Aftershocks

If you had been in New York on one of the Sundays just after 9.11.01, you might've felt a sense of deja vu if you were at the college today.

On Sundays, the city--at least in some parts--can seem oddly bucolic. I often cycle through the Wall Street area and the industrial zones because, most Sundays, there's practically no traffic. The quiet in those areas is somehow even more transformative than the calm of the countryside because it's unexpected, especially if you've never been in those areas on a previous Sunday.


The other day, Matthew, a colleague, compared the atmosphere at the college to what I've described. Only a few courses are offered during the winter intercession, and fewer students take each of those courses. So, even in the middle of the day, the hallways and even the atrium and cafeteria can seem almost deserted.


What's nice about that is that everyone's more relaxed, or at least less intense, than they are during the regular academic term. And there aren't any lines to use the women's bathrooms!


But today the quiet seemed almost sepulchral. People were shell-shocked: at once too numb for grief yet on the verge of tears. And, in fact, when I left the campus today, I saw two people crying as I passed underneath the Long Island Rail Road trestle to Archer Avenue.


The somber mood is a result of yesterday's earthquake in Haiti. Many of the students, and a few faculty and staff members, are Haitian. So are a number of residents of the neighborhood surrounding the college. Many more people in the college and neighborhood come from other Caribbean countries, and I've noticed that, particularly in times of crisis, people from that part of the world bond with each other, even if their cultures and languages are different.


It seemed that some people were reacting to the tragedy as if it had happened on Parsons Boulevard rather than in front of le Palais National. That's because, in a sense, it did happen here: I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say nearly all Haitians in this city have immediate or secondary family back on the island. The first generation of Haitian-Americans is still being born: just about all young Haitian-Americans have parents who were born in Haiti. So there is still a seemingly- unbroken chain between neighborhoods like the one in which the college is located and the ones that were leveled by the quake.


That such a powerful earthquake struck in such a desperately poor country reminds me of something Primo Levi said in Se Questo E Un'Uomo: To the man who has, God gives; from the man who has not, God takes away.


Levi could as well have been sitting next to me during my subway ride home when he wrote that. A woman whose peasant-like earthiness has been weathered by working too long for too little in a sometimes-frantic, sometimes-hostile city far from home sat across the aisle from me. She was reading snatches of Amy Tan's The Kitchen God's Wife. I could see that she was just barely keeping her tears at bay for the first part of the ride. Then they sprouted from the corners of her eyes like streams from a fountain. I surmised that she was dealing with a loss, or the fear that she might've experienced one: After all, I never thought Tan was such a moving writer.


Anyway: When I return to the college tomorrow, I won't be surprised to find a similar atmosphere to what I encountered today.

Some Thoughts on Amanda Simpson's Appointment

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be true to yourself. But it can't hurt. Or can it?

That might be the underlying message of Amanda Simpson's appointment as a Senior Technical Advisor to the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security. As best as I can tell, you pretty much have to be a rocket scientist to understand what that job is!

Obama appointed her to the post. Some are saying she's the token "T" (sounds like something that might've been used on Boston's mass transit system) on his cabinet. It could be that Obama is trying to make nice with the LGBT community after refusing to support gay marriage during his campaign.

I have very mixed feelings about this appointment, to say the least. From what I've read about her, I have no doubt that Ms. Simpson is qualified for the job. And it may just lead to greater acceptance of transgendered people among the general public. After all, she is the first openly transgendered Presidential appointee, and now is arguably the highest-ranking, or at least the most visible, transgendered person in a public office.

And she seems eager to do the job. I can't help but to be happy for her.

But I also can't help to be disturbed by one aspect of the appointment--or, more precisely, its implications. It reminds me, in a way, of Harry Truman's racial integration of the Armed Forces in 1948, and how much African-American leaders advocated for it.

Ms. Simpson spent most of her career at Raytheon, a defense contractor. I guess most rocket scientists are working for the military (Yes, NASA is an arm of the military. Don't let anybody tell you any different!) directly or indirectly. I suppose one cannot fault someone for working wherever one can find employment in whatever he or she does best. That's pretty much what 99 percent of all humanities faculty members (including yours truly) are doing.

So I can't fault Ms. Simpson for working a company whose business model is often said to be "blowing shit up." But her extensive background in such endeavors could be a double-edged sword, both for her and transgendered people generally.

One of the reasons why African-Americans fought for the integration of the Armed Forces is that some of them fought in Europe during World War II and were not segregated when they entered cafes or other public venues in England, France and other countries as they were in fighting for their own country. But another reason that may have seemed even more important at the time was that leaders of the then-nascent Civil Rights movement realized that being integrated in the military would make integration--and, they hoped, acceptance--faster and more complete in the civilian world. In other words, if you were good enough to fight alongside your countrymen for your country, you had to be their equal. Or so the thinking went.

But, as much as this country makes grand gestures of honoring veterans, the truth is that most people who haven't been in the military don't want to be in contact with it. In a way, I can't blame them: After all, soldiers are reminders of war, and who wants to think about that? But there is also a hypocrisy involved: For all that this country's leaders like to make a show of honoring veterans, it also conscripts, de facto, many who are too poor or dark or uneducated to have other options. And, it also diverts technological and scientific talent and skill away from uses which might be of greater benefit to people: Amanda Simpson is a case in point.

