Three More Months; Strange Bedfellows

My surgery is three months--91 days--from today.

The funny thing is that today I had less of a sense than I had yesterday that some things in my life are coming to an end. Maybe it's because I talked to Professor George White about a joint project. He's teaching a class in the History of Hip Hop; my class is The Poetics and Rhetoric of Hip Hop. I'm starting to see how our collaboration can develop into something powerful. Now I wonder whether I'll be at the college to see the fruits of our labor.

I really like Professor White. Every time I've talked to him, he's been very welcoming and upbeat. And I find myself feeling the same way.

He insists that I call him George. Some habits are hard to break. He doesn't seem to mind.

Somehow it doesn't seem so ironic that we may have another collaborator who just happens to be the director of the Men's Center at the college. See what happens when you change genders?

I'm thinking now of a conversation I had with the prof who's a playwright. I mentioned that for as long as I can remember, I hated men--with a few exceptions. But about a year into my transition, I found that I was losing that hatred. "Well, of course!," he said. "Now that you don't have to be one, you can enjoy the company of some men."

He got that one right. Some students and the professor in the class I'm taking reacted with horror when I mentioned that there is a Men's Center at the college. I knew it would be useless to defend it to that audience: They still see men as "the oppressors" or "the rapists."

I did, too, for a long time. Now it makes sense: Nick, the man I created, was suppressing Justine, the woman I am. Now that I am (mostly) free of him, I am more open-minded and intellectually (as well as spiritually) available.

So now I'm going to collaborate with the "enemy": the director of the Men's Center. What sort of Vichy of gender identity will be forged from our mutual cooperation? And what happens to me if I'm its Petain?

See...It's having an effect on me already: I'm using metaphors from military history! Next thing you know, I'll be watching re-runs of Aces High with the guys. And they are going to see Waiting to Exhale with me. Uh-huh.

Now, of course, the collaoration will be over music and things related to it. But who knows where else that could lead? I don't think I have much to offer the young men who go to the center. I mean, what can they learn about being men--more specifically, black men--from a middle-aged white transgender woman?

Very often, I wonder what anybody could possibly learn from me about anything. I mean, really, I'm not that unusual, much less interesting. I've failed much more, and more often, than I have succeeded. And I'm not the sort of person most parents would want their kids to be when they grow up.

It seems that a person can be a former something-or-another--an accountant, let's say--and other people can learn how to be an accountant from him. But no-one is going to learn how to be a man from a former man (or, actually, a woman who lived as a man). And I haven't lived as a woman for long enough to show anybody how to do that.

Still, I enjoy the company of women and find that some want my company. Actually, more want me now than wanted me when I was living as Nick. And, oddly enough, I have an easier time relating to men--at least some men. It'll be interesting to see whether that, or my relationships to other women, will change three months from now.

One Step Closer: Where Will I Wake Up?

One more meeting.

Today my department had its penultimate meeting of this academic year. One more to go...until my surgery.

It seems lately that everything is a countdown. It's always another week, another day, another moment closer to the surgery. One less day, one less meeting till the surgery. No more clothes swaps. One less trip on the subway. Yes, I even thought that tonight, as the train rushed through the 67th Avenue station on the E train. Once more out of the station.

All of the doctors insist, and everything I've read asserts, that I'll still have the same senses, and that I'll be able to do anything I did before, as long as it doesn't require as much physical strength as I had before. Still, I can't help but to wonder whether I'll see any of my surroundings differently, or perhaps I'll be in different surroundings.

Logically, I don't expect the surgery to change my senses. Then again, I didn't think the hormones would, either. Sometimes I feel as if I've lost some layer of protection I once had: sounds and light are more intense than they once were.

And everything I feel, hear, see, taste and touch--or touches me--is one step closer to that day. Or one less experience that I must have on the way.

One less meeting in a conference room. One less meeting in a coffee shop, a classroom or on the streets. Or one more experience on the way.

I'm glad the meeting is past. That hasn't changed; I don't think anyone has ever wished for longer or more meetings at the workplace. Or less sleep. That's how I'm feeling now: ready to drop off. One less time falling asleep, or one more sleep, before the one that will be induced when I am in the operating room.

That makes me more nervous than the operation itself. I have never undergone anything more than local anaesthesia, except for one time when I was about seven or eight years old. I was having a tooth pulled, and in those days doctors almost always put people under general anaesthesia even for the smallest of surgeries. After being in that dentist's chair, the next thing I could remember was getting on the subway at the Fourth Avenue station in Brooklyn. It's an elevated, open-air station that, on one end, plunges into a tunnel. We got on the train that went in that direction and disembarked a couple of stations after it re-emerged from the tunnel.

The E train, which I ride to and from work, runs underground for its entire length. Of the city's two dozen or so subway lines, the R and the Times Square shuttle are the only others that never run in the open air. People invariably leave those tunnels in different places from the ones where they entered. Most of the time, the places where they enter and exit the tunnel are places they've seen before; sometimes they're seen every day. But once in a while, someone enters for the first time or comes out in some place he or she has never seen.

Where will I wake up?

Palm Sunday

Today is Palm Sunday. I can remember when this day would begin a week of going to church twice a day with my Catholic school classmates. Even though school was closed on Good Friday, we were expected to be there not only for an afternoon mass, but for the Stations of the Cross.

If I recall correctly, as an altar boy I served in two or three Good Friday masses and Stations of the Cross. When I did the latter, I didn't really spend time on the altar. Rather, I would accompany the priest--as a caddy, really--as he moved about the perimeter of the church and stopped at one of thehe twelve bas-reliefs depicting scenes from the Passion of Christ. There was one for Jesus being sentenced to death, another for when he falls in the middle of trudging while carrying the cross on his shoulder and, of course, his death. I can't recall at this moment what the other scenes were, but I probably could remember them if I thought about them enough.

Really, as criminal justice stories go, they don't come much better than the Passion. I was reminded of that some years back when, not long after its release, I saw Jesus of Montreal. A pastor asked an avant-garde theatre director to stage a Passion Play for his parish. There was a woman who was overcome with emotion whenever she saw any Passion Play, including the new version. But others hated it; some saw it as sacreligious.

The director researches the story and comes to the conclusion that not only parts of the story, but what people had always assumed about Jesus as well as other personages in the story, were inaccurate. And, he calls upon actors and actresses with whom he'd worked to play the characters in the story. One of those actresses is working in porn films; he casts her as Mary Magdalene.

Once again, I digress. I know that I've really digressed because, well, I've forgotten what I digressed from. Or maybe there wasn't anything to digress from. Then I guess it's not a digression after all.

OK. So you didn't want to go from Jesus of Montreal to a cut-rate version of Tristram Shandy. I won't go there. Promise, promise.

I was thinking about all those people who go to church on this day to receive a palm frond. A few were walking along Broadway in Astoria as Dominick and I had lunch at a window table in Uncle George's (Great food, reasonable prices!) in the beautiful early-spring weather. His grandmother makes crosses from those palm fronds. My maternal grandmother used to do the same thing. I kept one for a long time, even though I had long since stopped believing--to the extent that I ever did--in the need or value of the Catholic church, or any other church.

Of course, the main reason why I kept that cross until it splintered and crumbled is that my grandmother made it. Even at my most rebellious, I would never denigrate the church in her presence. She wouldn't have told my mother or anyone else if I had; I refrained simply because she valued it. Even today, I can't offer a much better explanation. The odd thing is that I never felt as if I were holding back my feelings about the church; I saw the way my feelings differed from hers as a consequence of being who we were. Of course, I didn't know how complicated and complex that distinction could be.

