The Ides: Recalling Time, Remembering Lives

A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

Well, I haven't heard any soothsaysers lately, or at least I don't think I have. And, if I were to find one, what would he or she bid me, if anything?

If you've heard that admonition Shakespeare put into Brutus's mouth in Julius Caesar, it's hard not to come to this date, the fifteenth of March, and not expect some kind of foreboding. Spring is less than a week away, and the weather feels that way.

This year, though, I'm not experiencing the dread (which was always followed by rage) I used to feel around this time of year. Back when I used to think the beginning of spring was the original lie, I always expected something catastrophic to happen. Maybe that's an effect of losing my grandfather on the first day of spring--which also happened to be his birthday--before I turned eight years old.

His death is really the first I recall, mainly because I was very close to him when I was very young. Mom and I were talking about that tonight. She recalled that her maternal grandmother died the year before. I have only a vague recall of that funeral, and almost nothing of her. Mom said that made sense, for I never saw much of her: I was usually with my maternal grandparents or other relatives when Mom was working, and her grandmother was sick much of the time.

My mother has an amazing recall for dates. If you talk to her for five minutes, she'll always remember your birthday. She also rattled off the dates of various births and deaths in our families: Her father died on 21 March 1966, which was also the day he turned 72; her brothers (my uncles) Herbert ("Sonny") and Dominick ("Nick") on 15 December 1982 and 27 October 1989.

All of this came up because I asked her how old a cousin of mine, Joseph, whom I haven't seen in years, is. The occasion of that question was my mention of the fact that Dominick (my boyfriend, not my uncle) works with kids who have special needs, which a much more polite term than the one that used to be applied to people like my cousin. Said cousin is 44 years old now and cannot fend for himself, so he lives in a group home. That is the fate that awaits some of the more fortunate kids with whom Dominick works.

I cannot tell you Joseph's birthday or the date on which I last saw him. I know the former is in late November--in some years, on Thanksgiving Day. I know that because the birthday of his father, my uncle Joe (who also happens to be my godfather) is around the same time.

My recall of dates is nowhere near as consistent as hers, and seems to have little, if any, logic governing it. I can pull up the dates of a few deaths in my life: If you have seen my blogs from the couple of days preceding Christmas Eve, you know that. Hey, I even know the dates on which my cats died: Caterina, 23 December 1991 (same date as Kevin, my first AA sponsor died ; a friend committed suicide on that same date in another year); Charlie I, 16 October 2005 and Candice, 17 January 2007.

I also remember that I moved out of the apartment I shared with Tammy, and onto the block where I now live, on 17 August 2002. We started dating some time in the spring of 1998--not long before Memorial Day, if I recall correctly, but I couldn't tell you the exact date. I met Dominick some time in the fall of 2004; we were "seeing each other" briefly--from around that Christmas till some time the following spring. And we resumed in the late summer or early fall of 2007. I remember that time because a cracked ankle was healing and I was riding my bike for the first time in about three months when he saw me from his grandmother's minivan, which he was driving.

Of everyone I've mentioned, Dominick is the only one in my life now who didn't know me as Nick. All of my deceased relatives and Kevin knew me only as Nick, Nicky or Nicholas--as did Caterina. Charlie I lived until I was early into my third year of living as Justine; Candice got to see one more year of my new life.

I hope that this Ides of March isn't a foreboding of another death or some other event that would be traumatic or devastating for me. I was telling Mom that I want the 7th of July to come, already, but I have this fear that the doctor will find that I have some illness or other problem I didn't know I had and that--or some other thing I can't foresee now--will keep me from having the surgery.

From the Ides of March, it's another 114 days till my surgery. I never knew that I'd be so good with dates, or with counting, anyway. Is it a constructive or pointless thing to do while I'm waiting?

And is there reason to be aware? Or to worry? I don't think it's the future, as uncertain as it may be. The past, for whatever reasons , always worried me more, especially when I was unconsciously repressing so much of it.

Can--or should-- someone "Beware the Ides" retroactively?

Momento Allegro

The D train hurtled through the tunnel from 34th Street-Herald Square to the West Fourth Street Station. For a long time, that was my favorite subway ride: When I was in high school and college in New Jersey, I used to take it after getting off the PATH train from Penn Station in Newark. I loved that subway ride, for it both symbolized and enabled what lured me into the city. You get on the D train in midtown, by Macy's and Penn Station ("...and lead us not into Penn Station"), and it takes you directly to the Village, with no stops in between. Sometimes I still think of that stretch of the NYC subway as my "escape train."

Now escape seems like an utterly implausible idea: I have some difficulties--Who doesn't?--but escape is not just an impossibility or impracticality; it isn't even conceivable because every time I've plotted or attempted an escape, it turned out not to exist. I could as well have been coming up with a formula or equation for phlogiston. I ran away to Europe even when I knew full well that what I was running from couldn't be evaded there or anyplace else. The funny thing is that if I'd understood that, I might not have taken those trips, but if I had, I probably would have appreciated what I saw all the more.

The thing is, when you're in the moment, but not living for it, you have nothing to escape. Today, at a particular moment, I was on the D train between 34th and Fourth Streets. Other people on the train read newspapers or dozed off; a few looked my way. It seemed that every time I looked at somebody who looked at me, that person flashed one of those smiles that, as best as I can tell, serves the same sort of function for humans that a wagging tail does for a dog: It signals that the person smiling or the dog wagging his tail is friendly, or at least not hostile. But it's also a sort of demarcation of psychic and sometimes physical territory: Both sides will be cordial to each other, which includes not transgressing each other. It's really not a bad way to navigate through time and space among people. I've noticed that, especially since I started to live as Justine, I am usually treated better when I have almost any kind or degree of smile on my face. And, faces that seemed to be cast in stone light up, if only for a moment, at the sight of a smile--even one like mine!

Two young men or boys--I would have guessed their ages to be somewhere between 16 and 20--sat diagnoally across from me. They were white and gangly with close-cropped hair: They had the look of young people from one of the last remaining blue-collar enclaves in this city. In other words, they're like kids I saw during my childhood and early adolescence in Brooklyn. Although I could follow little of what they were saying in the din and rumble of the train, I knew that they were talking about going to escape--from school, from parents, from who-knows-what--for the day, or at least part of this day, a Friday.

And every few seconds, it seemed, one or the other of them glanced in my direction and smiled. And I reciporicated. And it seemed that each succesive smile from them became broader and more emotional.

One thing I've discovered, and which has pleasantly surprised me, is how many "good kids" there actually are. One might not approve of the way they dress or the ways some of them spend their time. But more of them are polite, and even friendly and helpful, than I would have imagined. Maybe it's because I'm older and I remind them of --egad!--their aunts, mothers or even grandmothers. Somehow I can tell those boys in the subway had, or have, a good relationship with some older female family member.

Perhaps that's the reason why, even when nothing else is going well in school, I am still happy with most of the studets. We treat each other with respect, and sometimes even warmth. Most of them seem to want to please me; I don't mind that even if I'd rather that they'd do the things that will foster their intellectual and emotional development. Still, I welcome their friendliness, no matter how temporal, as I did with those boys on the train.

As I walked out the doors of the subway car, they wished me a nice day and weekend. And I wished the same for them.

We Don't Need No Education

At least I didn't have to go to the college today. In fact, I didn't talk to anybody until I went for my electrolysis session. There, I could talk about everything but school if I wanted to. And I was happy for that opportunity. Today Paula, whom I hadn't seen in a while, worked on me. She asked how soon until my surgery. When I told her "less than four months," she said, "Oh, that must be so exciting, so good."

"Oh, you bet it is."

All I said about work is that I've been busy. And I wouldn't have had to say anything about it to anybody had Dominick not called after reading my entry from last night.

As if it were not enough to feel the same way about my identity and sexuality as other people do, I have to work in a place and in an industry that doesn't operate by the same sorts of rules or logic as other businesses do. It's also driven more by personality disorders and conflicts than most other fields of endeavor. So, trying to explain it in a rational way for someone who wants to make sense of it because he thinks it's supposed to make sense in the same way as everything else is frustrating. And, I admit, I don't do frustration well.

To give you an idea of how different higher education is from anything else, here's something Dominick asked rhetorically: How is it that you, who go way above and beyond the call of duty, have to worry about whether or not you'll have a job next year?

