Then and Now: Suffering and Living

Ok, so some people have been reading this blog after all. And I'm not getting hate messages. I should consider myself lucky.

Tomorrow I start a new semester: my last before the surgery. So what are my students going to tell their grandchildren? Hey, I knew her way back when, before she had her surgery. Well, I'd have to become famous before anyone told his or her grandchild anything like that. Unless my book sells or some hotshot editor or Oprah reads this blog and realizes how smart, witty and charming I am, well, I don't think I'm going to become famous any time soon.

Last night Dominick and I were having a "Would you still love me if...?" conversation. Yes, Dominick, I will love you if you become a woman, or anything else. Yes, even if you decide to become a lawyer who defends Mafiosi, the drug lords and the next Bernie Madoff. Or if you decide to become a mercernary. I can love you through anything I can think of now.

We talked about a lot of things, actually. It was probably the first time I talked about my sexual history or my parade of lovers and partners at any length. Looking back, it seems to make sense that we had such a conversation after watching Milk. I think he's just beginning to understand why I had relationships with Tammy or Eva, or any of the others, and why I didn't start my transition sooner than I did. I think other things are starting to make sense, such as my not having a relationship with a man for more than twenty years and why I want him now.

Coming into my teen years in a small New Jersey town during the 1970's, and even attending college later in that decade, was very different from Dominick's coming-of-age in Queens two decades later. At the time Harvey Milk started his activism, most people--even gays themselves-- believed, however unconsciously, that gays and lesbians were a pox on this land. And all they knew about transgeders were Christine Jorgensen and Renee Richards. In other words, we were freaks, and most people didn't want to know any differently.

Back then, there were no city, state or federal ordinances to punish violence against us and almost no mental health service that affirmed us as we were. In fact, some kids who "came out" were sent by their parents for electroshock treatments and other horrors to rid them of their "illness." Now, instead of electroshock and psychotropic drugs, kids are sent to fundamentalist camps to be "cured" and "saved."

Tonight I was talking about this very subject to Mom. I'd mentioned that Dominick and I had seen Milk, and I was telling her about how I had to explain those times to him. He's often asked me why I didn't start my transition sooner, and I explained that I often wish I had. "I think of all those years I could have actually lived."

"And you wouldn't have had to go through all of those things."

"I probably wouldn't have been in any of those relationships I was in."

"Of course. None of them worked. They couldn't. You were trying to be someone else."

Tears were streaming down my face. "I know. I wish it could've been some other way. All I ever wanted to be happy."

"Well, I hope this surgery does it for you."

"I think it will. My transition has been working out for me so far. I'm not depressed all the time."

"That's true," she sighed. "You almost never seemed to be happy, even when things were going well."

"And that's why they only went well for so long."

"And why those relationships didn't last."

We paused. "Well, that might've been the one good thing about all that: Those relationships didn't last. Not with Eva..."

"Thank God for that."

"Tell me about it. But sometimes I wish I didn't have to go through those things."

"I do, too."

"But the other side of it is that I can transition now. Things are better: There are more people who understand and accept."

"That's true."

And, I explained, that is the reason why, in a way, I envy young LGBT people. There's still a lot of bigotry, and the possibility of becoming a victim of hate is never far away. But at least there are ways to fight it, and we don't have to accept mistreatment or even the bones lawmakers and others throw us now and again. That is what Harvey Milk stood for. And that is the difference between young people's experience and my own.

But I have my experience, and it has helped me through the past few years. It's all helped: my days as a bewildered child, confused adolescent, angry young adult and resigned, benumbed adult are a resource to me now. I have been both the victim and perpetrator: I was taunted and beaten for being a "sissy," and I once beat up a young man whom I thought was gay. They have become lessons for me and now I realize that I can pass those lessons on.

And, yes, I remember when Harvey Milk was assasinated. That, too, is something I hope to pass on: not only the memory of how he died, but the wisdom that came from how he lived, and how and when he chose to live.

One day he took a risk and discovered what it means to really live. Once you learn that, you can't go back. At least I discovered that for myself, and I hope others do too. I'm not talking only about gays and transgender people. I mean everyone.

Hey, I'd like for my mother and father to be happier than they are. After all, they--especially my mother--have a hand in helping me to attain my own satisfaction in life. There are all kinds of things I haven't had to experience as they did, and I'm grateful for that.

And yes, Dominick, I will love you even if you don't suffer in the ways I did, they did, or Harvey Milk--0r anyone else--did. It was all temporary; you don't love someone for temporary things.

You love them for now. And here we all are, after Harvey Milk, after all of it.

The Life of Harvey

Tonight Dominick and I went to see Milk. Of course, we are both intensely interested in the subject, and I've been a fan of Sean Penn ever since I saw Dead Man Walking. But I wondered just how good of a film it would be.

Well, it exceeded my expectations. It's the sort of movie that demands that the people in it are given their due complexity and emotional weight. The film delivers on that count. Having Sean Penn play the film's eponymous protagonist helps, but I think the script is good because the other players, particularly Dan White, are shown through their conflicts with themselves and others.

The film also made me realize something about Harvey Milk: that he lived most intensely, and accomplished everything for which he is remembered today, within the last eight years of his life. As Milk begins, he's tape-recording a message he intended to be heard if he were assasinated. You might say that he anticipated his demise, although he probably didn't guess that Dan White would kill him as well as mayor George Moscone.

After we see Milk recording himself, we see him the day before he turns forty, cruising another gay man in a New York City subway station. At the time, he's a closeted "suit" for an insurance company; soon, he and his new lover drive to San Francisco, where one of the world's most famous gay communities was forming in the Castro district. There, they live openly as themselves for the first time in their lives, and the ostracism and sometimes violence they experience propels him into activism.

If I had seen the film when I was younger, I probably would have cheered when they "dropped out" of the rat race and became, in essence, hippies during their first couple of years in the City Improper, as San Franciscans like to call their home town. You might say I did something like that when, a week after I graduated college, I flew to London with no itinerary and nothing but an open-end return ticket, my bicycle, a couple of changes of clothing, my camera, two blank journal books and a bunch of condoms. A couple of years ago, I confessed to my mother that the trip, which I claimed was for educational and cultural purposes, was really a way of running away. I think she already knew that; maybe she knew that one day I'd acknowledge that fact.

Since I saw the movie tonight, and not earlier in my life, Two Buddies on a Great Road Trip Adventure wasn't its appeal to me. Rather, it's the fact that Harvey Milk in essence began his life as he neared middle age and lived all of his life, really, in those last eight years. I'd say there's a parallel to my own life. I started dating Tammy just before I turned forty. She is the first person to whom I openly acknowledged my female self. The only problem was that I allowed her to think that I was merely cross-dressing; after three years I saw that woman in Saint Jean de Maurienne who, simply by crossing paths with me, made me realize that I could not continue to live as a man. The funny thing is that Tammy acknowledged that I was destined to live as a woman before I was willing to make such an admission about myself. And it was the reason why she ended our relationship.

Now I am only five months and two weeks from my surgery. I feel that the path to my current life opened as I was about to turn forty; I began to follow it shortly after I turned forty-three. At forty-five, I changed my name and began to live by it. During the past seven years, I have begun to learn about my body, as I mentioned yesterday, and more important, about how to live by the dictates of my spirit.

Somehow I see myself entering yet another phase of my life. Of course, it has to do with my impending surgery. But I don't think that surgery is the only factor in the changes that are coming. I have a feeling that I might be headed in a new direction, career-wise and creatively. The classes I'm about teach and take may lead me into, or out of, some vocational path. So might the collaborations I have been discussing with a choreographer and two professors. Any or all them might lead me in some direction I can't yet envision.

