Sidestepping Obsession

I've been keeping busy in an attempt to think as little as possible about my upcoming surgery. Yet today it seemed that everything I did or encountered reminded me of it.

Then again, it seems that everyone who knows I'm scheduled for the surgery expects me to think about it all the time. What's really odd, though, is that in spite of my efforts not to think about it, I don't mind when one of my colleagues or friends asks, or simply wants to talk with me, about it. They've all been encouraging; some, like Celeste, have practically been cheerleading.

Could it be that my efforts not to think about the surgery actually have to do with the kind of encouragement I've been getting? Right now, I'm realizing this: Thinking about the surgery on my own, I could very easily turn obsessive, which would lead to all sorts of things. Would I become a Tranny-zilla? (It doesn't have quite the same ring as "Bridezilla," don't you think?) However, I don't see how one could become obsessive over or becuae of the support one receives from others.

Some might tell me that the fact not every one of my waking thoughts concerns the surgery is the very reason why I can be receptive to the advice, support or pure-and-simple kind words I've been receiving, even from people whom I don't know that well.

I still wish my mother were going with me. Originally, my father had planned to accompany us; now I wonder whether how long he will stay out of his chair and the hospital. He insists that his condition has nothing to do with my transition; my mother concurs. I offered not to do the operation if it would make him happy. He wouldn't hear of it: "You've come so far. You're happy. And none of it will change me." In fact, after he said that, I find myself wondering whether he would actually regress if I were to back away from the operation and revert to living as a man.

I plan to do the operation: I not only want it, I owe it to myself. Now I find myself thinking again of Nora in A Doll's House. In the play's final scene, she tells her husband Torvald that if she doesn't fulfill her "sacred" duties to herself, she cannot be of any use to anyone else. Perhaps Dad realizes that; I'm sure Mom does.

As for living as a man: I'm not sure I could do that now, even if I wanted to. And why would I want to? So I can pee while standing up? That stopped being fun when I couldn't hit targets anymore. And, if you're going to do anything against a wall, you can be so much more creative--and have more fun--with a spray can or a magic marker. Besides, urine has DNA in it, or so I would think. So if some law enforcement agents had nothing better to do, they could trace it and come after you.

All right. You didn't come to this blog to read about peeing. You came to read about Pi Ying, the famous Chinese mathematician. I know what you're thinking: If he was so famous, why didn't I hear about him until now? Well, if it makes you feel any better, I'll have you know that I didn't know anything about him, either, until I started writing about him.

On that note, I'm going to bed. Now I wonder whether I'll dream about the operation.

Allegro

So tired right now. Kind of giddy, but tired nonetheless.

This giddiness started yesterday, during my bike ride. Part of it came from simply being in the saddle on a perfect late Spring/early summer day.

The fact that the surgery is now less than a month away in more than enough reason to cheer for me. "Believe me, the time is going to go faster the closer you get to the 7th," advised Robin, Dr. Bowers' office manager. I hope so.

My current euphoria started yesterday with the knowledge that my surgery is one month away. In the afternoon, I went for a bike ride down Cross-Bay Boulevard through Howard Beach and across two bridges to the Rockaway Peninsula. There, I pedalled about five miles of boardwalk and a few blocks worth of local streets to the Atlantic Beach Bridge. Then, I zigged and zagged within sight of the ocean from Long Island's South Shore to Point Lookout. It was late in the afternoon, on a Sunday, so the park at Point Lookout would be either full or deserted. The other day, it was the latter: I had the rock formation--and my "chair" in it--all to myself.

Even a flat tire didn't dampen my mood. It got me home a bit later than I'd planned, but that wasn't the worst thing that could have happened.

Along the way, I stopped for pizza in Howard Beach--probably the best neighborhood in New York these days for the universal food. There, you have a choice between New Park Pizza, which is really old-school with its ultra-thin crust pies, and half-dozen others, including Dino's--where I stopped--all within about three or four blocks. Dino's is my second-favorite, but I stopped there mainly because it's on the same side of Cross Bay I was riding, and because I wanted a slice of their eggplant pizza.

Anyway, I was eating at one of the sidewalk tables right in front of Dino's when a one-legged man hopped out of his car. I am sure that he's accustomed to opening doors and such for himself, but I stopped eating for the moment to open the door for me. He insisted he was OK; I insisted it was OK.

A couple of seconds after I grabbed it, a man who came out of another store stepped over to me and grabbed the door. "Are you going in, miss?"

"Oh, no thank you. I'm fine." He intended to hold the door for me, as well as the one-legged man. In his universe, or at least his presence, a woman does not hold a door for a man, no matter how much more physically able she is.

Maybe I was born in the wrong decade: I will never, ever understand some aspects of etiquette. I certainly don't mean to criticize the man who insisted on holding the door: He was brought up that way and, I would guess, naturally sweet and considerate. And, well, why would I want him to un-learn his behaviors?

I was wearing a light brown pair of camper-style shorts and a T-shirt in a shade of green that might be described in a catalogue as "willow." And I wasn't wearing any makeup. Not so long ago, hearing a man call me "miss" when so attired would have been enough to keep me happy for the rest of the day, or even the rest of the week. I was pleased, but it was about as notable as Liz Taylor or Larry King marrying again.

What made me happy after the encounter with the one-legged man and the door-holder was the realization of just how privileged I am right now. I wish my mother were accompanying me, as she'd planned to do. But the fact that I can get the surgery, that it was Sunday afternoon and I could ride my bike and stop for pizza, that I could pedal along the ocean, made me feel very fortunate. The one-legged man has certainly learned how to cope, and from what I could intuit, seems to be leading a happy and fulfilling life. But, tell me: Who ever loses a limb voluntarily? I, on the other hand, now have the option of changing my body so that it more closely manifests my spirit. It may be late in coming, but coming it is--quickly and, it seems, gayly.

Down to the Last Month

My surgery is scheduled for exactly one month--yes, thirty days--from today.

My final month as...what? A man? I haven't thought of myself that way in a long time. Almost nobody seems to think of me that way anymore. I've been living as a woman, but I am not yet one--at least in the eyes of the Federal government, as well as a lot of other people.

So it's my last month as...what?

I'm thinking now of the time I was given this assignment: To write as if I had one hour left to live.

Marc Crawford, who had some brief fame when he won awards while covering the Civil Rights marches and urban riots of the 1960's, gave the assignment to me and some fellow students in a class he taught. One of my classmates recommended him; the first time I saw him, I wondered what in the world I was getting myself into. So did a lot of other students: After he gave that assignment on the first day of class, about half of them never came back. Of course, that was how Marc wanted it: Those of us who remained were committed (Well, one or two may have ended up in asyla, but I never heard of it!) or at least stubborn. As for me, I knew I wanted to take the class--and to prove Marc, who didn't think I'd return for the second class session, wrong.

I think he never expected to get tenure at Rutgers, so he taught and started and edited a literary magazine his way. At times, I've been tempted to teach his way. But I don't think I could pull it off, and if I did, I'm sure I wouldn't be re-hired--or hired anyplace else.

Sometimes I try to write the way he did, or at least the way he wanted us to write. If Hemingway weren't so testosterone-besotted, he might've written like Marc. And if Marc hadn't been so, well, besotted for so much of his life, he might have lived longer and written more. Or would he?

