More Changes Coming?

Yesterday I posted a new photo to my blog: one that Regina took. I think I can see what she and other people mean when they say that I look "calmer," "happier" or "better" since the surgery. Certainly, I feel all of those things, even with the uncertainties I see in my future.

The uncertainties include my career, where I will be next year, the year after or at any other time in my life and who will or won't be in my life. I know that surgery isn't supposed to change your life all by itself. But I think about those people who left, and came into, from the time I started my transition. And I also wonder whether some of my priorites will change, and how they might affect what kind of work I do and where I live. For the moment, I like my neighborhood. And I enjoy teaching, although I wonder whether the battles over utterly arcane pieces of mental turf that seem to be part of the academic world will make me wish for something else--or whether, as Regina and I were discussing, I might focus my efforts on writing and on educating people about gender and sexuality issues.

I'm not sure of how useful it was for her, but talking to Marilynne when her family was giving her grief over her daughter's impending surgery is one of the most satisfying things I've ever done in my life. I didn't get only emotional gratification from it; I also gained spiritual nourishment, which, I am sure, helped me as I was going through my surgery. I also enjoyed talking with the ones who were about to expereince what I'd just experienced.

Plus, I can already see that I am living in a world of women to an even greater degree than I did before my surgery, or my transition. The funny thing is that I am actually becoming, I think, more sympathetic to men than I was--which, I guess, isn't hard to do, considering that before my transition, I hated most men. But, as a woman among women, I find it enjoyable and healthy to spend time with all sorts of women, from the ones who home-school their children, whether for religious or other reasons, to the ones who've spent their entire lives in educational institutions; from school bus drivers to molecular biologists and from butch dykes to the most femme transgender women. And, I've come to feel that in the academic world, people are expected to talk about, but not to empathise, with them.

The more I see of it, the more it disturbs me that motherhood is so stigmatized in the academic world--by women. I've met women who've become department chairs and have risen even higher than that, in the academic as well as in the corporate world. And, it seems that in the hallowed halls, the women who are in positions of authority--at least the ones I've known--were childless and usually single or divorced. And, I've seen too many instances when an adjunct instructor's child had a medical emergency or needed more time or attention for some other reason, and the female department chair or other supervisor was grudging or unwilling in allowing the instructor whatever accomodations she needed.

Even tenured professors who take maternity leave or have to sacrifice for their children are not looked at favorably by their chairs or their college's administration. Their work is taken less seriously, and they are often kept off those committees and projects that could help their careers.

I'm not saying that this sort of thing doesn't go on in the corporate world, or in other fields of endeavor. But I find it disheartening that women who, I'm sure, faced a lot of prejudice and other difficulties should inflict more of the same on another woman who's doing what she needs to do, and is probably doing her job better than most other people are doing theirs.

Maybe it's odd that I, who will never be a mother (unless I adopt), should think this way. Maybe it has to do with the relationship I have with my own mother. At times in my life, I downplayed it, and even distanced myself from her, at least somewhat. But, not long ago, I told her that if I had to change anything in the life, the very last thing I'd want to change is that she's my mother.

Having that sort of relationship is probably the reason why I gravitate toward women like Regina, Millie and Marilynne. Having a good mother, I know one when I see one, and realize what good and valuable people they are. Plus, as Regina says, I've given birth and am caring for a new life. I expect that, and other things, to influence the rest of my life. So I expect to change in other ways, even if I don't yet know what will change, or how.

Still, I'm looking forward to it all--yes, even to returning to the college. After all, that will be part of those changes and will be an early step on the road of "the rest of my life."

After One Month: Today

Today I turned one month old.

And I can't believe a month has passed already. Now tell me, how many people say "Time flies!"--or, even better yet, "Tempus fugit"--at the age of one month.

I don't think even Catullus or Cicero could've said "Tempus fugit" at the age of one month. Nor, for that matter, could they or Victor Hugo have said "Comme le temps passe vite."

So, does this make me the smartest one-month-old in history, or what? ;-)

OK, enough bragging. That's so unbecoming of a lady. I have to uphold what Regina says about me: that I "reaffirm femininity."

She and I had lunch at Uncle George's restaurant today. If you're ever walking (or pedalling or driving) along Broadway in Astoria, Queens, you've got to eat there. They serve real Greek food, not what you get in a diner. And the food's excellent, plentiful and relatively cheap. Best of all, on a day like today--sunny and warm, but not too--they open up the window/doors on the 34th Street side of their resataurant, and you can sit at one of the tables in the semi-open area. So, you have something like the atmosphere of a cafe's sidewalk terrace, but you can still have a conversation with whomever you accompany, or whoever accompanies you.

Regina explained, in her gentle way, that I am still really an embryonic woman. (How would the world be different if my brothers and I had spent our formative years watching a program called The Embryonic Woman instead of The Bionic Woman?) My body is still becoming acclimated to what Marci brought out from within me, and my mind is sorting out all of the new sensations in old places and old sensations in new places I'm feeling. That process, I suspect, will take quite a while longer.

And she reminded me of something she'd said months ago: I'd been giving birth to myself. Now that the new life I had been carrying within me is living in this world, she said, I am, and am becoming, a different person from what I was before my transition. "Any time you give birth, you're not the same as you were before," she explained. "You really divide your life into 'before' and 'after.'"

That, she said, is the reason why things I expereinced only a few weeks ago seem as if they happened a lifetime ago. The spring semester at the college seems like aeons ago; if I talk about the day I graduated college (if indeed I can still remember any of it!), I may as well be talking about the day Panagea started to break up.

Regina and other women I know who are or have been mothers have told me that once you give birth, your life is not only yours anymore. They all said exactly those words, or something very, very close to them. I wondered whether that made me different from, and not quite equal to, all those women who bore sons and daughters into this world.

While I am not yet ready to compare myself to my mother, Regina, Millie, Sonia or anyone else who are or have been mothers in the way most people would define the role, I can say that I have this in common with them: the sense that because I gave birth, my life is somehow not mine alone. Even though I gave birth to the person I've always known that I am, I didn't do it solely to satisfy my own ego. Furthermore, I now have a responsibility--one that I have taken on gladly--for the life to which I've given birth.

