Sunday Mist And Drizzle

When does a mist become a drizzle? When you go outside.

At least, that's how it seemed today. No mist is finer than the one you see through your window; the moment it touches your skin, it is no longer drifting. Then it has fallen; it has become a drizzle.

On Sundays, most people will experience it through their windows: as a mist. If it continues, it turns to rain on Monday.

All right: Now I've given you a local weather report and forecast. You came to this blog to read that, right?

Anyway...This is the first Sunday mist and drizzle I'm experiencing in this new apartment. (In a couple of days, I'll have lived here for two months. I guess it's still a new place for me.) It's funny that a couple of days ago I thought that I'd never see the kind of light I used to see around the old place on misty Sundays. It is, in some ways, even more stark than what one sees on the clearest and coldest day of every winter. That is because the light that has become of the mist from the river, which was only a block away from my old apartment, seemed to focus the hard if not sharp edges of the warehouses and shops, empty on Sunday, and the rows of sometimes-shabby but sturdy houses where many sleep and others retreat.

Here, the rows of brick houses and buildings seem to take depth from, yet add texture to, the misty air. It's like a kind of Pointillist painting, except that the grains that make up the image are even finer, and that image is on an even greater scale. I will risk triteness in saying that it is perhaps more romantic--in a very bourgeois (which I don't mean derogatorily) way. On the other hand, the light and mist around my old place, in its definition by sharper lines through a more encompassing kind of veil that drapes itself over the buildings and anything else that happens to be outside, seems somehow more apropos of an industrial, blue-collar neighborhood. There, it is definitely a drizzle and, as often as not, turns to rain.

It seems that mist and drizzle filled every Sunday of the first fall and spring I spent at the old place. They were also the last fall and spring I spent before I began to live full-time as Justine. Now, seven years later, I've had my surgery and it seems that I'm still early in the first chapter of my new life. That means, of course, the mist cannot remain a mist for long: It will become a drizzle--that is to say, change. Naturally, I do not, and probably cannot, know what kind of change I'll experience, save for what has already been planned. All I know is that there will be some rain and some sun, and whatever's in between.

A Familiar Shore In A New Life

Probably no cinematic scene is more emblazoned in my consciousness than the one that ends Le Quatre Cents Coups, a.k.a. The 400 Blows. Antoine Doinel, a boy of about twelve years old, lives in a dysfunctional home (to put it mildly!) and spirals downward from schoolboy mischief to petty crime in the neighborhood near Le Moulin Rouge. At various points in the film, he says he wants to see the ocean. After he is arrested, his mother asks whether he could be sent to a seaside reform school. Of course, the truant officer is none too willing to oblige; he says something to the effect that he wasn't running a resort.

Anyway, he's sent to a kind of military school where, during a football game, he escapes and keeps on running until he reaches the sea. When his feet touch the water, he turns his head and his face fills with an expression that has probably been interpreted in more ways than any other facial expression save for the Mona Lisa's. It's a combination of relief, release, conquest and a sense of what Yeats meant by "a terrible beauty is born."

Now, I'm not sure that whatever expression I wore today on the Coney Island Pier is nearly as enigmatic or interesting as Antoine's. But I'm sure I must have shown some of the sense of release--I could feel it--and what I like to call a sense of Zen ecstasy. And, of course, I've been to the ocean many times before. But this is the first time I've ridden my bike there in more than six months.

It was cold, but not terribly so, and there was no wind or precipitation. And the almost pristinely clear sky was almost too bright for reflections: The sun and the clear sky actually seemed to light the water from within, so that the waves flickered like nearly translucent lapis lazuli flames. Even though the air was chilly and the water, I'm sure, was very cold, I felt those colors and the refulgence of the sun glowing within me.

A new life, or a new stage in one's life, is often referred to as a new (and distant) shore. I wonder whether anyone ever thinks about reaching a familiar shore in a new life. Actually, I think that's part of what Zen teaches.

I'm thinking now about a day very early in my life as Justine. I rode my bike to the Coney Island boardwalk, as I did today. And I had a flashback to myself on a beach one Sunday in October during my senior year of high school. It amazes me now that more kids don't run away from home or do even more reckless things at that time in their lives: The pressure of expectations is so great even for a kid who's not struggling with his or her gender identity or sexuality. That tug-of-war between what parents, teachers and other adults want a kid to do and what that kid might actually want to do exacerbates, and is exacerbated by, the tension between the sort of person the kid wants to be, or realizes he or she is, and what the parents and other adults hope for. In my case, it meant that I would apply to West Point and Annapolis because my father and some other adults in my life wanted me to become a military officer. I think women were admitted to those academies the year after I applied to them, and at that time, the number of female officers was probably smaller than the number of male women's studies professors. So, of course, being a military officer would mean living very much as a man.