To paraphrase the Clinton's first campaign, It ain't the economy, stupid. Even in the best of times, instructors, especially those in the humanities, with little or no seniority are subject to the same conditions. So are the ones who, for whatever reasons, aren't in the good graces of their department chairs and deans. As I am not.

My department chair gave me two courses for next semester: an adjunct's schedule. She said she hadn't heard anything about my reappointment, and that I was on the bottom of the seniority list. "So why did Professor X get reappointed?" She responded with something people in her position like to say when they've been found out: "Well, I can't talk about other people's cases with you."

I understand why she can't do that. But I really would like to know why someone with less seniority and who, frankly, hasn't done as much or as well as I have, was reappointed and I'm being left to twist in the wind.

And I'm supposed to go to my classes and be a role model for my students. I'm supposed to say, in effect, that if you work with and for the system, it will work for you. The very act of teaching in a publicly-supported educational institution is, in essence, a representation of that notion.

If I tell them the truth, I definitely will not have that job--or any other in education--next year or in any following year. No, knowledge is not power, especially if you are hated simply for being who you are. Being an educated member of a "minority" group allows the empowered members of the "majority" culture to remain ignorant. I think again of Mitterrand's first meeting with Reagan, and how the former's beautiful command of English put him at a disadvantage with an American president who, if he were to read poety, would have chosen Robert Service, Rod McKuen or Jewel as the Poet Laureate.

So my department chair thinks that next fall she can get me to do everything I do now on a part-timer's schedule--and pay. Outsource my job to Sri Lanka, why don't you? Go ahead: I'll find another. Or better yet, I'll make myself a job someplace. If I do, it certainly won't be in education. If you really want to teach and learn, as I do, then it's exactly the wrong place for you. Ditto if you want to write well, let alone interestingly and movingly.

Isolation

Today at the college, I felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness overtaking me after I taught my first class: The Poetics and Rhetoric of Hip Hop. The class wasn't the problem: it went well and I do sense that at least some of the students value it. And I love them. Maybe they don't know it, but they make that class great.

So why did I feel desolate afterward? And, why did my feeling of isolation intensify when Cady Ann, one of the department's secretaries, told me about her friends who are in my class and love it, or when she very sympathetically asked about my upcoming surgery?

I couldn't even be angry with her. After all, how could she have known how I would feel? Hey, even I didn't know I would feel that way after a good experience with my class and talking to her.

But even when everything's going well, the college feels like an alien and often hostile place. I feel more like a stranger, and outsider, than I did on my first day there. Faculty members with whom I used to converse have become no more than one of many co-workers I pass in the hallway.

I noticed this when I went to a bathroom in a little-used corner of the campus's main building. When I stepped out, I saw a faculty member whom I used to see just about every day, but whom I hadn't seen in months. I was actually in a bit of a hurry, as I had another class to teach. But I waved to her; she waved back and signalled her approval for what I was wearing. And, as encouraging and sympathetic as she's been in the past, I couldn't think of anything to say to her.

Lately, I feel as if I have less and less to talk about with the faculty and staff members with whom I used to talk. It seems that they are all talking about research projects and other things of which I'm not a part. Or they're talking about grant applications, or even their families or other loved ones.

If you've spent large portions of your adult life unmarried, you know what it's like to go to a family gathering, or any work-related or social function, in which everyone else has brought his or her kids, or pictures of them. And that's all anybody's talking about: their kids. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But then you start to get the sense that they're all judging you as somehow deficient for not having kids, for not being married, or not even having a steady relationship with someone of the "opposite" gender.

Well, it feels something like that when I'm on campus. Some people are just plain, flat-out homophobic and believe that trans people are just the most extreme and therefore contemptible versions of gaydom. But others--most of whom probably don't intend any harm or understand what they're doing--come off as condescending or patronizing, which of course have the effect of excluding the person who is the object of condescenscion or other, subtler forms of exclusion and belittlement.

However, they're not the majority of people on the campus or anywhere else. Instead, I feel that the ones who are sympathetic but can't truly understand how I feel are the majority. And the worst thing is that know matter how much they'd like to understand, I could never convey my feelings through any means that accurately reflect them. As an example, when someone like Cady Ann asks how I feel about my impending surgery, she's thinking about words like "scared," "nervous" or "excited." Or they talk about the pain I'm going to feel. (It seems as if everybody has been watching Sex Change Hospital.) Those are all true enough, but there's somehing else I could never quite express. It has to do with what the operation means to me and my reasons for getting it.


I am thinking, ironically enough, about a part of Stone Butch Blues. That novel begins with a letter Jess, the first-narrator of the story, writes to her old girlfriend Theresa, even though she has no address or any other way of reaching Theresa.


In that letter, Jess recalls how Theresa always seemed to understand how she felt, especially after a particularly brutal attack from the police. Jess didn't have to say a word. But she couldn't because she had, even at that rather early stage of her life, shut down much of her ability to feel and express the ways her experiences affected her. Of course, she would never cry and Theresa didn't expect her to, for she understood that Jess's sense of herself as a "butch" came from her seeming invulnerability and lack of emotion. And, in many lesbian communities (which were centered mainly in the bars), especially in pre-Stonewall days, a "butch" got more respect as her shell thickened.


In her letter, she acknowledges that her lack of expression was a main reason why she and Theresa broke up. Even though Theresa had some idea of how she was feeling, she felt the need to hear it from Jess. But Jess is holding back; Theresa also realizes that getting her to talk would force her to re-live those experiences she was trying to forget. Having had similar experiences of harassment and violence, Theresa was reluctant to press Jess into re-living traumatic experiences.


And, Jess confesses that she could not express much of what she felt because the language she had was inadequate and inaccurate. She says, "I need 'butch' words to decribe my 'butch' life," or something to that effect. What's more, she needs for Theresa and everyone else to understand those 'butch' terms, which of course she can't or won't.


This, of course, is the exact opposite of what the academic world--at least in the humanities--teaches. We're taught to take pre-existing language and to order our experiences around it, or to use that pre-existing language to validate whatever we're trying to say. However, when your experience differs, your language will, too, as it must. And that is the beginning of the complications you wil encounter. People will think they understand your experience, but in fact there is much they cannot know. And, in my case, my situation is further complicated by the fact that I have been both the victimizer and victim when it comes to homo- and trans-phobic violence.

I know that it's not the job of co-workers to understand how I feel. But what I'm expereincing is in some ways more painful and alienating than what I would feel, or not feel, if I were just someone who came and went, and about whom nobody knew anything but the job I was doing. Sometimes I envy those people who spend their working days in front of a computer.

Now, if I do say so myself, I've given you a pretty good idea of what "tolerance" looks like. You don't have to understand, or even like or agree with, whom or what you're tolerating. The ones who understand this best are the blue-collar workers at the college, almost all of whom are poor and black. They--and in particular one who confided a sexual orientation to me--understand what it's like not to be understood yet abided because they were necessary for some purpose or another.

Right now, I feel that after I recover from my operation, I'd like to move to some place--or at least find a workplace--where nobody knows me. If they want to start rumors about me, let them. At least I wouldn't have to deal with people who think they can understand me and want to do so mainly to feel good about themselves, or to feel superior to somebody.

I used to think that women talked more about their feelings of loneliness because, well, they simply talked about their feelings more than men did. But now I've come to feel that because of who we are, our sense of alone-ness is more intense, and we feel more of a need to discuss it.

Oh, shit, here I go, blaming the hormones again! As if that's going to help anybody understand anybody else...

The Fatigue Defense

Today my department had its monthly meeting, which was supposed to be held last Monday but was cancelled because a snowstorm closed the college.

I'm not the only one who's noticing that those meetings have been getting longer and longer while accomplishing less and less. Others have said as much. A few were grading students' papers; one prof, who sat to my left, was evaluating proposals that were submitted to him in his capacity as the chairman of a task force. Who ever thought of calling it a "task force?" This college, and the others in which I taught, have so many task forces that I fully expect them to go to war.

Can you see it now? The chair leads one of those task forces on an amphibious assault against another college. Could you just imagine them storming the main Quad on a direct route to the library, the bookstore and the college president's office? Or would said task force be a defensive unit, defending its almer mater against onslaughts from other colleges that want to gobble up its labs and all the grant money they derive from them?