So...I existed until my forties, when I started to live. And at fifty I might be headed for another life. Harvey Milk didn't expect to live to be fifty; so perhaps I have a challenge and opportunity he didn't have.

It seems that lots of people don't begin to live as fully-realized human beings until they're forty or later. What happened back when people only lived to thirty? How many Harvey Milks were there?

I'm glad that at least there was one of him, and he was the one we had. Now I know a little bit more about how to live.

The Body of Lessons

This is depressing. I get the feeling that nobody's been reading my blog lately: I didn't get any hate mail after yesterday's post. In fact, I didn't get any mail at all. Maybe everybody understood what I meant, and that I meant no harm. However, I will refrain from using the "f-word" again. Really, I will.

And guess what? I submitted my tuition waiver to the Graduate Center. That means the course is now paid for, and I'm in it. I also told my department chair and a couple of other people in my department what I'd done. So now I guess I'm committed.

It looks like I'm committed to that course--The Poetics and Rhetoric of Hip-hop-- I'm scheduled to teach, too. Even Tom, my voice instructor, mentioned that he's heard about it. "I bet it'll be great," he said. Same sentiment, different words, from what my department chair said. And a few other profs, a bunch of students, Cady Ann and Sharon (the department secretaries), Dominick, Bruce and everyone else who's heard about it. And they all say I'm going to do fine in both of those courses.

OK. For the course I'm taking, I'll forget that it's the first class I'm taking in sixteen years and that it's on a topic--gender studies-- I once swore I'd never touch. And for the course I'm teaching, I'll forget that for half of that course's content, the students will know more than I do. So I won't introduce myself as Prof J-Val or Mizz J--at least not on the first day, anyway!

Today's session with Tom may be the last I'll have with him for a while. I wish that weren't so: The three sessions I've had with him have taught me so much. However, he's directing a play and is involved with another production that will keep him busy. I know I could take other voice classes, but nobody can top a teacher who's opened up a world to you.

In a way, Tom reminds me of Ray, the social worker I saw every week during the year before I started to live full-time as Justine, and for the first year-and-a-half of my current life. They both combine discipline and empathy: They have a clear sense of what they're guiding you through, but they also understand what you're going through. And, of course, Ray taught me all sorts of first lessons about one thing and another, while Tom taught me my first lessons about the way I carry my body and take my breaths.

I've talked to many women--and have read the words of many, many more--who look back in shock, anger, grief or frustration over the fact that they knew so little about their own bodies. Usually, they were in the dark because parents, teachers and other adults couldn't or wouldn't discuss those matters. Some of those women come from milieux in which such talk is taboo. For others, their lack of awareness had to do with the pure-and-simple misogyny of their communities or societies, some of which they internalized in much the same way that I internalized a lot of homo- and trans-phobia. I recall now an interview that some journalist--I forget who--did with an Afghani schoolteacher. She said that one result of the repressive regime that required all women to be covered from head to toe, save for a small grille around the eyes, was that women's bodies deteriorated. Worse, they were unable to pass on any awareness of how their bodies worked to their daughters, female students or any other girls or young women in their lives.

Of course, frustration over how little women understand their bodies--and one part in particular--is part of what motivated Eve Ensler to create The Vagina Monologues.

After my surgery, what will my vagina say? "Thank you for bringing me to light," or "Cotton only, please!"?

I'll soon find out. Meantime, I'm learning through other means.

Gender Studies Is For Faggots; Why's a White Tranny Woman Teaching Hip-Hop?

Don't ask how we got on the subject. But Dominick asked an interesting question: Since I began living as Justine, have I ever entered a men's bathroom by mistake.?

Actually, I haven't. I can confidently say that because if I did, I'd probably remember even though I wouldn't want to. Ironically enough, I can recall times when I accidentally (Yes, I'm telling you the truth!) entered women's bathrooms while I was in boy-drag. Some might argue that my subconscious was guiding me; I wouldn't argue. However, bathrooms for either gender, or both genders, never had any great appeal to me. Why would anyone want to be amid the filth and smell of most bathrooms for any other reason than to do what one needs to do? I mean, I never saw the appeal of "peeping" or having sex in bathrooms.

So what have I "accidentally"done since beginning my transition? Well, early in my life as Justine, I signed documents (including a newly-issued ATM card) and answered the telephone with my old name. Then again, I've always had lapses: I now recall the time early in my sobriety when I signed up for a workshop and gave a telephone number I hadn't had since I was twelve years old. Funny, I can recall it now: 212-435-0470. However, that number--or whatever phone number is assigned to that house--begins with "718" instead of "212" becuase it's in Brooklyn.

Wow! That alone is enough to date me: I can remember when all five boroughs of New York City used the "212" area code.

Anyway...Now that I think of it, I haven't really had many instances of gender spasmosis, if you will. At least not in logistical matters, anyway. But I've found myself lapsing into old ways
of thought and expression, and of acting on attitudes I'd absorbed, as Nick, by osmosis.

Why don't I want to teach that course called "The Poetics and Rhetoric of Hip-Hop?" Well, for one thing, I got into it accidentally. (No, I'm not one of those people who thinks everything happens for a reason.) But more important, I'm exactly what some hip-hoppers despise: I'm a white professional and I'm a woman. But not just any bitch or 'ho: I'm one who used to be a dude, at least on the outside.

Now, I know that not all hip-hop expresses misogyny or homophobia. And hateful ideas don't necessarily make for bad art. (cf. Pound, Celine and goddess-knows-how-many-others) However, knowing that a number of rappers have expressed their disdain or outright disgust for me and my sisters, it's still odd for me to be the one who will not only present the music, but also help students build bridges between it and all those books written by dead white men and taught to me by old white men who are most likely, by now, dead white men.

Oh...So that's why I'm having trouble getting published? I'm not a dead white man. Nor will I ever be. Instead, one day, I'll be a dead white woman. Or tranny-girl.

So I'm all wrong for that course I've designed. That means I'm also wrong for the course I planned to take: Literature, Gender and Sexuality. I've always been wary of gender studies. I don't want to be just another LGBT person with a certificate or degree in gender studies. For one thing, I suspect it would close many more doors than it would open. Haven't you heard: Gender Studies is for faggots. The latter term doesn' t necessarily gay or effeminate men. Instead, it means people, usually men, who wimp out on commitments, or who just generally shrink away from life.

All of this could lead me to what I've been avoiding for so long: becoming a scholar, becoming the enemy, accidentally. I already feel as if I've become one of them, though I'm still not convinced that I could do much in the way of theoretical work.

Yet everyone tells me I'm going to do fine. I must be absolutely amazing and fabulous if I can inspire that kind of confidence when I'm abut to do things for which I have absolutely no aptitude, inclinaton or desire.

So what would I be doing in a class for faggots or about people who despise them? It's a matter of pure, dumb luck.

What Am I Doing In School?

Feeling a little under the weather. Got up late, which meant that I missed a workshop at the college.

Tonight, the course I taught met for the last time. Actually, it's the date of the final exam, which meant that my students were turning in final projects. Well, you know what I'm going to be doing for a while. However, there's not nearly as much to do as there was at the end of the regular semester.

I'm really thinking about not taking that course I'd signed up for. Something in me says to take something "practical." After all, I don't know what the future holds for me in the academic world. And, right now, in spite of the people who've reached out to me, the good students I've had and even my department chair expressing enthusiasm for a course I'm teaching (and I created) this semester--and a collaboration I hope to pull off with a prof in another department--I still feel alienated at the college, and by the whole academic enterprise.