I, too, spent a large portion of my life besotted. And drugged. And trying to hold in the storm of my gender identity conflict--which may have been caused by a hormonal imbalance. I did not write about any of those things in my "One Hour Left to Live" story. However, it may have been the first time that I so much as intimated that I had feelings for men, and feelings for women that were very different from those experienced by most heterosexual men.

Those feelings were, of course, why I drank so much. That was my mother's first question when I "came out" to her many years later. My conflict was a major cause of my drinking, which I accepted as part of the course of becoming a writer like Marc--or, even better, Dostoevski. Honestly, I never liked Dostoevski so much as a writer--I still don't--as I liked the idea of him: the raging depressed alcoholic jabbing his quill into an inkwell and stabbing his plume against the blank white sheet in the darkness of a Russian winter. To me, that was to Romanticism as Romeo and Juliet was to love stories. I mean, how can you beat Dostoevski as a solitary alienated figure in opposition to--What? The very Russian upper classes who were his potential audience, mainly because at the time they were the only ones in their country who could read?--as a Romantic archetype? Drinking, gambling, womanizing (Does anyone ever manize?): those were the hallmarks of the writer bearing the existential burden of life. Someone like me, in other words.

Well, I got the drinking down. I was never much of a gambler. And I was a bisexual serial monogamist, although hardly what anyone would call a woman- or man-izer. But at least the drinking drowned my sorrows until they learned how to swim. Actually, they knew how to swim all along: They just bobbed under the surface of the water and held their breaths until the tide receded. And, in my infinite writerly wisdom, I figured that if whatever amount I wasn't drinking wasn't enough to drown them, then I had to hit them with a storm surge. No one who gets caught in it survives, right?

As you know, I found my way into Twelve-Step programs and a few self-help workshops. However, even after I got rid of the booze and drugs, and no matter what else I did, I still felt an isolated, misunderstood figure, albeit one who doesn't have the talents of someone like Dostoevski--or Marc.

And now, here I am, starting my "last" month. The difference is, I know I can't do this month in the same ways other people have done it, just as I can't have the same therapeutical or surgical experiences--much less events--as other trans women, not to mention other women--or men. Whatever comes, in spite of all the advice of gotten, I'm still entering a new and (at least for me) unchartered region.

At least I'm not alienated, depressed--or drinking or using illicit drugs.

Meeting During the Last and First Days

Yesterday I mailed cashier's checks for my balances with Dr. Bowers and the hospital in which she practices, Mount San Rafael. After what I did the day before! I hope I don't have any other mishaps between now and my surgery date.

After sending off those checks, I picked up two twenty-pound bags of Iams Light cat food. I have been buying one bag every two months or so since I moved into this neighborhood almost seven years ago. Al, the balding and tatooed proprietor, looks like someone you would expect to see fishing for marlins off Key West. But he's always been sweet and helpful, and commented on my buying two bags: "Stocking up for tough times?"

"I hope not."

"These'll last you a while."

"I know. I'm going to be away for awhile, and I want to make sure my cat-sitter has enough food on hand."

"Where are you going?"

"Colorado."

"Really? What are you going to do there?"

I don't know whether he expected me to say "mountain bike," "hike," "smoke herbs" or something else. But he met me as Nick, so I figured the truth was safe with him: "I'm getting my operation."

He paused, and looked at me. "You mean, you haven't had it yet?"

"Oh, no. I've been living as I am in preparation for it."

He looked at me again. "Wow! You must be really happy. You look it. Congratulations!"

"Thank you. "

He carried the bags to the door and asked how I was going home. "I was going to take a cab or car service." He then hailed a gray Lincoln Town Car driven by a man from India.

"Good luck."

"Thank you."

People who met me at the very end of my life as Nick have been some of the most interesting people of all to observe. Millie is one of them; so are most of the other people I know in this neighborhood. Millie has been about as good a friend as anybody could be to me; the man who owns the pet store is another. And I met another, whom I hadn't seen in a couple of years, today.

Lorna is a very funny--in a New York Jewish way--curly-haired administrator and part-time instructor at LaGuardia Community College. I worked there for three years--the first as Nick. I know I met her during those last days as a boy because she ran the college's English as a Second Language (ESL) Center, and anyone who teaches English, as I did, in a college like LaGuardia, where the majority of the students are ESL, deals with the ESL office or program.

When I saw Lorna again today, we caught up on what we've been doing: She got married; I got my current position at my current college. She talked about some of my former colleagues, some of whom I'd like to see again. And I mentioned my upcoming surgery.

She actually looked surprised. That surprised me, because I literally made my transition right before her eyes, and those of the colleagues she mentioned. Since I talked to practically all of my colleagues, and many of my students, about my change, they knew that I hadn't yet had my surgery, for I hadn't taken hormones or lived as a woman long enough to be approved for the procedure--not to mention that I didn't have the money.

Maybe she just assumed that I had the surgery during the time I didn't see her. But what I found even more surprising is that neither of us talked about those days. It's as if she never knew me any other way but how I am now. And that may have been the reason why I didn't feel nostalgia or bitterness when I walked up and down the corridors at LaGuardia.

So what was I doing there?, you ask. Well, a dance recital was held there today to commemorate the 100th birthday of the Queensboro (a.k.a. 59th Street) Bridge. Yes, it's the bridge in Simon and Garfunkel's song, and it's steps away from the college. Anyway, the majority of the program consisted of dances choreographed by Michio Taminaka, a neighbor and friend whom I met through Millie. She insists that we call her Tami.

The think I like so much about Tami's dances is that they are expressions of the spirit that inspires movement rather than bodily movements made to express some idea or another. If I remember correctly, Rodin once said that he was expressing reves au pierre--dreams of stone. Likewise, Tami seems to bring to life dreams in movement. Although it is very emotional and reflects a certain kind of romanticism, it is not of the sort that borders on--or tilts into--ephemerality and sentimentality that one finds in the works of someone like Balanchine.

And so her choice of dancers is something Balanchine would never have dared. He once said, in essence, that he wanted his ballerinas to be like the core of an apple: the whiter and thinner, the better. On the other hand, Tami casts people of just about every skin tone and body type you can imagine. In fact, my favorite of her dancers is someone who I believe is Latina and rather diminutive and even a bit stocky, though not a porker. The way she expresses her spirit reminds me of those rather husky-voiced jazz chanteuses whose singing can give you more of an education in love, loss and human nature than any PhD program or seminary ever could. What they were doing, of course, was channeling their own sometimes-harrowing lives. I suspect the dancer I'm talking about has survived a few things herself.

Tami and I have talked about collaborating on a dance: She wants me to write because she likes my work and that being a transgender woman has given me a particular kind of insight to what we plan to base our work on. That's as much as I'm going to say about it for now.

Tami didn't know me as Nick. In fact, she says she didn't even know that I ever lived as male until I mentioned that part of my life. "I simply cannot imagine you that way!," she claimed.

Other people have said that, too. One of them is a student who's in the class I'm teaching now. She was also in the composition class I taught last spring. That is where I first met her. I would guess that she's in her mid to late 30's and I know that she comes from one of the Caribbean islands, has kids, works as a paraprofessional in an elementary school and is active in her church. She is one of the best students I've had so far; she says I am the best prof. Someone who's such a good student doesn't need to say things like that! ;-)

This was her reaction when she learned that I am transgendered: "God made you, too. You are equal to everyone else he created, so I cannot and will not judge you."

Turns out that some of the students in the class I'm teaching this month are there because she told them about me. And she wants to take another class with me. Of course I'd be happy to work with her again.