Of all those people in their suits and dresses, and their kids in smaller versions thereof, I couldn't help but to wonder how many of them had, or are having, experiences-- in, or as a result of, the church-- that they will not be able to articulate until many years from now, if ever. I also realized that their inability to articulate their experience of the church is precisely what keeps them united in it. The kids don't know why they're going; the adults can't explain (other than to say, "it's where I was raised") why they keep on going back and bringing their kids with them.

After we ate at Uncle George's, Dominick and I were walking around. A few young people were shooting a video in front of a seemingly-abandoned Presbyterian church. Dominick, who isn't much more religious than I am, still thought it was disrespectful. I agreed with him. However, I asked two of the young people involved about their project. One of them pointed to another young man in a tacky suit who had been gesticulating wildly and said, "Doesn't he look like the kind of pastor that touches kids?" Dominick and I agreed that he did, although I don't know whether either of those young men involved in the video could've told anyone what a pastor who touches little kids "looks like."

I can. He seems taller and older than he actually is, and seems to carry more authority than he actually does. He is the sort of man whom parents tell their kids to respect and even revere, even if, after the mass, he excoriates his altar boy for not pouring enough wine into his chalice. And, of course, he gulps the contents of that chalice even more quickly and forcefully than your average frat boy at a keg party. That, after preaching the most pious sermon anybody had ever heard.

After berating the altar boy for not pouring more wine into his chalice, he insisted on standing by as the boy changed out of the black cassock and white surplice he wore on the altar. "Fix your pants!," he hissed as he grabbed at the boy's crotch. "Come with me," he rasped. The boy followed him into a storage room; he pulled the boy's hand to his crotch. Then he ordered the boy to open his pants; the boy complied even though he didn't understand. Then the priest pulled the boy's face toward his crotch.

I know about that priest because I was that altar boy. I didn't talk about the incident I described until decades later. That priest was probably dead by then; he almost certainly is now.

You might wonder why I'm not one of those former altar boys who sued their dioceses because their priests did similar things to what my parish's priest did to me. Well, for one thing, I know that those really big lawsuits and their settlements are exaggerated and overplayed by the media; they never report on how long it takes to settle and for the wronged party to receive compensation. Also, I didn't want to relive that ordeal publicly and that no amount of money (especially since I would receive only a small fraction of it) coud reverse the trauma I experienced, or give back to me those years when I simply lived with it.

And, no, being molested by that priest didn't make me a trans person, or even exacerbate any tendencies I may have already had.

But even if I'd been able to articulate it, I'm not sure that I would've ever talked about it with my grandmother, or with anyone else. At least, not until I did.

Opening In The Wind

"Winter's coming!"

That's what Johnny, Millie's husband, exclaimed when I saw him by his car this evening. The wind whipped around anything that wasn't made of and anchored to concrete, and it seemed that the day grew colder from beginning to end.

At least the wind blew away the rainstorm that drenched us yesterday and early this morning. When I encountered Johnny, I was walking home from the drugstore, where I bought a few Easter and birthday cards, as well as a couple of things I probably shouldn't eat. It's kind of ironic, isn't it?, that one can buy chocolate and tortilla chips in a place where people buy medicines to make themselves feel better,

Anyway...On the way back, I could really feel some of the effects that the hormones have had on me. For one, I felt the cold more than I used to. I was under-dressed for it, but when I was full of testosterone (and, at times, alcohol), I used to wear less in colder weather. But there was another way I felt the conditions more intensely than I would have in the days before the hormones.

Ever since I started taking the hormones, I've felt as if a layer of skin--psychically as well as physically--has been stripped away from me. Sometimes it's a wonderful, exhiliarating experience: I feel as if I've left my body and am soaring. Other times, it's excruciating: a song on the radio or a slight from someone else can leave me in tears. And then, at times like tonight, I feel that I am simply in a more intense and disquieting place than I was in before.

The wind whirled the spreading but thinning clouds across the sky and allowed the moon to peek through gaps. Lanced by the wind and glanced by moonlight, I felt an odd sense of austerity combined with fulsomeness. Somehow I imagine it's what is mirrored in the souls of monks and prophets when, having ascended a mountain, they reach the top--or at least wherever they need to be. I wasn't feeling only the physical sensations of the evening's weather conditions; I felt that somehow my spirit was opening, again, to new joys and burdens and whatever lay beyond them.

Sometimes I wonder whether cherry tree branches feel tired, exhiliarated or something else when they begin to bud and when those buds begin to open. How does it feel to spread one's petals, one's wings, for the first time and to feel the wind, the cold, the rain or even sun rays that are more intense than they were ready to feel? The flower does not have the choice of remaining closed--or does it?

Now I am reminded of a poem of mine I haven't thought about in a while. If you'll indulge me for a moment, here it is:

Magnolia

Buds throb red.

Cold raindrops cling
to bare branches
after the first
April storm.

My fingertips swelling,
my body pulses:

the center
of this old wound,
still fresh.

Still, I don't
pull off my gloves--

There are no leaves
opening
from this tree.

Now, I don't know whether my spiritual as well as neural rawness will lead to any sort of beauty, as the tree's exposure to wind, rain, cold and sun leads it to flower. Perhaps I cloaked myself with the armour of anger, and numbed myself in all sorts of ways, for too long. Or maybe, just maybe, I don't have such a wonderful, bright light within me to radiate through my being and into the world, just as some people don't have the talent or vision to transcend their own egotism. Maybe all I'll ever be able to do is feel.

Then again, sometimes I don't want anything more than that. It's still more than I could do before. Perhaps the tragedy is not in flowering; it is in not opening toward the rain, wind and sun.

Changing Clothes

Tonight I am doing yet another thing that I'm most likely doing for the last time in my current life.

It's really exciting: I'm swapping out my fall and winter clothes for spring and summer ones. I don't know whether I'm simply getting older or whether the task grows every time I perform it.

Actually, a bit of both. I can't believe how many articles of clothing I have--even after getting rid of some. Never in my life did I imagine I would have so many vetements. I know there are people who have far more than I have. Still....

OK. Now some of you hate me for living up to the worst stereotypes about women. Well, it just happens that we have that perogative, according to what the culture expects of us.

Oh, no....Do I sound like an academician? Oh well.

I don't think I had so much clothing even in the days when I had a wardrobe for Nick and a wardrobe for Justine. It seems that as I started giving Nick's clothes away, Justine's clothes multiplied. In addition to all the stuff I've bought, people have given me one thing and another. The thing is, nobody's given me anything I hate. Some things didn't work for me, and I gave them away. But for the most part, they've suited me well.

An example is the black cardigan/bolero jacket my mother gave me. It's one of those things that goes just as well with a pair of jeans as it does with a dressy skirt and blouse. Any time I wear it, I get compliments. One of my colleagues at work decided immediately that she liked my mother when I told her that Mom gave it to me. Elizabeth borrowed it from me when I stayed with her in Istanbul.

Then there's another jacket of similar length, but of entirely different material, that a friend gave me. And scarves from co-workers. I could go on. If I'd known people were going to give me so much, I would've bought about half as much as I did.

Or would I? Shopping has definitely become more fun since the switch. Clothes are a more sensual experience now: There are all kinds of colors and textures that I can wear now. Of course, women's wear isn't as well-made as men's duds are.

I remember now a suit I had--for a long time, it was my only suit--that went in and out of style three or four times. My teaching clothes used to consist of courduroys and cable knit sweaters--or, if I had a meeting, a button-down shirt with a blazer--in the fall and winter, and chino-type pants and button-down shirts (sometimes in plaids or stripes) when the weather was warmer. And, when I wasn't in those clothes, I was more often than not in my bike outfits.