And what if the would-be Rambo were.....well, just about any professor you can think of? Better yet...me? Yeah, I would really inspire shock and awe while launching an invasion of some college's quad, especially on a nice, sunny day when students or even faculty members are basking in the sun and the reflected wisdom of the books they're studying. Or throwing a Frisbee. Wait, I never see that where I teach. It's not a Frisbee kind of campus. How can it be, when none of the students live there?

At least I can have fun thinking about these things now. I couldn't during the meeting. None of what we discussed was rocket science: any literate person with an eighth-grade education, e.g., my mother, would have understood what the issues were. The difference is, my mother would make more sense.

And that, I realize now, is the reason why I felt exhausted at the end of that meeting. I needed a big, quick shot of caffeine before going to teach the class I had just a few minutes after the meeting ended. It's not that I did any heavy lifting: I made a couple of comments and asked a question, which isn't a lot to do in more than two and a half hours. Rather, just having to be there was itself draining.

You have never seen pettiness, egoism and bickering completely take over a room until you've been to the meeting of an academic or administrative department at a college. I don't recall anything like it during the time I spent in the corporate world, and certainly not even when working in elementary and junior high schools.

The kind of fatigue I felt simply drained my entire body and spirit. I don't know whether it has something to do with the hormones, or simply the ways I'm changing as a person, but I notice that I do grow wearier than I used to in dysfunctional situations, especially if that dysfunction is transmitted through condescenscion, comeuppance or any other form of egotistical violence of the spirit against other people. I know that I have less tolerance and patience for such situations, but I am starting to think that getting tired is a defense mechanism.

In the past, I used to walk away emotionally bruised and resentful that in spite of my efforts, now one had enough respect for themselves, much less me or anyone else, to communicate honestly and forthrightly without ad hominem (or ad feminem: let's not be sexist) attacks or attempts at self-aggrandizement. I'm sensitive--too much so, some people have told me--to the tensions between people. Sometimes I can feel them in my body as I enter a room, as I did today at the meeting. It's really not so different from the physical sensation I had when I heard that this country's leaders launched the invasion or Iraq.

Now, who knows? Maybe I'll see through the next crisis. Until then, I'm going to get some sleep.

Quinquagesima

Today was warmer than normal for this time of year, as yesterday was. And both days passed under overcast skies that didn't so much threaten rain as it foreshadowed showers, which came softly and briefly late this afternoon.

In spite of the warmth, my skin tingled from the chill that tinged the dampness. It was enough to remind me that spring has not arrived yet; we will most likely have at least one more cold spell.

This sort of day, not belonging to either the winter nor the spring, is part of another season: Quinquagesima. It is more commonly known as Lent, but that term is too fraught with connotations of enforced religious ritual for my taste. However, "quinquagesima," as those of you who paid more attention than I did in Latin or catechism class know, is a period of fifty days from Ash Wednesday to Easter. In most years, that period more or less coincides with that part of the year when you can practically smell and taste the coming of spring but you know that there's still cold wind and possibly more snow to come.

It sounds like it might have been some sort of pagan season. Most of the church's holidays and celebrations are adaptations of their pagan counterparts. As far as I know, the ceremonies and observances of most organized religions are appropriations of celebrations and rituals of the religions and cultures that preceded them in their locales. For that matter, every surviving culture is a hybrid. So is every surviving human being. After all, you don't get to my age, let alone old age, by being a purist, whatever that means.

But I digress. Well, maybe not: This season, or whatever you want to call the period of time I've described, is also a kind of cross-breed of time. And so my emotions about it are mixed.

If I wanted to be even more self-absorbed than I already am, I could say that this time of year is a reflection of the way I've been living now: What I've looked forward to, and longed for, is within sight. But it's not here yet. What I have now is the hope that I have indeed made it through the worst of the winter, literally and metaphorically, and that whatever inclement weather may come will be temporary and somehow prepare me for what I'm looking forward to. My years of being "trans" are almost, but not quite over; womanhood--at least more or less as most people envision and define it--is so close but not quite arrived.

In the hip-hop class, one of my students started a discussion of sense-memories. I don't think anyone in that class has read A la rechereche du temps perdu, but I mentioned how Proust could recall a whole world through the taste of a madeleine. They all understood. Now I am having an equally poignant memory, although this one is olfactory.

Now I am--in my mind--in the Rosary Garden next to the church in which I served as an altar boy. Around this time of year, people would leave memorial bouquets around the figurines representing the Stations of the Cross that lined a stone walway leading to a sort of mini-altar with a statue of the Virgin Mary. People, almost all of them women older than my grandmother, would come after the morning and early evening weekday masses to pray at this shrine. I wonder whether any of them noticed the smell of those flowers.

Yes, they all mingled into one smell, one more intensely sweet than any other I have experienced since. Lilacs (then, as now, my favorite flowers), hyacinths, crysanthemums and lilies intensified each others' effervescence and poignance. In fact, I can recall no other scent that so combines those those qualities.

Of course, all of those flowers were cut. More than likely, they came from greenhouses. Even then I knew that, but it didn't diminish the sense that at that time of year, life itself (not to mention beauty of any sort, let alone anything one has that is entirely his or hers) comes at a price, and that its emergence into this world is not the end of death. Those lives, those meanings, struggle to grow from the soil that became of their flesh, and the flowers of their beings are irrigated by their blood.

I think that I was beginning to understand something that I would read much, much later: James Baldwin's declaration to the effect that any person or any culture that has a language of her/his/its own has paid dearly for it.

And I knew--even if I couldn't articulate--that I wanted to live with and by that smell in the garden, to the tune of the music (I didn't know it was written by Bach.) played on its organ and the drama, rhetoric and poetry of sin, atonement and salvation. Not of faith--even then, as desperate as I was to believe, I could but a little, very little.

I wanted Easter because I wanted the spring. But first there was the quinquegesima, which included at least a few days--like today--that , only after a lot of experience, one begins to discern as previews or precursors rather than prologues or preludes.

In Four Months I'll Slip Into My New Gender Identity

So now we're down to four months...

Who's "we?," you ask. I guess I am speaking for both the person who is moving me onward in time and spirit, and the person who is there to welcome, admonish, forgive and adopt--or be adopted by--the one who will become her.

I'm thinking now of how the Rastafarians speak of the "I and I." Sometimes you hear it in Bob Marley's songs. He and they are referring to their corporeal, temporal selves, and to the spirit that is within them. It's one of those things that sounded really cool when I first heard about it, but that makes sense to me only now. Amazing, what changing into your true gender identity will do...

Excuse me while I change into my true gender identity. Hmm... Somehow I don't think that line will keep Dominick, or anyone else, eager with anticipation. On the other hand, I am actually saying that I'm slipping into "something more comfortable" when I say "my true gender identity." That is assuming, of course, that the person hearing either of those phrases is operating from the same set of experiences and assumptions as I am.

What did I just say? Omigoddess, I really am starting to sound like I'm in a graduate seminar! I want to slip into something more....

Naah. Don't think I'll do that. I don't think my fellow students or that prof would want to see me wearing a whole lot less than what I've been wearing to that class. I am definitely one of those 99.98% (Don't ask how I came up with that number.) of people who look better with clothes on. Of course, 100% of the people are programmed or hard-wired, or whatever you want to call it, to long for, lust over and sometimes pursue, that other 0.02%

Oh, dear. I don't want to spend the next 122 days making useless, pointless and baseless generalizations. They come to me like hiccups. But holding my breath or drinking a glass of water doesn't seem to help.

Four months...Seriously, now I'm really starting to feel the day drawing near. Almost a year ago, when I first set the date for my surgery, it seemed like an eternity away. Then, when I started counting down a year on this blog, it still seemed a rather long stretch of time. I mean, at my age, one year isn't an aeon. But it is something. Even six months--the point at which I expected to sense the imminence of the surgery--seemed like a fairly significant chunk of time. But now, four months seems like no time at all.

I know of the logistical things I have to do: get an EKG and an HIV test, buy a ticket out there, pay for the surgery and arrange for my time away and the time I come back. There are most likely other things I'm not thinking of or simply can't imagine. Will I have long conversations with friends, associates or family members? If so, will they be rancorous or reconcilitory (for me or the other person), tactful or tearful? Goodbyes or greetings? Or simply matter-of-fact, or "none of the above?"

