I Am A Patron Saint In Greenpoint

Today I had one of my blonde moments. Or was it an absent-minded professor moment? Or should I blame it on my age? After all, I'm in, or near, Alzheimer's territory.

Whatever the reason, my mental lapse caused me to miss an appointment with Anna, my hairdresser. I was supposed to see her at 2:30 this afternoon, but for some reason I thought it was 3:30. When I arrived, she was cutting someone else's hair and was booked for the rest of this day--and week. So I've scheduled an appointment for the day of New Year's Eve. At least I'll start 2010 with nice hair!

Anna works for Zoe's Beauty in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I always enjoy going to the salon-- and to the neighborhood, which is the main Polish enclave in New York. How long it will remain so is a good question: When you walk Manhattan Avenue, which is the main commercial strip, you see actual or wannabe hipsters perusing the windows full of Polish foods, videos and books. A few stores have signs in Polish, but not in English.

I went into one of them to buy some chocolates. Yes, the Polish make some good dark chocolates. As I don't drink vodka or beer (or anything else with alcohol), those chocolates have become my Polish drug of choice. The E. Wedel and Wawel brands seem to have a particularly nice taste and texture. It's a good thing the packages are illustrated: Sometimes they're printed only in Polish!

Anyway, when I went to pay for the chocolates, the young female cashier talked to me in Polish. I smiled in a somewhat embarrassed way. She knew right then and there I wasn't from her country. "Sorry! I thought you were..."

Ironically, she was actually more pleasant toward me when she realized I'm not Polish. And she was more polite with me than she seemed to be with the Polish customers. That, of course, is the opposite of what one normally expects in encountering people who speak a language different from one's own. What I find even stranger is that it's not the first time I've had such an experience in Greenpoint.

After buying the chocolates, I went to a little Polish restaurant called The Happy End. I highly recommend their white borscht and pierogies, and that's what I had there. As I was spooning up the soup, a man about ten years younger than I am sat beside me and started chatting me up in his language. I gave him my sad little "Sorry, I don't speak your language" smile--which seemed to make him even more intent on talking to me. He switched to English, which he actually spoke very well. "What are you doing for the holidays?"

"I'm going to see family," I lied. I've used that line to abort a couple of attempted pick-ups in my time.

"Oh. That's good. What about after the holiday?"

"Well, I'm going to work. "

"What's your name?"

This time, I told him the truth. That really got his attention. Apparently, Justine (which is spelled Justyna in Polish) is a sort of patron saint, or something like that, to the Polish. At least, one of my Polish students told me that. She said that Justyna led Polish forces in an ultimately unsuccessful insurrection against their Russian and German occupiers. I remarked that it sounds a lot like the story of Jeanne d'Arc. My student agreed, but added that in a way, Justyna is even more important to Poland than Jeanne is to France. "At least France still existed when Jeanne fought," she said. "When Justyna came along, the Polish people didn't have their own country."

If I recall correctly, some time near the end of the 18th Century, Russia and Prussia conquered and divided Poland, which would not become an independent country again until some time after World War I.

Anyway...I told that man in the restaurant that I am in the neighborhood often, and perhaps we would bump into each other again. "I hope so, Justyna." He enunciated my name, making sure that I heard it as a Polish name.

A couple of weeks ago, I mused on whether I should be Russian because their writers spend so much time describing women's eyes and I've been told that mine are beautiful. Now I'm starting to think that maybe I should be Polish. After all, I seem to look more or less the part. And Polish men seem not to mind big-boned, strong-willed women. Most important, perhaps, is that I seem to have the right name. Who'd have guessed that in changing my gender--and my name--I'd become a sort of honorary Pole?

Then again, would I have to change my last name to Valinottiniski? I don't think I'd like that. I'll stick to being an interloper in Greenpoint.

Learning About The Cold

After this weekend's snow, the air has been filled with the kind of cold that seems to cut right through the skin and go straight to the bone. It is a windborne cold that feels as stark as the sky during the day and the twilight at the end of this, the second-shortest day of the year.

Ever since I started taking hormones, I feel the cold more than I used to. Not only do I sense it more; it seems to have a sharper edge to it.

The cold today is different from the cold one experiences, say, in Paris. There, it's the moisture rather than the wind that bears the cold. So, instead of piercing or slicing its way into the skin, the European cold seeps through every pore and orifice and seems to deposit itself, as if in layers, in the body.

Since I started my transition, I've been to Europe once--in the summertime. So I don't yet know whether, and how, the cold weather over there would feel differently from how it felt to me when I was full of testosterone (and, in my youth, beer or wine--or sometimes even stronger stuff!).