Back in those days--which, though still recent, seem more and more distant--I would sooner consent to live burial than to "dress up." Even though I probably had fewer ties than the average man of my age, I never wore most of them. And, at the time I started my transition, I had a pair of wingtips that I'd never worn.

Now I am often complimented on the way I dress, and I enjoy it. Anita, my landlady, today commented on a particular outfit of mine she really liked. It consists of a just-above-the knee wraparound skirt in a "medieval" design that is somewhat more complex than checks but not quite a plaid, in shades of lilac, royal blue and gray; a bolero-length jacket in lilac with piping in a darker shade of purple. I wore it with a pair of gray tights and a pair of boots came to just below my knees. "You looked soo good in that," she said.

The occasion of that remark was a TV show she saw this morning. Hosted by Maury Povich, it featured female-to-male transgenders, who don't get nearly the attention we, the male-to-females, get. "They looked so good. One of them should be in men's fashion ad," she enthused.

Well, I try. People say I dress well. Now all I need is a body that looks as good. All right, you say that nobody needs a good-looking body. But who wouldn't want one?

On another tangent again. Just like this entry is. I stopped my packing and unpacking to do this. It's funny that such a seemingly simple task can take so much time.

Now I'm wondering whether some of the clothes I'm packing won't fit me after the surgery. Will my body change that much, if at all? I've heard of some trans women who gained or lost a lot of weight after their surgeries. Of course, if I had to choose either, I'd choose the latter. If I'm going to be a goddess, I don't want to be Juno. And I love the paintings of Rubens, Fragonard and Titian for the colors and the moods create. The lines, forms and shapes are appealing, too--but not on my body!

My therapist, doctor and everyone and everything else I've consulted say that the surgery shouldn't change my personality or my likes and dislikes. Still, I wonder whether I will still like, or whether I'll feel differently about, some of the things I'm packing-- not to mention other things in my life.

Back to work!

Sleep and Dreams

I was just talking to Dominick. He told me I should go to bed because he was tired.

Well, OK, it wasn't quite like that. He said he was going to bed after he hung up the phone, and that I should do the same.

What can I say? I'm a naughty girl sometimes. So, if you're reading this, don't tell Dominick I was writing it while I should've been in bed! ;-)

You know how it was when you were a kid (or how it is if you still are one): Daddy or Mommy is tired. So you have to go to bed. I never quite understood the logic of that. Then again, I don't understand the logic of lots of things.

I will admit that I am tired. It seemed that everyone I saw today looked ready to fall asleep. I include my students. They looked like they were already in the dream zone even before I started to lecture. They're all eager for Spring Break. So am I.

Actually, they're all eager for Spring. This winter has been rather cold, but not unusually so. However, we haven't had a whole lot of sunlight for the past three months. As we all know, dreariness can lead to drowsiness.

Can't wait for Spring. Can't wait for Spring Break. Can't wait for my surgery. Well, that's two significant but recurrent things, and one monumental and unique (for me, anyway) event I can look forward to!

M'illumno D'immenso

Today looked like a spring day, but didn't quite feel the part. It may've had to do with the hint of chill in the air that turned into more than a hint afternoon turned to sunset and twilight. It also may have to do with the bare branches I saw. A few looked like they may have beginning to bud. But even they didn't quite look as if they were coming to life.

But I was happy. The light of this day was very welcoming and even in the chilly breeze, it seemed that I could feel the glow of the sunset all over me. I think now of one of the shortest and best poems I've ever seen. Giuseppi Ungaretti, the Italian poet, wrote it:

M'illumno
D'immenso.

Yes, that's the whole poem. I won't even try to translate it. Really, it works best when you hear it in the orginal. If you can read it aloud that way (I can pronounce the words; I can scarcely convey the feeling of it with my diction and intonations.), you can practically feel every life force you've ever encountered radiating from the sun within you.

That, I believe, is the part of poetry that can't be taught. It's not just a matter of "having an ear" for sound and rhythm; it's a matter of becoming a receptor and transmitter of music. Generating it is the icing on the cake.

I will probably never be that sort of poet. Almost no American poet has ever developed that sense. The modern European and Latin American poets who had it--Neruda, Jiminez, and of course Ungaretti, among others--must have taken at least twenty years to develop it. For the most part, you don't find it in their early works.

OK, I know, you weren't looking for a treatise on poetics. So more about me. Is that a fair trade? More to the point, is it a trade you'd make?

So I'm happy now. I think it had something to do with buying that plane ticket and booking the hotel room for the night of my arrival. Perhaps I will disappoint some of you by telling you that I picked a cheapie: I guess the mentality I developed from my cycling and backpacking trips will never change. All I want at the end of the day is a clean, safe and not-too-depressing place to lay my head; I don't give a rodent's derriere about how many cable channels or whatever they offer. Even the food doesn't matter much: I'm as likely as not to have an impromptu picnic or a meal in or from a cafe or deli where the locals eat.

On my trips to France and elsewhere, I stayed in hostels, rooming houses, barns, sheds and under bridges. I've even slept in a cemetery. Ghosts knew enough not to mess with me, so I slept real good. I don't know if that will work now. Would a ghost fear anyone who said, "I slept very well last night."?

I've had people tell me that I'm not convincing when I speak in an egregiously ungrammatical manner. (How could they be convinced if I write sentences like the one that preceded this one?) They laugh when I use ghetto slang (or just about any other kind of slang); they're startled when I use curse words in any of the five languages in which I know them.

Odd, isn't it, that I feel somehow lighter now than I did before I went to City Tech yesterday? People have been responding to that; maybe I'm carrying some of the light I basked in when I descended that not-quite-spiral staircase. Or the light that I saw at the end of this day.

M'illumno D'immenso indeed!

Ghosts Don't Blush

Today I went someplace I haven't been in many years--ten, to be specific.

I'd gone to the New York City College of Technology to take out a book. The college is part of the City University of New York, as is York College, the college in which I teach. It's possible to have a book sent from one college to another, but that takes three or four days. I didn't feel like waiting, and I did feel like taking a ride.

I taught at NYCCT for five years, from 1994 until 1999. Back then, it was called New York City Technical College. And, well, you know that I, too, was called a different name in those days.

Nobody in the college seemed to recognize me. I didn't see anybody I knew. There may very well be nobody there I knew from the old days: Most of the full-time faculty members weren't very far from retirement and, I hope, the adjuncts have moved on to bigger and better things. And, naturally, none of the students I taught would be there now.

The weird thing was that, having spent five years in that place, I felt very little upon returning today. I did have one particular feeling: that of hostility and alienation. Except, it wasn't my own hostility or isolation that I was feeling, and I didn't feel that any of the hostility was directed toward me.

It seems that nobody's happy there. The only students who seemed to be having any fun at all were the ones gathered in group acting, well, as young people do when they're in groups of like-minded peers: Guys were watching girls; the girls were talking about boyfriends and families and such. But in walking the halls, I felt I was in one of the most emotionally as well as physically claustrophobic places I have ever seen.

You enter through one of two doors, then, after showing your ID to one of the security guards, push through a turnstile and walk up a narrow flight of stairs to the eleveators. Those stairs are the only ones leading to the elevators, and ascending visitors and descending students are squeezed into it. Think of the most clogged subway station you've ever entered or exited: It's a bit worse when you enter the campus.


