about the upcoming surgery and other things. But Iwonder: Could those things alone be enough to launch anyone into an orbit of ecstasy? Well, even though I'm still kinda big around the middle, I alone don't represent a sufficient sample size. (What did I just say?!)

I used to say that Woody Allen was only happy when he was depressed. I guess I used to be like that. And that person I was still knocks at my door sometimes. Now, most of the time, that person is no more annoying than a bunch of Jehova's witnesses who've rung your bell just as you and your family were about to have dinner. But at other times, that person can be problematic. For example, let's say you always wanted something but never got it. You tried, you did the right things, but nothing fell in place, and nothing seemed as if it would. So you resign yourself to being anything from simply unfilifilled to just plain miserable, whether in personal or professional matters.

And what do you do when things--and people--come to you without your even asking for them. You are enjoying the people's company and other things about your personal and professional life. But you did nothing to bring them those people or things to you, and they seem not to be a result of anything you did. I mean, everything from a job to a boyfriend to really good friends and the support you get from them. And, of course, my upcoming surgery.

What do you do when you're getting all those things you always wanted? Those things do, believe it or not, take some getting used to. Just like Timerman's Mediterran sunset: the one with the water that was almost tooo blue for his eyes, which were accustomed to grayer water.

Believe it or not, I'm still getting used even to having a definite date--not very far away, really-- for something I've always wanted. It's equally weird to know that people have actually helped--willingly.

What do you do when you're used to being alone and suddenly there are people who want to be part of your life--and they're the kinds of people you always wanted.

And so here I am, getting used to happiness. What will encounter as I go further down the road, these next eight months, to the operation I've always yearned for?

Eight more months...With great friends, familial support and a good job. I suppose I could get used to this.

The Election. What Else?

Over the past two days, it seems that all anybody has talked about is the election. At the college, of course, just about everyone is happy that Barack Obama won. In fact, only one of my students expressed any support for John McCain. And, no great surprise, no faculty or staff member voiced any desire to vote for Sarah Palin's running mate.

In some way, I'm glad that Barack won. It's not so much a matter of his skin color or that he's a Democrat. The student body at the college is about 80 percent black. So, interestingly enough, are the administration and the lower-tier staff members. But the faculty--yes, including me--are about as overwhelmingly white as the rest of the college is black.

And that, to me, is a microcosm of this country right now. Yes, we will have a black man at the top. And, perhaps, he will appoint some African American cabinet members. But most of the people who are really running the show, if you will, are white. Somehow I don't see that changing much, if at all.

Don't get me wrong: I think Obama may well be a great leader. And I think he's about as good a human being as we have had, or will have in such a high office. At least, I don't see how he can't be more mendacious than either Bush or Cheyney have been. But, as so many people have already noted, some monumental, if not impossible tasks face him.

Most people, when they say that, are referring to such things as the economy and disentangling this country from Iraq, Afghanistan and other places. Surely those are, and will continue to be, Sisyphean tasks. Even Obama himself said that they won't be solved in a year, or during one (He didn't say "my first.") presidential term.

But here's the real problem: This culture is spiritually broken. I am not religious, but I am entirely sure that whatever force makes life possible, much less meaningful, is something from which this country has been alienated. How else can that relationship be right now? This country got into two wars because of lies our leaders told. And decision-makers in government and businesses loaned money to people who didn't qualify for a listing in the White Pages, then hid those loans in packages of other loans and sold them.ow.

At least Obama seems to be listening to people and leveling with them. And I get the feeling that he might be, as some people have suggested, a "healer." I hope so: It's exactly what we neeed right now, not just for this country, but for the sake of the people. There won't be material prosperity or any kind of security as long as this country is spiritually sick.

Now, as to whether Barack's election will usher in a way for a transgendered person to become President....

Turning, continued

Yesterday I started to mention that a family friend molested me. The first instance of it that I recalled, just a couple of weeks before I turned thirty-four, happened when I was nine. And, as I began to talk about it, I also began to recall other incidents--with this family friend, a man whom I used to see all the time in our Brooklyn neighborhood, and, later, a priest in the church where I was an altar boy.

Now, I know what some people might think: That it had something to do with my "becoming" transgender. Well, I discussed this with two therapists and a clinical social worker. First of all, none of them thinks that anyone "turns" transgender over such incidents, any more than someone "goes gay" because of an experience with the other gender--or with an older member of one's own gender.

Furthermore, my awareness that I am actually female predates any of the sexual violations I suffered. I can say this with confidence, for I spent a lot of time discussing and working through this with the therapists and social worker. The earliest molestation I can recall happened to me when I was seven; my awareness of my gender identity came before I even knew the words "boy" and "girl." And I can recall, at age five, having an assistant principal, or some adult who wasn't a parent, teacher or the principal, tell me and my classmates to stand "boys on this line, girls on that line." And I got on that line.

So, how did I get on the subject of sexual molestation anyway?

I'll say just one more thing about it for now: When I started therapy, I had thoughts of undergoing a gender transformation, about which I knew little more than "The Operation." But, I was seeing a male therapist, and I didn't think he would be sympathetic to that. Also, I somehow had the idea that it would be more honorable and realistic, which in my vocabulary at that time meant "easier," to find a way to live as a man, preferably a heterosexual one. Who better to teach me that than another man, right?

Ironically enough, the social worker I would see during the first two years I lived and worked as Justine, and the year that preceded it, is a trans man. Of course I didn't go to him to learn how to be a man. But I think in some way, he helped me to better understand what it meant for me to "be" a man, or at least to understand--and sympathise with--men, to some degree anyway. And that was when I started to feel an incredible amount of pity for Nick. He experienced the molestations and all of the psychological and spiritual torment of being a supressed (sometimes by himself and other times by the outside world) female. Yet I am the one who was starting to live a happy, if not always easy, life. Somehow it didn't seem fair.

Then again, lots of things in this world aren't fair. Hell, what's more unfair than becoming as beautiful as one will ever be while one is dying? Do those leaves that are falling know just how unfair it all is.

Now you know why some people think I'm a troublemaker. ;-) But, hey, you can't always be well-behaved, or at least what most people think is well-behaved, when everything is turning, and you yourself are turning. At least I'm learning to accept, and even embrace it all--yes, even getting a full-time faculty position at a time and by means I didn't expect it.

So that season turned, and so is this one. And the seasons of my life. At least the biggest turning of all--the one that's going to happen for me in a little more than eight months--is one I've always wanted, one that will make me more whole. Then, I guess, something else will turn, or I'll turn in some other way.

Now, before I start singing that Byrds song (which, actually, is very, very good), I'll turn in.

Turning

The first day of November...Another turning point?

It's not that any major event happened for me today. But somehow, I feel something besides a page in the calendar has turned.

October is everything people like me love about the fall. Why do leaves have to be so beautiful when they're dying?

I think now of a Japanese story I read years ago. In it, a young boy contracts a disease that will kill him. However, nobody believes it because as he comes closer to his death, he becomes more beautiful. How can anybody look so good and be so sick?

Obviously, the author hadn't met Paris Hilton. But seriously, that boy is like a leaf in the month of October. Then--about now--that blaze of gold and red and orange turns brown as the branches they will leave bare.

You might say this is where the fall turns serious, toward winter. Although it was rather mild today, there was a hint of cold in the wind and of colder rains in the blanket of clouds that kept in the last remaining hints of fall.

It reminds me, somehow, of the time I'd gotten on the #5 train in the Bronx and took it the wrong way--not back to Brooklyn, where I was living at the time, but further up into the Bronx, where I knew no one and almost nothing.

But for some reason I though about getting off the train at Morris Park, a few stops away from where I'd started. It's in the middle of one of the last remaining Italian neighborhoods in this city. But I wasn't thinking about that. In fact, I wasn't consciously aware of why I'd wanted to go there.

In that part of the Bronx, the #5 train runs below ground level. However, it's not a tunnel: It's more like a ditch or a canal, as the top is open. That is, until you come to the station. Then it's a sort of tunnel, and the train's echo fills it: more like an Amtrak or some other long-distance train than a subway.