Right now I think that course I'm about to teach is bullshit. It probably is. So is the one I had planned on taking. All of it, really, is made-up: all contemptible, damnable bullshit. At times like this, I wish I had more aptitude for math or one of the other sciences. I mean, if I have to spend a good part of what years I have left in pursuit of another degree, why can't it be in something based on the real world. I think now of Anne, who's studying the stuff that makes up living organisms, including humans. And, at the last meeting for new faculty members, I talked to a geology professor. He's studying what makes up the ground we walk and the seas and skies that surround us. That means he's helping people understand tangible, basic things.

And what do we do in literature classes, particularly the "advanced" ones? We use conjecture and find or fabricate relationships between "texts" (which can mean almost anything) to come up with theories. Theories about literature. Just reading poems and stories and imagining the worlds they present takes me to the limits of my imagination; beyond that, I'm really not of much use. I am not an abstract thinker at all, so I don't know how in the world I'll make it through a class on literary theory. And I picked what is probably the least theoretical course offered in the Graduate Center's English Department, yet I'm having these thoughts.

Plus, I've come to see that with every PhD in English schools like the Grad Center turn out, this country becomes less literate, let alone literary. I think that having "experts" in fields like nineteenth-century novels actually makes other people less likely to read them. For one thing, all those smarty-pants PhDs speak--when they condescend to speak at all--in such dismissive tones that leaves other people feeling put off. I think that's one of the reasons why, in this country, we have many (and proportionally) more people with PhDs than other countries have, and people talk so much about the importance of education, yet we have a virulent kind of anti-intellectualism (and anti-art, -culture and -science attitudes) that other industrialized countries don't seem to have.

Enough of that ranting ramble for now. I could just cancel my registration for the class I would've been taking. But I still wish I weren't teaching that course I designed. For one thing, I'm not ready for it and I find I'd rather do almost anything than prepare for it. Why can't I teach the basic intro to literature class I had been scheduled to teach instead of the silly elective course I'm scheduled to teach?

I really want the next few months to be nice and simple. Why can't I teach only the basic courses I had been teaching before? A lot of people liked that well enough, and I didn't have to pretend that I was trickling new knowledge into minds that were thirsting for the latest literary theories.

Right now I wish I could skip over the coming semester or go someplace where nobody knows me. Then I wouldn't have to take or teach silly courses. I could just work and get myself ready for my surgery. Really, is that too much to ask?

Aging and Time Passing

OK. I loved that yellow dress Michelle Obama wore today. But there's no way I could wear it. First of all, that color would never work on me. Second, she's skinny. At least she looked great in it.

As for the inaguration: Sometimes I was enjoying it; other times I was turned off. Actually, I think I was more alienated by the commentators than anything that happened in Washington today. Then again, the so-called journalists have talked even more and said even dumber things than they did today.

I'm still glad Bush is gone and Obama is in. I think even McCain would've been better--and would've had a chance of winning had he not chosen Sarah Palin for his vice-presidential nominee.

Now that the Inaguration events are mostly over and done with, I feel, if nothing else, a little older. Well, of course, you're probably thinking: One is a little older with the passage of time, any amount of time. But something occured to me: This country now has a President who's younger than I am! So I'm having another one of those "Holy shit, I'm getting old" moments. Just like I had when I taught a freshman class and realized that none of them had been born yet when I walked up to the podium for my bachelor's degree. Or when I met someone younger than me who was a grandmother.

But it's not just someone's chronological age that makes me conscious of my own. After all, there are new faculty members who look like they're younger than I was when I ended my marriage and got my master's degree. (I don't mean to imply that there was a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the two. I do, however, find it interesting that one of my current students told me, last week, that she came back to school after her marriage split up. ) I feel like, if not one of their peers, at least not like some washed-up aunt or in-law around them.

And then, of course, there's Dominick. I never dreamed I'd be with anyone, of any gender or orientation, who is as young and good-looking as he is. Then again, I never could have imagined a soul like his. Maybe that's why I don't feel old when I'm around him. If anything, I get all giggly or teary around him sometimes, and can feel--or at least imagine--myself as the girl, the young woman, whose life I could've lived.

What's even stranger than anything else I've mentioned is that the changes I've undergone don't make me feel old, even when they make me wish I could be younger and making the journey to my current life. I was talking about this with Celeste, who is one of the first faculty members I met when I came to the college. I find myself liking her more as time goes on, in part because I've seen her change. (Not that I didn't like her as she was before.) She showed me an essay one of her students wrote about a poem of mine. That student saw things in my poem that hadn't even occured to me--among them, a theme of growing older. The student liked the poem, though she said it was "not an easy read."

Celeste and I talked about that essay, and about the changes we, and people in general, experience. She lost a lot and has just given up a full-time lectureship for a grad school fellowship. But, she says, the man who forced her, with a threat to her life, out of her "comfortable, cozy life" as a department chair at a college in Texas, and into several years of adjunct teaching before attaining the postition she's just given up, ultimately did her a favor. "I've learned so much and can move on to better things," she said.

But it's strange, I said, that sometimes we hold on to things, and relationships in particular, because we want something or someone that's remained as we remember it. We don't want it, or that person, to change. However, we ultimately lose those things, those relationships, those people, whether by our own doing or through some other means, precisely because that person, that thing, didn't change.

"And we did," Celeste added. "Everything and everyone has a certain amount of time in our lives. If we don't leave or let go, it's not good for us. Like that former friend of yours you'd told me about."

"Yes. I wanted to continue our relationship because I wanted to hold on to something from my past. What I was really wanted was a memory. But it didn't work, precisely because I was having the same conversations--perhaps with the names and places changed--as I had twenty years ago."

Then Celeste remarked on how much change she's seen in me. "It's not just that change," referring, of course, to my gender transition. "You seem more centered now." She said that, not only today, but a couple of weeks ago, too.

I first met her almost four years ago. On one hand, it seems like a lifetime ago. On another, it seems like yesterday. I know that sounds like a cliche, but it's true for me. It also explains, I think, why thinking about my changes doesn't make me feel old. It's the things that remain the same that age us in the ways we don't want to grow old.

And today's voice lesson, my second, didn't make me feel old. If nothing else, it's showing me what it's like to learn something brand-new. Nobody grows old doing that.

Getting to Know People

I just noticed that the last few posts have been about people, mostly. I don't think I'll write much about others tonight, for I have spent the day with no other company but Charlie and Max. And, well, they're technically not people, though I think of them as my family.

Anyway, it snowed again today. So far, we haven't had a big storm: It seems that we have an inch or two of snow every couple of days. So the snow and ice haven't totally disappeared at any time, at least not since I returned from seeing Mom and Dad. I can't believe it's been almost three weeks already.

I also can't believe that the course I'm teaching ends the day after tomorrow. Three weeks, and it's over. In a way, it's like taking a long plane trip and getting into conversations with people you've never met before and will probably never see again. You and they are 30,000 feet in the sky; they can no more see what your life on the ground is like any more than you can see theirs. So all you and they have, for that time on the plane, is that little bit of space and each other.

What I just described was especially true on my flights to and from Istanbul: ten hours going, eleven coming back. In that space of time, it seems, personae are born and invented. Sometimes people reveal aspects of themselves they might not to people they see every day; likewise, it seems that the cockpits of transoceanic jetliners are hothouses for flirtation, sometimes with people one would not meet, notice or acknowledge on the ground. (I first noticed this on when I went to Paris four years ago: my first trip abroad as Justine.) Maybe this all happens because, in that hermetically sealed faux-community, flights seem longer than they actually are.