Plus, the military and its contractors are not nearly as egalitarian, never mind progressive, as they like to portray themselves to the public. Most of the enlistees are people of color or poor whites from rural areas and the Rust Belt; most of the officers are not. And there is the military's odious "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. I fail to see how anyone can use membership in such an institution to help whatever group ones belongs to.

What the appointment of Amanda Simpson accomplishes is to have a transgendered person in a high position in this country's military-industrial-corporate welfare system. While that, like the integration of the Armed Forces, may show that members of another group are just as up to their eyeballs in the muck as everyone else is. Maybe that's what we have to be in order to gain equality; if that's the case, it's not a good sign.

Plus, it--like everything else Obama has done so far--is ultimately about his image. Obama, I believe, is every bit as dedicated to creating and maintaining his image, whatever that may be, as Ronald Reagan was. His appointment of Ms. Simpson might make him look good to some in the LGBT community and may convince others that he's really trying to be inclusive.

But, whatever may come of this, I still have great respect for Ms. Simpson's intelligence--and the fact that she transitioned where and when she did. That probably took more courage than my own transition, and the transitions of many other people.

In Front Of The Wife

On my way home from work, I stopped in the Duane-Reade store near the Jamaica Terminal of the Long Island Rail Road. (Yes, they spell Rail Road as two words.) I had to buy one of those, you know, things a girl needs (!) and had a coupon from D-R.

Anyway, having found what I needed, I walked down the chocolates aisle. (I went from what a girl needs to what a girl craves, I guess.) There, one of those swarthy, eternally handsome men with a moustache was with a woman who was quite obviously his wife. The woman was looking at something and talking to him in what I somehow knew to be Arabic even though I don't know any Arabic. As he made the gesture of listening to her, he rocked back and brushed against me.

"Excuse me, Miss."

"That's all right," I simpered.

He paused and looked in my eyes. "You're beautiful."

While I felt flattered, I felt badly for his wife. I mean, I don't think I'd want my husband flirting with some sorta blonde stranger. In any event, I was at a loss I exhaled, "Your lady is quite lovely."

"But you are beautiful!"

"Well, I have a boyfriend," I lied. "And you have a very beautiful wife." Which, by the way, she was.

"But it is not wrong to admire how beautiful you are."

"Well, I appreciate the compliment. But, please, appreciate what you have."

"Yes, she is beautiful. But so are you."

"Thank you. And I hope you both have a nice day."

After I paid for the box of needs and package of wants, I was walking out to the street when, from the corner of my eye, I saw the man looking at me.

Now, I must say, when I got dressed this morning, I could swear that there were a few pounds around my midsection that weren't there before. And it was one of those days when every mirror and every window I passed drew attention to my seeming newly-acquired adiposity. (So why did I buy chocolate?, you ask.) But people, out of the blue, told me that I looked good. And then I bumped into that guy. Or, more accurately, he bumped into me.

I'm still thinking about his wife, though. I don't know anything about her, but I don't think she deserved that. Then again, for all I know, that's written into their marriage contract, or some kind of contract that they have.

In any event, it got me to wondering if I was anything like that guy. Of course, I never looked as good as he did. But I couldn't help but to wonder whether I was a little friendlier with some stranger or another than I should have been when I was with whoever was in my life at the time. I never consciously flirted with anyone else when I was out for the day or night with one of my now-exes. Not to brag, but I was flirted with a few times on such occasions, particularly when I was in really good shape.

I actually used to dread those situations because they always led to a fight with whomever I was hooked up with at the time. That used to happen whenever I went to an office party or other event with Tammy and her co-workers or when I would go with Eva to something or another that one of her Sarah Lawrence classmates hosted. At the office parties, it seemed like everyone was ignoring me (which I didn't mind so much) or hitting on me. And sometimes the ones hitting on me were the wives of the traders, accountants, lawyers and other executives. (Tammy worked for a Wall Street firm.) She used to say that they were interested in me because it was obvious that I wasn't in or of that realm of work. That seems plausible enough. But I don't think I'll ever figure out what any of Eva's classmates saw in me--except, perhaps, that I was with Eva.

Maybe that guy who bumped into me today was flirting for no other reason than I'm not his wife. I'm guessing that she was about my age. But other than that, we couldn't be more different: She was one of those classically beautiful Eastern Mediterranean women you could easily picture in a Greek statue or Byzantine mosaic. I guess a guy can get bored with filet mignon if he has it every night; a cheeseburger (if not a cheesecake) provides a little variety, if nothing else.

Then again, maybe he flirted with me, in front of his wife, for the same reason that Donald Trump trades in his wife every five years for a newer model: because he can.

I hope I was never like that guy or that I don't become like that woman. But, if that sort of arrangement makes them happy, I wish them well.

Plenty of Fluids

I'm a bit under the weather. Actually, I have been for a couple of days. I've had a cold that, I hope, won't turn into something worse. So I've made a pot of chicken soup and am living on that and tortillas with salsa. Now, I don't think anyone has ever recommended the latter as a cold remedy, but I figure whole-grain corn (unsalted) and hot peppers can't hurt.

At least the chicken soup counts as part of the "plenty of fluids" prescription my doctor gave me. I can remember when "drink plenty of fluids" meant "party hard." If that's what "drink plenty of fluids" meant, then "carb loading" must have been a code phrase for "drinking beer."

As you might expect, I slept late today. I won't have a chance to do that through the week, or the coming semester. I've been teaching a winter break class that begins early in the morning; I will be doing the same next semsester. But I won't be teaching late-night classes, as I have been for the past few semesters.