One thing I know is that over there, they don't see a whole lot of sunshine during the winter. The sort of day we had today--what someone, I forget whom, used to call C-cubed (clear, cold and crisp)--is unusual there. The gray layers of clouds mirror the cumulus stratified chill that builds in one's bones through those winter days in northern Europe. And, if you're not accustomed to it, you feel as if the cold will never leave. Those who are accustomed to experiencing it know that one day it will leave--with the season, or with one's own life.

Thinking about the cold, and the different kinds of cold, has brought back a memory of Cori. Until now, I hadn't thought about her today. It wasn't as though I was trying to forget her: After all, if you try to forget something, it's too late.

Anyway...This is the anniversary of her suicide. If the person that I am now could go back in time for her, I'd do everything I can to get her to see what I know now: That her depression, as bad as it was, and as all-permeating as it seemed to be, would be gone one day. And she wouldn't have had to die in order for that to happen.

Of course, that was something I didn't know at the time--and, truth be told, I don't think I could have understood even if the most empathetic soul showed me what I've just described. I felt the same way she did about her depression: It had permeated every atom of her being and seemed as if it would stay forever.

We had the same sort of conflict over our gender identities. We thought we could resolve it by doing all the things guys did, by wearing the "right" clothes and so forth. But the coldness and grayness just seeped deeper into our beings and pushed out any sunshine and warmth.

That was why she called me on the last night of her life, and why I went over to her place. I knew just how she felt even though I was years--decades--away from describing it to any other human being. I tried to keep it at bay, confined to some part of me I hoped I would never need to access. But of course, over the years, the cold and grayness just drew tighter around my being. I did not believe that there was an end to that seemingly-eternal winter of grayness and cold.

Now, of course, I have seen an end, and have seen how the cycle can begin all over again. Cori is long gone, so all I can do is learn from my experience and help others.

The cold and the grayness end, at least for a season. So does the wind.

That Prof Didn't Have To Stand an Egg On End This Semester

Today is officially the first day of winter. The solstice came at 12:47 pm, our time. I didn't try to stand an egg on its end, so I don't know whether you really can do that on the day of a solstice? Or is that on the day of an equinox? And if I got an egg to stand on its end, how would that affect my life? Or would it?

Why would I try such a thing, anyway?

OK, so that was a bit of a digression. But can you start with a digression?

Anyway...I've been finishing up the semester. I don't know how I'll see this semester if I think about it in the future. In one sense, I can't imagine how I won't think about it: After all, it is my first in my new life. On the other hand, not much particularly noteworthy (for me, anyway) has happened. I worked; I did the best I could by my students and colleagues. A few students loved me; a few hated me; lots more saw me, if they thought about me, as just another prof--or as that prof.

What does it mean to be that prof? For one thing, lots of students stop me in the hallway to ask what I'm teaching next semester. Now that my courses for next semester have filled up, some students are asking how they can get into my classes. I guess there are more masochists in this world--or at least in the college in which I teach--than I ever imagined! ;-)

To be fair, I can understand why someone would think of me as that prof. For better or worse, I am one-of -a- kind in a number of different ways. For one, I'm tall and blonde (well, sort of) in a college in which 80 percent of the students are black, 10 percent are Asian and most of the rest are Latino/as. Plus, I'm bigger-boned than the average female of any race. And I'm the only faculty member named Justine. (If they're not calling me that prof, they're calling me Professor Justine--which I like.) And, of course, most of the school knows my story by now--or one part of it, anyway.

Hey, I'm even more of a minority than people who can make eggs stand on end! Or, for that matter, people who can touch the tips of their noses with their tongues (something I can do, by the way).

But I was that prof even before this semester. So, in that sense, this semester wasn't remarkable.

Maybe we can drag Marlo Thomas out of retirement to play me in a new series--That Prof. She's a few years older than I am, but that's all right. Plus, the fact that she's not much of an actress doesn't particularly trouble me. I mean, after all, outside of the college in which I teach, my circle of friends and my family, how many people have any idea of what I'm like? So they won't know whether or not she's portraying me accurately.

I think now of what one of the Medicis--Lorenzo, I think--said when people told him that a portrait (painted, if I recall correctly, by Botticelli) didn't resemble him. In essence, he said that 100 years after he died, nobody would remember what he looked like. But they would still have his portrait which, he correctly predicted, would be seen as a great work of art.

Now, of course, that's not to compare Marlo Thomas with Botticelli or any Medici--or any of them with me, for that matter. But imagine what someone could do with an idea like That Prof. If Meryl Streep had a lobotomy, she'd still be a better actress than Marlo Thomas. So, for that matter, would Helen Mirren or Simone Signoret. But, really, would you want to see any of them playing a middle-aged transsexual professor? Especially if said middle-aged transsexual prof is me? Streep, Mirren and Signoret can all play weighty roles. But none of them can do comedy. Well, I've never seen Mirren or Signoret do comedy, and the one time I saw Meryl Streep doing it--in She Devil--she didn't look right. Then again, opposite her, Roseanne Barr was playing a "serious" role. Whose idea was that?