Anyone who fulfills that responsibility is a nurturer. Lots of people don't want to be seen as one because it's not a respected role, particularly in milieux that are dominated by men. Women who live and have sacrificed everything else for their careers--whether in a corporate boardroom or the halls of academia--so often look down on women who, by choice or circumstance, are mothers. They seem to think that somehow the work they do is more rigorous and demanding than what mothers, or other nurturers, do.

"Nurturing" is not necessarily synonymous with "coddling" or "feeding." Sometimes nurturing can involve those things. But to me, it's really about giving, or helping to attain, whatever that life to which you've given birth needs in order to survive, much less thrive. And, in doing so, the nurturer finds mental and spiritual sustenance for his or her own journey in the act of nurturing as well as in the life he or she nurtures.

I can't think of anything more rigorous or demanding than that. I've told my mother that no matter how hard or long I work, I will never have worked as hard or long--not to mention given or sacrificed as much--as she has in raising me or any of my brothers.

She's still nurturing me. Regina is, in her own way. Millie, too. And they all have nurtured, and continue to nurture many, many other people.

What they do makes our lives possible. Today it's my turn, even if I'm only one month old.

The Gender-Variant Breakfast Club

John Hughes died today.

I have always one beef with him: Most of the teen films for which he was known were set in Chicago. Yet there is nary a black person (at least not that I can recall) and scarcely a Latino in any of his films.

To be fair, one could change "Chicago" to "New York" in the previous paragraph to make exactly the same criticism of Woody Allen.

However, as much as I enjoyed Annie Hall, Manhattan and Hannah and Her Sisters (which, by the way, is the name of the nail salon I frequent) when they came out, I don't feel any great urgency to see them again. And I thought Allen was operating out of his depth in Interiors.

On the other hand, I intend to see The Breakfast Club again. It's often dismissed as a "teen" movie: a label perhaps more fairly applied to most of his other movies. But that film, as I recall it, has elements that I think I could appreciate even more now than I did when I first saw it--Was it 25 years ago already?

The story itself is very basic and won't appeal to a snob or cynic. I guess that's proof that I wasn't really either; I was just a poeur hipster. Long live poseurism! And long live you if you're a poseur: You'll outgrow it eventually, and when that happens, you'll get a great laugh at your own expense. If you can do that, I've learned, you stand a greater chance of loving yourself, not to mention other people.

All right: Off the soapbox. At least I wasn't wearing high heels. I haven't worn them in weeks; the sandals with three-inch wedges I wore the other day don't count: they were too comfortable!

Anyway...In BC, a few kids end up in Saturday detention. Among them were a jock, a brain, a princess, a criminal and a pure-and-simple basket case (my favorite character, played by Ally Sheedy) who's in detention mainly because she had nothing better to do.

They find ways to pass the time and, in the process, reveal secrets to each other and discover commonalities in the narratives of their lives. At the request of the other students, Brian, the "brain" of the group, writes the essay the principal assigned them. For that essay, each student was to answer the question "Who do you think you are?" Brian writes the esaay as a letter to the principal, challenging him to look past his pre-conceived notions of them. One version of the letter is read near the beginning of the film and the other toward the end.

The first version goes like this:

Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois. 60062.

Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was that we did wrong. What we did was wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write this essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us... in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That's the way we saw each other at seven o'clock this morning. We were brainwashed.

The later version of the letter is:

Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong, but we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is

...a brain...Brian Johnson

...and an athlete...Andrew Clark

...and a basket case...Allison Reynolds

...a princess...Claire Standish

...and a criminal...John Bender

Does that answer your question?... Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

Call me a sucker, but just for that letter, I'm willing to forgive, if not overlook, the omissions and other deficiencies of Hughes' work.

So why am I thinking about that letter, or The Breakfast Club, now? Well, as simplistic as the plot and the expressed point of view of that movie are, that letter--and the way the actors portrayed their characters--shows at least an awareness of the blind spots not only of the characters, but of those who created, played and directed them. That, I think, is more than can be said of anything Woody Allen ever did. And it's certainly shows more awareness than most writers, directors and others involved in film and TV show when it comes to the way they portray people of color, not to mention transgender or other gender-variant people.

"Transgender," "transsexual," and "transvestite" are among those "simplest terms" to which Brian Johnson alludes in his letter. At least, they are in pretty much every film and TV program I've seen that has a gender-variant character or in which gender variance is a theme or sub-theme. And, because they are the "simplest terms," they can only convey "the most convenient definitions."

And that is why David Reuben's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask and Woody Allen's eponymous movie were so wildly popular. If I recall correctly, Dr. Reuben's book spent a year or so on the Times best-seller list and the film was Allen's most commercially successful up to that point. (I suspect that people who liked it probably weren't fans of Annie Hall, much less Interiors.)

It's been decades since I read Dr. Reuben's book or saw Woody Allen's movie. But, as I recall them, they both reinforced the ideas most people had about transgendered people: that they were guys in dresses who had sex with prepubescent kids. (How ironic was it that Woody Allen was engaged in, uh, extracurricular activities with his stepdaughter?)

As near as I can tell, part of being "in the closet" means accepting, and even reenforcing those stereotypes that are presented as verities and accepted as archetypes. By that definition, I reckon, most of us have been in the closet at some point or another. Although I lived in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood until I was thirteen, I rarely, if ever, saw an African-American, Latino or Asian person. And, although I called other kids "queers," I had no idea of what that meant, much less that, according to some people (and the American Psychiatric Association), I am one. So I didn't realize, until much later, the degree to which people of those backgrounds were stereotyped in the TV shows and movies, not to mention the cartoons, I saw when I was growing up.

