Riding With "The Girls"

The temperature rose to nearly 70 F today. And it was one of those days that ended with the autumn sun burnishing the horizon with an orange glow like a hearth smoldering over the bay.

So I'll give you three guesses as to what I did.

I did a slightly longer ride, this time on Arielle, my geared Mercian road bike. Now she has bragging rights: Tosca, my fixed-gear Mercian, got my first ride yesterday, but Arielle got the longer ride.

Plus, Arielle got to spend the ride with Barbara and Sue, who've been my sometime riding companions for the past few years. Arielle likes it when people admire her. I don't fault her for that: After all, it's a trait she inherited from her mistress.

Today's ride negotiated the curves of Vernon Boulevard toward the RFK (nee Triboro) Bridge and along the Greek restaurants, food stores and bakeries of Ditmars Boulevard to the road that leads to the bridge to Riker's Island. No, we didn't go there! (You can only cross that bridge on a bus or if you have a permit for your car.) Then, we made a couple of sharp turns and soon found ourselves next to LaGuardia Airport. From there, there's a nice promenade that rims the shoreline of Flushing Bay. Moored boats bobbed listlessly in the wakes of the few other boats that sluiced solar reflections flickering in the ripples in the waters beyond the marina.

At the end of the promenade, on the other side of the Grand Central Parkway from Citi Field, we stopped. A young couple was getting into a boat that didn't look like much more than a jet-ski with a bubble-top. A jet took off from La Guardia and seemed headed straight for us, for a moment anyway. And a black and white cat I've seen before slinked around the tires of our bikes. The cat's been there for at least ten years: I've ridden that promenade for about a dozen or so years, and can remember the cat from about that far back. He's surprisingly friendly--with me, anyway--and has a smoother, shinier coat than one would expect from a cat who seems to have spent his whole life outdoors.

After a few minutes, as the sun began to set, we started back to my place. By the time we parted ways, we'd ridden about a dozen miles. And I was feeling really good, save for a bit of soreness in my lower vaginal area. I tipped my seat ever-so-slightly downward just after I left my place. I guess I'll have to fiddle with the seat some more, at least for a while. But at least I felt energetic and the ride went almost effortlessly. Thank you, Barbara, Sue --and Arielle!

My First Bike Ride

Today I took my first bike ride.

My first bike ride since my surgery, that is. Four months to the day after my surgery, to be precise.

Because I woke up late and had a few errands to run--and made a trip to the farmer's market--I didn't get on my Mercian fixed-gear bike until it had already gotten dark.

Now, some of you may be questioning my sanity: A fixed-gear for my first post-op ride? My other Mercian, a geared road bike, couldn't have been too happy about that. Arielle--that's her name--sometimes thinks she's prettier than Tosca, my fixie, whom she accuses of "flaunting her sexuality." Which goes to show you that quarrels happen between those who have the most in common.

So I got on Tosca and reassured Arielle that her day was coming soon. Even though I had no particular route in mind, I figured--correctly--that I would take a flat ride. And I didn't expect to ride for more than half an hour.

So choosing to ride Tosca was probably no less insane than going out as a Saturday night began. But that, in turn, was no less insane than any number of other things I've done. Hey, what's a little traffic and some revelers after you've been through what I've been through?

I opened the gate in front of my place and slung my right leg over the top tube. You never forget how to ride a bike, of course, but after you've been off it for a while, you don't quite know what to expect--especially if you've been off because your body, not to mention your life, has undergone a dramatic change.

Anyway, I'd rolled only a couple of doors down the block when Millie called me from her door. A couple of weeks ago, she told me that even if the doctor gave me the OK to ride, I should stay off my bike until next spring. "More time to heal," she said. "Besides, why would you want to get back on your bike when it's cold?" I could read those same questions on her face even before she yelled, "Goin' for a ride?"

I nodded. She grimaced. "Don't worry. I won't stay out long."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

I turned right on to 34th Avenue, then, a block later, made another right to Vernon Boulevard, which follows the river. A couple of blocks after that, I made yet another right turn on to Broadway, in front of Socrates Sculpture Block. A couple of blocks later, I made my first left, to 12th Street, where a bunch of Serbian men were leaving a mosque. On the next block, I made a right turn to 30th Avenue, which one can follow about five miles to Astoria Boulevard, near LaGuardia Airport.