I think this cold may have been the result of the re-adjustment my body is making to my new schedule, as well as to the sub-freezing temperatures and high winds. I guess I shouldn't complain: After all, I have been healthy through my surgery, recovery and what has followed. I've experienced nothing more than the fatigue as well as the loss of strength that follows major surgeries. I had been warned about those results of surgery, so I am not complaining. And I have experienced no pain in the parts of my body on which I'd been operated, or anywhere else--not even in my mind.

I guess I'm really lucky if I can feel as good as I've felt through as much change as I've experienced. When you experience a sea-change, the tides can hit you with greater force than you'd anticipated, and the results can be surprising, to put it mildly. That, of course, is one of the premises of Shakespeare's The Tempest, where the expression "sea-change" was first used. (It and A Doll's House are my two favorite plays.)

I guess if a cold is the worst physical problem I've had (apart from being struck by that door: something from which I seem to have recovered), I have no reason to complain.

I'll just prepare myself for tomorrow and get some rest, as per doctor's orders. And, yes, I'm drinking plenty of fluids.

On Same-Sex Marriage And New Jersey

While I was enjoying my time with Dwayne the other day, something that disturbed him, me and many other people we know was happening on the other side of the Hudson River.

As many of you know by now, the so-called gay marriage bill was defeated in New Jersey. In many ways, that's a disappointment, but in still other ways, it's not a surprise.

Let me clarify something: I don't necessarily think that a law that gives a person the right to marry someone of his or her gender is itself a solution to the problem of inequality, simply because I don't think governments should be in the business of defining or sanctifying marriages. I don't understand how, in a country whose constitution specifies a separation of church and state, clergypeople have, in essence, the power to decide who is and isn't married. I mean, if two people are married by their priest or rabbi or whomever, those two newly-married people have over a thousand legal rights that non-married people don't have--all because of a clergy member's say-so.

In that sense, clergypeople not only decide who is married; in doing so, they decide on which people are first- and second-class citizens. That is to say, they're helping, wittingly or not, to administer a form of apartheid.

On the other hand, given the legal, political, social and economic systems we have, so-called "gay marriage laws" may be the best we can hope for.

One of the reasons why voters in several states and state legislatures in others have voted against laws to give someone the right to marry someone of his or her own gender is that the laws are written, and presented to the public, as gay marriage laws. Thus, some people think that gays are getting "special treatment" with a law that defines their right to marry. The reality is that gays who want to marry are simply looking for the same rights as those enjoyed by married heterosexual people.

So, even though laws defining the right to same-sex marriage may be the better alternative in this society, the drafting, voting on and passing or defeating such legislation is premised on a major flaw in the current marriage laws, and the way people think about them.

As I said earlier, current laws give undue power to clergy people. That, in turn, amplifies the power government has over a segment of people's lives: marriage. I, for one, happen to think that governments should have no power to decide who is and isn't married. Furthermore, I don't think any government should give people special privileges simply for being married.

The very same people who think that gays are asking for "privilege" are the ones who themselves enjoy over a thousand privileges the government bestows upon them for being married. A good number of those privileges are financial, courtesy of tax laws and such.

If governments are going to have any power at all over unions between people, it should be limited to the equivalent of civil unions. If two people want to hook up, that should be their right. But they shouldn't get any tax breaks or preferences for tying the knot or for having kids. After all, that is a choice. (Funny, how some of the people who take those privileges for granted claim that homosexuality--or transgenderism--is a "lifestyle choice.")

Of course, in order to realize the vision I have just described, an entire legal and economic order will have to be dramatically re-structured. And, until that re-structuring takes place, LGBT people will still be second-class citizens. So, perhaps, having laws that allow gays to marry is the best we can do until that change comes about.

Now, I want to offer some of my own thoughts as to why the bill was defeated in New Jersey.

My family moved to New Jersey from Brooklyn in 1971. I spent my high-school years in Middletown and went to Rutgers University in New Brunswick. My parents lived in 'Jersey for more than two decades before moving to Florida; one of my brothers lives in the so-called Garden State now. So I can say that I don't have the condescending, snobbish view that many New Yorkers have of the place.

People who aren't familiar with the state think that it's all part of the New York Metropolitan Area and therefore shares the Big Apple's social diversity and the social tolerance they attribute to the city. New Jersey does indeed have quite a few gay people. But most of them live in a few neighborhoods of Hoboken, Jersey City and Plainfield, and some spend weekends or holidays in Asbury Park. Even in those enclaves, gay people don't live as openly as they do in Chelsea or even in Jackson Heights. Part of that has to do with the fact that most of the gay residents of New Jersey are male and living in couples: People tend to live quieter lives under such circumstances. But there is also a largely unspoken and almost entirely unwritten expectation that they will live that way.

This expectation stems, in part, from the fact that New Jersey is, for the most part, a suburban state. People move there to get a little more space than they would have in the city and, very often, to stake out a part of the American Dream for themselves. The price of admission consists of their down payments and mortagages on their homes.

A large part of homeowners' time and energies--not to mention their incomes--is directed to their stake in the dream. For most, that is the sum total of their net worth. Such circumstances make people fearfully protective of not only their properties and investments themselves, but also of anything they fear will devalue that investment or encroach upon the status they have attained by building a middle-class family and home life.