In June of 2006, I taught another three-week course. And I felt that same sense of instant intimacy, if you will. But I realized that there was more to that class, and my relationships with the students in it, than that. Some of us shed tears on the last day of class; one student made a beautiful (I should be so beautiful!) drawing of me that everyone in the class signed. Several of us stay in touch with each others; I see others on campus from time to time.

And so I'll be saying goodbye, again, to people I may well, and would want to, see again. Somehow it seems appropriate to experience that at a time when I'm meeting new people, both in person and on line, whom I never would've imagined meeting in my previous life. What's even more intriguing, to me, is how often I find people extending themselves to me. Have I suddenly developed wit, charm or charisma I never knew I had? Lately people have told me, unsolicited, that I possess all three qualities. It's odd: I don't feel like I'm doing anything special.

Anyway, one more thing to be said for today: It's Bush's last day in office. Tomorrow is Obama's first. I, like many other people, feel that almost anything has to be better than the outgoing administration. I really don't envy Obama: So much is expected from, or at least hoped for, him. And he's inheriting a mess.

Oh well. I'll watch the inaguration and see what Michelle is wearing. Maybe if I'm really lucky, I can find it in my size and on sale.

Role Model

Today Dominick and I went to a brunch on Long Island to benefit an organization that, it happens, is located only a few blocks from me.

Carmen's House shelters young transgender people in the shadow of the RFK (nee Triboro) Bridge. It also turns out that one of its board members, who sat across the table from me, is a neighbor of mine.

Nina (not the one I mentioned earlier) is a retired junior-high school math teacher who, according to a friend who accompanied her, spends much of her time at Carmen's House. As far as I can tell, she's straight, and I'd guess that the director of Carmen's House, who's an Episcopal priest, is not. I'd love to find out what motivated them to devote themselves to such a project. Needless to say, I'm glad they're doing what they're doing.

And I may be joining them. They agreed that I could be the sort of mentor some of the young people need. According to the reverend, "Those kids don't even have bad parents; they have no parents." Or adults, for that matter; much less adults who have real jobs and some level of social skills.

OK...If they saw any of the latter in me, I must've done a really good job of fooling them. ;-) Not that I tried to do anything like that. Then again, they also think I have a real job or am an adult. Dominick could set them straight on those matters, as if I'd want him to set anyone or anything straight.

Anyway...I'm really thinking about volunteering with Carmen's House. For one thing, I miss contributing in direct ways to the well-being of those who share or sympathise with my experience of gender and sexuality. I did a lot of that during the my first two years of living as Justine, and now I find I miss that. It's not so much the work itself , it's the people--what some might call my "community"--I want to experience again. The brunch reminded me of that.

Bruce says that even when I'm not doing advocacy work, I'm helping because I am educating people about what it means to be transgendered. It's not as if I try to do that every moment. However, to some degree, I do that simply by living my life around those who know of my gender status. That's what Bruce says, and he's been right most of the time.

I still find it odd that anyone can see me as a role model. I wonder whether they'd see me that way if they knew anything else about me but my gender identity and the work I do. I mean, there are things I didn't do and people I didn't treat well. And I've given lots of advice that I'd love to take back. And, I still struggle with the homo- and trans-phobia, as well as other kinds of bigotry and prejudice, I internalized from people who probably didn't realize they were transmitting it.

Plus, the majority of what I've accomplished, such as it is, I achieved before starting my transition to life as Justine. I earned my degrees and started teaching, got most of my publications and accomplished myself as a cyclist and other kinds of athlete, as Nick. How could those young people see me as a model trans-woman, much less as the "tranny poster girl" that Jay once called me.

Tranny poster girl? I wonder who'd buy a poster of me, or where it would end up. I didn't end up with the Judy Garland poster that was part of the Chinese auction at the brunch. It's much more glamorous and elegant than any that could made of me.

I'm guessing that Nina, the priest and the teenagers at Carmen's House aren't looking for a poster girl. Or a model, unless she's a role model. Now there's a job I'd like to have: a role model for a major fashion designer!

Or for some young people. You might say I do that when I teach, which a reason why, even after all of these years, I still vacillate between loving and hating it. I guess it's an extension of my role as the oldest sibling in my family: I was expected to be an example for my brothers. I couldn't always, and didn't always want to be, the sort of role model the adults in my life expected me to be. Even after an excellent review or expressions of gratitude from students, I'm still never sure of how good I am at being that sort of person. Yet, somehow, that is the role in which I always seem to find myself.

And if that's what the young people at Carmen's House need, well, that's what I'll do, as best I can. I'll show them what Dominick, Nina and the priest see in me.

Lifestyle Choices

Cold and tired again. Well, I guess I have myself to blame for the latter. Some might say that the former is my fault, too, if my increasing sensitivity to cold is indeed a result of taking hormones. After all, they'd say, it was my choice to take them.

True enough. So is everything else I've done. So is going to therapy when you're depressed or confused, or church when you're looking for meaning or stability in your life. Or, for that matter, having children when...well, whenever it is that people decide to have children.

They are all choices, indeed. And so is working to make a living. I mean, after all, you could not do that, couldn't you? The results may not be what you'd like, but, well, that's a choice, too, isn't it.

But mine is a "lifestyle" choice, you say. Hmm...Is being a woman a "lifestyle?" I guess it is. After all, the style in which a member of one gender lives must, by definition, be different from the way members of the other gender live. One could argue that facets of those "lifestyles" are choices. But, again, what are the consequences of not making those choices?

In other words, I'm asking what people mean when they say "lifestyle choice" or use either of those words seperately. This is not a question of semantics or any of those other esoteric bodies of ideas. Rather, it's a question of what you will do to live, as opposed to merely surviving--or not being at all.

So I made a choice to live. It's really nothing more than that. That is why I find it strange that people will call me courageous, as Tom did yesterday and Anne the day before. Really, each of them made the same choice, albeit by very different means than I did. After all, their circumstances and their most basic questions are different from mine. The same for Bruce, who joked--as only a friend of nearly three decades can--that he fully expects me to start having a period.

They all understand that I made the choice I made out of what some would call necessity. In a sense, it is: In order to live the sort of life I've always wanted, I had to make that choice. And I'm sure Mom understands that as well as anybody can. Why else would she be as supportive as she's been? Oh, I know she's my Mom. But others have lost their relationships with their mothers, fathers, and everyone else they loved, and whom they thought loved them, when they chose to live by the dictates of their minds and spirits rather than those of the society in which they live.

I think she also understands that this isn't only about self-preservation. I've done that--sometimes well, sometimes not so--all of my life. Of course: How else could I be here now? But answering a "how" question is like solving the question of what you'll live on. The kinds of choices I made, that others have made, have to do with the "why" questions: the ones that have to do with what you'll live for.

So, yes, I made choices to be cold and tired at this moment. But at least I can go to bed tonight with another kind of energy--that of the spirit, la force vitale: what Michelangelo's and Rodin's works were all about--that will at least sustain me as I live with the struggles that go along with choosing to live.

And, yes, I've got that robe Mom gave me and a nice down comforter and flannel sheets. And then I could always leave the bedroom door open and let the cats curl up with me. Wait a minute: Isn't that supposed to be someone else's job? You know who you are! ;-)

Oh well. Now it's time to carry out another lifestyle choice: sleeping. I mean, I don't really have to do that now, do I?