I had expected to feel fat, awkward and clumsy after such a long layoff. However, I marvelled at how light the bike felt under me. It was like a better version of my own legs. And the wheels made it feel as if I were riding on proverbial rails, albeit much more comfortable rails. Plus, that fixed gear was easier to pedal than I would have expected.

A few blocks into 30th Avenue, I stopped to adjust my saddle. I have always liked my saddles level, or tilted ever-so-slightly tilted upward. But I was starting to feel some pressure in my newly-made lower organs. Moving the nose of the saddle slightly downward helped a bit. But I have a feeling I'm going to be fiddling with it--or, perhaps, getting a new saddle. I hope I don't need to.

After making that adjustment, I pedalled alongside cars driven by guys whose girlfriends were in the front passenger seats. I was expecting the worse but was pleasantly surprised at how courteous most of them were.

Before I knew it, I pedalled at least three miles between the traffic lane and cars parked by the curbs. Along the way, I passed small stores, some of which were closing, bars and dance clubs that were opening and rows of small houses where the cathode and neon shadows of TV shows and movies flashed in some of the windows. Young men in flashy jackets and young women in slinky dresses emerged from some of the houses; into others, couples with young children--some who looked like they'd just come from church--were entering.

Without thinking, I continued to pedal. My body felt surprisingly light, and every movement felt like a current of energy that powered my eyes and ears. Not only could I smell the burgers, pizza, gyros, curries and pollo asado cooking in the delis, coffee shops and restaurants; I could taste them. I was as alert as a cat to cars turning and people crossing streets, but it seemed that in spite of all of the Saturday night drivers and some people who were already intoxicated with one substance or another, I felt somehow that, with my senses that seemed to grow more acute by the moment, people were sensing me as much as I was sensing them. So, none of the possibly-inebriated drivers made turns they didn't signal or were careless in any other way, and I didn't have inattentive pedestrians charging mere steps in front of me in the middle of a block. It almost seemed that all those people knew that this middle-aged woman who's had an exasperating week was taking her first bike ride in four months.

After reaching the Grand Central Parkway entrance near Citi Field, I started back home. My feet made smooth, if slow, turns on my pedals. Along 34th Avenue, from about 110th to Junction Boulevard, I saw rows of churches and houses where some of the finest musician/composers to come from this country--Louis Armstrong among them--played and lived during the later years of their lives. That seemed to be a trajectory for jazz artists of that era: they started in Harlem, spent time in Europe and "retired" in the East Elmhurst neighborhood through which I was spinning in slow but steady time.

Then, after crossing Junction Boulevard, those old houses gave way to blocks full of garden apartments--the first of their kind in this country, and possibly the world--in the center of Jackson Heights. Those buildings--some very elegant, others showy in an Art Deco kind of way--cast the sort of light that glistens with silence even when there's no drizzle or light rain filling the air. In other words, no matter who lives in them-- in their history, those buildings have exuded the prosperity of business people, housed working-class immigrants and become dorms for young professionals and havens for single and coupled gay men-- the light that fills those streets in the evening is incorrigibly urban and bourgeois.

After a dozen or so blocks of those buildings and that light, the blocks alternate between the bright neon signs of stores and clubs and the oddly mute shadows of industrial buildings closed for the weekend. Then, after crossing under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway overpass and Northern Boulevard, I was riding down Broadway, past very familiar stores, cafes and shops. I managed to stop at Parisi's, one of my favorite bakeries, before they closed, for a loaf of bread and a sfogliatelle--my favorite pastry. And I got the hearty and delicious "Freddy's Platter" from the King of Falafel down the block.

By the time I got home to eat my Freddy's Platter and chase it with the sfogliatelle, I'd done about ten miles. Not a big ride for me: I used to do more than that before breakfast. And I wasn't pedalling along scenic seashores or among majestic mountains or fall foliage in Vermont or the Vosges. And while my legs felt fine and I didn't feel winded, I could feel some of the pressure in one of those sensitive areas. (I'll definitely be fiddling with the saddle some more!) But no ride could have been more beautiful, at least to me. The way it felt was almost the exact opposite of the climb up le Col du Galibier, which I didn't think about even for a moment. When I finished that climb, which seems like more than a lifetime ago, something--it seemed to come from within and without me at the same time--said, "You'll never have to do this again." I pedalled up that mountain because I thought I needed to, because I thought I'd let down all those people--including Tammy--who seemed to expect such things from me and because I feared "losing face" with all of those guys with whom I rode and to whom I used to boast about exploits like that one. On the other hand, something in my mind seemed to say, "You can do this again--whenever you want to."