One of the first TV shows I recall that seemed to make any attempt to break away from the dominant characterisations of non-white as well as other "minority" people was All In The Family. But even in that program, as good as it was, black characters like Jefferson as well as members of other groups, the old and the infirm were used mainly as foils for Archie Bunker's hang-ups rather than developed as full-fledged human beings. In the end, those characters were still defined by their labels, just as Archie Bunker was as a bigot, albeit a lovable one.

The TV show I recall that featured a man who wore women's clothing on a regular basis was One Day at a Time. We watched that because, actually, it was pretty good and my brother had his first crush on Valerie Bertinelli. (He could have chosen worse.) Although people got used to the transvestite character, the show did not in any way challenge the ideas most people, including me, had at the time: that such men were gay and more than a little creepy because they wanted to be women because they didn't know how to be men. And, of course, the cross-dressing was always played for laughs.

I must say, though, that in making "comic relief" out of cross-dressing, One Day At A Time was probably no worse--mainly because it was no different--from other shows and movies that featured any form of gender variance. "Guy in women's clothes" became the convenient definition for the simplistic terms of "gay," "transsexual" (No-one, to my knowledge, was using "transgendered" then.) or "transvestite."

If I recall correctly, The Breakfast Club came out about a decade after One Day At A Time premiered, and One Day appeared about half a decade after All In The Family made its debut. And it has been about a quarter-century since BC first came to the silver screen. It's fair to ask just how far movies--or we--have come in understanding people who are too often circumscribed by those "simplest terms" and "most convenient definitions." Even Trans-America, at times, falls prey to that sort of thinking, which is the reason why that what most people remember about it is "that Desperate Housewife playing a guy who becomes a girl."

In a way, I feel sorry for John Hughes. People always seem to have thought of him as a "teen" film director, and the vogue for that type of film seems to have died somewhere around 1992. What if he had found a new subject? Could he have made films that took up the challenge Brian Johnson posed to his principal?

Phantom Senstions and My Field-Of-Vision

Every six months I have a vistit with my opthamologist. It usually begins with a field-of-vision test. I sit in front of a device that looks like a cross between a flight simulator and an arcade game from my youth. There's a "cup" where I rest my chin; the opthamologist's assistant stretches places a patch over one of my eyes.

Then she flips on a switch and tiny points of light flash at irregular intervals across the screen. I'm supposed to press a button when I see one of those lights. Sometimes there is a short, intense pulse, like a disco strobe light, in the middle of the screen. Other times, there is a faint flicker around the periphery of that screen; sometimes I'm not even sure whether I've seen an acutal flash or an "echo" of one of those brighter pulses.

If you're my age or thereabouts, you're probably familiar with what I've just described. If you're younger, well, now you know have something else to look forward to.

Now, imagne that those pulses and flashes are tingles, twinges, pulses, throbs or jolts of pain, or simply of sensation. You know that you've felt some of them and respond or react. Others, you're not quite sure that you've felt them. Or you know that you've felt them, but you're not quite sure of what they are. Perhaps they are echoes or memories of some other pain or shock you once felt.

If you can imagine what I've just described, you understand something of what I'm experiencing right now.

Not that I'm complaining. I knew that after my surgery, I would have sensations that in some ways differed from the ones I had before the surgery, not to mention what I used to experience before I started taking hormones.

Back in the days when I was the "before" photo, I, like most men, would at times feel that surge of electricity in my crotch. And, well, you know what the result of that is: what I like to call the lightning rod.

But now I feel that surge coming from within me and, for a second, I expect to see a bulge through my clothing. But, of course, I don't have to worry about that. Instead, I feel the throb of my new clitoris and a pulsing--like the opening out of a beating heart--in the area around it. Once I reorient myself to this new sensation, I enjoy it, frankly. It makes me anxious to find out what my first orgasm will feel like.

Still, I wonder when I will no longer have the sensation- physical or mental--of a phantom penis. Or how long it will take before my consciousness will instantly, and without any thought on my part, connect those sensations with my new body parts. Hopefully, that day isn't far off.

I'll say this much: I much prefer all of those spastic physical sensations to all the rage I used to feel over events long past and people long gone. This isn't to say that I'm never, ever angry. But only recently did I realize the degree to which I was reacting to the "aftershocks," if you will, of my experiences. Until a few years ago, I was having the same kinds of arguments with other people that I used to have with my father when I was twenty years old. And I hated nearly all men because three of them molested me when I was a child and because various male teachers, coaches and others tried to "toughen" me up by humiliating, harassing or even beating me. Not to mention that I thought I had no choice but to live as one.

Being angry when whatever or whomever you were angry about is gone really can screw you up in all sorts of ways. I know that from experience. At least now I know that my phantom physical sensations are at least the first steps toward experiencing my own body, and a connection with someone else's, in the ways I've always wanted.

That much, at least, is as clear to me now as that short, intense burst of light at the center of my field-of-vision test.

Crossing and Returning

Today I crossed state lines as a woman.

Technically, it wasn't the first time I did that. On the flight home from my surgery, I crossed a few state lines. But somehow that isn't the same as crossing them on land.

OK, so I crossed from New York into New Jersey in the Lincoln Tunnel, on an Academy Lines bus to the Jersey shore. But there is a marker there delineating the two states. You don't see any "Colorado-Kansas" or "Welcome to Illinois" signs when you're 33,ooo feet up.

So why was I crossing state lines as a woman? Well, I assure you, it wasn't to do anything illegal, or even transgressive. I went to meet Mom and Dad for lunch. It was my first face-to-face meeting with them since my surgery.

Time was when I used to ride that bus from the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York to the Jersey shore once or twice a month. Today was the first time I took that bus in four years, when I met Mom and Dad for lunch in the same diner we visited today. That day, I was seeing them for the first time since "coming out;" it was the first time they saw me "as" Justine.

I got off the bus at a place called Airport Plaza in Hazlet, NJ. From what I understand, there was an airport there long, long ago. Today about the only thing it has in common with an aviation terminal is that it always looks either windswept or overheated by the sun. It's basically a parking lot surrounded by some stores that always manage to look drab no matter how often they're renovated. That's the reason why the lot is never more than half-full, which adds to the sun-baked, windswept effect.