It had rained that entire day, which was unseasonably cold for the middle of June. The tunnel provided some respite from it. Still, when the train stopped and its doors opened, I froze in my seat. I couldn't have moved, even if I'd wanted to.

And when those doors shut, I knew there was no going back. I rode that train to one end of the line, then...I'm not sure of what happened next. I hadn't been drinking or taking any drugs, so I was more or less in my right mind. All I know is that much later, in the evening, I was sitting in a park in another part of town.

The next day--a Friday-- I called some friends and my mother, who was living in New Jersey. "I'm coming over this weekend. I have to talk to you."

In a way, that was the second step to becoming who I am now. (Getting clean and sober was the first.) I was near my thirty-fourth birthday. However, I was dealing, for the first time, with something that happened to me over a period of time, and the first moment of it I recalled came when I was nine years old.

A family friend molested me. A very close family friend, in fact: He and my parents met when they were teenagers. In fact, that man introduced my mother and father to each other.

What Are You Doing On Halloween?

So what were you for Halloween?

During the past week or so, a few people--co-workers, mostly, as I've spent just about all of my waking hours at the college--asked me what I was going to "go as" for the holiday.

And how did I reply? With the easiest joke my transition has given me: "Oh, I'm going in drag!" Good for a few laughs.

What they--most of them, anyway--don't understand is that in my life as Nick, I spent every day in drag. Boy-drag, that is. Pants and shirts, not blouses and skirts. On occasion, ties instead of the necklaces and pendants I often wear now. Watches were my only jewelery, and my palette included brown, navy, beige, black and gray. I still wear those colors (beige, not so often: It washes me out.) but now I combine them with all sorts of beautiful hues: lavender, violet, lilac, thistle (When I lived as a guy, they were all "purple")rose, peony, magenta, coral (pink, the most forbidden color of all). crimson, cherry, scarlet, cranberry (red, to you guys!) and, well the list goes on. One color, I've discovered, is welcome in both genders--and, fortunately for me, one I love: burgundy

I think now of a day during my first year of living and working "as" Justine. I complimented Marianne, who was a fellow adjunct English prof at LaGuardia College, on a sweater she wore that day. "Thank you."

"That color really works on you," I said.

Shyrlee, another adjunct prof, was looking on. "What do you call that color?," she chimed in.

I thought for a moment. "Celery."

Their jaws dropped. "You really are a woman," they intoned in unison.

Ah, the joys of color. And skirts. Or pants, when I want to, not because I have to, wear them. And those nice, soft, flowing lines that elicit compliments about my appearance. Yes, my appearance. As in "you look really nice today."

I heard that a lot yesterday. I wore a suit consisting of a blazer and calf-length skirt made of wool in a purplish/burgandyish/maroonish color (And I teach English?), in a very classical cut. Under the blazer I wore a women's button-down shirt in a color Bontrager bicycles calls "Serious pink." I know that because I use that handlebar wrap, in that color, on both of my Mercians. It's about the same shade as magnolia buds, maybe a bit deeper.

With them, I wore nude pantyhose and closed-toe dress slingbacks with three-inch heels. I bought the shoes years ago, before I started living full-time. Great investment: They look good with just about anything, from that suit or others I have, to jeans.

But that suit and shirt elicited all the compliments. When I put it on, I felt good--no, radiant. Which leads me to wonder: Did I really look that good, or were people picking up on how I felt. Even with a cold that left me tired before I got to the class in which I was observed, I felt as if the Beatles could've been singing Something to me personally.

Some feminists might hate me for saying this, but I wish I could've been a pretty girl or young woman. But now I hope that, at least sometimes, I can be an attractive woman. And it won't happen because of my looks. Rather, it's a matter of style (not mere fashion), intelligence and grace. I wonder how much, if at all, I will ever have any of those qualities, especially the latter two.

Still, somehow I find myself feeling good, feeling radiant, even charismatic in some way, for much of the time. Of course, I like it when people pick up on, and affirm those qualities in me. But I just enjoy feeling that way, for its own sake. Frivolous, perhaps. But we all have to have our flaws, and at least one person who will indulge at least one of them.

Intelligent, confident, radiant, attractive, charismatic, creative--and feminine: Now there's the person I want to be for Halloween. And every day.

Academic Dynamics

Today I had a visitor to one of my classes: a professor who came to observe and evaluate me. He came to the most difficult class I have this semester: a composition class populated by seeming hangers-out (i.e., one who hang out) and other scholastic misfits who are older than the just-out-of-high-school students in the composition class I teach in the morning.

The kids I teach in the morning are great. However, it's really difficult to get the afternoon students to work. They want to nudge, slap and banter each other rather than to do assignments or study. At least one of them is a parent; it doesn't seem to have matured her. Others often come in late. I had two such stragglers today, who came in a few minutes after class started. One came in for the first time in a couple of weeks and wanted to know, as soon as she walked in, whether I had any papers to return to her.

I know that the professor who obeserved me wasn't thrilled about that. I told a couple of other people about this. They all said not to worry, I'll be fine. I guess. But I still remember someone who did hold students' actions against me: the department chair at LaGuardia College. She wrote an evaluation that was about 80 percent denigration and 20 pervent damnation by the faintest of praise. I suppose lots of people have faced similar situations. I'm just not particularly good at dealing with them.

Also, that department chair wanted to get rid of me, but she knew she couldn't do it outright. So she wrote something damning enough to besmirch my reputation as an instructor, but not bad enough to prevent me from being rehired. That she left up to one of her deputies who, like her, pretended to accept me more than she actually did when I began my gender transformation. (The first thing that deputy said when I came to work as Justine was, "Well, my sister's gay...") Some so-called educated people do that sort of thing all the time: They know they can hate me but also know how to cloak or couch it in the right terms, which are almost always as fluffy as those little sweaters on the toy dogs fashionistas tote as accessories.

I'm sure there are people at the college in which I'm working now who'd like to be rid of me just as much as that department chair at La Guardia wanted me gone. (One of my colleagues, who also taught at LaGuardia, said the following when I mentioned the chair's name: "I'm surprised you even waste the motion in your tongue to talk about that thing, much less waste your mental energy thinking about it." And they think I'm a bitch!) At least they don't have the same kind of direct authority over me that she did. Well, now that I think of it, I've always had the feeling the provost didn't like me, but then I've heard he doesn't really like anybody.

At least the prof who observed me today doesn't seem to have any animus toward me. He's not aloof, but his facial expression never seems to change, either: more or less a lot of people's idea of an intellectual professor. But, in all of the previous encounters I've had with him, he's been very respectful. And he is in charge of the department's curriculum committe, on which I now serve.

Back to that class...They all know I'm transgendered. One of the students brought it up in class. I affirmed it and mentioned it only one other time: two weeks ago, when I gave them the "How badly do you want an education?" lecture. Some of them thought, and probably still think, that I am a child of privilege. I am, in the sense that my parents are being as supportive as they are of my change and that I lived 45 of my 50 years as a white male who was heterosexual, kinda sorta. But I'd bet that they have a higher standard of living than I had when I was a student. And some of them are getting financial aid I didn't get because some of it didn't exist in my day, and for what was available, my father made about $500 more a year than what was allowed for financial aid students.

But I digress. That I'm a white, middle-aged transgender woman renders me unworthy of respect in the eyes of at least four students, who sit together and act like junior high schoolers. (One of those students is the parent I mentioned.) I've tried speaking with them in every way I know. I tried the imperative voice, because some young people will respond to nothing else. The risk of speaking that way is that some people don't hear it when it, or any other kind of assertion, when it comes from a woman. And I've also tried the appeasing tone of voice. You know, what a lot of us women use most of the time: "Oh, could you please..." or "I'm sorry to be such a bother." No go with that one, either. Not even appealing to them as someone who understands how much better you have to be, and how much harder you have to work, when you're not a white heterosexual male from older colleges with bigger networks, seems to have influenced them.

