Two Dates

This has to be one of the most interesting juxtapositions of dates: Today is Friday the 13th; tomorrow will be Valentine's Day. Will tomorrow seem like today for someone who asks, "Will you be mine," and doesn't hear the answer he or she wanted?

Does anyone ever answer "no" to that question on Valentine's Day? I've never heard of it. And, the times in my life I've asked, or been asked, the question, it had already been answered--at least for that day.

Now I will reveal a secret from a long-ago Valentine's Day. It's something I would never, ever do now (she says with a wink). It wasn't illegal, but I'm glad the statute of limitations has passed nonetheless. At least I think it has.

OK, I didn't father a child on some Valentine's Day past. If I had, it couldn't have remained a secret for this long. What I did was much more insidious than that.

It goes like this: I was a senior in college and like most students I knew, I was poor. There was a young woman at the school whom I let everyone else think I was dating, or at least studying French with. (Vraiement, nous ne faisons pas qu'etudier. Vraiement!) Because we were both passionate, opinionated people, we got into lots of arguments, sometimes very publicly. To some of our peers--and elders--that alone was evidence of a relationship that never existed, but which I allowed everyone to believe would flower after one or both of us graduated.

I would've liked to have such a relationship with her only because fewer people would have tried to fix me up with their sisters, female cousins, female friends, neighbors or other women in their lives, including their mothers and grandmothers. Yes, I've had people trying to hitch me with all of the people I've just mentioned. More than a few were very attractive, by anybody's standards; some were smart and/or nice. And at least a few of them seemed genuinely interested in me. That was rather funny, really, because I never considered myself terribly attractive or otherwise desirable.

All right: The truth was that I didn't want anyone to see me that way. And I didn't want a boyfriend, either: I'd tried that, and found it even less satisfying than a relationship with a female.

What I couldn't explain to anyone at that time in my life--and for a very long time afterward--was that neither a man nor a woman could make me happy in a relationship because, well, I wanted to be the woman, or at least a woman, in the relationship. Ironically, that very fact brought Tammy and me together--and caused us to break up.

But, oh, yes, I was starting to talk about that V-Day (Sorry, Eve Ensler!) from my youth. The young woman with whom I had the faux love relationship had a boyfriend on some distant campus and had flings with a few local boys. In those pre-AIDS (at least if you weren't in the Village or the Castro) days, that was expected of any sentinent college student.

However, some people, including my parents, worried about my seeming lack of interest in dating. So after I visited the family of the young woman in question, and she visited mine, we had two families hoping that we would couple.

In some ways, it was more intimate than any sexual/romantic relationship I'd had before, or would have for many years afterward. I told this young woman things that I hadn't told anyone else except my mother or my maternal grandmother, rest her soul. And, for many years afterward, I wouldn't tell anyone except my current therapist and the social worker I worked with during as I transitioned from living as Nick to being Justine. (During the intervening years, I went to other therapists and didn't talk about such things with them.) And, this young woman even talked me out of one suicide attempt and literally hugged me out of another, way back in the day.

So, yes, you would be correct in thinking that I cared more about this woman than anyone else I knew at the time except my mother and grandmother, rest her soul. But neither of us was attracted to the other in a sexual way, although I sometimes fantasized about spending my life with her in some sort of Platonic relationship. Of course I never could or would ask that of her: How can you ask that of anybody? Besides, while it would have been safe, at least in some senses, it would not have given either of us the kind of fulfillment we were seeking, however clumsily.

One more aside: Because I had the sort of friendship I shared with this woman, I could understand, many years later, what a sixtyish gay man meant when he told me that he still loved the woman whom he married when he was nineteen years old. She died young, from a cancer that probably could be treated, or at least kept in check, today. He came to terms with his sexuality during that marriage. However, he remained with her as she got sick and spiralled toward death.

All right. Now I'll tell you what I did to that young woman on Valentine's Day during my senior year. I gave her the reddest roses the world has ever seen. I am not exaggerating when I say that any more than I'm lying when I say I don't know how many I gave her; I only know that there were more than two dozen roses in that bunch.

Now, you're wondering: How did I afford so many perfect crimson roses on Valentine's Day when I was a poor student, back when the banks didn't give students credit cards? (Who says that people know better today?)The answer: I didn't pay for them. But, no, I didn't ransack the friendly neighborhood FTD. So what was the source of those almost-unworldly specimens of floriculture?

OK--That woman, if she's reading this, knows who she is and will now find out my secret. I found those roses in a dumpster next to one of the university's scientific research labs. I have no idea of how they ended up there, but there they were: That dumpster was just brimming with them! And, it seemed that every rose I picked up was redder, fuller and otherwise more perfect (and I'm an English teacher!) than the last. I didn't ask how they got that way, or what they were doing there.

So...If that woman had children with Down's syndrome or some other "defect," am I responsible? Or, for that matter, if she suffered from any physiological or psychological problems, are they results of that way-too-extravagant-for-my-means bouquet I gave her?

Did I turn her Valentine's Day into a Friday the Thirteenth?

From Playing Chicken With The Wind To Giving Birth

"It was the wind that gave them life," according to a Native American chant.

Today, it was the wind that blew my sandwich out of my hand.

Yes, you read that right. The bag containing my turkey and provolone hero dangled from between my left thumb and index finger. A gust wrested that bag, which fell to the sidewalk, from my fingers.

But the wind wasn't done. It rolled my sandwich along the sidewalk so that its wrapper unrolled and the bread, turkey, cheese, lettuce and tomato slices scattered about--all within a split-second.

Well, if you saw the condition of my body, you probably wouldn't feel sorry for me. And you shouldn't. But, short of a hurricane, I've never seen such wind.

At least now I feel quite content to be indoors--specifically, in my apartment, which is on the first floor of a house. Even though it was warm in my place, Charlie and Max, it seemed, wanted to curl up with me even more than they usually do. And, when they did, somehow it felt even cozier than it does on cold or rainy days.

In another life, on a day like this, they'd probably be with me, and I might be in some cottage on a windswept escarpment in Big Sur or someplace like that, looking out at the sea and sky and reading and/or writing by candlelight. And I just might be playing a harmonica--maybe something like the theme from Midnight Cowboy.

Actually, I did something not so different from that in my previous life, which wasn't so long ago but seems like part of another geologic age. I've holed up in lean-tos, sheds or the living rooms of various hostels and shelters of other kinds, basking in the glow of a flickering flame that drips wax.

I think now of the night that I arrived in Genoa, Italy on my bicycle. For the previous few days, I'd been pedalling up the Mediterranean coast from Rome, bound for Avignon, France. I'd spent most of that day in my lowest gears, grinding up a serpentine road that clung to the edge of a series of cliffs from which rocks tumbled into the sea, which on that day, lashed the shoreline about two hundred feet below me.

When you're pedalling a bike laden with your clothes, camping equipment, your camera and extra lenses (Remember, this was before digital photography.) through winds, gusting seaward, that make even your nearly formfitting clothes flutter like dangling flags, every physical and metaphysical particle of energy you expend is for the purpose of keeping yourself upright and, to whatever degree possible, moving forward--not to enjoying the scenery, beautiful as it is.

About an hour before I reached Genoa, I teetered along a section of road from which the guardrail was missing. That means absolutely nothing, except for that wind, seperated me from the stones I saw as they were breaking off from the side of the road and hopping toward the churning abyss below.