The other night, she stayed for a couple of minutes after class to talk about the assignment I'd returned. Then we started to talk about other things, when her cell phone signalled. "That's my husband. He's picking me up."

"Good man!"

"I've told him all about you."

"He's not worried?"

"He worries about everything."

"Did you tell him you're talking to a female prof?"

"Then he'll accuse me of being a lesbian," she intoned with a conspiratorial wink.

"Who to better understand what a woman wants?" We giggled as she walked out the door.

I was not expecting that exchange, especially not from her. Even more unexpected, for me, was the ease of her banter. Looks like I have to give up another stereotype: this one about religious people.

Now, the kinds of people I've been meeting in my last days, so to speak, have me wondering what kinds of relationships I'll have with the people I meet for the first time after my surgery.

The Doctor's Not Getting Paid Today

Today I went to the bank so I could buy a cashier's check for the remainder of my surgery cost. Well, I was feeling excited, and my heart skipped a beat (To my doctor: I am speaking figuratively!) as I walked up to the counter and told the teller, a nice young man, that I wanted to pay for the check from my savings account. "I can't remember the account number."

"Do you have your ATM card and an ID?"

"Yes, I do." I scooped into my handbag: cellphone, keys, cosmetics bag, work ID--but no wallet.

I shook the bag. Still no luck. Then I probed my tote bag, in which I was carrying a book, an umbrella and a folder full of my students' papers. Still no luck.

"Uh...Let me check one more time." Another shake of the bags. Still no wallet. I looked up at him, sheepishly.

"Miss, Do you have your ID?"

"I left it home." I could feel my face growing flush. "At least, I hope I did." Even though I knew, or was almost entirely certain, that I had indeed forgotten my wallet--something I don't recall having done, at least not in a long time--I still panicked. The young teller could see it.

"It's OK, Miss. Just come back whenever you're ready."

Three other tellers were working alongside him. It seemed that they all saw, or at least heard, our exchange. I felt as if the eyes of everyone in that bank, everyone along the Steinway Street strip; everyone, everywhere was watching me.

But the teller's tone was not mocking or condescending. Actually, his voice was soothingly sympathetic. Maybe he took pity on me. If he did, what did he see? A middle-aged or older woman slipping into senility or dementia? Or just a basic dumb blonde?

Of course, I had no choice but to return home, where I indeed had left my wallet. But by that time, it was too late to return to the bank: I had to go to work. So, I guess I will return to the bank tomorrow. Maybe I'll have the same teller. Then again, the others will probably be there.

I hope I don't forget my wallet, or do something equally ditzy, when I'm leaving for my surgery!

On My Way

The record-keeping department at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center sent my EKG to Dr. Bowers--finally! Jamie, who has worked at C-L for some time, took over that department and he was able to overcome the fact that someone lost--again!--the release form I signed more than a month ago, on the day I had the EKG and my HIV test.

Now all I have to do is pay the balance I have left with Dr. Bowers. And, hopefully, there won't be any more snafus. I wish only that someone was going with me: Today Mom told me she and Dad definitely won't. I knew that, but she finally admitted it. I can't blame her: Four days after being released from the hospital, Dad is behaving exactly as he did before: He's sitting in his chair with a blanket over his head. Who knows what will happen next?

Some of you might say it's not my job, but I feel that somehow I can say or give something to him that will help him to climb out of the abyss into which he's been sinking. Two metaphors come to mind for what he seems to be experiencing: meltdown and cancer.

I actually told him that his depression is a bit like the latter: I think he is correct in believing that it's within him and that he can't do anything about it. (One doctor told him, as I suspected, that's it's biochemical and possibly hereditary.) But, he can keep it in remission, so to speak, and live with it. Just as there are no "magic bullet cures"--or cures of any other kind--for cancer (at least not yet), there's nothing that will destroy the black hole within him that's feeding on everything else that's in his mind. But he can stop it, freeze it, or otherwise render it powerless, at least for some time--long enough for him to be the good husband and father he laments not having been.

For a long time, I thought I was a naturally depressive person. After all, of the first 44 years of my life, I was depressed for at least 35 of them, by my reckoning. Even when I was doing well and behaving with some sort of relative social grace, I thought there was a kind of tornado within me that imploded and sucked in potential relationships and accomplishments. I thought about suicide all the time--every day from almost the very earliest part of my childhood until I started taking the steps toward my transition. But, I believe, the reason I never did it was that I felt that vacuum, that black hole in me was so powerful that not even my own death could fill it. I mean, if everything and everyone else I destroyed, whether actively or through neglect, couldn't sate that voracious whirlpool of obsidian quicksand, how could anything about my own life or death quell it?

But, thank goddess, that left me when I started my transition and became a memory--though a still-vivid one. So, perhaps, I didn't suffer from true clinical depression, or at least the kind my father seems to have.

Still, I feel as if I have some role in helping my father recover--and in helping my mother weather all of this--but I'm not sure that I'm playing it. I'm drawing upon my own experiences, but am I conveying to him any wisdomI have gained from them, if indeed there is any to be had, much less any that applies to him.

Maybe I'm being grandiose. Perhaps I am just replaying the guilt I felt for so long--and sometimes still feel--over Cori's suicide. I think she knew, deep down, that I felt what she did--or the closest approximation to it that anyone she knew felt--yet I could not acknowledge it to myself, and wouldn't have even if I could have.

I can't help it. I'm getting to live the sort of life I've wanted, and I want to see others do the same, whatever they happen to envision for themselves. I guess the difference is that my father has never envisioned a life for himself--or so it seems. I don't think he could even tell you what his "dream life" would be, aside from living in California and having a red '57 Chevy. (I once promised him that if I ever became fabulously wealthy, I'd buy him one. That promise still holds.) Maybe he doesn't even dream of those things anymore.

As for Mom, well, I think the extent of her wishes right now is for Dad to get better and to be a loving husband, and to see more of her children and grandchildren. She really never wanted that much in the way of material possessions: She always wanted to have an attractive and comfortable house, but she was never interested in status. I think I have inherited those qualities from her.

But, really, as strong a person as she is, she wants a man who is there for her. Like me, she cries sometimes when she's tired. I think all she ever really wanted was for Dad to be the shoulder she could cry on and the arms that would hold her. And, yes, I inherited that from her, too. Neither of us cares much about looks, although I admit that Dominick is cute and I take some pride in being with a man who's so physically attractive. But it's not his looks that attract me, it's the way he looks at me, and the way I can look at him.

Mom is a much better human being than I could ever hope to be if I were to live ten lifetimes. So why can't she have what, basically, simply came my way? I did nothing to earn or deserve it. But I've got it, and I ain't lettin' go. I'm on my way.

Hearing My "Secret"

The other day, I was returning home from a bike ride. It wasn't a long ride--about 30 miles or so--but through most of it, a rather stiff wind rushed at me head-on or at my side. It seemed that I never had the wind at my back. And I was riding my fixed-gear bike, so I couldn't shift into an easier gear.

On a fixed-gear bike, which is what racers ride on enclosed tracks, if the wheels move, so do the pedals. So the bike doesn't move unless you pedal it, and it doesn't allow you to coast. I chose to ride that bike because I had intended to ride a flat route to and along the ocean, from Rockaway Beach to Coney Island.

By the time I got to Coney Island, I was toast. And it was very late in the afternoon. So I decided to get on the subway to come home.