In other words, I am dealing with a ghetto mentality, which unfortunately is shared by lots of people who don't live in what we think of as ghettos. People who operate from that mentality don't trust anyone who doesn't look, talk or act like themselves, or their conceptions of themselves, or how they think people are supposed to be. And, needless to say, their notions about race and gender are rigid because they're so intertwined with their class resentments--or, in my case, resentments over what they perceive my social and economic class to be.

They're not bad people, really. I just don't know what it will take to impress upon them that because they're darker and poorer, and come from different schools, than most of the people who will be interviewing them for jobs or other things they might want, they'll have to be even better than anyone else who's chasing those same things. I never would have understood that if I hadn't made my gender transition and dealt with some former professional colleagues and superiors who knew me as Nick.

The prof who observed me today didn't, but he knows about my transition. And it's never come up in any of our conversations. That's fine with me; he always gave me respect, possibly more than I deserve. After all, he is smarter, nicer and all kinds of other -er's than I am.

Now...as for the kind of evaluation I'll get...

Life Unfurling

You've heard about your life flashing in front of you? Lately, sometimes I feel like mine is unfurling like a film in very, very slow motion.

Early in my transition, I saw my early childhood. Later, after the hormones started to do their work on me and I was experiencing my "second adolescence," I also was reliving my first one, at least in my head. Now, as I've mentioned before, I find myself flashing back to my senior undergraduate year. I think it has to do with the waiting and anticipation. Then, I knew my life was going to be different in a few months, though I wasn't quite sure of how. And now, again, I am thinking ahead a few months ahead--although, I must say, this time I have a clearer and more realistic idea of what I might encounter. Still, I'm no more able to predict my life than I was in those days.

Another common thread: In a way I want these days, weeks, months to fly by. On the other hand, I don't want to miss anything, whatever that means. Back in my youth, I didn't think there was anything to miss in the place and time where I happened to be, mainly out of circumstance. The irony was that, in a lot of ways Rutgers, where I went to school, was a better fit for who I was then than York, where I now teach, is for who I am now.

A caveat: Yes, I am in a college full of religious people of one kind or another. Ironically, the Muslim students of Bengal and Paki heritage or birth are more secular and Americanized in their day-to-day lives than the US-born or Anglo-Carribean Christian fundamentalists. Even more ironically, I get along well with those students and faculty and staff members, and there are faculty and staff members with the John 3:16 verse emblazoned on their tote bags who treat me with compassion. And then there are Regina, the consummate Mom and a co-director of the Office of Disabled students, who is purely and simply the nicest person I've met in a long time. And Linda, the Women's Center director, who spoke up for me when a couple of staff members and students spread false rumors about me.

When I was Rutgers, I only interacted with other people when I had to or when I couldn't avoid it. The only close friend I had was Betsy, whom I mentioned earlier, and the only person from Rutgers days with whom I'm still in contact is Bruce, whom I met during my senior year but didn't get to know well until later.

More of that unfurling reel: Today I ran an errand at the World Financial Center. Tim, whose wife just gave birth to a boy, bought a pair of brake levers from me on eBay. He paid for the cost of the levers and my subway fare, and rounded it up a dollar.

After seeing him, I walked along the Hudson toward Battery Park and the Ferry terminal. I used to walk by the waterfront, which was much seedier in those days, and ride the Ferry to Staten Island and back. I think I set foot on the island only when passengers were ordered off the boat; otherwise I stayed on and waited for the return trip. Sometimes I'd stay on for another round trip. That would give me time to drink, get high, maybe write a bad poem or two. (Of course, I didn't think they were bad in those days.) On that boat, I could get lost in every possible way: on the water, among the lights and shadows of the Manhattan skyline and among the necklace of cables and beads of light on the Bayonne, Verrazano and Brooklyn Bridges as the sky darkened.

As I came to the terminal, I looked to my left, toward Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. It had been overcast through most of the day, but by that time the veiled sun crowned the plume of clouds with a dusky orange corona. Men and women in suits and topcoats--and sneakers or sensible shoes--rushed for the soon-to-depart ferry. They have families, houses, cars and all of the things I was avoiding in my youth at the other end of the trip, in Staten Island.

I was tempted to take a ride. But I was feeling slightly under the weather, and was skipping a reception for new faculty members and a class tonight so I could get some sleep tonight. This semester, I haven't been getting more than four hours of sleep on Wednesday nights. When I get home, it's usually midnight or later, and I can't get to sleep right away. And I have to get up at 5 am for Thursday classes, which don't end until 8:35 pm. On top of that, tomorrow I'm being observed and evaluated during the most difficult of those classes. I'm nervous, to say the least.

Will the reel continue to unfurl? The last time I had an observation with as much at stake, it wasn't good. I had applied for a full-time faculty job at LaGuardia College and the department chair herself was observing me. The year before, I "came out" to the college community: in the spring, I was Mr. Nick; in the fall, I was Ms. Justine. And the department chair and others, I think, were pretending to be more accepting of it than they actually were. I knew that at the end of that class, when she grinned the "I told you so" grin. I admit it wasn't a great class, but I got--by far--the worst evaluation I'd ever had. And she kept me dangling until the beginning of the winter session.

I hope that part doesn't repeat itself. I do want to return to York next semester for a number of reasons--including the students in that difficult class.

And that's another reel unfurling.

Midterm Week

Another crazy two days in a crazy week at the college. There are midterms and "peer evaluaton" of faculty member. So on Thursday I'm being evalasted, and today I had to evaluate someone who, frankly is a better teacher than I am. Or, at least, she's more organized.

And, I think, she engages students in ways I never could. I think part of that comes from having been a musician--she talked a little bit about that during her class. So, she's used to performing in front of people in ways that I'll never be. And I think she has a natural charisma that I simply don't have.

But those aren't the only reasons why she had a roomful of freshmen rapt with attention at 2:00 in the afternoon, which is the worst time to teach. She is, frankly, more intelligent and educated than I am. And she can relate her learning to her students, in the ways they need to hear it, in ways that I never could.

Maybe this is what I dislike--on my bad days, anyway--about being an educator. There's always something to make me feel inferior, and anything I do is done better than I could ever do it by someone else. Then again, I don't really need anyone to make me feel inferior: I simply fall short most of the time in the classroom, whether as a student or teacher. And in lots of other things, too.

I am probably the worst student ever to become a college faculty member. I'm not exaggerating: My best-kept secrets are my grades and test scores. I'll tell anyone anything--my age, my weight, what's between my legs--before I'll mention my academic record.

Do I sound like one of those stores that says its prices are "too low to advertise?"

Well, at least I'm not taking any tests this year, except for the ones in my doctor's offices. So there's no possibility for failure there.

I know I'll fail at more things. I hope they don't include being a woman or a human being. Then again, I don't think I failed at being a man so much as it could only fail me. And now I don't have to deal with that now.

Everyone tells me I'll pass. And that I pass. Now I want to do more. I hope I can.

Babies? Blame the Hormones...

Another quiet Sunday on which I slept later and got less done than I'd planned. I haven't even come close to reading all the papers from my classes, and I'm so far behind my e-mails it's laughable. And I didn't get to ride my bike until late in the afternoon, and then only for an hour.

But on my way out, I saw Millie with her next-door neighbors, all gathered around a stroller. Of course that meant Patricia's son, who is now two and a half months old and has his father's strong jawline and brown eyes--and all-around good looks. Not long ago, I would've sidestepped such a scene. But today I felt drawn to it.

Maybe it had to do with the fact that Millie and the neighbors were gathered around the baby. Then again, in times past, I didn't feel so compelled to see someone's baby, not even if he or she was born to a friend or family member. And I notice that, lately, I've talked to, cooed and touched babies of complete strangers, and no one seems to mind. Not only that, small children seem as drawn to me as cats and dogs.

All right. I'm going to upset some feminists and gender studies people I know. I can't help but to wonder: Is this another effect of the hormones and the accompanying changes? In the academic world, and in some other arenae, many people seem child-adverse and baby-intolerant. One prof said she tells her friends and acquaintances she's not child-friendly, so they shouldn't expect her to share their joy. She has openly expressed what, I suspect, what others feel. And, a male prof at the college says he doesn't like children because they represent the bourgeois idea of marriage and family: institutions of which he wants no part.

