Goodbyes and First Steps

Tonight the good-byes are beginning. I have met one of my classes--Writing for Business-- for the last time this semester, and in my current life. Most of the students probably don't know that I'm about to have my surgery, but they seemed to sense that I'm about to embark on some large undertaking. Some are graduating; others asked me what I'm teaching next semester. They all seemed to know that somehow I would be different when the Fall term begins.

Honestly, I didn't want to leave that class. I can only imagine how I'll feel about the hip-hop class tomorrow. It's turned out to be the best and most satisfying work I've done since I did poetry workshop with chronically ill and handicapped kids at St. Mary's Hospital for Children in Bayside, NY.

But my students must move on, just as I will. I hope some of them will remain in contact with me. I used to discourage that, but now I see what a mistake that was.

One good-bye I hope I don't have to say just yet is to Janine. Last night, I talked with Diana on the phone. She relayed the news from Janine's sister: Janine is in the hospital, where the doctors found another tumor at the base of her brain. So it seems that it will be even more difficult than it has been for her to get out and do any of the things she used to do by herself, with Zybicek, with me, Diana, Marie Jeanne and Michelle. I'm going to send her a card, but I'd really like to go to Paris and spend even a little time with her. (I'm not sure of how much time or energy she'd have for me, given her condition.) I don't know how or when I could do that, though.

Ironically, Diana brought up the day I mentioned in "The First Girls' Day Out." We went to Brighton Beach, where I changed into a bathing suit one of them--I still don't know which one--packed. Diana recalled a detail of that day I'd forgotten: My fake breast fell out of the bathing suit when I arced into an oncoming wave. I wonder what sea creature may have found it, and what he or she might have done with it.

She said that it was "one of the most enjoyable days" she ever spent. I feel the same way; I explained to her that it was really my first "girls'"outing. "I felt that a new dimension developed to our friendships," I said. "I'd left something behind, but I also came into something."

"That's because you stepped out of gender," she explained. "Actually , we all did. It became something different from what it was when you were a man hanging out with us."

When I think of it, I feel not only that I stepped out of the gender in which I'd been living; I'd, well, simply stepped out. It was like taking my first steps in the world. I felt scared and exhiliarated at the same time; I was cursing Janine under my breath for insisting that I change into the bathing suit but thanking her for being there as I took those first steps, each one less tenuous and furtive than the one before it.

"It was odd," Diana recalled. "But you were being you, and you were exactly where you should have been."

Now, if that's not affirming, then I don't know what affirmation is.

Happy Mother's Day

Today I experienced something I still haven't gotten used to: people wishing me a happy Mother's Day. I don't know whether I ever will, or should, become accustomed to the experience.

It's not that I mind people perceiving me as old enough to be a mother: At least they're not taking me for a grandmother! Plus, I still remember how I felt affirmed as a woman when I heard that greeting on my first Mother's Day in my life as Justine. So, in all, it's not a bad thing, I guess.

Still, I have mixed feelings. I still feel as if I don't have the right to be wished a happy Mother's Day. After all, I have never raised, much less given birth to, any children. I may adopt a child. Even if I do, I will not have endured and sacrificed what my own mother gave in order to bring me and my brothers into this world, or countless other women who've given new lives to this world--sometimes at the cost of their own. I could never repay Mom in any; that she wants to accompany me in my surgery is icing on the cake.

Then again, Dominick and other people have told me that I'm maternal. Very often I feel that way, particularly when a student--or anyone, for that matter-- comes to me for help or guidance. I've been told that some of my female students, as well as other women, look to me as a role model. I still don't understand why, although I'm happy to oblige them.

Another thing people have told me--and I'm finally owning up to--is that I'm nurturing. I've had moments when it might seem otherwise. Hey, I'm not perfect. But I do believe that in any situation, I should deal with people in a caring way. I mean, what other way should I be if other people are, as I am, living souls who happen to be living human lives for reasons beyond our control.

Does I merit a "Happy Mother's Day" wish because I am as I've just described? I don't know. But if people want to express such a wish to me, I welcome it. Perhaps it's not politically correct to say what I'm about to say, but here it is: I can think of nothing more difficult--and more honorable--to do.

So to any mother who's reading this--and to my own Mom, even though she never has and probably never will use a computer--a hearty Happy Mother's Day wish from me!

Senses and Soloists

Some of my best days include sense-memories. Today was one of them.

This morning, I took my usual trip to the farmer's market on Roosevelt Island. It seemed that the fruits and vegetables were fresher and more plentiful than they have been in months. Given that this is the middle of spring, that's to be expected. There still isn't much locally-grown stuff, but at least most of what they were selling came from Florida or California rather than the far end of South America. Not that I have anything against Chilean grapes or Argentinian pears, or anything from any other country. It's just that domestic production, even from as far away as California, tends to be fresher. Compared to the Tierra del Fuego, Fresno or Salinas is local.

Another reason why everything seemed fresher was that the market itself seemed fresher. A nice spring breeze after an early-morning rain can make almost anything seem dewy. However, there was something about that air that also brought out the sweetness in the scents of the grapes, the tart aroma of the strawberries and the pleasant pungentness of the basil. And I could practically taste the almost translucent sweetness of this year's first good corn.


What filled my nose seemed to go straight to the memory centers of my brain. Before I knew it, I was in those wonderful markets I used to find all over France and Italy when I was living in and travelling in those countries. Save for the middle of summer, most of the time it's not much warmer in much of France and northern Italy than it was late this morning--just under 70F. And there the morning sun often as not follows a predawn shower or precedes rain that passes through before noon.

If one must experience deja vu, one can do much worse than I did today!

These days, I feel that my senses are always alive in the way they were in my old life only when I was stimulated. It took something like a bike tour in a foreign country to bring that out in me. Now, it's as if my senses have no "off" switch. Much of the time, that's wonderful. But for someone like me who suffers migraines, sometimes it can also be a bit too much. At least today wasn't one of those times.

Well, at least I'm at an age when I am no longer shocked about finding out that my heroes were wrong. Arthur Rimbaud, who used to be one of my favorite poets (He's still worth reading for his sound, especially in the original, and his imagery, though his concerns can be a bit tedious.), wrote about the derangement du senses. I don't think that derangement is necessary; if you pay attention to your senses, you'll do just fine. If you want to sharpen them, there are all sorts of ways--including, of course, taking estrogen. But some of you guys may not want some of the other side-effects!

Tonight Dominick and I went to see The Soloist. Excellent acting, interesting story and engaging cinematography. I'm thinking of it as sort of an inversion of Les Miserables: Nathan Ayers and Jean Valjean both ran from their pasts, though for entirely different reasons. Valjean, of course, does so voluntarily after escaping from prison in Toulon; Ayers, in contrast, is driven out of Juillard and away from his family by the voices in his head that grow ever more insistent. He leaves what could have been a life of praise and reward for one of scorn and pity on the streets of Los Angeles; Valjean runs to Montrueil-sur-Mer, where nobody knows him, and becomes a very well-respected member of his community. He even manages to become the Mayor. Inspector Javert pursues him across the miles and years and tries to make him "pay" for his long-ago crimes; reporter Steve Lopez wants to bring Ayers back to the life of promise he had as a young virtuoso.