Such a way of thinking can very easily, and often does, turn into a siege mentality: I worked for this. Nobody gave me any special consideration. Why should anyone else get it (I can't begin to tell you how many times I've heard that, almost verbatim.) In New Jersey, such fears and resentments are exacerbated by the fact that New Jersey homeowners pay the highest property taxes in the nation. Plus, there is the relatively high cost of living and, for many, the high cost of commuting to their jobs (and paying an additional tax if that job happens to be in New York). And, finally, if they have kids--which nearly all of them do--there is that cost.

People in that situation feel that they're working harder and paying more than anyone else, and are not getting any special consideration for it. So they look at gay people, most of whom don't have kids, and feel resentment. That homeowner who's raising kids somehow feels that his or her taxes are subsidizing the life of libertine privilege they imagine that gays live, just as those same suburban homeowners feel (rightly so, I might say) that they are financing the incompetence and corruption for which New Jersey's largest cities are famous.

In brief, they feel--with at least some justification--that they're paying for people who don't pay their share. To see anyone else share the privilege they enjoy is, to their minds, an affront to their hard-working, law-abiding ways.

In addition to the large swaths of suburbia, there's a part of rural southern New Jersey that actually falls below the Mason-Dixon line. The Ku Klux Klan had active chapters there and in other parts of the state before World War II, and New Jersey was believed to have the largest Klan membership of any state north of the Potomac. The Klan has had a resurgence there in recent years, and in recent elections has supported various candidates, mainly those who oppose immigration.

This isn't to say that New Jersey is Alabama North. But it isn't Massachusetts South, either. So, at least to me, it's not such a surprise that the state allows civil unions for same-sex couples, but not same-sex marriages. So, as is typical of governments, the New Jersey State Legislature applied the right idea (civil unions) for the wrong reasons to one group of people and, as a result, merely elevated them from third- to second-class citizens rather than to equality. And they voted against the solution that, in a corrupt and cumbersome system, was the best chance at achieving equality.

Healing And Wellness: How To Be A Spiritual Subversive

Another trip to the doctor--this time, Dr. Tran (who insists that I call him Richie), my primary-care doctor. I think I've spent more time with doctors during the past year than I did in my entire life before then.

Dr. Tran, like Dr. Jennifer Johnson, is part of the Callen Lorde Community Health Collective. I've been using their services ever since I "came out" to Dwayne more than seven years ago. Michael Callen was a composer and singer who, after learning that he had AIDS, started one of the first organizations for those stricken with the disease. That was at a time when all of the known victims--according to official reports, anyway--were gay men.

I never met Michael Lorde or, frankly, knew much about him before I started going to C-L. That probably says more about me than about him. On the other hand, I met Audre Lorde once. Ironically, it was during the early days of my sobriety: some time not long after my 90th day, if I recall correctly.

I had gone to one of her readings at Hunter College. The odd thing was that in my sobriety, when I was following the Twelve Steps, I was more taken with the militancy of her poetry--and her militancy, period--than I was when I was abusing alcohol and drugs. I say this newfound appreciation at that time in my life was odd, or at least ironic, because the Steps directed people like me to, in effect, surrender our selves to a power greater than ourselves. On the other hand, Lorde, in her poetry and her work as an activist, exhorted people--especially women, people of color and lesbians--to know as much about themselves as possible and to take charge of what they learned.

But what I was responding to about her poetry and rhetoric, and what I was responding to in The Twelve Steps were, in some way, not so incongruous. At that point in my life, I never would have become clean and sober on my own. Yet somehow I knew I needed to do that. And, in much the same way most of us need someone to teach us the fundamentals of the languages we speak and of computation as well as any number of life skills before we can construct our own lives, I needed help to start my process of recovery. When I told Kevin, who would become my first sponsor, that the "power greater than ourselves"--at least as I heard it decribed in the meetings I attended--sounded suspiciously like the Judeo-Christian God, he implored--in his old-school Bronx Irish-meets-Hell's Angels way, "Well, let them describe Higher Power that way. You know what it is for you; go with it." And so I did.

Anyway...after her reading, I had Ms. Lorde autograph my copy of "Our Dead Behind Us." I was the very last person for whom she signed a book that day, and we talked a bit. When I thought about that moment later, it seemed more surprising than it did at the time. After all, you can't find someone much whiter than I am, and I was living as a male--and doing everything I could to seem the part. On top of that, I was clinging desperately--although I could not know, at the time, just how desperately--to the idea that I was some sort of straight guy.

You might say that I had stepped up to a battle but didn't know that a war lay ahead of me.

But somehow she seemed to know that. And, from the expression in her face and, more important, in her eyes, I knew that she knew what I needed to do--and she expected me to do it.

Many years later, I would see exactly the same expression from another poet who, if she didn't know Audre Lorde, surely had read her works. During my second year of living as Justine, I attended a reading by Grace Paley. After she finished, she signed copies of two of her books for me.

Before I could say anything to her, Ms. Paley told me, "Write that book!" And Ms. Lorde told me, "Always tell your truths!"

What I learned from both of them--from meeting them and reading their work--is that a woman has a moral and political obligation to herself--and to other women, and to everyone else--to learn everything she can about her body, her mind, her spirit and the world she lives in, and to never, ever stop telling whatever truths she finds--even if they fly in the face of whatever notions were previously inculcated into her. Or, as Lorde said, "If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies of me and eaten alive."

In other words, choosing her own survival is the most spiritually wholesome, and the most subversive thing, she could have done. I'm sure Paley could have identified with that. I know that I can.

