Who Should Play Transgendered People? How Sould They Be Played?

Today I stumbled over a blog I plan to check out every chance I get. It's called "Femulate," and bills itself as "the weblog of a male, (sic) who emulates female."

Its hostess, Staci Lana, has a number of interesting entries. (If only I were as good and as prolific a writer as she is!) But the one that caught my eye was about the issue of women portraying trans women in movies and TV shows. In particular, she talked about the notion of Nicole Kidman playing a transwoman in the upcoming film The Danish Girl. "Sure, Nicole Kidman is tall, but except for height, how many transwomen resemble Ms. Kidman?," Ms. Lana wonders.

Well, I couldn't agree with her more. I know I bear no semblance to Nicole Kidman and know no other transwoman who does. And, believe me, I know quite a few who are simply beautiful, and plenty more that are simply better-looking than I am.

Then again, I'm not so sure I'd want to resemble her. Sure, she's pretty, but I always thought she was just another pretty girl. That's also pretty much how I feel about Jennifer Aniston. On the other hand, if I woke up one morning and saw someone who looked like Angelina Jolie, Isabelle Huppert, Rihanna or Michelle Obama in the mirror, I'd be ecstatic. And I'd want to age like Sophia Loren, Jeanne Moreau or Lena Horne.

Anyway...Staci Lana got me to thinking about the portrayal of transwomen in the media. Too often they're murdered. That reflects what happens in real life: I read somewhere that we're twelve times more likely than average to be killed by someone else, almost invariably for being ourselves. But I also recall a report that said more than forty percent of all African American men in certain cities have been involved in the criminal justice system, and that nearly half of all Latinos don't finish high school. Imagine the (justifiable) outcry if all the blacks on film and TV were getting arrested or sent to jail, or if all the Latinos were uneducated and unable to speak English well.

But, as if all those dead transwomen (Transmen, it seems, aren't portrayed at all.) weren't bad enough, they are as likely as not to be portrayed as having been sex workers or hustlers of some other kind. Thus, in the minds of many people, the dead transwoman "had it coming to her" or died as a consequence of her "choice" to do sex work--or to be a transwoman in the first place.

Of course, we could say that any action we take is a choice. In theory, we could choose not do most of the things we do, but sometimes we don't want the consequences of not making that choice. As an example, someone who kills someone else in self-defense possibly could have made another choice--provided, of course, that he or she had more time and the other person's gun were not pointed at his or her head.

I think now of something Paul Fussell told me when I was one of his students at Rutgers. (Has it been thirty years--almost--already?) "There's no way to justify killing another human being," declared the Purple Heart and National Book Award winner. "No one ever has the right to take the life of another," he averred. But, he also admitted, when a gun's pointing in your face and a finger is pulling on the trigger, you don't have a whole lot of time to weigh your alternatives. Or maybe your alternatives aren't very tenable ones.

So, yes, some teenaged trans girl who stopped going to school because she was getting beat up and who's been kicked out of her family's house can choose not to become a prostitute or drug runner. She can also choose not to shoplift food, clothing and medicines, not to mention cosmetics. I mean, isn't it more honorable to starve than it is to practice "the world's oldest profession?"

And I guess Jean Valjean could have chosen not to steal that loaf of bread or to committ that petty crime that violated his parole. Had he made those choices, he wouldn't have had Inspector Jalabert on his tail for all of those years.

Sometimes I wonder what other choices would I have made had I begun my transition earlier in my life--or if I hadn't tried to masculinize myself by playing sports and otherwise trying to be "one of the guys." What if I'd been one of those girls who didn't finish school and whose parents threw her out? I think now of Sylvia Rivera, whom I met near the end of her life and the beginning of my current life. Her father abandoned her family; when she was three, her mother committed suicide. Until she was eleven, she lived with a grandmother who put her out of the house after she started wearing makeup and women's clothing.

So what's an orphaned trans girl from the Bronx to do when her grandmother expels her from their home?