In the end, the townspeople don't want to give Valjean up. And Ayers doesn't want to give himself up, if you will, to a life of concerts and possible celebrity. Both men want to live out their lives in their own versions of peace: Valjean in the community that he has adopted as it has adopted him, and Ayers with nothing but the music he so loves.

Finally, both Javert and Lopez arrive at impasses: The former realizes that he can neither arrest Valjean nor allow him to go free, for after saving people's lives, he is, as Javert realizes, a much more complex man than the criminal the inspector always assumed him to be. And Lopez is frustrated by the fact that in the end, he cannot transform Ayers into someone who would be at home with the artistic directors and conductors of the world's great opera houses and troupes. Javert deals with his dilemma by tossing himself off the Pont au Change into the Seine; Lopez can only console himself with the fact that he helped Ayers to get off the streets and into an apartment and arranged for his long-lost sister to meet him.

All right. You didn't come to this blog for some two-bit comparisons and analysis, did you? I'm going to stop. I'm tired, anyway. At least I'm going to bed after having my senses awakened and seeing Dominick and an excellent movie. Things could definitely be a whole lot worse.

This Afternoon I Am Happy

The rain finally let up this afternoon. The sky didn't clear completely, but enough blue broke up the clouds to fill the streets of SoHo and the Village with the kind of light that makes the city seem almost like a garden. People--residents and tourists alike--seemed to emerge from skins of fleece and down and wool that have bound them to their need for warmth and sleep. And sidewalks burst into color, from the vendors selling purses of woven beads and printed skirts to the patrons at sidewalk tables that have probably opened for the first time this year. A terrier stretched his leash to leap at the hem of my ankle-length skirt and play with me; his owner, a burly man with a thick Bensonhurst accent, cooed-- to the extent that such a man could coo-- "Ooh. My baby likes to make the ladies happy."

In other words, it's the sort of day that reminds me of why I love urban strolls so much, especially in that part of my home city. Really, in the nearly forty years I've strolled and ridden my bike in that part of town, lots of stores, cafes--and people--have come and gone. Coldwater flats have turned into condos; decaying piers have become playgrounds for the children of yuppies. People I have known and loved have been born, lived and died on those very streets. Yet the only other walks that seem as much like quintessential urban strolls are along the streets around the Saint Germain des Pres and from the area around the Musee Picasso to the Place des Vosges and the Canal Saint Martin.

On a day like today, all I could feel--in spite of my headache--was life, including my own, opening like a flower. Call me Pollyanna if you wish; I don't care. Tra-la-la.

Bruce said it's no wonder that my parents have been accepting, and my mother has gone beyond being supportive. "You're doing it all with such enthusiasm," he said over lunch. "Who wouldn't respond to that?"

It seems a bit ironic that I should feel my life opening up now, one day less than two months from my surgery. Or maybe it's not so ironic. After all, it's what I hoped for when I began my transition. Of course there have been difficult and intense times. But I always had a sense that something like this was on the other side, wherever that may be.

Now if I can keep this up for at least the next sixty days....

Some time after that, I'll be taking a walk like that one, a bike ride like the ones I took along the ocean. Perhaps it will be in the fall; the light and the colors will be different. So will the tone and texture, if you will, of the air.

Oh, this must be a really happy post. Charlie has just leapt onto my desk. Being the curious kittie that he is, he's curious about what I'm writing that's got me smiling. No, Charlie, it's not naughty or subterannean. I've been a really good girl today. Really.

He believes me. You can't lie to a cat anyway, so of course he believes what I'm saying. I think he already knows that I'm going to be away for a couple of weeks: He can't get enough of me, or so it seems.

I guess he also knows that I didn't know that the day would be so nice. That's why I didn't leave the windows open when I went out. So, neither he nor Max had their ledges. But since I've come home, they have been able to bask in the early evening light and to refresh themselves in the cool breeze that accompanied nightfall.

And when I came home, they found me in a great mood. I hope they're at least as happy as I am now.

That's what I hope for my friends and family, too. And for Nick, the person I used to be. After all, by living through those times, he brought me to these times.

Just sixty more days....

Two More Months: What Next?

Two more months. Two more months. Two more months.

All right. So you're tired of hearing it. I'll say it another way: sixty-one days.

Naah, I like two months better. Somehow it seems shorter, more manageable. What is it? Two payments on a rent, mortgage, credit card or any number of other things you can think of. Of half of a college semester.

And now two months stand between me and my surgery. Now I really know it's close. I'm thinking of all of those things I want to do before the surgery. As if something is going to end that day.

Of course, some things will end: The current state of my body, for one thing. My legal status, for another. And, I hope, the feeling of being neither here nor there--or plain-and-simple alienation--that has, for too much of my life, bound me like a strait-jacket of gray rain. The "gray drizzle" of William Styron's depression would have looked good to me on some days.

Over the past few days, I've wondered how it will be when I return to work in the fall. Some of my colleagues know that I'm going to have my surgery. Actually, I'd bet that quite a few know, along with most of my students. You know how it works: If you tell two people, one will tell a friend and the other will tell your enemy--or, at least, someone who doesn't like you. And at least one of those people will keep the cycle going.

I wonder if they expect some sort of complete transformation. After seeing me, are they expecting someone prettier or more elegant--or at least more "feminine" or "girly"--when I return? How about someone nicer or smarter? Or ditzier? Will I suddenly come up with ideas no one else could have even dreamed?

Let's see...They'll want me to come in with Jennifer Lopez's body? Or Hillary Clinton's mind? Or Gloria Steinem's or Mother Teresa's soul?

Tomorrow will be another day--on the road to my surgery. Tonight will be another night's sleep; another chance for Charlie and Max to curl up with me. Will they see me differently afterward? Will I seem different to them?

I'll find out in two months.

Meantime, I'm trying to make the best of this weather. It's rained for almost a week now. In the wee hours of this morning, we had a downpour that made forward vision all but impossible. It wasn't even gray: It was almost too intense for gray but too raw and, at the same time, too opaque for any color at all.

I should think the colors will be the same, perhaps more intense. That's how I've experienced them, and so many other things, since I began this journey. Sometimes I feel as if the hormones pulled away a layer of skin and left my nerve endings intact. I wonder whether the surgery will do more of the same.

Just two more months...

The First Girls' Night Out

While at work, I missed a call from someone I haven't talked to in a long time. I'd turned off my cell phone while I was teaching, and by the time I could call back, I was ready to leave the campus. That would have meant spending only a few minutes with her as I walked to the subway. Or it would have meant remaining on campus for quite a while longer.