Six Months: The Paradoxes of Coming Home

Exactly six months ago today, I had my surgery.

I'm thinking now of that conversation I had with Marilynne's daughter just after Christmas. We agreed that on one hand, it seems that the time has passed very quickly, but on the other, it seems like a very long time has passed. Somehow that paradox seems to relate to another: That we lived the vast majority of our lives pre-op-- and even pre-transition-- and now so much of my previous life is fading, or has already faded, into the background.

And there is yet another paradox: Knowing that there are things I did because I lived as a guy named Nick, yet realizing that while I was doing them, I was Justine. As an example, I had relationships with women who were attracted to that guy. Yet I know now that even though I was repressing myself, I was--at least in some way--just as much a woman as I am now. And that is exactly the reason I felt the need to make my transition and have my surgery.

Some day relatively soon, Marilynne's daughter will have lived the majority of her life post-op. Given my age, that day is not likely to come for me. Still, there are times when it feels like this part of my life is the longer and greater part--that, in fact, I feel somehow as if I have always been post-op, or at least the woman who entered new stages in her life with her transition and operation.

Spending time with Dwayne after work accented the feelings I've described. For me, that makes sense, as he is the very first person to whom I "came out." He has never called me anything but Justine or used any pronouns but female ones in reference to me. In other words, he knows about my previous life but never saw it. So, even though that part of my life was much longer than my current life, he knows only a summary of it, if you will, and it is the point that came before the starting point of my current life. You can say that, I suspect, about anyone who meets and develops a relationship with you in the middle of your biological life.

When Dwayne and I embraced upon meeting, I felt in some way as if I'd "come home." I told him that, and he said he felt the same way. Oddly, that's what I felt the first time I met him, which is the reason I was able to "come out" to him.

Then, I knew I'd come home but had practically no idea of what that meant. Now, I am learning about my surroundings, if you will, but everything I learn--whether it's about my body, or about the ways I experience what's outside my body or within my mind and soul--feels inevitable and organic, if not predictable.

What I'm learning makes complete sense even if it's not what I expected. And that's the reason I'm learning it. That can make time go very quickly and make the past seem even further in the past.

Leaving and Becoming, Again

Today is the twelfth day of Christmas. In some countries, it's celebrated as Christmas. In the church in which I was raised, this is called the day of the Epiphany.

Today I can't honestly say I've had any epiphanies. I guess we're not supposed to have them every day. I'm not sure I could handle that, anyway.

Around this time last year, I was teaching the same course I'm teaching now, during the winter intercession. It was a larger class, and it was in the evening. It was an odd time, really: I'd write or ride or do something else during the day--the afternoon, really--before going to class. The course I took--good mainly in the sense that it confirmed that taking more like it is not something I want to do--hadn't yet begun. What I had begun to do, however, was to count the number of days until my surgery.

It all seems oddly distant to me now. It feels a bit like looking at a fading black-and-white photo of myself and other people---family members, perhaps, or classmates--in poses, clothing or settings you can't recall as they're shown in the photo. If you're a child in such a photo, you seem more serene or simply cuter (or not as cute as) you recall yourself, or more precisely, the way you look in that photo.

It's like one of those memories you carry that somehow doesn't seem like one of yours, or a story that you've remembered, and possibly even told, in the way you heard it from someone else because you didn't yet have your own way of describing it to yourself.

That, by the way is, as near I can tell, the only way to gain knowledge or memories that are relevant to your own life: by describing, in your own way, your own experience to your own self. And that becomes possible when you are the subject and not the object of your own narrative.

Oh, no. I hope I don't sound like one of those dreadful texts I read in that course I took last year. If it does, I guess I had to start somewhere. Right?

I know this much: You become that subject only when you do. That is the only way to become, to learn: by doing.

And I guess there isn't a whole lot you can do with those memories frozen in amber...or sepia.

What Did I Teach Today?

During this Winter Recess at the college, I am teaching a business writing class. There are fourteen students. Two took other classes with me during the fall and another was in a class of mine two years ago. Then there's another student who, while he has never taken a class with me, seems as if he's one of my students. And I'm not the only faculty member who feels that way about him. Now, as he's about to embark on his final semester at the college, I'm actually teaching him.

So far I'm liking the class: It's small, the students seem receptive and the course will be an intense experience. I know that because I've taught winter session and short summer session courses. Each lasts about three and a half weeks, so every day is like a week of the regular semester.

Anyway...Today we were discussing some of the "do's and don't's" of writing a cover letter for a job application. Somehow the subject of whether to mention church memberships came up. I told students they should mention such things in a resume or cover letter only if they're relevant to the position or the organization. The same thing for organizations that have to do with race, ethnicity or politics: You don't mention them unless they have to do with the requirements of the job or organization. "And they're not allowed to ask about those things in an interview," I said.

A few jaws slackened. I could tell that one woman had been asked about such things during an interview; the others came from other countries where laws against such questioning don't exist. I turned to one student, a Bengali woman, and said, "You don't want to announce that you're Muslim unless you're applying for a job in a mosque."

"A lot of people assume that I'm one," responded a male Hindu student from India. Then I talked a bit about some of the things that happened in the days just after 9/11/01, when people were harassed and beaten because someone thought they were Muslim or Middle Eastern. That happened to a taxi driver just three blocks from where I was living at the time: A group of men surrounded his cab when he stopped for a traffic light, pulled him out of the car, and beat him on the pavement. As it turned out, the driver was a Filipino Catholic, if I remember correctly.

