A Nor'easter and the Force of Personality

Well, the Nor'easter didn't blow through until a couple of hours ago. But the day was chilly and gray nonetheless. I've ridden my bike on worse days. In fact, on days like the one we had today, I like to ride along the ocean because, for one thing, the beaches are empty save for a few people who are walking their dogs, treasure-hunting(!) or simply enjoying the solitude. Plus, a day like this isn't so cold that it slows you down, but it's chilly enough to keep you moving.

Tomorrow we're supposed to have lots of wind and rain. At least then I won't be sorry I'm not on my bike.

Even though there's plenty of heat in my apartment, I wish I could use the fireplace that's in my living room. Yes, it's an attractive mantel and I've put it to good use. But it ceased to function as a fireplace long ago, when it was filled in. Even when you don't need the heat, the glow is nice on a day like this. It's the perfect accompaniment to any number of soups, hot chocolate and a few rum concotions that I know about but, of course, don't drink now.

I wonder what Charlie and Max would look like in that light. Would they still be as cuddly as they are if I had a fire going here?

I'm not having any major or even minor epiphanies about myself or anything else today. It's just one of those days for reading, writing and...I was going to say "pamper myself." But it's funny that things I used to think of as "pampering" are now part of my regimen, at least for the time being. One example is the hot baths. Even without bubbles or essential oils (only epsom salt), they are a pleasure I never could have imagined. I guess I never quite got it out of my mind that baths are for little children and grown-ups took showers. Other people, including an old roommate, insisted that I had to take baths, that I would love them. Such proclamations put my cynical mind in overdrive: It can't be all that. That, of course, was just my way of feeling superior by denying myself the opportunity to find out that something might indeed be pleasurable for me, or at least as good as someone else said it is.

Now that I think of it, it's kind of ironic that I teach. After all, if you're teaching, you expect your students to accept, at least on some level, what you say because you say it. Even if what you're teaching is rooted in the most solid empirical facts (as, of course, almost nothing in an English course is), you still expect your students to accept it because you're telling it to them.

However, on the last day of every course I teach, as students are leaving the classroom, I say, "Your class is beginning now. Go out there and learn what I've taught you."

Some people say I'm a good teacher. Others say I'm a terrific one. But I'd really like to know what students learn after they leave my classes, and if and how they use whatever I teach them. I know that much of whatever effect I have on students has to do with the kind of person I am rather than the kind of mind I have or the methods I use.

I suppose that's pretty much how I get through life. How else could I have undertaken my transition, or for that matter, freed myself from dependence on alcohol and other drugs? Lots of other people have learned the same stuff I did and went about whatever they did in the same ways I did. Some of them had minds that were more fecund, developed or beautiful than mine could ever be. And they still didn't do what they needed to do. Or they may not have had to do what I did.

I was about to say that I accomplish what I do through the power of my personality. But that's not quite accurate, either. It has more to do with my makeup than with what I make up. And, because we're made, put together, conceived--or whatever you want to call it--there are some things we simply must do, and perhaps even more important, there are particular ways we have to do them.

And now I am going to curl up with a good book and two cats. Three out of three ain't bad, right?

Pseudomona and the Old Gang

Today I went to see Dr. Jennifer. It looks like I'm going to be off my bike for another couple of weeks.

The ray of sunshine--if you'll indulge me in a completely inappropriate metaphor--is that we're supposed to have a Nor'easter this weekend. Charlie and Max will be happy about that: I'll be indoors and they can climb all over me to their hearts' content.

I don't see how anybody could have one of those guys cuddled up against them and still hate cats. In fact, I don't understand how people hate cats. After all, every one I've ever had has been friendly, sweet, polite and cute. Maybe I just have good cat karma or something.

Anyway, Charlie and Max have pseudomona to thank for keeping me home. Pseudomona: It sounds like a Greek play about someone pretending to be Othello's wife. Of course, such a play wouldn't be possible, as the ancient Greeks were writing plays about a milennia and a half before Othello was born.

If you ever read Othello and need something pithy to say in a class discussion, use this: Quoth Iago/ Lusty Moor. It'll bring a smile to even the most jaded teacher or professor.

Now, pseudomona isn't causing me any discomfort. But Dr. Jennifer says it could keep the last part of my healing from happening the way it should. And, when you've waited as long as I have for the operation, you don't want to mess it up.

Plus, given that I've done about 30 years of serious riding, missing another couple of weeks isn't so great in the scheme of things. But it's still a pain in the rear. At least it's not a pain in...all right, you get the picture!

After my appointment with Dr. Jennifer, I walked through Chelsea and the Village to Soho, where I met Bruce for lunch. He looked as un-well as he sounded over the phone. That, of course, made me want to make chicken soup for him. Since we had neither the time nor facilities for that, and Bruce, understandably, didn't want to trek very far, we had what might've been the third- or fourth-best option: miso soup at a Japanese eatery a couple of blocks from his office. (Chinese hot and sour soup is usually my next-favorite option for medicinal purposes.)

My chicken soup-making impulse was piqued by seeing Bruce in a rather "down" mood. Of course, having what might be a low-grade flu doesn't help his mood, which doesn't help him to feel physically better. He must have some Puritan background somewhere along the way: When he's unproductive, as he says he's been, he's unhappy. But what else could he or anyone be when unwell? Besides, he can make me seem like a slouch sometimes, so he needs to let up on himself, at least for a while. As if I haven't told him things like that before...

I know I'm talking about a friend: In typing the last sentence of the previous paragraph, I smiled a bit. We've known each other for 30 years, or close to it, and he's always been a bit of a workaholic and his own worst critic. I doubt he'll change in those ways. The only reason I'd want him to change is for his own mental (and possibly physical) health. But, otherwise, there isn't a thing I'd change about him.