Once I got to the right floor, I got lost. Now you know how bad my sense of direction is and that my memory for direction is worse! I knew that the library was on the fourth floor; what I'd forgotten is that you have to go through a passageway that connects the campus's main building to another campus building, then enter through a doorway leads you into the library, which is part of the main building you've just exited.


They're the sort of buildings someone designed as a monument to himself. But I'd bet there's not a single person there who could tell you who designed those buildings. I can't.

I must say that the library staffers were helpful. And, the woman who checked out my book was friendly, especially considering that she had a fairly tense encounter with the guy who stood in front of me on the line. I suspect that she doesn't get treated very well: She's probably a few years younger than I am and very overweight. She seemed to have some sort of disease or disability and I sensed, somehow, that her weight was at least in part a result of it.

After exiting the library, I saw a sort of spiral staircase that I wouldn't call a spiral staircase because it was constructed from materials acquired from a Stalinist building supply store. But it descended under a skylight that seemed, if only in that spot and moment, to hold the claustrophobicness and grunginess of that place at bay. I felt rather graceful and even rather attractive: I think almost anybody would in that light.

A young man who leaned against a window ledge must have sensed it. He was talking on his cell phone and lifted his eyes toward me. He continued to look my way. I didn't mind: The light accentuated his tall frame and the warm glow of his cafe au lait complexion. He smiled, I smiled back; I don't know which of us smiled first.

On the way out, I wished the Latina security guard--whom I saw for the first time upon entering the building and will probably never see again--a very nice day. And she returned my wish. She probably doesn't encounter that very often.

Then I pedalled along a block of Jay Street to a side street that led to the Polytechnic University campus and the Metro Tech center. When I was teaching at Tech, I was living in Park Slope and I used to ride my bike through that passage and into the streets around the Fulton Mall just about every day. Not much seemed to have changed, and I get the sense that most of the people there are gone at about 6:30 every evening, as they were in those days.

Again, as on the Tech campus, I felt no flood of memories. In fact, I didn't even feel a trickle of them. It's only now that I'm recalling those days in that place. I was in better physical shape than I was even in high school: I could, and did, ride circles around guys who were a decade or more younger than I was. And, I remember now a party in the building in which I was living: I won a game of Animal Twister played against people who were ten to fifteen years younger than I was. I had my first cat named Charlie; during that time I would adopt a pretty calico I named Candice. I used to go to France for a couple of weeks every summer; I would ride my bike through one part of the country or another and end my trip by spending a few days with friends who lived in and around Paris.

Not a bad life, right? But I was just as unhappy as I had ever been: In fact, that may well have been the unhappiest time in my life. During that time, I got into my last fistfights for reasons even less consequential than those any teenaged boy might have. And one of the reasons why I could leave those male cyclists in the dust was that I hated them simply because they were men; I exempted only a handful of males--Bruce being foremost among them--from my blanket condemnation of the sex. One woman I dated during that time used to call me--affectionately at first--a "male lesbian" because of my attitudes towards men.

Then it was off to York to teach a freshman composition class. They're a nice group of people; neither as lively as one freshman class I taught last semester nor as contentious as another. After class, I got to talking with Mark, a playwright who teaches there, about one thing and another. Then he mentioned something I had all but forgotten about.

"Those photos you showed me haunted me. I've never seen anything that had such an impact on me."

He was referring to some of my "before" photos. In all of them, I wore a beard. Each of them were taken at different times by people who, to my knowledge, had never met each other. But they all had a common denominator far more important than the beard: "You were so angry in all of them. I've never seen such anger," he said. "If I'd seen you then, I definitely would have crossed the street."

That, from someone who fought in the Tet Offensive!

Now, he says, "You're about as different from that as anybody can be. I tell people about you, without mentioning your name. I never understood why someone would make the change you're making until I saw those photos." After a pause, he said "I don't think anything has ever taught me more than seeing those photos and seeing you now."

He made me blush. And we all know that ghosts don't blush.

One Hundred Days To Go

Barack Obama is still in his First Hundred Days. Tomorrow I will start my last hundred days.

That's right: It's only one hundred days to my surgery! And last night I did something else that reminded me of just how close I am its scheduled date: I bought my plane ticket to Colorado. I got a really good fare, so I figured it was a good time to buy.

Any plane that landed at this afternoon at La Guardia Airport, from which I will depart to and to which I will return from my surgery, would have had to descend through a layer of clouds that hovered over this city. Fog sheathed the upper floors of buildings across the river from Socrates Sculpture Park, where Dominick and I spent part of the afternoon. And a somewhat finer mist veiled those same buildings and everything else between that shroud of fog and the ground.

In some odd way, I found that scene comforting. Part of it, of course, had to do with Dominick's presence. But I was also recalling other times with similar weather conditions.

It seemed that the spring of 2003--my first in this neighborhood, and my last before living full-time as Justine--was filled with days like this one. None, it seemed, were exceptionally warm or cold. Through the months that preceded it, I had gone to work as Nick, socialized as Justine with a new circle of friends and acquaintances I met at or through the LGBT Community Center in Greenwich Village and saw little of my family or old friends. It may well have been the strangest time in my life, as I was living with the exhiliaration of taking the first steps toward living my own life, and the fear of people finding out, on terms that weren't my own, about that life.

Maybe that fear and those thrills are the reasons why I found the season's fog, mist and drizzle so comforting. The bright sun could or would have made clearer all of those ways and things I was and wasn't, and the cold or driving rain would have driven me back into that emotional space from which I'd just begun to emerge.

My eyes have always been very sensitive to light. At very intense moments, the solar refulgence in which so many living things bask simply becomes too bright for me. Don't get me wrong: I love the sun as much as anyone can. But sometimes it is too much for me; so is the warmth of those rays.

Sometimes I wonder what it's like for a newborn baby when she opens her eyes for the first time and sees, for the first time, the light that will fill her waking moments until she closes her eyes for the last time.

And what will I see when I open my eyes from that surgery?

Will it be mist? A storm? Or preternatural clarity?

It's hard to know, under any conditions, what one will encounter a hundred days hence. But I know that I will be entering a new part of my life that will probably surprise me because much will be familiar and in which I will find normalcy, if not comfort, in ambiguity and unpredictability.

After seeing Dominick, I went to the bodega for a cup of mint tea and noticed that Millie's door was open. I rang; she and John invited me in for dessert. I talked about having bought my plane ticket and that its purpose is only a hundred days a way. As always, they were encouraging and supportive. I said that my mother might accompany me back here, then go and visit my brothers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Then I started to have a fantasy of my mother meeting her, meeting Dominick, meeting Bruce and the other people who've mattered to me.

Of course it's not likely that all of those meetings will happen. But sometimes the mist dissipates the distinctions between the possible, probable, improbable and impossible. Sometimes that's what we need.

As I left Millie's and John's house, the drizzle and mist turned to rain and lightning as thunder muttered through the streets. Surely there will be nights like that among the last hundred days, my next hundred days.

You're Not Adopted

Someone once asked Anne Coulter what she would do if her son told her he was gay.

"I'd tell him he was adopted," she snapped back.

Now, I know that a man I talked to today is not going to tell his kid anything like that. It's hard to imagine that he would, after the conversation we had today.

He and his business partner sell organically-raised chicken and other products from stands next to the Farmer's Market on Roosevelt Island. I'd been buying fresh fruits and vegetables at the market for a couple of years before I stopped at their stand. I was first drawn in when I noticed that they were selling fresh mozzerella, which is one of my greatest weaknesses in life. Now, I know it may not be the healthiest diet in the world, but I could live on fresh mozzerella--especially the stuff that man sells--with fresh tomatoes, basil, freshly-ground black pepper and a couple of drops of oil and balsamic vinegar on freshly-baked French or Italian bread.