"So there's really prejudice out there," commented one student, who works in the college's day care center.

"Yes," I said.

"What do you think, prof?" a young man wondered.

"I know it exists because I've experienced it firsthand."

I could hear that same man breathing. Everyone in the class stared at me. I figured that at least half of that class knew my story, so I told them about the time I went to an old supervisor of mine, who had become the department chair in another college, to ask about working there. It was just before the beginning of the semester, and the department was hiring adjuncts to teach a few newly-opened sections.

When that department chair was a coordinator at the college in which I used to teach, I had nothing but excellent reviews and he praised my work and professionalism. However, when I saw him again, about a year after I'd started living full-time as a woman, he somehow recalled that "there were problems" with me. He said I was "erratic" and that there had been complaints about me.

"Well, I never heard about them then. Why are you bringing them up now? And, as coordinator, you wouldn't have dealt with them."

"And your reviews were very inconsistent."

"Who told you that?"

"I can't talk about that."

When I finished telling the story, I could feel the eyes upon me. Then, one of the students I had last semester said, "Well, at least we have you here."

For a moment, I couldn't say anything. Then, after the student who works in the day care center gave me a "thumbs-up," I implored the students to remember, if nothing else, that trying to "fit in" or imitate those who have power does not work if you do not have the privilege they have. "All you can do is to be your absolute best self, whatever that is. Know what you are, and be the best of that you can be."

Don't ask me where that came from, much less whether it was the right thing to tell them. But, really, it was all I could say. I'm not sure what, if anything, I taught the students in that exchange. But it was all I could offer before we got on to the business of the rest of the day's class session.

What Is The Wind Bringing To Life?

So far, this probably hasn't been the coldest winter we've had in these parts. But people seem to think, and sometimes it feels as if, it has been. The cold has been accompanied by wind or wetness. The last couple of days it's been the wind; before that we had snow.

What has that meant? That I haven't been riding and everyone's been bundled up. You can see why people get depressed: They're closed off from each other, literally and figuratively. One is less likely to be seen by, much less have contact with, someone else. (The fact that there's less daylight at this time of year doesn't lift some people's moods, either.) On the other hand, they're also less likely, for exactly the same reasons to commit violence on each other. Then again, some people are more likely to commit violence on themselves.

Anyway...All of the wind that's blown this way makes me think of a Navajo creation story. It begins something like this:

It was the wind that gave them life. It is the wind that comes out of our mouths now that gives us life. When this ceases to blow, we die. In the skin at the tips of our fingers, we see the the train of the wind; it shows us where the wind blew when our ancestors were created.

This story goes on to say that in the autumn, four beings appeared: White body, Blue body, Black body and a Yellow body. They told the people they would return in twelve days. In preparation for the gods' return, on the twelfth day, the people washed themselves thoroughly. The women dried their skin with yellow cornmeal; the men with white cornmeal.

(It seems that cornmeal has a similar role in Navajo and other Native American cultures to what rice plays in many Asian cultures.)

Soon the people heard the shouts of the approaching gods. Blue Body and Black Body each carried a buckskin; White Body carried two ears of corn, one white and the other yellow.

The gods laid one skin on the ground, with its head facing the west. Over it they placed the two ears of corn, with their tips facing the east. Atop the ears of corn, they spread another buckskin, with its head to the east. Under the white ear of corn, they slid a white eagle's feather; under the yellow ear, a feather from a yellow eagle.

Then the gods told the people to stand back and allow the wind to enter between the buckskins. White wind blew in from the east and yellow wind came from the west. As the wind blew, eight gods called the Mirage People walked around the assembled objects four times. As the gods walked, the feathers, whose tips stuck out from the buckskins, were seen to move.

When the Mirage People finished their walk, the upper buckskin was removed. The ears of corn were gone; in their place lay a man and a woman. The white ear of corn had become a man; the yellow ear, a woman. They were the First Man and the First Woman.

It was the wind that gave them life, and it is the wind that comes out of our mouths now that gives us life. When this ceases to blow, we die.

I love the story. What makes it even more interesting, at least to me, is that in Navajo culture an implicit understanding that the wind, the life-giving force, is a kind of primordial mother: a creatrix, if you will. So that which gives us life, according to Navajo tradition, is female, and the Great Spirit, which is male, is the witness to the creation.

Hmm...It's just a little ironic, to me, that we've had the most prolonged stretch of windy weather I can recall at the beginning of my first winter in my life as a woman. I won't claim any cause and effect: I'm not that narcissitic!

I wonder, though, what the Navajos would make of the weather we're having. Could it be that a creative, chaotic, tumultuous and powerful time is beginning now? Or am I just seeing the world through the mirrors and prisms of my own life at this moment?

Gender Cleansing?

There is a laundromat along a street that dead-ends at the street on which I live. There are also two others within two blocks of my apartment, but I have been using the first one I mentioned. Of the three, it's the smallest, and the least expensive. The proprietor keeps it clean and the machines seem to be in good working order, so I've seen no reason not to use it.

But today, as I washed my clothes, I realized something about it: I've used it four times since and passed it a bunch of other times since I've moved here, and every time, I've seen only women using it. And it's not women of any particular age group, or racial, ethnic or socio-economic background that I see there. All of the patrons come from "the 51 percent minority."