When I ask questions like that, even in jest, that's definitely a sign I need to sleep. So that's what I'm going to choose, as soon as I finish writing this.

Recovering My Voice

Today I had my first voice lesson. Tom, my coach, is a voice and drama professor at the college. I almost pity him: He's a sweet man, and I don't think I'll be one of his easier or better students. He asked whether I ever had any voice training or did any singing. No voice training, I said, and I sang--if you could call it that--briefly in a church choir. (OK. What other secrets from my dim, dark past will I reveal?) And I've done nothing whatsoever to explore my vocal range, for I never thought I had one.

Now, I know I don't have the greatest range, and my highs are not very high. (I'm talking about my vocal palette, not my psychological state!) I never particularly thought of myself as a "tough guy," which is exactly the reason why I tried to seem like one. And that may be the reason why I never used the vocal resourses I had above my chest rather than the ones in my solar plexus, which I had always used.

I know that there were lots of ways in which I was "fronting." All of that sports training, particularly the weight lifting and extreme cycling, were part of my attempt to feel and seem manly, or at least to deflect any suspicion about my sexuality or gender identity.

Even my intellectual pursuits, such as they were, reflected my dubious and futile efforts at seeming to be at least somewhat macho. I would read enough, and just deeply enough, to be able to express and rationalize my disdain for other writers and their works, some of which I hadn't read. Real men read Hemingway, not Fitzgerald or--gasp!--Henry James. Even when I wrote poetry, I eschewed a certain part of my sensibility, which of course I've rediscovered only during the past few years. And that is one reason why I reluctantly pursued a Master's Degree and am still resisting the idea of a PhD: Real men didn't become literature professors or literary theorists or critics. Real women didn't, either, but somehow I could suffer Helen Vendler, who has absolutely no taste in poetry but who can write a pretty good sentence, but not Harold Bloom.

You might say it was my own kind of sexism. Except that, with a couple of exceptions, I hated men, ostensibly because a few treated me horribly, but really because I had to live as one. Or so I thought.

And so now here I am, just beginning the process of liberating my female voice. At least Tom doesn't want me to talk in a falsetto or to "make" a voice. He wants me to find the feminine aspects of the voice I already have.

It's funny, really, because some people have said that my poetic, and even my prosaic, voice are "feminine," at least in some ways. In the early days of my transition, I showed my poetry to a woman whom I met while volunteering at the LGBT Community Center in The Village. "So this is where Justine was all those years!," she marvelled. Yes, I was there, even though I signed those poems, and everything else up to that point in my life, as Nick or Nicholas.

So someone else had my voice, and I 'd been using someone else's voice. Or, at least, I'd been using one tha wasn't my own. And now I'm starting to reclaim another part of myself. You see, that's what everything about this so-called transition really is: recovery. Yes, recovery: After I had been sober for a number of years, I finally realized that is what "recovery" really means. It's not simply a matter of giving somehing up or changing it; rather, it's about taking back your essential self, or at least some part of it.

And so I'm starting to work on getting my voice back. I'm glad I have Tom coaching me. After all, recovery is never easy.

Plus Qu'un Peu

Having to go to faculty meetings makes me feel like a real fool for going to graduate school. However, the one I attended today--for "new" full-time faculty members (some of whom have been teaching for more years than at least a couple of the meeting's organizers have lived on this planet) was, at least in some way, satisfying for me.

The good thing about meetings like that one is that they allow me to actually talk to a few of those new faculty members and catch up with some others. Most of them are nice people and interesting in their own ways. The weird thing is that they all seemed to know my name even before I actually met them. And some of them really made an effort to treat me well even when I was sulking at the beginning of the semester.

Today I spent about an hour after the meeting with Anne. I had met her on her very first day at the college, back in July. She was trying to find her way around campus and asked me for directions. Now, about my navigational skills, I tell people I'm a direct descendant of Christopher Columbus and inherited his sense of direction. I mean, after almost four years at the college, I still get lost sometimes. Then again, people who've been there even longer than I've been there say the same thing.

Anyway, she and I would occasionally pass by each other in the hallways. The funny thing is that I had more or less forgotten about the time I gave her directions until she reminded me of it at a meeting just before the holidays. And, on seeing her, I would greet her with a "Bonjour, comment ca-va?" When she said, "Oh, you speak French," I said, "un peu."

Well, today she exclaimed, "Your French is more than 'un peu.'" I felt myself blushing a bit. "I read your writing."

"Vraiement."

"Oui. J'en ai lis sur le web."

"Mes articles.?"

"Your blog. I've been reading it. I found out your full name and looked you up." She saw my surprise. "I know, I'm nosey," she demurred.

"Oh, I don't mind. I'm just kind of surprised."

"Well, ever since that first day, you intrigued me. You aren't like anyone else here, you know."

"So I'm told. "

She went on to express admiration for my writing as well as my gender identity transition. But it wasn't idle praise: Gender identity and sexuality was part of her research for several years. She is a geneticist who studied under another geneticist who has also done research in gender identity and sexuality and who, in fact, is a leader in the field.

During the course of our conversation, I used the acronym LGBT. I explained that it stands for "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender."

"Why are the transgenders in there. What you experience is so different from what gays and lesbians experience."

Wow! For a straight, straight woman, that's quite a bit of understanding: more than un peu, if you will. What she expressed is the frustration I came to feel as an activist: That we were lumped together, although we were so different. However, I explained, there are reasons why we're together.

"Because you suffer from the same kind of discrimination."

"Yes, that. But also because we don't conform to society's ideas about gender and sexuality. And, in fact, transgender people were an important part of the early gay liberation movement, at least here in the States."

The thing about Anne is that she wasn't just expressing the "right" or even merely enlightened ideas. I think she has a genuine understanding of us, and of me. And she's a very warm, accessible person, in whatever language we're speaking.

And here I was, worried that I would seem foolish. After all, she is one of the most intelligent people I've met. But she was reaching out to me. And I'm glad that she has, more than un peu.

I have to admit, though: It still puzzles me when people think I'm unique, memorable, special or say that I stand out in some way--not to mention when they compliment me. I guess whatever you live with isn't exceptional when it's integral to your being, and when you know enough to know how much you don't know, you feel like you only know un peu.

I hope to sit down with Anne again soon. I feel that I'd learn more about a few things, along with my French!

Into the Night

Funny I should mention her...


Tonight I was riding my bicycle home from work. I was only a few blocks from home when I saw a petite, youngish-looking woman talking on her cell phone.


That, in and of itself, is nothing unusual. But I heard her voice: "I'm at 32nd Street" and the tone of victim-like helplessness combined with resentfulness. And the voice was a few sizes too small even for her diminutive body.


As I neared the side of the intersection where I was standing, I noticed her facial features: a rather well-formed nose and cheeks that, although not high, were at least rounded in a rather pleasant way.


And her skin color: somewhere between the olive tone of Southern Italy and the earthier yet rather sallow hue of central Asia, possibly one of the countries whose names end in "stan." Hmm...Stan's States. Now there's a name for a business.


Passing about twenty feet or so in front of her, I got a glimpse of her and heard more of her voice.


I've known only one person who looked and sounded like her. You guessed: my former friend Elizabeth, whom I mentioned on yesterday's entry. That was the first time I'd thought of her in a while, and I certainly didn't have her on my mind tonight, as I was pedalling home.


Now tell me, what was she doing there? What were the chances?


Of course it's entirely possible that she moved into, or was visiting someone in, the neighborhood. But, still, this is a city in which you could be living a couple of doors away from some long-lost relative and not even know it.