The "F" train is probably the most direct way back to my place. But I like to take the "D," which winds and curves along an old stretch of elevated track along New Utrecht Avenue in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bensonhurst and Borough Park. That is where I lived until I was about thirteen years old, when my family moved to New Jersey.

That line offers some of the most sweeping views of the Verrazano Narrows and Bridge, as well as of the solid and, oddly enough, charming brick row houses in two of the last blue-collar New York neighborhoods.

Also: Underneath the elevated tracks near the Bay Parkway station, one of the most famous movie scenes was filmed: the chase in The French Connection. I'm not normally a fan of that sort of thing, but because it was done so well--and the movie was so good--and, well, let's face it, I have pride in my roots--I enjoyed that scene.

Anyway...The D train was re-routed due to track work. The change wasn't announced until the doors were closed and the train was about to pull out of the station. So, instead of those vistas I mentioned, I was treated to panoramae of weather-stained concrete walls along the stretches of track between the dilapidated stations of the N line, where the D was re-routed. There is one neat feature about that line, though: It runs below ground level, but under an open sky.

Then the D train returned to its normal route after crossing the Manhattan Bridge to Grand Street in Manhattan's Chinatown. Ironically enough,a few minutes and three stations later, I would transfer to the actual N train at the 34th Street-Herald Square Station.

Somewhere along the way to Queens, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone I sometimes see on the street. Actually, she called out to me: I sat at the end of one of the long benches near the rear of the subway car with my bike propped by a railing and my right hand, and she stood near the other end of the car, which had filled up by that time, with a friend.



Since we live only a block from each other, we disembarked at the same station: Broadway in Astoria. From there, it's about a ten-minute walk back to my place. Along the way, Lucy and I talked and she commented on how she hadn't seen much of me lately. I commented that I was busy with work and other things. Then we talked about things that are to come in our lives.



I have bumped into Lucy from time to time for the past several years. She is pretty and has a warm, contagious smile. And, in every encounter that I can recall--including the one I am describing--we parted with a hug and a kiss. Being the emotional person that I am, I very much enjoy that.



When we've talked, it's been more about how we felt than what we were doing or had done. More than one person has said that is more or less typical of conversations between women. It's more of a conveyance of emotion rather than a report of actions or happenings. So, while we knew a bit about each other, we didn't know the details of each other's lives.



Until the other day, that is. You might say that I "came out" to her: I mentioned that I am about to have my surgery. Although she knew that I've never been a typical woman--much less a typical man--that revelation surprised her. Although she never knew me when I was still living as Nick, she said that, because of some of the people she's met, she "thought" I was undergoing a gender transition: She could see it in the softening of my facial features and that I've grown something like breasts. But, in all of the time we've known each other, neither of us said a word about my change. It just happened that way.


After we parted, with an even heartier embrace than usual, I felt both relieved and a little sad. There was something almost innocent about our not having talked about my transition or upcoming surgery, but at the same time, I was happy to know that I could share my "secret" with her.



Today she sent me an e-mail in which she thanked me for being "open" about myself. I am glad she appreciates that, but all I really did was to share something true about myself. To me, she's really the one who's being "open."



Not that I'm complaining! :-)

The Last Course And Sleep

So...This was the first day of the summer session--and of the final course I'll be teaching before my surgery.

It's called "Understanding Literature," and everyone in the college, regardless of his or her major, must take it some time after completing English composition. Of the twenty-one students who came to class, four were in my composition class in the spring semester, and one came from one of my fall semester classes. One is among the best students I've had, but I'm happy to see all of them.

This is the first time I'm teaching the course in three years. Perhaps it will be a come-down after the Hip-hop class I taught in the spring. But Understanding Literature, a.k.a. English 200, was my favorite general-education course to teach. I have a pretty fair amount of freedom in what I can do; the only stipulations are that I use the textbook/anthology that the department has mandated and give a final exam, which I create and grade. Of course, nobody expects us to cover all of the works of literature that are in the book. So I tend to emphasize poetry, since that is what I enjoy most.

I'm really glad to be teaching the course. For one thing, I'll make a little more money. But, perhaps even more important for me, it keeps me engaged with people and my mind occupied for at least part of the day. As you can imagine, I've been thinking about my upcoming surgery about as much as I used to think about sex when I was full of testosterone. Sex, food, sex, poetry, sex, bicycling, sex, what's she wearing?, sex, wish I could wear it, sex, sleep...

I've been told that I actually thought about sex less than the average male. Now that's a scary thought. I don't think about as sex as much as I did. Actually, I like that: It's nice to think about other things. Like the surgery. And my parents' health. And....

Before I began to take hormones, I read--and heard from my doctor--that they might decrease my sex drive. (Transmen who take "T" get hornier, from what I've heard.) Then again, sex drive tends to decrease at about the age at which I started my transition anyway. So, I feel even more certain that I haven't made a sacrifice, at least in that department, to live the life I want.

Of course a perfect lady is not supposed to have a huge sex drive. At least, she shouldn't seem to have one. For me that's great: If I want to be a slut at heart, it's a perfect cover. That wouldn't be such a change for me, really: Being an altar boy and a good student allowed me to get away with a pretty fair amount of mischief, albeit of the more subtle varieties.

What's that old Yiddish saying?: A lady on the streets, a nafkeh (sp?) between the sheets. Or something like that. I guess I'd rather be that than a nafkeh on the streets and a lady between the sheets.

For a few weeks after the surgery, I won't have any choice, really, but to be a lady between the sheets, and--however ungracefully--on the streets. It's a bit difficult to do otherwise when you're healing.

It really must be late if I started talking about my class and ended up where I just left off. So I'll go to bed now. To sleep, perchance to dream: Now there's something the anaesthesiologist could say to me as my passage begins. But I can't let him/her do that. Putting people to sleep while quoting Shakespeare: That's my job. Just don't tell anyone I try not to do that in my classrooms. I mean, put people to sleep.

G'night, all.

Sensing That I'll Soon Be Leaving (for my surgery)

So...One month and one week until my surgery. Two units of time that aren't hard to fathom: How many things in our lives are done weekly or monthly? Some of us get paid on one of those schedules or the other; most of us pay bills by the latter schedule. And, well, let's say that even after my surgery, there is one thing I still won't be able to do that other women do--involuntarily--every month.

After a bike ride to and along the ocean, from the Rockaways to Coney Island, I came home and made myself dinner. After eating, I sat in my over-stuffed chair and watched Cold Case. Before I could lose myself in the details of the story, Charlie climbed onto the chair, and me. Then he curled himself upright against my torso and propped his head on my shoulders. He wriggled, trying to find the perfect position; upon finding it, he closed his eyes and purred deeply. It was better than any vibra-massage chair; soon I found myself dozing off.

He's normally a very friendly cat, but lately I notice that when he climbs onto me, he doesn't want to let go. I don't mind that; in fact, I enjoy it. I would have let him rest on me all night if I didn't have to get up from that chair.

I wonder whether he senses the imminence of my operation. Maybe he thinks I'm going to leave him for a long time or, perhaps, that I won't come back. I will actually be away for about a week and a half and, well, I hope it's not longer than that. Surgical techniques have improved so that I don't expect it to be a major risk, though I still worry about being under anaesthesia.

Whatever's going on, I hope he's not signalling danger or trouble for me--or advancing age and declining health for him. Something in me said, "Maybe he's trying to tell me his days are numbered. "

Whatever it is, he's welcome to climb on me--as long as I'm not wearing a black wool skirt, of course!