And then there are those feminist/gender study theorists who simply resent the fact that babies represent the oppression of women. In a way, I can see their point: Once a woman gets pregnant, she forecloses a lot of career opportunities. And her colleagues, and the rest of the world, see her as a breeder, both in Margaret Atwood's and ACT-UP's usage of that term.

Now, I'm glad I didn't have children because, given how conflicted I was about myself, I didn't think I could be a good parent. And I certainly wasn't about to have children with Toni or Eva. It was never about how I felt about kids: After all, I worked with them and found the experience fulfilling, often enjoyable.

Dominick and I have talked about adopting a child. He wants to take one in, even if he has to raise her (He would rather have a girl, as I would.) alone. I'd like to have a child, too, but I don't think I'd want to raise her alone simply because of my age. Some would say it's not a good idea for me to start raising a baby at this point in my life because I might not live to see her become a woman. They have a point, but I also feel that every parent takes a risk, no matter how small, that he or she may not always be there for the child.

At least Dominick and I both believe, with good reason, that I would be a loving and supportive parent. Others have expressed the same confidence about me. It's not that I no longer believe that the world is full of confusion and suffering, and that a child could be an heir to them. Rather, I now believe that knowing the nature of the life my child might inherit is actually the reason to raise one.


lightning crashes, a new mother cries
her placenta falls to the floor
the angel opens her eyes
the confusion sets in
before the doctor can even close the door

lightning crashes, an old mother dies
her intentions fall to the floor
the angel closes her eyes
the confusion that was hers
belongs now, to the baby down the hall

oh now feel it comin' back again
like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind
forces pullin' from the center of the earth again
i can feel it.

lightning crashes, a new mother cries
this moment she's been waiting for
the angel opens her eyes
pale blue colored eyes, presents the circle
and puts the glory out to hide, hide


The suffering and confusion are part of the circle, which is not complete without them. I'm sure that Millie and Patricia have experienced their share, as my mother has, and my grandmother did. And they bore--and, more important, raised--children anyway.

What you just heard isn't the hormones talking. But the cooing, the baby talk...Where did they come from?

Neither Stranger Nor Native in the Nail Salon

These days, when I get my hair or nails done, or see women with toddlers or babies, I recall--oddly enough--an experience Jacobo Timerman described in Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number.



Timerman is an Argentinian Jewish writer who was imprisoned and later exiled for his criticism of the Peron regime, particulary its anti-Semitism. After years of incarceration and torture, he was stripped of his Argentinian citizenship and exiled to Israel.



Although he never denied his heritage, he was not a religious Jew. This meant that he went to shul on holidays, if ever, and that he never learned Hebrew--not even the prayers. So, when he was sent to Israel, he entered something that was the inverse of being an exile: He was in a country to which he felt, via his fellow Jews in Israel, an attachment if not a bond.

Nonetheless, it was difficult to make the transition to living there. Learning, in his late fifties, a language that bears no relation to the Spanish he had been speaking all of his life was no easy task. Nor was adjusting to the rhthyms and customs of his new/old (or old/new) country.

But it wasn't just a matter of dealing with logistics or relationships. The very light of the place itself was something to which he was not accustomed:

The balcony of my house in a suburb of Tel Aviv faces the Mediterranean. It is large, almost the size of a room, and my wife has filled it with flowers, plants and Max Ernst posters. Facing my balcony, the scarlet sun is sinking over a sea that's too blue for my eyes, which are accustomed to the southern Atlantic. It hasn't rained in Tel Aviv for nine months , and the ceremony of the sun blazing over the sea is repeated daily.

The first time I read that passage, at least twenty-five years ago, I cried. And I am now. Even in the translation I've quoted, it's possible to see how beautifully it was written. But, then, I felt somehow that Timerman, whose life has had almost nothing in common with mine, was describing not just my life, but my relationship to the world. Why I felt that way would not become clear to me until I first began living as Justine.

In some way I had always felt like an exile, no matter where I was or whom I was with. That is probably the reason why I have always identified with people who were displaced, for whatever reasons. Of all the stories in the Bible, the one that always resonated most for me was the exile of the Jews from Egypt and their wandering the desert for forty years. After that, no place where the Jews lived could ever be home: There was always the possiblity, at any moment, of being forced to leave. And they couldn't go home, so to speak.

And so it was with my gender identity. The body I inhabited always felt like a place of exile. So did locker-rooms and all of those other places where I had to congregate with males, particulary those sanctoned by their schools, workplaces and such. I could speak their language, at least after a fashion. And I knew how to dress, act and talk the part, if you will.

Now my body is turning into a version or variant of the one to which had been stored up in my spirit, my subconscious, or any other place I would visit, out of necessity, every chance I got. And I find myself in spheres to which I always belonged, at least in spirit: the ones in which women congregate. They include, of course, nail and hair salons.

I am still learning the unwritten codes of behaving and relating in those places. It seems more acceptable to talk with, and be talked to, by strangers than in most other arenae. You should also make eye contact, but not too much. People have always told me that I make a lot of eye contact; I've even spooked (unintentionally, of course) a few people with it. And more than a few people have told me that I have an "intense" or "intensive" look, although these days I hear things like "intensely sensitive."

The thing is, I've always looked at people, whether out of caution or curiosity. Even when I was living as Nick, women seemed to sense that I wasn't looking at them out of sexual impulses (at least, not most of the time, anyway). And I could compliment what they wore, or even the beauty of their eyes, and only rarely did anyone take it as anything more than that. Now, if you're a guy and you tell another guy that you like his tie, well, that's another story!

In places like nail salons and hair places, that sort of interaction almost seems mandatory, or at least expected. It may have something to do with the hair dressers and nail polishers (What do you call them, anyway?) themselves: They seem more communicative than the barbers I used to see--more like bartenders, really. And I think this sets a tone for those places.

It seems that even the light is different in those places than it is in the barbershops I used. Of course, some of that has to do with the decor: You are more likely to be swathed, at least psychologically, in shades of peach, pink, lavender(!), soft yellows or sepia than to be surrounded by the more industrial shades found in many barbershops. But more important, the light seems more diffuse yet more true (if not surgically accurate) than what one sees by in a barbershop. It's odd: The light seems softer in spite of the abundance of mirrors one finds in nail or hair salons, at least the ones I use.

It's not only that one finds more mirrors in these places: They always seem to be positioned in such a way that whoever's getting her hair or nails done next to, or across the aisle, from you is within reach, even though you can't move. I find myself having "conversations" through facial expressions and eye movements: something I don't recall experiencing in men's barber shops or any other male venue. I'm probably still not very good at it, but I enjoy it somehow: It's more or less the way I felt when I was first learning French and stumbling all over it.

One thing I must say, though, is that women who are complete strangers--some of whom surely know that I'm transgendered--have made me feel very welcome. I think in particular of Mimi, an Italian-American woman who's probably about ten years older than I am and is truly stylish rather than merely fashionable because she is who she is. (I think this is also the first time I've actually talked with someone named Mimi.) She is so warm and friendly that I don't think I could have not talked to her, even if I'd tried. Which, of course, I wouldn't have.

Perhaps I was not born to that world, as Mimi and the other women were. But, perhaps they sense that I am of it. I think now of what Isabelle used to say about my: that I was French a couer, at heart, because even though I am American and will never speak quite like a native, I was at ease with Frenchness as I was with my native culture--possibly more at ease, at least for a time in my life.

But still, I wonder: How is it possible to feel that you're exactly where you belong even though you're struggling to learn about it? Not that it's a bad position, it's just odd.

In other words, I love the world in which I'm living now. But I'm still getting used to it.

A Walk Through the Village

The morning started off cold and breezy: a harbinger of winter. But it rather quickly turned into one of those fall days that, while not quite warm, basked in the radiant, refulgent hues of dawn and sunset.

I could feel myself turning into those colors and other kinds of light--Maybe this is what Salvidor Quasimodo meant when he wrote

m'illumno
d'immenso.