I was tempted to turn around and...what? See whether or not it was really her? If that young woman wasn't Elizabeth, then I'd just apologize, I guess. "Oh, I thought you were..." And if she had been Elizabeth, what would have I said?


Well, I could say lots of things. But none of them would matter. After all, when a person begrudges you your happiness or, worse, denies who and what you are and your right to live by the substance of your being, what can you say? What kind of a conversation can you have with someone who'd rather see you dead than happy just so that she can be right, or at least able to rationalize her resentments and hatefulness?


Yes, it hurt when she said she no longer wanted anything to do with me. The rejection from my brother Tony hurt even more, but somehow I could forgive him. If he were to call me, I wouldn't ask questions, except about the state of his health and well-being, and would do the best I can to resume the kind of relationship we once had. I don't think I could, or want to, do that for Elizabeth. I guess family ties are stronger than any others after all.


And Elizabeth, in essence, denied not only that I am part of her family, if you will--I'm referring, of course,to the sisterhood--but that I ever could, or had a right to, be one of its members. That, evne though there was a time in my life--a long time, in fact--in which she was my best friend and probably knew me better than anyone except my mother or grandmother ever has. Or so I thought.


So, for all I know, she disappeared into the night. And so did I. Two people can do that only if they're going in different directions. At least I know that her path isn't the only one to life as a woman. Thank goddess!


I was tempted to turn around and try to get another glimpse. But I knew I could ride or walk only but so close, if at all, until she noticed me. Or maybe she wouldn't. That would be fine with me.

Passing

The other night Dominick and I were talking--about the movie (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) we'd just seen, our families, our work, and about, well, ourselves. Seemingly out of nowhere, I became contemplative. Dominick sensed it immediately, and asked what was "the matter."

I said "oh, nothing," which was true enough for government work.

"What are you thinking about?"

Lately, I find myself thinking a lot about what changes I've experienced and witnessed during the past six years--since Tammy and I split up and I moved out and started on the road to my gender transition. I also find myself thinking about the passage of time and what is lost, and gained.

Before I embarked upon this journey (All right, I'll stop getting all quaint on you!) I had assumed that, with the surgery--when and if it happened--I would be leaving an old self, an old identity, behind. The person who lived before the surgery would cease to exist--would become a memory-- for me and at least a few other people. A new self would emerge, to be sure: That is the point of all of this work, after all. But what would happen to the old self, to the things I used to be?

As Dominick and I were tallking, something occured to me, which I tried to articulate for him: Different incarnations, if you will, of me had passed by at that very moment when he and I were together. Nick, or the very early Justine, wouln't have been led by the hand by, or walked arm-in-arm with, Dominick, as Iwas at that moment. Part of it had to do with the notion I had of my sexuality, such as it was.

That was passing, or was already gone. And so, I realized, is the person who was earning diplomas and working before Dominick was born. Almost by definition, I could not still be that person and be with him. And, some people--notably Elizabeth, Jay (a male former friend, not to be confused with current friend Jay, who's my favorite butch because she's the first person to whom I "came out") and my brother Tony--ended their communication with me precisely because I am no longer that person. On the other hand, there are people in my life whom I probably never would have met, much less befriended, had I remained the person I was.

The funny thing was that I could see everyone I used to be passing by at that moment I was talking to Dominick. No, I haven't started taking drugs or drinking again: If I can see what I saw the other night, why would I need to?

But it was strange to have, in some weird way, my life flash before my eyes. I can't stop thinking about it and wondering if it portends something. I mean, it's the sort of experience one normally associates with a life-and-death moment, and in that moment with Dominick, I was about as alive as I have been and could be. I didn't sense any danger. Maybe there was some turning point at that moment. I just can't say, yet, what might've turned or changed.

Maybe it will make sense later. Or maybe it was just passing, too.

A Decision

To try to solve the dilemma I described yesterday...What did I do?

I called Dr. Bowers' office.

Robin, with whom I've talked before, must've heard just about every fear, anxiety or crazy situation anyone who's on her way to the surgery might encounter. But she's not jaded: She is friendly and compassionate.

Actually, what she did is to reinforce an innate sense that I've developed: that I can, and will do the best and right things, and things will work out. She assured me that after I'm discharged from the hospital, I won't need help getting out of bed or doing day-to-day things. There also won't be any bandages to change. I'll need only to insert my catheter, which I can do alone. And I can't exert myself physically: It'll take a few weeks before I can bike, swim, or engage in any other sport or fitness activity. And then I'll have to start slowly.

There is only a very slight chance of complications after the surgery. And if I experience them, I can go to my regular doctor, she assured me.

If I want to stay with Mom and Dad after I leave the hospital, she said, they won't have to do anything except let me rest. Really, all I want from Mom is moral support, and that she's willing to give (and has been giving) me.


But, oddly enough, hearing that swayed me toward coming home after the surgery. Dominick said he'd help me, and would even let me stay with him. Millie would probably continue to do whatever I can't do for my cats, and I could call on favors from other people, if you know what I mean. And, on that odd chance that I have any post-op complication, I could just hop in a cab to my doctor.

After hearing Robin, I knew I could make the choice not to stay with Mom and Dad, and not add to any tension between them. It would be just that: a choice, for me. They are still going to the hospital with me; that is when I'd most want and need them for moral support, anyway. And, of course, I will always have the knowledge that Mom was willing to do even more than that for me.

So far it looks like the proverbial "win-win." I'm happy with the scenario, and when I called Mom and told her, I could feel her relief even before she voiced it. Now, I hope that Dad, my brother and whoever else will stop giving her "grief," as she described it.

Now I have 176 more days. Any more crises or decisions?

Who's Stressing Whom?

Now the fun begins...

Today Mom told me she was "getting a lot of grief" over her promise to let me stay with her after I recover from my surgery. She's also pledged to go to the hospital with me and to stay while I'm there to lend moral support. "I really want to do that for you," she emphasized.

Really, neither she nor Dad will have to do much else while I'm in the hospital. I really don't want anything more: After all, what could they, or anyone else, give me that's better than that?

But Dad and my brother Mike say it might be putting a strain on her if I recuperate at Mom and Dad's house. They have a point, and I promised Mom that if I found out that she had to do anything strenuous for me, or if she simply wasn't feeling well, I would make other arrangements.

One thing (among many) I can say for Mom is that she follows through on her commitments. So I know she did not make her offer idly. And I really don't want to cause her unnecessary stress. However, it looks as if there will be stress anyway, although it (or at least some of it) may not come from where or whom it might've been expected.

Mike expressed his own discomfort about the fact that I'm going through with what my decision to live as a woman, as completely as I can--which he presented as concern for Mom--when I talked with him last week. I have always known that he wasn't crazy about my gender change, and I never expected him to be. As for Dad, he had actually been supportive in his own ways, if not enthusiastic. That has been a pleasant surprise for me.

Still, I wish he'd voiced his concerns directly to me rather than feeding them to Mike, who's using them as fuel for his own agenda. And I wish they both would lay off Mom. Whatever happens, Mike won't be part of my surgery or recovery. He has no desire for that, and I don't begrudge him. However, he did ask me to schedule my surgery so that it wouldn't "interfere" with my nephew's graduation from high school, which my parents plan to attend. That is the reason why I scheduled it for July (which, I admit, is a nice birthday present) instead of June.

I may just make new post-operative arrangements anyway simply to spare my mother from further conflict. Then again, I wonder whether that would work, given what results have come from my attempts at trying to make things easier (I can't make them easy!) for others. Even though I reiterated for them the same promise I made to my mother, my father and brother still are talking as if I don't care and am trying to bleed my mother dry.

