Our Mothers, Their Daughters

Today I talked with Marilynne. She may be the first friend I've made in my "new" life.

Her daughter underwent the surgery on the same day I had mine. But the daughter's was far more complicated than mine, as she was born with a condition that only a handful of people on the planet have. So, her recovery is also more complicated and lengthier than mine.

Of course I would love to see them again, and soon. However, they're going to Marilynne's parents' for Thanksgiving. It's probably just as well, for Mom and Dad have been talking about coming up this way from Florida. They'd hoped to move here--or, somewhere in this area--by the holidays, but it doesn't look like things are going to work that way. They've had no takers for their house, which isn't surprising. After all, Florida is one of the worst real estate markets in one of the worst economies this country has had in a long time.

Back to them. Sometimes I wonder what, if anything, they'd say to Marilynne and her husband, or vice versa, were they to meet. Mom always says I wasn't such a difficult kid to raise. I don't think she's merely being diplomatic, even though I don't think I could have been such an easy kid to care for.

I'm thinking now of a corollary to something Marilynne said: "As a mother, you always feel guilty." That was her response to my comment that she needed to be more generous with herself and to feel more confident that she's doing everything humanly possible to take care of her daughter and everyone else around her. At the end of the day, she simply has no time or energy to take care of herself. And if she had either, she'd find some other need someone else has and address that.

My mom is like that, too. It's not hard to imagine her saying what Marilynne said. And that's exactly the reason why it makes perfect sense, at least to me, that she would say I wasn't such a difficult kid to raise. Why would she, Marilynne or any other mother feel guilty? They would always know--or at least feel--that something else needed doing, but possibly couldn't be done. That means, of course, that no matter what they have to do, or are doing, they've done or are doing something else that's more difficult. And, chances are that something still more difficult will present itself. So, most things will only seem but so difficult in comparison.

Marilynne says that her daughter really isn't such a difficult kid. "She never wants anything," she says. But that's because "all she ever wanted was to be a girl." I always wanted the same thing, even more than anything else--even life itself. However, as I've mentioned before, I didn't express it because I'd never heard such a thing expressed when I was a kid. Plus, I don't think I was (or am) quite as intelligent as Marilynne's daughter.

But Mom would probably tell you I didn't want that much, either. That was true enough. And, she'll always point out that I never got into trouble (mainly because I never got caught! ;-) ) and that her friends always liked me. Yes, and I liked them, even more than my own peers.

And now I find myself making friends with women of, or over, a certain age--and I happen to be one of them myself!

One thing I know: Mom has been a saint and Dad has been much better than I ever anticipated. I'll bet that Marilynne's daughter will say, if she hasn't already said, the same thing about her mother and father. And her brother has been supportive. As far as I'm concerned, they're a family of heroes. At least, they're heroes of mine, anyway.

At least I expect to see Mom and Dad soon. Marilynne had talked about coming up this way with her daughter this fall, but I think that turned out to be a less realistic idea than any of us had anticipated. Her daughter, like me, is still healing and regaining her energy. Marilynne, I think, needs to do the same.

We're talking now about Spring Break, or possibly the days just after Christmas or New Year's.

Evaluation: Moving Forward

My workday started and ended with evaluations. First I was evaluated by someone who was probably born about the time I started my undergraduate education and has a higher rank than mine. And, at the end of the day, I evaluated someone I'd never before met.

Next week, I'll find out the results of the evaluation that was done on me. No matter how often I'm evaluated or how good an instructor I become, I think I'll always worry about the evaluations. Everyone tells me not to. But they didn't know me when a vindictive (over what, I'll never know) prof at another school wrote, by far, the worst evaluation I've ever had. The thing about being an English prof is that there are no statistics you can invoke to support your contention that your evaluator was biased. And, if you say that the evaluator had it in for you, the powers-that-be tag you with all sorts of labels, none of them flattering.

Whatever comes of it, I feel good about the class. They are a very good bunch of students, and I very much enjoy working with them--not only because they make me look good! And I can honestly say that I'm doing the best I can by them.

As for the evaluator: I hope I didn't seem resentful of her. She did what you're "supposed" to do in the academic world: Go to school from the time you're four until, oh, about thirty. And she got a PhD with a specialty that the college and department were looking for at the time they hired her. Whether she did those things by design or not, they worked. Plus, she's smart and a seemingly decent person.