I had a pretty good day at work, but I was very tired. But now I'm starting to wish I'd called her.

Diana was part of one of my first "girls' " days out. Just before I started living full-time as Justine, she and three other friends of mine went to Brighton Beach on a beautiful summer day. Actually, we sort of ended up there spontaneously: We'd all gotten together near Diana's home on the Upper West Side and, next thing we knew, we were on the beach.

The soft breeze from the ocean and the light that reflected off the water wove my hair into patterns of light. At least, that's what Diana said. I trust her on that: After all, she's an artist. So is Janine, another one of our friends who accompanied us that day. Later that day, Diana confessed to me that she was a bit anxious about meeting me that day: It was the first time we'd connected since I began my transition. "I feel guilty saying this," she related. "But all I could think was: 'I hope she's pretty.' And, you are."

That coloring in my cheeks wasn't sunburn. Still, Janine concurred and declared that I was "solaire"--as if the sun was radiating from me.

That was when I first realized something that's been very useful to me: The only thing better--or at least more powerful--than a man who can make a woman blush is another woman who can perform that feat!

I think I was still aglow the following night, when we went to an outdoor dance performance at Lincoln Center.

Anyway...I've wanted to talk to Diana and Janine, and to the friends who accompanied us that day: Marie-Jeanne and Michelle. They and Janine were visiting from France; Janine has known Diana and her husband Don for years and stays at their place when she visits.

She used to come here every year or two, sometimes more often. For a time, I was going to France every year. I would spend a day or two with her, some time with other friends and a couple of weeks on my bike in the countryside.

But she fell ill about four years ago and got worse. The last time I saw her--in August of 2006--she was in a wheelchair. Since then, I've received a couple of e-mails from her and talked briefly. I know she doesn't have internet access at her place, so that would account for the infrequent e-mails. However, the times I talked to her, she sounded very tired and not well. So, naturally I've been worried about her.

I hope Diana has some good news. None of them know yet that I'm having my surgery, though I don't think it would surprise any of them to find out. I don't think they're the kind of people who tell you that they're fine, they love you however you are, then disappear from your life. I want to have another girls' day--or night--out with them, especially before my surgery.

Whenever I talk about my travels to France, someone invariably says, "The French hate Americans." Or, "They were rude to you." In other words, they make declarations about what they haven't experienced. Maybe I really do--as I've long suspected--have the world's strangest karma. Even when I was unhappy and angry, I met some good people. The women I hope to see again are examples. Janine, Marie Jeanne and Michelle are about as French as brioches, and they are some of the warmest and friendliest people I've ever encountered. And I managed to meet them in a country where "everybody hates Americans."

Plus, they all know that I've experienced France in ways that most tourists don't, thanks to all those kilometres I pedalled. Marie-Jeanne once declared, Tu connais plus que les francais--I've experienced more of France than the French.

They knew me as Nick, but if we meet again, I would be tempted to relive our first girls' day and night out: my first ever, with any women. Of course, I've learned that you can't really recreate any experience. All you can do is find out what about it made you happy and work with that. But of course that won't stop me from trying. After all, you don't forget your first girls' night out.

Lasts; What Will We See Next Time?

Some people celebrate "firsts": the first date, the first job, the first apartment and...well, you get the idea.

But now I find myself marking "lasts." Today's "last" was a fairly minor one. But I can't help thinking about it.

My department's last meeting of the academic year was held today. Nobody relishes meetings; they're always too long and feature too many battling egos. Today's meeting wasn't quite as bad in this respect as the previous two or three meetings. But it was indeed long: I had almost no time between it and the class I taught.

Although I see, if only in passing, most of the faculty members on most days that I am at the college, this may well be the last time I see a few of them before my surgery. Most of the rest will be gone in a couple of weeks, once final exams are done. I won't see them again until late August: the beginning of the new semester, and my first post-recovery days.

And what--who-- will they see? Even more to the point, at least from my view: What will I see?

I expect to have the same abilities and the same accumulated knowledge and wisdom (such as they are!) that I have now once I return from my surgery. But will my interests and priorities change? Is there anything I do now that I won't care to do?

I've changed over much less than what I'm about to experience.

No Bike Ride In The Rain; What Women Want

It rained most of the day today. So I didn't do something I thought I would do for the last time before my surgery: I didn't pedal in the New York City Bike Ride, which used to be known as the Five Boro Bike Tour.

I've done rides--including the New York City/Five Boro--in the rain before. But riding in such a large group in the rain can be dangerous. It's not that the ride itself is so dangerous in the rain: At least, it's not unlike other rides I've taken in the rain. The peril comes with all the inexperienced and unskilled riders who show up.

Very often, people who haven't ridden in a long time or who aren't very good or are simply careless get in the saddle. They make sudden turns in front of groups of people. Or they get tired and stop right in the middle of a crowd. Both of these things have happened right in front of me. Once, a guy who had whose bike was better than his skills and conditioning and who had more attitude than intelligence jacknifed in front of a group of people who were in front of me. They tumbled; I narrowly missed them.

But I saw a stream of riders rolling down Vernon Boulevard, which skirts the East River only a block from my place. I did. for a moment, wish that I'd gone with them: It's been a while since I've participated in such a big ride. Just last week, I did a longer ride, half of it into headwinds, than the NYC ride. However, if someone who isn't a cyclist knows that you are one, he or she is bound to wonder whether you're doing the ride. There are lots of people who know of no other ride save for Le Tour de France. And I know people who can name only one other cyclist besides me: Lance.

So that means the only two cyclists they've heard of are a cancer survivor who's broken records--and a tranny. Do they think that cycling is a sport of freaks?

Before I started living as Justine, the only pleasure I got from dressing--aside from going en femme--was when I put on my cycling clothes. Tammy used to say that it's the one opportunity for men to be peacocks. She's right: I used to have all manner of jerseys and other items in every kind of design and color scheme you can imagine.

The only problem is that they're all made of lycra. I simply don't have the body for it anymore. And, the shorts reveal the fact that I haven't yet had my surgery!

I talked with Mom this morning. She may not be able to accompany me to the surgery, she says. I believe her when she says she wants to come with me. But she says that given the state of my father's health, and the toll it's taking on her, she may not be able to accompany me, or to go to California for my nephew's high school graduation. She promises to do everything she can to ensure that she'll be with me. Now, if only my father's condition would improve.

What seemed to be a case of the flu a few months ago has degenerated into a myriad of other problems, which have exacerbated depression that has underlay much of his behavior throughout his life. It deepened after he lost his job; since then, interludes of equinaminity and stability have laced his malaise.

He's always been obsessive, but lately he's been overbearing with my mother. From what she says, he's either hovering over her or sleeping. Sometimes he won't talk; other times, he laments being a "lousy" son, husband and father. Mom and I have both told him he can't do anything about the kind of son he was, but he can be a good (or at least better) husband and father. And he can start today.