That night, I had a large but very simple meal of pasta, meat and salad at the hostel (Ostello del Mare: It sounds like one of Shakespeare's tragic characters became a sailor!) , in a room lit by candlelight. I can't recall the meal itself so vividly--it was about half my lifetime ago, after all--but I do remember that almost nothing had ever tasted so good. And very few meals have I've had since were that good. And the vin ordinaire that I washed it down with could just as easily have been Dom Perignon's finest vintage.

My ride along the unguarded roadway was not my first of experience of being on a precipice with the wind pushing me toward its edge. I'd stood, my toes hugging a jagged edge, on a similar ridge in California during my first trip away from the East Coast of the US, when I was a teenager. My father called me away; when I finally backed toward him, my brother rushed over to me and punched me. Several years later, on my first trip alone, I dismounted my bike along a desolate stretch of the Normandy coast and leaned seaward as the wind braced, then pushed at, my back. In spite of those gusts, clouds drifted lazily toward the ripples that would become tides as they swelled toward the shore.

For most of my life, I could not resist playing "chicken" with the wind, even when the air and sea were calm--or when there was no sea and very little air. I last recall daring the caprices of the brink during my last long bike tour, during the summer of 2001. I'd spent most of that morning grinding my way up l'Alpe de Huez, along with hundreds of other cyclists who anticipated the pack of Tour de France riders later that day. The road up the mountain is not particularly long. But, before you reach the summit, you negotiate twenty-one virages (hairpin turns). Each one, it seemed, was steeper and turned more sharply than the previous one. And, of course, with each of those turns, you are at a higher elevation, where the air is thinner but the wind and sun are more intense.

Well, on one of those virages--the fourteenth or fifteenth, if I recall correctly-- there was no guard rail. I did not want to stop because I believed--correctly--that it would be much more difficult to resume my ride than to continue it, however slowly. However, it seemed as if all of the Alps, and all of the rivers, pastures, glaciers and villages that punctuated them, spread below me. Although I'm not religious, I recalled Satan leading Jesus up a mountain and showing him the kingdom that spread beneath their feet. I think that's how the story goes, anyway, and I could imagine it taking place at that spot.

So, what did I do because I didn't stop? I veered to my right and rode as close to the edge of that road--which, at that point, lacked a guardrail--as I could. As the sun reddened my skin in the thin air, I felt the wind blowing at my side and back at the same time--or so it seemed. So, with each pedal stroke, one puff pushed me a few metres onward while another tottered me along a jagged edge of falling rocks.

A few days later, I would see that woman in Saint Jean de Maurienne who, simply by walking home from work as I straddled my bike at a stop-light, made me realize that I could not take another step in this world as a man. (I've mentioned her, and that day, in previous posts.) And I never again tempted the wind, for I would never again have to tempt fate because, I realized, fate was all I'd ever had. From then on, there was only a journey, if not destiny.

Now I'm thinking about why I've never taken such chances since I started to live as Justine. You might say that in taking that step, I took the greatest risk I could ever take and nothing else seems quite so momentous a choice, so freighted with my hopes. Or, maybe, having committed myself to living as Justine, I was taking so many other risks that had real consequences for my life that momentarily giving my fate to the wind almost seems trivial, if not childish.

I've also heard other people say that women are more risk-adverse than men are. Hmm...Maybe those hormones are having even more of an effect on me than I'd anticipated. Then again, what man ever takes as great a risk as a woman does when she gives birth?

From living as a boy who played chicken with the wind to being a woman who surrenders to the very force of life--at least her own life--itself: Is that a form of birth? Or is losing the need, or even the wish, to play chicken with the wind?

Agoraphobia Does Not Become Me

Today's the birthday of the brother who was in the Army reserves. I sent a card but didn't call; I am both afraid of and too angry to call any of my brothers right now.

So I spent the day as an agoraphobic might. At the college in which I teach, it's not always the same day as it is in the rest of the world. So, while it was a Tuesday at home, it was Thursday at work. The majority of classes at the college meet two days a week: Tuesday/Thursday or Monday/Wednesday. However, my Tuesday class meets only on that day. So, for my students--and me--there was no class today.

The university of which my college is a part also observed Thursday today. That meant that I didn't get to be a student today.

That's all probably just as well. Yesterday, people who saw me on campus said that I looked tired, angry or sad, or some combination thereof. Indeed, I was all of the above. So today I was feeling inclined not to deal with people. That means I got to play the part of the reclusive writer/scholar--or at least use that ruse to be agoraphobic.

Actually, I did some non-blog writing and work on the hip-hop course I'm teaching. Both made me feel that at least I accomplished something, which made me a little happier. Hopefully, I'll be more ready to face the world tomorrow.

My mother might be the only member of my family who has any idea of how vulnerable I am. Well, maybe the brother who just disassociated himself from me knows that sometimes I feel as if a layer of skin has been stripped away from me and is exploiting that. Of course he wants me to feel hurt. Maybe that's how he's trying to keep me from doing the surgery. That, and isolating me from the rest of the family, or trying to do that.

Even though she seems to understand how I feel, I think my mother is too upset to be as supportive as she has been. I'm starting to wonder whether she'll accompany me to the hospital after all. I'm almost entirely sure that my father isn't going with me: My brother has seen to that. And he's no doubt wishing that my mother hadn't promised to support me in the ways she has. On top of everything, she and everyone else in the family is blaming me for breaking up the family they like to pretend was more idyllic than it actually was.

I really did, and still do, appreciate the efforts some people in the family made for me. Nothing in my life ever made me feel better than my mother's promise that she and my father would accompany me to the hospital. And I was happy that until the holidays, my brother and I were speaking to each other without the rancor that marked so much of our earlier dealings with each other. Now, in losing those things, I feel as if I'm being crushed in a vise.

Yes, the doctors warned me that the hormones would make me more sensitive. And so would the prospect of surgery, my therapist advised me. Well, I experienced some of the joy of that, so I guess I have to go through the downside, I guess.

Tomorrow I'll have to go to classes. And maybe I'll try to get in a session of electrolysis. Agoraphobia does not become me.

Migraines Make The Tranny

I'm collecting recipes. No, not the kind for boeuf bourguignon, osso bucco or General Tso's chicken. I've got plenty of those already, and will probably continue to collect them. That means, of course, that I probably won't even try the majority of them.

No, those aren't the recipes I'm talking about. I mean another kind. I'm not voluntarily collecting them; they're finding their way to me. Worst of all, they're all recipes for the same thing: a migraine headache.

The latest recipe is what I experienced yesterday with my family. Yes, that was a great experience for a migraine sufferer like me to have! The brother who's turning the rest of the family against me has come up with the perfect recipe: all he has to do are things he's always done, from the time when we were kids. In other words, he's bullying and otherwise manipulating other family members.

So, for the entire day, I felt that there was a steel cable running through my head and at each of my temples, someone tugged at each end of that cable, which tensed everything inside my head as it frayed.

When I was younger, I used to take solace in the fact that all sorts of geniuses, many of them in the arts, also suffered migraines. It's always good to know that you have something in common with people you admire. I think now of the time when Iwas in my sophomore year in college, I think, and I "came out" to a few friends and family members because, well, I didn't fit anybody's idea of a straight guy, I hadn't had a steady girlfriend and wasn't looking for one. When I told my uncle Sonny, he quipped, "Well, it was good enough for those ancient Greek writers, wasn't it?"

Turns out I'm not a gay man after all. Oh, well: I'll have to find some other common bond with Plato, if I really want one.