In other words, her path--at least professionally--bears almost no resemblance to mine. Probably the only point of intersection between our trajectories is one of the schools each of us attended: She earned her PhD where I completed my B.A. But while she went "straight through" school, I spent more than a decade doing other things between the time I finished my bachelor's and started my master's. And I left the academic world for three years when I was with Tammy.

During the class, I didn't think of the evaluation as a "first." Of course, I had one good reason not to: I've been evaluated a number of times before. But I felt that I had an energy, or at least a level of energy, to which I am only beginning to acclimate myself. Even after the evaluator left--an hour into the two-hour class session, as is standard--and even after the class ended and the students left, I felt as if I could have continued forever.

The students knew I was there for them. And I knew that I was doing what I did for myself. It became very personal; what we did in that class had everything to do with the life I've led--at least, some aspects of it, anyway--and with them. Why else did they respond, not only as intelligently, but as passionately, as they did?

Sometimes I think I'm not an intellectual because....Well, actually, I never think of myself as an intellectual. Why? Well, the only way I've ever been able to learn anything is to take it personally. I am not someone who can learn "objectively" or dispassionately. That's certainly a reason why I was drawn toward literature, writing, history and language rather than to, say, math or chemistry.

Just as I can only learn something by taking it personally, that is also the only way I can teach it. And I can only reach students through that same sense.

To tell you the truth, I don't want it any other way. It's moving me forward now.

Why I'm Not Celebrating The "Hate Crimes Bill"

It seems that nearly everyone--at least everyone I know--in the LGBT community has been celebrating the inclusion of language that includes transgenders in the so-called "Hate Crimes Bill" and that it looks like the President will sign it this week. If there's any reason to feel good, it's that, if nothing else, public officials as well as other citizens are indeed acknowledging that we are indeed subject to violence simply because we are who we are. In fact, one study says that transgender people are sixteen times as likely to be murdered as anyone else.

I hate to be the one who dumps cold water on anybody, but I must say this: Passage of the bill is not quite the cause for celebration that some believe it to be, any more than gay men and lesbians gaining the right to marry will be. I mention the push for gay marriage, even though that's another discussion unto itself, because it, like the "Hate Crimes Bill," shows how both mainstream politicians as well as LGBT activists too often work for "victories" that have only symbolic value (and sometimes not even that) while missing the underlying issues. Also, I happen to think that more legislation is almost never a good thing, and neither the "Hate Crimes Bill" nor gay marriage changes my mind about that.

However, my chief objection to the "Hate Crimes Bill" what I call its "exceptionalism." In other words, it essentially says that a crime against gay or transgendered people is inherently worse than others because it was committed against a gay or transgendered person. Now, I will say that because I am transsexual, a murder of, or other crime against, an LGBT person affects me in ways that other crimes do not. That, I like to think, is natural: One feels the most for one's own people, whomever they happen to be. Also, I understand the particular dangers we face, having brushed up against them myself, so the poignancy of a person being murdered because she is transgendered or beaten because he is gay is magnified for me. Still, I don't think such a bias--for that is what it is--should be reflected in any law, any more than any other bias should be so encoded.

In other words, I think that if a person is to be punished for killing or beating someone, he or she should incur whatever punishment is meted out because he or she killed or beat someone, not because the victim happened to belong to one group or another.

Some people--again, I am thinking in particular of LGBT activists--argue "hate crimes are different from other crimes," or something to that effect. Indeed they are: When you come right down to it, every crime is different, at least in circumstances, from every other. However, the effect is the same: Someone's life, person or property has been taken away, or at least violated.

Now, I'm no lawyer or scholar of the Constitution, and probably never will be either one. But I know enough to know that under the criminal justice system, a perpetrator's motives are considered in deciding upon his or her guilt or innocence and the type of punishment he or she should receive. One person may harm me because I'm a trans woman; another might want to do the same because I'm ugly or--ahem--because I write posts like this one. Still someone else might hurt me to get the $15.23 in my purse; another, because her husband left her for me. Whatever the motive, the outcome is still the same: that I have been harmed.