After our lunch, I stopped in Bicycle Habitat, a couple of blocks from Bruce's office. Just what I needed to do, right? I made my first post-op visit there last week, when I saw Hal, the dreadlocked mechanic/musician who just bought a house in the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. But nobody he grew up with is there now. Anyway, I couldn't help but to notice that he seemed to have aged a bit in the three or four months since I'd previously seen him. We didn't get to talk for very long, but I had the sense that something else is going on in his life.

And I saw Sheldon, whom I bumped into back in May, I think, for the first time in a decade or close to it. He's an old riding buddy and was a mechanic in a shop I used to frequent in the neighborhood in which he lived. It's funny: He was dating Danielle, and all of the other guys in our posse were in committed relationships with women. And I was with Tammy. He married Danielle; those other guys married the women they were with in those days. Or, at least, they're still with those women. I am the only one from that "gang" who's not with his or her flame from that time. What can I say?: Each of them got the girl, and I became the girl. Or, more accurately, I was the girl all along.

He told me that Ray, one of our group, was still with Kyra. She and I rode together and had coffee (and nothing more than that!) a few times before she met Ray, which was around the same time I met Tammy.

The last time I talked to Ray was a couple of weeks after 9/11. He'd called in the middle of the night, practically in tears. He'd worked on the site, voluntarily: His skills as a plumber and metalworker were very useful in sorting through the debris of that place. However, his physical courage--which, at times, bordered on machismo--was chipped away by some of the things he found, which included body parts.

I told him to get away from that site right away. He'd been there night and day for two weeks straight; nobody had any right to ask any more of him, I said. He insisted that he couldn't "abandon" the people, whether or not they were living. If I'd had more presence of mind, I'd've told him not to abandon himself, or his own health, at any rate. Instead, I told him to get out of there and "come to my place, if you want to." Tammy, much to her credit, favored that.

But I never heard from him again. And the old gang went our separate ways. A while back, I found myself thinking about him and wondering whether he was OK--or even alive. After all, who knows what he inhaled during those days and nights among the still-smoldering wreckage.

At least I know he's OK, at least after some fashion: Sheldon offered to give him and Kyra my phone number and e-mail address. If they call, it could be very interesting, to say the least!

Fission

"Gunnar Berg" didn't wish me me good luck. Instead, he advised me to be strong. I am happy for that: It's a lot more satisfying to achieve by being strong, or simply working hard and from the bottom of your heart, than it is to have things fall in the right places.

What's odd is that lately I've felt strong: strong enough, in fact, to take on new projects, reach out to new and old acquaintances and to extricate myself from a relationship that, really, has had almost no reason to be for some time.

And now Michelle, a former student of mine, is exhorting me to be strong and not to go back. "You don't need a man to be complete," she said. "No woman does. A girl, yes. But not a woman. And that's what you are."

Michelle knows whence she speaks. And I was so happy to see her again.

The relationship from which I've liberated myself is the one I had with Dominick. Now, I'm not going to "trash" him in this post, or anywhere. I didn't suddenly realize that he's a terrible person or find out some dim, dark secret of his. Rather--as cold as this sounds--I no longer have a need he once filled, at least partially. As a result, I have had to acknowledge something I knew intuitively: We don't have much in common.

Furthermore, I feel that each of us needs to move forward in our lives. In doing so, each of us will be going in different directions and, as a result, will most likely have very different journeys in front of us.

Actually, I knew that a while ago--from when I first knew him, really. So why did I continue with him?

Well...Now I'm about to reveal my shallow side. Here goes: He's a very good-looking man, and he was at least reasonably good to me most of the time. When I was still forming my identity as Justine, as a woman, I felt at least somewhat more affirmed as such by his presence.

What I didn't realize at the time was that, in a way, he was looking for the same thing I sought: stability. I was, as you can imagine, going through a lot of change and even some upheaval. And he was trying to figure out a few things about his life--while living in a dysfunctional environment.

I haven't seen him since about a month before my surgery. The truth is, I haven't wanted to. As you know, whether or not you've been reading this blog, I had to focus so much on myself--first the preparation for my surgery, then my recovery and other aftereffects--that I didn't have the energy or time (or, after the surgery, enough waking hours) to deal with much else. And, frankly, there wasn't much he could have done.

I realized this during the time I spent in Colorado. (Something about the mountain air, right?) There was so much he could not understand about what I was going through, much less what I had gone through. I knew that, in part, because I spent my time out there with people who understood perfectly. Dominick could and would spend time with me, but he never could understand exactly how vulnerable I am or why I'm that way.

Again, I do not mean to disparage him. This sort of thing happens sometimes in relationships of any sort: What he could give me, I no longer need. And he can't give me what I need or want now, mainly because we lost what (as it turns out, little) common ground we had.

I'm not nearly as upset about this as I might have expected to be. In fact, I'm feeling stronger, knowing what--or more precisely, why.

Thank you, "Gunnar." And you, too, Michelle.

Home

Every year, the department in which I teach holds an "open house." In it, refreshments are served (the biggest draw of all--but don't tell anybody I said that!), faculty members plug the elective courses they're teaching and make some attempt to entice students to major in English instead of, say, accounting or physical therapy. It's an easy sell: After all, wouldn't you rather study something for which you need an advanced degree in order to have any hope of meaningful employment ( for which you might have to go to some third-rate technical college in Oklahoma or some such place) instead of something in which you can get a starting salary roughly equal to mine with just a bachelor's degree? Of course you would!

All right. I won't be sarcastic anymore. I actually like the open house, my aversion to the politics of the department and college notwithstanding, because I do get to chat with people I wish I could see more often. And, I get to read a poem or two aloud. Not my own, but that's all right: I take pleasure in relaying a piece of writing I love, however imperfectly I may do that.