Of course, she didn't remain a sex worker. Had she, she probably wouldn't have lived as long as she did: to the same age that I am now. (Actually, I'm a few weeks older than she was when she died.) But she never escaped the poverty into which she was born. If anything, she was probably poorer: She lived on the streets for long periods of her life.

And I--even with my rather tenuous employment situation on the lowest rung of the college faculty ladder, and having earned little money from my writing--am among the better-off transgender people. I first realized this during the brief time I worked for Housing Works, which was also the first time I met (relatively) large numbers of transgendered people. Unless you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth, being transgendered and making that transition early in life has been a virtual recipe for poverty and even homelessness, not to mention early death. That has just begun to change: Some trans kids are getting the support they need. But it's still a very, very risky world for us.

It's telling that the status I have now--which would be low for a straight person of my age who's living by the gender assigned to him or her at birth--is largely the result of things I was able to do before I transitioned. I probably would not have had the chance to study with Paul Fussell, Alicia Ostriker, Marc Crawford, Allen Ginsberg, Jean Valentine or Thomas Lux, much less become a professor, had I been in a situation like Sylvia Rivera's, or that of any number of trans kids. I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to live in another country or to talk with Norman Mailer. And I almost certainly would not have whatever credibility I have (or have left) in the worlds of work, and generally.

So I did not have to make the choice to become a sex worker or drug dealer. But that's not the same as not making the choice. The difference is that I have never had to suffer the consequences of making, or not making, such a choice.

Now, I don't think anyone's ready to see a transgendered four-star general or admiral. Frankly, I wouldn't want to see such a thing, anyway. But I also don't think most people would find a transgendered CEO or a tranny Mother Teresa terribly credible, either--at least not today. But, if filmmakers and TV producers are going to portray trannies as hookers who end up dead, they should at least start making stories that show how those trans people came to be sex workers. I mean, at in Les Miserables, we know why Jean Valjean commits his crimes. Heck, in L'etranger, we know that the protagonist has no real motive for the murder he commits. And when we're talking about transgendered people becoming sex workers or other kinds of criminals (at least according to the laws on the books), we're not talking about the seemingly-motiveless malignity of Iago in Othello.

So...I think Staci Lana is right when she decries casting directors' choices to play trans women. However, I think it's not just a matter of who plays them; it's also a matter of how they're portrayed.

Still, I am intrigued by her idea of getting more men to play trans women. (It seems that there simply aren't enough transgendered actors to go around.) What would happen if casting directors started to think as Staci Lana does? Well, they would certainly rule out lots of actors: Some wouldn't be credible, and too many others could never vacate their own egos long enough to do such a thing. But I think that the real difficulty in portraying transgender people is that we are all acting--pretending to be someone else--until we begin to transition. Few people can understand what it's like to act in one's everyday life, simply to stay alive. Somehow I doubt that Nicole Kidman or Tom Cruise could understand this.

What few also understand is that almost no one who had to perform in order to survive would choose to continue performing, no matter how well he or she might be paid for it. That, I think, is one major reason why there are so few transgendered actors. No transgender person wants to do drag, if you will: Even playing a transgender character--at least the types we've seen in movies and TV--is, in a sense, returning to the closet. Why? I can't think of any transgendered character in a mainstream film or TV program that served any purpose but being transgendered--or, more precisely, embodying the stereotypes of transgendered people.

So we need not only the right actors, we need writers, directors and casting directors who are more aware. Then we'll have Sean Penn or Meryl Streep or whomever playing demure transgendered account executives. Oh, happy day!

Then again, I am waiting for an opera about a woman and her cat(s) rather than about monarchs or military "heroes." Meantime, I guess I have to content myself with Felicity Huffmann in Transamerica.

Did They Ever Imagine This?

Another rainy day in April. What else is new?

Today there was a tornado watch where my parents live. Although I know I probably would have heard from them had anything happened, I called. Mom wasn't home, so I talked to Dad for a while. Between today and the other day, I've talked more to him than I did in some years.

That's no exaggeration. Even today he knows that whenever I call, I'm going to talk for longer and in more intimate detail with Mom than with him. But there was a time when, if he answered the phone, he gave it to Mom without speaking to me.