And, let's face it, whether or not it was her intention, Marlo Thomas was funny. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks that way. Or maybe my view is skewed because That Girl ran about the time I was entering puberty. Her voice changed pitches more often during one segment of that show than mine did during my entire puberty. And she seemed to have as little control over it as I did over my voice changes.

I don't think anyone's going to make a series like that. So for now, if you want to see that prof, you have to come to the college in which I teach. And you'll find out that I'm just like all the others. Really.

OK, so believing that is a bit of a stretch. But save for the fact that I returned from surgery, and didn't have the physical stamina I normally have, this has been a fairly unremarkable semester. That's probably a good thing.

Where Are The Men?

We ended up with about a foot of snow. Out in the far reaches of Long Island, they had two, or even two and a half feet. Up and down the East Coast, from Virginia to Canada, people are digging out from this storm.

I am not a meteorologist, and I have practically no education of any sort in any area of science. But this storm seemed to be like a hurricane, except that the wind drove snow instead of rain--and, of course, that it was much colder than a hurricane.

The view from my bedroom window was that of a town molded in alabaster. It's lovely, and will remain so until the snow turns to slush the color of ashes.

More people were out and about yesterday were on the streets last night. What's interesting is that a seemingly large percentage of those people were in couples--heterosexual ones, mainly. That's what one normally expects to see on Saturday night, as there are clubs and bars along the commercial strip near me.

It seemed that the people who weren't in heterosexual pairings were instead mothers and daughters together. The daughters were teenagers or young adults; the mothers were around my age. That in itself is not so unusual: On the weekend before Christmas, mothers and daughters often go shopping together.

But what I found truly striking is the absence of middle-aged and elderly people, and men over 35 or so. There are a fair number of elderly people in this neighborhood, as there are in many parts of Queens. It seems that one can see just about all of them on a Sunday, as they're going to or coming from church, and possibly having lunch (They aren't the sort who "do brunch.") or dinner with friends or family members. As for the men: There seem to be fewer and fewer of them the longer I live here. If there are indeed fewer men in the prime of their lives than there were when I first moved into this area, I don't know why.

Of course, some people would argue that I contributed to that trend! ;-)

In a weird way, this reminds me of Park Slope the first year (1992) that I was living there. It seemed that there weren't any men of a certain age; there were only the very young or senior males. Occasionally I would see a thirtyish man with a woman, and possibly a child in a stroller. Those men often looked confused or resigned, as if they didn't know what they were supposed to be doing.

It may well be that they didn't know. At that time, a lot of professionals in the Wall Street-related industries had lost, or were losing, their jobs. Quite a few of them were living in "the Slope" at the time: In fact, they had much to do with turning the Slope into one of the city's more fashionable neighborhoods.

I recall stopping to use a Citibank (I called it "Shittybank.") ATM on Seventh Avenue. A fairly young woman stood at a table, exhorting people to sign her petition. I forget exactly what the petition was for; nonetheless, I'm pretty sure I signed it. Anyway, at the same time I was at her table, a man who was working in some skilled trade--I think he was an electrician--came up to the table. Then another man followed. We chatted: It turned out that both men and the woman at the table were unemployed. The second man was a Wall Street professional; the woman at the table was, it I recall correctly, an architect.

At the time, I was working on my MFA in poetry. I mentioned that to them; the woman found it really ironic that of four strangers who happened to just meet, the only one who was employed was a poet. I tried writing a poem about that, but, as you can imagine, such ironies don't work when you try to make them work.

Anyway...Something about what I saw today reminded me of those days in the 'Slope. I'm not a sociologist, so I couldn't tell you what may be causing it or what it may mean. For some time, I've heard and read that men are becoming superfluous, or at least nothing more than sperm donors. If that's true, then my transition was an even better idea than I thought it was!

Seriously...I feel that I've been seeing fewer and fewer men in these environs. As much as some of them exasperate me, I don't want to see them become superfluous or obsolete. That wouldn't be good for them--or the rest of us.

You Were Dreaming Of A White Christmas?

The higher the snowdrifts pile, the harder the wind drives the snow. At least, that's how it looks from my bedroom window.

A while ago, I was outside when the snow was beginning to fall. As I remained outside, the wind started to gust and the eddying flakes turned into cold, wet needles against any skin or other surface that wasn't covered.

Some of the stores closed early: something most people wouldn't expect on the last Saturday before Christmas. On the other hand, most people weren't outside unless they had to be, or unless they had gone out earlier in the day and had been out all day.

I stepped into a gift shop that I hadn't been into in a while. The Korean lady who owns it always says, "No see you for long time" when I step in. The truth is, you don't have to go into a place like that very often: In fact, you need to go in only when you want to buy something because she always has more or less the same stuff there: scarves, brooches, designer knock-off purses and tote bags, and other sorts of accessories. I mean, she gets new colors, patterns and designs, but the basic idea of what's in the store doesn't change much.