In that sense, whatever a person's motive, isn't his or her harming me, by definition, a hate crime? To violate or take a person's life, liberty or property without his or her consent is, at best, enormously disrespectful and, more likely, hateful.

So why, exactly, does it take my being transgendered in order to make the crime worthy of the prosecution that it deserves? Or, even more to the point, why does it take someone's status, whether it's high, low or somewhere in between, to make legislators and the criminal justice system recognize his or her right to live as who he or she is and to be secure in his or her person or property?

In short, why does the fact that I'm transgendered trump the fact that I'm a human being (who happens to be a transgendered female) in some lawmaker's decision that I should have the same rights as anyone else, or that someone should be punished for violating those rights?

To me, prosecuting and sentencing a crime against me or any other LGBT person because of who we are is no different than mourning the death of anyone else who is in any other way "exceptional" over that of someone who is considered "normal" or "ordinary."

And that is exactly what happened after Matthew Shepard's murder. The media trumpeted his fluency in several languages and his leadership skills. Indeed, it's terrible to lose those things, but what would the media have made of him had he been of average IQ or was studying to be an accountant--or, for that matter, had he been a sex worker in Denver? By the same token, I can't help but to wonder whether the media would have paid any attention at all to the disappearance of Laci Peterson had she not been a pretty white woman from a tony Bay Area suburb who'd been a cheerleader at her college. What if she had a been a single mother and a Salvadorian immigrant living in Crocker-Amazon and taking English classes in the Mission district of San Francisco ?

While I don't expect much better from the media (I'm so happy not to have TV reception!), I do want to see respect for life as the fundamental underlying value of the society and culture in which I live. The "Hate Crimes Bill" is no more about that than the sensationalism surrounding Anna Nicole's death was. Instead, it tells judges and juries to evaluate a crime by the status of the victim rather than the life that was taken from him or her.

Doing that isn't going to cause anyone to respect the rights we have because they're the same as theirs. That, in turn, will do nothing to change the "status" we have: a status that leaves us, not only with a one in twelve chance of being murdered, but with a seventy percent chance of being unemployed or working in the underground economy. (And that's in San Francisco, mind you!)

The cynic in me says that the passage of the Hate Crimes Bill is not so different from John Mc Cain's request that Jack Johnson be pardoned. I doubt that he, at his age, will run for President again. However, I suspect that he's thinking about his legacy, especially because he represents one of the two states that does not observe Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday. And, he also knows that his party, the Republican, has about as much support among African Americans than Martin Luther had in the Vatican. Likewise, politicians of all parts of the spectrum realize that LGBT people vote, and that we're anywhere from one in thirty to one in five of the population, depending on which researchers you believe. Whatever the number, it's enough to swing an election.

And, as long as the public is swayed by gestures such as the passage of a "Hate Crimes Bill," it will.

How I Became Bourgeois In The Storm

Today I took one of the strangest walks I've ever had. It wasn't particularly long, distance-wise--at least, not in the scheme of walks I've taken throughout my life. But in terms of time, it was one of the longest walks I've taken in years.

Perhaps it seemed so because there was no moon tonight. Rather, rain fell throughout the night, sometimes torrentially, other times just barely more than a drizzle. (One thing that hasn't changed: I am still the sort of person who prefers a drizzle in Paris to a storm on Long Island.) When rain cascaded from the sky, I ducked for cover in two coffee shops, a Rite Aid and a Brazilian gift shop. And I also spent some time in a Home Depot store, where I bought some material for a small (at least, I expect it to be) project.

Anyway...Even though I walked streets along which I sometimes shop and through which I pass when I ride my bike to work (which, of course, I haven't done since June), I felt--for a moment, anyway--that I was taking a tour of my past, even though that was not my intention.

That feeling came to me after I turned the corner of 46th Street at 34th Avenue just after crossing Northern Boulevard. That block of 46th Street is lined with row houses that have pitched roofs in a sort of Tudor style. Interestingly, they are more vivid on a night like tonight than they are under a moonlit sky: Their shape does not lend itself to silhouettes. Nor does the light that fills, but never seems to escape from, the windows of those houses: It makes the lines of those windows and roofs all the more stark in the darkness.

In other words, you know that there are people inside those houses. But you never see them, much less the lives they lead.