OK, guys...Now you know the way to a girl's heart. This girl's heart, anyway!

D'ailleurs, a quip about my numerical incompetence--"Hey, I'm an English teacher"--led to conversation about teaching, specifically teaching foreigners. I mentioned that one of my early teaching experiences was in a language school a couple of blocks away from the UN. It seemed that every other day another student "fell in love" with me. In particular, I recalled, there was a young woman who begged me to marry her.

I paused when I noticed the partner gazing at me. "Oh..." I caught myself. "I was living as male in those days."

He smiled. Then we talked some more, and the other man asked me if we could step aside and talk "personally." Well, I told myself, I got myself into this one. But he didn't seem menacing or judgmental. Au contraire...

"I have a five year old." I knew what was coming next. "I want him to be the best William he can be"

"What does that mean to you?"

"That he's a good human being and he's happy."

"Sounds good to me."

"Well, he's having gender issues."

Pause

"He's playing with dolls," he continued. "I'm OK with him as long as that's what makes him happy. He's a great kid, a beautiful kid."

"Well, of course. Look at who he has for a father."

He blushed. (That's another one of my weaknesses!) "Well, I was wondering where I could find leadership for him."

"He's in school now?"

"Yes." He mentioned the name of the school in his hometown, which has a reputation for being diverse and progressive. They moved to that town, he said, because for his child it's "a better environment" than town where they had been living

I admired and respected the man. All kids should have a parent like him. But I also could hear his unease: After all, as they say, kids don't come with instruction manuals. And who can teach anyone how to raise a transgendered kid? I had the sense that he wanted to hear some magic words in some language I don't know. I really felt bad that I couldn't offer him any more advice than to find a good counselor or psychologist to work with his kid. He said that he hasn't been able to find anyone who knows how to work with transgender kids.

He seems to think--accurately, from what he told me about William--that his behavior is not a phase that will be outgrown. And, of course, he doesn't have the idea that he can beat or shock it out of him. Thankfully, William isn't headed for a military school or life on the streets at sixteen.

For those of you who've been reading my blog and think that I'm either very close or have a somewhat unhealthy attachment to my mother: Now you know why. She really did the best she could with me yet she had absolutely no idea of what she could do. Sometimes I think that she still believes there are things she could have done differently. I'm sure that she would have, had she known any differently--certainly if she hadn't had me before she turned twenty years old.

A couple of weeks ago, she and I were talking about the kids of people we've known and what's happened to some of them. She said she'd had a conversation on that topic with one of her friends. "I told her I'm proud of all of my kids, for different reasons."

"Even me?"

"Of course. Some things you could do better, some you could've done better. But you're a sensitive and generous person. And you're handling yourself so well in everything."

I think I could have told that man to think that way. He probably does already. But maybe I could've advised him to be sure that William knows that he makes his dad proud and happy.

I promised him that I would ask people I know about people who might be able to work with him. He thanked me for that. But now I wonder what else I could have said, or done.

Oh, and by the way...I decided to buy one of his chicken pot pies and a package of his eggplant pomodori ravioli. They're in my freezer now.

And I never have, and never will, tell anyone he or she is adopted. Charlie and Max know they're not: They found their way to me. They just can't have any of that fresh mozzerella!

Not Total Recall, Thank You

tToday Bruce and I were walking around SoHo, the neighborhood in which he works. I worked there, too, many years ago: half my lifetime ago. He has known me through all of those years; the only people in my life now who've known me longer are members of my family.

We passed a store called Sur la Table on Spring and Crosby Streets. Back in the day, I worked there, except that it wasn't Sur la Table. In fact, the vast majority of the stores, restaurants and people there today weren't there back when I was working in the neighborhood.

The building in which Sur la Table sells trendy kitchen chotchkes to trendy people who eat in trendy restaurants once housed American Youth Hostels. I worked for them for about two years. During that time, they moved into what is now Sur la Table. Before that, it was located in a loft space that wasn't very lofty, near the other end of Spring Street. Back in those days, there were still artists--real ones--living and working in that neighborhood. And my co-workers consisted of burnouts, dropouts, hippies who didn't know or care that it was the 1980's and an old Greenwich Village denizen turned new Greenwich Village denizen. Yippie to Yuppie, in other words. And, oh yeah, there was a self-proclaimed pacifist who listened to WBAI yet quoted Frantz Fanon.

In other words, it was just the place for me. I didn't stand out: I was just a depressed, repressed (self-repressed, actually) transgender who dared not speak her name and lived through advancing stages of alcohol dependency. Except, I didn't dress female in public, except for the Halloween parade and out of sight of anybody I knew. And I never missed work because of my drinking. OK, maybe a day or two. Or three or four. Besides, I usually had food with my alcohol.

And what kind of food was that? Usually, a small loaf of bread from the Vesuvio bakery and a piece of cheese from one of the delis. So, when I drank my wine (or, sometimes, beer) with it, I wasn't being a drunk, I was being European--specifically, French. And it was, and is, my right.

Vesuvio's has moved to a block near the Bowery. Bruce and I passed it, and that is what started my reverie of memories. I mentioned those picnic lunches during my AYH days; the way he looked at me, I knew he was thinking about the booze. I mentioned it, and he said, "It's so good that you quit."

"Yes. Testosterone and alcohol isn't such a good combination sometimes, is it?"

"Not for you, it wasn't."

"So now I'm full of estrogen and caffeine."

"That's why you get giddy sometimes."

In mock protest, I squealed, "No, it's the hormones."

"Always the hormones." We laughed.

Then, over lunch we talked about people we knew and haven't seen in years. What are they like now? Have they become people neither of us could have imagined? Or people they themselves could not have imagined?

"I guess we're all surprised at how we turn out," I volunteered.

He nodded. "I remember all the anger you used to have. You carried it in your shoulders."

"I'm still angry sometimes."

"Not like you used to be."

"Back when I had a beard..."

His eyes widened. "That's right! I almost forgot that you had a beard."

Then I mentioned that yesterday I was talking to someone I hadn't seen in a while and didn't recall that I had a beard. Carlos used to own a bike shop on 7th Avenue and 26th Street, if I remember correctly. I recall that it was between the Fashion Institute of Technology campus, where I was teaching at the time, and the old Veterans' Administration hospital and offices. Today he owns a shop in the next neighborhood over from mine. I needed a chain for my commuter bike, so I paid him a visit.

We also did a bit of reminiscing. He asked what I've been up to, and, for the first time, I mentioned my upcoming surgery. In fact, it's the first time I've said anything at all about my transition. Surely he's seen me change, but he never mentioned it--until I did yesterday.

He looked at me from head to toe. "You're so much better now."

"Well, I'm not in as good physical shape. I'm nowhere near as good a rider."

"Who is?"

"True enough. But I've been such a slacker."

"I'm sure you have a lot on your plate."

"Well," I said, "it's what I need to do."

"And look at you. You look so much better!"

"Really?"

"Yes. You're radiant. And you can hold such a good conversation."

"Oh, I wouldn't go back."

"Of course not."

"If I did, I'd have to grow a beard," I quipped.

He tapped his head and thought for a minute. "That's right. You did have a beard--a red one. I almost forgot. It's hard to imagine you ever had it."

Have other people forgotten? I wonder what else they may have forgotten. Or what I've forgotten.

Defending Him: Catfight?

I'm not a violent person. But I did have a fleeting thought...

Dominick told me about a female co-worker who accused him of cursing at her and calling her names. It seems that this woman, who's a good bit older than him, is trying to get him to do all of her work, and he refused. So she complained to their principal.