He and I had a difficult relationship. But that is in the past. It's not easy now, but at least when I've most recently seen him, he's made some effort with me. That's really all that matters to me now; the past is done. He may not be the most demonstrative person in the world, but he can treat people well. Whatever else he does, I will always credit him for the way he treated my maternal grandmother. The only person who has ever mattered more in my life is my mother, so anybody who treated grandma well can't be all bad. Mom agrees with me.

The funny thing is that she and I always wanted the same thing from him: Someone who is a supportive and consistent, if not constant, presence. A few days ago, Anne and I were talking about the qualities we value in the ones with whom we spend our lives. That is the difference between her previous and current husband, she said. We cry, sometimes because we're unhappy, other times because we're tired, and other times...well, we don't exactly know the reason, but we need it. Her current husband gives her his shoulder, holds her, talks to her.

Really, what else could she, my mother, I or any other woman want from a man (or woman)? Dominick has been that sort of man for me, but one doesn't necessarily need a romantic relationship to have that. Whether we're strong or something else, we need someone who offers an ear, a shoulder, a word of encouragement. It's not a matter of looks or money; those things rarely last, anyway.

Mom has not had that sort of man. But it's not too late. I'm more fortuante, I guess. Sometimes I feel guilty about that: She has done so much more to deserve to be loved and cared about than I ever did.

But I think she's glad that at least I've decided to pursue that for myself. Perhaps that is the reason why she wants to accompany me to the surgery.

Dogfights and Dreams

A dachsund rolled onto her back the way one of my cats would. A French boxer sniffed her belly then stepped over her. A couple of minutes later, what looked like a Husky pup climbed onto her back. Then a white dog with spots over most of his body and black around his shoulders, paws and ears stepped to the side of the dachsund who, as if on cue, rolled onto her back to be sniffed again.

And the humans who accompanied them--all young women--chatted and giggled as clouds swirled and drifted away from each other, allowing just enough of the setting sun to blaze off the flickering ripples of the East River that lapped against the pier on which we all stood, directly across the river from the United Nations.

This scene filled me with an eerie sense of deja vu, as if I had awakened from some repetetive, inevitable dream. Those young women were all young enough to be my daughters or even--if I had lived a different sort of life in another time and place--my granddaughters. Yet somehow they seemed like the moments that immediately followed some long-ago memory.

They didn't remind me of anyone in particular--not any famous person, nor of anyone I've ever known. And save for the daschsund, the dogs didn't remind me of any I've ever known. Yet they all seemed familiar somehow.

Lately people I haven't seen in ages have appearing in my dreams. When I was a kid, rumor had it that if you dreamed about someone, that person would die.

So who have I dreamed about? Last night, it was about a girl with whom I grew up and haven't seen at least since I was a teenager. She was, if I recall correctly, a year older than me, and her two brothers were my age and a year younger than I was. They were all children of a family friend. I was particularly freindly with the one who was my age. Interestingly, he looked to me as a sort of benevolent older sibling. He used to tell me that he admired my intelligence and the ways I could express myself. As we got older, he also used to tell me, "I wish I could deal with things as well as you do."

Then, it struck me as really odd. After all, I was struggling with all sorts of things that I would not talk about until many, many years later. I've mentioned some of them on this blog. But then they were like the dangerous cargo inside a ship that could only drift from side to side or lunge forward into darkness and a storm.

One of the things he said I "dealt with" better than he did was seeing the man whom I know molested me and who, I feel almost entirely certain, did him as he did unto me. Or something like it.

Anyway, in last night's dream, his older sister said, "I wish you could have done something for him."

I can understand--and even agree with--what she says. Maybe I could have helped him more than I did.

Or could I ? If anything, I may have been doing even more to keep my own experience secret. I had repressed it so far that I almost never thought of it as a "the closet."

The boy of whom I'm speaking never quite said that the man, who was another family friend, molested him. At least I don't remember that he did. And, as I've said before, I certainly didn't talk about the ways he sexually abused me for about twenty-five years after the fact.

But my young friend did tell me that he was "really afraid" of that man. For that matter, I was, too. However, I don't think I ever told him that. The truth of the matter was that all I actually did was to be was to be the sort of kid he wanted me to be: I went along with whatever he said. Hey, I even laughed at the guy's sick and dirty jokes. Plus, I think that in some way he actually knew I was a "better" kid than his own were: I did well in school, didn't get in trouble (actually, didn't get caught) and was an altar boy. But most of all, I kept my fear of and anger toward him within me. It may have helped me to survive, but it certainly kept me from moving forward for many, many years.

What came of my young friend? I know that he'd fallen into drug addiction, and I've heard that he was doing worse things to finance his addiction. He may well be dead: Perhaps that's what his sister was telling me in that dream.

If he is, then...what? What did my anger at that man, or my anger generally do for my friend or anyone else? Whatever it did, it would have been as familiar and even more predictable than those dogs--or the humans that accompanied them--on the Long Island City pier.

What Does A Woman Do?

Getting down to the wire now. It's the first of May. Just the rest of this month and June, and one week in July, until my surgery.

It's odd that we had hot, sunny weather last weekend and for the first two days of this week--as April neared its end. Yesterday was rather chilly; today was warmer but it rained on and off throughout the day.

This week, people have been complimenting me on the way I've looked. However, I see the extra pounds I'm trying to lose (I don't think I would've worn a bikini this year anyway.), the ways in which my facial and bodily structure could be more feminine and the knot I tied so sloppily in my scarf.

Of course those are not the things that make me a woman or not. Still, when I see all those women who seem so much more graceful, not to mention prettier and smarter, than I am, it's hard not to compare myself unfavorably to them. And I'm kicking myself for the sausage I ate last night and the pasta and cheese I had today.

I guess I'm not immune to the societal mind-fuck. Any number of people have told me not to worry.

Today, Bruce mentioned that a part-time worker in his office is teaching a Women's Studies course. She feels threatened by a particular male student in the class, he said, and she's worried that he'll attack her or commit some other form of violence. She's gone to the campus authorities (He didn't know which school.) and was referred to people who referred her back to the people who referred her to them. Now she's at her wits' end.

I recalled situations--when I was still living and teaching as Nick-- in which I was threatened by students. In One, a kid off the streets didn't want to do the work and wasn't happy that she was getting "F's" on all of her assignments. She threatened to bring in her boyfriend, which she did. But he was so drunk that the other students were snickering. I just barely kept myself from doing the same.

Another time a student threatened, "I'm gonna put your head through that wall." I notified my department chair and the campus security chief, who sent two officers to the next class session and removed her.

In another incident, a young male student threatened to run me over the next time he saw me on my bike. He was removed, but in some, ahem, coincidence, I wasn't re-hired the following semester.