Somehow, though, I imagine those lives to be in symmetry with the sharp lines of those houses reflected in the rain-slicked street. Although the street was quiet--almost eerily so for an urban neighborhood--I could almost hear, inside of me, conversations that did nothing to disturb the instrumental music--all muted strings, no human voices--playing in the background, possibly on one of the "beautiful music" stations on the radio.

Less than a mile, but about four decades, from that street lived my great-aunt and uncle. When I was a kid, we used to go there every once in a while. My brothers and I liked it because his house was near LaGuardia Airport, and sometimes Uncle Jim would take us to see the planes taking off and landing. Plus, even though his house was actually smaller than the one in which my brothers, Mom and Dad and I were living, it seemed so much more opulent. Cut-glass dishes in shades of cobalt and crimson rested on a dark wooden coffee table that seemed almost Oriental, at least to my eyes at the time; those dishes were filled, though not overflowing, with small hard candies. And we sat on a sofa upholstered with a velvety material (I thought it was real velvet.) in a claret hue.

My great-uncle Jim, who had been a prizefighter in his youth, went into business and eventually bought that house we were visiting. Of course, I didn't know the word bourgeois in those days, and when I did learn it, the context in which I learned it gave it a negative connotation. However, I would realize much later that it fit that house, and the lives he and my great-aunt Minnie were living in it, perfectly.

Also much later, I would understand that their house (He always said it, and everything else, belonged to both of them.) and the lives they were living in it were a refuge from, and a buffer against, the storms that were never far away--from their lives, or anyone else's. He had grown up poor and had fought in boxing rings and on battle fields. By the time I knew him, he had renounced both. From what I heard, my great-aunt was behind that: She belonged to a church, I forget which, that espoused pacifism.

Back in those days, the Vietnam War was raging and, in part as a response to it, young people all over the nation protested violently. It was also during that time when the months from June through September came to be known as "riot season": Many years later, I would realize just how close my family and I came, on at least a couple of occasions, to the confrontations when we were on our way to or from that house, or other places.

Tonight I got caught in another kind of storm. My waterproof anorak kept me dry above my waist. But even as my feet were soaked, I walked with the knowledge that I was as secure as anyone who was inside one of those houses. You need to be at home in order to feel that way. Somehow I understood that back at Uncle Jim's and Aunt Minnie's house in Jackson Heights all those years ago.

Now I am, finally.

A Power Outage, DWB and Panic

So there was a power outage, or something, in Blogland last night. I couldn't sign on to this blog, much less post a new entry.

I know that in the scheme of things, it was small. But all sorts of paranoid thoughts raced through my head. Did the Y2K bug arrive ten years late? (Maybe it was on the Roman or some other calendar!) Had the Great Depression II brought the world--and the blogosphere--to a screeching halt?

Before I realized that the problem was with the site, I thought there was something wrong with my computer. Or, I thought that being in the age range for Alzheimer's (Am I?), an absent-minded professor and blonde had caught up with me and I did committed some blunder that only someone who bears such a Triple Crown could make.

And this fear also passed through me: That someone found the content of this blog--or me--"objectionable" and flagged it. Of course, anything is "objectionable," for someone could, conceivably, object to it, for whatever reasons. But I wasn't fussing over definitions at that moment.

As often as Oprah and other folks on TV talk about transgenders, prejudice against us still exists. Even the ones who are younger and much prettier than I'll ever be are not completely shielded from it: I've heard all sorts of stories of harassment and worse. Then, of course, there are terrible tales like that of Leslie Mora, and the horribly tragic ones like that of Gwen Araujo.

Speaking of whom: A few years ago, I had an idea for writing a book about people who were killed by bigots. I was going to profile the sad stories of Emmitt Till, Yusef Hawkins, Matthew Shepard and Gwen. All except Till's murders occurred during my lifetime; in fact, I can remember where I was when I heard about Hawkins, Shepard and Gwen. While Till has been commemorated in a Bob Dylan song, Spike Lee dedicated "Malcolm X" to the memory of Hawkins and Shepard's murder led Moises Kaufman to create "The Laramie Project," there was comparatively little attention was paid to Gwen Araujo's murder at the time it occured.