Of course, I don't expect every ride to be like the one I did tonight. But it was absolutely fine for this lady's first ride.

More Games

Yesterday I experienced the first real case of rage I've had since my operation. When I got to the college, I couldn't look at or talk to anybody until I got into my classrooms.

The games haven't ended with that coordinator, whom I'll call Laura. The department's secretary, whom I'll call Deena, has been complaining to our department chair essentially because I ask questions, bring things to her attention and am persistent. I know she's busy, but sometimes I have a legitimate question, such as: When a document--in this case, my class schedule for next semseter--contains two contradictory pieces of information, which one do you believe? Or do you belive neither?

When I asked her, you'd have thought that I was asking her to eat one of her children. She was screaming at me. But of course, I can't say anything about that to the department chair or the college administration. However, because I unwittingly approached her at a bad time last week, she felt absolutely free to not only complain to the chair, she had no compunction about embellishing the story by saying that I cursed at her. She'll probably tell a similar kind of story to the chair, if she hasn't already, mainly because she knows the chair will take her word over mine.

People sometimes tell me I "read too much into things." But after that experience I had with the prof a few days ago, and the accusatory tone the chair uses when speaking to me, even though she hasn't the slightest bit of evidence but someone's word of any wrongdoing on my part, I really think that someone or some people are trying to drive me out of that place.

I guess I should take some comfort in knowing that I'm not the only one who feels that way. Last week, "Cathy" told me, "They're looking for flaws in my breathing." She's been at the college for almost twenty years, fifteen of them as an adjunct instructor. Now she's been getting grief from that same coordinator who made the false accusations against me earlier this week. Why is this coordinator breathing down her neck? Well, that coordinator observed her class and wrote a report, which included the claim that this prof is lax in her job because a student came late to class. Hmm...I guess we, as profs, have control over train schedules, traffic jams and such.

And not only did Cathy have to endure such a stupid evaluation from Laura; she also has been to hear the department chair tell her that she should "look for a job closer to home." The chair did not elaborate; Cathy's evaluations have been overwhelmingly positive and students seek her out.

Now, Cathy and I aren't in league in any conspiracies. Neither of us has ever had any wish to usurp anyone's power. Yet administrative people in our department have treated us with the same combination of defensiveness and accusation.

We both came up with a possible reason why we're being treated the way we are. We're both bigger-than-average women, both of us have gone through things that have nearly cost us our lives and we just won't take condsecension or duplicity from anyone, much less someone who's young enough to be one of our children.

Mind you, the ones who are trying to make "Cathy" and me pawns in their games are the very sorts of people who purport to be paragons of tolerance and open-mindedness. And "Laura" calls herself a feminist.

Yet they want two women with advanced degrees and who are writers to be academic versions of Harriet Nelson. They want us small-framed, wasp-waisted and utterly submissive: We're not supposed to speak up for anything or anyone, much less ourselves. And, if we are creative or have any original ideas, we're supposed to smile as they take our ideas as their own. After all, it's for the "greater good"---of their careers

The Games Are On

Turns out that the coordinator is everything I said she is in my last post. And she's a backstabber on top of that.

Today I got a tongue-lashing from my department chair because the coordinator told her I did something I didn't do, and that I said something I never said. Of course, the department chair will always take her word over mine. That's how it is when someone has more ambition than intelligence or talent and has a title that you don't.

It looks like I'm going to revert to an old way of mine: On the job, I simply won't talk to anyone unless I must. That's how I used to be on previous jobs. Of course, that limited my networking opportunities, but that wasn't so bad for me, really. I mean, is the hobnobbing really worth having someone do what this coordinator did to me? Look where being open and friendly with co-workers got me!

The only thing that's worthwhile about being an educator is actually educating people. Sometimes that happens in the classroom; other times it happens in other contact you have with your students. But the rest of being an educator is not worth what you have to go through to become one: The pay sucks and you find yourself dealing with pettiness and vindictiveness you simply don't see in any other sort of endeavor.

And English departments are, I'm convinced, the worst of all. Well, maybe some philosophy departments are worse, but I can't imagine any other sort of department that can be so bad.

At times like this, I think my students who are accounting majors have the right idea!

Have the Games Begun?