But the migraine headaches put me in all sorts of company I want. Not only am I akin, in that sense, to lots of creative people; my throbbing temples prove, once and for all, that I really am a woman in a man's body.

That's what some stupid online quiz says. It purports to tell people whether or not they're really trannies, the male-to-female variety. (They didn't have anything for FTMs.) Even though I passed with flying colors, according to their standards, I'd've laughed my implants (Oh, wait, I don't have them!) off if it weren't so full of stereotypes that, I thought, died out after the last cartoon with Minnie Mouse was made.

"Are you hopeless with math?" Yes, I am. "Do you always find yourself getting lost?" Let's just say that I'm a direct descendant of Columbus and inherited his navigational skills.

You get the idea. Well, at least it's good to know that I'm a genuine-article, gold-medal transgender woman, migraines and all.

It's not the first ridiculous test I've ever taken. I think they're all pretty stupid and utterly useless, even when I do well on them. Yes, I include the GRE, even though I did better on the verbal and writing sections than 95 percent of the people who took it. The math was another story. I guess that's further proof of my gender identity. But, did I need the test to tell me that?

I guess it's good to know that the tests show what I already know. Some people will believe the results of those tests before they'll listen to you recount your feelings and experiences. So I guess I'm safe if I ever need a seal of approval from such people.

Well, I'm going to try to fall asleep with this migraine. Wake me when it's over. I'll still be lousy in math and navigation!

I'm Breaking Up My Family

Yesterday I mentioned the pamphlet Timerman describes in Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without A Number. One of the claims that pamphlet made was that Freud destroyed the Christian concept of the family. That was one of the rationalizations for anti-Semitism offered by some of the military leaders in the Peron government.

Well, guess what? I'm doing Freud one better. I'm not destroying the concept of a family; I'm destroying an actual family. And I'm not even Jewish.

I never knew I had so much power. But that is what is what my family is imputing to me. To be more exact, my brother who's been causing a lot of ruckus lately says that just as my other two brothers want nothing to do with me, neither does he. And he claims they're upset because Mom and Dad offered their support of me.

Oh, really, now? One of the brothers in question cut off contact with me immediately after I came out. The only communication I have received from him in the past five and a half years was an e-mail that said, in essence, that my transformation was a fetish and that I'm leaving lots of upset people in my wake. That was around Christmas five years ago.

As for the other brother: We do talk occasionally. Now if he's decided he wants nothing to do with me, well, it's news to me. I haven't spoken with him since Christmas, but there have been times we've gone even longer than that, especially for the five years the Army activated him. (He was a reservist until a few months ago.) And there were other times when he was working and studying as well as fulfilling his reservist obligations. On top of all that, he takes care of my niece and nephew when he's home.

I'm sure he wasn't happy about my transition. But if he wants nothing to do with me, well, I want to hear it from him.

And the brother who has now decided he wants nothing to do with me is stressing Mom out. Turns out, he's the one who earlier said that this situation was stressing Mom out and that I was wrong to do that to her. She had volunteered her help, I reminded him, and after saying "Well, gee, thanks, are you sure you really want to do that" to her, I accepted only after she insisted that helping me was what she really wanted to do. One thing Mom has never done, in my experience, is to offer something that she doesn't really want to give, or to make any other commitment she isn't ready to keep.

Imagine King Lear without Shakespeare's writing. That's more or less how my family situation seems to me now. Actually, it's a combination of that and Othello, again without the Bard's language-- and without the issue of race. So what does that make My Brother the Manipulator? A cross between Iago and either Reagan or Goneril. The first character said, "I hate the Moor" in reference to Othello, and the other two panelled their lust for daddy's fortune with a veneer of words extolling their love for him. The other daughter, Cordelia, says only, "Father, I love thee." Not to say that I'm her: I'm no angel. But I actually do love my mother and father and don't care about how whatever they might or might not give to me compares with they might or might not give my brothers.

Now, for all of you who wonder why you should read Shakespeare, I hope I've given you at least one reason. Even if you're not interested in his language, you will understand a few things better in your daily life. I took only basic Psych in college, but I bet some of the more specialized courses refer to his plays. And Freud himself had quite a bit to say about Hamlet. Sometimes I think that he may come to be remembered even more as a literary critic than as one of the founders of modern psychology.

Back to my family: Even before everything blew up, the cynic in me said that something like this would happen. The only difference between the vision I had and what's gone down is that I thought my father would be the one to undermine what I do. So I named the wrong person in my family. Instead, my brother is using him.

And yet I get all the credit for destroying the family. Hmm, maybe I should become a divorce lawyer. After all, if I'm going to break up families, I may as well get paid very well for doing so. Raoul Felder, watch out: You're about to have formidable competition.

Five Months, A Circle

Five more months. That's how many days? 150, exactly.

I'm thinking about my mother again, as I often do. I wonder what she felt like when she was five months away from giving birth to me, or to any of my brothers. Because my birthday on the Fourth of July, my countdown to surgery (on 7 July) very closely parallels her timetable to my birth. Of course, her experiences are different from mine in so many other ways, for any number of reasons: I was the first of four children she would have; she gave birth to me a month before she turned twenty and, well, she had more of an excuse for gaining weight during that time than I have now! Still, I can't help to wonder what she was experiencing at this chronological point in her pregnancy, when she had 150 days to go.

They say that we can live life only one day at a time. Of course that's true, even though it never seems that way.

When I look back at the previous 215 days-- seven months; when I recall the five and a half years I've lived as Justine and the forty-five I lived as Nick/Nicholas; when I recollect the decades of depression and loneliness, I am startled at how quickly it has gone by. I am not the first person to have said that about her past. But I am also surprised, and sometimes exasperated, at how slowly the present--or more precisely, the moments just ahead of this one--approaches me. I am like one of those kids who whines, "Are we there yet?," as soon as he gets into the family car for a vacation.

So...I look at my past in the way adults see it. ("Where did the years go?") On the other hand, I am looking at my present--that ephemeral moment as elusive yet as concrete as an eel one might encounter in a dream--as a child might.

Now I think I understand what Dominick meant when he thought he saw my story in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. As implausible as the plot seemed, I liked it--both the Fitzgerald story and the movie. Now it's actually starting to make sense. Not only do I now see myself in it; I now see how it shows the ways in which we perceive time. It occurs to me now that Fitzgerald's story came, if I recall correctly, not long after Einstein did his work that changed the ways we define time and space. (Jacobo Timerman described a pamphlet circulated in Peronist Argentina that said Einstein "destroyed" the "Christian" concept of space and time, just as Freud "destroyed" the "Christian" concept of the family and Marx "destroyed" the "Christian" concept of society. All of this was part of a rationale for anti-Semitism.) Why do we perceive time as we do?

All right. If I come up with the answer, I won't have to worry about a 20 percent, or any other percent, increase in the cost of the surgery. So I'll get to work on it.

And I probably won't come up with a better answer than the Lakota chief who said that the life of a person is a circle from childhood to childhood.

The Cost of the Surgery Just Went Up Twenty Percent And I'm Trying Not To Think About It

Today I learned that the cost of my surgery might increase by as much as $4000. Dr. Marci Bowers' office cited large increases in costs, particularly insurance. That seems to be a problem for a lot of doctors these days.