AP was like that more than thirty years ago, when I was attending high school a couple of towns away.

Funny that I was thinking about my high school years during the months before the surgery. I probably went about twenty years, or close to it, without thinking about them at all. But somebody told me about a site called classmates.com, which I checked out of curiosity. I found myself looking at the profiles of people I hadn't seen since graduation day. I had no desire to meet most of them again, yet I was curious as to what they were doing and where they were doing it.

I actually e-mailed a few of my old classmates, which led me to correspond with Sue, whom I hadn't seen since we graduated. She was one of the smartest kids there: I know, I had a bunch of classes with her, and she did better than I did in most of them. But the first things I remembered when I saw her name were that she was the nicest, and by far the wisest, person I knew in that place.

If souls really are re-incarnated (Something I am willing to believe.), Sue must have lived many, many lives--or, perhaps, a few particularly intense ones--before becoming a middle-class daughter in Middletown, NJ.

As you can imagine, high school was a difficult time for me. I never got beat up, mainly because I was an honors student who played soccer, which meant I didn't spend much time around the sort of kids who would've beaten me up. But as I now know very, very well, sometimes the so-called smart or educated people can be the worst bigots of all.

To be fair, I probably would've been in the closet no matter where I was at that time in my life--or, for that matter, just about any time in my life before I turned 40. And, I probably would've been deeply depressed throughout my adolescence and early adulthood, no matter who or what surrounded me.

But at least in high school I was friendly with Sue and some other sympathetic girls. In fact, it may have served as cover: Some of the boys and a few teachers used to nudge me and wink as if I were some sort of stud.

In addition to those girls who weren't girlfriends, I talked with a fair number of adult women. They included some of my teachers, particularly Mrs. Mastri, who taught the World Lit class I took during my sophomore year. But even more of a presence were my mother and her female friends. whom I saw just about every day.

My mother always seemed to have smart, literate women around her. I remember talking about Ayn Rand and Alexis de Tocqueville with Kay Murphy--who made a terrific quiche--and Wuthering Heights and some poems of Emily Dickinson with Betty Carr. Another friend of my mother's was a vegan, which was all but unheard-of in that time and place.

These women were all my mother's age or thereabouts. I actually felt more comfortable with them than just about any of my own peers. Although I was nowhere near "coming out," I knew I couldn't live the sort of life people seemed to want me to have. That is to say, I could not live as a man. I didn't say this to my mother or those women. But whenever I said I didn't want to get married or have kids, or to follow some of the career paths other people seemed to want for me, they never tried to convince me that I would "grow out of" what I thought or felt.

I didn't have women like that in my life when I went to college, or for a long time afterward. In fact, college seemed to be even more gender-segregated than high school was. And I was attending Rutgers, not some religious fundamentalist college or a military academy.

Those thoughts occured to me when I was on the bus coming home, after Mom and I saw a bus painted with the insignia of my alma mater while we were waiting for the bus I would take back home. I joked that I could get on that bus.

"Would you?"

"Go back to Rutgers? To that time in my life: no, no way, no how. It was one of the easiest times in my life but..."

"You were miserable."

I nodded. "It was one of the easiest, but one of the worst, times in my life."

"If you were doing your life over, would you have gone there?"

"I don't know. I'd say no, except that, at that time in my life, I would have been miserable just about anyplace."

"That's true. Would you have done school differently--taken different courses, hung out with different people?"

"Maybe. I think it would've been better to've had a different attitude about it all."

What I didn't get to say--my bus pulled in--was that I would like to have been living as female. But she knew that already. What I would've liked, in addition, was to have gone somewhere where nobody knew me and therefore had no expectations of me.

If I wanted to make such a move today, I probably could've gone back to the place where Mom and I had lunch: the Marina Diner on Route 36 in Belford, NJ. The food was good, but it didn't have quite the same "feel" to it as it had when I was young and it was our favorite diner. We guessed that the ownership had changed: The waitstaff and cooks all seemed to be recent Mexican immigrants. I have nothing against them, but it's certainly not what we remembered.

But most important of all, none of the customers looked even remotely like anyone we knew back in the day. Nor did anyone in the area, the town, surrounding it. I didn't need my sunglasses or anything else to go incognito there.

Mom and Dad were the only people I recognized there, or at Keansburg beach, to which we drove afterward. It was just as well; I wanted to see them.

And I'm glad I did: Mom in particular didn't seem too happy about this trip up north. Things were pretty tense between my parents, my brother and sister-in law. I hope I made things a little better for them in our former home--and as the woman I am.

Feeling From Within

"Only her hairdresser knows for sure." I don't know who said that first about whom. But one thing I noticed is that I've talked much more with my hairdressers than I ever did with any barber I had as a man. Anna, my current hairdresser and Toni, who did my hair until she left to do theatrical makeup, know the very reason why I started going to them rather than male barbers. For that alone, they know more about me than any of those barbers did.

Now I'm noticing that the woman who does my nails (naildresser? nail-polisher? nail-finisher?) has a similar role, even though she speaks much less English than Anna or Toni and doesn't speak any other language I understand. Hannah--that's her "American" name--is a pretty Korean woman with a very warm smile whom I'd guess to be about 30, maybe 35 years old. I have been going to her for about two years now, but today was the first time I went to her since my surgery.

In spite of her limited English (I've taught her some. I hope I haven't handicapped her!) I find I can talk pretty easily with her. I guess someone in her line of work encounters all sorts of people, especially here in Queens. But she also has interpersonal skills that overcome her gaps in language. She seems to engage everyone who comes into her shop, even the boyfriends, spouses and children of her customers. I should also mention that I see her every week or two, whereas I go to Anna every two months or so.

And so Hannah knows my secrets--well, a lot of them, anyway, including the one that's not a secret. You know which one I'm talking about. I'd told her I was having the surgery, but I think she may not have been sure of when. So, when she saw me today, she remarked that she hadn't seen me "for a long time."