And yes, Max, you have the same rights and privileges: All kitties are equal in my house!

Off to sleep again, to the sound and feel of purring.

A Journey and a Language

A quiet day today. I slept until almost 1:00 this afternoon; I can't remember the last time I did that when I wasn't jet-lagged. And I'm starting to feel sleepy again. I don't think I'm coming down with anything, and I don't think I'm falling into the kind of depression my father has experienced--or any depression at all.

I didn't do anything earth-shaking: Took a skirt to the dry-cleaner, mailed a package and shopped in the weekly farmer's market on Roosevelt Island. I was rather surprised that they were still there when I arrived: they normally run out of most of their produce fairly early in the afternoon. They still had some mushrooms: the best I've found in this area. However, they'd run out of cherries. Victor, one of the men who runs it, expressed the disappointment I was feeling. However, he offered some consolation: Although the cherries were at least as good as they were last week, they're still not locally-grown: Those won't come in for another couple of weeks, at least. Still, I was a bit disappointed: Cherries are one fruit I very much look forward to finding and eating late every spring and early every summer. In January, there are cherries and other fruits from South America. They're perfectly good, just not as fresh as the domestic produce.

So, today was a warm, sunny day on which I didn't go for a bike ride. (Well, I rode to the dry cleaner and the market, but that doesn't count.) At one time that would have infuriated me; woe would betide whoever asked me to spend such a day with him or her rather than in the saddle. What woe would betide them? They'd have to put up with me, in the kind of mood into which I'd sink.

Yesterday, through the graduation ceremony and the reception that followed, this image played through my mind: That I had been looking at a map that showed roads that led to the ocean, and I was nearing the end of one of those roads. I have been on more than a few trips in which the destination was the sea, including one in which I landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport and my only itinerary was to ride my bike to the ocean. After about a week and a half of pedalling through some lovely countryside and stopping in various chateaux, musees and pretty towns and provincial capitals--and a bend in the Garonne river, where it begins to open itself toward the sea--I arrived at the duned shores near Bordeaux.

I remember that particular bend, not only because it's a lovely place, but also for an older couple I met there. They had to be one of the most contented pairs I've ever encountred. I imagined that they had been living near that bend all of their lives, mainly because I could not imagine them in any other place. Why? I had arrived late in the afternoon or early in the evening, depending on how you keep (or spend) time. We talked a little; they were fascinated that someone from the other side of the ocean would come to their part of the world to ride a bicycle. And said etrangere could speak French reasonably well! If I recall correctly, they spoke no language other than their own. And, really, it was all they would need: what they knew about that place really couldn't have been described in any other way.

As we talked, the man nudged me: Voir! Voir! He pointed to the water: What looked like an oceanic tide rushed toward the bank where we stood. Deux fois chaque jour, his wife explained: Twice a day, the tide comes in to their bend in the river, about 20 miles inland from the sea.

That's the sort of thing the tour books don't mention. And it's one of those things you can only find on a journey to the ocean, precisely because there is no way to predict that you will find such a thing.

I don't know why I was thinking about all of that during the graduation and reception. I guess those new graduates were arriving at the ocean, a seemingly infinite and chimeric expanse stretching before them: one that is familiar yet almost never understood in its own voice, which can only be understood, much less mastered, through intimate experience with it. Schooling has given students the means for making maps and boats, if you will. But, as necessary as they are, they are the phrases that allow approach and entry; really learning about the sea requires living with it.

You might be say I am also describing my own situation, as my surgery date nears. I know why I am undergoing the surgery and I have visions of what I want my life to be like afterward. However, I also know that there's so much before me that I don't and can't know; I think I might be speaking, in effect, a different language once I get there.

When you understand something in its own language, you change. I wonder how I will change.

Graduations

Today: College commencement. Some of the graduates were students of mine, whether during the semester that just ended or in earlier ones. After the ceremony and the reception that followed, I went to my office to take care of a few things. To tell you the truth, I didn't want to leave: Somehow this day's events were some of the clearest signals that this part of my life will soon end. What I always wanted is near enough that I can practically taste it, but I think that today I realized, at least to some degree, what I've learned and what I've gained (besides weight) during the nearly six years that I've been living as Justine.

Two students--one whom I hadn't seen in more than a year--gave me two of the warmest embraces I've ever received from people who were not relatives or intimate friends. They both said they've read entries on this blog. I didn't ask--but now I'd love to know--how they found out about it.

Sharon took three classes with me. Before that, she took a workshop I taught on the test everyone in the college has to pass in order to continue into her or his junior year. She recommended me to quite a few of the students who've taken my classes since I first met her. I don't think I've ever seen a more committed student: She managed to keep up with her studies even as she was working, raising two kids and giving birth to another. And she moved during the middle of the second course she took with me.

Actually, she graduated last year. But she came to today's ceremony because friends of hers were receiving their degrees. I don't think those friends could do anything but go to school and graduate as long as Sharon is in their lives: I've seen very few people who can motivate people the way she does. I know I was a better teacher when she was in the classroom.

I probably will see her again after the surgery, and I may see her before it. However, I saw many other students--and a few faculty and staff members--whom I won't see again , at least before my surgery and the Fall semester. They all seemed to know about my impending surgery and were offering me words of encouragement. A few even said I've "inspired" them. To what, they didn't say, mainly because I didn't ask. I never knew I could have such an efffect on anybody!

Another of those students is Tiffany. She took my hip-hop class; before that, she took Writing for Business with me. Talk about two different kinds of courses! Two of her friends, whom I'd never met before, accompanied her. "We've heard all about you!," they both exclaimed.

"Whatever Tiffany says..."

"Is the truth," she replied to me.

Tiffany, like Sharon, is a student I anticipate seeing, or hearing from, again. At least, I hope so. Another similarity between them, as you may have guessed, is their commitment to their studies.

And there is another similarity...aside from being African-American women of roughly the same age: They inspired me. There were days I simply did not want to go to the college; once I was in the classroom, however, I remembered why I was there.

It has at least partly to do with the satisfaction I get from helping people like Sharon and Tiffany to achieve their goals and to think beyond whatever boundaries they may not have even known they had. (I think most, if not all, people have such boundaries. Sometimes I think my life has been a process of discovering them, and at least sometimes, breaking them.) The funny thing is that they were helping me to learn the same thing for myself. That may be reason why, in teaching that hip-hop class, I was--at least for the time I was in that class--not conscious of any of the labels anyone may have affixed to me: "white," "transgendered," (or other, less polite, terms), "middle-aged," or even "professor." Sure, I made jokes about them, but I feel that it is a way of working beyond those boundaries.

In other words, I feel that, thanks to people like Sharon and Tiffany, I've learned that I can actually live and work by my spirit, my essence, rather than by mere expectations.

Is that what my real change--my "graduation," if you will--is?

After seeing them, I got to spend the evening with Dominick. Talk about change for the better!

Forty Days, Beginning With Graduation

Forty days. That's how much time stands between me and my surgery.

Forty days and forty nights. A rather fine, if chilly, mist wrapped itself around this day as if to keep it from following the sun into the new season. Now that mist has turned into rain. It seems that we've already had forty days of rain; I hope we won't have forty more. Otherwise, some guy with a long beard might start to build a big wooden boat in Socrates Sculpture Park. And it won't be art for art's sake.