Hmm...Maybe I should ask for donations. I could put a link on this page for Pay Pal or some such thing. Naah. Their fees have gotten too high. Besides, that seems like a surefire way of getting emails from people who are related to Nigerian princes (How many of them are there?) but who are in a terrible emergency, so would I deposit their wire transfer into my account and then transfer it to an account of their choice?--and I would get a commission, of course.

Which bridge do they want to sell me? No deal: I'm buying a stairway to heaven. Actually, if I had enough money, I'd buy the original tape or record (whichever it is) of Stairway to Gilligan's Island. It was on YouTube a while back. I don't know whether it's still there. If it is, check it out.

If there had been a stairway to Gilligan's Island, the island wouldn't be Gilligan's because the Minnow would never have been shipwrecked there. How would the world be a different place?

Something occurs to me now: Gilligan's Island was really a plug for colonialism. Think about it: When you watch that show, 99.9% of the time you're seeing the crew of the Minnow, all of whom (including Gilligan) are white and, presumably, protestant. Once in a great while you see a "native" who paints his body, wears feathers and talks in gibberish. The same could be said for F Troop which, if I recall correctly, had its run at about the same time as Gilligan's Island.

Kids like me watched stuff like that. So we were really taught that a certain amont of racism, or at least Cauco-centrism, was normal precisely because we couldn't see that it was exactly that.

You know how it is: The kid starts off with GI and F Troop; next thing you know, he's into Mein Kampf. Or, as George Carlin said, beer definitely leads to heroin.


Even if you put aside whatever conceptions you have about Hitler, MK is one of the world's most excruciating reads. The writing is wretched and repetetive. A prof who's fluent in German says that MK--as well as Das Kapital --are actually better in translation than in the original. If that's not a disincentive to learn German, I don't know what is.

Perhaps I should write a book about how television teaches kids to embrace such awful things as racism. Maybe it'll make me a whole bunch of money and I won't have to think about the cost of surgery or anything else. It might also make me the transgendered version of Tipper Gore. Oh, my!

Hmm...I'm undergoing this transition to become Tipper Gore. Or Phyllis Schlafly. Or how about Andrea Dworkin?

Oh, dear. Now you've just seen proof that I have to write earlier in the day. See what happens when you're up late at night with nothing but your laptop?

G'night, all.

Dreams and Real Learning

The weather's turned really cold again. It's supposed to warm up to almost spring-like conditions on Sunday, then return to the chill and gray skies we've been experiencing.

And now I'm awake, late at night, with the cold and my cold. Yes, I should be in bed but I'm not feeling sleepy. I'm not one of those people who falls asleep simply by going to bed. Sometimes I envy those people. But I notice that, it seems, their dreams do not remain with them for even a moment after they wake up. On the other hand, I find that waking up is not always an exit from my dreams, whether or not I want to leave--or, more to the point, realize that I can or can't leave them.

Sometimes my dreams are disturbing. I guess I'm no different from most people that way. At least being jolted or jarred is better than being sad, angry or lonely in one's dreams. Sometimes the scary dreams are a kind of refuge, or at least an escape, when your life is not happy. Having them is better than being sad, angry, lonely or in any way alienated while asleep. I know; I had the same arguments with the same people--all of whom, really, were me--all through my dreams for many, many years. (I think now of the time my mother said she and my father were arguing in her dream.) The only respite was the occasional return to some version of a room or any other place that I could not recall in my waking life. Actually, I returned not so much to the places as to the light of or around them, or at least the light as I could remember it only in those dreams.

It occurs to me now that in my dreams these days--at least the ones I recall--I am not in my past, or at least in any version of it that I can recognize. The good thing about that, of course, is that I don't have to be ruled by the pain I experienced, and the fears that it engendered, from those days, those years, those decades when I had abandoned the hope of living as the person I am. Perhaps there are still lessons to be learned from my past; maybe one day I will return to that process--if I experience the need and learn how to navigate through that process. But--Please indulge me in being trite, just for a moment--there is nothing I can do about the past itself or about anything from it. A few people from those times are in my life now; a few have chosen, at various times (including my transition), to absent themselves from it; still others--many, many more--are simply not here: they or I have moved on, or away. That's to be expected.

Last night's sleep, while only six hours long and ended by a knock at my front window, was particularly restorative. Though I still have the cold, or whatever it is, I feel a lot better than I did at the end of the day yesterday. I wasn't arguing with or raging at anybody; the anger I felt yesterday was, well, in the past. That's not to say that going to the college will suddenly become a more pleasant experience; it's simply one aspect (albeit a large one) of my life now.

I also realize that something I did with my students in the Poetics and Rhetoric of Hip Hop class is having a effect on me. I began that class in an entirely different way from any other I've taught. I asked them to close their eyes and find whatever is the most peaceful place for them--one where they weren't in that crowded subway or that conflict with the boss or spouse, or whatever was agitating them away from their spiritual centers. For about two or three minutes (I also had my eyes closed and wasn't keeping track of the time.), I asked them not to pay attention to anything but their breathing. All they had to do was breathe in and breathe out; all their surroundings had to do was to provide them with that breath. Then, I had them tap a pencil softly when they felt they had completely exhaled.

Then, I asked them to notice whatever rhythms they felt in their bodies: their breathing, of course, but also their blood (if they could feel that), their stomachs, their heartbeats or whatever else might twitch, vibrate, pulse or flow. And, finally, I asked them to hear whatever sounds they could and to feel whatever else might be pulsating or vibrating in that room.

My purpose in doing this exercise was to sensitize them to the rhythms they will hear in the songs and poems we hear and read in the class. You see, I want them to understand how those things work, but not only in an intellectual way. Perhaps some will think it runs counter to the nature and purpose of a college. Maybe they're right. But, at least I'm teaching poetry, if not the way it was meant to be understood, at least in a way that I have come to understand it--a way that is different from how others experience it.

I realize now that in some way, I was reaching out to my students, too. I wanted to be in that classroom with and for them, but not only because it was better than all the stuff I've come to loathe about the school. Rather, I just wanted the opportunity to present--no, not to present anymore, simply to be--my best and most integrated self.

After the class, I couldn't believe how many students wanted to talk to me--and not just about matters pertaining to the class. And I'm also not talking only about personal dilemmas, though a few students mentioned those. A few of them remarked on how much they learned; others talked about songs and other things they love. And, at least two others seemed to want simply to spend a moment with me, face to face.

Finally, as I was about to go home, I bumped into another student in that class: a young woman who took the Intro to Literature course (which everyone in the college is required to take) I taught during my first semester in the college. Back then, I thought she had recently been in prison: She had what I call the Rikers Scowl. But she had never been there, not even for a visit. On the other hand, she struck me as one of the most intelligent students I ever had; my opinion hasn't changed.

Now she's in that Hip-Hop class, and she talked with me about some of her dreams and goals. More important, she told me of some of the things that are important to her: that people be true to themselves and not to "live only for survival." Because she believes in a being higher than ourselves, and that being gave us life, "that's what we're meant to do--live, not merely survive."

And, she said, I helped her to understand those things, although neither of us knew, at the time, what we were doing.

I like to tell people, as they're about to leave on the last day of class, "The course starts now." Either she already knew that or took it to heart.

At least now I have those experiences, not the mere memory of them, for the kind of learning the students and I did doesn't end. On the other hand, all the arrogance, stupidity, pettiness and vindictiveness at the college ends when I leave it. Oh, I may experience other kinds of negativity in other places. But at least it isn't permanent and all-pervasive. And real learning is. I hope I'm giving that to everyone I meet--and to myself.