In each year's open house, there's a theme for the readings. Last year, it was "social justice," for which I read two selections from The Spoon River Anthology. This year's theme is "home."

I've looked at a few poems and a selection of prose. Since each of us is limited to three or four minutes, I can't read them all. Each one of them feels as fresh as it did to me the first time I read it, which is always a good sign. However, I do find myself having a response I had never before anticipated.

I realize now that, oddly, the concept of "home" has always been rather abstract for me. Or, at least, I don't relate to it in the same way as other people might.

Now, I can say that I come from a relatively stable family. At times, I've wished that my father had been more present, at least emotionally, than he was. He has expressed that same wish in recent years. I tell him to forget about the past; now is the time to be the kind of grandfather, father and husband he wishes he had been. Mom and I agree that he's "gotten better." Even when my relationship with him was at its most strained, I respected him for one thing: He treated my maternal grandmother well. She always said as much; so does Mom.

At least Mom was always available in any way you define that word. For a few weeks before my surgery, and until I returned to work, I talked to her every day, sometimes more than once. When I was living in Paris--in the days before the Internet and cheap calling plans--we talked and wrote to each other every week. And through my life, I've talked with her about one situation or another I've faced. She may not know the particulars, but she knows my emotional makeup. Not very many other people could understand it.

So why am I talking about my parents, again? Well, really, when I think of "home," at least as I knew it early in my life, what else was there, really? I've forgotten most of the objects we did and didn't have in the places where we lived, none of which was as wonderful or terrible as I thought they were.

What I do remember are the some physical spaces and sensations: the almost warrenlike rooms of the apartment in which we lived in Brooklyn, the narrow stairs that led from the brick front porch to the door that opened into the wide dining room and kitchen of the house to which we moved, just a few blocks away from the apartment, and the strangely raspy grass that surrounded the house in which we lived next, in New Jersey. Those might be the memories of a home, but they are not home, or even pieces of it.

After leaving my parents, home became wherever I happened to lay my head that night. Although, looking back, I realize that I got a pretty good education at Rutgers, it is the time in my life I would least like to repeat. Even when I had stimulating classes or met interesting people, I felt as out of place as I did in a locker room or military barracks.

For a time, I felt as if I "belonged" in Paris, although I never could have claimed it as my home. That's still a stronger connection than I would feel to any neighborhood--and any dwelling--in which I'd live for the next two decades or so. It didn't matter how "good" the neighborhood or "nice" my apartment was: I simply never felt I could claim it as my home.

When you feel like an alien in your own body, what could possibly feel like home?

It's no surprise to me now that the block on which I now live has become a home. Millie, John and Tami adopted me, if you will. My place isn't the most elegant, and some parts of this neighborhood, which was largely industrial until recently, are rather ugly. But they've grown on me. At least the parks, the river and the Noguchi Museum are within a one-block radius of my apartment. And even more important are the people and the fact that I can now inhabit my self.

Yes, it's wonderful to come home. Now to choose which version of it to read at the open house. I have another week, I think, to do that.

How Not To Get Lost

Today is Columbus Day. Some people had the day off from work, and kids from school--to celebrate a guy who got lost.

At least, if any man had an excuse for not asking for directions, it was Signor Colombo. I mean, whom could he have asked? Dolphins? Sharks? Seagulls?

You see, if there really is a master or creator, Columbus would've been wandering the ocean for forty years. And Moses would've made it to Israel in, what, a few weeks?

OK, now I've probably offended half of the Western world, and a good part of whatever readership I had. What'll I do now?

I can understand how difficult it must have been for Chris. After all, I've been in countries that spoke languages I didn't. And, as I like to tell people, I'm a direct descendant of Columbus and inherited his navigational skills!

All right, I'll admit: I have no connection to the one who "discovered" the "new" world--at least, none that I know of, anyway.

How could anyone say he "discovered" a place in which millions of people were already living meaningful and useful lives? In fact, I'd say that through most of the first millenium and a half, they were more civilized--in almost any way one defines that term--than the part of the world whence Columbus sailed.

And how could anyone say that what he found was the "new" world. Now, I know nothing about geological history, but I'd hazard a guess that the "new" world must be as old as the "old" world simply because they share the same planet.

Maybe I should become a geological historian. Then maybe I would stop whining about how old I'm becoming or have become.

So let's see--to become a geological historian, I'd have to take most of an undergraduate curriculum, as I never took a geology course and not a whole lot of science. Then I'd have to get a master's and a PhD. By that time, I'll be old enough that my professors will be studying me!

All to do what prisoners do: break rocks!

This day, at least here in New York, is a sort of Italian pride day. Isn't it strange that we come from a culture that gave the world Michelangelo, Leonardo, Dante, Petrarch, Bocaccio, St.Francis of Assisi, Galileo, Verdi, Vivaldi and Eleonore Duse--and we're supposed to feel pride in some guy who didn't know he landed somewhere near Port au Prince when he was trying to get to India?

At least Petrarch could make the quatrains run on time!

Anyway...I'm thinking now about Lindy, who had an orchiotomy a few days after I had my surgery. She hopes to have the full genital reassignment surgery in a few years, when she can afford it. But she needed that orchiotomy to save her life: Her male genitalia sealed off what turned out to be ovaries and a birth canal that were turning gangrenous and destroying her liver and kidneys. She confirmed what I'd suspected: that she and her wife spent all but their last dollar, literally, to get the orchiotomy. But I have no doubt that one day she'll have the surgery: she and her wife are committed to it, and to each other.

During our conversation, she quoted Oscar Wilde, articles from the New England Journal of Medicine and almost anything you can think of in between. She wasn't trying to impress me: She couldn't, because I was already in awe of her. Rather, those texts she quoted were as necessary to her survival as the air.