So why do I--or other people--go into such places to browse? I guess that in a store like that, even if you know what's there, the combination of colors and textures makes for an interesting, and even stimulating, sensory experience. That, as near as I can tell, is the essence of retailing. Then again, if I knew what "the essence of retailing" is, I'd be rich, wouldn't I?

The funny thing about "gift shops" is that people who go into them are more likely to buy things for themselves than for someone else. In my case, I'd say there's something like a 50-50 split: I'm as likely to buy for myself as for someone else. Or, as I did today, I'll buy something--in this case, a pashmina scarf with a particularly attractive pattern and combination of colors--and decide later whether I want to give or keep it. Someone once told me that's a sign of a good gift.

Honestly, I was in that store to get out of the weather that was turning more frightful by the moment as much as I was there for sensorial stimulation or to do any actual shopping. And, because the owner knows me, or at least has seen me before and knows that I won't steal her wares or burn the store down, she lets me hang out there for as long as I like and doesn't pressure me to buy anything. That, of course, is exactly the reason why I buy something whenever I stop in, as I did this evening.

Then, it was back into the snowstorm that was on the verge of becoming a full-blown blizzard, if it hadn't already come to that point. Even the guys from The King of Falafel and Shawarma were calling it a day--but, at least, not before I could get my chicken and rice platter! From there, it's a very short walk, even in tonight's weather, to my place.

People take shelter in stores, or inside or under anything that will stand between them and the weather, in the hope--in contradiction to the evidence before their own eyes and ears--that the weather will improve, however slightly: that the rain or snow won't fall as hard or the wind will let up just long enough for them to go wherever they're going next. Except, of course, that the weather doesn't usually work that way.

Sometimes you have to go back out into the cold, into the night, even if no one else is there. At various times, I've delayed doing that, which meant, naturally, that when I finally did venture out, it seemed even more desolate than I thought it would be.

Some people argue that we always travel alone. In a sense, they're right, because whatever journey we take cannot be undertaken by someone else. Paradoxically, taking our own journey, and experiencing, at times, no one but ourselves, is exactly what we need in order to find the ones we need and want.

What I've learned is that it may be our fate to go into the cold and darkness, and the storms. But it is our job to get through it. That means, of course, that the storm is not permanent. The darkness and the cold needn't be, either.

Now, as to how I went from buying a scarf to a bunch of ruminations that may or may not have worth or meaning...you've got me!

When You Don't Have To Apologize For Yourself

So today I turned in my grades and went to the holiday reception for faculty and staff members. That I actually wanted to go to such a thing is, for me, a change. And once I got there I realized why I was looking forward to it.

I did indeed spend some time with colleagues and other staff members I hadn't seen in a while. It still amazes me, even at this late date, that someone can work a hundred feet away from you and you and that person can go for months without seeing each other. Some of that has to do with the nature of our work and the variations in our schedules. But, for some faculty and staff members, I think it also has to do with working for so long in a culture in which people remain in their offices or cubicles. I think some of the newer faculty and staff--I include myself--and some of the administration are trying to change that. However, it took a long time for that culture, which I noticed almost from my first day at the college, to develop. So it will change slowly.

Then again, in the words of one prof who started at the college last year: "We all seem to be doing more this year!" She's right on many levels. I know that all of my class sizes increased by 25 percent this year. So did most other classes. So someone who teaches four sections has, in essence, five. That's no small consideration when you're teaching a writing or a lab course. In my case, I'm reading 25 percent more papers than I did last year.

Well, I guess that, if nothing else, we can say we're equal in that regard. Plus, some of last year's newbies have been "recruited" to various committes and such. I was doing those things already, so I didn't have to weather that shock.

But catching up on friends and other colleagues wasn't the only reason I was happy to go to the reception. All right, I'll level with you: The food was really good. There were Indonesian-style chicken satays and spicy sauce for dipping them. They were a nice complement to the vegetable somosas, the spicy fried shrimp and, of course, rice. And there was some sort of spicy sliced beef, which was also very tasty. As for dessert: I got so involved in conversation that I missed out on the cheesecake. But the berry pie was nice.

Now that I've made you hungry, I'll tell you the best thing, or at least the most interesting--at least for me--about being at the reception. I could see how some people had changed in just a few months. One of last year's newbies had a baby since the last time I saw her; another got married. Others got grants.

And they all said I seemed "different" this year--"in a good way." Yes, every one of them said that! A couple of them knew that I've had my operation; they asked how it went. For the others, I just smiled--not without a little bit of mystery!--and thanked them. Finally, a Biology prof said, "You look so much better. It's not just your physical attractiveness, though. You just seem so calm. You're not apologizing for yourself."