What must I, and what will I want to, do between now and then? More important, is there something I'm supposed to do between now and then? I can't think of what it might be. Am I supposed to say "goodbye" to my life as a man? My life as a trans person? Or as Version I of Justine?

Well, I think I said "goodbye" to life as a man a while back. Actually, I said a number of "goodbyes," beginning with the one that went no further than my own mind. That was on the day I saw that woman in Saint Jean de Maurienne: the one I've mentioned in a few other posts. Then, a few days later, Tammy met me at JFK and I held her more desperately than I've ever held onto anything--save, perhaps, for the moment that preceded that one--or anyone in my life. When I held Tammy, I could feel that life slipping away from me as I grasped for it for it with more and more desperation and determination, if less tenacity.

I also realized at that moment that she was the only reason why I had any desire at all to continue living as a man. If I were to become Justine--myself--I would certainly lose her. She'd said as much earlier. She wanted that image and fantasy of Nick I presented; I wanted it only to the extent that it allowed me to stay with her. The four years I spent with her allowed me to retreat from the human race as much as was possible while living in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Being with her also spared me from blind dates set up with friends', family members' or co-workers' co-workers, family members or friends.

I moved out a year after our rendez-vous at JFK. During that time, I could feel the life I'd been living, and the identity by which I'd been living, sliding through my grasp like an eel in a dream. Every movement took me a little further around the bend that turned the current of my life away from the familiar but fallow shores to ones I could only imagine.

In particular, I am remembering the hot day in May my niece Lauren made her First Holy Communion. It was a few weeks before I moved out, and I had not talked about my situation, in any sense, with my brothers or my parents. I sat to the right of all of them, and all through the Mass, I just barely kept myself from breaking down into tears and sobs. I knew that once I started crying, I wouldn't stop: I might even fall to the floor or further lose control in some other way. And all those families at that Mass didn't come to see a grown man (supposedly) crying even more uncontrollably their babies could. And that is exactly what did happen after I left everyone and had grabbed a seat--alone--in the train going home.

This is the last time she'll see her Uncle Nick. Or that they'll see their brother or son Nicky. As it turned out, I would see them all again that Thanksgiving, after I told everyone I'd broken up with Tammy and moved out, but didn't tell them why. I was still working and living as Nick, except for a few people I'd recently met at and through the LGBT Community Center in The Village. They were the very first people in the world who would come to know me as Justine.

That February, I went to my brother's house for a birthday party and to meet a newly- divorced woman who worked with him. He thought we might like each other, he said. She seemed nice enough, but I had absolutely no intention of dating her or anyone else at that time. I let her, in essence, interview me only so that I wouldn't have to describe what was leaving me.

The next time I saw any of my family members, I was "coming out" to them. First, to one brother. To another, a couple of weeks later. And to my parents, a couple of months after that. By that time, all of my friends and co-workers knew me as Justine.

Now I have people in my life who've known me only as Justine. I wonder whether they've seen any changes in me (besides my weight gain!) and whether they'll see any after the operation. Will I, in essence, be a different Justine, or a different version of Justine, from the one they know now? Is that person they know fading from view as that same person's life is moving away from him, from her, and toward the woman who is her vision of herself?

The answers to these questions, and others, may begin to reveal themselves four months from now. Maybe it's happening already. Either way, I've a lot to do during the next four months.

Every Girl Should Be So Lucky

I knew the economy was bad. But I wasn't expecting to see anything like this: A favorite Thai restaurant was empty at lunchtime on Friday.

On other occasions when Bruce and I went there, it was full and we had to wait for a table. But today we had the place to ourselves. The food was as good as it's always been. And, well, you couldn't get better service than we had.

The good news was that we had the place to ourselves. Bruce is just about the last person in the world to put on an act for anyone, much less complete strangers. But I guess I have been known to perform for an audience that didn't know they were my audience. I lapse into it unconsciously; sometimes I catch myself as I'm doing it.

Somehow, though, it seemed as if each of us had let our guard down. It's not the first time we've done that for each other. He talked about the emotional life of his family, and how he's been affected by it. His father in particular, he said, was emotionally distant. "He only called twice just to see how I was--and those were after he got sick," Bruce recalled. His father, he said, didn't connect well with people and wasn't demonstrative.

Bruce isn't, either. But the funny thing is that throughout my life--at least for the nearly three decades I've known him--he's been the most emotionally available man I've ever known. For a long time--in fact, until I saw my social worker for the first time--he was the only man with whom I'd ever talked about the molestation and other painful things I've experienced. And until I met Dominick, I never thought I'd talk about any of those things with any other man.

Yes, Bruce has always been a different sort of friend for me. We drank and looked at women together; once we were interested in the same woman. We acted like the Blues Brothers; another time we walked around Union Square and the East Village (when both were funkier places than they are now) in Hawaiian shirts and acted like tourists because--well, because we could.

I've seen him face his brother's and father's deaths, as well as other sadness in his family. He's seen me become sober--and Justine.

The funny thing is that all through this, our friendship has been the least gendered relationship I've had with anybody. Even when we were acting like a couple of crazy young men, I never felt like we were just a couple of guys. He said as much, back before either of us had ever used a PC. Even in those days, he called my sexuality "fluid" and that I "wasn't your typical straight guy."

And there we were today, talking about the ways we've been affected emotionally by people in our lives. Not the sort stuff that laces conversations about the Knicks or Giants.

He's as much of a straight guy as you'll ever find. But somehow I've felt free to be vulnerable--whcih is to say Justine, even before I "came out" as her-- when I've been around him. And I feel that all the more the longer I know him.

Now, you tell me who or what is a girl's best friend? Yes, I love Dominick, but that's different. He's in my life now; maybe he will be for a long time. But Bruce has been here. Every girl should be so lucky.

No Escape and No Luxury

Getting closer and closer...

Didn't accomplish much today. Got up late, but I probably needed the sleep, as I'd been up late the last couple of nights.

I suppose I shouldn't beat myself up over my non-productiveness. At least a couple dozen people I know would tell me that. But that won't stop me. If you've been reading my entries, you know me well enough to know that.

The doctor told me there'd be days like this. So did my therapist and my social worker. Much as I esteem them, their seal of approval doesn't quite work for me in this case. Then again, I know a few things now that I didn't before I met them.

It's funny how men--some men, anyway--think women are being frivolous when we sleep late, go out shopping (whether or not we buy anything), read romance novels or watch soap operas. I must admit I still haven't developed a taste for the last two. I had the TV on today as I was reading e-mail and doing some paperwork. I think the midday news was on when I started; by the time I looked at the TV screen again, a soap opera--or what is now known as "daytime TV"--was playing. I caught the program just in time to see a doctor preparing to remove the bandages wrapped around some female patient's eyes. Of course, whatever caused her to get eyefuls of glass shards had to do with money or sex, both of which are--as near as I can tell--the same thing on those programs. And, I must admit, I stopped what I was doing to see if that woman could see when the doctor removed the bandages. Alas, she couldn't. Bad for her, good for the plot, I guess.

I used to think that housewives liked those programs because they were bored. Of course, it's not hard to understand how they would be: If she has more intelligence than he does yet she is relegated to changing diapers and cleaning furniture, what else could she be? If she's lucky, that's all she'll be.

But, years later, I found out that a lot of gay men watch those programs, too. And I'm not talking only about the "kept" ones: I've talked to an advertising art executive, a man who travelled the world in the employ of one of those firms that's gone bust in the last few months and an engineer who taped those programs and watched them at the end of the day. Why did they like such programs? For that matter, why do they like Susan Lucci, or Joan Crawford?

Not so long ago, I would have felt superior to all those soap opera fans because I could finish the Sunday Times crossword puzzle. Lots of people think that's a waste of time, too, but I always rationalized that at least those puzzles were developing skills. Yeah, just like Renaissance scholars read Latin, Greek and Hebrew literature so they could better understand the Bible.

And you know what? I still am superior because I can finish the Sunday Times crossword puzzle. Yes, I am. How, I don't know. But you know, once you become a snob, you've got to keep it up. Just like I had to keep up my misanthropy and my disdain of scholars and academicians. And you're soooo convinced of that, right?