I heard about it only because I was at the LGBT Community Center that day. Only a few weeks earlier, I had moved out of the apartment Tammy and I shared in Park Slope; only a few days earlier, I had my first appointment with Dr. Gal Meyer, who would interview me, order tests and, finally, prescribe hormones to me. At that point, I was still going to work as Nick and my neighbors, family and friends--who didn't see much of me--still knew me that way. But I was spending most of my free time en femme, much of it volunteering with or otherwise participating in one Center activity or another.

So you can imagine how much I was affected by hearing about Gwen's murder. In fact, when creating the link for her name earlier in this entry, I was in tears. No other stranger's death has had quite the same impact on me. If you'll indulge me in a cliche, I will say that I felt I had lost a member of whatever race, nation or other group I belong to.

I was also affected (not merely shocked) by Matthew's and Yusef's killings, though in different ways and for different reasons. In "Jack Price and College Point," I described the way I felt about Matthew Shepard's demise. As for Yusef: He was killed not far from where I grew up and, literally, steps away from where relatives of mine have lived. The adjacent streets are as familiar to me as any others in this world: I have, at times, returned to them, and to the rooms my relatives inhabited, in my dreams (and nightmares!). And, when local TV news reporters interviewed residents of the neighborhood in the days after Yusef's murder, I felt as if I were hearing a language I didn't know that I still knew but would, of course, always be a part of me because I heard (and, to a lesser extent, spoke) it so early in my life.

Now, you may be wondering: How did I go from the Blogspot outage to hate crimes? Well, I described one of the scenarios my mind conjured up when I couldn't access my blog: that someone didn't want a tranny posting on Blogspot, or anywhere else. Were Till, Hawkins, Shepard and Araujo still here, I am sure they could relate.

Anyone who is, by birth, a member of any group--whether it be racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or gender--that is stigmatized, has had moments when he or she couldn't help but to wonder whether, or even believe, he or she was singled out or otherwise discriminated against simply for being whom he or she is. I've met, especially at the college in which I teach, far too many people who were stopped by cops for DWB. I've also heard too many stories about women who were denied promotions, or even jobs, for reasons that were not clearly (perhaps deliberately so) stated. And, of course, I've had the same happen to me--and I've been stopped by plainclothes "cops" (I still question whether they actually were commissioned.) for no earthly reason.

Even someone yelling at you hurts, or simply makes you wonder, in an intensified way because you know that even in the most benevolent of settings, prejudice against you and whatever you represent is never far from the surface. So you wonder what, exactly, was the motivation behind someone who did a "routine search" of you or what really happened when your inquiry "fell through the cracks."

People will accuse you of being "overly sensitive," "paranoid" or "sooo defensive"--or of "reading too much into" someone else's words or actions--when you respond to people or react to a situation in a way that is refracted through the prism of your experience. As if they all don't do the same thing. The difference is, their experience doesn't include the sort of prejudice you've experienced.

I really try to respond to everyone I meet as an individual, and to deal with every situation independently. But there are times when, as a member of whatever group, you can't help to wonder if you've been targeted.

To whoever is in charge of Blogspot: I hope you understand. And I thank you for what was, actually, a prompt and proficient response to the technical problem.

I'm writing in this blog again. I'm happy.

Whose Stories?

Have you ever realized that you were trying to live out someone else's story? Or, have you ever doubted your own because it wasn't like any other you'd heard?

I answer "yes" to both questions. (Why else would I be writing this entry? ) And it's ironic that I should say so today, after a student asked, in a combination of exasperation and resentment, why should she be expected to read ancient Greek writers, The Inferno or any number of other ancient or medieval "classics."

And what did I tell her? "Their stories are our stories. Their characters are people we see every day."

So, you may be wondering, how could I ask the rhetorical questions that opened this entry? Is that a bit of a contradiction?

Now you can accuse me of being cagey and evasive. (Guilty on both counts!) I'm not going to answer that one, at least not yet.

How is my story "different?" Well, I was born--both in the sense that the state recognizes and that which my spirit manifested--in summer. And, I am living my first full season in the autumn. I am feeling nurtured and energized by the blaze of reds and golds from leaves falling and bricks glowing in the autumn sunset.