You could say that we had a difficult relationship. Even today, I can sometimes feel the strains, although each of us is making more of an effort than we've made before. Before my transition, I didn't fulfill a single hope he had for me. Or so it seems. And sometimes I wonder whether he's saying to himself, "Now this..."

I know he wanted to have a daughter. So did Mom. And she would have named her Justine. (She told me that when I was fourteen, when we were talking about something else entirely.) But I don't think either of them envisioned that their girl would come into their lives the way she--I--did. Then again, how many people's lives go exactly according to the scripts they've written?

All those years I imagined myself living as the person I'm becoming. But I never imagined that I ever would have the opportunity to live that life. Nor did I imagine that I would come to it as I have.

And Mom and Dad: Did they ever imagine that their lives would become what they are? They are living far from where they were born and spent most of their lives, and people are dying all around them. None of their kids are living anywhere near them; neither are any of my mother's old friends. Now she's finding that she doesn't have as much in common with them as she once did: They've moved to other places and developed new lives. Dad has had only two friends, and both of them are dead.

Did either of them imagine they would be where they are now? Or the ones who would enter that place?

For that matter...Did any of us imagine a tornado watch, much less an actual tornado? Did they ever imagine their daughter would call them to be sure they were OK?

I never imagined any of it. At least some things are better than I ever imagined. After all, I am Justine. And I am called by that name.

I Passed Two Tests Today. Do I Get $4000 for That?

Today, like yesterday, was clear, breezy and cold for this time of year.

Unlike yesterday, however, today was a day of preparing for my surgery. So, I went to my doctor for an EKG and an HIV test.

My doctor insists that I, and everyone else, call him "Richie." Even if he wanted to be called Dr. Tran, he would seem no less accessible. He attended to me once before: Almost two years ago, I took a fall and Dr. Schwarz, my doctor at the time, wasn't in that day.

He's soft-spoken but not self-effacing. That's not to say that he's self-important; rather, he exudes a confidence that's completely un-selfconscious. And, people describe him as "sensitive," which is accurate. However, there's even more to him than that.

Lord Byron wrote of his cousin, Mrs. Wilmot: "She walks in beauty." (Now tell me, wouldn't you love to have someone write that about you?) Well, you can say that about Richie, but in a different way: He just has a beautiful spirit. He knows his stuff when it comes to medicine, but I get the feeling that he's channeling a kind of life energy that he walks in.

We talked a bit about ourselves. As a child, he left Vietnam with his family after the fall of Saigon. Yes, he was one of the "boat people." He and his family sailed to Malaysia before coming to the US: That was a common route for the refugees. Death was also common: "You had about a 50 percent chance of dying," he related. The boats were rickety, the seas were rough, and there were pirates, "just like Somalia" he said in a reference to the privateers who captured a ship on a relief mission to Africa.

He spoke with no self-aggrandizement or self-pity. However, I could not help to feel admiration for him, which isn't what he wanted. But he did not admonish me for it.

As warm, but more effusive, was the nurse who hooked me up for my EKG. If you ever need one, and go to the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, you may be fortunate enough to meet Emily Phipps. I had never before had an EKG and I was afraid that the test would reveal some ailment I didn't know I had and would prevent me from having my surgery. She knew this even though she didn't know my story. She also sensed, correctly, that I have had fear of being seen without clothes.

But I felt comfortable and safe with her. At every step she explained what she was doing; in between, she talked with me in a way that didn't merely soothe me; it guided me into the calm we needed. She didn't merely tell me to be calm; she talked with me into it.

So I passed two tests and had a great experience. Then I came home to....

A call from Dr. Bowers' office. Robin, her office manager, let me know that the worst-case scenario came to pass: The surgery will indeed cost $4000 more than they originally thought. The hospital in which Dr. Bowers performs the surgeries raised its fees by that amount; she spent the past few weeks trying to negotiate it down. No luck.

Well, if I had to choose, I'd naturally rather have the price increase than to be kept from having the surgery because of medical reasons. It's easier to do something about money than your EKG reading.