She's definitely right about the last part. Even before she said that, I was noticing that I wasn't seeing myself as the "other", or mentally putting an asterisk next to my name or the box marked "F." Or, for that matter, putting an asterisk next to my job title. I am teaching; I am writing: Therefore, I belonged in that reception--and belong in the college--as much as anybody did or does. And I had every right to talk to that Biology prof, to the Director of Academic Advisement, to my colleagues and office staff in the department in which I teach, to the Dean I saw yesterday--just as anyone else has that right, and the right to talk to any man, woman or child with whom they want to talk, and who's willing to talk with them.

I'm just learning how not to apologize for myself. People have long told me that I need to do that. Better late than never, right?

Now I'm recalling a remark someone made some time ago. This person--someone who once called himself my friend--and I had gone to a memorial service on the night of Transgender Remembrance Day last year. Before the service began, I circulated throughout the church's reception area and talked to a few people. During the service, I was one of the many people who walked up to the altar and read a memorial to someone who was murdered over her gender identity. And, after the service, we stayed for a buffet dinner.

On our way home, this person said, "You know, I've never seen you so relaxed. It's the first time I've seen you and you weren't defensive. You let your guard down, and it was nice."

Funny he should say that. Even when we were having good times together, I often felt as if I had been on trial simply for being who I am. I didn't realize that until I spent some time away from him. And, I'm sure, he didn't realize, and probably still doesn't realize, what he was doing.

I started to feel that, for whatever reasons, he--again, like many other people I've met--felt that that I owed him some sort of justification for what I felt and thought, but that he was under no such obligation to me or anyone else. Lots of people act that way without realizing what they're doing. I mean, if you're a straight white cis male, nobody ever asks you to rationalize your preference for women or, for that matter, Dockers or your favorite beer. Trust me, I know that from experience.

Fortunately for me, these days I don't spend much time around people who think they're entitled to an explanation and defense of every detail of my life. Some want to understand more than they do; I'm happy to help in whatever ways I can. Still others genuinely want to offer support; I am always happy for that.

As for the ones who expect a rationale and defense from you simply for being: They do it in the guise of trying to "understand" you. But what they really want is for you to help them reinforce the status quo that affords them some sort of privilege you don't have. In other words, it is, at best, a form of patronizing--or simply to make them feel less guilty about feeling superior to you.

At least today I didn't have to defend myself against anybody like that. That's why I didn't have to apologize for myself. For that reason alone, it was a really good day for me.

Getting Into "The Holiday Spirit"

Today it finally felt like Christmas is coming. I hadn't been "in the spirit," not because I'm unhappy; rather, I have just been too busy to notice that the holidays are imminent. When you move on the day after Thanksgiving and all of your time from then onward is taken up with unpacking, trips to the hardware store, grading students' papers and having conferences with those students, it's hard to notice a lot of other things.

There wasn't an "Aha!" moment or anything in particular that made it seem like the holiday season. I think it had to do with being home and working at my own pace. I went to bed in the wee hours of this morning and woke up late. Then, after reading papers from a few of my stragglers, I started to calculate grades and do some other paperwork.

Then, early this evening, I went to Hanna and Her Sisters to get my nails done. The last time I did that was about a week or so before my move. So it's been close to a month. The old polish was gone, and my nails, which are naturally dry, were breaking off. I'm not finished with arranging things in this apartment,and I haven't hung any pictures. And, once the semester is over, I'm going to do some work on that old Raleigh three-speed I picked up. So why did I get my nails done tonight?

Well, tomorrow is the holiday reception at the college. This semester, I attended a couple of lectures and a couple of more readings. And I read three poems--including one of my own--at the Department's open house last month. But other than that, I've been fairly invisible to most of the college, save for my own students and some of my colleagues. That has mainly to do with my recovery: Even though the tissues are looking really good (Dr. Jennifer says I'm healing better than anyone else she's seen.), I still don't have nearly the physical energy or stamina I had before the surgery. It will be a while before I get that back. Certainly, I have more of them thatn I did at the beginning of the semester. But, it seems that every time my energy level increases a bit, something comes along--like this move--to take it up, and then some.

Although I'm not much of a political animal, I'm rather looking forward to the reception. It'll be, I hope, a chance to see a few people I haven't had much opportunity to see this semester. Plus, it'll be a celebration of sorts for me: the end of my first semester in my "new" life.

Lately I've noticed something strange: I don't have the need I once had to talk about my transition with people I see. And, I'm not that interested in talking about the operation: It's done, it went well, the experiences surrounding it were wonderful and now I'm here. There really isn't a whole lot more to say, if I'm going to say anything. Yet, as I don't have the need to talk about it, I feel emotions--and intensities thereof--that I've never before experienced. I really can't think of anything else to which I could attribute those feelings: Sometimes I'm positively giddy for no other apparent reason. As the semester has ended, instead of saying "I enjoyed your class," students are saying things like, "I felt such joy in your class," and "You really know how to talk to us!"