Aren't we supposed to begin our lives with the spring? Isn't that how it happens in the stories we hear as kids and see in the media?

And when do you ever hear of someone beginning his or her life after passing one of those round-numbered birthdays?

OK. So my story is different from the ones I've heard--at least in some ways. So how can I say that any story "belongs to the human race?"

I advised that student to look carefully at all of those texts they've assigned to her Western Civilization course. "Murder is as old as Cain and Abel," I said. "And the story of Hamlet is the story of Oedipus Rex."

"You know, you're right!"

"'There's nothing new under the sun.' That's in the Book of Ecclesiastes." The funny thing is that when I said that, her face opened with the light of revelation--and she reads the Bible much more than I read it!

People who feel as I do, and who face the same gender identity dilemma as mine, are not new. And any possible response to it comes down to the classic choice: between flight and fight--or to be or not to be.

In other words, what makes Oedipus Rex and Hamlet endure is not merely the story in each. Rather, it has to do with how each play lays bare the questions we face and the choices we make every day. To be or not to be. To give in to the insanity, or to struggle to be be free. In doing so, do you destroy what's come before you--or make some attempt to honor it?

The student with whom I had the conversation is a black Caribbean woman whom I'd guess to be in her mid-30's or thereabouts. She has described some of the bigotry she's experienced, but says she admires me for the way I've handled my situation. Which, of course, is the reason why she came to me with her question.

I suppose that if I'd been a quicker thinker and had been more articulate, I could have told her that all of those works contain our stories, or more precisely, our truths--without sounding as glib as I just did. The stuff you see in the newspapers, on TV and in those awful books and films they force-feed to kids: Those are the stories of other people, most of whom you'll never meet. I mean, where are you going to meet the sorts of people you see on soap operas--or in politics?

They are only stories: the ones with the spouses and houses you're supposed to have--even if the price you pay for them consists of madness and death, whether inflicted by you or someone else. That madness consists of such things as having to live with the feeling that you were born in the wrong place, the wrong time, in the wrong body and with the wrong desires and needs. The only way out is to live as if none of those things were wrong: You have as much right as anyone else to be who you are, where you are, when you are.

You get only one chance to do that. Then, there's one storyline: We all fall, and it's for eternity. Until then, there's only your story. It's been around since ancient times, at least, but only you can live it.

That is one of the few things I've learned with any certainty. And I hope that student understands this: To live your own story, you have to understand the others. That is my advice to her, and myself.

A Tranny Theory of Relativity

Today ended in another one of those beautiful autumn sunsets, like the one I saw yesterday. The difference was that I saw it on my way to work, or more precisely, while running errands on my way to work. Then I taught my night class. They're a good group of students, but sometimes I wonder whether I'm boring or whether they're working very hard during the day: I feel, at times, as if they're going to fall asleep on me.

Hey, putting people to sleep isn't in my job description. I'm not an anaesthesiologist, you know.

I'm thinking, again, of "Jeanne Genet"s comment a few days ago. She was talking about relationships formed during intense transitions: They tend not to survive once the transition is complete, or at least has reached a plateau. (Sometimes I think of what Jean Valentine told me about writing a poem: You never finish it; you only abandon it. Sometimes I think that applies to transitions, as well as many other things in life!)

I wonder if her insight explains something else I've described in a previous post or two. I am talking about the passage of time, or at least the way I've been experiencing it. For some reason, last Spring--when I was only a few months before my surgery--seems like lifetimes, or even aeons, ago. I feel sometimes as if it's the life of someone I'd always heard of but who were elsewhere, whether in this world or another.

Perhaps I have to get to work on developing the Tranny Theory of Relativity. I knew that the surgery would be a point of demarcation: Life Before and Life After. Except that this seems to be the inverse of the physical laws I know about.

In any case, it may be that, as per Jeanne, a lot of what I had and developed as a young male or in my transition is no longer neccesary or useful and I'm moving on. Of course, what you're moving away from seems further away than that which is scarcely, if at all, visible.

An October Sunset: Brick by Brick, Stone by Stone

So we had a dreary, chilly weekend. And what did we get on Monday? A beautiful, if chilly fall day that ended in one of those perfect October sunsets that blazes with the colors of the changing leaves and the glow of bricks.