Sickness in Transit

So, so tired again today. I know I have something more than a cold. I guess tomorrow I can sleep late. Maybe that'll help.

It would also help if the college cleaned the ventilation system and checked for mold. A lot of people get sick there. Others, who have much more seniority than I have, point this out. But the college administration is in denial about it and so many other things.

And today, like every recent day, I could feel the tension as I locked the door of my place behind me and started on my way to the college. I felt angry and sick as I got on the subway and as the train made its stops and, at the end of the line, I disembarked and walked up the stairs from the station to the street and on to, and through the campus. Even the chance to converse with one of the more sympathetic profs--a gay man who is in the closet on his job--didn't relieve me of the rage and anxiety I was feeling.

The feeling subsided only when I walked into the door of the classroom where I'm teaching the course I was dreading. So far, they've been great students. I've decided that the students are really all that matters at that place. My experiences with them will be what will have nourished me, and kept me sane (more or less) at the college.

That prof and I have talked before about our experiences. He doesn't feel confident about "coming out;" I was outed even before I stepped on to the campus. He's worried about the religious fundamentalists on campus--students, faculty members, administrators and staff members alike.

I mentioned that I haven't had difficulty with the students, even the religious ones. I'll strike out the "even": Some of the religious students have actually been some of the kindest of all. Ditto for the religious staff members. The problems, as I had in other places, were with politically correct people who had advanced degrees and said all the right things to my face.

So the students, some faculty members, and most of the non-administrative staff have been worthwhile. The rest of what I experience there is bullshit. The department meeting the other day confirmed that for me: If egos have to do battle with each other, they have to do battle with someone. And if you're in their crosshairs, they'll find something about you that's a threat to them.

To hell with them. I didn't sign on for that when I started my transformation. I think I'm a pretty good teacher, and my students feel that I'm helpful. Well, most of them, anyway. That's what I try to be.

Forty Days and Groundhog Day

Yesterday I was so tired that when I woke up today, I couldn't remember going to bed. Or even getting home. I had a cold that seems to have turned into something that feels suspiciously like the flu. Except, I'm not supposed to have the flu: I got a flu shot. This reminds me of the winter before last, when I got the flu shot and had lived on antibiotics during the month of January.

Today I woke up late and notified the prof of the class I'm taking that I'm not coming in. I'm feeling kinda sorry about that. I still don't know whether I'll like the class although I enjoyed that first session last week. At least this prof seems good.

And so far I'm liking the classes I'm teaching. But being at the college is really dreadful sometimes. It's odd: From the time I lock the door of my place behind me until I step in the classroom, I feel angry or tired or both. The college seems more and more like a troubled and tense place, and the department in which I teach is becoming a microcosm of the place. The department meeting yesterday was one of the most excruciating meetings of any kind I ever attended: filled with so much egotism in the guise of intellectual debate or concern for the welfare of the college or its students.

It's not even about me anymore. I mean, I'm not even thinking about how some people in the department, and in the college, have treated me. Or how certain administrators seem to feel the need to insult my intelligence every time they open their mouths. That stuff bothered me, but now the tension between some of my colleagues has made the atmosphere acrid at times. Almost nobody's happy about being there, especially one English prof who is clearly more intelligent than just about everybody else (I include myself) there.

There used to be an apron printed with these words: "I spent four years in college for this? " That's a pretty good summation of how I feel when I'm in the college but not in one of my classes. I went to graduate school--for that?

And we're supposed to be role models for our students. Well, I guess one does have to know how to bicker and engage in all manner of otiose orotundity. And you have to learn to see people only as labels--the black, the tranny, the Spanish girl, the whatever.

For all that, yesterday was the first time in forty days I didn't write in this blog. Forty days....No, I haven't seen any floods and I'm not in an ark. I have two cats, but I don't have pairs of any other creatures.

Forty days: the first time since Christmas Eve. And yesterday was Groundhog Day. One groundhog saw his shadow, the other didn't. So who're ya gonna believe, as the sage said.

Yesterday was also the birthday of the brother who's not speaking to me. Yes, he cut off contact with me after I "came out." Sometimes I wish I were one of those people who could forget, at will, anything she didn't want to remember. Then again, I don't want to forget. After all, he just may decide to reconnect our relationship. Mom thinks it will happen some day. That's what I hope. And I want it to happen while Mom's still alive.

And two other people who are no longer in my life were born on the second of February: my ex-wife and the first woman I dated after my divorce. Weird coincidence, huh? I also dated two consecutive women whose birthdays were on Christmas Eve.

So what else happened on Groundhog Day? Well, on that date seven years ago, Tammy said that she no longer wanted to be my partner/lover. We had stopped having sex some time around Christmas; she said she no longer felt like she was in bed with a man. Well, wake up and smell the chorizo, sweetie: You never were in bed with a man, ever. Admit it, get over it, get used to it.

Still, we stayed together for another few months. Well, we weren't a couple, though we were still presenting ourselves as one. I don't think anyone who knew us believed it, but they didn't question us. That, as she and I were in denial. Funny, I think that in some ways her denial was even stronger than mine. I was clinging to the relationship and the memory of the good times we had in its early days; she was holding on for life to the notion that I was a man who would simply get tired of wearing women's clothing. As you might imagine, this was one of the more excruciatingly lonely and depressing times in my life. Given that I spent about 40 of the first 44 years of my life in a clinical depression of varying intensity, that's saying something.

But of course that time had a good outcome: I moved out and started taking my first steps toward my current life. At least I have that to look forward and come back to when I'm in a meeting like the one I endured yesterday.

Before and After, Than and Now, After Today and The Surgery

OK. So I'm catching up on work that should've been done already. Like that course I was so worried about teaching. Actually, it's not that I've put the work off so much as I wanted to get it just right. I haven't been satisfied with the outlines and reading lists I devised, and I probably won't be satisfied with the syllabus or the way I teach the course. But everybody I've talked to--from my department chair to Dominick, from Bruce to the department secretary, think it's going to be "just fine." I know them all well enough to know they're not just telling me the sort of stuff you tell the troops when what you should really say is Nous sommes dans le pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdes. I think I got the quote right, but I can't remember who said it. All I know is that it wasn't De Gaulle, Napoleon or Charlemagne.

Now there's something they don't teach you in French 101.

So what's making me so anxious about this semester. Well, it is my last before the surgery, and now that I know that this time isn't simply a denouement till that day, I feel somehow that I have to do something, if not extraordinary, at least outstanding.

Sometimes I think this might be one of those "pivotal" times when something significant in my life--which may or may not have to do with the surgery or even my career (such as it is) is hinging on what I do during the next four months. Other times I feel that this may be my last semseter at the college, or even in the academic world, and that I should go out with, if not a bang, at least a very high, clear note.

Those other changes I sense, as I said, may or may not be a result of, or have anything to do with, my surgery.

Is the prospect of the surgery bringing other parts of my life into sharper focus, or simply making me feel them more intensely? Why--apart from peer pressure and the fact that the college is paying for it--did I feel that I should take a class? (For that matter, why did I choose a subject--gender studies--I swore I'd never touch?) Why did the opportunity to volunteer at Carmen's Place present itself?

Some might say that I'm distracting myself from thinking about the surgery. I don't know about that: I still think about it all the time. Any time I see something with a date on it, from a product in a store to a deadline for some application or project, the first thing I think about is whether it's "pre" or "post." That's how I was thinking at the English Department meeting last week: Any time someone talked about courses for the fall semester, or beyond, all I could think was, "After."