And, last October, a student whom I'd never before met ambushed me as I walked from the campus to the subway, accused me of following him and threatened to kill me. I reported the incident and about two weeks later, I saw him in the library. I summoned campus security officers, who took him away and, I found out later, instructed him to stay away from me, as I wasn't following him and had no wish to do so.

As I related that last incident to Bruce, I realized that "They responded as they did because the college didn't want their tranny to get hurt." He agreed and said, "Sure, they wouldn't want that kind of PR."

And, during the years when the other incidents occured, I was riding my bike practically everywhere and lifting weights. I had not consumed any alcohol or drugs for several years, and I'd never smoked. (I still haven't.) As my body was shaped such discipline, my face and indeed my aura reflected the anger I felt at simply having to live as a man and not having much of anything else go the way I wanted.



But, honestly, I don't know what I would have done in any of those situations had I been born with a uterus. Other female instructors who are more diminutive than I am have also expressed fears for their safety. I don't know what advice I could give them, save perhaps to take martial arts classes--something I've never done.

Now I know one way in which I haven't, or haven't had to, think like a woman. Not to say that being trans protects me, though living as male probably did.

What does a woman do?

Fatigue, Lunch and Survival

I can't believe how tired I've been. Yesterday was the first time in weeks I haven't written on this blog.

And now here I am, sleepy again. But I want to write. So here I am.

Yesterday I had lunch with Anne. It's really odd that you can work in the same place as someone else and not see that person for months. I don't think I've seen Anne since the beginning of the semester. In the meantime, she's become noticeably more pregnant with a boy. And I'm closer to beginning a new life with a female body.

Perhaps I will get to know her even better than I do now. I would like that, actually: I enjoy having a conversation with her because she is educated and truly smart. In other words, she values her education but isn't impressed by it; she really understands that it's more important for people to find what makes them happy than it is to fulfill someone else's idea of achieving success. She mentioned her sister, who took up vocational studies, got a job in a financial company, married and had kids. Their father compares her unfavorably to Anne, which is not what Anne wants.

Only in looking back do I find it so remarkable that she could talk about that, the life growing inside her and the life she is building with her husband in such a seemingly casual way, and that, spontaneously, I shared something about myself that I've only allowed to a few other people in my life. It's no wonder, then, that I don't feel defensive about who I am when I talk with her.

When I think of her, when I think of Regina, when I think of Millie, I realize that, as different as they are from each other, I love them all for basically the same reason: We empathise with each other as women, even though our experiences as women may be very different. I will never have a baby, as they all have had (and Anne will soon have again), but they know that I am experiencing the fatigue of bearing a new life that I will soon bring into being.

They also seem to understand that I have only recently learned something they've probably known all of their lives: that if a woman is to survive spiritually--which is to say that if she is to survive--she has to be tough, not through coercion or violence, but through the force of being who she is. The only means we have of survival, much less to thrive and prosper, is through the power of our own essential beings.

Being a woman is being a survivor. And one survives only through fighting for one's self. Certainly Anne and Regina have had to do that in their professional and personal lives; Millie, I'm sure, has had to do the same thing within the family to which she was born. All of them survived, not by trying to beat men at their own game, but in acting in their own plays. After all, one doesn't win a game played against the very person or people who made the rules.

That, by the way, is one of the reasons I've undertaken the journey I'm on now.

Time Travel

Let's see...I began this bright, sunny (and unseasonably warm day) by listening to the Beatles' "Good Day Sunshine" and "Here Comes The Sun" while eating my corn flakes. It's pretty hard to be in a bad mood after that, and I didn't try.

Even a trip to the dentist wasn't so bad. I had my routine cleaning and checkup, and the doctor warned me that I have an infection developing at the base of a root canal. My root canal teeth were nothing but trouble--until I had one pulled after I woke up in worse pain than any I experienced before the root canal.

Then, thinking I would arrive late a committee meeting at the college, I flew on my bike, only to find that I actually made it about fifteen minutes early.

After that was the best part of the day: The guest appearance I made at Professor White's History of Hip-Hop class. There, I talked about the poetics of hip-hop: the stuff I've been teaching in my course. I took them on a trip in my "time machine" to find the "beginnings" of the music: specifically, where the three-beat line came from. Most students were surprised to learn that a generation before Shakespeare, John Skelton wrote poems that consisted of rhyming trimetric lines. And he even began one of his poems with "Whyll I'll chylle."

My department chair came to the lecture. She seemed to like it, in spite of the fact I couldn't play some of the songs I wanted to play because the internet wasn't available in the room. It didn't occur to me that there would be any place in the college where I couldn't access YouTube, as I have from other rooms. Had I known that, I would have brought some CDs with me.

But it all seemed to go well enough. The students were certainly primed for me, and I was for them.

And throughout the day, various people said that I looked "radiant," "pretty" or simply "good." I know I was smiling, even as I grew tired in the evening class I taught.

Could it be that I'm finally bringing, or adapting, the things I loved in my past to my current life? I know I must, and want to, do more poetry readings and guest lectures. It seems that when I do such things--which are both creative and social--I cannot help but to transcend whatever has bound me. I am opened, whether or not I wanted to be--or, more precisely, whether or not I believed that is what I wanted.

So now I know that some of the things that got me here are going to help me move forward after all. They kept Justine alive when I was living as Nick; now I can live as Justine by honoring Nick in all of those things in which he kept my spirit alive, and which he left as legacies or even gifts for me.

Forward--transcend! OK, so you can't imagine some drill sergeant barking that his troops. Nor can I. But why would I want to? A march may have brought me here; now it's time for a journey.

Coming Out and Glowing

It seems that my energy or aura or whatever you want to call it is changing. Four different people--who, as far as I know, don't know each other--told me that I was "glowing" today. Now, I haven't been around any nuclear power plants lately, so I think there must be other causes.

Like...bike rides by the ocean. A walk by the ocean--my long printed skirt rippling in the wind and grazing pools spun by breaking tides--with a tall gorgeous man. A very flattering haircut and eyebrow style and tint--and a facial massage. And some make-up in sunnier tones than what I've been wearing for the past few months.

And today I did something I haven't done in a long time: I gave a poetry reading. The setting was, shall we say, intimate. In other words, there were only a few people in the audience for every poet--four, including yours truly--who read.

I felt like I stumbled a bit with a couple of my poems. I decided to read a couple of older poems, a couple of new ones and some recent work. I think that the audience was on my side: Most of them knew me, or knew who I am.

In a way, I felt as if I were "coming out," even though people in the audience knew, or have heard about, me. Some of them didn't know about my poetry before today. They knew me as their professor or colleague, but not as a person who could transform the raw materials of life into art through words and sounds.

It's ironic that reading "as" Justine should still be a relatively novel experience for me. I've done only a few public readings since my transition, but I feel that those poems--some, anyway--were written by Justine even though I didn't sign them with my name. Still, the conditions under which I wrote some of them are entirely different from the ones in which I live now.