Sometimes it feels as if the end of every satisfying day, or of anything truly satisfying, was built brick by brick, stone by stone. And therein lies the glow of a sunset like the one I saw today.

I'm reminded of that Donovan's "San Damiano" song:

If you want your dream to be,

Build it slow and surely.

Small beginnings, greater ends:

Heartfelt work grows purely.

If you want to live life free,

Take your time, go slowly.

Do few things but do them well.

Simple joys are holy.

Day by day, stone by stone,

Build your secret slowly.

Day by day, you'll grow, too:

You'll know heaven's glory.

All I know is that I'm building my life as Justine, as the one I am, and doing whatever work I know I need to do toward that end. I get the sense sometimes that even if I don't know what the edifice will look like in the end, I can envision it at least somewhat. All I can do is lay each brick, lay each stone and set every tile and pane of glass.

This is actually a very nice feeling. It's liberating. I haven't had to do a lot, even though at times it feels that way, if only because I'm still recovering from my surgery. But whatever I've had to do, I've had--and wanted--to do well. Writing and teaching and, to the degree that I can, be present for those who need me. And to be present for myself, in my own life. Many other people have, and have had, to do much more that was more taxing and less rewarding.

I just have to do all of those things well. Although I think about the future, I have almost no idea of what will come next. That's actually a good thing, I believe, because this has been--I'll risk sounding cheesy, if I haven't already--a voyage of discovery.

Wallace Stevens always denied that he was a surrealist because, he said, surrealism was about invention, whereas he was interested in discovery. In a similar vein, I'm learning that if my goal is learning rather than accomplishment, the latter will follow. They may not be the sorts of accomplishments one can hang on a wall or take to the bank--not at the moment, anyway. But they are more necessary than what is framed and hung, or what shows up as a number on a balance sheet.

Yesterday I wrote a post that came completely from my heart as well as my head. I wasn't trying to dazzle anyone with my rhetorical skills or my overall brilliance, such as it is. Heck, I didn't even edit it. Yet I have received a few overwhelmingly positive responses to it; "Gunnar" has posted it on his blog.

I wrote it because it mattered to me. And now I'm finding out that it matters to other people, too. What more can I ask? And I can say the same for my teaching. I know it's working when the students are learning and I don't have to wonder whether or not it has anything to do with my teaching. In a way, it really doesn't matter whether or not it does: If I did the best work I could, and they did, too, there really can't be any other outcome but that they and I will learn.

And we end up trusting each other. I realized this today when two other students came to me to discuss their papers but talked about confidential matters with me. I used to wonder why anyone would tell me about themselves, and I even denied that I am the sort of person in whom they should confide. My old coda could have been something I saw on a T-shirt on the Lower East Side: "Do I look like a fucking people person to you?"

Today my answer to that is, "Fuckin' A, I am!" I don't know how or why. But it's part of the work I've been given: one (or maybe a set) of the bricks, if you will. One that reflects the sunset of this October day.

Jack Price and College Point

Had I known about yesterday's march, I might've gone over to College Point and joined all of those people who were showing their solidarity with Jack Price.


Last Friday, two young men beat him while taunting him with anti-gay slurs as he left an all-night deli in the neighborhood. He's still in the hospital with a broken jaw, collapsed lung and shattered ribs.


The good news is that residents marched alongside LGBT activists and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. The interesting thing is that they were outraged over the fact that Price was attacked for any reason and that such violence should occur in their neighborhood. Most of them knew him, or knew friends or relatives of his, and were upset that he would meet with such violence in their neighborhood.


In other words, they weren't necessarily marching out of sympathy for gays. Rather, some were marching for someone they knew, and possibly loved. Probably others were marching out of a sense of justice: that no human being should meet with such violence. One of the more gratifying things I've learned is that there are many more people than I imagined who feel that way, or, at least, can have that sense evoked in them. Still others were worried about their neighborhood "going down the tubes."


The bad news is that many more people didn't go to the rally because they feared, not necessarily the attackers themselves, but the homophobic and otherwise bigoted "element" they all know exists in their neighborhood, as it does nearly everywhere else. Some of that "element" was penned up by cops in one of the parks: They chanted their slogans and held up their signs but weren't allowed near the march. I wonder if anybody had a sign that read "God Hates Fags," as the Most Right Reverend Fred Phelps sported in a rally that followed the murder of Matthew Shepard.


