A Bike Ride Into Change

I just had to get out of the house and on my bike, even if only for a little bit. And even if I still had a heavy cold.

Today I pedaled somewhere I haven't been in quite a while: the Williamsburg waterfront. It's not far from where I live, but it seems like an accomplishment, given how little bicycling I've done over the past few months.


Plus, I had a feeling that my lungs and sinuses wouldn't clear themselves much more if I stayed in the house. So I took my trusty Mercian fixed gear bike, which made me feel as if I'd ridden only yesterday.


It's only been about six or seven months since I've been there, but in some ways I could scarcely recognize it. Oh, the amazing views of the Manhattan skyline haven't changed. Nor has the metallic yet briny smell of the mist from the East River about half a mile from the Williamsburg Bridge.


One odor that's gone is that of a freshly-opened box of Domino's brown sugar. That smell filled the air near the factory that made the stuff, next to the river and practically at arm's length from the Bridge, even after it closed a few years ago. Now that the aroma and the jobs that made it possible are gone, I wonder what will happen to that building. If a structure can be beautiful in a Dickensian way, that factory building is. Will some developer turn it into a condominiums?


If it were to be converted, it certainly wouldn't be like the condo buildings that stand along the waterfront now. Construction on those condo buildings started about two years ago; they have been completed for several months now. They are much like others that have been built in the last ten years or so along the city's waterfront: rectangles of steel, mortar and glass that are meant to be stopovers for the night for young professionals who work, and young trust-funders who do whatever they do, in and among the famous buildings they can see from their apartment windows. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I have a hard time imagining them as places of rest, much less living.


Even more noticeable was the new bike lane along Kent Avenue--and the absence of trucks. I have long enjoyed cycling there after business hours and on weekends, when the formerly industrial landscape became strangely serene. When I rode there on weekdays, I was never worried, not even when the trucks came and went: Most of those drivers were considerate and curious. All you had to do was make yourself visible and not do anything stupid, and all was well.


It was even quieter there on Saturdays than on Sundays because most of the small factories and warehouses that lined that stretch of the river were owned by Hasidic Jews. Although I have seen them only from a distance (As I understand, their religion frowns upon communication with outsiders unless it's absolutely necessary.), they were part of the landscape, if you will. It was odd, to say the least, not to see any along Kent Avenue today.


In a way, it's surprising that these changes didn't happen sooner. The part of Williamsburg along and near Bedford Avenue has long been a hipster haven, and many of the lofts near it were artists' and musicians' studios. As happened neighborhoods like the Village, Soho and Park Slope in past decades, what follows young creative people and wannabes is young money, whether of the yuppie or the preppie variety.


Now, I don't mean for this to be a sociological analysis. Instead, I just want to describe a change I've noticed. Even though I hardly ever had contact with the Hasidic Jews, I somehow felt a kind of kinship with them. As best as I can tell, it has to do with the fact that they're survivors, and I can say that I've had to be one. So, even in my lycra-clad racer-wannabe days, I felt completely at home when I rode through the Hasidic Industrial Zone, if you will.


Plus, they were, I now realize, among the last holdovers of an old way of living and thinking in New York. They worked at the waterfront. They weren't there for the views or the prestige of a waterfront address, mainly because, when they were there, a waterfront address had no prestige. Maybe it's because New York has so much shoreline that residents of the city didn't value--and, it seemed at times, denigrated--the water's edge. The most prestigious addresses in Manhattan (along upper Fifth, Madison and Park Avenues) are the ones furthest from the water. And in Park Slope, the further up the slope--and the further from the water--you go, the more elegant and pricey the brownstones become.


Meanwhile, the waterfront was for laborers, like my uncle who worked at Bush Terminal in Brooklyn. This seeming disdain for its shores was perhaps best seen in this city during the 1950's and 1960's, when the NIMBY projects, like public housing and waste disposal plants, were built along the oceanfront in Far Rockaway and Arverne and along the Hudson and East Rivers in Harlem.


So...I grew up among people who made their living--and, in some cases, lived--by the water. I still feel drawn to it, and to the kinds of people I've talked about, today. Perhaps that is the reason I've connected more easily with my students than with my colleagues.


But today, the few people I saw were at the water's edge, not to work, and not even to play, but for the relative proximity to the skyscrapers they can view from their windows. For some of them, it could just as well be part of the decor, as the remaining piers may as well be.