That I was having my surgery was a shock only because she thought I would be gone longer. She thought that, being gone for a month, perhaps I'd gone to visit my family or friends, or on a bike trip someplace. She, like many other people, thought that the surgery and recovery from it took many more weeks or months. Many other people think the same thing, as I did until I began researching it in anticipation of my own surgery.

She also thought I'd be in more pain than I'm experiencing. That part still surprises me: I haven't felt any pain, and now I don't feel sore unless I bend or sit upright for long periods of time. And I am starting to feel twinges like little electical shocks in and around my clitoris.

Back when I used to go to bed with the hope that I'd wake up as a woman, I used to tell myself that my penis was really an overgrown clit'. Marci did indeed use part of my old penis to make my clitoris, but the sensation is very different. Although I can feel those twinges and tingles on the surface, as there are a lot of nerve endings there, I feel as though those sensations are coming from within the clit. It feels more like a life force than a sexual charge. On the other hand, when I used to get an erection--or simply feel twinges on my penis--that sensation remained on the surface of the skin, as if the impulse began and ended there. I'm not saying it's like that for males generally; I'm saying only that's how it was for me.

Now, I didn't talk about that with Hannah today. But I think she knew that somehow I was experiencing and feeling things differently from how I'd experinced them as a male--and that, somehow, perhaps, my feelings were more like hers or other women she knew. "Welcome to the women's world," she said. And then, as we parted, she gave me a very tender hug and kiss: the kind a woman gives another woman because she understands how the other feels, from within.

Heroes

I keep on thinking about Marilynne and her daughter,who just had a GRS that was much more complicated than mine.

The other night, I called Marilynne. Her husband answered. He was very cordial, a Southern gentleman, you might say. He thanked me for being helpful to Marilynne and their daughter when we were at The Morning After House. And he praised me for my courage.

Until recently, I found it odd when people used words like "courage" in talking about me. But last night, I was grateful for the acknowledgment. Maybe I am indeed courageous for having undertaken the changes I've experienced. After all, I was risking pretty much everything in my life by "coming out," let alone by dressing and otherwise expressing myself as a woman.

The cynic in me says that people see such actions as courageous when you succeed. But, really, how do you measure "success?" By how much money you make? By that criteria, it's debatable as to whether I'm a success. By how good you look? I won't say anything about that.

Of course, I didn't voice those doubts. But he must have been reading my mind when he said, "Well, just the fact that you did what you did makes you a a success."

"My dear, that blush you see is not a Maybelline product..."

He chuckled. "Well, you certainly sound like you're doing well."

"I am, and you are part of it."

"Well..."

I explained that meeting him, Marilynne and their daughter meant so much to me. "You guys are all heroes of mine."

"Really?"

"You and your wife for the way you've supported your daughter."

"What else could we do?"

"Who else but a wonderful parent would say that?"

"And you were a great help to us."

"Well, all I did was..."

"It meant a lot to us."

"And you were so helpful to me. Best of all, I learned a lot by seeing you all. I am developing as a woman, as a person, and you all gave me examples of what I want to be. You're a hero."

Having a mother who's been supportive of me in this, and in so many other things, I know a hero when I see one. Anyone who helps someone in a time of change and transition is certainly a hero.

Not to mention the ones who do what they need to do, who do what is right for their spirits.

Yes, I have heroes in my life. And they think I'm one.

Well, at least I don't have to wear tights and a cape and a funny mask. Now, anyone who can coordinate an outfit like that is definitely a hero! ;-)

Looking At My Vagina

Three times a day, I have to locate my vagina. I do that with a small mirror I hold in my left hand as I lie down. Then, I gently probe the area under my pubic bone with the stent I hold in my right hand, and begin my dilation. Come October, I will have to do that only twice a day; during the second week of the new year, I will be down to once a day.

Although I now have a little more than two weeks' worth of practice, the procedure still seems as odd as it seems exhiliarating. As I was telling Dr. Jennifer the other day, I never had to pay so much attention to my body as I do now. I'm not complaining; that's actually a good thing. Back when I was in the best condition of my life, I was merely pushing my body to its limits and pounding it into submission. Looking back, I realize that although I was in what most people would call "really good shape," I really wasn't very healthy even though I rarely even caught colds, much less had more significant illnesses.

And now I not only have to locate my vagina, I need--and want--to look at it. Even though it's a new organ, I feel that it was always there: I have a hard time imagining or even recalling that a penis was there for 50 years.

I feel a bit like that woman in The Vagina Monologues who said she'd never seen her vagina. Of course, for 50 years, I had no way of physically seeing mine, either, even though I could always sense one within me.

If my first steps as a woman felt as momentous to me as Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon felt to so many people, my first examination of my vagina was the inverse of that. Rather than conquering and leaving an imprint on some place outside myself, I was exploring a space within me. It was scary at first: I thought that my clumsy fingers would touch the wrong place the wrong way and ruin everything. What "ruining everything" would mean, I didn't know.

Of course, nothing got ruined or even damaged. Rather, the folds of my labia and the moist strands of flesh in varying shades of pink inside them suggested, to me, the complexity and emotional intricacy of undulating hills and rivers or a winding seashore. Somehow, those qualities made me feel, if not simple, at least innocent in the way of a young girl stepping for the first time down a winding path in a primrose garden.

I know that I am merely describing first impressions, and I have absolutely no idea of what I will encounter among, or beyond, those curves and folds and turns. And that is exactly the reason why I want and need to continue from this first exploration.

Nurse Phyllis was neither boasting nor exaggerating when she told me that I would leave Trinidad knowing more about my vagina than many cisgender women know about theirs. In many cultures, women are forbidden from knowing about their own bodies; in other cultures--including, some might argue (and I might agree), the one in which I live--women are discouraged from learning about what distinguishes them from, rather than accepting that they are inferior versions of, men.

When I say what I'm about to say, I hope that no-one thinks that I'm implying that we're somehow superior to men. But now I do know that when a woman examines her own body, she has to look inward in ways that are never necessary for men. I say that knowing that I have only begun this exploration, and in spite of all the discouragement they receive, many women have gone much, much deeper than I have, or possibly ever will.