Speaking of whom...It was around this time in 1998 that he was left to die in the cold Wyoming desert night. I remember that time well: Tammy and I were taking a weekend trip to a town near Syracuse, where I would meet her family for the first time. We heard about Matthew on the way up. She was shocked, in part, because two of her best friends were gay men; I felt my skin crawl, as it did in those days whenever I heard about a "hate crime," because I wasn't "out of the closet" about my own identity or the gay-bashing I committed when I was a teenager.


Places like Wyoming are often dismissed as "flyover country" and neighborhoods like College Point are often derided by denizens of more affluent and trendy arrondissements for being too far away from downtown or not having enough trendy cafes or nightlife. I can't speak for Wyoming, but I have spent enough time in College Point to know that, prior to the attack, it was no more or less likely to have had one like it occur on its streets than any other neighborhood I know of--including Jackson Heights.




Unlike Jackson Heights, where three young men beat transgender woman Leslie Mora as she left a club in June, College Point has never been known as an LGBT enclave. Much of it is industrial; the rest of the neighborhood consists mostly of small houses occupied by their working- and middle-class owners and their families. Narrow streets wind between those houses and some old churches; all of those streets follow or end at the shore of Flushing Bay.


Another difference between Jackson Heights and College Point is that the latter neighborhood is very much like it was twenty or even forty years ago. Most of the residents are white, mainly of Irish, German and Italian ancestry. There are more Hispanics and Asians than in years past; still, one is struck by the absence of people of color, particularly blacks, when walking along College Point Boulevard or any other thoroughfare in the neighborhood.


Some would expect narrow-mindedness, if not outright hatred, in such a place. Certainly, one can find it there, as one could find it anywhere inhabited by humans. On the other hand, the neighborhood's constance means that many people there grew up and work with, and even married, each other. Given that, according to whichever researchers you believe, anywhere from one out of every twenty to one out of every five human beings is not heterosexual, just about everyone knows someone who is. The thing is, in a place like College Point (which, in the aspect I'm about to describe, is much like the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bensonhurst and Borough Park were when I was growing up in them), people not only know that you're gay; they've seen you grow up gay. So, even the most conservative people come to realize that, yes, some people are indeed "that way," and that some of those people are in fact their children, neighbors and friends.


Of course, not everyone embraces their "difference." Again, as in almost any other community that comes to mind, there are families who exile their gay children and others who harass and terrorize them. But many other residents understand something that most of them never articulate, mainly because they never have to: That their gay children, siblings, aunts, uncles, classmates and co-workers are a part of their community and that an attack on any of them is a "black mark" on the neighborhood. In other words, if their gay children, siblings or neighbors are attacked, it means that the neighborhood isn't "safe." To blue-collar and middle-class people, who are nearly all of College Point's population, that is no small consideration, as, for most of them, the homes in which they live are, along with their cars (The nearest subway station is about three miles away.), are the sum total of their wealth. If the neighborhood goes "bad," they lose and have nowhere else to go--at least not locally, anyway.


And, if they lose their neighborhood, they lose not only their investment, but their entire way of life and sense of who they are. Even if crime rates don't go up and property values don't go down, they still feel that an attack against one of their own is a reflection of some failure or inadequacy on their, or the neighborhood's, part. In other words, such an attack shatters their sense of security, which many of them cite as one of their neighborhood's assets.


If that's the reason why some people were marching, well, that's as good as any. And, in the end, those people are as important as earnest activists for calling attention to our need to feel secure in our persons and the right to be the persons that we are, whatever that may mean.


One of my history profs said that all effective revolutions begin with the middle class. Of course! The rich have no reason to revolt (If they want lower taxes, they find havens rather than take to the streets.) and the poor, who often have reason to, can't--for all sorts of reasons--mount as effective a movement as those who have a bit more time and money. Those in the middle are the ones who have everything invested and nowhere else to go. When they see no recourse through the very institutions they have used to gain whatever they have, then no one else has that recourse, either.


And, it seems that at least some people in College Point know what is at stake, at least for them, with Jack Price's beating.

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.