Forty days...I'll be spending fifteen of them in a class I'm teaching in June. It ends on the 24th; I'll have a few days left before I go to Trinidad. Dominick says I should take a trip somewhere, preferably to some Caribbean resort. The idea of taking a trip tempting, but my finances may not permit it. Besides, I just may have more to do during those last few days than I now realize. And, quite honestly, I've never had any interest in going to some tropical island so I can fry myself on a beach full of tourists: the kinds of people I could meet in a Long Island or New Jersey mall. There's plenty of ocean here and in other places, thank you. And I need only to take a bus ride, not a plane trip, to a mall.

Tomorrow some of my students will graduate. So will a few hundred other students at the college. Some of them have jobs; some are already working. The rest, I don't envy.

The year I graduated--1980--also featured a tight labor market. Actually, the labor market had been so for about a decade: almost half of my life up to that point. Some of us were scared out of doing things we actually wanted to do. In my case, they were writing and teaching--and going to graduate school. Jobs for high-school English teachers were scarce; college faculty positions were all but non-existent and no one knew when or if the situation would change. For me--and, I'm sure, other students--it provided a good rationale for "taking time off from" school. Like most of my peers, I was tired of being a student: It's what I'd been doing since I was four years old. And I knew that at some time in the future (Is that just a nice way of saying "Not now! Not now!"?), I would become a student again. How or why, I didn't know.

More than a decade later, I did indeed return to school, for a master's degree. In a way, it was easier than my undergraduate schooling: I didn't have to take courses in subjects like math. I graduated with honors; a few people urged me to continue my schooling and earn a Ph.D. I told them, "Maybe later." Once again, I was tired of being a student, even though the master's degree took only two years to complete.

This semester I took a PhD level course and realized that it wasn't for me. Actually, I knew that even before I took the course, but my department chair and a couple of other people egged me into taking it. At least now I can better explain why I'm not interested in pursuing further study. I guess that counts for something.

For now, I have to prepare for the next steps in my life. As far as I know, I can't learn that in any classroom.

On My Way To A Gynecologist

Well, at least my father seems to be getting help now. As a result, my mother is so much calmer than she was the other day. I don't know quite what will happen to my father, but it has to be better--for him and Mom--than what he had been experiencing.

Mom remarked that he was "seeing so many doctors" and "they were all pushing another drug on him." I think the last things in the world he or she want are more drugs and more doctors; although she was talking about Dad's situation, she could just as easily have been describing her own. The difference, of course, is in the drugs that were prescribed: no psychoactives or psychotropics for Mom. Even so, she's expressed her belief that the doctors were "just pill-pushers."

I feel so lucky. Today I went to what is--barring something unforeseen--my last visit to my regular doctor before my surgery. My experience with Dr. Tran--who insists that I call him "Richie"-- has been almost the exact opposite of my parents' experiences with their doctors: He actually seems reluctant to prescribe pills. That's how I prefer things, anyway: Even when I was slogging through my worst depression, before my gender transition, I didn't want to take medications, and I never did. Perhaps my own struggles with substance abuse made me wary of any sort of drug, even a legitimate one. Believe it or not, that was one of my self-imposed obstacles against starting my hormone regimen.

Isn't it ironic?: I abused alcohol and other drugs, in part, not to deal with my gender identity and sexuality issues. After recovering from my addictions, I didn't want to take any drugs or medicines at all, in part to assure myself of my virility. ("Only sissies need that shit.") Then, I was reluctant to start taking hormones because I didn't want to acknowledge the woman that I am. Now I've embraced her, and all she needs.

Soon she--I--will have another need, which my doctor anticipated. He prescribed an appointment for me with a gynecologist, which the receptionist/secretary scheduled for 27 July: almost two weeks after I return home from my surgery.

A gynecologist. Now there's a first for me. Of course, I knew that sooner or later I'd need one. But I hadn't thought about it; somehow it seemed even more distant than my surgery seemed when I set the date for it.

But there was something about the way Dr. Tran--excuse me, Richie--said "appointment with the gynecologist" that made it seem like a marker of some sort. Ironically enough, the calmness of his demeanor and the softness of his voice conveyed the significance of it to me: He knows that I'm entering what is, in some ways, still uncharted territory in spite of the preparations I've made to examine and prepare myself for it.

As I was making the appointment, I understood why it seemed like a line of demarcation: It was a signal that I was indeed on my way to entering the gender and world I've always felt the need to inhabit. I am now 41 days away from my surgery, but I feel that I moved even closer to it today than in the past few weeks. Not that I felt I wasn't progressing toward the surgery; rather, the leap I seem to have taken today alone brought me closer to my trip to Trinidad than everything I did during previous weeks.

A result is that I feel less like I'm leaving some things--namely, my rather long life as a male and a shorter time living as a transwoman, or a woman transitioning toward her surgery and the life that, I hope, it will enable.

Yes, I am on my way. (I hope!) The gynecologist's offices will be one of my first stops on the other side. I talked to three of her patients, who rave about her. So does Richie.

Everyone assures me that I have nothing to worry about: I'm on my way.

Playing Chicken With a Rainstorm

Today I took another ride up to the George Washington Bridge, then down River Road through Bergen and Hudson counties to the Jersey City waterfront, where I allowed my mind to flicker and ripple languidly like the surface of the river that channels glass and steel reflections on either shore as they fill with schools driving toward the same wrecks at the bottom of the day's currents and disgorge those same schools-- some of whose members are full-- at the end of the day.

And it was about the end of the day when I arrived on the network of piers and promenades that form a kind of buffer zone between Exchange Place and the Hudson River, only a few miles from where it meets the ocean. I thought I felt a couple of raindrops; through my ride, I felt myself tempting the rain that the forecasters said was a possibility. A couple more drops here and there, as I rode behind Liberty's back to the Bayonne Bridge, where a boy with a girl and a skateboard declared, "I love your colors, lady--on your helmet and your bike."

Well, kid, if you ever see me again, you know what my favorite color is. Now as for my dress size, my age or any other personal information, you'll have to get to know me just a little better!

I did something silly, though I didn't realize it until well after I'd gotten home and eaten dinner: I forgot to bring my cellphone with me. Yesterday, during my brief ride, I cried and, as I was about to go to Millie's house, I found out how dire my parents' situation had become. In spite of that, I felt invigorated, even giddy at times, as I rode and took my leisure in the shadow of a tower on the bank of a river. It's as if I knew Millie and Dominick were right: Everything would be OK; I would be OK.

Except, somehow I felt that I didn't need the future conditional tense. Things were not going to be all right; they were in the process of becoming all right. I learned of this after I discovered my mistake and turned on my phone.

Mom had called me twice to say my father is in a hospital, and, from the sound of things, he was getting help. When I called her back, she seemed calmer and more relaxed than she has in some time. For the first time in months, she has at least some hope of having not only her own life again, but something like a partnership rather than the relationship of a parent whose kid won't listen to her and, in doing so, finds ways to make himself miserable.

Hearing from her--specifically, hearing what I heard from her--was as reassuring, at least for now, to me as the light rain that fell unaccompanied by wind or thunder as the boat plowed its way through waters that had become choppier in front of Liberty, at the point where the Hudson roils into the New York Bay--and, from there, into the ocean.