But, once again, I digress. The reception at the college is being held; it's the first holiday-specific event in which I'm participating. It was the reason I was getting my nails done, and looking forward to it made the holiday seem, for the first time, imminent. Plus, tonight was what I like to call "crystal cold." The air seemed to intensify, if not deepen, the hues of the sunset and to reflect, even more clearly than other kinds of air, the stars against the nighttime sky. The strings of lights wrapped around signposts and stretched across windows seemed brighter and more colorful, and the cold, crisp air also seemed to highlight people's faces: even the ones who were getting off the train after a day's work seemed more vivid, if not more florid, than at other times.

Finally, being in Hannah and Her Sister's nail salon, I remembered whence I've come. I've been going to that salon for a little more than two years, and now that I've had my operation and gone through other stages of my transition (I'd love to know how Hannah explained any of it to the nail finishers who don't speak, or speak very little, English!), being there, walking that stretch of Broadway, getting my supper, or just doing almost anything, seems normal even though (or because?) they're all part of this new chapter in my life.

Really, you can't get a better gift than that. And you can't give anything better than joy to another person. If that's not what "the holiday spirit" is about, I don't know what is.

On Gender and Etiquette

You'd think I'd have certain day-to-day situations figured out by now.

Today I was leaving the administrative wing (which we call "The West Wing") of the campus's main building and entering a hallway that leads to the classroom area. I had just opened the door when I saw the college President and the Dean of Arts and Sciences walking toward it.

I did something that I would have done even when I was at my surliest and most belligerent self, during my youth: I held the door open for her. Although a part of my mind said that I was doing it out of politeness and basic respect, if not obsequiousness, I also was looking at the President of the College as the President and, well, as a woman.

Now I'm wondering whether she sensed that. I held the door, but she waited for me to pass through--and the Dean waited because he was walking behind her. I continued to hold the door and she walked through as we exchanged greetings. The Dean followed her, but grabbed the door just as she was passing over the transom. And he waited for me to pass through.

Sometimes I don't think I'll ever be graceful in social situations. I know that a woman is not expected to hold a door open for another woman, but a man of the Dean's age and status--and from the culture in which he was born and raised--is not only expected to do so; he expects to hold the door.

Yet I reflexively hold doors open for people, regardless of gender, or at least try not to drop them in their faces. I was like that even when I was rebelling--or telling myself that I was rebelling--against what, I didn't know. And, yes, I extended such courtesies even when I was a nasty or depressed drunk. I guess it has to do something with upbringing: My mother always expected me and my brothers to behave well in public, and in the company of elders. The funny thing is that even when I was trying to get as far away from home--or at least being a kid--as I could, I was grateful for that, particularly when I was living in France. They, and Europeans generally, still value good manners and such.

But even if I have good manners, I have no social grace whatsoever. I know how to do what I've been trained from childhood to do, but I can't finesse a situation like the one I encountered today. Some people seem to handle situations like that one with elan and dignity that I've never seemed to have: Even if they do the "wrong" thing, it seems all right. But they usually end up doing the "right", or at least a graceful, thing.

The President was actually very gracious, as she has been to me in other encounters I've had with her. I could say the same for the Dean or that he was, at worst, punctilious. And, by the standards of this culture (and most others I'm familiar with), they have treated me like a lady. I've never discussed my history with either of them, but I'm sure they must know about it, even though they've never known me as anyone but Justine.

Still, even after a few years of living as a woman, I still haven't quite mastered female-to-female etiquette. (Then again, I haven't mastered etiquette, period.) I encounter situations like the one I had today with the President: I act out of what I see as basic courtesy and respect, but the woman to whom I extend it is not expecting it. Or, even stranger is when another woman treats me with something like male chivalry. I'm thinking now of times when women have given me their seats on buses and trains, or held doors open for me. Sometimes those women looked like they could've used the seat, or any kind of courtesy, even more than I could!

All I've been able to do in those situations is to smile and wish them a good day or good holiday. That seems to make people happy for the moment, even if I feel like I've stumbled.

Now I'm wondering if a stereotype might be true: that women are more socially graceful. That makes me wonder whether that grace is borne in the two X chromosomes, or whether cis women get it with their uteri when they're born.

All right...Now I'm getting myself into some real trouble, aren't I? All I can do, I guess, is to treat people as well as I know how to. Hopefully, those situations will work out until I figure out how to work them out.

The Telly's Got Reception. What Do I Do Now?

Now I've got a bit of a dilemma.

Six months ago, I stopped watching TV. On the day that all broadcasting switched from analog to digital, my TV set had no reception.