Oh well. I kinda knew that when the six-month milestone approached, someone was going to flip out. And I didn't expect that person to be me. And I'm not that person.

All I want is to be happy and to be good to the people I love. Why is that so hard for some people to understand?

Synchronicity?

Another gray, cold day, except that we're getting some snow. It's colder than it's been, so I don't think the snow will turn to rain, or even sleet, any time soon.

Most people would rather be touched by snow than struck by sleet. I feel that way, too. But either way, it's cold.

Maybe the estrogen and my age are changing my body chemistry. I never used to feel, or at least notice, the cold as much as I do now. At least, I didn't admit that I did. I suppose I could blame my body chemistry for that, too, except that back then I was full of testosterone (and sometimes substances my body didn't produce!). Oh, no, I'm not cold, and I know where I'm going. Of course!

But back to the weather: It really seems like a B-movie come true. I mean, how many scenes depict hard times against a backdrop of winter weather. I guess they're the negatives, if you will, of all those paintings and lithographs that depict prosperity and the glories of an empire unfolding under clear Hapsburg skies. Of course, as the skies grayed, empires and fortunes waned.

So I guess it's supposed to be cold and gray, what with the economic times. I may have already mentioned all of those Depression-era photographs in which everything always looks overcast. And, of course, as the skies darken, it means that the nation is going to war.

I hope that's not the case. I'm against war in general, but I can think of very few military actions that rival this country's invasion of Iraq for the sheer mendacity that led up to it. Bush lied, they died: It may not be the greatest rhyme, but it sums up the situation.

And the pretext for it was something that wasn't in the script, unless it had been written by Albert Camus and based on The Plague. I am talking, of course, about September 11th, a day when le mort en pleurait du ciel claire: Death rained from the clear blue sky. You could live all of your life in New York and never see a morning as clear as that one was, before the planes crashed into the towers. I was reminded of yet another literary work:

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels' trumpets
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

That's part of "A Song On The End of The World" by Czeslaw Milsoz. (Did I spell his name right? Everyone I know pronounces it to rhyme with "cole slaw-meat loaf.") No one believed what was happening on September 11th; it just didn't fit with the cloudless sky and the sort of warmth that either radiates from the last flickerings of summer or hides the fact that autumn is about to begin, depending on your point of view.

And now it's cold and snowing and the world's going to hell in a handbasket, at least according to the pundits. I hope that all the things I'm looking forward to aren't swept away by these winds or buried in the snow (or worse yet, dissipated when the snow melts.).

Sometimes synchronicity is a good, or even logical, thing. Only sometimes.

Males and Females in Hibernation

I'm so tired. Today reminds me of a lot of days I had during the regular semester: Too much to do, not enough sleep. In between the comprehensive exam workshop and the class I taught, I went to my office with the intention of doing some work. Instead, I nodded off.

I started to think about my cats: even though it was relatively warm inside my apartment, they could feel how cold it was outside. At least, that's what I sense. So, they are curling up on anything and anybody that has even the slightest ability to be cuddled. That would include me.

And I'm feeling rather hibernatory (Does that word exist?) myself. Cold and gray for days on end does that to some people. Actually, lots of people. As if I were ever concerned with joining a majority!

Anyway, I had another one of those days in which it seemed that every woman I saw was younger and prettier than I am. Of course, those aren't the things that make one a woman, but I find myself wondering whether I'll be attractive and sexy (as if I ever was) after the operation. I know women are judged much more on their looks than men are, but I also want to be the kind of woman that only I can be. Well, at least I hope I'm sui generis. But I still want to "fit in" as a woman.

I'm still thinking about what my brother Mike said last week: I'm not effeminiate. Of course, I should take that with bays full of salt: After all, he said "every transsexual I've seen is effeminate." Now, I know he lives in California. But he's also in the San Bernadino area, which is where lots of LA cops live. So, I have to wonder just how many transgenders he's actually seen. And, of course, I think of what Richard Russo said in his afterword to Jenny Boylan's She's Not There: That he still slipped into using masculine pronouns when talking with Jenny, who, as Jim, befriended him many years earlier. And, Russo said, there were still times when he had trouble seeing Jenny as a woman, even though she "passed" practically from the first time she went out in women's clothes and has morphed into a beautiful woman. On the other hand, Jenny's roommate at the sex-change hospital was much more masculine-, or at least androgynous-, looking, but Russo could never see her as anything but a woman and used female pronouns when addressing and talking about her.

I know all this, and the fact that I haven't actually seen Mike in person in about fifteen years and, for all I know, I may never see him again. Still, his words are echoing in my head, no matter what I do to purge them.

I guess they affect me for the same reason my brother Tony's ending all communication with me, and between me and my niece and nephew, hurts: Nobody can hurt you like your flesh and blood. A cliche, but like most cliches, it attained its status because it's so true and nobody does anything about it. Then again, what can you do about it?

Now I have a question: Do female bears hibernate in the same way as male ones?

Another Winter Night

Tonight I rode my bike to and from work. It was the first time I'd done that in, probably, a month. And it's the first time I've been on my bike since I got back from Florida. Time was when I'd've ridden every day. But, well, I guess I've slowed down and I'm not trying to prove anything. Still, sometimes I miss those days when I was riding everyday, and to practically everywhere. Part of that sentimentality is, of course, a longing for youth, or at least being younger. And I think of the kind of shape I was in, at least physically. Emotionally, spiritually--that's another story.

Anyway, I didn't count on the temperature dropping about fifteen degrees by the time I left the college. At least, that's what it felt like. And I was wearing a skirt that came to just above my knee when I stood, or to the lower-middle part of my thighs when I was in the saddle. I covered my legs in pantyhose. Surprisingly, I didn't feel the cold much below my waist.

Then again, whenever I've ridden my bike in winter, my legs rarely felt cold as long as my head and torso were warm enough.

I must have been quite the sight on my bike. A female driver actually was looking at my legs, then at me, at a stoplight. She was grinning.

And now I am dozing off. The cold really saps your energy--especially if you're female, whether by birth or with those little yellow Premarin pills.

Six Months: Deja Vu, A Venir

Today's the day. Well, the halfway day, anyway.

Six months...since I started counting down this year. Six months--181 days--until the date of my surgery.

Yes, only six months to go. When's the day gonna come?

For the last few weeks, I've had the sense that this would be a major milestone. I wasn't sure of whether I'd plow full-speed-ahead, or whether I'd start to panic. You might say I'm doing a bit of both.

Actually, this day has been neither as exhiliarating nor as foreboding as I might've expected it to be. About the biggest event of this day was resuming my electrolysis after a layoff of three weeks. Tonight, I had another class session with the students I'll be teaching for the next two weeks. They're very nice, and I haven't told them anything about my impending surgery, this blog or my life as the "before" picture. However, I'm sure they've heard something about them, for most of my students these days are friends of students who've taken my classes before.

Tonight they were very energetic, asking lots of questions and adding a lot to the discussion and doing really good work. And I felt hyper and giddy. Were they feeding off my energy, or was I running on theirs? Or was it some sort of spontaneous synchronicity? What in the world did I just ask?

Anyway, I enjoyed it and will continue to do so, or so I hope. Maybe if the next six months could be like this, I would be in really good condition, both physically and emotionally, when I go into the surgery. Or I may just be so exhausted that I'll collapse onto the operating table and Dr. Bowers can give her anaesthesiologist the day off. Does that mean I would get a discount on the cost of the surgery? Anaesthesiologist sent home, not paid...Hmm, How would the anaesthesiologists' union feel about that? Or do they have one?