After talking with her, I realized why I didn't enjoy that course I took last spring, and why I don't think I'll take any more PhD-level courses in English--or, most likely, any more English courses at all. In fact, it helped me to realize why, as much as I love literature, writing and teaching, I can't stand most English departments--and, for that matter, much of Education with a capital "E." It also underscored why I won't ever go near Gender Studies, or any supposedly-intellectual endeavor with the word "gender" in its title, ever again.

Lindy wasn't trying to one-up me or anyone else by quoting what she read. She wasn't even trying to win an argument, if for no other reason that she has no reason to argue with me (at least not yet, anyway!). Rather, she was using those texts, which had been her guides, to better understand her own situation and to relate it to me.

In other words, she wasn't using those texts as ego-gratification in the guise of intellectual inquiry. Instead, she was using them to help her amplify some very hard-won truths. (If you want to get an idea of just how hard-won they are, check out this entry--and my comment--on Staci Lana's blog: http://www.femulate.org/2009/10/gender-on-my-mind.html)

When a person does what Lindy did in our conversation, there's simply no way he or she can condescend to anyone else. And there's certainly no need to do that after you've found your own truths rather than what merely gives you status. If nothing else, you understand that winning an argument--whatever that means--is nothing more, or less, than that: winning the argument doesn't mean that you're right.

Really, the only victories are in discovering the truth--one's own and that of the world. After that, the other "victories" are just so much ego gratification. If that's not a recipe for getting lost, I don't know what is.

At least Christopher Columbus had an excuse for getting lost!

I Can't Be A Ninety-Day Wonder

Today is ninety days.

If you've been reading this blog, you might be thinking, "No, that was last week." Yes, last Monday came ninety days after my surgery.. (Wednesday marked three months, if you count that way.)

But today was the ninetieth day of my sobriety. At least it was twenty-three years ago.

If you've ever been involved with any of the twelve-step programs, you recall that the program leaders always recommended that you attend ninety meetings in ninety days. I know I exceeded that: On one Saturday alone, I attended five meetings! In this city, there's a twelve-step meeting available at literally every hour of the day or night.

Ninety days is often considered, if not the first, then one of the first milestones in sobriety. Most people who make it through ninety days make it through a year. And most who make it through a year make it through two. And so on.

As I recall, for me, there was no question of not "making it." I simply didn't know what else I could do. Even though I'd tried to become clean and sober twice before, somehow I couldn't see not sticking with "the program" that third time. Although I couldn't see any reason why, I knew somehow that I had to survive. I didn't--and still don't--believe in a supreme being in the sense that most organized religions represent him. (Yes, most do represent him as male.) And Kevin, whom I would ask to be my first sponsor (and who would accept that sometimes-thankless task) advised me to stay away from religion but to believe in something greater than myself. He agreed that AA's description of "Higher Power" sounded suspiciously like the Judeo-Christian God, but said, "There's really nothing wrong with believing in it. Just don't listen to anyone who tries to tell you what it is."

For a guy who "never saw anything beyond Fordham Road before they shipped me off to 'Nam" and who, before becoming sober eight years before I met him, "saw guys die in the jungle, then in my uncle's bar," he could give most philosophers a run for their laurels!

The funny thing is that he understood me in a way that no man besides Bruce ever had up to that point in my life: He knew that I have always been very, very emotionally vulnerable, almost to the point of brittleness and fragility at times. But he, like Bruce, also knew that it was the key to any sort of spiritual growth I needed to make--including sobriety. And that, he later told me, is how he knew I would "make it": "Your soul was crying out for it. And you finally admitted that you had a soul, so you couldn't do anything but listen and care for it."

This, from a guy who came to meetings clad in black leather and on his motorcycle.

"I just knew you were no ninety-day wonder," he said.

From a guy whose best buddy got blown to bits just feet away from him--in fact, from any soldier--that's a rave. Somehow I think he also knew what I knew then: I had no choice; I couldn't have been a ninety-day wonder even if I'd wanted to be one.

Such is my situation now. Good thing I knew that before I started my transition. I mean, things have gone well and having the operation had given me what I'd hoped to have, in a spiritual as well as in a physical sense. But I knew--even before that day I met Jay and told her what seemed, at least to me, the first true thing I'd ever told anyone about myself-- that I was a "lifer;" that not only could I not turn back even if I'd wanted to, the thought of doing so wouldn't and couldn't present itself to me.

There was simply no way I could be a ninety-day wonder. And there still isn't.

Autumn Wind

The sun disappeared behind, then reappeared from, clouds that streamed across a sky in which the gray of this morning's rain turned almost instantaneously into the crisp blue of autumn, then took on, almost as quickly, the first orange tinges of a sun ready to set.

Only the wind moved faster than that sky. And it was this day's only constant.

It was the classic autumn wind, a prelude to the autumn dusk. Perhaps I will remember this day in another year, as that wind is the brush and the dusk is the paint of recollection.

Nothing makes me feel more strongly that a day has passed and I am another day older--though, perhaps, richer in spirit--than having moved through and with that wind and arrived at that autumn dusk.

So why is it such a struggle for me to find the language for this day, for this feeling I now have? Perhaps it is because none of what I have experienced today--in fact, for some time now--is a repetition of a recollection. What I no longer experience is what I now call the Eternal Present: when every moment is simply a replay of one that came before rather than a segment of a progression.

People who live in the Eternal Present, of course, do not call it that. If they're aware of their situation at all, they might describe their days and lives as a cycle of "same shit, different day." Or "same shit, different year." A Buddhist might call it, "same shit, different lifetime." Then again, I don't think a Buddhist would say that because, it seems to me, that a Buddhist wouldn't think that way.