Today I saw my evaluation report. It was good, though it could have been better. In a way, though, I'm not upset: I'm doing the best I can by my students, and most of them appreciate that. I once had an excellent evaluation when I taught one of the worst classes I taught in my life (I'm talking about my own performance, not the students.) and, at another school, I got trashed when I did a good, if not great, class.

I also received my schedule for next semester. I'm not happy with it: I really think the coordinator tried to make it as untenable as she possibly could for me. She seems to have designed it so that I have no useful blocks of time to do the extracurricular work I've been doing, sometimes in conjunction with her as well as other department members.No one else in the department has anything like it.

I haven't talked to her at length this semester, or spent any other significant amount of time around her. However, the couple of times I've seen her, it seemed that she didn't even want to look my way. She used to be rather friendly toward me, and she was happy that I participated in Women's History month events.

Maybe she's upset with me for having the operation. I haven't talked to her about it, and I never told her I was having it. But I'm sure she's heard about it from other people. And I always suspected she was an Andrea Dworkin acolyte.

It figures that there would be somebody like that. At least I was warned. But I don't understand how someone could have liked me when I was in transition, but not now.

Oh well. At least I haven't, in a long time, lived by the illusion that education makes people more tolerant or accepting. After all, I lost two friends during my transition. And both of them had PhDs--one of them in gender studies!

In a way, though, I guess I can't judge them, or anyone else, too much. I had long suspected that going through my transition and surgery would cause me to re-evaluate, or at least re-think, some things in my life. Maybe that coordinator is doing the same thing with me. I always suspected she was a feminist along the lines of Robin Morgan, who hates transgender women because, well, we have that little "M" on our birth certificates.

It's really odd, to me, that someone can like, or at least tolerate someone like me when we're in transition but not after we start living full-time or having our operations. I guess when we're in transition, they can patronize us, which is to say that instead of covering themselves in white hoods and sheets, they wear the masks of toleration.

Also, I think that coordinator liked me better when I was teaching only part-time in the department. I noticed that she cooled somewhat toward me after I became a full-timer. But I don't think she even acknowledged my existence this semester until she made up that schedule.

Things might be getting interesting right about now.

All Saints' Day

Today is All Saints' Day. I guess they're not celebrating me. Oh well.

When I was in Catholic school, we used to get this day off. Of course, we were expected to go to church, and the nuns always seemed to know who did and didn't. Still, we weren't obligated to anything else besides Mass, so it was still sort of like a day off. It was like Sunday, actually.

It just happens that today is Sunday. And last night we turned our clocks back an hour, so it was dark not long after 5:00 pm. Kind of ironic for Sunday, isn't it?

The day had been overcast until around noon. Then, the sun peeked from behind clouds, which broke up then scattered like the leaves skittering in the breeze. I walked along Vernon Boulevard, which skirts the East River from a couple of blocks north of my place down to Jackson Avenue, about two miles away. Along the way, there are some spectacular vistas of the Manhattan skyline, including some picture-postcard views of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings.

The contrast could not have been more striking between the glass and steel of the Manhattan side and the yellow and orange leaves swirling among the rust-colored bricks smoldering in the late-afternoon autumn sun on my side of the river, where the working-class (but gentrifying) neighborhood in which I live gives way to factories, most of which are closed for the weekend. Still, some a couple of trucks rumbled through the area.

The light of this afternoon made everything and everybody look good. At least, everybody and everything I saw was beautiful. Really! And I was in a frumpy outfit, my hair was a mess and I had on no makeup but my lipstick. But men were looking at me, and one tried to chat me up as I crossed an intersection. And a truck driver--the only one I saw today-- yelled, "Hey, gorgeous!"

I didn't turn. "Hello babe." He couldn't have been talking about me.

"You! With the purple bag." I was the only one who fit that description. "How'ya doin'?"

I smiled at him. "Have a nice day, darlin'," Yes, he was talking to me. "You do the same," I cooed.

We hear all sorts of stories about women who are abducted and worse in scenes like that one. Such a vision flashed through my mind, but before it ended, he was out of sight. Of course I'm careful, but I don't think the man meant any harm. If he was out driving that truck on a Sunday, he may have just wanted human contact, if only for a moment. Or, perhaps, he was flirting just because, well, he could.

The odd thing is that as I become more vulnerable, I become less fearful. I take the precautions any conscious woman would take and understand the potential for sexual or other kinds of violence. But at the same time, I understand that even if he's big and tough, he's still a man. So I have some idea of how he's thinking or feeling and can work with or around it, as need be.