That has to be the shortest poem of which I'm aware. And, if any is impossible to translate, that one is. So I won't even try. Any reader who reads it as it looks to him or her will do as well as any other reader, I think.

You are the power of that light because the light becomes you. You are full of that light, which is the magnificence of your being because it is you, who have become the power that has become you . I know I'm not anywhere near Quasimodo's poem. But never mind...

The light becomes you, and you can walk through time as well as space because neither can stop light, any more than anything I did to remain as a guy named Nick would ever, ever keep the spirit--the light--of Justine from shining through. Or the light of any other spirit, for that matter.

Especially as that light grows more intense, and deeper, as the day goes on. That perfect-fall-day light refracted through the old brownstones and brick houses of the West Village and the cafes and stores along Seventh Avenue and Bleecker Street. It is hard to find any more beautiful light in any city, yet it is tinged, at least for me, with some sadness--for the time and my youth that have passed, to be sure, but because I understand that the way I see it now is in inevitable outcome of how I used to experience this place.

Back in the day--I'm thinking about my senior year at Rutgers, again--I spent a lot of time in the Village. Then, it felt like a refuge--which is to say, it was an escape--from what I perceived to be a prison of mundaneness in New Jersey, in a college, as good as it was, I never really wanted to attend. (Don't ask how I graduated!) Sometimes I'd go with Betsy; other times I went alone. Either way, I felt beyond the reach--of what? Expectations: That I would become a military officer, as my father wanted, or that I would get a job in some office, get married and "settle down," as everyone else seemed to want. And everyone thought I should fulfill their expectations, mainly because they thought I was another one of those young people who "didn't know what he wanted."

Actually, I knew full well, but I couldn't say it. Or so I felt. I had some vague notion of becoming a writer: of being like those writers and musicians whose ghosts I was pursuing in the Village. And when things got too bad in this country (Reagan had yet to become President, though it was starting to look like a possibility.), I would flee to Paris or some other exotic place. And, of course, I would never marry: I would live for art and orgasms, with some bike riding thrown in for good measure.

Occasionally I would talk about this with someone. You don't even have to guess the reactions: a few indulged me; some, who shared some version or another of the same fantasy, encouraged it; most, however, would admonish me for my romanticism.

Go ahead, laugh about it. I am right now. (Yes, that gives you permission! ;-) ) But then, those trips--my escapes-- were really all I had. And the Village, both East and West, was the one place where I felt I could live that fantasy, even for a moment. There was nobody to tell me not to; it seemed that even the boxes into which other people wanted to place me didn't exist. I could order a coffee (mainly because that's all I could afford) and eye the pretty waitress who was pretty mainly because she was there while I was writing, or at least making the gestures of doing so. Then I could follow Bleecker Street across Sixth Avenue toward Sheridan Square and Christopher Street, where--well, I probably don't have to tell you what (or more precisely, whom) I saw on Christopher Street in 1979! Or, I could walk Bleecker in the opposite direction, toward Lafayette Street, and cross over into the East Village and chase the shadows of Charlie Parker and Allen Ginsberg.

Back then, if you said "Williamsburg" to anyone, they thought of the colonial theme park in Virginia. And you didn't go to SoHo after dark. (Well, I did, but that's another story!) The Village, East and West, was still the place to be, or so it seemed. Bleecker Street and the West Village always seemed lit by neon, even in daylight; the East was cool because had crumbling bricks and falling plaster I could enter by choice, never mind that lots of people (namely the Puerto Ricans and old Jews) didn't make that decision and still ended up there.

It's amazing, now that I think of it, that I didn't get myself killed over some of the things I said and did. Actually, I wouldn't have minded dying that way, or so I thought: It would have been more honorable somehow than to double over from a heart attack while wearing a three-piece suit. In truth, I simply would never've had to make any of the decisions that would lead me to such a fate, or being a military officer, or any of the other destinies to which others tried to steer me.

In those days, the streets of the West Village were giddier, those of the East funkier, and on both ends, more dangerous, than they are now. There was no money to be made from high-tech stocks or other such things, so people, it seemed, were more relaxed. And nobody had heard about AIDS: A few people, none of whom I knew yet, had friends or relatives who died from what they called "gay cancer," for lack of a better term.

In other words, all of my encounters with people there were momentary pleasures. It's very easy for me to look back with nostalgia on those days because it didn't require any sort of commitment to my own life, to my own self, to move through them.

And when Betsy accompanied me, there or for a cup of coffee (Yes, a real, literal one!) in the cafeteria at Rutgers, it removed me from yet other expectations. A lot of people thought we were a couple of some sort because she was young and attractive, and we talked, argued and hugged in ways that most casual friends don't. As long as she was around, I was "off limits," and I didn't have people hitting on me or trying to fix me up with someone or another.

But, as with all things, none of it could last, even if that had been what I wanted. I would come to know people who lived (as I did, briefly) , suffered and died in the Village. And they weren't legends or others I never encountered in person: They were real, flesh-and-blood people who didn't meet their fates over their eighteenth (or whatever number) of whiskey in the White Horse Tavern.

Within a few blocks of Sheridan Square--the site of the Stonewall Rebellion--John, Elizabeth, Tom, Raul, Amy and Nick(!) all died of AIDS-related illnesses. John, Nick and Amy lived in the neighborhood; Raul and Tom had lovers there and Elizabeth was in a Housing Works residence, trying to get her "life back together." John was my second AA sponsor: He guided me for the next four years after Kevin, who helped me through my first five years, also died from pneumonia brought on by AIDS. I sponsored Raul and Amy: I broke one of AA's unofficial rules against mentoring someone of the "opposite" gender.

After Elizabeth died, I didn't go to the Village for a long time, or so it seemed when I finally went back: for counseling and support groups at the LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street. After about two years of sessions with Ray, an FTM social worker who is one of the best human beings I've ever met, and of attending groups and other functions, some members of the support group and I decided to go out an eat. We went to the diner around the corner. After I sipped the coffee I used to order as a prelude to my meal, my eyes welled up. I excused myself, stepped outside and my face soaked with my tears. Janine and Deeanna, who were in the group, and a waitress followed me outside.

When I was composed enough to speak, I explained that the last time I was in that diner--long ago, I said--I was with a friend who died from AIDS. And I'd eaten at that diner at least once with each of the people I mentioned who died from the disease. Then Charlene showed up and, when she learned what happened, asked whether we should go somewhere else.

"No. I probably need to be here."

And, after we split up, I spent a couple more hours roaming the streets of a Village night. None of the people reminded me of anyone I remembered. That was probably a good thing. They don't remember the old days; good for them, I thought. Of course there were some things they'd never understand, but I envied them.

You see, they don't know how the light of that place came to be, any more than I knew, back then, how I could not become it. They did not know, any more than the people with whom I had encounters today because their dogs walked over to me and licked my hands. And an attractive young woman with a dog that didn't look like any other I've seen didn't flinch when, as she turned the key to her door, I asked about her companion. There is no way she could know about the ones who died, from whatever reasons or causes, where we stood.

At one time, that would have made me angry. But I probably never would have had such an encounter as the person I was in those days. And, somehow, I realize now that I enjoyed that moment, and my walk through the Village, precisely because of my long-ago experiences. Life is beautiful (All right, now you know I really am a romantic!) because there is death; joy is joyful because of the pain and suffering that so often precede and underlie it. To think otherwise would be to begrudge all those people who love, or even like, who I am now but didn't know me back in the day.

And after that walk, I got to have lunch with Bruce, whom I first met back in those days.

Not Excellent and Fair, but Pretty and Pretty Damned Good

Shakespeare may not have called this day "excellent and fair." But it was pretty and pretty damned good in its own way.

Not the least of this day's delights was the sky. No, it wasn't that cloudless sky under which I pedalled the weekend before last to Point Lookout. It wasn't even the mostly clear sky that graced most of last week.

Instead, it was a kind of ceiling one sees only at this time of year. On the horizon, the clouds were thickening and their undersides wove ashy gray waves and ridges. In spite of their expanse and hue, they did not grow heavy and ominous; rather, they refracted rather than concealed the light above them.