Now, given the difficulties I've had in workplaces, I may not be the best person to give him advice. But I advised him to talk to his immediate supervisor and the principal at least once a week. I don't think that they believe, deep down, that he's vindictive, foul-mouthed or any of those other things she says he is. I know he isn't. But at least if he keeps in touch with his superiors, and if he can get someone to witness his work with that woman, he has a better chance of being treated fairly.

"I'd be willing to vouch for you," I volunteered.

He thought about it, and talked more about the situation. Then he joked, "I know! I'll tell her my girlfriend is coming in."

"Tell her I'm una rubia muy alta y muy fuerte."

"What did you just call her?"

"Tell her your girlfriend is tall, blonde and really strong."

We both laughed. But it got me to thinking about what I would do if I were ever in a confrontation with another woman. If she's the size of most Latinas I've seen, I'd tower over her. And, even as sedentary as I've become, I'd probably have more physical strength. And, if she's bothering Dominick, she'll have to contend with the rage of both genders in one woman!

Would she back off? Would I bitch-slap her? Or would it turn into a scene from The Jerry Springer Show?

How, exactly, would other women handle this situation? I know lots of women have resorted to violence when another woman was doing something inappropriate with her boyfriend or husband. Others have evoked--verbally or otherwise--the threat of such violence and the other woman backed off.

Now I'm recalling one instance of the latter. Tammy and I were in the gift shop of the Chateau d'Amboise, which has always been one of my favorite buildings in the world. A woman--Polish, I think (I saw her getting off a Polish tour bus) about our age at the time (40, give or take) followed us--to be more precise, me--closely. Tammy and I had been cycling through the countryside for about two weeks, and I was riding just about everywhere every day for a few years before the trip, so I was in very good shape. And that woman was looking at my body--specifically, my legs.

I'll admit that hers weren't half-bad. Nor was the rest of her body. I'll also admit that I was taking some furtive pleasure in it, though I had no intention of "accidentally" bumping into her. And, twined with that low-grade thrill I was experiencing was a bit of uneasiness. Tammy and I had been having a great time and I didn't want to spoil it. I mean, few things are worse than bringing someone to another country where you speak the language and she doesn't, and making her unhappy. No, I didn't want to do that to her.


Tammy hadn't noticed. But then she said I looked "nervous" about something. I told her about the woman, who was standing a few feet away from us in the gift shop. "Is she bothering you?"

"No, just looking at me."

"Well, if she does anything, I'll ruin her trip."

I was not in any danger, but I was glad Tammy was ready to "defend" me. And I don't think that woman would have lasted very long against Tammy!

That night....

I didn't continue that last sentence because there are some things a lady should not talk about. She should do nothing more than enjoy them. And that is exactly what this woman--the one writing this blog--did.

I never thought about this before, but Tammy was "defending" a "man." Then she made love to a woman. She said so. In fact, she often said that throughout our relationship--at first, affectionately; later, as an accusation. And, she said, it was the reason why, a few months before we actually broke up, we stopped having sex. "I can't sleep with a woman!" she exclaimed.

Now I'm wondering: If I went and confronted Dominick's co-worker, or any other woman who was bothering him, would either he or I be aroused? Both of us? What would that lead to?

And you thought this was a "family" blog!

Which Way Next?

OK, so let's see...In the last two days, I submitted a paper that will contribute absolutely nothing to my professor's (or anyone else's) understanding of literature or anything else. I stumbled through a presentation in that same class. I observed a class taught by a prof who did things I couldn't even dream of doing. And, during the hip-hop class, I stumbled, spaced out and had an equipment failure--while I was being observed by the college's most senior faculty member.

It all sounds like an academic version of one of those "bloopers" highlight reels, doesn't it?

And, really, none of it upsets me. Right now, I don't expect to be teaching at the college (or possibly anywhere else) in the fall. And I certainly don't expect to take more PhD-level courses, or any more academic courses, for that matter.

Any time I talk to anybody on campus (except for my students), I feel a distance growing between me and that person--and the college. When I'm not in the classroom, I'm kind of a zombie. It's almost as if they're talking to a shell and I am talking to people who are in one way or another absent.

Sometimes I feel as if the person they and other people came to know, or thought they knew, is already gone. I never had any idea that the surgery would change my personality, though I do know one trans woman who was nasty and bitter before her surgery and is very nice (at least to me) now. Actually, I have to wonder the surgery affected her brain, or maybe her vision. After all, she tells me that she wishes she could be as beautiful as I am!

She also tells me I'm a great woman now and will become an even better one. I hope she's right. But a woman I am, for better or worse.

Still, I can't help to feel that something else is ending besides my life as a man and as someone in transition.

I feel like a ship making its last voyages, a train making its last runs. Will there be a new vessel, a new vehicle in its place? Or will the trips they made be abandoned, possibly replaced by another one? If so, where will that one go, and what will I see along the way?

Ever since I've began my life as Justine, I've lived by the belief that my life as Nick offered me a lot of resources and sustenance for my transition and my current life. But now I wonder how useful it will be to me in my life ahead of me--or even how useful it is now. And the part of my life I find most suspect right now is my involvement with education, both as a student and teacher.

I take that back. I've found my interactions with students to be instructional and even interesting. But I wonder just how much I'm actually helping them to learn anything at all. I feel like I'm in that scene of Kramer vs. Kramer in which the father and son--their wife and mother having left just days before--try to make French toast. In case you haven't seen the movie, I won't spoil that scene by describing it.

I'll tell you only that they survived the experience. I expect that, barring some accident or another, I'll survive this, too. But sometimes I wish I knew what exactly is ending and what will follow.

A March Or A Journey?

Bricks reflected orange light turning red from the setting sun. Somehow this felt autumnal, even though spring arrived (at least officially) three days ago.

Perhaps it had something to do with the cold wind that whipped and whirled through the streets of this neighborhood next to the East River. Those gusts made today feel like a late fall rather than an early spring day, as if we were marching toward winter rather than journeying into spring.

But something else made today seem like the end of something, even though no cataclysm or catastrophe descended upon me or the world. None that I know of, anyway.

Actually, I have lately felt that something is ending or winding down. Of course it is my current life, or at least a major part of it, that is on its way out. But this is different from the sorts of endings I or other people have experienced.

It's ironic that I am feeling, again, a sense of isolation as I am drawing closer to something that I am doing in order to free myself from another kind of solitude. I sense that I will experience some sort of loss that I cannot quite envision yet. I do not know whether it will be one of the kinds of losses people normally experience, such as the deaths of other people in their lives or simply a ritual or routine someone had. Or, perhaps it will be something material or financial: I hope it won't be my means of paying for the surgery!

Of course the possiblilty of not having my job after my current contract expires is very real. But I have previously lost jobs before through no fault of my own, and I am already preparing for that possiblity. Although I very much like some of the work and people who've been part of my present job, I feel no special attachment to it. Then again, whatever strong attachments I've felt in my life have been to certain individual people, my cats and occasionally to objects. Oh, yes, and to feelings and memories: sometimes I cling to those even more furiously, if unconsciously, than I do to people and things.

But I have no loyalty to institutions, save perhaps my family (not The Family). I don't know whether this is a universal truth (Do they really exist?), but I think that it's difficult, if not impossible, to develop bonds with institutions if you couldn't be a full-fledged member of the first ones you knew first.