At the laundromat down the street from my old place, the majority of the people washing clothes were female. But I saw a fair number of males there. And it wasn't just young guys, the seemingly-unemployed or senior citizens: There were boys and men of all ages and backgrounds; they came from the public housing projects as well as the modern condos, and every kind of dwelling in between.

And, in other laundromats I've used in other communities, I noticed that a significant portion, if not a majority, of the ones washing their clothes were male. Often they were students or travelers, as well as denizens of the environments and backgrounds I've mentioned.

However, I have yet to see a male patron in the laundromat I now frequent. Interestingly enough, the proprietor of the place is a rather young (and not-half-bad looking) man who, I must say, has been very nice and helpful to me.

I wonder if that particular laundromat normally has an exclusively or predominantly female clientèle. There do seem to be more women living in the blocks near my apartment than there were in the immediate environs of the place where I used to live. What's more, there seem to be women of all age groups here, whereas most of the women I saw around my old place were around my age, or even a bit older.

On any weekday, you can see lots of women going to and coming from work and shopping the strip of stores near my apartment. Part of the reason why so many women--many of whom are apparently single--live here is that it's closer to the subways and other transportation, and there's nearly constant activity along the shopping corridor and the streets adjacent to it. Thus, many of us who have to come home after dark (or, in a few cases, go to work before dawn) feel safer in doing so. When I lived in my old place, if I came home after the last bus cruised Broadway (around 11 pm), I'd have to walk about a mile or take a bus that let me off about a quarter-mile away from my old apartment. Part of that quarter-mile was often deserted, as it is an industrial area where the small factories and garages close around 6 pm.

Still, I can't help but to wonder why the laundromat I've been using seems to have as female a clientèle as my nail salon or hair dresser.

Going (Bike) Shopping With My Cousin

Today I spent much of the day helping my long-lost cousin buy a bike.

OK, I know that was hyperbolic-- but only slightly. I did indeed go bike-shopping with him. And, until a few months ago, he was long-lost, sort of. Well, actually, I knew he was alive and more or less where he was. Still, I managed not to see him for forty years--until late August, just before the semester started.

It wasn't by design that I didn't see him for all of those years--unless, of course, you believe that some power higher than yourself willed it so. I am not saying that there was no Grand Design behind our separation; I simply don't know that there was such a plan.

In any event, finding a bike that he liked turned out to be surprisingly easy. I know more than most other people know about bikes; still, it's been a while since I've guided anyone, through his initiation or re-initiation into the world of bicycling. And I didn't want to do what I would have done back in the day, when I was working in bike shops.

Back in my boy-racer days, I would have found it vaguely distasteful to help someone who knew almost nothing about bikes. Worse still would have been helping such a potential customer purchase a basic, entry-level machine: something I never, ever would ride myself. I also would have tried to get such a customer to spend more money than he or she had earmarked for his or her new steed.

But, of course, Gene is my cousin--or, more precisely my mother's cousin. Some of my relations aren't happy with some things I've done, but I have never tried to hurt or cheat them. Plus, I want him to be happy with his bike, which has meant listening to what he wanted rather than what I think he should have.

And what did I hear from him? Comfort, comfort and comfort, in that order. After that, he talked about taking short rides on weekends and building up to longer daily rides as the days grow longer and warmer. Finally, he wanted a bike that would ride well in a number of different conditions.

And what did he end up with? A Bianchi Cortina, with a bunch of accessories. His choice of bike (He test-rode it and two others.) didn't surprise me; in fact, it was the first bike in the shop that I noticed when he talked about his wishes and preferences. What surprised me, however, was how much he spent on accessories for the bike. I thought they were all good choices for him, given how he intends to ride. I guess I was surprised because I didn't prod him into buying anything: he knew he wanted a rack for the rear, a trunk bag for the top and fenders, and he realized that it couldn't hurt to have lights in case he starts a ride late in the afternoon and continues into the evening.

I probably wouldn't have bought the bike he bought, but only because it's not a bike that suits my style of riding and, well, because I really don't need and can't afford another bike right now. However, the Cortina is, I believe, a very good example of the sort of bike it is: a basic hybrid, which is really what will suit Gene.

He bought the bike at Spokesman Cycles, which is sort-of-near where I used to live. I had planned to take him on the grand tour of bike shops, but I think he didn't want to drive into Manhattan, where we would have gone to Bicycle Habitat. Plus, I figured that Spokesman had, for the small shop that it is, a decent selection of the kinds of bikes that might interest Louis, and its location is convenient for him. And the owner is a friendly acquaintance.

Afterward, we went to Los Portales, a Mexican restaurant in Astoria, where we had a soups that cost almost as much as our entrees. We were happy with both. After that, we had some pastry and coffee in a cafe across the street, where we stayed until closing. We talked about a lot of things, as you might imagine. After all, this is the third time we've seen each other after that forty-year absence.

Now, I know that this experience of helping Louis choose a bike was entirely different than any other experience I've had in guiding anyone else through the process. For one thing, I was doing so as a "civilian," albeit one armed with the knowledge of a former bike-shop employee and relationships with the proprietor of the shop. Also, I was helping a relation of mine who, I believe, may be turning into a friend. (He's been honest with, and sweet to, me.)

But I think the most important difference is that I listened to him more than I had in previous encounters with people buying bikes. Some of that may have had to do with the fact that he's a relation. However, I think it also had to do with the fact that I've developed a more encompassing, democratic view of cycling and cyclists. Once, years ago, I told someone she should "lose weight and get in shape" before she started to ride a bike; now I am happy to see people mount their saddles, even if those seats are not the ones I would ride and the people mounting them aren't shaped the way I and my old riding buddies were when we were in our best shape.