But it felt like some kind of victory, however small, to read those poems today. Time was when I was reading just about every week--usually in some bar or club, but every once in a while as a featured poet in an art gallery or library. Poetry reading on Friday night, long bike ride on Saturday, another (possibly shorter) ride on Sunday morning, another reading on Sunday. Or sometimes I'd read somewhere after taking my Saturday bike ride and one of two things would happen: I would end up in a bed that wasn't mine, or I'd go for another bike ride on Sunday.

If I could've lived as Justine, I could have lived that life forever--or something close to it.

But today's reading and the weekend's bike rides and walks along the ocean--and Dominick's company--gave me an energy that I never could have found when I was living as Nick. Back then, I was all anger and intensity. Interestingly enough, some people actually found those qualities attractive, if only for a moment or a night. What kind of people were they? People with those same character traits. This meant, of course, that they were almost as fucked up as I was. And we all know that crazy, neurotic (or psychotic) people are good for at least one wild ride, maybe two. Anything more than that and you'll eventually make work for your friendly neighborhood divorce lawyer--or cops bearing restraining orders.

Ooh...It feels soo good that all of that is in the past. So, today I get to bask in the glow of wherever I'm walking. And people who've never met each other say the same things: I'm radiant. I'm glowing.

Changes: To The Ocean, Again

Iowa may be a lovely state and they now have gay marriage. (Who'da thunk it?) Still, I don't think I could live there: It's way too far from the ocean.

Dominick understood. I probably didn't even need to tell him that. When we walked onto a beach on the Rockaway Peninsula, he could see me "coming to life." That's just how he described it.

He did something any gentleman--any good man--can and should be willing to do for a lady: He watched my purse and shoes as I traipsed through sand into just enough water so that when the tide rolled in, the bottom few inches of my skirt were soaked. Then again, I was wearing a skirt that came nearly to my ankles.

The shoes may not have been Jimmy Choos. And while I have not seen another purse quite like the one I was carrying, I don't think it would be included in any estate sales. Still, ya gotta love any man who did what Dominick did today.


Today was like yesterday, only warmer. The weather reports said the temperature in Central Park reached 92 degrees F today, but it felt more like 70 on the beach--even less when the wind stiffened.

I know it'll be a few weeks before the water's warm enough to swim: Even those splashes and swirls at my feet and ankles were enough to give me goose bumps! I know that swim season will be very short for me this year, as I won't be able to do that (and a lot of other things) for a long time after the surgery.

Am I projecting onto the world, or are there really more pregnant women than there have been in recent years? It seems that everywhere I look, I'm seeing at least one. Sometimes she looks like she's my age, or not much younger; other times, she's not long past being a baby herself; of course, most pregnant women are between those ages. But did the men of this world, ahem, found new ways of occupying their time this winter? Did they really give up ESPN? (I know what you're thinking: I've got ESPN!)

Of course, those women can't do some of the things I'm doing--like yesterday's bike ride--while new lives are growing inside them. And they need to rest for some time, and forego certain activities for some time after that. I'll be in the same, or at least a similar, situation after my surgery.

I've heard that some women's tastes change after they give birth. While they're pregnant, they crave foods they may not have liked previously to nourish the lives inside them. And they may not eat those foods again after their pregnancy. If that's true, I wonder what other tastes they gain or lose. One woman told me some of her choices in reading (not including the "how-to" books) shifted once she became a mother. For example, she said that she now loves Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel she previously dismissed as overly sentimental.

Hmm... I wonder if my tastes will change so dramatically after the surgery. Whatever happens, I don't think I could lose my attraction to the ocean.

On My Bicycle, I Have A Wardrobe Malfunction

I spent a good part of this day on the verge of a "wardrobe malfunction," as Janet Jackson so famously called it.

The top I wore had no sleeves and two shoulder straps that were about the same width as most of the bras I have. The neckline is low, and there is an elastic pleat underneath the breast. From there, the top flares down to my waist.

I wore it on a bike ride I took today. And I wondered why men who drove by were paying so much attention to me until I stopped at a store and a 6'4" (or thereabouts) man was staring down to my neckline.

It was in danger of becoming my waistband, or my hemline. Yes, that neckline that I didn't think was plunging was actually sliding down!

Now, I don't have particularly big breasts. My mother doesn't, either, and true to the doctor's prediction, I'm half a cup size smaller than mom. According to my doctor and everything I've read, a trans woman will typically end up with breasts that are one cup size smaller than her mother's after two years of taking hormones.

Anyway...I may not have mountains. But it seems that I have developed a rather noticeable valley. So, today I made a great discovery (Will it change the world?): Men's eyes are drawn to the clevage, and if it's noticeable, they'll take notice. Perhaps my clevage makes my breasts seem bigger than they are--assuming, of course, only the cleavage and not the breasts are seen.

The latter was becoming a risk. The second time I noticed that my neckline was slipping--I had begun pedalling home from Point Lookout--the top slopes of my breasts were coming into view. Visions of a drunk kid with a pickup truck or a cop pulling me over flashed through my head.

I fixed my top by pulling down the bottom rear part, which made the neckline become more or less of a neckline again. Now the guys were shouting "nice legs,"as they always seem to do when I'm on a bike. At least that, and exposing one's legs, are not illegal--or, at least, won't get me into as much trouble as exposed breast.

The rest of my ride went blissfully uneventfully, although I felt cold as I rode along the ocean in Nassau County and The Rockaways. The water, as I understand, is still only about 45 or 46 degrees F (7 degrees C), so the breezes from it make those areas fifteen to twenty degrees F cooler than a few miles away from the ocean. I know, I should have brought a jacket or something. But I wasn't thinking about that as I left my place around two in the afternoon, when the temperature was in the 80's F.

Oh well. At least the wind was at my back for the last fifteen miles or so (of a 65 mile ride), as I pedalled north from the Rockaways. And my Mercian was great to pedal, as always.

Did Janet Jackson have the wind at her back?

Another Moment Fugue

We played a game of "smile tag." She started it. Honest. (Are you reading this, Dominick?)

Bruce and I were having lunch at a Thai restaurant near his office. I sat against the wall; he sat with his back facing the next table. There she sat, on the opposite end of the table from Bruce, facing me.

She was looking at me from head to toe as Bruce and I sat down. I wore a casual top in a hue somewhere between aqua and turqouise that flared over a long print skirt in shades of blue, green and pink. On my feet were a pair of Keen flip-flops: the kind with the toe guard and the traction soles. None of it was exceptional, I thought: Any number of women my age could have been dressed in a similar way if they were going to lunch or shopping on a fine spring day like today.

And, I wasn't wearing any makeup, save for a dark pink shade of lipstick. I felt so good about my skin after the facial massage last night that I didn't want to touch it. Also, I wanted to see just how "natural" I could be. On my way to lunch, I ran an errand, during which I met someone I hadn't seen in several months. She complimented me on how "pretty" and "fresh" she thought I looked.