And that light is what makes them the kind of cloud unique to this time of year. That refrected sun and sky is the surest sign that the summer sun, even the early fall or Indian summer sun, is long gone. Instead, the air will be a reflection of this light, especially on a day, like this one, in which the wind begins to strip yellow and crimson leaves from branches that will twist and knurl bare in a couple of weeks. But for now, the trees still have some of their vestments. And the earth, in spite of the chill and wind, does not feel desolate under the shawl of clouds.

Yes, a shawl. There's actually something rather reassuring about the sky today, like a strength one acquires because one is vulnerable. We think of women--usually, older or religious or both--when we think of shawls. But, really, who has more wisdom than they have? They know what they know and what they don't know; they may seem frail but they are the greatest founts of useful advice about how to live. Maybe it's because they've loved and lost more than anyone else.

At least that's what I belive, based on nothing more than my own experience. And that experience also leads me to believe that shawls can be so beautiful (I love wearing them!) because, in some way, one has to earn the right to wear one: after a long journey, or in the presence of whatever one has to wrestle in order to gain wisdom and strength (which is not the same thing as power). Now that I think of it, the only men I've seen wearing shawls are the Orthodox Jews with their teifillin. Some wear them every day, underneath their other clothing. I think now of Daniel, with whom I used to ride: Sometimes I would see the fringes of his shawl poking from under the hem of his bicycle jersey.

I'm also thinking now of a Langston Hughes poem in which the breeze spreads a shawl of leaves across a bare garden. I don't recall the exact words of the poem, but I do remember that image distinctly.

So what lies ahead? Am I gaining some sort of strength or wisdom for something, perhaps a struggle, that lies ahead? That wouldn't be new, of course, but the circumstances for it are different. I don't mean to be cynical when I say that in looking forward to, and preparing for, anything exciting or exhiliariting, I now anticipate struggles and challenges. But I'm not letting them scare me off: the possible rewards are just too great. In this case, they include more fully becoming the person I truly am.

Just to show you that I'm not cynical: I know winter's coming. And it might be a tough one. But it's also an opportunity to wrap myself in both physical and metaphorical shawls and blankets. Likewise, during the early days of my transition, the challenges and sometimes the hardships gave me the opportunity to find out that, yes, there are people who love me and who would help, and sometimes even protect or defend, me. And I learned of them, paradoxically, just as I was starting to learn what my strength and strengths actually are. The funny thing is that it's actually humbling to learn that I have the ability to help other people and to write well. Maybe it's because my vulnerability led me to those strenghts.

And this day was pretty. But it was pretty damned good, too, because it's a harbinger of things to come, including the winter: the difficult time that teaches me to find nurturance. That, in turn, shows me how to be a nurturer--which is something I've been told I am.

Now that's excellent and fair!

Work

Last Wednesday, I stayed up all night and was all but useless after my morning classes on Thursday.

So what am I doing tonight? Pulling another all-nighter, of course. And I have the same classes tomorrow morning that I have on Thursdays.

So why, you ask, am I writing this now, when (at least in the eyes of people more sensible than me) I should be doing my work or sleeping?

Well...To paraphrase the old neighborhood, "Ya do what ya need ta do." That's not quite the same as what ya gotta do, which includes most of what we think of as our work, as well as other external obligations.

Writing is one of those things I need to do, if only for myself. I guess, in that sense, it's like the gender transformation I'm undergoing.

There's no practical reason why I should be taking that journey--or writing this journal/blog entry. That is, if you define "practical" as what adds to the GDP, or one's own financial portfolio--as if I have such a thing.

But how does that saying go? If you're not good to yourself, you're not good for anybody. For anyone who values me in any way--whether because of the work I do or love I give--it's necessary that I write, and become the person my spirit has always been. Had I not been writing, had I not started my transformation, it's entirely possible I wouldn't be here at all, much less the person they--and I--value.

Does this mean that the responsibility anyone has to anyone else really begins with the resposnsibility one has to one's self? Well...If that's the case, some writers I revere are correct. (Not that I thought they weren't!) Responsibilty to others begins with responsibility to one's self. Isn't that the basic message of A Doll's House? Isn't that at least a subtext of any Shakespearean tragedy? Or any number of other works you'd care to name? Richard Russo, he of Empire Falls fame, said that novelists hold characters accountable for their actions, or something like that. Sounds about right to me.

I did not choose to have my gender identity conflict, any more than I would choose to be born with a crooked spine. But I did choose--however unconsciously--the ways in which I dealt, or didn't deal, with it. Whether I played sports, acted upon borrowed homophobia, or got into relationships--and, yes, a marriage--that gave me cover, I was making choices. So was I the day I finally did what a therapist told me I needed to do twenty years earlier and talked to a psychiatric social worker and a doctor about the way I felt. The first time I mentioned it--to Jay, who was then serving as an intake counselor at the Gender Identity Project (at the LGBT Community Center of New York)--I felt as if I were, for the first time in my life, telling someone the truth about something.

For as long as I can remember, I've heard the saying "A woman's work is never done," or some variation of it. Now I think I'm just starting to understand what it means. Of course, I'll never give birth to a child and, unless Dominick and I adopt, I'm never going to raise one. So I'm not likely to understand how it feels to be a mother. As best as I can tell, being a mother means having someone depend on you, no matter where you are or what time it is. Even after she's taken care of one person, there's someone else in need of the mother.

I'm not likely to experience anything like that. However, there is another kind of work that always finds you when you're a woman. That is, of course, the work you need to do to repair, replenish, rejuvenate, refresh or simply to sustain who and what you are. And you have to do it after you've taken care of all those obligations you have, or people think you have, to them.

When you're a man, there is sometimes recreation, at least. You can just pull back or pull away, and be done with it: Whatever you accomplish during the day defines you, and you can rest on that. But as a woman, you're not defined so much by accomplishments as by what you have done for, and given to, others, and what people think you have done and given for them. So there really is a need to do entirely for one's self, or more precisely, for one's own being. That's why so many of us love to shop, as I do, although that's not necessarily the answer.

I guess the reason why we, as women, have this need to do for, and be for, ourselves at the end of the day is that there is so little in the culture to sustain a girl's development into a real, formidable woman. Most of the movies, TV shows and even the so-called fine arts--not to mention education--only teach girls to fill up some cariacture of femaleness.

In other words, they learn only to be what their mothers, grandmothers, teachers and other women in their lives have been: someone who serves others while ignoring her own needs.

I guess, in some sense, that is something I have in common with other women. The ones born with uteri are not given the language or other tools they need in order to find out and fulfill the mandates of their own spirits. For them, almost nobody knows how to show them how to find, much less nurture, their true selves. And nobody, not even I, knew--or, later, could or would acknowledge--that I needed the same thing: to find and nurture my true female self.

And so our work never ends.

Younger than Before

When I was younger, younger than before
I never saw the truth hanging from the door
And now I'm older see it face to face
And now I'm older gotta get up clean the place.

That's the first stanza of Nick Drake's "Place to Be." I've been playing that song quite a bit lately, and it goes through my mind, especially when I am alone. The undulating, but not quite lilting guitar chords, don't merely accompany the words: They lift, but do not float, the song on its journey through space and time. If I were to listen to something while taking a long bike ride, this would be perfect, at least for part of it.

Here's the rest of it:

And I was green, greener than the hill
Where the flowers grew and the sun shone still
Now I'm darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be.

And I was strong, strong in the sun
I thought I'd see when day is done
Now I'm weaker than the palest blue
Oh, so weak in this need for you.

"Now I'm darker than the deepest sea." It sort of reminds me of what, if I recall correctly, Antonio Machado said: "We die not from darkness, but from cold." And he and other poets, including James Wright, wrote about people growing darker as they age.

But it's that first stanza that goes for the gut. "I never saw the truth hanging from the door/And now I'm older see it face to face." Although I did see the truth about myself--actually, I sighted it and turned away as quickly and violently as I could--the day on which it came face-to-face came much later. That, of course, was the day I saw that woman in Saint Jean de Maurienne and realized I could no longer live in this world as a man.