That's because "being in the moment"--which every Buddhist I know talks about--seems, at least to me, to be the exact opposite of The Eternal Present. Being in the moment means, as I understand it, being present and accountable for whatever is in your life at the moment. On the other hand, adherence to The Eternal Present prevents people from being present in the moment--which is to say their own lives-- for it implies that things will be as they have been, whether or not people do anything differently.

This day's sky and wind and sun were parts of a moment that is one of a train of many others that are different, in almost imperceptibly subtle ways, from the ones that preceded and the ones that will follow it. They may be conduits of memory, and they may become memories for me. But that doesn't mean that they will dictate what I will experience the next time I see the wind turning moving through an autumn day into the dusk.

Tonight my memory is of the beauty of that sky and the way the sun reflected in my eyes and the wind rippled against my skin.They are wonderful, but tomorrow I will wake to something different, even if it is a reflection of the same sun and an echo of the same wind in the same sky.

A Nobel Laureate and a Full Professor

Barack's daughters mentioned the Nobel Prize, the family dog's birthday and the upcoming long weekend in the same sentence. Not bad for kids who haven't even finished their first decade.

So why am I mentioning it? Because I'm going to talk about winning the Nobel Peace Prize and academic titles in the same breath, for essentially the same reasons Sasha and Malia made their breathless utterance.

Yesterday, I was talking--well, I had an exchange, to be more precise--with another prof in my department. She once held a couple of fairly prominent positions, but she essentially missed a couple of years due to an "illness" and is probably--or should be--very grateful she has tenure. Of that latter fact she let me know in no uncertain terms. I forget why, exactly, but she made it known.

Then somehow another professor's name came up in relation to a sort of academic blood feud that sometimes boils over at departmental meetings. She talked about some of the strange things this other professor--whom I tried to, but never could, like--did and got away with. "I guess she has tenure, too," I commented.

"She's a full professor," she reminded me in a bellowing intonation.

I probably should have known that. But, really, I don't pay attention to such things. I know who the President, provost and deans of the college are. I also know my department chair and the chairs of most other departments. And I know that a couple of profs have been teaching there since the day the college opened, and a couple of others for almost that long. But other than that, I really don't know who has the higher or lower stature among the faculty. And, truth be told, I don't much care. I talk to people for my own reasons, not because of their titles or status.

You might say that I'm not impressed by very many people. I am willing and learning to love; I am bound to care, but I have little or no reason to be in awe. And I have never done well in situations in which I was supposed to be impressed with someone because of his or her credentials or because someone else said I should be in the thrall of that person.

I'm not some kid feigning the insouciance of her elders. Kids (or adults) who do that are merely insolent. Rather, I have seen that giving someone respect simply for his or her title, or withholding said respect for lack of said credentials, is no different than judging someone for the color of his or her skin, or for any number of other external characteristics.

Actually, I feel I'm rather like Sasha and Malia who respect and admire their father for winning the Nobel Prize even if they don't quite know what it is. But. at the same time, they're only but so impressed, and are so to the degree that they are only because the announcement of his winning the prize came, from so many commentators, in tones that bordered on the reverential. So all those girls know is that their daddy did something that much of the world admires. They do, too, but to them, it's no more important than their dog or weekend.

The first time I saw those kids, I knew they were smart. They haven't disabused me of that notion.

Another Countdown

Today I saw the doctor. Next week I see my gynecologist again. My fingers are still crossed: I hope to get the "all clear" signal. To do what, you ask? Well, to ride my bike and have sex. And, possibly, to do some heavier lifting, though I'm in no hurry to do that.

If I do any or all of those things, my lack of physical activity for the past three months will be evident. I thought about that today as I was walking around in Chelsea and the Village after seeing my doctor and before I went to the college.

I feel so flabby. But people--including my doctor as well as a waiter (whom I'd never before met) in the Turkish restaurant where I had lunch--told me I looked "really nice." Actually, I'm noticing the flab just now. But I actually was feeling pretty good about the way I looked. I wore a boat-necked purple blouse under a long navy cardigan and an A-line skirt in a houndstooth pattern of blue and gray. Hal, the dreadlocked mechanic at Bicycle Habitat, half-jokingly said that my outfit matched my Mercian perfectly.

It was the first time I'd seen him since a few weeks before my surgery. He says he's just bought a house in the neighborhood where he grew up. But nobody he knew in those days is there now, he says.

I know that neighborhood. It's right next to the one where I grew up--and Prospect Park, where I rode almost every day for years.

How many more days until I can ride it again? Eight, if all goes well. But I wonder how far I'll go. Well, I guess no one has to worry that I'll run away from home on my bike. As if I were going to do that at this point in my life, anyway!

Three Months: One Woman to Another

I can't believe it's been three months since my surgery. Soon, I'm supposed to be more or less normal. That is to say, if my doctor and gynecologist give me the OK, I'll be back on my bike and able to have sex. I have the equipment for either pastime; for the latter, all I need is a suitable partner!

Tomorrow I see the doctor, and I see the gynecologist next week. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. At least I'm not using that as a birth control method--not anymore, anyway! ;-)

Now I feel a little guilty for making that bad joke. Last night, I talked again with the young student of mine who told me, last week, she'd just gotten pregnant. When we talked last week, I tried to give her both the "pros" and the "cons" of giving birth or having an abortion. What surprised me is not only how confident she felt in speaking to me, but also how confident I felt in listening to her and offering her advice.

In some way, I could feel--not only vicariously, but even in some visceral way--her pain. "I don't want to give up my child," she insisted. Although having a child wouldn't have been the "best thing for her"--at least in the sense most of us think of that phrase--I felt a lot of respect for her when she articulated her wish not to have an abortion. No matter what science says, there will always be people who think that life begins at conception. And science has been wrong before.

She was convinced that she had a boy growing inside her.