Early on, even before I had a language for explaining myself to my self (much less to anyone else!), I knew that I could not remain in the church in which I grew up. I take that back: I knew that I never was part of it in the first place; I couldn't be, being who I am. And I never could be part of the schools I attended, or more precisely, the things they represented. I knew that they were organized with the intention of readying people to take orders, whether from a supervisor in the shop or office or the officer in charge of the unit. And they also, in more subtle ways, trained people to start heterosexual nuclear families. Even before I had explained my gender identity and sexuality to myself--never mind doctors, therapists, family members, friends and would-be partners--I knew that I was entirely unsuited for that vision of domestic life.

I had that sort of life for a relatively brief part of my life. Still, I am amazed that it lasted as long as it did. And now I don't have to worry about losing it.

So what, exactly, is coming to an end in my life? What do the colors of today's sunset and the chill of today's wind mean?

The Lie of Spring

Yesterday was the first official day of Spring. And it snowed early in the morning. Today was sunny but still chilly. In other years, this date is the first date of Spring.

And so it was in two years in particular I'm thinking of. They were the year I turned eight and the year I turned sixteen. On the 21st of March in 1966--My mother and I were talking about this last week--her father died. He would have turned 72 years old that day.

His is the first death I can recall. A few weeks after that day, I was to make my First Holy Communion, which he wanted so much to see. That's always a big deal in any Catholic family; it's even more so when the child or grandchild is the first in the family, as I was.

I still underwent my intitation to what some consider the most elemental of all of the sacraments. The only difference was that my mother and grandmother didn't have the party they were planning for me. I didn't know they were planning it until much later, so I didn't know what I'd missed. That means, of course, that I didn't miss it.

My grandfather and I spent lots of time together until he became too sick to take me to the park or on train rides to Coney Island and other places. I wonder now if my relationship with him would have been different had I been living as a girl. For that matter, I wonder how my relationship with my grandmother, who died when Iwas 24, would have been. She and I were also very close. Probably the only person who knew me better was my mother. For a long time, they were really the only people who knew me at all.

What would it have been like to be grandpa's granddaughter? He had two others: my cousins Theresa Anne, who turned three the year he died, and Sandra, who turned two. I never saw him with them, but I'm sure that if nothing else, he was very loving. So I guess that's the way he would have been with me, though in a different way. How, I don't know.

All I know is that he died on this date, which was the first day of spring that year. It was also the first day of spring when my other grandfather died in 1974, during my sophomore year of high school. My father did not have siblings, so my brothers and I were the only grandchildren he had. Seeing the way he treated my other grandmother, and other women (including my mother), I'm not so sure I would have wanted to be his granddaughter.

Hmm...Maybe I could've been my maternal grandfather's granddaughter and my paternal grandfather's grandson. What did I just say?

How would things have been different? I can't say. All I know are the things that are different now. As I've mentioned, there are people who were once in my life but who no longer are, for all sorts of reasons, some of which were voluntary. And there are others who are with me now and whom I never could have imagined.

Then there are relationships that have changed in obvious and subtle ways. I think now of Bruce, with whom I have my longest-standing friendship. The only people in my life now who've known me longer than he has are related to me. He's never been a physically demonstrative person, but after we knew each other for a little while we were hugging each other whenever we met. People have told me I hug them like they've never been hugged before; I tell them I learned from the best!

But now I've noticed that he and I kiss whenever we meet. I don't know when this began, but I think it was some time not long after I started to live as Justine. I wouldn't say his kisses are romantic, nor do I expect them to be. But he kisses very tenderly, as one who honors my vulnerability. Is that how we would have been had I been living as a woman for all of those years?

Oh...Why am I asking "What if?" Now it's got me thinking again about Cori, who called me on the last night of her life to talk to me about her gender identity issues. It would be years before I would talk about my own with anyone, so I am still not sure of why she wanted to talk to me. But I did the best I could. She hung herself the following day, three days before Christmas. Remembering her as female is all I can, or will ever be able to, do for her.

The first poem I ever wrote that I can still stand to look at today was inspired by her. It's been published in a few places, under my male name. But, for better or worse, I wrote that poem. Yes, the person I am--much, much younger--wrote it. In case you're interested, here it is:


The Lies Of Spring

Last fall we walked
along the bank of this river.
Somebody warned you
not to come here with me.

We saw our faces, calm and clear
on the surface of the water.
You leaped and disappeared
into the mud below.
I stood, blinded, in the twilight.

I did not jump
because you told me
the water’s very cold.


Today I walk alone
on this weathered shore.
A single lily pokes through
mud that is your bones.

You once told me: This flower
Is the first sign of spring.

--4 September 1985

I know: It's flawed in all sorts of ways. But I cannot change it, of course: I had to write, at that time in my life, the poem as you see it now. Although I, my true self, wrote that poem, I have changed in other ways since I wrote it, so the person I am now could not have written it. And so I cannot edit it. Here it is, and here I am.

Hormones, Migraines, Laughter and Tears?

Tonight I called Dominick. I caught him as he was having supper with an old friend of his, who was his Spanish teacher in high school. Dominick refers to him as "Dad." I've met him, and I can see why Dominick adopted him as his surrogate father. When he was five years old, his biological father split with his mother and was almost never in his life thereafter.

I am happy that Dominick had a "Dad." Somehow, though, I cannot imagine calling any other man but my own father by that name. He may not have been the most emotionally available person in the world, and there were things on which he didn't or couldn't guide me. And when he tried to steer me, it was toward careers (e.g., the military) that were completely unsuited to me. Still, he was a better father to me than his own father was to him. Much better.

And I have an even harder time imagining myself calling anyone other than my mother "Mom." Millie, at times, has been a sort of mother-figure to me in the six and half years I've known her. I've cried to and laughed with her, and she's asked me into her house to have a cup of tea or something to eat with her, and sometimes with her husband Johnny and her daughters and grandkids. I have a feeling that some time tomorrow I'll be in her kitchen or at her table. Funny, how I've developed that sense about her--or has she developed it toward me?

Anyway, back to Dominick: When I called him, he and "Dad" were eating in a very noisy restaurant. This is one way Dominick is my opposite: He doesn't like crowds, or so he says, yet he seems to favor noisy places. Generally, I don't like a lot of noise around me, especially when I'm trying to have a conversation with someone. I've always felt that way: I've never been good at hearing over background noise, and I get migraines.

My headaches, when I get them, and my sensitivity to noise seem to have intensified since I started taking hormones. It took a while for me to notice it, but I find that these days I can hardly have a conversation with anybody when I'm riding the subway. Combine that with my clumsiness, and you just might be entertained at my expense if you were to take me out for dinner. I guess that's a good deal: You buy me dinner and I provide the entertainment. Dominick doesn't seem to have gotten a laugh out of watching me in those situations. Then again, that's not where his sense of humor lies.

So I don't have to have a migraine to entertain. That's good to know.

Now I wonder: Will I become more sensitive to noise after I have the surgery? Is that the difference between a penis and a clitoris--that one is an antenna? If so, what does that make the other?

Let's see: The hormones make me more sensitive to light and sound. And, I'm told, insults, injuries and empathy. And to all kinds of other emotions. Hey, wait a minute: I'm not supposed to say things like that after reading a few studies and attending lecutres that say women and men have more or less the same abilities in most things. And I'm certainly not supposed to say them while I'm taking a gender studies course. Or am I?