Perhaps some of us are soothed and reassured by soft rain and mist because we spend our lives, wittingly or not, playing chicken with storms. Lovely as those brief showers are, they can no more prepare us for hard rain and squalls than the clearest skies can. We fall asleep to the drizzle, to the intermittent showers, and the storms seem to come without warning.

My storms--which were not as severe as the ones some other people have experienced--have, through their accumulations and erosions, built something that may not be as formidable of the Statue of Liberty. But they made an individual as, if I say so myself, distinctive as the Statue in the harbor is. And a lot happier, even through the storms I've experienced recently.

I hope that my parents have an experience like that. Especially Mom: She so deserves it!

And, yes, I still hope that she'll be with me in Trinidad after all.

It Continues On Memorial Day

Around noon, I went out for a bike ride. How couldn't I?: The day was gorgeous and I was going to a barbeque at Millie's, where I expected to take in more than a few calories.

I got home around 1:45, took a shower and dried my hair. Then I heard the signal on my cell phone that indicates someone left a message. Someone turned out to be Mom, who sounded even more distressed than she has lately. However, her message was equally disturbing: Dad wanted to talk to me.

I called. He answered and said he wanted to ask about withdrawal from drugs, about which I know a bit. It seems that one doctor doesn't know what the other has prescribed for him, and every doctor he visits prescribes something else. He decided to stop taking all of the prescriptions except one.

He's spiralling even deeper into his depression. Just before he called, he'd written notes to Mom, me, my brothers and other people, and called the VA hotline. Now he's worried that because the counselor recorded the call, as she is required to do, that record could harm him. How, he couldn't say. If anything, I advised him, it might help him to get the help he actually needs.

But he lapses into the same monologue I've been hearing for weeks: He "doesn't see an end to it" and that he has "nothing to look forward to, no motivation to do anything." He admits he is "driving people away" and "destroying" Mom with stress. I haven't seen her since Christmastime, but I would not be surprised to see that she's aged another ten years since then. She sounds that way over the phone.

She and Dad insisted that my impending surgery has "absolutely nothing" to do with their current emotional states. Dad even said, "It's what you need to do to be happy; don't feel guilty."

Yesterday, he told me, "I foresee a tragedy coming." I pointed out to him--and, afterward, Mom, that it was the first time I had ever heard him use the word "tragedy." I tried to get him to talk more about this, but he claimed he didn't know what it was or even what it might look like. "Does it involve death?" I asked.

He hedged. "I dunno."

"Well, that's what a tragedy is: a death. Is that what you mean?"

"It'll be a disaster."

"Well, you can survive a disaster, overcome it, even come out better for it. That's not a tragedy."

"But I don't know how to get out of it."

"That's why you need help."

"But nothing's helped."

"You've been to the wrong doctors. They're not equipped to help you in the ways you need. Whatever it is, wherever you have to go, keep trying."

He repeated something he said yesterday: "I want to kill myself. But the reason I don't is that I'm chicken."

"No, it's because you're not."

"What do you mean?"

"As long as you choose to live, you have a chance to heal. If you don't..."

"What would be the difference?"

I mentioned something I've never told him before. "I used to think about killing myself all the time."

"Until your change."

"Yes. But I'm not going to tell you that it's what you need. I don't know exactly what your change will look like. But I know this: You have to choose to live."

"Why?"

"Because I want you. Because Mom wants you. Because my brothers--your sons--and your grandchildren want you."

"For what?"

Another revelation: "Five people in my life have committed suicide. All of them, for problems that could have been solved. It would have taken time, and work. But they could have found a way to work things out. "

"And what difference would it have made?"

"They'd be here. I don't know what their lives would be like, but I can tell you they would all be worthwhile. And--all right, I'm being selfish--I wouldn't've had to carry the wounds they left me. And other people wouldn't have those wounds, either."

Then he lapsed into a lament that's become all too familiar to me and everyone else in the family: He was a bad son, husband and father. I reminded him, as Mom and others have, that he can't do anything about the kind of son he was--although, I continued, he was probably a better son than he realizes, given the kind of father he had. And there's still a chance for him to be a good husband and father. "I, for one, don't care about what you did, or might have done, to me thirty years ago, forty years ago. There's now. And, to tell you the truth, you've been better to me than I ever imagined you would be. "

"Well, thank you."

"No, I thank you. "

"But I'm not like your mother."

"Who is? So why do you have to be like her? After all, I already have her in my life."

"So what can I do?"

"Care. About yourself. About seeing your grandchildren grow up. About your children. About Mom, especially. That's all you have to do. Nobody expects you to start a new career and make lots of money. But, you have to care."



I don't think I had any effect on him, for the conversation ended with his refrain about being a bad son, husband and father, and feeling that he can do nothing about it.



Well, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It seems that this date, 25 May, and today's holiday, Memorial Day, have often been significant for me. (It also just happens to be the birthdate of Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy!) Wonderful, terrible but important things seem to happen for me on this date, and on this holiday.



To wit: This date two years ago was a Friday and the weather unusually hot for the time of year. I'd had lunch with Bruce and, having no place where I had to be, decided to take the D train out to Bensonhurst. I wanted to capture the light and heat of a day like it in that neighborhood: They come without warning, which doesn't allow shadows to form and provide their refuge from the refulgent, relentless sun. The bricks and shingles of the houses trap that light inside them and cling to the heat, which made the sandstone-dry streets of that neighbood seem like ovens.



After spending a couple of hours wandering that neighborhood, at its edge, I came to the Holy Spirit church, where I was an altar boy. I had not stopped for, much less entered, it since 1971. Though it wasn't on my itinearary (as if I had one!), I needed to go there and confront the "ghost" of the priest who sexually abused me.



Four years before that, this date fell on a rainy Sunday that was unusually cold for the time of year. Ruth, a woman with whom I became friendly when I was volunteering at the LGBT Community Center of New York, called and asked whether I wanted to accompany her to PS 1, a gallery and performance space not far from where I live. "Of course," I said. I replied in the same way when she asked whether one of her friends could accompany us.



I was coming to the end of that year when I was going to work as Nick but socializing away from my neighborhood as Justine. So Ruth had only seen me "as" Justine. Her friend, however, turned out to be a colleague at work! Of all co-workers I could have chosen to be the first to learn about my identity, there hardly could have been anyone better than Alice. As long as you're not napalming babies, she can understand and accept just about anything you might do.

After that day, I knew I had no choice but to "come out" to everyone I saw regularly. I had planned to return to work the following semester as Justine, so of course "coming out" was inevitable. I guess that that day, I realized for the first time the inevitability of the life I would come to lead: the one that has led me here. After our visit to PS 1, we walked to a since-closed fish- and -chips restaurant and a movie theatre where we saw some silly flick. On the way, we walked by LaGuardia Community College, where Alice and I worked. No one except a few security guards were there. One of them glanced at us as we walked by the main entrance. He didn't give us a second look; I would bet that as best as he could tell, we were just three women in early middle age. I took that as a good omen.

Let's see...I could choose about seven or eight other May 25ths and Memorial Days that were significant, for better and worse. for me. Here's one: In 1998, when this date fell on a Monday (as it did today) and was Memorial Day, I had set into motion the most desperate series of acts in my life. They comprised the relationship I would come to have with Tammy.



We had spent that weekend together and we took our first "roadtrip" together: to Wave Hill, one of the most beautiful places in New York City, which served as the inspiration and home to a number of artists. It overlooks the Hudson and its many trees and flowers were in full bloom or about to reach that state. It was a great place to spend a late-spring day and to make some attempt to "get myself together" as I understood doing that in those days. I was nearing forty, and clinging on to that last hope that I could live as a heterosexual man. Tammy had no idea that day of what she'd gotten herself into.