I've had a few people--including ones who are sober rationalists who eschew anything even slightly mystical--tell me that because I'm pursuing the right path for me, other things are falling into place: my parents' support, the full-time faculty position, and other opportunities that have come my way. And they all reassure me that everything's going to be fine. Even when I question them about specifics, whether about work, my love life or the surgery itself, they say that I'm going to be just fine.

I believe them. No, it's even better: I sense the truth of what they're saying. But I would love to know a few more details. Why are things going the way they are in my work? Why, suddenly, am I in such demand? And why are people--even complete strangers who know nothing about my impending surgery--being kind and helpful?

Someone--I don't remember who--told me, a long time ago, that if everything's going well and people just start helping you out of the blue, you're near the end of your life. I don't know whether or not that person was serious, but somehow I took it to heart. It makes me think of a Japanese story--by Junichiro Tanizaki, I believe--in which a child grows more and more beautiful the closer he comes to his death. His mother wants to save him; nobody--from her neighbors to any of the doctors--can see that anything is wrong with the child and they all come to believe that she's crazy.

More than one person has told me that I'm giving birth to myself. That's more or less how I see this process, and in that sense, the surgery is the moment of delivery, if you will. But births always involve deaths, or the risk of them. Of course, the person I had been for fifty years will end, at least in some sense, with that surgery. And that person has been dying, or at least receding, as a new life is being born.

Like anyone who's going to give birth, I find that much of the time I am as tired as I am exhiliarated. Yet, it seems, there is always more to do, more than I ever imagined, and there is help that I didn't know existed. That, of course, means that I must live up to it all, for the sake of who's about to be born.

Yes, it's going to be all right. But I want to get it right, then and now, now and for tomorrow. For the coming days, for the days that follow today and the surgery.

What Stands Between Me and Her?

It's already the end of the first month of this year. Soon there will be only five months between me and my surgery.

Can you imagine me doing a commercial in which I coo, "Nothing comes between me and my surgery." OK, of all the women in this world who are or ever were prettier than I have ever been ( I admit, that's a rather large percentage of the female race!), Brooke Shields is one of the last I'd want to be. (As you might expect, Sarah Palin is at the bottom of my list, at least for now.) I mean, when Ms. Shields, who was about sixteen-going-on-twelve at the time, all but whispered "Nothing comes between me and my Calvin Kleins," was that child pornography, or what?

So what's all this got to do with the price of a postage stamp?, you ask. Well, not much, except for what happened when I stopped at the post office before going to the farmer's market on Roosevelt Island early this afternoon.

Roosevelt island is connected to Queens by a bridge that looks like a pair of cranes that are sleeping in seperate beds, if such a thing could be made by a young boy with an Erector set. (Now, tell me, what kind of a message does a toy with a name like that send to said young boy?) And, after creating it, some angry alcoholic painted the contraption in a tint of orange that's one shade removed from rust and left it to fade, chip, crack and peel for about 40 years. The island is also connected to Manhattan by a finiculaire over the East River, seemingly within arm's reach of the 59th Street Bridge. I've taken two dates for nighttime rides on that gondolier in the sky: You can hardly find anything more romantic for the price of a subway ride (You swipe your Metrocard to get on; back in the day you used a token.) or, for that matter, at any price. As long as you focus on the lights from the New York skyline flickering on ripples from boats that, from that height, seem to skitter along the river--and as long as you're not agoraphobic and don't think about the time passengers were stuck in it, high above the river, for eleven hours--it is one of the most beautiful short rides of any kind you will find anywhere.

At the north end of the island is an old lighthouse in the middle of a park built on the rock that comprises the island,and Manhattan. That is where I buried my first cat named Charlie, and Candice, the pretty calico who died little more than a year after he did. They say that still waters run deep; somehow, I think that even under most treacherous currents there is calm, if not peace. Which, really, is all you can give to those who have just died. And the only way to honor the dead is with the truth.

The rest of the island, which once housed a sanitorium, consists mainly of buildings and a parking deck that might win a Stalinist architecture competition, if anyone would hold such a thing today.

Ok, so what's this all got to do with anything? I'm coming to that.

In addition to the Farmer's Market, which is held every Saturday, Roosevelt Island has, to my knowledge, the only post office besides the big main post office next to Penn Station that's open on Saturday afternoon. I needed to mail two small packages, so I stopped at the post office before I went to the market.

I stopped in that same post office last week, when I needed something postmarked and was running low on stamps (something that happens less frequently these days). Mike, who is wonderfully genial and sarcastic--yes, at the same time--told another customer that he had the Edgar Allan Poe commemorative stamps, which I bought last week. "Nice stamp, even if I don't like it, all that gloom." I felt myself cracking a smile. "Hey, watch it, I'm from the Poe anti-defamation society, " I called out to Mike.

A woman standing two places in front of me began to titter. She wasn't much more than five feet tall, but she stood out as much as any basketball player would have. Her face and eyes were in tones of earth, with all its complexity, and nearly raven-colored hair. She could have been a peasant or the wisest woman in the world, or both. Most people wouldn't think she was beautiful; however, she seemed to have a sense of style that transformed the plain black pants and brown jacket she wore. It had something to do with her accessories: I especially loved her earrings, which looked like a cross between something Native American and something from India: a metal that looked like a combination of bronze and silver, and stones that looked like green and red marcasite.

She, Mike and I exchanged some banter about Poe, the stamps and other things. She asked what I did. I told her I write and teach English. "And whenever I teach Othello, I tell my students to remember this: 'Quoth Iago/Lusty Moor.'"

Her laughter seemed familiar, in some odd way. So did just about everything else about her. Who was she?

I didn't ask. I couldn't. During those few moments, I thought I was talking to a professor I had at Rutgers. The woman I saw in the post office looked and sounded like, and even had similar body language, to that prof who taught the class I took on John Milton. That prof would most likely look a good bit older than the woman I saw today; I'm not even sure that she is still alive.

That prof was a poet and I loved listening to her read passages from Lycidias, Comus and, of course, Paradise Lost. A few people I knew at the time, including Elizabeth, thought that perhaps I had a crush on her. After all, attractions to older people of any gender were never out of the question for me, and all of my relationships before Tammy were, with one exception, with people considerably older than I was.

But the real reason why I noticed that prof, and why I still think of her, is that she represented everything I ever wanted to be. She wasn't beautiful, but she was sexy because of the person she was: a poet and an all-around interesting person. And a woman. So, I couldn't say, "I want to be her when I grow up" without raising a few eyebrows, or eliciting something worse.

I took the Milton class with that prof around the time Brooke Shields was ruining a lot of guys' underwear because, if she was telling the truth, she wasn't wearing any. Just her Calvin Kleins. That prof would never have worn Calvin Kleins. Then again, she was a prof, and in those days profs--especially at Rutgers, with its proximity to Princeton--had an image to uphold, if you know what I mean.

So...that prof wasn't really much to look at, even considering that she was roughly the age I am now. But she was a woman, to the core, and a formidable one at that.

She's one of the first people I ever wanted to be when I grow up. And that woman in the post office reminded me of her.

Only five months between me and my surgery. But what, between me and her?

An Aunt Who Begs For Money

It's funny that yesterday I wrote about serving a community and wondered how people come to serve communities very different from the ones in which they've lived. Today I had an opportunity to ask someone that very question, but didn't. However, I suspect the chance to ask will present itself again.