Speaking of the class: I actually did some of reading I need to do for my paper and presentation. I don't know how either will turn out. Once they're done, once that class is over, I won't think about them. A few months, a few years, will pass. Then, I might talk about them to somebody or some group of people. And they'll laugh. That's what seems to happen whenever I talk about long-past experience. On the other hand, when I talk about what I've felt, I've elicited a few tears, from whomever I've told and myself. I don't aim for the sobs or laughter: They just seem to come when I talk about my life. A few nights ago, one of my students wondered aloud whether I was doing stand-up comedy on the weekends. Now there's an idea. Sometimes I think that getting in front of people for the purpose of making them laugh takes more or less the same set of skills as imparting wisdom or knowledge.

I suspect someone is laughing at that last thought. As long as I can hear it over the din...

Here and Coming

Amazing, what just a little R&R will do for you. The twitches I'd been experiencing disappeared, at least for now. I hope they don't return. According to my doctor and my own research, they were the result of stress. So they probably weren't too serious; they were more annoying than anything else.

I'm coming to the conclusion that going to school is not good for my health. I never was happy as a student, in spite--or because?--of my love of reading and learning. All through high school, college and graduate school, I was unhealthy and usually depressed. And so I have been for the past few weeks.

I really thought that maybe, just maybe, things would be different this time. After all, I was taking an academic course for the first time in sixteen years, and I don't have to tell you I've experienced a lot of change since then. (Now you know that I didn't need to vote for Obama for that!)

What's more, although the course I signed up for wasn't what I really wanted to do, I thought it would draw upon some of my strengths and make me more conscious of something or another. And, on the first day, I really liked the prof.

Actually, I still like her. She's a scholar, and that's how she's teaching the course, as well she should. However, theory is something I never did well, and at my age, probably never will. Plus, I simply don't have the patience to navigate the maze of verbiage that's in most of what we've read in that class.

I don't know whether I'll ever get the paper done, or how I'll do the presentation I'm scheduled to make on Tuesday. I know, I should be working on them now instead of blogging. But I simply can't keep myself focused on the material. I know there are always boring things to read and uninteresting tasks. But I might be able to work through them if there was at least some compelling reason, some purpose, some light at the end of the tunnel, or whatever you want to call it.

So what's the purpose of this blog, you ask? Well, it's first and foremost a way for me to express, create, vent, self-indulge and do all those other things associated with doing something for the pleasure of doing it. And hopefully, dear reader (Now I'm getting all retro on you.), you will find it interesting, amusing or somehow captivating. Finally, I want this to lead me to an appearance on Oprah.

Uh-huh. I couldn't even make it on to Jeopardy. Yes, I tried out for it when it was in New York about three years ago. I still have the pen they gave me to fill out the forms. I've used it to fill out other forms and to write notes and to create the Sistene Chapel of graffiti in my bathroom.

All right. So I didn't create the Sistene Chapel of graffiti, or anything else, in my bathroom or anywhere else. It sounds like a cool idea. The only problem is, I'd have to paint over it when or if I move. Then again, I might be here for who-knows-how-long.

And, really, I can't use the pen too much more than I already have. Otherwise, it'll get scratched up, and I'll never be able to sell it on eBay. Then again, do I really want to sell my precious Jeopardy pen on some cheesy online auction site?

As for graffiti--It's just about impossible to do anymore. Rumor has it that the bathrooms at the college, and other places, have video cameras in them. And, in the bathroom I use most often when I'm at work, each stall has a sign warning that graffiti is a crime. It's pretty garish-looking, and would be slightly less so with a skull and crossbones on it. Whoever's monitoring that video camera must have a really unfulfilling life: I mean, after all, he or she has to see that sign and people like me in partial stages of undress. For that, he or she should demand redress. But that person won't, and that's exactly the reason why he or she was hired for that job.

No redress for undress. How's that for a slogan? Sounds like a critic's comment about a really bad porn movie. As if I know what bad porn movies look like...

On another topic entirely, Dominick said he thinks I'm trying to escape from people. That's more or less what I've felt like lately. I simply can't hold a conversation with anybody: all I can do is register volumes and occasionally nod or make monosyllabic replies. When they ask for my opinion, I don't have one or I can't say what I'm actually thinking without upsetting somebody. Not that I care so much about their feelings: I just don't want to get into arguments or other pointless exchanges with anybody.

To give an example: The coordinator in charge of the composition classes sent an e-mail asking whether we agreed with a change she wanted to ask the publishing company to make in one of the textbooks used for that course. In reply, I wrote that the original edition of the book had two extremely useful chapters that were lopped off the current edition. Then I wondered, "When are we going to get away from trendy topics and get back to basics?" Someone's going to excoriate me for that one, I know.

Somehow I feel that my time remaining to me is very, very limited. I have only three and a half months until my surgery, and I really don't want to waste this time. After the surgery, there will be five or six weeks of recovery. Then, I don't know what I'll be able to do, or when. I mean, ultimately, I should be able to do everything I can do now except to piss against a tree. (Not that I've done that lately.) But how long will it take?

Plus, I get the feeling that the time I have after my surgery will be even more precious than what I have now. I don't know how many more days, months, years I will have after my recovery. But I sense somehow that it will be even more of a privilege granted to me, and that I must not take it for granted. Somehow I think it will be like the time someone has after a cancer has been treated into remission. Or, maybe it will be like the time someone has after a negative result for a test taken after his or her friends or loved ones have died from AIDS.

At times like that, there's just no room for bullshit. If you're going to interact with people, it has to be meaningful and affirmative, not wasted on trivialities. For me, those times are here and coming.

Would They Have a Harder Time With Me If I Cried or Screamed? It's Not Their Choice

For the last two days, I have been a hermit when I've been on the campus. At least, I've been as much of a hermit as one can be while teaching classes.

I try not to talk to anyone unless I absolutely must. Being there, and not being in the classroom, is just about unbearable right now. But, even in the classroom I'm having a hard time keeping my anger and sadness in check. I haven't lashed out at anybody, and I certainly don't want to do that to my students.

Would that really be worse than if they saw me cry? Yesterday, when I arrived on campus, I went to my office and shut the door. For about an hour hot tears rolled down my cheeks. As self-indulgent as this may sound, I didn't want them to end: The crying was the first useful, necessary and even constructive thing I've done this semester for myself. I didn't care whether someone saw or heard me: I'm tired of that mentality that says your feelings must fit into certain time frames, physical spaces and other constraints. However, I didn't open the door because, but only because I didn't have the emotional energy to get myself out of the chair and to the door.

I wouldn't say I felt better after crying. In fact, the headache I'd had only worsened. But at least it was, in some other way, purgative if not restorative. I'm still feeling just as sick, emotionally and physically, as I did yesterday. But at least I know I'm dealing with the truth and I don't give a fuck about anything else. Really, there isn't time for anything else; there never is.

If what I'm feeling hasn't affected my teaching, it's blocking my work in the class I'm taking. We had a paper due on Tuesday. I thought it was postponed because the other assignments were pushed back a week. But the other students, except one, handed in their first paper. The prof said I could hand in my paper this coming Tuesday. I said I would, but I haven't even started it yet. And I'm feeling no compulsion to do it, or any of the other work in that class. After all, what incentive do I have to finish the work? If I did, I could still be looking for a job this fall. And, really, what do I need with theoretical work? I have no mind for theory even when I'm at my best. So what's to say I can do six or eight more years of the same?

I shouldn't have let people egg me on into taking the course when I really wanted to take Mandarin or Arabic. At least languages are useul sometimes, and for me, they are more real than all of that theoretical bullshit. And I could have had the pleasure of actually knowing whatever I learned in the language. But queer theory, or any of the other liteary theories, aren't in any way useful. And they're not all that interesting.

Well, at least I'm almost entirely certain that not only will I not be back at the college next year, I won't be pursuing a PhD. That's a relief, really, for all it means.