But back to this day, and the six months gone and six months to come. At the beginning, I wanted this to be an uneventful and uncomplicated year. Somehow I had the idea that I needed to save my energy, to save myself, for the surgery. That was one of the reasons why, just after I started this full-time faculty position, I was upset: I started to feel as if whatever right to privacy I had was taken away from me. But then again, practically everyone on campus knew about me, or had at least heard about me and thought "that's the one" when they saw me walking down the halls.

Or maybe they said, "She's that prof," or "He's that prof." If they said either of those things, I shouldn't be happy. After all, I am an English teacher and I'd hope they'd know that any living thing, whatever his or her gender, should never be referred to as "that." Not even if he or she is an ex or an in-law!

I must say, though, that the more imminent the surgery becomes, the more I sense my in-between-ness. (I'm sorry for the inelegance of that locution.) Previously, I was seeing myself if, not as a corporeal woman, then at least as someone who was living more or less as one. In public, strangers who've heard nothing about me call me "ma'am" or, if I'm being a really good girl, "miss." There was the other side, too: People who assumed I was less knowledgable or competent than I actually am. I've found them in the halls of academia as well as in hardware stores. And then, of course, there have been the dangers: I don't venture as freely, solitarily or as late as night as I once did. I'd been warned not to do those things, and I think now of the guy who tried to pull of my skirt, whom I tried to lose in a maze of ancient streets just behind the Hotel de Ville in Paris. I know those streets better than most non-Parisians, but he knew them at least as well. Finally, I leapt into a taxi and blurted "Republique" to the driver. I know the arrondisements around la Place de la Republique pretty well, he wouldn't be there, and from there I knew I could get on the Metro to Janine's apartment.

That was near the end of my first year of living full-time as Justine. A couple of more incidents with randy, raunchy guys followed during the ensuing years.

Most women in similar situations would be thinking about a sexual assault. I thought of that, too, and of other kinds of assault (which usually accompany the sexual kind). But biological women in those situations are in danger, or are at least concerned because of their woman-ness. On the other hand, I was in danger because I was, in some senses, not yet completely a woman.

Of course the operation won't take that danger away. But I'm doing it so that at least I will come closer to being the person, the woman, I am and want to be.

So, if I've been living between genders, or as one who entered her ancestral home-gender (Sorry for another clumsy phrasing!) but who wasn't yet fluent in the language or entangled with the culture, there are still aspects of living fully (or as fully as I can) as a woman that I can only imagine. And aspects I can't imagine.

And there are the things I've always imagined. Will they be as I envisioned them? Among other things, I'm thinking, of course, about my body without a penis, and with a vagina and clitoris. Will I see it the same way as I see other things I've always imagined, like my breasts (such as they are)? I'd always wanted them, although I'm now glad they're not as big as I would've wanted them when I was younger. The truth is, I see them when I dress and undress, but I don't think about them. They're just kinda there: I like them, but they're nothing to make a fuss over. Then again, they don't have as great an effect on how I function as a woman as I expect my vagina and clitoris will.

Now I'm thinking again of that first year of living full-time. I was teaching at LaGuardia Community College. The school's drama society and women's center were staging Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. (See what happens when one of your school's faculty members "changes" genders!) A few of the actresses, women from the center and I were talking about it. Then they began to talk about their vaginas and what they meant to them. Finally, they all looked to me. "Mine's within me," I said. "Hopefully, one day it will be on the outside, too."

"It will," said the Center's director.

Yes...As long as all goes according to plan and design, it will. In another six months.

Deja vu; a venir. Another 181 days to go.

Time flies. Are we there yet?

Body and Spirit

Last night, after I wrote my entry in this blog, I went to Oprah's website. Yes, that Oprah: which other one could I mean?

Anyway, I clicked onto the link for people who want to be on her show. There, I found a bunch of categories. I couldn't fit my request in any one of them, but I chose the one about spirituality and self-realization, or something like that. On it, I wrote--in the little box provided--my story, or at least what I could fit in there.

It made me think of Monty Python's "Summarize Proust" sketch. Not that I'm as interesting as Proust. But how can someone's, whether one's own or someone else's, life or work be pigeonholed into 2000 characters?

All I could do was say, in a very rudimentary way, that my journey from living as Nick to life as Justine has been a spiritual one, and that I took it entirely for spiritual reasons. It's part of an even larger journey, which includes my sobriety as well as whatever else has contributed to my evolution, such as it is.

Will Oprah's agents call me? I'm not betting on it. Then again, I'm almost never a bettor anyway. All I've ever done is what I needed to do--at least when I put down the bottle, pills and powder, and when I "changed" genders--and hoped, but didn't assume, that everything would turn out all right. It occurs to me that betting and spirituality are mutually exclusive, and that as little as I can understand faith, I know that it's not a bet; it's a matter of beliefs.

So, what was the nice spiritual trannie girl thinking about today? How ugly she is; how every woman she saw today on the train or elsewhere looked like Angelina Jolie next to her; how she'll never make a good woman with a body like the one she has.

I am practicing a more feminine, or at least a more alluring, walk. Soon I'll start the voice lessons. Hopefully the walk and the talk will become natural for me. The latter would probably be helped if I were to lose about thirty pounds or so.

In case one of Oprah's agents is reading this (:-) ), I want to emphasize that I really have been making my transition, and have scheduled my surgery, for spiritual reasons. I simply want my body to more closely conform to what my spirit, my essence is and wants to express. Sometimes I tell people that I feel like the handicapped kids for whom I conducted poetry workshops at St. Mary's Hospital in Queens: Sometimes their spirits soar, leap, run, jump or dance even if their bodies can't. If there were a medicine or operation that would allow their bodies to express what was inside them, who wouldn't want them to have it? Well, I am luckier than they were: such things exist for me.

Still, I wouldn't mind having Jennifer Lopez's curves, Rihanna's legs, Halle Berry's facial bone structure, Kirstie Alley's eyes or just about anything from Angelina Jolie. I mean, really, I want them for spiritual reasons. Honestly, I do!

I know, Marcie Bowers doesn't do that kind of surgery. She's going to do my gender reassignment, but she doesn't do cosmetic surgeries. And, from my conversation and what I've seen of her, I don't think she's apt to recommend it to all trans women. This may sound strange to say about a surgeon, but I get the impression that she's more concerned with the spiritual than the corporeal: The work she does on other trans people's bodies, and will do on mine, is for the purpose of helping people's bodies to become vehicles for their spirits. She has said things to that effect, and speaks of her work in almost religious tones.

Know what? I wouldn't mind looking like her, either. Dr. Bowers, can you make me as pretty as you are?

I've made that request of one other woman in my life. The funny thing was, I hadn't yet begun to take hormones, grown my hair or do anything more than "cross dress" up to that day. And I was grungy and sweaty from bike riding that hot day when I asked Toni to help me. For the next five years, she would cut and color my hair and help me to select skin and hair care products as well as cosmetics. Then she went to Paris to study theatrical makeup, and is now starting to work in that area. One of her fellow hairdressers in that shop--Anna, in Zoe's Beauty in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY--now cuts my hair.

Neither of them made me as atttractive as they are. Then again, I do get a lot of compliments on my hair, at least when I brush it. In my spirit, I always had long, flowing hair. So I guess they've helped me to become my real self, in their own way.

Who says you can't be beautiful and spiritual at the same time?