It wasn't that I was too stupid, lazy or broke to get a converter box. For one thing, I didn't like the idea of being forced into a new technology when my old one was working just fine. I'm not one of those people who wants to see every pore of whover's image is on the screen. Television has always been about artifice; in even the most "realistic" of shows, the actors wear makeup and perform in front of sets. Or, if they're on the street, that street very carefully chosen and blocked off.

Another reason why I didn't make the switch was that I though maybe it would be a good time to make a switch of my own: away from TV. Interestingly, the day of the Big Change (at least, in the world of telecommunications) came a little less than a month before my operation. So I knew that in the hospital, I would need to have other diversions. That wasn't a problem: I had a couple of books, a notebook, a laptop, my MP3 player--and, of course, my cell phone. Plus, between the time I was knocked out and the time I had to spend on treatments and such, I didn't have as much time for TV as I might've expected.

I also knew that the weeks I would spend at home after the surgery would be without the telly. Once I decided not to make the switch to digital TV, I actually looked forward to recovering without it.

Since then, I've turned on the set once: to watch a video tape. That's the only purpose my TV set serves now: as a screen for my VHS player, which I've watched once since the switch to digital. In fact, the only VHS tapes I now have are one of the Trinidad documentary and a few others from the community-access cable TV program I hosted for a few episodes. I've nevert looked at the latter tapes; somehow looking at them never seemed that important to me. In fact, I've been tempted to throw those tapes away.

And, today, I was even more tempted to get rid of my TV set. I slid it to pick it up and take it outside--the trash haulers are making their twice-weekly pickup tomorrow--when I saw a cable behind the cabinet. Just for the heck of it, I plugged that cable to my TV set and--voila--there was an image of a guy and a girl fighting.

I think it's a cable for some sort of outdoor antenna. After all, the only reception I got was for regular network programming on VHF network channels. It doesn't look like there's reception for cable TV.

Still, I now find myself wondering whether to keep that TV set. I suspect at some point in the future, I might want to watch another movie or something. And I guess that guests might appreciate it.

But getting rid of the set is now even more of a temptation than it was at the beginning of the day. So is keeping it. Why, I don't know: I can't think of anything I really want to watch.

What do I do?

Wrinkles and Folds

Today I noticed every line in my face, and every ounce of flab on my body. Maybe it's because I'm tired. Or maybe I am old and fat. It seemed that everyone--even the old profs at the department meeting--had smooth faces and lean bodies. What's happening to me?

Am I buying into society's expectations about women? If I'm wrinkly and flabby, I won't get a date, much less my book published, even if I have the mind of Virginia Woolf or Marie Curie, or the soul of Gloria Steinem or Dorothy Day. At least, that's how things seem.

Yes, every one of those lines around the corners of my lips looks like a crack in a weathered tenement building. And the swelling around my left side has subsided, but is still there--what, almost three weeks after my mishap. The doctor said that all I can give it is time, and that the baths I've been taking for other reasons are the best thing I can do for it.

But when a prof who's been at the college since the day it opened and another who's my mother's age and survived a stroke three years ago look younger than I do--or seem to--what does that say about me?

Someone once told someone--I forget who--that she "earned" every one of her wrinkles. Nice thought, but I wish I hadn't done so much to merit them. It's like when you go through a difficult experience--like, say, not knowing where your next meal is coming from-- and someone tells you it's building your character. Yeah, OK, I always want to tell such a person. But I'm not ready to have such depth yet. It would be nice to have what other people have, just for once.

Like being, if not young, at least youthful. Or looking it. I mean, some of my best friends are old (or at least older) women. But I don't want all of my friends to be just like me! Well, maybe that isn't so bad, now that I've accepted that I'm turning into my mother--or that I already am like her, and have been like her for as long as I can remember, at least in some ways. That's not such a bad thing, really, when I consider who my mother is!

Then again...part of my healing is developing wrinkes...at least in that part of my body. It's funny, isn't it, that part of being a healthy woman means having wrinkles--or folds, anyway--in that at least that part of your body? Now there's something no man will ever understand!

Crafting From Empathy and Inevitability: James Wright

Today is James Wright's birthday.

It's somehow appropriate, almost cosmically so, that he was born as winter was descending on the steel mill town (Martins Ferry, Ohio) in which he grew up. Quite possibly no poet ever used the word "darkness" as much as he did in his early poems.

But the interesting thing about his poetry--at least from the poems in This Branch Will Not Break onwards--is that for all of the self-pity he expressed in some of them, his poems are almost never despairing. Sometimes they're angry; other times, they're sad. But at least every emotion he expresses in his poem is an emotion he came by honestly.

The reason for that is that he never, ever "dumbs down" his poems, at least not spiritually. Absent is the facile cynicism that could have come so easily to someone who had his experiences and had a career as an academic. Also absent is the hedonism disguised as spirituality that too often infects the works of the writers of the so-called Beat Generation.