Don't get me wrong: I met a few people who were friendly enough when I stopped at the pier and went into the Duane Reade store at the base of one of the buildings. Admiring a baby's big blue eyes got me talking with his young parents; a young woman struck up a conversation over my bike when I propped it up by the pier. They all seemed nice enough and if I spent more time with them I might've found common ground. But I have seen the place in which they're living in a way they never could, and they could not even know that the eyes that allow for that way of seeing are fading; no new ones are being born to replace them. Of course that is inevitable: The world has changed, and so has this city and the neighborhood in which those younger people are living.


Jobs like the one my uncle worked no longer exist; the places that employed people like my uncle for those kinds of jobs--some of them located, only a few years ago, where those condo buildings now stand--are also gone. Gone, too, are the expectation that people like my uncle would work in such jobs (or that they would work in a factory, as my father did when I was a kid) and that their wives would stay home with the children they bore, as my mother did until my youngest brother went to school.


Part of me says, "Good riddance." After all, most people wouldn't want to work those jobs if they had other choices. And women, save for ones like the Hasidim, don't have to have children as soon as they're old enough to bear them or marry men so as not to compete with them for their jobs. Plus, if a woman is going to work, she doesn't have to be a nurse, secretary or elementary school teacher, as honorable and necessary as those jobs are.



In some way, I've come to realize that those changes have made my changes possible. I am not bound by those expectations that people once had for males like the one I portrayed or for the woman that I am and have become. So I had the option--though I had to wait many years for the opportunity--of leaving the constraints of my male body without dying. And I did not have to become the sort of woman Christine Jorgensen, bless her soul, became.


That is because the world in which I lived not so long ago no longer exists. Of course, that is a good thing in many ways. But sometimes it's still jarring to see so much change, and that it seems to have happened so quickly, even if I had to wait a long time for it. But here it is. I'm still finding my way around it and getting to know some of the people in it--and myself.

Giving Birth To New Definitions Of Ourselves

When I began my current life, I had assumed that there were two things I would never have: XX chromosomes and a uterus. Somehow I had the feeling that even though I never would have either one, sometime in my lifetime some trans woman would be fortunate enough to get them.

Well, it seems that the dream of a uterine transplant will come true for a trans woman even sooner than I imagined it would. For the past few days, I've seen stories about Sarah Luiz and her belief that she will become the first transgender woman to give birth.


More than one commentator has said that Ms. Luiz was to the '80's as Christine Jorgensen was to the '50's. She knows this, which is the reason why she has applied to become the first trans woman to receive a uterine transplant. She figures, and she believes the doctors at Downtown Hospital know, that her ability to garner publicity will help them get the money they need to do the research necessary to refine their techniques.


Actually, if any transwoman were chosen to be the first recipient of a uterine transplant, that would generate much more publicity than if a non-transgender woman were to receive it. When I read about the surgery, I had a fleeting temptation to apply for it myself. But I've decided not to, mainly because it's hard for me to rationalize giving birth to a child at this point in my life. After all, by the time that child is a sophomore in high school, I will be eligible to collect Social Security--if indeed it's still available.


Also, I'm not so sure that giving birth will make me more of a woman than I am. Many other women are no more capable of having babies, for any number of reasons, than I am. Yet almost nobody doubts that they're women. Some--including some of those women themselves--may consider them as somehow incomplete or defective women. But in a world--or, at any rate, in any country in which people don't have to give birth to ten children in the hope that four of them will make it to an age in which they can help to support their parents--no one has a responsibility to have children in order to continue the species. Furthermore, women today--again, at least in modern industrial and post-industrial societies--have roles other than those of birthing and nurturing.


One thing I've come to realize is that I am part of what may be the first generation of people to be free of the notion that sex can be justified only for procreative purposes. Some may think it's caused a decline in morality; somehow I get the impression that morality never existed, or at least wasn't as widespread or ingrained as some people seem to think it was. Anyway, I think that being freed of the notion that love must lead to marriage and sex must lead to babies has given us more freedom to define our sexuality and our gender identities--and what those things mean to us--in our own terms.


I think now of how Christine Jorgensen tried so hard to be what women in her place and time were expected to be: As she was researching the new science of gender reassignment, she was also studying to be a nurse because it was considered to be a "woman's job." I also think of how being able to "go stealth" was considered the sign of a successful transition, and how I believed I wouldn't be able to pull it off. And, naturally, my self-esteem rose faster than a rocket Amanda Simpson helped to design whenever I "passed." What that meant was that I seemed more or less like what people expect a woman of my age to be.