For many women, such exploration is painful--emotionally as well as physically. In My Vagina Was A Village, one of The Vagina Monologues, a Bosnian Muslim woman recounts a brutal gang rape she suffered. After being probed, prodded and invaded with everything from surgical instruments to bottles, "Pieces of my vagina came off in my hand." I have seen VM three times, and I never saw a dry eye in the audience at the end of that particular monologue.

In light of it, and my own experience, the newness of my own vagina is startling. While I have nothing that even remotely compares to the expereince of that Bosnian woman, as a child I was molested by three different men: a close family friend, a neighbor and a priest in the church in which I was an altar boy. Bad as those experiences were, they was not the cause of my gender identity conflict: the knowledge that I am a female preceded my physical violation by years. But I can't help but to wonder what it would have been like to have been penetrated vaginally, not only with those men's penises, but also with sticks or other objects, rather than being made to stroke and suck their cocks.

I also can't help but to wonder whether my new female organs, on which most of the surgical scars have healed and over which hair is growing, will be--or is--somehow marked by the sexual violation I expereinced when my vagina was still within me, and which I tried to bury in my closet.

After I finish this entry, I will dilate one more time, take an epsom salt bath and go to bed. Tomorrow morning I will look at my vagina again.

I Broke A Promise To Myself And I'm Happy

So today I broke a promise I made to myself. And I'm feeling good, if not righteous, about it.

I'd gone into SoHo to meet Bruce for lunch. I hadn't been in that part of town since a week or so before my surgery. Nothing had changed, it seemed, since the last time I was there, yet I felt that last visit was a lifetime ago.

Someone--I forget who--said that the only real changes are in ourselves. That feels right to me.

Anyway...In keeping with what one usually sees on Broadway near Spring Street on a summer day, young people--college students, mainly--were trying garner support for one cause or another from the streams of passerby who were interested mainly in shopping or lunch. On my way from the Broadway-Lafayette station to Bruce's office, I passed people who were canvassing for the ACLU, PETA and an alphabet-soup of other organizations.

Within a few steps on either side of the entrance to the building where Bruce works, canvassers were trying to get people to "support gay rights." They represented the Human Rights Campaign, which was near the top of my personal blacklist because, essentially, they sold out transgenders: The HRC's leadership decided that including protections for transgenders in the legislation they wanted the Federal government to enact would destroy any chance of the legislation passing. So they said, in essence, "Well, we'll throw the trannies under the bus if it'll get protections for G's and L's. "

The legislation didn't pass. So much for compromise.

But today, I saw three canvassers. Two were people I didn't expect to see canvassing for the HRC. One was a straight woman who told me she's interested in gay rights because she knows gay people. The other, though, was even more of a surprise.

She moved to New York a few months ago. I could tell, just by looking at her, that her road to a shared flat in Brooklyn was a hard one, and that her path her hasn't been much easier.

I could also tell something that, well, most people could tell: That she is a transgender who hadn't been living as female for very long, and who probably hadn't started to take hormones. She clearly didn't "pass," but I have no doubt that, in her heart and soul, she's a woman. After all, it takes one to know one, right?

Anyway, I let her tell me her story. Before coming here, she came out, and people--including family members, friends, co-workers and a supervisor--pretended to accept it more than they actually did. And they used it to manipulate and abuse her in various ways. Finally, she decided to come to New York "to start over" and encountered much of the same kind of hostility. She was essentially harassed out of a place where she worked; when she filed for unemployment insurance, the caseworker (Is that what the Department of Labor calls them?) called her former employer, who denied that there was any harassment. So, of course, she was denied benefits.

Finally, after much fruitless searching, she got her current job. It isn't easy, and I'm sure the pay isn't the greatest, but at least she's motivated to do the job. Some people--mostly men (whom, I suspect, were acting out their own insecurites)--called her names and said other hurtful things. But, she says, at least her current employer isn't treating her as her old one did.

So what promise did I break? Well, I told myself that I wouldn't talk about my own status except to people who already know about me. As happy as I am about my surgery, I won't tell everyone, even though I have the urge to. As for all those people who see me with a smile on my face: Some will smile back, some will resent me, and a few others will just wonder. I cherish the ones who smile back, and I enjoy letting other people wonder.

I told that young trans woman--and the other two HRC canvassers--about myself. They were supportive, even enthusiastic. And the young trans woman wanted to talk more to me. I was perfectly willing to listen.

I'd like to think that, if nothing else, she found me and my story encouraging. I don't know whether she plans on undegoing the surgery: I suspect that she wants it, but it will take her quite a while to get the money together. Of course, that's a situation I understand very well.

But I think that she was looking at me and thinking that, yes, the sort of life she envisions is possible. I shared some of the difficulties I encountered in coming to where I am. Some of those trials parallell her own; others, I think she could understand. But all of those difficulties are just that; they are not insurmountable. (Actually, for the next few weeks, a lot of things, including fences and my bicycle will be insurmountable for me. So would a "bottom," except that I don't want, and have never wanted to, be a "top!") At least, I hope she found the encouragement I'd like to think she found.

Another thing I sensed about her: She could use a very long, caressing hug. I was perfectly willing to give her that. Turns out, she's a really good hugger.

At least I didn't make any promises not to hug anyone I've known for less than half an hour.

Three Articles of Memory

You know that you're very, very lucky--or that you haven't much of a social life--if you actually look forward to seeing your doctor.

When you're recovering from surgery, you don't get out much, to say the least. Even though you might spend lots of time on the phone, as I have been spending, you don't get to see very many people.

Anyway, I saw Dr. Jennifer again. She is very pleased with my progress, she says, and she wants me to return in two weeks for a follow-up. I'm looking forward to it.

As for the part about being lucky: I get to see Dr. Jennifer. I was mentored, and had my surgery done by Marci. I've talked to Mom and Millie every day, and to other people along the way.