OK, so I'm not so superior to all those people who "waste" their time watching soap operas. Or the ones who go to escapist movies and amusement parks. Or the ones who go fishing or to football games. Or who golf. (I don't think I'll ever understand the attraction of that.)

And there are plenty of people who think that poetry is a waste of time. Or playing with one's cats. Or having cats at all. Even if one of those cats is named Jeffrey. The man who had such a cat was Smart. Really! With a name like Christopher Smart, how could he not be smart? Or, how could someone with a name like Angelina Jolie not be beautiful?

I'm starting to realize that everyone needs to do at least one thing that's gratuitous, or even excessive. It's not a luxury; it's what someone whose life is confined by the written or unwritten prejudices against who and what they are through no choice of their own. You can be the most wonderful mother or anything else but, at the end of the day, you're just a woman in the eyes of those who set the rules. And that art executive, and the others I mentioned are, in this world, just gay men, whether or not they're in the closet. The only difference is that, if they're closeted, other people gain power by their complicity in keeping the secret; if said gays are "out," they are labels and targets. No matter what he does, Barney Frank will probably always be known as "the gay senator." And those who don't like him will use that fact before any other, or even the fantasies they've built around that fact, to rationalize their disdain or hatred.

I think that the professor of the class I'm taking was making that point when she unabashedly confessed that she loves Uncle Tom's Cabin. I agree with most of what James Baldwin said about it in "Everybody's Protest Novel": It does considerable violence to the English language with its melodrama and sentimentality. I'll grant that it certainly influenced people. But I'm not yet ready to be convinced that it belongs in the canon as much as Moby Dick does.

By the way: One way you can tell whether someone has actually read Moby Dick is to talk about the story line of The Old Man and The Sea. After all, they're both about a guy trying to catch a fish. All right, a sea creature: I know, a whale isn't a fish. At any rate, if you recount the plot of Hemingway's novel, the person who's lying about having read Moby Dick will go along with whatever you say. Trust me, I've done it.

All right, now I can say it: I have read both Moby Dick and Old Man and the Sea. And I have no particular desire to read either again, although if I continue my studies, I'll probably be reading MD again. Ditto for Uncle Tom's Cabin. What will I think of it.

Back to women, gays and soap operas: Just as playing is part of a child's development--and sometimes part of an adult's creative process--I'm starting to think that lush, florid things serve some sort of purpose for those whose lives are truncated by bigotry. If poetry is not a luxury (which I know it isn't), maybe "camp" is not excess after all.

OMG...What did I just say? Every time I turn around, I'm becoming something else I never imagined I would, or swore I would never allow myself to, become.

Could it be that when you're poor or oppressed, there's no such thing as a luxury, or of frivolty? And does this mean that when there's no escape from your condition, nothing is "just" an "escape?"

Or could it be that it's simply getting late and I'm getting tired again?

My Course, A Real Education As Justine

One of my students in the Poetics and Rhetoric of Hip-Hop class I'm teaching is writing a feature for the college newspaper. It happens that a history professor, George White, is teaching a course on the history of hip-hop. They are the first two courses in hip-hop to be offered at the college. That is the subject of the article my student wants to write.

She asked, among other things, how this course differs from the others I've taught. Well, it's an elective, so nobody's forced to be in it. And I have more freedom in my choices of materials, assignments and such than I have, say, in a composition course.

But the real difference, I said, is that in that class, I'm teaching from my heart. When I teach about poetry, I am sharing the essence of what I am. And in linking it with hip-hop, I hope that I am offering my students an opportunity I had: My interest in poetry developed from the music--or, more precisely, the lyrics--I grew up with. Among them are songs by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, John Lennon, Joni Mitchell and, later on, Bob Marley.

There was something else I couldn't explain at that moment. It really is the first time I am teaching a course as Justine. That, I think, is the reason I freaked out just before the semester started: I never expected to have a class that I designed and that I would teach in my way. I submitted the proposal for it, thinking it would be rejected or that someone else would teach the course. Plus, it seemed almost ludicrous that I, a white middle-aged transgender woman, would be teaching about hip-hop in a college in which 80 percent of the students are black.

But my race, gender identity or the fact that I didn't grow up with hip-hop hasn't been a factor. In fact, I've joked about all of those things. And the students tell me that they enjoy the class all the more for it. And, somehow, I think that if I were still living as Nick, the heterosexual guy, I never would have taught that class. Truth is, acually, that I couldn't have.

I'm not quite sure of why I think that, but I feel certain about it. Nick had the intelligence I have (for better or worse) and the education I inherited. But I also inherited his fear of becoming a scholar or critic, or some other such thing. They were failures as artists and at life, or so I believed, and that is what I didn't want to be.

But one prof, who's a playwright, advised me not to worry. You'll always have your own writing, he said, and what I'm doing with that class should help me, because it's creative, too. After all, he explained, it takes a creative spirit to bring together the sorts of works I'm joining.

So where did all that fear come from? Well, I guess I was still fighting a part of myslef. I stopped the war that I'd been carrying on with myself when I started my transition to Justine-hood. But I still do battle with smaller issues. I guess if you're used to fighting, you look for conflicts, however small. I really don't need to do that anymore, but that doesn't stop me.

Maybe that's the reason why I couldn't have created or taught such a course while I was still living as Nick. Making the change has, bit by bit, freed my mind--and most important, my spirit. And now I know that the course--or, for that matter, a real education, to the degree that I'm capable of getting or giving it--is not only an intellectual expereince: It is spiritual, if not in the religious sense.

Well, all I can do now is thank Nick for providing me with some of the tools and skills I need to do that sort of work.

Snowstorm

School's out....for today.

It snowed last night, let up this morning and snowed some more this afternoon. In all, eight or ten inches, depending on which report you believe, covered the streets, cars, houses and the park. It's the biggest snowfall we've had in couple of years, at least.

But the worst part of today's weather was the wind. Of course, it makes cold weather feel frigid. What made things worse today was that it whipped the snow around, turning puffy flakes into needles against the skin. Garbage cans and all sorts of other objects tumbled down the streets and sidewalks. I think that's the real reason why schools closed: Navigating was hazardous, if not dangerous.

So today was a day to curl up with a good book....and catch up on my reading. One thing I'd forgotten about being a student: You're never caught up. Same thing with teaching: There's always a pile of papers and students who wanted them returned yesterday. With an "A," of course.

You're never caught up...on work. On the bills. In love. In...well, you name it. How is that?

If I were to catch up, what would happen to me? I forget who said that when you don't have any more bills to pay, you die. Or is it the other way around? Would I have to find another job if I didn't have a stack of students' papers and exams in front of me?

No work left to do. Nothing to look forward to. What would that be like? I hope that's not what the days after surgery will be like. I mean, after all, I've never looked forward to anything as much for as long as I've anticipated the surgery. I know that there will be other things to do, most of them things I'm already doing.

Well, I know one thing: I won't be shovelling snow. I won't be able to do that. Besides, I don't think there'll be any snow to shovel at that time of year. But, as they say, you never know.

For now, I have a day off, work, hope and anticipation. I guess it's not a bad combination.

A Matter of Time

"Can you believe it? We're into March already."

"I know."

"Only four more months..."

That was Mom reminding me of how close--or how far?--I am from my surgery.

It seems that everything has become a matter of time now. The past few months, the past year, have flown by. Yet I feel like a six-year-old kid to whom Christmas seems like an eternity away. And I know it'll be here before I know it. Of course, if you tell that child Christmas is just around the corner, he or she will never believe you.

Mom and I were both thinking about the same people today: her parents, Uncle Sonny (her brother) and my cousin Sandra. All gone, long gone, although their deaths seem to have come only yesterday. Uncle Sonny's birthday would have been on the 7th, and grandpa's birthday--and the date of his death--were the 21st: the first day of spring. For a long time, I hated that date and that month; the coming of spring used to seem like the original lie. Flowers opened from earth, from mud that had been someone's bones; the dew's source was in their blood. My early poem The Lies of Spring was my first attempt to honestly describe how I felt about it all.

This Saturday, on the 7th, Uncle Sonny would have been 77 years old. He was the same age as I am now when he died. Grandpa was 72; Mom and I both expressed disbelief that on the 21st, it will have been 43 years since his death. Years ago, she told me that she's "never really gotten over it." She chastised herself; I said that there's no timetable for grief.