Of course, as an educator, I thought of how that young woman's life as she knew it would, in effect, end before she turned twenty years old if she had the baby. School would be out of the question for many years; she would also have to find a way to make her relationship with her boyfriend work, or raise that baby alone or with the help of family members. The only problem with the latter option was that, well, it wasn't an option with her conservative, religious parents. As for her boyfriend: They'd broken up a few weeks before the pregnancy, gotten back together, had sex once (one time too many, in her parents' eyes) and gotten pregnant.

She still hasn't even told her parents that she'd gotten pregnant. And she doesn't plan to, she says.

Which means, of course, that they won't know about her abortion.

When she talked to me last week, she told me that her boyfriend wanted her to end her pregnancy. She also told me he accused her of "getting emotional about everything."

"Well, that's one thing he never could understand. He doesn't have that embryo inside him. So his body, not to mention his spirit, could never feel to him the way yours does to you right now."

Her eyes widened. "Yes! That's one thing guys never could understand about us."

The funny thing, in retrospect, is that I didn't pause mentally when she said that. I also didn't feel as if I were acting or "faking it" when I went along with her. Somehow I could just feel her emotions so strongly that I can honestly say I understood her about as well as someone in my situation could.

But last night, when she said, "I just knew I could talk to you," I felt that I had to "come clean," at least in one way.

"Well," I said, "I was feeling your pain. But I'll admit that I never have been pregnant, and never can become pregnant."

"Really?"

I explained why. To which she responded: "I never would have guessed. But you are so wise and so caring. I'm glad I talked to you."

"And I'm here for you, even when I'm not your professor anymore."

"You always will be."

Thank you for reminding me of that, young lady.

By the way: Class went very nicely. Maybe it's just because I enjoy teaching that class--a literature course--more than I enjoy the course on writing research papers, which is what I was teaching the other day. The students in that class are fine; it's just hard to make that course, which students are required to take, enticing. It's lots of detail work, which doesn't draw upon my strengths and passions as a creative person with a conceptual mind. I can teach that course reasonably well, but I'm sure others could do it better. But when I'm teaching lit or other kinds of writing courses, the students are looking at my soul.

And that young woman spoke to it. I was describing my encounter with her to Jason, a trans man I know and whom I bumped into on my way home. "She would've come to you, no matter what," he insisted.

Three months since surgery...It's going to be interesting to see what happens after six months. Or a year. Or whatever comes after that.

A Full Moon Follows a Dull Day

Today I wasn't feeling particularly energetic. At least I took a walk of about a mile before I went to work.

The weird thing is that now, at home, I have more energy than I did earlier in the day. Maybe it has to do with the cool-turning-chilly breeze fluttering, then rippling, the curtains by my desk. It may also have to do with the clouds drifting in halos of reflected moonlight and somehow just missing the full moon. Yes, an early-autumn full moon: In its silver iridescence, like lightning turned inside out, turns a walk into a dance as elegant and mysterious as a silhouette.


Soon I must go to the ocean. I haven't been there in months, and not at all during the summer. This time of year is when I most love the sea and to walk in or ride along beaches. If I could swim now, the water probably would be fine. At Sandy Hook, New Jersey, which is about an hour southwest of the Rockaways, I immersed myself in the Atlantic tides one Thanksgiving weekend. The weather had been mild, but not unusually warm, as I recall. And the sea, although cold enough to pimple my skin, still was warmer than I'd expected.


The sea under the full moon: Now there's my element. When I think of moving to Colorado, I remember that I'd be about 1500 miles from the nearest ocean. Then, of course, there is the matter of getting a job.


About the only kind of job you can get in Trinidad is as a nurse. Funny that I was thinking about that on the subway when I saw a young woman wearing a jacket with a crest from the University of Pennsylvania's Nursing and Midwifery Program. I asked her about it; she said it's a graduate program and that she'd done her undergraduate science courses in the City University system of New York.


I think of the work that Marci and Jennifer do and how fortunate I am to have been able to experience it. Most other trans people don't find that kind of care, in part because so few people can provide it. They both tell me that what I'm doing is wonderful and that I'm a beautiful person. But what is my work next to theirs? Marci performs miracles--or, at least, she performed one on me. And Jennifer helps people to keep those miracles going. Next to their work, how necessary is what I do? I mean, what I did in class could have been done by thousands, if not millions, of other people.


In other words, those students didn't need me to accomplish whatever they wanted to accomplish. The two classes I taught today were sections of the Research writing class. It's not as if I can offer them anything special in such a class. But if I were a nurse or some other sort of health professional, I could offer trans and other kinds of people care that they may never have found otherwise.


Is that a realistic idea? Or just another full moon rumination?

Miss Manners I'm Not

Did some walking today and I'm tired now. But at least it stimulated my senses and my mind and gave me some badly-needed exercise.

Along the way, I had an interesting encounter in Bake Way on Broadway. Sometimes I stop there for a snack and/or to use the bathroom. I came in for the latter, but I knew I'd pick up one of their red velvet cupcakes on the way out.

Well, a very pregnant young woman entered immediately behind me. I really needed to go at that moment (I'm still getting used to my diminished bladder capacity!) but, because she got the attention of the young woman behind the counter, she got the key.

She extended her arm toward me. "Here." She tried to pass the key from her hand to mine.

"You go first," I commanded.

"Thank you, Miss."

Now, when I was living as male, the situation would have been more straightforward: She would've gone in ahead of me. And I don't think she would've offered to let me use the bathroom before her.

I found myself thinking about a situation I encountered a few months ago. I'd just gotten on the bus to go to work. I was carrying a tote bag with some books and papers in it: Nothing that would give my pre-op self a second thought, much less difficulty.

