Learning About Home

Jonathan, one of my colleagues, and I left the college together tonight. We walked down a short path that leads to a promenade that borders the oldest cemetery in the state as well as two college buildings before passing under a Long Island Railroad trestle.

Along the way, I couldn't help but to notice that the reds and yellows of the leaves that had not yet fallen were more vivid in the darkness, with the lights from the buildings reflecting off them from behind, than they were in daylight. That is because the day was heavily overcast, although no rain fell. The light of this day was definitely late-fall, tending toward winter: It has lost the October glow and is darkening into the more stark light of a winter sky. For another week or two, we will see more color on those trees than anywhere else, even though the leaves seem to be falling off more rapidly with each day. Then the branches will be bare of leaves, not to mention color.

Every year, it seems that the department in which I teach holds its Open House on a day like this one. As in years past, it began at 4pm, just as the sky is about to start growing darker. This year, there seemed to be more camaraderie than in last year's Open House, even though the organizers of last year's event tried to make it a festive commemoration to the newly-elected Obama. I think part of it had to do with the topic of the readings and presentations: Home.

At least it's a topic that everyone can relate to, in whatever way. As I've mentioned in another post, it seemed, for much of my life, to be an abstraction: After all, how could I be at home anywhere if I wasn't at home in my own skin?

I was uneasy, not because I was giving a presentation, but because I saw the department secretary and the coordinator who'd accused me of something I didn't do. I was going to avoid them, but they both apologized to me. They seemed sincere to me, so I assumed that they were and accepted their apologies.

Of all the readings, presentations and performances, mine was scheduled to come last. I was a bit intimidated, because the two readings that preceded mine (There were eight in all.) were dramatic and done by a pair, then a group, of people. And I was going to read poems and a short prose selection by myself.

I read three pieces in all. Actually, I recited one from memory: Palais d'Hiver,one of my own short poems. I preceded it with a selection from Jacobo Timerman's Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without A Number and followed it with Bruce Weigl's Anna Grasa.

But the way I started my presentation really got people's attention. I introduced myself and said, "I find this topic, home, very poignant right now. After all, I came home for the very first time this year."

Some of my fellow faculty members knew what I was talking about. So did many of the students who were there, as well as some guests they and faculty members brought in. And, I'm guessing that the college president and provost, and the dean of arts and sciences--all of whom were in the audience--knew, too. I haven't mentioned my surgery to any of them, but I'm sure they've heard about it.

Afterward, a number of my colleagues--including Janet, a new prof with whom I hadn't previously had the chance to speak--as well as students I'd never before met and the partner of one of the profs--came up to me and offered hugs, congratulations and advice.

The selection I read from Timerman can be found here.

My poem is here.

And here is Weigl's poem:

Anna Grasa

I came home from Vietnam.

My father had a sign

made at the foundry:

WELCOME HOME BRUCE

in orange glow paint.

I had to squint,

WELCOME HOME BRUCE.

Out of the car I moved

up on the sign

dreaming myself full,

the sign that cut the sky,

my eyes burned,

but behind the terrible thing

I saw my grandmother

beautiful Anna Grasa.

I couldn't tell her.

I clapped to myself,

clapped to the sound of her dress.

I could have put it on,

she held me so close.

Both of us could be inside.

One thing Timerman and Weigl understand is that sometimes home takes some getting used to, especially if you're there for the first time, or are returning after a long absence. I'm learning about that, too: I just came home four months ago.

An Execution of the Eve of Veterans' Day

In a very, very dark sense, it's fitting that John Allen Muhammad was executed on the eve of Veteran's Day. I unequivocally oppose the death penalty--yes, even for someone like Muhammad--and war, for any reason. For one thing, I figure that if a man who won a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star in World War II (but who wrote, ahem, Thank God for the Atom Bomb) could tell me, "There is simply no way to justify one human being to kill another," what argument is there for any war or the death penalty? For another, I have come to understand that the only people who benefit from either one are the men (and, yes, almost all of them are men) who are the powers behind the social, economic and political systems in which both are conducted. There is never any justice for the loved ones of the victims of either monstrosity; there is no such thing as "closure" after such a loss. And revenge is not justice.

Also: No one has ever corrected or prevented a crime by committing the same sort of crime. The "war to end all wars" indeed! Finally, I simply cannot stomach the idea of a state, no matter how benevolent, having the power of life and death over any human being. Now, I know someone is going to say, "Well, would you rather that John Allen Muhammad have the power of life and death over someone else?" Of course I wouldn't. But he didn't have such power once he was captured.

As for war: What in the world are American troops doing in Afghanistan? What were they doing in Iraq--under Bush I or Bush II? And what, pray tell, were we doing in the Balkans region under the Clinton regime? How can anyone who has any respect at all for life put another person in a country where he's hated just because he's there by people who did nothing to harm him or the country he hails from?

Even if you accept the premise that American invlovement in, say, World War II was justified, how can you have so little respect for what your sons, fathers or neighbors accomplished and sacrificed in such a war that you would so cavalierly put them in some place where they face danger for no useful purpose?

I am thinking again about the story "Gunnar Berg" posted on his blog. How many people would refuse to fight, or set their "enemies" free if they could see the common humanity they share: That the desires and dreams of their enemies aren't so different from their own, and that perhaps their adversaries' children are, in some ways, like their own. Then perhaps they would understand the truism that war is between brothers. And that is the reason why nobody wins, ever.