One thing that irked me about guys like Orlovsky and Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg (and I say this as someone who studied under Ginsberg) is that they could rhapsodize about the holiness of the hands that crafted the latticework on the fire-escape on an East Village tenement without knowing who those hands belonged to, much less empathising with that person. That trait bothered me long before I could articulate it: While I admired some of the strange lyricism and the stances against authority expressed in some of their poems, something about many of them simply didn't seem authentic to me. Even as a teenager, I felt that way.

Wright--whose work I would discover when I was in my twenties--was the exact opposite. He couldn't keep a long poetic line running on anger and alienation (as Ginsberg did in Howl ) or with an elegaic rhythm (see Ginsberg's Kaddish). But his free-verse poems flowed, not seamlessly, but from a sense of inevitability (which is not always as smooth as one might expect) from something seen (rather than a "vision") to something else seen. Plus, Wright seemed to understand that an image is not just a picture rendered into words; it is something that has its power because it causes the reader (or viewer) to engage his or her imagination. That is why, even at his self-pitying worst, he is utterly transcendent. I almost hate to use that word; the quality I'm describing is almost beyond that.

Many of us in writing workshops tried to emulate his poems. Do I need to say that we failed? Anybody can assemble lines of words into something with a ragged edge and call it "free verse." But to have the kind of empathy Wright had for his subjects, and the respect he had for the music of the words he used, is something that nobody can imitate.

Anyway, I'll stop talking about him and leave you with a few of his poems.

A Blessing

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Beginning

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.

The dark wheat listens.

Be still.

Now.

There they are, the moons young, trying

Their wings.

Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow

Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone

Wholly, into the air.

I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe

Or move.

I listen.

The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,

And I lean toward mine.

And now, here's one for all of you football fans:

AUTUMN BEGINS IN MARTINS FERRY, OHIO

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

Passing Jewish

Late this afternoon, I took a walk that extended to well after dark. That's not hard to do at this time of year, just a few days before the Winter Solistice.

My walk, which began with no particular plan or direction, took me to the northern end of my neighborhood, where a Con Ed power station is the only thing between the rowhouse-lined side streets and the almost metallic waters of Long Island Sound, near the point where it meets the East River.

I stayed on the side of the street with the rowhouses, many of which were garlanded with strings of lights. Reindeer and sleighs made from chicken wire, around which spiralled more strings of those lights, stood guard at some of those houses. Most of the people who live there are second- or third-generation Greek-Americans or Southeastern European immigrants who, by whatever means, scraped together the down payments. Some of them have more than one generation of family living in them.

The one exception was a house on the bay side of the avenue, a few blocks past the power station and a row of other industrial buildings. It's just around the corner from the old Steinway piano works and looks as if it has been holding out the same way for the past fifty years or so.

In each of the second-floor windows was a Magden David made from blue, white and silver lights. And, in one of the ground-floor windows stood a lit figurine of what appeared to be a cantor.

For a nanosecond, I thought of knocking on the door. They were most likely the only Jewish family in that neighborhood, and they were displaying their identity on...well, if not their sleeves, at least in their portals to the rest of the world.

It made me think of what it is like to "come out." Or, more precisely, I found myself reflecting on what it means to have one's identity known, how that comes about and what the consequences might be.

Now, being a Jew in Queens, or anywhere in New York, hasn't been so unusual in about, oh, 15o years or so. To be sure, there are anti-Semites here, and the part of Queens in which I was walking has never exactly been known as a bastion of Judaism. Still, I don't think very many people who know them give it much of a thought.

Then I realized why: Among all of those highly-, sometimes gaudily-decorated houses, I saw very few people. They were walking their dogs and they probably lived those houses. But as soon as their dogs do whatever they need to do, they go back into their houses.

Maybe what I saw isn't typical of that part of the neighborhood. Still, I couldn't help but to wonder how much people were getting out and interacting. If they weren't, that might well be the reason why that Jewish family could display their faith so publicly during their holiday: Perhaps nobody was there to see it. Or they just didn't notice.

If that's the case, then I'm struck by how much that parallels what many trans people think of as "passing" and what many of us want in our lives in our "new" gender: for others not to notice. So we get dressed in a nice outfit and put on our makeup--so we won't be noticed.

Of course, it's odd to talk about that in my blog. Then again, most of the people I see--and will most likely never see again--have no idea about me or my history and, if they got a glimpse of me, will not give me a second glance. That is normal; that is what I experience most of the time. And, honestly, I wouldn't want it any other way.

I guess it's a variant on an old fantasy of mine (which I still sometimes indulge in): that lots of people would read my writing, but only a few would recognize me on the street and even fewer would give me a second glance.

Well, I guess the second part of that fantasy has come true. To most people--if they catch sight of me--I'm just another middle-aged woman passing by and passing through. Not that I'm complaining about that.

Now, to get that book published...