Then again, she doesn't want to handle things the way I do. She never said that to me, but I wouldn't wish on anybody the depression I fell into after my grandmother, her mother, died. I was depressed before her death and was all but inconsolable for several years afterward. It's really a wonder that I made it through that time; how is another story.

At least today I didn't have to be surrounded by my past. I'd gone to the Hunter College library to pick up a book I need for the class I'm taking. I very rarely go into the part of town that surrounds the college and have had little contact with the college. So images of my old stories didn't parade themselves before me and through my mind, as they did during the walk I took after having lunch with Bruce the other day.

Those last couple of days have flown by. And, yes, the day of my surgery will come before I know it. When I look back from that date, this day, the last couple of days and the past few months will seem to have raced by. And I will probably feel eager and anxious to start my new life, even if it has already begun.

Size Matters

OK, now I'm going to tell you something counterintuitive. (Oh, that word is so pretentious. But I used it again!) It might not matter much in the scale of things, but here it is: Size didn't matter as much to me when I was living as Nick as it does now.

Now, you're probably wondering why I'm worrying about the size of that. Well, guess what: You have a dirty mind. I was being entirely literal. And, because I'm a lady, I would never, ever talk about that!

So the hormones haven't tempered my mischieviousness. Oh, well. The doctor didn't say that they would, and I never said that I wanted them to. What the doctor doesn't tell you won't hurt you: Is that how it goes? Or is it that what you don't want can't hurt you? Either way, I'm safe, I guess.

About the issue of size: I noticed it again when I went to get my nails done. On occasion, you'll see a man getting a manicure, but 99% of the time--even here in New York--all of the patrons as well as the nail finishers are female. I am taller and bigger than most women though, I'm told, I'm not at the far edge of the bell curve. On the other hand, as a male, I was average--almost militantly so--in both height and body size. As a matter of fact, when I was in shape, I was thinner than most guys and smaller overall, save for the shoulders I developed from weight-lifting.

Today I realized why I notice my size even more in nail salons than in other all- (or mostly-) female environments. Just about everyone who finishes nails, at least in this city, is Chinese or Korean. The half-dozen women who do that work in the salon I usually patronize (Hannah and Her Sisters in Astoria) are Korean. And so were all of the nail technicians in the places I patronized before I started to frequent Hannah and Her Sisters. Next to those women, I seem like King Kong.

I haven't had my nails done outside New York yet, so I don't know if the situation holds true everywhere. From what I could see, it seemed to be the case in the part of Florida where my parents live, but not in Paris or Istanbul. Before going to those places, I had my nails done, so I didn't have to avail myself to the local equivalents. Now I wish I had, just to see what they were like.

Some sociologist or labor historian should undertake a study that would explain why seemingly every nail technician in New York, or any urban or suburban area in the US, is from China or Korea. We know why, for example, Jews came to dominate the garment industry and how they and Italians pretty much were the film industry. Or why for more than a century, the vast majority of cops were Irish or machinists were German. But why are nail technicians Chinese or Korean?

Maybe the answer won't matter that much. But less consequential matters have consumed great amounts of intellectual and other kinds of capital.

For now, I guess I'll have to get used to standing out in a nail salon the way an NBA center next to one of the jockeys at Aqueduct Race Track--at least until Amazons take over the nail salons of this city.

Will size matter then?

Le Cafe Perdu

Today Bruce and I went to lunch at the Red Egg, a Chinese restaurant on a part of Centre Street that sits in a nether-world between Chinatown, Soho and the Lower East Side. It's hard to get any sit-down meal in Manhattan, much less one as good as we had, for seven dollars (before tax and tip).

Today I had Red Egg Curry Chicken. It was so good that I was scooping up and downing what remained of the sauce after I'd finished the chicken, asparagus and okra that made up the rest of the dish. And Bruce's General Tso's Chicken, which I sampled, was as good.

We've eaten there a couple of times before, and I'm sure we'll go back. The decor is a cross between a Soho bistro and a Chinese restaurant in Queens. That is to say, it's made up of sleek red and black lacquer and blondish wood.

A good sign is that the place was full, or close to it, each time we've gone. And, at least half of the customers were Chinese. Also, they set your table with chopsticks. I'm not sure that they have western-style utensils: I didn't see anyone using them.

After we finished, Bruce had to return to work. So, after we parted, I wandered across town on Spring Street to the Bowery, then up toward Cooper Square. The day was mild but overcast; everyone rightly believed that we would get the rain that was forecast for the early evening.

On a day like this, which feels like an early spring day except for a touch of damp chill, flesh and bright colors peeked out the way the sun does as it moves through layers of clouds. Near Bruce's office, in a building sandwiched between two boutiques, young women fluttered about in shorts with brightly-patterned tights or skirts over sheer hosiery. Some of the young men weren't wearing coats or jackets, or even sweaters, over their T-shirts. Back when I was young and full of testosterone (and alcohol), I would have done the same.

The styles may change, but they are re-enacting what seems to be a ritual I've seen for as long as I can remember. If we'd had a day like this a few weeks ago, it wouldn't have been seen as a prelude to spring: It would have been just an unusually warm day in winter. And so everyone would have been wearing coats and scarves and such.

Well, some people--young women, mostly--wore scarves, mainly as accessories. One in particular just oozed style with hers, in shades of champagne, lilac and dark pink. Its ends fluttered behind her as she pumped her Peugeot city bike--the kind they sell in France, not an export model--with fenders, a rack, generator light and all. She would have looked completely appropriate on the streets around Saint Germain des Pres or Montmartre.

She is me, in another life. If only...

Seeing her, and those downtown streets and buildings that criscross each other at mad angles, I started to get, as Kurt Vonnegut would say, woozy with deja vu. I recalled walking those same streets when they both more carefree and more dangerous than they are now. I knew of some of the dangers; others escaped--along with a lot of other things--my consciousness as I drank or intoxicated myself in some other way. I saw a place--Phebe's, still there--where I used to drink enough so that I didn't notice or care that the hamburger I ordered was burnt. It brought back images of other places, long gone, where the graffiti in the bathroom provided more debate on issues of the day, and larger questions, than just about any still-surviving magazine or other publication that has any sort of intellectual premise or pretense.

One place like that was Le Figaro cafe, which used to take up a corner of Bleecker and MacDougal Streets in the heart of the Village. Back before Starbuck's cafes started popping up like weeds after a rainstorm, Le Figaro was one of the few places where you could get something like a real espresso or cappucino rather than the burnt-coffee-bean-and-boiled-milk concoctions other places served. Back in those days, they served decent quiche Lorraine and some not-bad desserts. But those weren't the reasons to go there. Nor was the decor: If you can imagine an interrogation room from a '40's or '50's noir film wallpapered with copies of the eponymous French newspaper (ironically enough, one edited from a conservative, almost reactionary, point of view), you have a good idea of what the interior looked like.

From what I understand, Bob Dylan and his peers used to go there after playing at The Back Fence and other nearby dives. Of course, that gives it the same sort of cachet Dylan Thomas's patronage gives the White Horse Tavern. But the real reason you went to Le Figaro, or any of those old-time Village coffee places, was to watch people. So, it was always best (to me, anyway) to go on a day like this one, which would probably be the first of the season on which the sidewalk tables would be set up.

Today, a lot of those people I looked at back in the day are probably gone. As are one bartender and one waitress who used to work there. I had crushes on both of them that I probably wouldn't have had if I'd seen them in a New Jersey mall. A lot of other people probably did, too. That's how it was in those old Village (East or West) cafes and coffeehouses: They really didn't have a whole lot to recommend them except their locations, but somehow they transformed the people you met in them in much the same way that young people who just got off the bus from Iowa or Kansas or Oregon became bohemians when they opened up their suitcases or backpacks in that neighborhood.

Of course I would have liked to have been in one of those cafes as that young woman who rode her Peugeot today. However, neither she nor anyone else I saw today would, even if they could, choose to be a patron in one of those cafes I remember. Nor could I. As much as I feel I would have liked to experience those days and all of my past as Justine rather than as Nick, I know that if I had (if I could have), I may not be here today, little more than four months from my surgery.