The truck driver was lonely and probably feeling that he's getting old (though he didn't look very old to me). He wants to make sure he still has his virility and charm intact. What better way to find out than to test them on whatever woman passes by? I gave him a smile and, as it turned out, that was enough acknowledgment for him.

It's not that I feel pity for him. I just understand what it's like to live in a male body, with testosterone bubbling over, yet feel time passing you by.

After all, it was Sunday afternoon. And it was All Saints' Day, with the glow of the first early sunset flickering in the fallen leaves just before the first long night of the season.

Wearing The Mask

My first Halloween as a woman and what did I do? I went in drag.

All right. I know that joke's getting old, and I promise never to use it again on this blog--unless my age, blondness and absent-minded-professor-ness (What kind of word is that?) get the better of me and I forget this post.

Seriously, I didn't go out in boy-drag. Nor did I go trick-or-treating in a Michael Jackson mask or a Kate Gosselin wig. Those were two of the most popular getups this Halloween. And I didn't go as a witch, as appropriate as some of my students may think it would be!

Actually, I spent the day in a very out-of-season pair of bay blue shorts and a top striped in aqueous shades. They were handy and the day was a bit warmer than normal for this time of year. Besides, I had no engagement that called for appropriate attire.

In other words, I was feeling lazy today, at least about my appearance. So, I didn't wear makeup, either. I simply brushed my hair and put on some lipstick before I went out for a walk.

Now here's something for which I can blame my mother: Even when I'm as poorly dressed as I was today and when I'm not wearing makeup, I don't leave the house without putting on lipstick. About two years into living as a woman, I realized I'd developed that habit. When I told Mom about it, she gasped: "That's what I do, too!"

A pause. Then I quipped, "Like mother, like daughter, eh?"

Another pause. "It looks that way, doesn't it?," she mused.

"At least I have a great mother to be like."

"And you're a fine daughter. I still don't understand what you're doing--I'm trying to--but you're my child, you're good, and you deserve to be happy. And I've never seen you happier."

That, from exactly the person I could never fool with a mask or a wig.

Perhaps some day I will wear one again, for fun. But for now, it is a victory--in exactly the same sense that survival is victory--that I don't have to wear a wig or mask, at least not most of the time.

My previous life reminds me of what Paul Dunbar's narrator said:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

"This debt to human guile." If that's not a definition of the masks and costumes I wore every day for more than 40 years, tell me what is.

I really hope that all the kids I saw tonight won't have to wear that sort of mask. Let them have fun with the ones they're wearing!

You Can't Get An Education From Anyone You Don't Trust Or Who Doesn't Trust You

I am thinking again about yesterday. Perhaps that's not a productive thing to do, but I'm prone to that sometimes.

Anyway...I find myself reflecting on what I've been learning during these past few months. So much of it comes down to trust. And now I realize that the trust I'm learning is not only toward those who can actually give me the care and education I need. It's also a trust in myself.

When you don't feel whole, complete or simply right-- whatever that means to you-- how can you trust yourself? What can you trust if your body is lying to you and in order to survive, you have to tell-- or worse, perpetuate-- lies of one sort and another? And how can you hope to get an education of any sort if even your name is not your own?

James Baldwin once wrote that a child cannot learn from a teacher who despises him. That's more or less right. But I think that it would be more accurate to say that no one can get an education from anyone he or she does not trust, and who does not trust him or her. All you learn is a sort of defensive deception: You lie, dodge or commit whatever other subterfuge is necessary in order not to be harmed. And, of course, if someone is telling you the complete truth about something, it cannot be anything but a falsehood in such circumstances.

You go to a doctor because you think you've cracked your ankle in a fall. If the doctor, or his or her screener, asks if you've felt depressed, you say "no" because you want your ankle fixed, not to raise suspicions that you harmed yourself on purpose.

Something like that happened to me. And to practitioners I've previously used, I've said that I had sexual fantasies about women, and even talked about wanting to marry one or another, just so that I wouldn't get locked up somewhere that couldn't offer me what I needed, much less wanted.

How many times do we get through a situation, a day or a period of our lives by saying what someone else wants, or seems to want, to hear? Or worse yet, what we wish were true?

When I saw Mom back in August, I said that my years at Rutgers, where I was an undergraduate, were the worst of my life. She asked what I would have done differently: Would I have gone to another school? Studied different things? Or delayed going to school?