Now I'm recalling kids I knew in school whose parents or other relatives gave them money or othr gifts for "good" report cards. Sometimes they'd see mine and say, "Wow, my father would give me five bucks for that." In those days, you could go to a few movies on that amount of money.

Today I passed two tests with flying colors. Do I get $4000 for that? I know that might be a bit more than the adjusted-for-inflation report card rewards. But, hey, don't I deserve it?

Hopefully, after my surgery I'll get everything I want with my looks, charm, wit and erudition. Then I want to get rich.

Right now, all I really want is to do my surgery and to be safe. At least Richie and Emily helped me toward that today.

Easter: Food and Movies Today, The Doctor Tomorrow

Easter Sunday...My last before the surgery. It's ironic that Bruce has told me that my transition "resurrected" me. Now I've just a few more weeks to go before my surgery. If my transition was my "resurrection," then what will my surgery be?

Today I've eaten enough for three people. I had a bowl of Corn Flakes this morning. Then, my landlady's mother brought me some Indian-Guyanese food--curried goat, rice and peas-- enough for a light lunch. After that, I went to Millie's for lasagna, pulled pork, vegetables and salads, rice and desserts. All great stuff: just what a growing girl needs, right?

Tomorrow I go to the doctor for an EKG and HIV test. If you're, ahem, a certain age, the former is required within 90 days before the surgery, and the latter is required for everybody. Even though I had an HIV test in November, it's not recent enough for the purpose. I just hope the doctor doesn't find any problems now. Or, I should say that I hope I haven't developed problems I don't know I have. Dominick says the doctor will say I'm crazy, but I pointed out that it's not a physician's job. Besides, everyone knows that I'm the sanest person in the world. And the most beautiful, too...

I took my hormones with food today, so I can't blame them for that last bit of silliness. Last week, when Dominick came to my place, I was giggling at everything he did, including his breathing. Then I realized that all I had in my stomach were the hormones and a couple of cups of green tea. My giggle fit could just as easily have been a crying jag; I'm sure that Dominick preferred what he saw.

Another thing on which I can blame the hormones: I watched the Sex and the City movie again. After dinner, Stephanie and Lisa--Millie's daughters--and I sat on the long green couch in the living room and watched that wonderful monument to fashion, shopping and all other aspects of being a Material Girl. Yes, it's mindless and trashy, but I loved every second of it. It's funny how brainless, pointless movies that are full of violence--especially of the militaristic variety--are not deemed as "trash" and aren't denigrated to the same degree as movies like Sex and the City or The Devil Wears Prada. I mean, some guy who got an exemption from going to Vietnam by teaching phys ed at a private girl's school in Switzerland and doesn't even hold a machine gun properly plays a storm trooper and is considered more credible than women who are approaching middle age and trying to deal with it through sex and shopping. You tell me: Which is the real American way?

The American Way. Now all we need is Truth and Justice (yes, with a capital "T" and a capital "J") and I will have completed a journey from Rambo to Carrie Bradshaw to Superman. Why anyone would want to do such a thing, I'll never know. All I know is that if I was once Clark Kent, I'm turning into Lois Lane. At least, I hope for something like that.

Actually, I think it's weird enough to watch Sex and the City the night after watching (at least partially) The Ten Commandments. I guess I'm not the first to have done that. But I don't think anyone has ever planned such a thing. I must say, though, they had some interesting clothes in The Ten Commandments, even if they weren't the latest from Yves St. Laurent.

What will next Easter bring?

Advice to a Cross-Dresser; The Ten Commandments

Today I was reading an article from The Independent by Neil Straus. He described his expereince with a survivalist camp run by a couple of guys who were, or still may be, involved with Blackwater. It's one of those things that makes you really proud to be an American. Really proud.

Anyway, the course culminated with Strauss and one of his classmates navigating a city landscape--Oklahoma City--without getting caught by the bounty hunters that filtered through the streets. If the guy and his classmate would've been caught, they would have been handcuffed, placed in the back of a Hummer and dropped off in a remote area from which they'd have to make their way back and through the city.