And I am having these experiences at this point in my life, at this point in history. I was reminded of the latter when, after my visit with Dr. Jennifer, I walked around in the Village and stopped in the LGBT Community Center of New York.

It's no surprise that they're dedicated to celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. All around the Center were exhibits containing photos, other kinds of artwork and copies of newspaper articles related to the history of the gay-rights movement.

One of the articles, and a photograph that accompanied it, reminded me of something that Jay told me: There was once a law that stipulated that anyone wearing fewer than three articles of gender-appropriate clothing could be arrested.

So let's see...I was wearing a feminine-cut lavender tank top, a denim skirt and..uh, let's see...oh, yes, I am wearing a girly pair of panties. Although my flip-flops were also kind of girly-looking, I'm not sure that they'd count as "gender appropriate." And we don't want to take any chances now, do we?

Seriously...under that law, there were many days when I could've been arrested. Like when I wore a bra (without padding, of course), lace panties and a garter underneath my chinos and button-down shirt. Or when I wore panties underneath one of those one-piece lycra cycling bibs.

I guess that meant that cross-dressers wore undergarments "appropriate" to their gender. I confess, I did that a few times--like the times I went "in drag" for Halloween. You have to admit, it is kind of funny to be wearing boxer shorts and a wife-beater underneath a dress. At least I was never strip-searched.

But lots of people were. Jay remembers. It's amazing to think that within my lifetime, places like New York still had laws on the books that were remnants of the Victorian era. I've told my students that when I was nine years old, interracial marriage was still illegal in Virginia and other states.

It's even more amazing, though, to think of how we were when we were younger. For me, it's still a shock to think that a little more than three weeks ago, my body was different. Yet I cannot imagine it; I cannot imagine my body any other way but the way it is now.

And people too young to remember the days of Stonewall and Jim Crow laws cannot imagine that sort of world: the one of which people like me and Jay still have memories.

Of course, we do not want people to forget history. I myself don't want to forget what I've experienced of it, such as it is. But now I wonder just how much of our own pasts we must remember, and which things are important.

I guess that will all become clearer in time.

Maxi-pads, Chocolate and Reaffirming Femininity

My big outing of the day: to the Post Office, then to Rite Aid, where I bought two packages of Kotex maxi-pads, two bars of Lindt 70% Extra Dark (one of the world's best legal non-prescription drugs!) and a package of Ferrero Rocher chocolates that were on sale.

Cheryl, the assistant manager at Rite Aid, hadn't seen me in some time, and commented on it. She first met me when I moved into the neighborhood, just before I began my year of going to work and family engagements as Nick while going shopping, to movies and to various LGBT-related events as Justine. So she has seen the transition, but I hadn't talked to her about my surgery. And she noticed the two packages of maxi-pads.

"Two of a girl's basic needs," she dryly remarked.

I couldn't suppress a grin, which I couldn't keep from blossoming into a smile.

"Exactly what I need now," I said.

She looked at me. One of those silences that lasts a nanosecond but seems to engulf all of time hung in, but did not fill, the space between us.

"I've just had my operation."

A silence that seemed even longer than the previous one filled the air as she looked directly into my eyes for the first time. "You're looking well. You're looking happy."

"I feel as if a huge weight has been taken off my shoulders. I feel more complete now."

"I'm glad for you. I hope everything continues to go well." Then she rushed toward the back of the store, where a young woman was stocking the shelves in the "baby needs" aisle.

Given that she was on the job, I'm surprised that we talked for as long as we did. Perhaps we'll talk about this some more. Perhaps not. Maybe she won't want to, or we won't need to.

It's not as if Cheryl is a close friend. But she's one of those people who's always been friendly and helpful to me. Who knows....Maybe the next time I go to that Rite Aid, she'll tell me to buy different pads. Or she'll tell me that she likes dark chocolate or wonder how in the world I eat them.

I've long suspected that all women love chocolate, and if women can be classified in any way, it's according to their tastes in chocolate: one who likes dark is definitely different from someone who prefers milk chocolate, who is yet another kind of woman from one who goes for white. Then, of course, we can further categorize women by whether they like truffles, caramel fillings, cream fillings, liqueurs, nuts, raisins or other additions--or whether they prefer their chocolate "straight."

Somehow I suspect Cheryl likes milk chocolate with caramel. Nothing wrong with that: I just happen to prefer mine dark and straight, or a dark truffle. I must admit that for the life of me, I don't understand how anyone eats white chocolate straight-up. I can understand using it as a garnish or flavoring, or swirling or layering it with dark chocolate. But to eat chunks of it...no.

Later in the afternoon, I talked to Regina for the first time in a while. She moved from the college where I teach now to the one in which I taught before I came to my current college. It's not so far away from me, but because our schedules have been so different, we haven't seen each other in a while. We made a lunch date for next Friday. Still, I was trying to talk to her for as long as I could: It's always such a pleasure for me.

Near the end of our conversation, she said something that still moves me, even though she's said it before: "You're an inspiration for me."

If her phone were photosensitive, it would've been pink from my blushing. "Really? Well, I'm happy for that."

"You really are. You reaffirm femininity. You show people how good it is to be feminine."

The funny thing is that I never set out to be "feminine." I just happen to be that way, or at least express myself that way. But, if she or any other woman--or man, for that matter--feels that I reaffirm what is best about being who one is, then I'm happy.

Just remember that I need maxi-pads and love chocolate, just as you do! ;-)

New Words In An Old Friendship

"You sound really good!"

Bruce, who is not given to speaking in superlatives, said that. Today we talked for the first time since my surgery. He'd been away and, given my nonexistent-at-this-moment sense of time, I wasn't sure of whether or not he'd returned yet.

He was on a holiday that's typical for him: a Zen retreat and some hiking. And, he capped it this weekend when he and other family members took his mother on a hot-air baloon ride for her 85th birthday.

I don't think I've ever before been so happy to talk to him in the nearly three decades I've known him. "From the moment I woke up from the surgery, I felt as if a weight had come off my shoulders."

"Really?! I can see why."