But there are other kinds of truths that have come face-to-face. Like my attraction to men (although my feelings for women have not died). And that I absolutely must write and teach because, well, what am I if I don't do either? Although I didn't really get the opportunity to show what I could do in my previous position--which had a long, pretentious title--I know that fighting that battle now would be just another distraction. So, I have surrendered it, if without grace. Then again, there aren't many things I do gracefully.

Anyway, to return to the topic of the passage of time: Over the last few days, I've begun to feel as if much of my life happened more than a hundred years ago. Yet, I don't feel as if the time has passed, at least not in the ways to which I am accustomed. However, I also don't feel as if I've gone from chronological Point A to chronological Point B in some kind of time machine. I feel as if I have spiritually, and even physically, passed through all of those years and all of the places I saw during that time. They were, for an instant, as immediate and at times painful as they were when I first entered and left them.

I really do as if I've passed through a hundred years. But I don't feel that much older. (Not that I would know what being a hundred years older would feel like!) In fact, I feel as if I've scarcely aged at all.

If you're thinking, "Hey, cool," well, it is, in a way. What I've experienced really does turn the past into the past. On the other hand, it's disconcerting and exhiliarating at the same time: I feel like someone who's just showed up in this world and is taking her first steps, much like those of the Apollo 11 astronauts on the moon. I feel as if I've been jettisoned from my old world, from my past, after having had only that past as a resource.

What that means is that I can't act out of memory. Somehow I've become acutely aware of this after the week that just passed. I have taken walks, seen plays, gone to dinner and done all sorts of other things with the women and men with whom I've been romantically or sexually involved, as well as with friends, family members and co-workers. But somehow none of it applied when Dominick and I walked along Long Island Sound at the former Fort Totten, when we circulated among the crowd at the reception that followed the play we saw at the college, and even when we just whiled time away after walking out of the movie.

The past year, the past five years, the previous five, the forty that came before: all of them seem frozen in some sort of amber that I couldn't crack even if I wanted to. It seems that the people with whom I am friendly now--and I include my parents--have either moved away, and helped me to progress from, it or simply weren't part of it in the first place. I also realize now that those who've decided they no longer want to be friends or otherwise continue relationships with me have chosen to enclose themselves in that amber: They only know the past, and how I was in it, and don't want to move on, with or without me.

It seems I have been handed down, given a place to be. But I'm still getting used to it, really. After all, I only entered it--slowly, and with a lot of fear--five years ago. And I'm fifty now: at the end of a ray of time, but still younger, younger than before.

Leaving a Movie for the Imagination

Tonight Dominick and I went to a movie. We lasted through the first twenty minutes or so of Quarantine, a remake of a movie I've never seen. Whether or not that makes any difference, I'll never know.

I don't know which of us damned he movie more. Dominick said it reminded him of The Blair Witch Project, but wasn't as good. I replied that I felt like I was watching The Exorcist without the charm.

Because it was made in a psedo-documentary style, I can see the connection to Blair Witch. On the other hand, the sheer grotesqueness of some of the footage does recall The Exorcist. The only problems are that the story isn't as compelling and the acting isn't anywhere near as good in Quarantine.

Anyway, getting out of there gave us an excuse to wander a bit and laugh together. We were passing time and neither of us wanted to go home. So he drove up 36th Street into the upper part of Astoria. It looked like someone was staging a miniature version of the San Gennaro festival, complete with greasy sausage and pepper sandwiches and zeppole.

Since we both know better than to connect anything in a "festival" like that with our heritage, Dominick and I didn't eat any of the food or partake in any of the arcade games. The still air grew colder under not-quite-silver three-quarter moon, so we didn't want to walk outside. Instead, we ducked into the church for a few minutes.

Carvings that looked like gargoyles adorned each end of each pew. The bulbs on the string of lights outside the stained glass window created the kind of image Van Gogh might've if he were simply melancholy among people who tried to cheer him up.

But it was enough to spark my imagination: I practically floated down the aisle seperating two rows of pews in a long, billowy dress to meet him on the altar. Somehow, as non-religious as each of us are, we cannot imagine doing it any other way, in any other institution. At least, Dominick tells me he feels that way.

Change, Then and Now

During the year before I started living full-time as a woman, I had a lot of thoughts about, and flashbacks to, very early in my childhood. I'm talking about the time before I entered kindergarten. For one thing, I was trying to pinpoint possible sources of my gender identity conflict, and when I first became aware of it. I still don't have the answer to either question, but I know when was the first time I became aware of what the conflict between my body and spirit could mean. It was my first day at school, when some adult who wasn't my teacher told the boys to get on one line and the girls on the other. You know where I stood. And so the complications began.

Up to that moment, I knew--even though I didn't have the words--that I wasn't quite a boy, and that I wouldn't become a man. And being, actually, a rather sheltered kid in spite of my family's relative poverty, my gender identity really wasn't that much of an issue. When my mother worked, I spent my days with her parents. I don't recall my grandmother doing things, or giving me any toys, that were boy-specific: no toy soldiers and such. Sometimes my grandfather took me on "train rides" on the subways. As I recall, I wasn't so enthralled by the machinery as I was by the panorama of places and people we saw from the windows.

Some might say that I longed for the safety and security I felt then. Perhaps. It's one thing to know who you are, or aren't, even if you have only the name that was given to you but not the names of the ones who do battle within you. But suffering with the complications that arise when you still don't know those names, much less how to resolve or otherwise deal with such a conflict, is much worse. It's like always feeling, within, the cold that fills you after someone you find repulsive finds a way to get you into his or her bed.

Anyway, around the time I began to live full-time as a woman, my reminisces turned toward my puberty and early adolescence. That may have had something to do with the changes my body were undergoing after a few months on hormones: My breasts were growing and my skin was growing softer, among other things. This is often referred to as a "second" puberty, and--for me, at least--fits of uncontrollable giggles or crying over romantic songs on the radio accompanied it.

Now I find myself flashing back to the fall semester of my senior undergraduate year at Rutgers. Somehow that fall felt particularly autumnal, as I understood what that meant. The weather was about right: save for a couple of days, it wasn't exceptionally cold or warm, as I remember. But more important, I knew that changes were already happening and more were to come.

Nearly every chance I got, I took the NJ Transit and PATH trains to "the city"--the one in which I have lived for more than two decades. Sometimes I went to see a play in some little space in the East Village or to hear someone or another play in some bar or cafe I probably wouldn't have gone to for any other reason. Still other times I just hung out--in the bookstores, on the Village streets, or on the Staten Island Ferry. Of course, I never set foot on Staten Island: I rode the boat back and forth, inhaling the metallic briny mist on the front deck as the boat surfed rippled water in sight of the skyline, a few bridges and the Statue of Liberty.

Even when I walked or rode my bike around the campus, my mind was on that ferry, those streets, those bookstores and cafes and theatres. You might say that I was in college, but not of it.

Sometimes I regret that now, but then it made sense. For one thing, all I had to do was accumulate enough credits to graduate: I had already fulfilled my major and course distribution requirements. And I was guaranteed to graduate with an entirely unexceptional record: Phi Beta Kappa was out of the question. What's more, I anticipated that within a few months, I would be somewhere else, and I would probably never see any of my fellow-students, or professors--or, for that matter, the school itself--ever again.

Sometimes I feel that way about the college in which I'm teaching. Will I come back after my operation? Intellectually, I know the answer is "most likely yes." But who knows?

Don't get me wrong: I'm enjoying it. I am fortunate enough to have two classes I truly enjoy, two that are satisfactory and one that, well, has its moments, but isn't terrible. And, I must say, some faculty and staff members seem to be going out of their way to treat me well.

I noticed this tonight, when I went to see Anna in the Tropics in the college's theatre. First, the playwright, Nilo Cruz, read a short play he said he had to write before he could do Anna. Then a reception followed, to which Dominick came after work. Maybe he's the reason I felt more comfortable than I had at previous gatherings. Of course, that's how I feel with him. Perhaps the other faculty and staff members I saw were responding to that in me.