Well, Strauss and his classmate made it through the course without getting caught. But he had a close call--ironically enough, with a couple of frat guys who were drinking. Strauss decided that the moment was right to disguise himself. So he ducked into a Hooters restaurant to "transform"himself into a "woman."

Strauss recalls, "Gazing into the bathroom mirror, I realised, to my disappointment, that I don't even make a good transvestite, let alone a passable woman." So he tried to powder away some of the shadow on his face. Just then, one of the frat boys walked into the bathroom and very belligerently grilled him. Well, what else would he expect when he's dressed as a woman in a men's bathroom in Oklahoma? As he tried to talk his way out of the situation, the frat guy's buddy came in.

The would-be survivalist Strauss escaped only by convincing the two frat boys that he was doing an undercover drill with the Marines and that if they bothered him, he would call the rest of his batallion.

Hey, I'll try that the next time I'm in trouble!

Now, as somebody who has much more experience than Strauss has in transformation, I would tell him that he made one glaring fundamental mistake.

First of all, he shouldn't have gone into a men's room--in Hooters or anywhere else--to change. Back when I was "cross-dressing," I used to look for a unisex bathroom. Lots of coffee shops, pizzerias and such have only a single bathroom. That is all but ideal; you have to contend only with people banging on the door. As I became more of a quick change artist, that became less frequent.

Now, I'll admit that here in New York, finding such places is probably easier than it is in Oklahoma City. On the other hand, I should think he could've found such a place there. If not, he should have gone to some remote part of a park or some other place where he wouldn't have had to worry about someone following him in.

From that experience, Strauss concludes the following: "Cross-dressing is not an urban survival tactic. It's an urban suicide tactic."

It needn't be. I didn't see him, but I would bet that when I started, I was even less passable than he was. And I didn't have his training. Then again, I was presenting myself as a woman as a form of survival. I was training myself for the life I envisioned, even when I didn't believe I would have the opportunity to live it and coped by denying that I wanted anything like the life I now have, or am about to have.

I'm guessing that Strauss has never had fantasies of cross-dressing, much less of living as a woman. Still, I think he could've--in addition to finding the right place to change--been less self-conscious about the exercise, precisely because it was that--an exercise.

At least I'll give Neil Strauss this: He is actually committed to survivalism. The article was an extract from a book (Emergency) he wrote on the topic. And it was rather well-written. In all of these respects, it's not like those articles The Village Voice used to publish. (Maybe they still do; I can't remember the last time I looked at the Voice.) Those articles were invariably written by some bullshit bohemian or pseudo-anarchist with a trust fund who went into the slums or rode shotgun with some drug dealer or plutocrat, or some other "heart of darkness." In particular, I recall an article about riding the subway, back in the days when it was covered in graffiti and filth, ridden with crime and plagued by breakdowns, delays and other major inconveniences and minor catastrophes. I don't recall exactly what that article said, but the gist of it was "Wow, I rode the #2 train into East New York and lived to tell about it!"

Their mistakes were even sillier than anything Strauss described in his article. At least his biggest mistake was one on which I (or someone else) could've given him advice. And you know he won't make it again. But those kids writing for the Voice might've gone on for another fifteen or twenty years without figuring out what the score is.

On an unrelated topic: It's the night before Easter and, as happens every year, a TV station is broadcasting The Ten Commandments. It's one of those things that, the more dated it looks and feels, the more people will watch it.

When I say "dated," I'm not talking about the fact that it deals with events that supposedly happened thousands of years ago. I'm talking about the film's visual style and its acting. The former is vivid or exaggerated, depending on your point of view. It's full of colors, bold and vibrant but not with a whole lot of depth. Then again, it's a Hollywood movie, not a Vermeer or a Fragonard. Still, I can't help to feel that as dazzling as it is, it's still an illustration rather than something that conveys truths or perceptions. It makes me feel something I felt when I visited, for the first time in thirty-five years, the church in which I served as an altar boy. The bas reliefs for the Stations of the Cross, as well as other statues artwork in there, that seemed so formidable when I was a kid became oddly hokey when I revisited. (Of course, that feeling paled in comparison to what I experienced moments later, when I went into the sacristry and "confronted" the "ghost" of the priest who molested me!)