"Yes. I could actually feel it. And it's a good thing..."

"Oh, I'm sure."

"You bet it is. From all this inactivity, I have no upper body strength."

And then the patented Bruce Groan. Every time one or the other of us--or anyone else--has made a really silly joke or bad pun, I've heard it. Today it's another sign that I'm home. But now it's even better: I am the person I was always meant to be, and he welcomes her.

Now, of course, I had been living as a woman for almost six years before I had my surgery. But I think Bruce sensed, even before I voiced it, the sense of completeness, of wholeness I now feel. My journey is not complete--at least I hope not!--but at least I can move forward with more emotional and spiritual integrity.

We've made plans to have lunch on Friday. I was hoping to see him on Thursday, after my appointment with Dr. Jennifer. But, he has one of those meetings that no amount of cunning, charm or chicanery I may or may not have ever been capable of can get him out of.

Omigoddess...that last sentence. And I teach English! I hope my department chair doesn't see that one.

So why am I letting it stand? Well, I guess you can say that I care a bit more about sincerity, "heart" and trueness to myself and to the truth than I do about propriety. Deep down, I've always been that way, although I put on my stuffy grammarian's mask when it got me influence (or the illusion of it, anyway) or it simply made me feel superior to somebody else. But now....Speaking in a language that's accurate and truthful will do all sorts of things for me that perfect grammar won't. Or so I believe.

Now I wonder what it will be like to go back to the college, and to teach, this fall. It's not that I don't want to do either. I just wonder what, if anything, I will see or do differently. What will matter more to me; what will concern me less? Or will I still care about the same things in more or less the same ways?

I guess those are the essential questions when it comes to any kind of change a person undergoes. Will I come to realize that the things I've been teaching my students are even more important than I thought they were? Or will I see them as roadblocks against arriving at the truth about ourselves? Could it be the language I've tried to teach them simply cannot express the things they--or I--need to say?

I keep thinking about Michelangelo's David. Michelangelo kept on chipping away until he found David; all of the work and the surgery were about getting to the woman within me. Could it be that--as I've suspected--it's necessary to chip away all the dead language, all of the words, phrases and other structures of language that have grown obsolete, or simply tired, in order to get at the truth? Sometimes I feel that my education--and whatever education I've imparted to my students--is based on the premise that our truths can be fashioned from the words we learn. Or, worse, we receive the message that more words, more phrases, more pages are better.

Enough theorizing for now. I'm thinking about Bruce again. He may well be the only real male friend I've ever had. Take that back: I consider Millie's husband Johnny a friend, too, though I probably wouldn't have met him if I hadn't met Millie. Anyway...I expect my friendship with Bruce to continue. But I can't help but to wonder whether anything about it will change. Maybe it won't be dramatic: It seems that he and I stopped relating to each other as one male to another a long time ago, if indeed we ever had such a relationship. And I don't think the changes will be negative, either: After all, he's seen me become happier and more integrated over the past few years, and I feel that it's deepened our friendship.

And now he says that I sound better than I ever did before. I can't wait to see him on Friday: We've planned a lunch date for then.

Dr. Jennifer: My First Visit With The Gynecologist

Today I had my very first visit with a gynecologist. Well, Marci Bowers is a gynecologist, too, but today's appointment was the first time I visited a gynecologist specifically because she's a gynecologist.

If Marci had been born with the XX chromosomes and had been gay, she would have been something like Dr. Jennifer Johnson. Like Dr. Bowers, Dr. Johnson instisted that I call her by her first name. Also like Dr. Bowers, Dr. Johnson knows exactly what she's doing and has the benefit of all of the best tools, technology and experience. But, also in common with Dr. Bowers, she knows that those aren't all her patients need: For good, holistic health, people like me need a good, empathetic human being as well as the most efficient machines modern medicine has.

And that is why I have had complete confidence in both of them from the moment I first came into contact with each of them. They know that your womanhood is not just about the shape of your body's organs; it's a state of mind and a manifestation of the spirit. I think that even back when I was cynical (or faking it, anyway), I could have seen that quality in either of them.

If Marci took me over the bridge to femaleness, she and Jennifer have been welcoming me into that land in which I have always been a citizen but in which I have only recently begun to reside. You might say that I was born and lived as a female exiled in prison or in a prison of exile. And now that I have entered into the country of my spirit, I have guides and allies in people like Marci and Jennifer.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised, then, that Jennifer was not only evaluating my condition; she was admiring the work Marci did on me. As well she should. Even though there's still some swelling and the scars are healing, I can see the artistry of her work. It's not just a matter of the shape of my labia looking proportionate or symmetrical or the feeling I'm starting to have in my clitoris.

I think now of what Michelangelo said about his work: He chipped away at the stone until the David that was always within it came to be. Marci didn't simply fashion a vagina for me: She worked with the materials I had until the vagina that was always within me found its way. I realized this during my session with Jennifer, when I caught a glimpse of my new organs in a mirror wondered how there ever could have been anything else between my legs.

Really, it's no wonder--if I do say so myself--that within the first minute or so of my time with Jennifer, she exclaimed that I was "positively glowing." I replied that after the surgery, I felt as if a huge weight had come off my shoulders. That burden was, of course, the overlay of a masculine inversion. I mean, really, when the wall is chipped away, when the blinds are turned outward, what else streams in but light? And how can anyone who is suddenly filled with it do anything but "glow?"

The funny thing is that she wasn't the first or last person to say that I was "glowing" today. And I didn't even leave the house except to go to my appointment with Jennifer!

I'm going to see her again on Thursday. She said that everything looks fine and is doing what it's supposed to be doing, but that I was showing the first sign of a mild infection near the bottom-most suture. She said it wasn't anybody's fault; it's just a result of some of the discharges that people normally experience after surgery. Marci said I might experience something like this; that is one reason why she recommends a gynecological appointment two weeks or so after the surgery.

So...Everything is where it's supposed to be. And I'm meeting people who are even better versions of the people I need and want. Is this a life, or what?