Plus, in killing someone, you place him and whatever he represents above all else. Muhammad, as a result of his execution, will have had more attention paid to him than any of his victims ever had. And in a war, so much effort and materiel go into tracking down and killing "ememies" that those enemies take precedence over everything else--whether it's the economy, education or one's own loved ones

From Wholeness to "Juvie"

Very few things in my life have felt better than getting on my bikes this weekend. I was talking with Charlie, the owner of Bicycle Habitat, about that. He said, "Well, it's the first time you've gotten on a bike as a whole person. Of course it's going to feel better."

Today I went to pick up the bike that's going to become my next commuter/errand bike: a Raleigh Sports ladies' three-speed. It's one of those classic English three-speeds, with fenders and a chainguard. I had them give it a once-over, as it's been a while since I've worked on a three-speed hub. Besides, would the great tranny goddesses if I got my hands dirty doing something like that? I guess they'd've understood: My nails are a mess anyway. Now, if I'd just had a nice French manicure or one of those nail-paintings and ruined it while working on machinery, well, that just wouldn't do, would it?

Anyway...I wish I could've ridden during the day today: The weather was even better than it was yesterday. At least I got to ride home from the shop, which is a distance of about seven miles.

And that ride came at the end of a strange day. Or maybe it wasn't so strange, given who I am. And its strangeness comes not from any paranormal activity or anything related to it. And nothing unusual happened in my classes. It was just the feeling that was odd, almost disconcerting. It was so, in part, because of my own doing.

I talked to two faculty members today. They've always been friendly toward me, and they were today. But I could see that they were being friendlier toward me than I was toward them. I wasn't upset at them: In fact, I hadn't seen one in a while, as he was at a conference. I felt a little guilty about not being more talkative with them, and I wonder if they're reading anything into it.

It had to do with the defenses I've built up since the goings-on of last week. I really didn't want to talk to any of my colleagues, even the ones who've been supportive. You might say I've gotten a little bit paranoid: After one person--Deena, the secretary--whom I thought was an ally treated me as she did and a purported feminist--Laura, the coordinator--accused me of something I didn't do, I'm starting to feel as if I can't trust anybody who works there. And, because the department chair seems all too willing to accept, at face value, what people like them say about me, I feel as if I don't have any support. That makes me question the value of the service (on committees and such) I've performed for the department and college.

Those very same defenses came down, or at least softened a bit, in my classes. The students seemed even more receptive to me and perceptive about what they've been reading than they usually are. We were doing fairly mundane material, but the classes were a joy to do.

Equally joyful was bumping into three students I hadn't seen since last semester. They seem to be doing well; of course, they all asked how "it" went. Not that they couldn't ask about my operation; it's almost as if "it" is a kind of shorthand in the way that "the big event" is for some other goings-on in other people's lives.

One in particular was happy to see me, as I was to see her. She's very overweight and has a harelip. One day last year (her freshman year), she told me she felt I was the only one of her professors who didn't look at her as a fat girl with a harelip. Why should I?, I wondered. She's a rather smart young woman who works hard and isn't afraid to try something new: What else should I, as her professor, have seen? Besides, I thought she was very nice. That she seems not to have trouble making friends, and even getting dates, with her fellow students is evidence of that.

So here's what's strange: When I'm around my students, I feel like I'm around grown-up people, or at least people who are in the process of becoming that way. Sure, some of them do things we would think are silly or irresponsible, but they also seem to learn when I or someone else points out the error of their ways and offers advice, if they ask for it. I also know that a few of them may have had non-existent "crises" or other "situations" that they used as reasons for missing a class or an assignment. Still, I trust them, not because I'm lenient or don't care, but because I know that the only way to help someone, especially a young person, to become trustworthy is to trust him or her. If that person knows her or she did something dishonest, I would hope that he or she would learn and do something better from the chance I give. On the other hand, if you treat people as if they're going to do wrong even if they haven't, they'll do something subversive simply because they don't trust you.

In contrast, when I'm anywhere on the campus but in my classrooms, or around many of the faculty members and administrators, I feel as if I'm in some place that's a cross between a junior-high school and a juvenile detention center. The same sorts of games that go on in those places are standard operating procedure at the college, or so it seems. There's the same sort of petty cliquishness, and the same sort of intolerance of people who are, or seem to be, different from themselves.

It's telling that every handicapped or LGBT student I've taught, advised or counseled at the college has transferred or dropped out of it. It's equally telling that Latino and Asian students don't stay, and the Latino staff members feel something one longtime administrative aide expressed to me: "more like a stranger here than I did on the day I started." That day was 24 years ago.

Furthermore, there is not a single "out" member of the faculty. Three profs told me, privately, that they are gay or lesbian and made me promise I wouldn't reveal their identities. Two of them got tenure before most of their students were born; the other, I suspect, fears not getting re-appointed. I think now of the time I went to Kingsborough Community College and New York University and saw lots of faculty members' office doors adorned with "Safe Space" signs. Students know that they can talk to those profs about their sexual or gender identity and not be judged, much less "outed." On the other hand, students know only by word of mouth that they can talk to me. And they probably don't even know about those other profs I just mentioned.

I'm starting to feel I am, on a smaller scale, like Dr. Stanley Biber (who trained Marci Bowers) when he started performing sex reassignment surgery in the days when it was still called "the sex-change operation." He had to "fly under the radar," for the nuns that ran Mount San Rafael Hospital would not have approved. And, in those pre-Internet days, people found out about him through a kind of "underground" network that consisted mainly of other transgender people.

So...I can get on my bike as a whole person now. But I can't be that way at the college--not even among colleagues who've known me since I started there, years before my operation. Or maybe now they resent me for being whole instead of just a label that they saw in one of their textbooks.

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.