Another thing I've come to realize is that, just as the definitions of sexuality have expanded with every person who defines him or her self in his or her own terms, each of us who decides to live by the gender of our mind and spirits rather than what's on our birth certificates is also expanding the definitions of "male," "female," "man," "woman," "boy" and "girl." Even the ones about whom people marvel, "I couldn't tell" change our ideas about gender.



So, it's a most interesting irony that Sarah Luiz is trying to become more like what people have traditionally defined as a woman and that in doing so, she's actually helping to change the definition of "woman, " just as "the man who had a baby" will have contributed to such a change.



As for me...I don't think I need to have a baby in order to feel complete. Perhaps I will feel differently as I spend more time in my new life. But I never before had any wish to have a child, mainly because I felt that someone as conflicted and as full of self-loathing as I was would not make a good parent. I don't regret that decision; I've seen too many kids who were born to such parents (or, worse, to parents who didn't want them). Still, I think it's great that I and many other women (I'm not talking only about trans women.) may soon have yet another choice to make--and another opportunity to define for ourselves what it means to be a woman or man, or, perhaps, something we haven't named yet.

Resisting a Temptation to Revise

Dina, who teaches at the college, told me about a vacancy that was recently listed at a college in which I used to teach. The job is, in some ways, attractive: It would entail a lighter teaching load and possibly give me an opportunity to develop and teach new courses. Plus, the college has developed a "gay-friendly" relationship.

For the reasons I've mentioned, I thought, for a moment, about applying for that job. But I think I'll pass.

For one thing, "gay-friendly" doesn't always translate into tolerance for, much less acceptance of, transgender people. Also, if I take a new job, I'm not so sure of how much I want my identity to be a factor in getting, taking or staying on the job--unless, of course, I were to work with an LGBT organization.

One nice thing about working this semester has been that my identity, though it is known to most people at the college, has been far less of a factor in my dealings with people there than it had been before. At the beginning of the semester, a few colleagues who knew that I'd had my operation asked about it. Some were very supportive. As the semester wore on, most of the faculty and students treated me well. There was one exception: I've managed, for the most part, to steer clear of that faculty member since her shenanigans. And I've talked about who I am just once, with the class I'm teaching now. I felt that it was an appropriate time and the students appreciated my candor and the fact that, as a result of my experiences, I could understand some of theirs.

The odd thing is that the college in which I teach has the reputation as the most "gay-hostile" campus in the city. I've had gay students for freshman and sophomore courses who didn't return for their junior or senior years and others who "came out" to me and swore me to secrecy. Yet, apart from a couple of incidents like the one I mentioned earlier, I really haven't had any difficulties this semester. Some of my former students have come to my office or sent me e-mails to wish me well; so have some faculty members from my department and others. Save for the one who made the false accusations against me, I haven't encountered hostility or other negativity from other faculty members.

So my current situation, while not ideal, is tenable. Or, at least, I've found my way around it, more or less.

Plus, while my colleagues met me early in my life as Justine, they don't have any memory of me as Nick. In contrast, there are several profs at the other college, where I taught for five years, who would probably remember me from my days in boy-drag. I wasn't happy in those days, so I'm not so sure whether their memories of me would be pleasant.

It's not that I'm afraid of seeing them again or that I feel any shame about who I am or have become. It's more like I want to move forward rather than to revise my past, or anyone's perception of it.

Perhaps most important of all, I've lost the desire I once had to meet people who knew me as Nick and try to show them my real self. I've even lost the curiosity I once had about what it might be like to have relationships, as Justine, with people who knew me as Nick but who last saw me some time before I started my transition. To be sure, I've had pleasant reunions with my cousin and aunt, and with Sheldon. On the other hand, hooking up with Elizabeth after being out of touch for a number of years didn't turn out so well. Fate or circumstance or whatever you want to call it may well bring other people from my past back into my life, as happened with my cousin and aunt. But I'm not so sure I want to purposely revisit past relationships, whether they were friendships or work partnerships.

The one other temptation about applying for the job at my old school is the fact that the old chairman has retired. The new chair started teaching there around the same time I did; she was working on her PhD. I don't know how or whether she remembers me, but I don't recall any negativity between us. So I may be able to start on a good note, or at least with a clean slate, at least as far as she's concerned.

However, the old chair is listed as a professor emeritus, which may mean that I'll see him again. About a year into living full-time as a woman, I found out that he was hiring adjunct instructors and asked whether he'd consider me. He declined, claiming that my reviews were "inconsistent" (They were all excellent.) and that I was "erratic." (He used to praise my consistency.) There were "problems," when I worked there, he said.