I can't help to wonder, though, whether my attitude also had something to do with my change in gender manifestation. I've heard and read various notions that women are better listeners and more practical thinkers than men are. Perhaps some of us become so, though, I believe, by necessity rather than because of our innate differences from men.

Maybe it just has to do with the fact that even though I'm not the athlete I once was, I'm much happier with myself. People, including students, have told me that they respond to that in me: I'm starting to notice that they do, and perhaps Louis is, too. That makes for more pleasant and productive interactions. Most important, I think that happy people feel, ironically enough, less need to change other people. At least, I know that I don't have to turn Louis into a wannabe racer to enjoy his company.

Reflections At The Beginning of The Year

Most new years have begun with a day that seemed eerily quiet to me. This New Year's Day has been no exception. The weather was neither unusually cold nor mild for this time of year, and it did not begin to rain until well into the evening. And, when I ventured out this afternoon, there were few people on the streets. And those I saw were uncommonly serene; I exchanged wishes for a happy new year with several of them, all of whom are strangers.

I guess everyone else was sleeping off a hangover, watching football, cooking or eating.

Later in the afternoon, I became one of the latter category, going once again to--you guessed it!--Millie's house. Her younger daughter, who will turn one of those round-number ages (I won't say which one!) in a couple of months, seemed happier than I've seen her in a while. And her other daughter, who came with her two kids, also was in an uncommonly good mood. And John, Millie's husband was exhibiting his usual (and sometimes wonderfully charming) combination of thoughtfulness to his guests and cluelessness about some of our conversations. It's not that he's stupid--far from it. It's just that there are some things he really knows nothing about. In that sense, I guess he's no different from the rest of us.

Also present was Catherine, whom I like very much. She and Millie are childhood friends who, somehow or another, have managed to live no more than a neighborhood or two apart from each other through more than half a century.

Sometimes I find myself envying that: Even before I began my gender transition, I had to uproot myself a couple of times. I have not been in contact with anyone I knew during elementary or junior high school for thirty years or so; I am in tenuous, sporadic contact with a few people I knew in high school and in college via Facebook and other online means. However, I have a hard time of keeping such relationships up. Or, more precisely, I am a bit reluctant to commit to them, as I know that each of us has changed during the decades we haven't seen each other.

I know it's very difficult to relate to someone who, in essence, is a different person from the one you knew when you and that person weren't present for each others' changes. I learned that when I tried to resume a friendship with Elizabeth after we hadn't seen each other for a decade or more: Even if Nick hadn't become Justine, it might not have been possible to be friends. On the other hand, Bruce and I have been in nearly constant contact for close to thirty years; we have seen each other go through crises and triumphs. I can only imagine what Millie and Catherine have experienced in all of the time they've known each other!

Yet, as we shared chips and salsa, antipasti, baked ziti with sausage, salad, roast pork, rice with peas and corn, I realized that I, too, have a friendship with a history with Millie, with John--with their family, in fact, and Catherine. I've known them for about seven and a half years: not as long as they've known each other, but, in essence for my entire life as I now know it. All of them, except for Catherine, met me during the last days I was living at least part of my life as a male. None of them ever mention that, even though I never asked them not to.

Plus, in my very earliest days of living full-time, I watched Millie's grandkids--who were then nine and six years old--when she had to go somewhere, and John and their daughters were at work. Now the grandkids are fifteen and twelve years old.

Now I'll admit that I have a self-indulgent, self-reflexive reason for talking about them and the friendships that have developed between us: In thinking about what I've experienced, I realize how far I've come, if I do say so myself. When I say "how far I've come," I am talking about what I've left behind me--whether by choice or other means--as well as what I've gained or simply come into.

Of course I have left various relationships; others have fallen by the wayside. That, I suppose happens in everyone's lives. In addition, I have abandoned--whether by choice or otherwise--various material possessions and a place I had, not only in a larger world, but in the lives of various people who were in my life.

What have I gained? Relationships, possessions and a place in the world and in certain people's lives. Naturally, the ones I've gained are, for the most part, very different from the ones I've left behind. And the people who've remained with me have changed in various ways, while remaining true to themselves.

And what have I come into? The pleasures gleaned from what I've gained, and a sense of my self that I never could have anticipated, much less pursued or seized, prior to my transition.

I must admit, what I've gained and come into have some ironic--and some purely and simply funny--consequences at times. (Yes, Ed McGon, God does have a wicked sense of humor!) To wit: Catherine, Millie and Stephanie, her elder daughter, were talking about something and somehow the subject of menopause came up. (The grandkids were, at that moment, in the living room and too engrossed in their video games to hear us.) They were talking about how a woman knows it's coming on (hot flashes, etc.) and I said, "Well, first, you miss your period."

Not one of them blinked. And one of them--Millie, I think--said, "Yeah, and after that you start having the other symptoms."

And the conversation continued as if nobody had said anything unusual or out of line. I wasn't trying to impress anyone or "fit in;" I merely stated, with confidence, a fact and was part of a women's conversation. John, who sat at the other end of the table from me, gave me a brief but knowing smile.

If that, and the rest of the time I spent with him and everyone else is a harbinger of what this year will be like, things ought to be good, or at least interesting--ironically, by becoming routine. At least I know I'm starting this year in the life in which I belong.