That, of course, made me wonder what that woman behind Bruce saw. As he and I talked and ate, I could see her out of the corner of my eye. I think she wanted me to look at her for longer than I did. She might've been a friendly enough person, but I couldn't imagine her in any other moment but that one, so I would not be interested in seeing her again.

Of course, if this scene had happened before my transition, when I was still living as Nick, it would've been just another case of girl-flirts-with-guy-in-restaurant. And she was like other women who were attracted to me and whose phone numbers I might've requested: Petite, curvy and dark-haired, with a face that bore too much complexity to be described as "pretty" or "pleasant," although she was not unattractive. I think that much of her look had to do with her eyes which, although a very dark and deep shade of brown, were as translucent as water.

But of course she was not looking at Nick; she was eyeing me. Might she be a lesbian? Bisexual? Maybe, I thought, although one can never tell for sure unless...Well, how graphic do you want me to be? Funny, how I wanted to know those things even though I had no intention of seeing her again. I guess I'm strange that way: I am curious about people I have absolutely no desire to see again.

I guessed that she might be a creative person of some sort. I've gone through times in my life when I would not consider a relationship with any other kind of person, and other times when I swore them off. I'm not in either of those phases now: I'm rediscovering men, and learning which types attract me. I prefer tall men with dark or darkish hair, and although I thought I'd want a man who's close to my own age, I find myself with Dominick and not caring that he's much younger than I am.

But I digress (again!). Each of the woman's glances toward me seemed to grow longer than the previous one. And, I must say, her smile had a disarmingly direct warmth: something I wouldn't have expected from her. As Nick, I could have interpreted it in a certain way and acted accordingly. But now that I'm Justine, I don't have to be prissy (which is, by the way, not the same as being a lady). So now I don't have to say she intrigued me; now I can say she baffled me. Well, all right, "baffled" is not quite right either. I simply couldn't figure out what she saw when she looked at me and started our game of "smile tag."

She parted about five minutes before Bruce and I left. On her way out, she turned her head and gave me another long glance and smile. I wished her a nice weekend; she expressed the same wish for me.

And that moment survives, partially, only because I'm writing it down now. Barring the unforeseen, I will have lunch with Bruce again next Friday--and see Dominick this weekend.

Spaces

Today I went for a haircut and coloring. I also got, for the first time since August, a facial massage and had my eyebrows shaped and tinted. I guess you could say it's a sort of mini-vacation.

The funny thing is that I could sit beside two women who are far more beautiful than I could ever dream of being, yet I could feel confident. It's funny that I can feel more comfortable and confident around women like them than I can around people who have more or less my level of education and with whom I can more or less hold my own when it comes to scholastic or intellectual accomplishment. Funny, how that smaller gap between me and, say, professors seems like a much wider gulf than the one between me and drop-dead gorgeous women.

I guess in a refuge, everyone is more or less equal. Yes, that's how I'm thinking of Zoe's Beauty Salon now. One rarely, if ever, encounters a man there, so whatever tensions existed between us and them are at bay, if only for a couple of hours. And your professional status, or where you live, count for nothing there.

Plus--and this is something I never realized until today--I don't have to apologize for or defend myself as a trans woman. The owners and beauticians there know about me: The first day I came in, I was still in boy-drag. They have seen me change; they have seen me become more like them, not only in appearance. On the other hand, I feel as if I have less and less in common with my work colleagues, save for a few exceptions.

You might say that I am mentally withdrawing from the college, and from education generally. The more I teach in that college, the less integrated into it I feel; the longer I spend in the class I'm taking, the less I feel I'm learning--or want to learn, at least about the subject of that class. And, to be quite honest, I've begun to feel as if I don't want to be more integrated into the college, or even into the department in which I teach.

As a Nation of Islam minister once said, "Why would I want to be integrated into a burning house?"

OK, that statement goes a bit further than I intended. Maybe this paraphrase is more like it: Why would I want to be integrated into a house that doesn't have anything to offer me--not even shelter. Who wants to live in a house in which one can't interact in any meaningful way with whoever else is in that house? Or a house in which one cannot feel safe? That's emotionally as well as literally true about the college, at least for me.

It's perhaps most ironic of all that I go to Zoe's because they know about me, but I want to find a job in a place where nobody knows me. But, like all ironies, it makes perfect sense: With Anna and the crew at Zoe's, they know why I want the things for which I go to their shop, and that seems to help them in serving me. On the other hand, while at the college, I am continuously prodded to be, well, a tranny rather than someone who happens to be trans. And I am expected to be that person to serve the purposes of certain people at the college.

Fatigue and Frustration

Today I felt tired and fat and old. Maybe it had something to do with the chill and rain that grayed the air. Or, perhaps, it has to do with the fact that I'm nearing the end of the school term and, almost concurrently, my current life. I feel that I've given all that I could: first, toward being a man, then toward my transition. The former is done, finished, or at least reached its ending a long time ago. The latter is almost at that point. Neither is retrievable now; I could not return to the former or or remain in the latter even if I'd wanted to.

I'd just like to feel young and lively and pretty-and skinny. At times like this, I really wish I'd undergone my transition earlier in my life. But then again, what would my life be like now? I could have lived all of those years as a woman. Or, given the way the world and I were, how many years would I have had?

Most of the people who knew me as Nick are not in my life now. Most people with whom I work and otherwise spend my days know that I lived that part of my life, but they never saw me that way, save in photos I've shown some of them.

I'd really like to go to some place where nobody knows me--or, at least, knows about my past. Yesterday I gave a talk to an honors seminar on the subject of transgender health care, and the ways it parallels the experiences of other women. I'd agreed to do it months ago, but once I got to the class, I wished I weren't doing it. I think the students sensed it; so did the two professors that teach that class.

Part of the reason why I wanted not to give that talk was that two students whom I hoped never to see again were in that class. Fortunately for me, they were never my students. But one of them is the editor of the student newspaper. Ever since she assumed that position, she's wanted to do a story about my gender identity. Not about my teaching, my poetry, my activism or even my cats. She just wanted to write about the fact that the college has a tranny prof. I never trusted her for a number of reasons, and I don't respect the newspaper for the same reason I don't respect the college's student government: They never take on the serious issues that affect students. But there I was, talking about my experiences and she smirked when she wasn't wearing a shit-eating grin.

The other student was a tutor when I was directing the tutoring center last year. She was one of a group of tutors and other student workers who hated me because I was trying to improve the standard of tutoring that was offered, and I refused to sign their time sheets for four-hour shifts when, in fact, they showed up for only one or two. Anyway, this student and the others made spurious, fictitious complaints about me. They claimed that I cursed and made sexual jokes.

I mean, if they had to run me out of there, at least they could have showed a little creativity and originality. Any fool can bring down a tranny or anyone else who experiences bigotry over his or her identity simply by imputing sex, or the threat thereof, to that person. And said fool can get a cowardly paranoid authoritarian to believe it and to rid the workplace of the clear and present danger.