I forget which feminist writer said that in the Sexual Revolution, women got screwed. And so it was back in those giddily serious days. Now I realize that the women, almost invariably young and fashionable in an arty kind of way, served as props for those guitar- and chess-playing young men of yore. Even fairly recently, cafes like le Figaro were mainly the provinces of straight people. They gays were on the western and eastern extremes of the neighborhood, and they had their own versions of the cafes, not to mention the bars.

Those cafes are gone, too, as are so many of the men who patronized them. Only the women--reincarnations of them, anyway--remain. Today Bruce had lunch with one who hadn't been thought of because she couldn't conceive herself in those days.

Going to School: It's a Girl Thing, Ya Know

It's really strange to have the day off on a Thursday. For as long as I can remember--yes, even back in elementary school--it was my longest and busiest day of the week.

Of course, when you teach English, you never really have a day off. There are always papers to grade, lesson plans to create and reading to do. And now, of course, I'm taking a class.

Yesterday, Cady Ann, the English Department secretary, wondered why I didn't take a class sooner and why I don't pursue a PhD. Well, it's not out of the question. I just hope that if I do it, I'll still be employable.

Somehow I had the sense that my gender transition would involve getting some sort of an education. I didn't really want to believe it, as I had lots of really bad experiences as a student, and more than a few as an educator. But deep down, I knew that I would. I didn't know whether it would mean the course I seem to be pursuing or something else entirely. A couple of years ago, with the encouragement of one prof who used to work in social services, I seriously entertained the idea of getting a master's in social work. Ironically enough, thinking about my social worker helped to spark--and extinguish the flame of--that idea. I guess it's not hard to see why people whose lives have been changed by counselors, therapists, social workers or teachers think they would like to spend their lives helping other people in the same way. On the other hand, I wonder how many of them understand what it's like to deal with people who have the same problems as theirs, only worse, every day.

And I honestly feel that I am not as patient or sensitive as my social worker or Regina, who worked at the college where I work. Then again, I probably have more of a chance of marrying into the Royal Family (as if I ever wanted to do such a thing) than I would of becoming as good a writer as Shakespeare. Yet I keep on writing.

In any event, I don't think now that I'll do social work or counseling. For that matter, I won't go to law school, either, in spite of encouragement I received from three lawyers and a few people who are doing advocacy work of one kind or another. The study might be interesting, but I'm not so sure about the practice. Not only that, I'd have to incur lots of debt, which means I'd have to take a corporate position or something equally unappealing.

So let's see...I could always train myself for some trade or another. Or another profession, like accounting. Uh-huh.

What else can I think of to avoid the inevitable. The inevitable? No, can't be. There must be some way of not becoming another tranny who does gender studies or some such thing. I mean, real education is old white men teaching about dead white men, right? At least that's how it was in my day.

But these days some people have different ideas. Everyone, including the professor, in the class I'm taking seems to have them. Even the crotchy conserviative that I am is going along with them.

So I'm back in school again, just like I'm supposed to be. Except that in some way I can't say I'm "back." I'm starting over, really, just as I have in everything else for the past seven years. The day Tammy and I split up, I knew that starting over was all I could do.

And ya know, going to school is a woman's thing. I mean, real men don't have to go to school. Guys are supposed to be physically powerful and their work is supposed to show it. Back when I was riding my bike a couple of hundred miles a week and lifting weights, I could live on fried foods and cheese and have a lower cholesterol level than 99% of people in the industrialized world. Schooling could never do that for me.

As long as I didn't know, I didn't need to know. And if I found out, I could ignore it and it would go away. Or, better yet, I could exorcise it by exercising myself, whether on the saddle or in bed.

Oh, you never heard of that theory before? It goes like this: If somehow you realize you're anything but hetero and/or can't live by that "M" on your birth certificate, you get married. If that doesn't work, you try it again--or at least live with a new girlfriend. Before, between and after each marriage or relationship, you sleep with a woman any chance you get.

In other words, act like a het guy and you'll be one. I don't think Skinner or any of the other behaviorists mentioned that, but they also never said that their principles couldn't be applied to one's gender identity or sexuality. You know, that's further proof of the axiom that if you don't know, you don't need to know. And its corollary: Your troubles begin the moment you know.

In some weird way, that's what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick said in The Epistemology of the Closet. Knowledge is not necessarily power. She gave the example of Ronald Reagan meeting Francois Mitterand. While Monsieur Mitterand spoke some of the most graceful English ever to come from lips first attuned to speaking another language, Ronnie Raygun couldn't utter so much as Bonjour. So, of course, their conversation was in English.

Naturally, the first thing I thought of was Caliban saying to Prospero, You have taught me language/And the profit on't is, I can curse. Oui, j'en ai entendu l'anglais, et donc, j'en ai parlait avec l'idiote american. And I got an education so that I could do the work of people who don't want to think--and get paid less than they're paid.

And, of course, this meant that Mitterand was forced to be all the more proficient in English. At the same time, it destroyed any incentive Reagan ever had, if indeed he had any, to learn French or any other language besides English.

That's how it is when you're a woman or a member of any other stigmatized group. You have to learn and know more--or, at least, different things--from members of the dominant groups. This allows them to be ignorant, which makes it all the more necessary to learn even more.

So, yeah, going to school is for women. And gays. And blacks. And...well, you get the picture.

Thus am I back in school. At least I'm enjoying it, so far, which really will trump any other sort of motivation. I need to know, I want to know, I can't imagine not knowing. And those are the reasons why I must keep on learning. What else can a middle-aged woman who happens to be trans do? Learn...and enjoy it.

Here I've come again.

You Should See Yourself Giddy With Shakespeare and Ice-T

I haven't studied biology in more than thirty years. I'll be the first to admit that I don't remember much, and what little I do recall is probably hopelessly out of date. So, take this next statement for whatever it's worth, coming from me: The human body does not convert estrogen into ecstasty, with a lower- or an upper-case "e."

Or does it?

I think I'm experiencing a 48-hour case of what I now call the "girlie giddies." As I was about to start taking hormones, the doctor said I would become more emotional and have mood swings. As if I didn't already! I don't recall the doctor being more specific. What I do know is that I've had some crying jags as well as the girlie giddies.

What has it been about these last two days? I'm not doing anything special, and everything's working out and people want more of it. I was sorry to see the end of yesterday's session of the class I'm taking. I felt like I was watching the credits at the end of a film and I didn't want to get out of my seat. And I felt that way today, too, at the end of the hip-hop class I'm teaching. The time just flew; even the students said they couldn't believe it was over. "We have next week, and ten more," I reminded them.

"Can't wait," one chimed.

"I've never seen a prof on such a roll," another declared.

Actually, they were on a roll. It seemed as if the connection between Shakespeare's Sonnet 30 and Ice-T's Power was the most obvious thing in the world, although, to my knowledge, no one made it before me.

Here's The Bard's sonnet:


When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.


Well, one thing this sonnet proves (at least to me) is that anything Robert Browning did, Shakespeare was doing, more sagely and more elegantly--0r at least in a more intimate way-- two centuries before him. I mean, if you wanted a four-word summary of this poem (if that could do it justice), "Love Among The Ruins" would be a good one. For the first twelve lines, the speaker of the poems is talking about his losses. But, in the tradition of the Shakespearean sonnet, there is a "turn" before the penultimate line. And what do those last two lines say? Well, when I remember you, at least I have something to hold on to. Or something like that.

And the language. Oh, the language! "Then I can grieve at grievances foregone/And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er/The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan/Which I new paid as if not paid before." Just listen to those sounds: the "g" consonances in the first of those lines, the assonance (Yes, he had a real nice assonance!) of "o" sounds in the following lines and the coup de grace of "the fore-bemoaned moan" and "paid as if not paid before." Those "fore"s call out to each other; so do the "moans" which also resonate with the (rhyme of) "foregone" and "woe to woe tell o'er."

Then, just as we think all is lost, we hear that final couplet. In nearly other poet's hands, the "friend/end" would have seemed mundane, or even banal. But here, as the conventional or "weak" rhyme, it actually brings closure and a sort of affirmation. And, as one of my students noted, the "s" sounds in the final line are reassuring, too. Why is that, I wondered. The best answer I have for that is that they are refractions, not reflections, of those "s" sounds in the poems first line. "Sessions of sweet silent thought" is a quieting rather than a quiet sound; it's almost repressive. On the other hand, "All losses are restored and sorrows end" has a more reassuring, if not empowering, sound to it, which comes for the price of all those sad and melancholy sounds in the middle of the poem.