"Why didn't I hear about them then?"

"I can't talk about that."

Of course he couldn't: How can anyone who revises someone else's history talk about it with the person whose history has been revised?

So, I think I will leave that school in the past, and not try to revise it.

Through My Skin

For the past few days, I've had a rather heavy cold. That, of course, has left me tired, which is one reason why I didn't post yesterday. It was the first time in a few weeks that I hadn't written an entry and I felt a little sad about it.

Today I realized that something I've been unable to describe--until now--has changed since, if not as a result of, my surgery. I don't have a name for it (Does one exist?), so I'll describe a manifestation of it.

Sometimes I feel as if I can sense something essential, or at least basic, about a person through and on my skin. You've probably said that someone or another made your skin crawl. Well, sometimes I feel as if some people have that effect on me. Or they make my skin tingle or burn or feel as if it's going to float, and I'm not sure of whether it will remove itself from my body or take the rest of me with it.

I felt something like what I just described--in a much less intense way--after I had been taking hormones for a couple of months. I used to say that I felt as if a layer of skin had been stripped away. Now, sometimes I feel as if I'm a mass of nerve endings. Sometimes that's wonderful: I experience joy like I've never known before. But at other times, I can feel the warning lights flashing without being sure of why.

The weird thing is that I feel as if I'm learning for the first time about people I've known for some time. Sometimes that's a felicitous, or at least a good, thing to experience. However, it can also leave me feeling unsafe around, or annoyed with, someone I once liked. That's how I feel about someone whom I considered to be a good friend not long ago.

Or, sometimes, I just feel no particular reason to talk to someone with whom I once conversed, sometimes at length. Maybe it's because I realize that I no longer have, or have never had, anything in common with that person. That's how I feel about a few people at the college. It's not that I dislike them; I just don't feel any particular connection to them apart from being a co-worker.

On the other hand, I also feel that I have something to talk about--or at least a friendlier "vibe" from people who seemed not to like me before, or whom I didn't think I liked. I'm thinking in particular of one colleague in my department. She started teaching at the college three years ago; from that time until this year, I thought she was rather snobbish or at least aloof. But we have become rather friendly. It may just be that she felt insecure as "the new kid in town": after all, she is young and had just recently finished her PhD. She had a couple of fellowships but, if I'm not mistaken, this is her first full-time faculty position.

But she's been friendly to me ever since I "broke the ice" early in the fall. Maybe she realizes that I'm not a competitor: We may both be in an English department, but the work we do is very different. And, I don't begrudge her that she's way more attractive than I ever was, am or will be. If nothing else, she has a very appealing smile, which I hadn't seen before this year.

Somehow I have the feeling she was intimidated by me. My first encounter with her came when she gave a sample lecture after being interviewed for the job. I was in the audience, among other faculty members and administrators. And I asked her a question--I forget about what, exactly, except that it had to do with the role of gender in a novel she mentioned--and it seemed to make her nervous. I wasn't trying to put her "on the spot;" it was simply a question that came to my mind.

I guess that if I were in her position, I might've been caught off-guard, too. But what she may not have realized at the time was that I was asking the question out of a complete lack of familiarity about the works she was discussing. And, of course, I didn't understand how or why she would be intimidated, at least a little, by that. If that's the reason why she kept her distance from me, I can understand.

Or, it just may be that she knew I'm transgendered: if she couldn't see it at first, she may have realized it from the question I asked. And, she may not have known what to make of that. She could very well been one of the many women who worried about what I'd do in a women's bathroom. (The funny thing is that I try to spend as little time in them as I can; I'm usually not noticing much else besides the cleanliness, or lack thereof, and I'm thinking about what I have to do at that moment and the moment after it.) By now, she's heard that I've had my operation, and she may feel less worried about me as a result of that. And I'm sure that even though she knows that I see her as an attractive woman--I've told her as much, as I'm sure many other people have--she knows by now that I'm not seeing her as a potential sexual partner. Maybe she knows, too, that I see she's really an OK, and rather interesting, person to talk to.

Now, these changes I've experienced don't mean that I'm getting rid of all of my old friends, as some trans people do when they transition. I've thought about making some changes in my life, to be sure--and, in fact, I've had to make one that I'd thought about making. But it will be interesting, at least to me, to see whether the way I feel about other people and things changes during the next six months, year, or few years. I know that happened a few months after I started taking hormones and as I started to live full-time as a woman.

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.