Cady Ann offered the best example of that. She's the English Department secretary and one of my favorite people in the college. "Is he your..."

I nodded.

She hugged me. "Congratulations. He's beautiful."

"Thanks. I know..."

"Listen to you!"

"I know his real beauty."

"Of course. Why else would you be with him? But he is cute..."

"Well, thank you."

"I'm so glad for you."

Now there's a difference between myself and that year when I was facing, with dread, the prospect of the rest of my life, as a man. What would I have been like if I'd had Dominick back then? Of course, that's really just another way of asking what my life than would have been if I could be the person I am now.

And what was I doing during my senior year? Well, I had a few one-nighters, mostly away from the campus. But, when I was on campus, I was hanging out with Betsy, and letting everyone think I was more of a stud than I ever could be. Guys would nudge me and wink upon seeing her. If anyone asked what we did, I would only grin. Of course I wasn't going to talk about the conversations we had about the things in which we'd lost our faith, or the times when she talked me out of jumping off a ledge or taking a razor blade to the lines I'd marked on my wrists.

No, I haven't lately been thinking about offing myself: In fact, the notion hasn't even crossed my mind since I started my gender tranisiton. And, Dominick is not just eye and arm candy, even though he could be.

Change--at least, the prospect of it--is the common denominator between now and then. The difference is, of course, I have some idea of what that means, and could mean. This, of course, does not imply certainty.

An E-Mail and a Warp In Time

An e-mail made my day today, even though its tone was sad and rather anxious.

Sajidur, who took three classes with me, graduated last year. Since then, I've thought about him a lot. And, last year, I really wished he was around: One becomes an educator to be of service to people like him, not to academic bureaucrats. He is very smart and works hard. Best of all, he appreciates what you do, no matter how small it is, for him, and you find yourself appreciating him because he's, well, him.

How can I describe him? Well, he's not tall or in any other way physically imposing. But he is formidable, in part because of what most people would call his intelligence. Yes, he does have more intellectual prowess than most people. But more important, at least in my opinion, is what I like to think of as his spiritual quotient, if you will.

As I got to know him, I came to realize that his appreciation for literature--and his ability to write about it--is really part and parcel of the same gift that allows him to understand his major, business, so well. You might say he's a creative spirit, although I doubt he would ever describe himself as a creative anything.

Even when we talked about an assignment for the class, I felt somehow as if our souls, rather than our egos, were conversing. Too often, people conflate ego with intellect. I have done that myself: I have done things ostensibly for intellectual reasons, but they were really a gratification of my ego. In other words, I took inordinate pride in being smart enough--or, more accurately, having people think I was smart enough--to do whatever I was doing, whether it was playing Scrabble or explaining how a particular kind of poetry works and how it's related to quantum mechanics.

All right, that last part is fiction. I've never in my life compared anything to quantum mechanics, mainly because I don't know what it is. But I have given explanation that were pure mierda de toro and congratulated myself, mainly for impressing someone who didn't know any better.

Anyway, back to Sajidur. He wants to meet for a heart-to-heart talk. A lot of things he never could have anticipated have happened to him since graduation, he says, along with the way this country has deteriorated economically and politically (and, to my mind, spiritually) during that time. Everybody's tense and anxious, or so it seems, and I don't envy anyone who has to find a job.

He also said he read an article I wrote a couple of weeks ago. In it, I said that the United States has become an economic plutocracy. "I couldn't agree more," he said. " The greed has taken us to lands belonging to others and killing and destroying without justification. " I couldn't have said it any better.

Now you know another side of him: He doesn't go around saying "evil capitalist system" or anything like that. He had expressed interest in a career in international business. But, at the same time, he doesn't see greed as a good business practice or conquest as the only kind of success.

However, the part of his e-mail that struck me most was near the end, when he said "All of a sudden I feel twenty years older." I can relate to that, oddly enough, because my recent exprerience has been almost the inverse of that: I feel younger than I did twenty years ago (and people who've known me, or seen my old photos, say that I look younger), and somehow that makes those times seem even more distant. Maybe it's because, paradoxically enough, getting older has meant becoming more whole, and in some ways, simpler.

Well, there's also the fact that my undergraduate days are much further in the past for me than Sajid's are for him, or anyone else his age. What that means, for me, is that I really don't think much about them these days, so I don't dwell on how long ago they were. For me, those days were mainly a time of confusion and anger, so I have less reason to think about it than I do.

In any event, I just want to see him again. Maybe soon...Anything I can do to help the time pass without aging him, or me.

From Denials to Uniting

Today I got to spend some time with Dominick, finally. I don't think we've been together since the school year started. So a season has passed, literally, since then.

And have either of us changed? Maybe. The last time we saw each other, only our thin summer clothes seperated one of us from the other. But today, a rather warm day with a cool breeze that reminded me that yes, indeed, it's autumn, I felt as if...

Well, I'll try to describe it metaphorically, through a place we visited: Fort Totten, on Long Island Sound in Bayside. It was decomissioned about fifteen years ago, I think. Now it's a park that is accessible only to cyclists and pedestrians.

(Why are military bases such great places when they're not military bases anymore?)

Along the road that loops around the perimeter of the park--and, for about half of its length, curves with the shoreline--stand sturdy old red brick buildings that once housed officers. At one point, three of the buildings open out to a patch of lawn. And they're all covered with ivy that, like the leaves on the trees, has just begun to turn various shades of red and yellow and gold.

It seems that buildings like those are made specifically to be looked at in autumn. And there they were, on the edge of that road that, from there, made a turn toward the sea.

So it was possible to see, if only fleetingly, those colors of turning, changing earth transposed and then merged with the metallic blue and gray waves of the water, sky and a bridge a bit off in the distance.

Was I looking at two parts of the same soul uniting? Or two souls, or minds, joining, or at least drawing closer?

I have always loved both the tones of the sea and the shades of the earth. But I never really expected to see both in harmony. And I guess I'm one of those people who, if she doesn't expect to see something, she fights or denies it until there is no other choice. Then she doesn't "learn" to love it; rather, the love finds her.

I spent three years denying how I felt about Dominick. There were the rationales: he was too young; we saw things too differently; I'd had relationships exclusively with women for the previous 20 years, etc. But over the past year or so, it's come to the point that I can't, and don't want to, deny him--deny his love--any longer. And I certainly don't want to deny it because it is something I never expected to have in my life.

That, by the way, is a pretty good analogy to how I reacted over getting the job I have now. I had long since given up any hope of getting a full-time faculty position at a college because I'm too old, don't have a PhD and don't fit into academic culture. And this semester, when I got one--if by default--I let the college's administration drag me into it kicking and screaming instead of running to embrace it. And I used the same sort of reasoning: I'm too old, don't have a PhD, don't fit in and will be resented by my colleagues for getting in through the back door, so to speak. In fact, I went all the way back to my youth, when I told myself that teaching was the last thing in the world I ever wanted to do.

At one time, sleeping with a man was just about the last thing I would've allowed myself to do. Being a woman was probably the only thing I was less willing to do. And in both cases, they were exactly what I wanted. At least, to be a particular kind of woman with a particular sort of man--although, I must say, both turned out to be a little different from what I'd expected. Better, actually.

As was this day: better than anything I could've anticipated. And so was the dinner we had at the end of it: at a waterside restaurant called Louie's in Port Washington. Neither of us had eaten lobster or any other shellfish in some time, so we ordered a "clambake special" that included two lobsers, a few clams and oysters, corn on the cob, a potato and cole slaw. All of that after an appetizer of calamari and home-baked bread. All of it washed down by cheesecake and coffee for him, mint herbal tea for me. All of it delicious. And each of us brought home a lobster and other things we couldn't finish.

Just in front of our table, Louie's pier jutted out into the water. Twilight was turning into evening, and I saw a light, above the skimming boats and their flickering reflections, in the horizon. And I recalled that we were in Gatsby country, more or less. And it is not the end of summer or the beginning of fall; it is autumn now. Autumn, with three more seasons to follow until I unite in the way I've always wanted: my body to my soul. Or as close as they're likely to come in this life. My body to my soul; my soul to another. To his.