And what of Ice-T's song? Here's a link to the lyrics:

http://www.metrolyrics.com/power-lyrics-ice-t.html

That song is practically an inversion of Shakespeare's sonnet: Through most of it, Ice-T raps about having the trappings of power. But after the "turn"--at "Power starts with 'p'..."--the singer realizes he doesn't have real power after all, at least not in this society.

It was such a joy to see students discovering for themselves what I've just described. It made me even more giddy. One of the students, who took the Intro to Literature class with me four years ago, exclaimed, "You're just lit up! You should see yourself." To which I replied, "No, you should see yourself."

Yes, you really should see yourself.

My Worst Fears Are Coming True And I'm Ecstatic. What Do I Do Now?

Maybe I'm not joking after all when I tell people about my "special tranny powers."

You know...I can put together an outfit. I can be witty and sarcastic. I can learn anything because I can read your mind and I can explain it all because I've got a good mouth on my shoulders. (Thank Chanel La Vie en Rose lipstick for the latter.)

Seriously...Today I said things and I'm still wondering where they came from. What's amazing is that I didn't get myself in trouble.

Here I was, thinking I was an utter fool because I had to read and re-read Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's essay about paranoia and her introduction to "The Epistemology of the Closet." And I had to read them again before they made any sense to me. And there were times I wanted to let my cats have at those pages. Damn, Sedgwick, what's with all the Latin words? Or sentences longer than the Verrazano Bridge?

Yet, I wanted to keep on reading her. Of course, the material's of interest to me. But that wasn't the only thing that kept me going. I guess you might say that I wanted to master difficult material to prove something to myself. But that's not the whole story, either. It was almost as if I couldn't help but to read those essays.

Oh my goddess! I'm reading a gender theorist--and enjoying it?! This is exactly what I always feared. What do I do now?

Well...I've had my worst fears come true before. Like the day I realized I was going to live my life without alcohol or drugs. Time was when I could more easily imagine myself buried alive. But of course it was what I needed to do so I could live long enough to face my biggest fear of all...

...Which, of course, is that I am Justine. That I would actually give up that cocoon of white male heterosexual privilege in which I lived. Where I didn't have to know anything about writers like Sedgwick. Where I could read Walt Whitman and John Milton as poets, and nothing more or less. And where no-one would bother me for advice.

Oh well. I'll just have to feign guilt over becoming a sober woman who can actually understand abstract texts, and now can't imagine how she got through life without them.

And what's more...I'm enjoying this. Forget it...I'm walking on clouds. I see worlds opening up already.

Do you want to hear the wildest part of all? Other people in the class said that I was helping them to understand what we were reading. They said things like, "That didn't make sense until you talked about it." One student said, "I wondered whether I was getting any of this. But then I thought, well, Justine will explain it." And another exclaimed, "You were really on fire today. I've never seen anybody do like what you did in class." The prof thanked me, too.

The best part is that I was smiling all through that class. Someone else mentioned that, but I knew it already. I couldn't help myself. As I talked, the texts started to open up to me. And the prof not only asks great questions; she may have the best timing I've ever seen. She knows when to let people ruminate or whether to prod them a bit. As she did with me: Early in the class, she could just see that my mind was like a ripe piece of Brie ready to burst out of its wrapper.

OK. So now I'm in the kind of class I swore I would never take. And enjoying it. Better yet: The prof ended the class only after realizing it ran past its allotted time. But I didn't want it to end.

Uh-oh. Does this mean I might actually pursue a PhD after all? Then how am I going to tell all those young trannies that none of it matters?

Now I have one less way of saying "fuck you," thumbing my nose or whatever you want to call it. Not that anybody's convinced when I do that.

I guess I have to find something else now that feigning misanthropy is no longer an option. Actually, it never was, but that didn't stop me.

Have I opened a can of worms? Or a new chapter? Well, either way, I guess it'll take up a lot of the next four months. Can you imagine me going into the operating room saying things like, "The great divide is not male/female; it's homo/hetero"? I guess that'll really give the anaesthesiologist incentive to do her work.

So I'll wake up from the surgery with a body that's a closer approximation of my spirit. And after I recover, I can...take another class? And be thankful to a prof who's teaching gender theory?

It sounds good to me. Really. Really?


What do I do now?

Taking History Personally

Tonight I watched 60 Minutes. There was a time in my life when that was the only TV program I watched, and I never missed an episode. It is often informative, but more often, it's sensationalistic. But tonight there was a very interesting and disturbing segment.

Elia Solomonovich Kalperin was a town in Belarus, where he saw most of his family--including his mother--slaughtered by the Nazis when he was six years old. He would have been one of those victims, too, except that an SS soldier took a liking to him and trained him as a young soldier. He soon became a mascot and the youngest corporal in the Nazi army, leading a bunch of other kids in a propaganda film.

The Nazis gave him a new identity, naming him Alex Kurzem. Because he was so young, he soon forgot his original name and, with time, the details of his aborted childhood. For more than half a century afterward, he didn't talk about his experiences with anyone. So he lived with a name, and therefore an identity--and, therefore, by extension a bunch of stories--that weren't his.

Does any of that sound familiar?

You can imagine, if not count, how many tears streamed down my cheeks. Holocaust stories are terrible enough, even when they're about survival. I won't even pretend that I expereinced anything as traumatic as that, and I hope I don't have to. Still, those stories somehow feel personal for me.

Now, as for the other part of his story--living as someone else--I can identify with that all too well, as I suspect every transgender or anyone else who's ever lived "in the closet" can. I, too, lived with a name and identity, and thus a life, that wasn't mine. All of those things were forced on him; I would say that, under less extreme circumstances than his, I was inculcated with the idea that I was a boy called Nicky who was supposed to grow into a man people would know as Nick and who would sign his checks and other documents as Nicholas. Similarly, all those Germans who saw that propaganda film thought he wasn't part of "the hated race," as he said in the 60 Minutes interview, so they expected him to grow into a the sort of man from "the master race." The kids who saw that film were supposed to want to be him, and their parents were supposed to want their kids to grow up as he was expected to.

Take away a person's history--personal or collective--and you can dismantle him or her for your own purposes. The Nazis knew that all too well; so did Mao Tse Tung when he initiated the Cultural Revolution. So, of course, did those who bought and sold African people and forced them to work in the cotton fields and sugar plantations. As long as the slaves were forced to speak a language that wasn't their own, but weren't allowed to learn how to read or write it, or any other language, the slaves could not be anything but.

That's more or less what one of my students said in the Poetics and Rhetoric of Hip-Hop class I teach. While Elia Kaperin made it to Australia, where he survived and prospered, he was in a sense a slave, too.

It seems that slaves carry some memory, even if it isn't one of their own, of their lost personal or cultural history. That, I believe, is the common denominator of just about every cultural contribution African-Americans have made, and the reason why so much of it is expressed in music. In some sense, they're recreating the griot or its equivalents: the experience is shared and passed on through the performance of music and dance, and the telling of stories.

Elia Kaperin said there was a word that stuck in his mind through all those years: Koidanov. He had no idea of what it meant until some historian found learned that it was the old name of the village where Kaperin was born. Only then was he able to find family members who had survived--and to learn the fate of his father, about twenty years dead by then.

Through all those years I lived as Nicky, Nick and Nicholas, I carried within me an essence, a spirit, of the woman I am becoming. Sometimes it felt like a memory,though I didn't know from where or when it could have come. I was willing to believe, as I am now, that perhaps I was a girl in a past life. An Indian man I met not long after I started my transition said as much: He believed that I was indeed a woman but was sent back in a male body in order to learn what I needed to learn.

So a Jew who was, in effect, forced to become a German has something in common with Africans who were turned into slaves and a woman who had to live as a boy and a young man. Our first imperative is, of course, to survive--no, to live. To do this, we must not only resurrect personal or cultural heritages; we must create. I take that back, we can't do anything but to create, whether or not we choose to do so. We create ourselves and, in consequence, what we need to nourish ourselves intellectually and spiritually.

It's all we can do, because it's all personal.