Today I talked with Father Louis Braxton, the founder and director of Carmen's Place. We first encountered each other at the Transgender Remembrance Day service Dominick and I attended two months (!) ago, but I didn't really talk with him until the brunch Dominick and I attended two weeks ago.

Even in his large body and face, his eyes dominate. They are deep brown but as full of light as any others I have seen. They don't so much express and command as they register and suggest--and radiate respect and empathy at the same time. Seeing them, I'm not surprised that the teenagers in Carmen's House love and respect him and that those who are helping him aren't the ones one might expect. I think now of Nina, who wasn't there today, and a young woman who's a graduate student at NYU and was there when I came into the house.

That's exactly what it is: a row house that was recently built. Across the street from it is a mansion, and on the block, which slopes downward, are the kind of brick row houses one sees all over the parts of Queens that lie west of the Van Wyck expressway. At the top of the hill on which Carmen's house sits, you can see the RFK Bridge and, when skies are clear, Long Island Sound. I jokingly refer to the neighborhood as "the San Francisco of Queens."

Inside Carmen's House are two bedrooms shared by the six young people who stay there at any one time. The one I saw was cluttered, as was the rest of the house. But that is to be expected in such a place. Father Braxton lives in the house, in a smaller room. Last year, he left the pastorship of a church to become the full-time director of Carmen's Place. Now he has a makeshift altar in the living room, where he leads the young people in morning prayer services.

He needn't have told me all of that for me to sense his commitment to what he's doing. I wondered, but didn't ask, why he chose to work with transgender people. He would probably say it was a "calling," that God led him to it. Of course, there are lots of people who don't believe that God (or whatever they call whatever they worship) would entreat anyone to work with transgenders. I won't argue with them, any more than I would try to talk Father Braxton out of what he's doing (as if I could!). He seems to be the sort of person for whom doubt, if and when he experiences, is part of growing in his faith.

OK, so you didn't open this blog to read what I think about religious faith, right? Well, we talked for a long while, and he asked, "I'm hoping to recruit you." The truth was that I was already recruited at the brunch: I had made up my mind that somehow or another I would be involved with Carmen's House. The only question was what I would do.

It looks like I'm going to be an aunt who begs for money. In the parlance of the house, an "aunt" is an older female like me who will be a presence most of them haven't had in their lives. According to Father Braxton, most of the young gay and transgender people who live at Carmen's Place grew up in foster homes or with violence or other kinds of severe dysfunction in their homes. They have never known someone who leaves home to go to work, an adult who's not abusing drugs or alcohol or anyone who hasn't been in the criminal justice system. So, I could be mentoring, exhorting or nurturing them--or, possibly, doing all three.

And I'm going to write materials for the house's fund drives, and to work with other volunteers to make those drives happen. Hopefully, my writing will entice people to write checks and otherwise support Carmen's House.

Oh well. This aunt is geeting sleepy now. I'll talk more about this later.

Serving A Community

More electrolysis today. Today a very nice young woman named Sandra zapped and plucked me. Turns out, she's been in the Navy, although she's almost nobody's idea of a military woman.

What's really interesting about her, though, is that she says she wants to specialize in services for male-to-female transgenders. She says she became interested in us because her boyfriend owns a club where she's met trans people. "I have so much respect for you, to do what you do. And I've had a lot of fun around transgender people." And, she said, "There's not that much in the way of services for you."

"Tell me about it!"

"You have to go through so much to find anyone who understands what you need."

She could not have been more right, but there's much, much more I could have told her. But I did tell her that I've known that I'm transgendered before I knew the word for it; in fact, I knew even before I knew the words "girl" and "boy." And, although I'm making my transition fairly late in my life, I am lucky: I have something like a career and a life.

So many young trans girls run away from, or are kicked out of, their homes, sometimes immediately after "coming out." So what job choices does a teenager have if she hasn't finished school and is in a city she doesn't know? Let's see....Starbuck's is about to close 700 stores. Other chains have already closed all of their stores. And most other jobs, not to mention college, are not available for someone who doesn't have a high school diploma.

So what do they do? Almost nothing legal, I can tell you that. Many of those trans teenagers who leave or are kicked out of their families' homes end up on the streets, where they do whatever they have to do to survive. That is how too many end up selling their bodies or drugs.

Sandra's heard of such stories. I've actually seen them, and it's awful to be living one. Any one of those girls might make more in a night than I do in a month, but there's no way they can hold on to it. So, more often than not, the money they make doesn't last a day or two.

Anyway, I am glad that Sandra is choosing to work with trans people. She is sensitive and has a good feel for a person's hair and skin, so I think she should do very well.

It still fascinates me when straight people want to work with trans people. Sandra told me a bit about her story, but I think there's something else motivating her. I thought the same thing about Nina, the grandmother and retired school teacher who volunteers at Carmen's Place, a shelter for young trans people.

I'm always interested to find out why people choose to serve certain communities or groups of people. It's often said that we try to help those with whom we most identify: members of our own community, in other words.

Sometimes, though, we don't find the people we expected in our communities.

Flimsy Stockings and Strong Support

Today was another one of those days of which we've already had too many this year: snow that fell in the wee hours of morning turned to sleet and slush by the middle of the day. I guess, in some way, it's an improvement over the last few days, when it wasn't even warm enough for snow to turn to sleet.

Now, any sensible woman of my age would've worn pants today. But who said I was that kind of woman? Instead, I wore a silk skirt printed in a sort of houndstooth pattern of blue, gray and black. With it I wore a charcoal gray turtleneck under a long cardigan-like sweater in a lighter shade of gray with a kind of pewter-colored sash.

So far, a nice winter outfit. I got compliments on it. And the sheer black tights worked with it. Well, I should say coordinated: They didn't work so well. I don't know how it happened, but by the time I got to school there was a big hole on the inside of the left calf.

Is it me, or do black panty hose tear or develop runs more easily than hoiery in any other color?

I made a joke about it with the first class I saw today. "If you want extra credit, don't notice the tear in my black pantyhose." A couple of the female students hummed and nodded knowingly. I guess it's one of those things about being a woman that nobody teaches you.

At least it was a cheap pair of panty hose.

Anyway...I don't think you came to this site to read about my wardrobe malfunctions. I certainly don't look as good in them as Janet Jackson did in hers during the Super Bowl halftime show a few years ago. Trust me, you'd rather've seen her outfit come undone than to see me lose the clothes I'm wearing.

About the class: It's the one about which I've been nervous. I may not have had reason to be. As I looked at the students and answered their questions, I realized something: They want to be there. It's not like the composition or research writing class all students at the college are required to take. I'd forgotten that not all classes are like that.

Also, I saw a few students who'd taken other classes with me. One took the Intro to Literature class with me four years ago, during my first semester at the college. She's actually one of the more intelligent and perceptive, if not happiest, students I've had. So, you can imagine how baffled I was when she wondered, "You're not going to hold what I did in that class against me?"

"What? The excellent work?"

"OK. I won't worry about it." She actually smiled.

Whatever I was supposed to hold against her, I've long since forgotten. I'm so sorry to disappoint her. She'll live with it, though.

I could feel her and that class energizing me. I may not be a hip-hop expert and I am making up the course as I go along. But any teacher who gets energy from his or her students will do all right. I hope that's the case for me, in that class.