Yet an older (at least she seemed to be) black woman who looked rather tired offered me her seat. I was about to politely refuse when something in that woman's expression told me that she really, for whatever reason, wanted to give me her seat and I couldn't, or at least shouldn't, refuse.

Nonetheless, it felt odd, as you can imagine. I'm still getting used to men who open doors and offer you their seats and to use the bathroom ahead of them. But I'm not sure that I'll grow accustomed to other women doing those things for me.

And even if I were to live a few more lifetimes as a woman, I'll probably still stumble through any situation in which a pregnant woman offers to let me use a bathroom ahead of her.

Sometimes I wonder whether I'll ever master female etiquette. I didn't always do so well with male etiquette. But I've learned things that make less sense.

What Would Grandma Think of an Escapee? A Parolee?

The other day was my maternal grandmother's birthday. Today is the anniversary of her death. The latter, I realized much later, sent me into one of the deeper troughs of the depression in which I spent about much of my life as Nick.

I can't honestly say that I've mourned her--or anyone else's--death in a while. Perhaps that sounds callous. But for the past few years I have not had a new death to mourn, unless you count Nick. Yes, at times I mourned him because even though I wasn't happy when I was living as him, there were pleasurable moments. And I certainly learned a few things from him. But there were days that it simply didn't seem fair that he lived and he suffered--for my sake. Not only did he not have the opportunity to bask in the light and warmth of his flame, he also did not have the chance to receive gratitude, or any other reward, from me. That simply didn't seem fair!

And that very lack of justice is the reason why mourning becomes, after a while, futile. We all die; almost none of us gets to pick the time or way in which we'll leave this planet. Grandma was so ill that it was all but impossible to determine her precise cause of death. But would it really have mattered which of the complications from her diabetes killed her? To some doctors and forensic scientists, yes. But not to anyone else.

I think about her now and wonder what sort of relationship I could have, or could have had, with her were she still on this planet. If she were, she'd be 96 years old. I can't say I've spent a lot of time with people around that age. Then again, not many other people could say they have, either.

I loved my grandmother because, well, she was my grandmother. But I liked her because she always seemed to know how I felt. Sometimes I think she suspected my gender-identity issues, or had fleeting thoughts that I was gay, or at least not straight. But she knew that I wasn't a "normal" boy: I could see it from the expression on her face when I showed no interest in toy soldiers or erector sets.

What would she think of what I've become? I'm sure it would be difficult for her to understand, as she was certainly a daughter of her place and time. She was also religious, but I've found that a person's religious beliefs don't always determine how or whether a person will accept someone different from him or her self. I've experienced kindness and compassion from some people who worship in institutions run by men who think that what I've done is wrong, or even worthy of a death sentence. (Actually, a lot of people extend what they think their religions say about homosexuality to transgender people when, in fact, the holiest documents of their faith may have said nothing at all about homosexuality or transgenderism.) And someone who has a PhD in gender studies and no discernible religious beliefs ended a friendship we once had.

Somehow I don't think Grandma ever even had a conversation with anyone in which those subjects came up. She probably never knew anyone about whom she could say with certainty that he or she was not heterosexual. That may have had to do with being in a time or place where people were more covert about their lifestyles, much less their inner lives. And it may also have had to do with the fact that, well, she didn't know or didn't care.

I can't deny that there would be times she would have looked at me and seen her grandson. Even if I was an unusual boy, it was as a boy that she knew me. She may have even wished that I weren't trans or that I didn't make the changes I've made.

Then again, she was always so proud of the things I did, whether they were the grades I got in school, becoming an altar boy or simply taking a long bike ride. I think it would make her very happy that I write and have been published and that I teach in a college. I also think she would be even happier to know that I have become someone with whom people talk about their fears and secrets--none of which I've betrayed on this blog! She might not like the fact that some young student got pregnant out of wedlock, but I think she'd be really proud to know that such a student sought me out for advice.

I haven't treated some people very well. But I have made every effort to be better, especially to my parents. And I really would rather deal with people through kindness and gentleness than through hostility and suspicion. Sometimes I'm still on "high alert" or I respond to people as if they're more bigoted than they may actually be. But I'm learning who is and isn't, and simply spending as much of my time and effort as I can with those who aren't, or who simply don't care.

Yes, I would like for Grandma to know who I am now. I think we could've had a nice relationship. But then again, Grandma died at 68 and was--physically as well as emotionally--much, much older than that. Even in comparison to other women of her age, she wasn't healthy. By the end, she was clearly suffering, though she never lost her will to live. At times it was almost painful to see: Her body had become a prison, but she wouldn't dream of escaping.

That's not what I did, though. I finally embraced what was within me. And I was released. I think she might've appreciated that.

I Can See Clearly Now

Tonight is one of those really classic early autumn nights, even if it's a bit chilly for this time of year. The air is crisp, almost brisk, and the sky is clear. In fact, it is on nights like these that one can truly call the sky "clear": On winter nights, pinpricks of light punctuate grow brighter against the dark and the cold: Chiaroscuro is not the same thing as clarity.

But on a night like this can't be anything but clear. The moon and the stars are almost pure light, and everything under them doesn't only reflect that light; it radiates the soft glow of that light.

Nights on which rain doesn't fall will become clearer all through the fall, until around Thanksgiving or so. Then the light of the stars and moon will begin to freeze in place and will remain static, like portraits of memory.

But for now the sky can't be anything but clear, as it is on such an early-fall night.

It was around this time of the year--I was fourteen, if I recall correctly-- I first heard Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now", it didn't seem odd--in some way I couldn't explain--that the song, in Nash's beautiful rendition, came out when it did. And every time I heard it thereafter, I felt some kind of solace every time I heard it.

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I've been prayin' for
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

Look all around, there's nothin' but blue skies
Look straight ahead, nothin' but blue skies

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day.