About the acting: Everyone in this film acts in a way Uta Hagen referred to as indicative. In other words, it's a diva's way of acting: Here I am, Charlton Heston, in this Egyptian getup. Now you know I'm Moses. To be fair, no matter how well she portrayed Sephora or any other role, I probably never will be able to look at Yvonne De Carlo without thinking about Lily Munster. Still, even at her best, all I can think is that she's Yvonne De Carlo with bangs and lots of eye make-up.

This style of acting--which probably constitutes the vast majority of performances by big-name starts--contrasts with the kind in which the actor or actress brings the character out from within him or herself, much as Michelangelo said he chipped away at stone until he found "David" within it. At his best, that is what Sean Penn does when he acts: His work in Milk and Dead Man Walking are two of the best examples. Geraldine Page was that sort of actress; sometimes Meryl Streep is. (Unfortunately, she became a star for doing her most indicative work back in the early '80's, when people seemed to notice only the accents she portrayed. I'm talking, of course, about A French Lieutenant's Woman, Sophie's Choice and Silkwood.)

And one more thing about the acting in The Ten Commandments: The actors all enunciate their lines in a "stagey," almost vaudevillian, kind of way. That was common in the early "talking pictures," some of which were directed by Cecil B. DeMille, who directed The Ten Commandments. And the tones of the narrator were even more stentorian than those of the actors.

Still, I'll admit, it's quite the spectacle.

Now I wonder what Neil Strauss would do if he were wandering the desert for 40 years. Hopefully, he'd stop and ask for directions. Maybe I'm harboring unrealistic expectations. As if I've never done that before!

A Meeting...For What?

Today my department chair said she wants to have "a brief meeting" with me after I return from Spring recess. Hmm....

She sent that message in response to my e-mail describing my collaborations with the other professors in the college. Maybe she'll want to visit my guest lectures. Or maybe someone's complained about me.

The only other reason I can think of is that she's upset with me for going to the college's compliance officer to ask why the contract os someone else in a position like mine was continued into next year, but mine wasn't. "It's not descrimination," the compliance officer insisted.

Lately, I've had a pretty rocky relationship with my department chair, so I'm not expecting the meeting to be a happy occasion. Also, when your boss says she wants to meet with you but doesn't say why, it's usually not a good thing.

Well, I no longer expect to be at the college after my current contract ends. She knows that, so I can't think of any other reason why she wants a meeting with me.

I'm following through on the lectures and such only because I had started to work on them and said I would do them. They won't make any difference in my career--whatever that is--but I like talking with students, and doing Q and A sessions with them. Plus, as I said, I enjoy working with Professor White, one of the profs whose class I will visit.

Not only do I not expect to be at the college next semester; I feel more and more as if I won't be in the academic world at all. I don't want to go back into the pool of adjunct instructors and, honestly, I have enough bad memories of campuses and classrooms. And I have even worse memories, and more of them, of dealing with administrators and executives in this field.

So what can my department chair say in our meeting?

Can You Get Over the Fear of Sleep?

I can't help but to think about being under anaesthesia for my surgery. Is it odd that I'm more worried about that aspect of my surgery than any other? After all, I've discussed just about everything else related to the surgery--the reasons why I want it, why I'm doing it and what will and won't change afterward-- with my therapist, social worker and various other people, in person and online.

It seems that the induced unconsciousness is the part that nobody talks about. For that matter, nobody seems to know that much about it. An anaesthesiologist can talk about the medical aspects, including risks, of it. So can a surgeon. But nobody, it seems, can tell you why most people come out of it more or less the way they went into it while others develop complications or even die. They also don't tell you how it feels, or whether or not it can change you in some other way.

Will I dream the same way as I do when I sleep in my own bed? If I have dreams, what will they be like? How will they be different from the ones I have at home?

And: Will I have one of those out-of-body experiences that some people describe?