I might have done all of those things, I said, but I probably still would have been miserable. She cringed when I said that last word. "Oh, you were!," she said. "I haven't seen very many people who were more unhappy than you were in those days."

I explained that I was, by any definition of the term, deeply depressed. I felt as if I had nothing in common with anybody at the college. In part, it had to do with the fact that when I was young, I tended not to make friends among my peers. What friends I had were, for the most part, women older than I was.

Also, I felt more hostility toward who and what I am than I ever felt in high school, or before that. For many years afterward, I accepted the standard explanation: that I was noticing it more. And, being the sort of person I am--one who just wants to live her life--I trusted other people's opinions before I trusted my own experience.

The thing is, the higher you go in education, the more you encounter that mentality. If you experience something, it doesn't count for as much as what some "expert" says about it. I have come to realize that such an "expert" is more than likely to be self-appointed and gains his or her authority because so many people are, for whatever reasons, too cowed or indifferent to challenge it.

But there was another dimension to the conditions that made me so unhappy: I was in a residential college. So I was living with other students, whom I saw every day. They included various jocks or jock-groupies and frat guys. Living among them meant that I had to keep my acts and my defenses up at all times. I played the drinking games with the guys and feigned more interest in "banging" women than I actually had. Worse, I not only went along with the "fag" jokes, I made a few myself.

And, because I engaged in such mendacity, I came to despise everything about the college, college generally, the people in it and what I had to do to keep myself there. Today, of course, none of that surprises me--or, for that matter, the people who've heard this from me--because I had, by that time, learned to so thoroughly despise myself.

I fell into such an awful state because I could not articulate what was happening to me. I tried to fit into the labels: I was "straight;" I was "gay;" I was "bi" (whatever those terms mean! ); I was a guy with a "feminine side." And, of course, I kept that side as far from view as I could.

The result was that I never did anything more than half-heartedly. I was present only physically in my classes and in other college functions; when I reached out to others (Yes, I got very lonely sometimes!) I could only do so from behind a wall. And even in that relative safety, I was still in a mask and costume, whether or not it was Halloween.

So I could never ask the sort of questions I wanted to ask, or do anything that would allow me to get the sort of education that stays with a person: that which teaches a person by expanding his or her self-definition. This means helping that person to learn how to do what he or she is capable of doing, and to expand that person's range of what is capable.

Maybe this is the reason why, in spite of all the time I've spent in a classroom as a student and teacher, I have never quite trusted Education (with a capital "E"). Even when I enjoy teaching (which, these days, is most of the time) and otherwise helping students, and when I enjoy an exchange with a colleague (a more frequent occurrence these days), I still sometimes feel as if I cannot trust it. Perhaps I am still carrying a lot of residual damage.

I am interested in helping people gain an education, whatever that means for them. And most people go to school for that, and we are--at least in theory--charged with that role. But I often feel that my own education bears only an incidental relationship to the time I've spent in school.

In brief, I felt a little sad after leaving Dr. Jennifer's office yesterday for the same reason that I shed tears upon leaving Marci, Nurse Phyllis, Robin and all of those other people I met in Trinidad: From them, I was finally getting an education--a real education.

Now I'm wondering whether it's the only education I've ever had.

Another Graduation

Today I had what will be my last appointment with Dr. Jennifer, at least for a while.

She confirmed what I've suspected: Psedomona is gone! Okay, say it again: Pseudomona is gone! Just rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it?

Yes, that minor-but-pesky infection I had is history. And, she said, all of my major healing is complete. But she did advise me to finish my current round of antibiotics and to wait another week before getting back on my bike or getting that other kind of exercise. You know which kind I mean.

Of course this is great news for me. But I shed a few tears, too. For one thing, I was actually enjoying those visits with Dr. Jennifer. All health-care professionals should have her warmth and empathy as well as her skills. That, of course, is what I also say about Marci Bowers.

My tears today were, I feel, like the ones people shed at graduations. They are tears of joy, yes. But they also express a feeling of relief, of having arrived safely and well at some destination.

In some way, this really feels like a graduation, in much the same way having finished my session with Nurse Phyllis or seeing Marci the day after my surgery: I had "made it" through something through which each of them had guided and nurtured me.

That I learned about my body from each of them almost goes without saying. However, I now realize that my new-found education has come about because I had to trust each of them with my body as well as my spirit in ways that, earlier in my life, I simply couldn't have with anyone --partially because I never had to.