Or hope, anyway. As you can imagine, my struggle with my gender identity and sexuality was particularly fierce. I was on the wrestled and played soccer for my school. I hoped that doing such things, and taking extra science courses and mechanical drawing as an elective, would somehow make me more masculine. But the boys on those teams--and, I suspect, my coaches--knew that no such thing was happening. They would make me run wind sprints long after the other boys were finished. The good news was that I got into really good shape--in body, anyway.

Even when I won a match or made a good play, other boys would taunt me. They wouldn't call me "faggot," "queer" or any other derogatory names. Rather, they'd point out, in a mocking way, some girl who'd developed or sexy teacher and coax, in an even more mocking way, that they'd tell that girl or teacher that I had the "hots" for them.

Of course, they thought I was gay. Later, I would identify myself in that way only because I wasn't attracted to women in the same way as other guys. Then again, I wasn't attracted to men in the same way as gays I knew.

Those pinpricks of clarity would remain frozen in the recesses of my mind. I had no way of articulating what I felt--at least not to other people, as most people thought, as I did, that gay men were all "queens" and transsexuals were at least vaguely skeevy. Then again, the only trannies I knew about were Christine Jorgensen, Renee Richards and tranny hookers.

So, while I could viscerally feel my own desires, my lack of a language for them left me unable to see the meaning of them more clearly. That would take many, many more years.

At least I knew that it would be all about seeing clearly, seeing all the obstacles in my way. Hearing the song would give me hope for that; sometimes I had nothing more than a wish. But at least the points of light were there, even if the sky wasn't clear enough for them to shine on me,or I simply wasn't looking at them.

Tonight I looked at the clear fall sky.

Loving What Never Was

Have you ever looked at a photo of someone in his or her youth and said--to yourself or whoever happened to be in earshot--"Wow! I wish I knew him (or her) back then!"?

Or, have you ever had such a reaction to the photo of one who's departed?

About the first scenario: I had such a reaction to seeing a photo of Francoise Hardy from around 1969. I also wanted a time machine when a woman I dated in my youth showed me a photo of her father in his Navy uniform. The French chanteuse was beautiful and stylish; my old flame's dad was just pure-and-simple hot. And she knew that's what I was thinking.

About the second scenario: After seeing a photo of Albert Camus on the cover of one of his books--L'etranger, I think--I had a fantasy or two about him. He wasn't particularly handsome, but he had, at least in that photo, one of the most intelligent, if tense and turbulent, faces I'd ever seen. I'd had a similar reaction to seeing a photo of Virginia Woolf.

Anyway...About the only thing stranger than being in love with your own memory of someone is fantasizing about a past life that you never witnessed.

I met Sara and her boyfriend Rob a few weeks before my surgery. We got into an interesting and rather intense conversation that led to our exchanging phone numbers. During the ensuing days I was busy and otherwise preoccupied, as you can well imagine. Then, a couple of weeks after returning home from the surgery, I was taking a walk near Socrates Sculpture Park when I heard someone call "Justine!"

Sara was out with her friend Dee, whom she talked about when we first met. They invited me to dinner at their place the weekend before Labor Day. And now we've been talking frequently by phone.

Now, if the L's and the G's can talk about having "gaydar," what's the transgender equivalent? Whatever it is, it was set off the moment I met Sara and went to multiple alarms when I saw Dee. I knew that Sara is bisexual before she opened her mouth and that Dee is a what I will call "man-que": someone who, in many ways, is even more male than I ever was. But financial and other considerations--namely, her medical condition and her age--keep her from taking hormones, much less having surgery.

When I was at Sara and Dee's place, I had the feeling that Sara was developing feelings for me. She talked about things I will not discuss with anyone else, and she took to my breast--and shoulders--as one might with a family member one trusts completely.

One thing no amount of hormones or surgery will ever efface is the width of my shoulders. They're not quite of NFL linebacker dimensions, but they still have the breadth--if not the strength--of someone who used to lift weights, as I did every day for several years. Normally, I draw attention away from them by the way I dress: I often wear long scarves or blouses or sweaters with long vertical lines or with soft fabrics around the shoulders. People who cry, or simply prop their heads, on my shoulder appreciate that!

But that night I was wearing a spaghetti-strap tank top. So there was nothing between my shoulders and Sara, a fact not lost on her.

Tonight, she called me from the waiting room at a hospital. Her landlord, who is a good friend, has been sick and now the doctors have found cancer in his intestines. And Dee is having problems related to her lupus. "I really wish I had your shoulder right now," she said.

"Where are you? Which hospital?"

"Don't do that. You're still recovering from surgery. We'll meet soon."

"Yes, we will."

"You're so gentle."

"The only thing better than a man who can make a woman blush is another woman making a woman blush!"

"Oh! You're the best!"

"Well..."

"I love you. But I would've loved to've known Nick."

"No you wouldn't."

"You're so sweet and gentle. He must've been, too."

I let it go. It didn't seem the right time to talk about relationships I aborted or otherwise destroyed through my anger. I even warned people I dated not to get too close to me because the monster within me would emerge. I was never physically violent with any of them, but I was probably one of the cruelest people, emotionally, that any of them had ever encountered.

Sara never had to experience any of that. And she never will. Furthermore, I don't think I want to talk about it with her, simply because, frankly, talking about it seems rather pointless. What would she--or I--gain from it?

Besides, while she and I may be turning into each others' friends, I don't envision a sexual or romantic partnership with her. Truth is, I can't have sex with anyone just yet, although that may change soon. But even more to the point, I am in such a transition that I don't want to entangle myself that way--with her, with any other woman or with a man.

What's more, being so involved with someone who's fantasizing about someone I never was, or even just someone she never met, would just be too weird for me.