I can't get that image of waking up on the D train as it was about to lurch from the Fourth Avenue station into the tunnel that would take the train to another section of elevated track. Along those tracks is the apartment in which my family lived at that time; at the end of those tracks is Coney Island. The F train runs along those tracks now; the D goes to the part of Brooklyn to which we moved not long after that day I'm recalling.

In Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut's narrator-protagonist describes a tunnel that he had to follow into the afterlife. It wasn't quite like a subway tunnel, but a tunnel it was. Almost everyone would rather go over a bridge or tunnel; I feel the same way. For one thing, even the plainest bridge is more attractive than any tunnel. And, of course, a bridge won't scare someone who's claustrophobic. Agoraphobic, yes.

When crossing a bridge, it's possible to look at the scenery. For that reason, I have always loved my trips across the Verrazano Bridge, and would (would that I could!) take the next flight to Istanbul, Paris, Rome or San Francisco to transverse the Galata Bridge, Pont Neuf (or Alexandre or Iena), Ponte Vecchio or Golden Gate Bridge. But I'm not so sure I'd want to follow Dante and Virgil across a bridge (were there one) over the various pools and pits described in The Inferno. In such places, experiencing the surroundings can be poisonous or lethal in other ways. Whenever I've taken the bus to New Jersey, I see, to the left of the Turnpike, a long railroad trestle over the toxic swamps near Newark Airport. It's not the sort of crossing I'd want to make every day.

Perhaps one needs to be in a tunnel if one hopes to arrive safely from the moment before the surgery to the moment after it. I'm not sure how I'd react if I could see and feel the cutting and whatever else Dr. Bowers will do that day. Or maybe I would be drawn to it, and that would somehow impede the surgery or my recovery.

In sleep there is always the risk of not waking up. Of course, I hope to wake from mine and know that I more than likely will. Whatever happens, at least there were two times in my life when I woke up: when I stopped drinking and doing drugs, and when I finally started to live by my true gender identity. Two moments in fifty years ain't bad, I guess.

Now to get over the fear of sleep...

Spring Break; The Point Is...

Spring recess is about to start. I can't wait. I warned my students, especially the freshmen in my composition class, that there will be less than a month of classes when we return from this recess. And, of course, there will be only about 2-1/2 months until my surgery.

Speaking of freshmen...Yesterday it seemed as if I were having a class reunion with the ones I taught last semester. I was bumping into them everywhere I turned. I didn't mind in the least: I had some really nice students, and they know that as long as I'm there, they have someone they can talk to about school or unrelated topics.

I could tell that at least one of them has been having a rough time this semester. She had a rough time last semester, too, although she did well in my class. I'm guessing that she did well in her other classes, too. But a lot of people can't get past her appearance: She's very overweight and has a harelip.

I won't say, "But, she's a nice person" or anything like that. It happens that she is a very nice person. I also wouldn't say she's naive. She just doesn't act as if people have treated or will treat her badly: She simply doesn't have it in her to do bad things to other people, so she isn't looking for evil and wrongdoing in other people.

Sometimes I'd like to be like that. Sometimes I feel like the inverse of that: I will do what I do whether other people think it's wrong or right. And I usually do the most ethical thing I can for someone, but not because it's ethical or because I'm thinking about whether it or anything else I've done is right or wrong. Rather, I'll do the ethical thing because there just isn't anything else anymore to do.

There came a point, for me, when "right" and "wrong"--other people's notion of it, anyway--no longer mattered; I didn't have any reason or desire to continue in any other way. The point of life--one's own life, anyway--is not victory or moral certitude or approval of same from others. It's also not victory, conquest or accumulation. Rather, life is about, well, life and living it. As far as I can tell, there is no other justification for life than to live.

Ditto for my surgery. I am doing it only because I want to live and, of course, be happy. I can explain how I felt or talk about how I lived with my conflict over who I am, and that my reasons for my gender transition are spiritual. But the bottom line is that I'm doing the surgery only to allow me to live, in some fashion at least, as the person I am.

And now I am going to bed because, well, I want to sleep--for now, anyway.

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!