So Poetics and Rhetoric of Hip-Hop here I come. I've told the students that most of them know more hip-hop songs than I do, and they could use songs that aren't mentioned in class as part of their papers and presentations. "So you're going to teach me, too. That's the dirty little secret of teachers: That's what we become in order to learn.

Not Queer in a Gender Studies Class

So...I survived my first day as a student in 16 years. What do I make of it?

Well, I got in a few minutes late. The class is a seminar, in which everyone sits around a long table, so it was pretty hard to hide--especially when the last remaining seat was next to the professor. If I'd had enough presence of mind, I could've made a joke about being seated at the right hand of the goddess or some such thing.

And I looked at the reading list. Yes, lots of reading, but I expected that. After all, it is a PhD level course in English.

What gave me pause was the kinds of reading: Lots more theory than I expected. It didn't seem to phase any other student in the room; from what I could tell, they were all ongoing students in the PhD program. And a couple talked about research projects in which they were immersed.

I learned of them as we introduced ourselves and talked about what brought us to the class. I confessed that I was indeed taking my first class in 16 years and that until I signed up for the course, I swore that I would never, ever take a gender studies course, or anything that resembled one. Surprisingly, the students seemed to humor me. A few even smiled approvingly.

And the professor seemed pleased. I also mentioned that I'm transgendered (The prof and some students probably knew that already: After all, she's the president of the Graduate Center's Gay and Lesbian organization, and probably half the students in that room are members.) and joked that I'm taking the course "to hear what you guys and all those other scholars are saying about me."

I think I broke some ice there: I noticed that one student, who was sitting diagonally across from me, slackened her jaw and a couple of other students' postures seemed to expand a bit. I wasn't trying to open up the class: I think the professor could have done that perfectly well on her own. But if I helped, well, I'm happy.

I'm happy. Yes, I actually enjoyed being in the class. Of course, it was only the first day and we didn't do any of the hard work yet. But in spite of the gaps in my knowledge and education, I didn't feel like a misfit there.

And I got to talk to the prof a bit after class. I can see why her students at Hunter College revere her. (Most of the Graduate Center faculty teach at CUNY undergraduate colleges, of which Hunter is one and York, where I teach, is another.) And the idolizing remarks I read on Rate My Professors came from students in advanced courses, not students in freshman-level courses who said that she's an easy "A." Those Hunter students says she is rigorous but fair and accessible and even sweet and charming, according to some. I could see that.

Besides being smart and nice (always two huge pluses with me), she's attractive in a soft-butch kind of way. I mean, she makes a handsome butch, but she could almost as easily be a cute femme. And, yes, she was wearing Doc Martens (or shoes that looked like them) and what looked like chino pants with a button-down shirt, but in a way that no male would wear them. No guy would also accesorize as she did: I came this close to asking where she got her earrings. So, while her style isn't Michelle Obama, it's style--real style--nonetheless.

Thinking about her, I recall a conversation I had with a York College adjunct prof who recently got his PhD. We were talking about what people mean by "queer." He said that according to any number of gender theorists, it means "nonconforming," which is close to the original meaning of the word.

I don't remember which of us said this: The way I'm living and express my gender identity now, I'm actually less queer than I was when I was living as a straight male. As far as most people can tell, I'm just another middle-aged straight female. People who express consternation upon finding out that I'm transgedered tell me that, until then, they thought I was a straight woman. Which, of course, is what I am, kinda sorta.

So why that last qualifier? Well, I am seeing Dominick now, and I find myself interested in men these days. But I don't think I'll lose my ability to be attracted to a female, whether or not I act on that impulse if it presents itself. Furthermore, the kinds of men--and women--to whom I'm attracted are probably different from what most straight men or women like.

But attracted to men, and dating one, I am. Also, I dress and otherwise present myself in ways that most people would expect from a straight, if rather conservative, woman. (Students have told me that they like my clothes because they're "conservative but nice.") On the other hand, my ways of relating to the world were, in many ways, different from those of most straight men. Bruce and other people who've known me for a long time have always told me this.

Most important, though, is that in the very fact of living as a straight male, I was a "queer," at least in the sense that it wasn't what most people would expect from the bisexual-to-straight woman I always envisioned myself to be.

Hmm...I wonder if I could work that into one of the papers, or the presentation, I will have to do for the class. Or a tell-all book: "I Was A Teenaged Queer Bisexual Male."

I guess I'm not so queer in that class, after all.

Flight Fantasies

The idea of going someplace where nobody knows me seemed even more appealing today than it did yesterday.

I've heard of more than a few trans people who've done exactly that. They go to some place where no one knows their histories and live the new lives they'd always wanted. I remember Jennifer, from my first support group, who moved to somewhere near St. Petersberg, Florida because she wanted to start over. She'd waited until her kids had grown up to start her transition, and after she and her wife split up, she wanted to meet new people and see new sights.

Today, a faculty member with whom I have exchanged greetings saw me on the subway and told me he'd heard that I'm transgendered. So he wanted to talk about that, when I just wanted to zone out on the ride home. He actually seems to be a nice person, and I know that my old misanthropic pose doesn't fool anybody. And, honestly, I don't mind talking about my experience with people who are actually interested in me as a person rather than as a specimen of some label they've read about.

But it seems that no matter what else I do, I will always be known by colleagues and others as the tranny. Their token tranny. The one who helps them fill their quotas. So now they have a white friend, a black friend, an Asian, a paraplegic and a butch Filipina bisexual. I complete their collection, which they will redeem for valuable prizes. You know how it works, "Save the whales. Win valuable prizes." Whales, blacks, trannies: Saving them all will get you brownie points.

So the idea of moving to another place, another job, another career, another life after my operation appeals to me now. Also, I'm sick of the cold, gray weather. Dominick has never liked it. (Of course that's why you get a boyfriend: You can blame him any time you follow some half-baked idea!) Leave the college: No more pencils/No more books/No more teachers'/Dirty looks. Wait a minute: I'm the teacher. Dang!

But then again, you probably have an idea of how well the Geographic Cure has worked for me and other people. It usually leads to the "same shit, different city/state/country/life" syndrome. I guess that's better than the "same shit, different syndrome" syndrome.

And, after all, here I do have friends with whom I can talk about other things besides gender. That is because they know me as more or less the person I actually am. And, well, I realize that there are people who want to see me as an example for what they do. Today I got an e-mail from a trans woman who says she is following right behind me in my path and is looking to me. I will write to her; that e-mail made my day.

Then there is the promise I made to myself and my mother that I wouldn't run away again. I made that pledge after finally admitting that so much of what I did before making my transition was just an attempt to escape from myself. All those relationships that didn't work and some of the trips I took: They were about running away. And my transition from being Nick to living as Justine is a repudiation of responding by flight.

So I guess I'll just have to deal with the cold gray weather and the curious (or nosey) people. One thing I've learned is that the point of life is not convenience. Nothing in life happens at our convenience. Sometimes it happens when the time is right, but almost never when it's most convenient.

Besides, I can assume that the young woman who chatted me up while waiting for the bus was just being friendly. I think she's new to town, and was trying to find her way around. And I'll assume that those guys who were looking at my legs weren't wondering which set of apparatus was underneath my skirt. I thought I was Madame Michelin Tire (Is that what the Michelin Tire Man's wife would be called?), the way I was bundled from my waist up. Hmm...Maybe some guys are fantasizing about seeing Madame Michelin Tire with nice legs, or at least in a sexy pair of black leather boots.

These boots were made for walkin'...not for running away.

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.