Yes, that student told those lies to my supervisor and the provost (The tutoring center came under the auspices of the office of academic affairs.) and smiled to my face and pretended that she had nothing to do with the troubles I was experiencing.

If I could've had my way, I would have turned around and never gone back when I saw those students. But I promised that prof I would give the talk. And I didn't want to give ammunition to anyone who may still be trying to get me ousted from the college.

Maybe I still can't set foot in the college without thinking about last year. The job I had then was the worst I ever had, and early in that year, I was attacked as I was leaving the campus. My supervisor and the provost told me to keep quiet about it. And, when my attacker was apprehended, he couldn't be expelled from the campus--he was a student--and no one would tell me his name.

Well, at least I know how it feels to be in a place where victimizers have more rights and protections than the victimized. That knowledge will probably come in handy.

Into the Mist, Prematurely

Today I walked out the doors of the college's main building into a fairly heavy fog. I crossed the street to enter the college's second classroom building. At the opposite end of it is a stone promenade that seperates the campus grounds from a Revolutionary War-era cemetery. Some people are afraid to walk by cemeteries; I find them rather benign. And I thought the promenade would take on a mysterious aura.

But the entrance to that building was locked, so there was no access to the promenade. This meant walking the street that seperates the building from the larger main classroom building. At the end of the block, one passes under a stone trestle of the Long Island Rail Road. (Yes, they spell Rail Road as two words.) Along the way, one passes the old St. Monica's Church building, in which Mario Cuomo was baptized and served as an altar boy. Now it's a daycare center.

Although I was disappointed at not having access to the promenade, I was enjoying the walk. Fine clouds of fog swirled around the streetlamps; the impressions--How can you call anything seen in fog a "reflection?"--made by that light could make even the stones of that church seem unbound by the weight of time.

As I approached the church, I thought I heard a young woman crying. Then I saw her huddled in an almost foetal position on the stairs to the church entrance and another, older, woman standing in front of her.

"Is everything OK?"

"She's OK," the older woman said. "I think she's going into labor," referring to the young woman on the stairs.

"Can I get anything for you?," I asked the young woman.

"No. I need help."

"You called for an ambulance?, " I asked the other woman.

"Yes. They should be here in a couple of minutes," she responded to me and the young woman.

"How does it hurt?," I asked the young woman.

"From my back down to here," she winced as she pointed to her crotch.

"Does it hurt like a menstrual cramp?" the older woman queried.

She nodded. The older woman and I took turns reassuring her that help was on the way. Just then, she grabbed at her crotch.

"A stab of pain?" I asked. She nodded again.

"Just keep on breathing. Breathe deeply. As soon as you feel pain, breath in deeply." I don't know where that came from; the words just came out of my mouth.

She took a deep breath. "Try to relax. Let your breath out as the pain passes through you. Then take another deep breath."

As we continued this impromptu breathing exercise, the older woman said "That was so good of you to stop." I didn't acknowledge her; I continued to talk, as soothingly as I could, to that young woman.

Then a patrol car arrived and the male officer who got out knew he was in the wrong neighborhood, so to speak, when he saw two women standing over a younger woman. The female officer who accompanied him, on the other hand, knew what the young woman needed: to get to a hospital, and reassurance that she was going there.

Another patrol car arrived, but still no ambulance. Then the male officer from the first car decided to take her and the older woman--who, as it turns out, was her aunt--Jamaica Medical Center, the nearest hospital. The older woman and that female officer thanked me as I started to walk away.

I'm not sure of what, exactly, I did or whether it actually helped that young woman. As I entered the subway station, it occured to me that the older woman--and nearly every other woman in the world--had knowledge that I never had, and will probably never have, and could help someone like that young woman in ways I never could.

But I did not feel alienated or put off by any of it. Of course it's satisfying to know that one has done what one could in a situation; I hope only that the young woman and her baby are doing well, whether or not I did anything that helped. I do, however, wish there was more I could have done.

After all, I can hardly imagine anything more terrifying than to suddenly go into labor in a place where one hadn't expected it to happen, and when it happens sooner than the due date. In her case, she's about a month premature: She said she was in the 32nd week of her pregnancy.

From that scene, I walked under the trestle, turned left at the next corner and continued to the stairs of the subway station. The mist was growing finer yet felt heavier against my face. I descended the stairs to the turnstiles, and another flight of stairs to the platform. About ten minutes later, a train arrived; I entered its doors. When I got off, about half an hour later, I walked up the stairs to the street. The air seemed to have grown a bit warmer as a steady rain fell.

Coming In Out of the Cold

Just when I thought I could go anywhere, any time, with nothing between my legs and the world but a couple of microns of nylon, I experienced this day.

I've been out on much colder days than today in sheer pantyhose. But today the cold went straight to my bones, or so it seemed. Maybe today felt even colder than some days we had in January and February because we had warm weather on Friday and Saturday and mild weather yesterday. However, the temperature did drop quickly: I could feel the difference between the time I got on the subway to go to my opthamologist and when I emerged from the station at 23rd Street and Broadway half an hour later. And the wind drove the rain, which became needles that bored the chill into bare and nearly bare skin.

I arrived early for my appointment, so I went to a nearby Walgreen's drug store, where I bought a pair of opaque tights. Actually, I bought four pairs--two black, one each in navy and ivory--because they were on sale at two pairs for five dollars. I ducked into the bathroom of a nearby coffee shop to change; it helped. After that, if the weather wasn't pleasant, at least the cold was tolerable.

Are my hormones surging? I got giggly with Dominick yesterday and was crying last night when I thought about returning to the college. And, I noticed that a couple of my bras seem to fit tighter than they'd previously fit: Could it be that my breasts are growing again?

Now the cold today...At least I'm come in out of it now.


In this life, in this life, in this life,
In this, oh sweet life:
We're (we're coming in from the cold);
We're coming in (coming in), coming in (coming in),
coming in (coming in), coming in (coming in),
Coming in from the cold.

So begins my second-favorite song in the world. Who but Bob Marley could have written or performed it? One wonderful thing about this verse is that it so deftly weaves hope to the difficulties that made him/her seek that hope. There's no doubt that this person wants to live and to love. The song exhorts listeners to the same:

It's you - it's you - it's you I'm talkin' to -
Well, you (it's you) - you (it's you) - you I'm talking to now.
Why do you look so sad and forsaken?
When one door is closed, don't you know other is open?

So what do we learn? Cold kills, but it is not a reason for despair. How can it be, if coming in from it is the first step toward survival--in an profoundly spiritual as well as in a literal sense? I would never have known the joy of becoming myself, of becoming Justine, had I not spent so many years living as someone else.

So what did I learn today from feeling the cold? That it is possible to come in, out of the cold--even if you're outdoors on a cold, windy, rainy day with nothing more than a thin pair of pantyhose on your legs!