With each of them, I had to allow myself and them a level of intimacy that, for most of my life, I didn't know how to permit anyone else, much less myself.

You might say that I was experiencing, viscerally, what I had experienced vicariously when I saw The Vagina Monologues: a shared experience of having one.

As I understand it, that is supposed to be a reason for graduations: The new graduates reflect upon the common experiences of those who are graduating with, and who have graduated before, them.

So what does this "graduation" mean? For now, at least, I can, in some way, function independently as a woman. Maybe it was the logical "next step" for me. I've gotten to the point where, when people address me as "Ma'am," "Miss," or "Lady," I do not append it, even in my own mind. Although having lived as a male will always be a part of me, I no longer see it as a qualifying condition.

I have graduated again; I came home on a spectacularly beautiful fall day.

The Hate Crimes Law

I'm supposed to be happy that Obama signed the so-called "Hate Crimes Bill" into law today.

And I guess I'm supposed to vote for Obama when he runs for re-election.

Essentially, that's one of the reasons why he signed it: He figured that he'd get our votes that way. I wonder how many in the LGBT community will forget that he opposed gay marriage. Not that I think that winning that "right" will put gays on an equal footing with straight people: I think that marriage is none of any government's business. If people want to marry in their religious institutions, that's fine. But I don't think that a government--especially in a country that's supposed to have a separation between church and state--should have the power to decide who's married and who isn't. If they absolutely must be involved, they should just grant civil unions to everyone, and it shouldn't bring tax benefits with it.

All right, you're saying to yourself, she's not married and probably never will be. Point taken. Still, I think that in a secular country, a government should not be sanctifying marriage--or any other relationship between two or more people. That's, in essence, what it does with its policies on taxes and in many other areas.

For that matter, I don't think singlehood should have special privileges or status, either. No government ever forced me to get married, or to be single. Nor has this government forced anyone else into it. People who get married aren't veterans who were drafted into service. As much as I abhor war, I think that they're one of the few groups that should receive special benefits and tax breaks.

Anyway...Given that he opposed gay marriage at the same time Dick Cheney voiced his support of it, I think Obama is being more than a little hypocritical.

Plus, the Hate Crimes Bill is really a law that was added to a military-spending appropriation bill. Most people would see military spending and gay rights as almost polar opposites. But when you realize that the bill really isn't about gay rights, or any other sort of concern for LGBT people, you realize that it's just another way for the Federal government to expand its powers. And, of course, military spending is to government power as heroin is to an addict.

The fact that gay- and tranny-bashing are now, at least according to the letter of the law, Federal crimes will not stop them from happening. Nor will more zealous prosecution or "tougher" sentencing. Such things might stop someone who's thought about robbing banks, but it's not going to curb hate. In fact, if anything, I think that the so-called Hate Crimes Bill just might lead to more "hate crimes."

Think about it: Some person or group who hates gays (and probably lots of other people) can seem like a martyr to himself, or to his group, because he is dealt with more harshly than some other criminal because his victim happened to be LGBT. On a smaller scale, that's no different than the US going to war against Islamic countries that already view us as The Great Satan. Not only will they hate us even more; they will also feel all the more justified in seeing us as demons. And that will give young men with nothing to lose but their belief that 72 virgins are waiting for them in the afterlife all the more rationale for fighting a jihad against us.

Now, of course, I can't blame Obama for the fact that the law was attached to a military spending bill. Or maybe I could. After all, I don't think he's seen any kind of military spending that he didn't like. And look at how he's expanded this country's military involvement with Afghanistan. Does the man read history? Twenty years ago, the Russians, who were just over the border, sent in five times as many troops as we're ready to commit. And they couldn't mold Afghanistan to their will. What makes him think we can do it?

But back to what the law can't accomplish: It won't stop people from committing those crimes because it can't stamp out the hatred that leads to the crimes. And, really, how much can any law help a community--I'm talking about transgenders now--of whom 35 percent are unemployed and 59 percent make less than $15,300 in San Francisco. Let's face it: If you don't have a job, or some other legitimate source of income, you don't have power in this society. And that makes it that much harder to dispel the idea that we're freaks and, if we are working, it's in the sex industry.

Maybe I'm wrong and Obama meant well and this will actually help us. If things turn out that way, well...according to scientific principles, bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly. I don't think that any scientist who's ever opened a jar of honey minds being wrong about that. "If this be error and upon me be proved..."

For now, it hasn't been.

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.