As I recall, I met some of Tammy's friends for the first time that weekend. She would later tell me that they remained silent as they knew her ex-husband was sleeping with her female friends. In fact, one of those friends was one of her ex's sexual dalliances. I have not spoken with any of them since Tammy and I split up; I can only imagine what they might have been thinking when they met me.



Two more years when this date fell on a Monday and was Memorial Day: 1992 and 1981. In the former year, I had the first tremors within me that would culminate in the quake, of you will, of having my first flashbacks to my childhood sexual molestations. About three weeks later, I would have a sort of low-grade breakdown and soon afterward, I would talk about those long-ago experiences for the first time. Sometimes I think it's the second step (getting clean and sober was the first) toward recovering my self.



And in 1981, I had come back from France to take care of some business and see family and freinds. That day, I went to Philadelphia with a couple of friends I had at that time and accompanied them back to New Brunswick, NJ (where I attended Rutgers) for a party with some of our common friends and acquaintances.

At that party were, among other people, four of my Rutgers friends: Robert, Amy, Tony and William. That would be the last time I would see any of them alive. Within a few years, all of them would die from AIDS-related illnesses: the first people I knew who suffered such a fate. Sometimes I think of that day, that Memorial Day, as the beginning of "The Last Summer."

Then there was this date in 1991: I had gone to Middletown, NJ, where my parents were living, for a family barbecue. That night, after I got home, I went to an AA meeting, where I saw Kevin in person for the last time. I knew he had various ailments brought on by his then-recently-diagnosed AIDS, and on that day he wasn't looking well at all. Still, he insisted on remaining my sponsor, as long as I wanted him. Bruce advised me to take him up on it, for it would probably help him keep his spirits up, he said.


Two days after that meeting--on Memorial Day-- Robert, whom I last saw at the 1981 party, died. I found this out a few days later, from friends of common friends. By that Christmas, I would lose four other people in my life to AIDS, including Kevin on the day before Christmas Eve. And the younger brother of a woman I dated would be stabbed to death in the hallway of the buiding in which I was living.



And now today. And now this. I suppose that I should be thankful that after experiencing, among friends and other people who've been in my life, fourteen deaths by AIDS and five by suicide, that I have not grown numb at the prospect of facing another pointless, needless death. This is the first time in a very long time that I'm facing the prospect of a family member dying, and the first time I am looking at the possibilty of a family member's death by his own hand. At least I'm doing what I can to keep it from happening. I'll be continuing it today, on Memorial Day, and beyond.

Now This

More family drama. Actually, more of the same family drama. It goes like this: My father is spiralling deeper into depression and indolence, knows that he should do what Mom, his doctor and therapists, his sons and I have recommended. But, he says, he has no interest in eating or reading a newspaper. Under those circumstances, how can anyone expect him to join clubs, make new friends, take up a hobby--or even a job, given that he doesn't really need the paycheck, which would be small, anyway.

He has no bodily strength, he says. Mom concurs; he eats only when she forces him. That's one of the easier things she's been doing. Every time I've talked to her during the past two weeks, she sounds more tired, angrier and sadder. She doesn't have the strength to keep up with all the extra work she now has; she expressed regret that she probably won't accompany me to Trinidad after all. She probably won't go to my nephew's high school graduation in California, either.

It's one thing for my father to passively prevent my mother from going the her grandson's graduation or my gender reassignent surgery. But it would be much worse if he deprives my brothers--and me--of their mother, my nephews and nieces of their grandmother, Uncle Joe of his sister and other people of someone they love. That, I've told him, is the one and only thing for which I would not forgive him.

I hope he doesn't undermine me in getting the surgery, or anything else. For a time, it seemed as if he were being as supportive as he knows how to be of anything, and he even was helpful. Now this, as I'm only six and a half weeks from my surgery.

Grunge

I'm totally convinced that men--most of them, anyway--like sweaty and somewhat grungy women. Why else do they watch me and yell, "Hey, babe," "Nice legs, honey, "Come to me, girl!" when I'm riding my bike. Especially when I've just pedalled a bunch of miles.

Oh well. So much for my brilliant observations about the gender in which I lived for the first 44 years of my life. I wonder if any of my notions about either sex will begin to change 45 days from now. If they do, will those changes be a result of the surgery or of the Colorado air and water? Oh my goddess: That sounds like a Coors Lite commercial. Brewed with pure Rocky Mountain water. Aged in the mile-high air. Or something like that.

As I recall, when I was drinking, Coors was not one of my beers of choice. Back in the days before domestic microbrewers, that first taste of Heineken would ruin you for drinking native concoctions. Oui, apres Heineken, la deluge. Now that's not a slogan that will ever be used. Well, in France, maybe. Or in Quebec or other Francophone lands. Anywhere else, I simply can't imagine a Dutch brewer using the language of Louis XIV in its adverts.

But after Heineken, I had my first girl. St. Pauli Girl, that is. (Remember that commercial? "You never forget your first girl.") Now that really spoiled me. So did Carlsberg, St. Sixtus Ale (I mean, what else do you expect Belgian Trappist monks to do but make great beer?) and others I might remember--if I wanted to.

This ramble got me to thinking about someone who was in one of the first support groups I attended. His nom de femme was Andi; as a man he was Andy. The reason I am referring to him as male is that somehow I never believed that he would actually live the rest of his life as a woman. Perhaps that is not fair of me; I'd like to find out where he is now and to see whether or not he's still with another member of that group--a transwoman named Alex who, en femme, looked rather like Drew Barrymore.

Andi, while not quite as pretty or passable, probably could have been made so. After all, if I can, anybody can. Right? But I still think of him as male, and probably always will, unless I see him again. On the other hand, Cori, whom I talked about a couple of days ago, is a woman in my memory. She talked with me about her "gender conflict" on the last night of her life; I have chosen to remember her as female, even though she had that "M" in the box of all her identifying documents and I never saw her en femme. And Toni, shortly before overdosing on sleeping pills, confessed to feeling jealous--to the point of denouncing me--when I began my transition because "You are doing what I always wanted to do." Well, I'm doing the reverse of it, anyway. In any event, I like to think of him as male simply because he didn't have the opportunity to live as one.

Anyway...How did I get from men who like sweaty women to beer to Andi. Well, the beer-to-Andy segue, I'll explain now. You see, he claimed that he couldn't drink as Andy, but he could as Andi. As Andy, he had to attend AA meetings and do other things to stop his drinking, which was, from his accounts, as compulsive as mine was. However, he claimed that as Andi, he could control his drinking.

Amazing, what changing a vowel at the end of one's name will do, isn't it?

I imagine that he must have been sweaty and grungy at least some of the time at work: He was a landscaper. I wonder whether his wife was sweaty and dirty when he got the urge to fuck her.

About the only thing I know about the wife is that she had their divorce papers delivered to our support group. As our group left the building (across the street from the LGBT Community Center in New York) in which we met, a car drove by and a passenger flung the rolled-up documents in Andi's direction. I must say: That guy had really good aim. The papers landed just inches from Andi's feet.

I also must say: He actually had nice legs. And his feet, which were even bigger than mine, actually looked nice in the high-heeled sandals he wore even though it was some time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Not too many of us were sweaty or dirty that night.