Anyway, on that long-ago day, I could only see more of the same struggles. In other words, I was seeing what I now call the Eternal Present: Everything ahead of you is just another version of what's in front of you. So, while I could apply to colleges and make plans to prepare myself to become an officer or a doctor or whatever, I simply could not envision the person who would be whatever I was supposed to become at the end of that training. What others dreamt for me was invariably predicated on my becoming a man, or at least their idea of what a man is. And, of course, that is exactly what I couldn't be even if I'd wanted to.

So today's bike ride brought me back to a place where I'd struggled, and first began to reconcile with that battle. In other words, it brought me to a familiar shore in a new life. At least now I can hope the familiarity is a blessing, or at least an advantage. If nothing else, it made me happy, if tired.

Sleep And Body Heat

Last night I fell asleep while reading a student's paper. That should not be taken as an assessment of the student's work: I probably would have fallen asleep had Angelina and Brad walked into my apartment and done whatever it is Angelina and Brad do.

Anyway...When I woke up--nearly ten hours later--I was stretched out on the couch, with Charlie curled up by my feet and Max by my left side. I had been sitting up when I started to doze off; I cannot remember stretching out on the couch. And I didn't notice when Charlie and Max climbed onto the couch. Then again, it's not the first time I've awakened with them by or on me.

What's more, I didn't dilate before I went to sleep. So yesterday was the first day I didn't. I'm guessing that one day in six months won't ruin what's come to fit me so well. Also, I didn't take a warm bath, as I have been nearly every night. To fall into such a sleep without my bath, I must have been really tired.

At one time, I would have berated myself for being so tired and falling into such a deep sleep without having ridden my bike long or hard, or having exerted myself in any other way. Yesterday, I simply taught my class, read some papers, ran an errand, ate and read some more papers. My body had its own reasons for being so tired, I guess.

Yesterday was the last day of the class. I told my students that I'd be in my office this morning. Fortunately, as it turned out, only one student was looking for me, and she wasn't upset. We managed to find each other this afternoon, a little while after I arrived on campus.

It was a bit odd to have started the day and work after ten hours that were a blank. And I didn't have the excuse of anaesthesia or other forms of induced unconsciousness. Heck, I haven't had a drink in more than twenty years or smoked pot for even longer than that. No, my body shut down--shut me down--all on its own. Not that it's anything to celebrate. I just haven't fallen asleep so suddenly or deeply for no particular reason in I don't know how long.

At least I felt rested today. And Charlie and Max didn't seem to mind. Nor did I mind them sleeping on me. I have to wonder, though: Do they like me only for my body heat? Or do they really like me because, well, I'm their human.

What if some scientist were to find out that people hug each other only because we are drawn to each other's body heat--that is to say, only to keep warm. Or that our impulse to hug is rooted in an old survival mechanism. What did Miguel de Unamuno write? Nos morimos de frio y no de oscuridad: We do not die from the cold, not from darkness. Could Senor Unamuno have been a gato in his past life? Or, perhaps he was un gato que vive en un cuerpo de hombre. I used to tell my cats that's what I was; now I tell them I'm in un cuerpo de dama. And, of course, they always greet such comments with that look that says, "Whatever!" Cats perfected it long before humans came up with the word and sullen teenagers started sputtering it.

I'm sure that Mr. Onzain, my first Spanish teacher--who was the best-dressed and -groomed man I had ever seen up to that point in my life--would be speechless at my translation. Whether he'd be speechless over my proficiency or lack thereof in his native language, or simply my audacity in attempting the translation, is an open question. Then again, I wonder what he'd think of that Unamuno quote.

I must still be tired if I'm rambling the way I just did. Oh well. Maybe I'll have another long sleep tonight.

When I Started To Learn What Is Mine

Tonight I got to see Dwayne again. Even though I saw him about two weeks ago, it felt like a reunion all over again. He says that I am a different person from the one he first met about seven and a half years ago, and he loves seeing what I've become, and what I'm becoming.

You may think I'm flattering or aggrandizing myself when I mention that here. Perhaps I am. But I don't really care: What he said is special, and so is seeing him again, because he is the very first person to whom I "came out."

If I've already told this story, could you please indulge me in telling it again? Dwayne was working as an intake counselor at Center Care, the Mental Health Services section of the LGBT Community Center of New York. The day I came in, I knew nobody there and had no idea of whom I would meet. I just knew I had to talk to someone who would understand what I was feeling, or at least steer me to someone who could.

I knew my relationship with Tammy--and the life I was living as a result of it--had been slipping away from me for about a year. Actually, it was already out of my grasp by that day, and I knew that there was no way of getting it back. Nor was there any reason to hold on to it, even if I could. But I would not acknowledge that my previous life was already gone: that, in fact, I never had it in the first place. In other words, it was never mine.

Sometimes I still miss Tammy. We had some very good times together: In fact, the first two years I spent with her were the best time in my pre-transition life. And she shared more of my interests than any other lover, and any but one or two friends, I've ever had. But I also knew, in my heart of hearts, that it couldn't last. I tried to deny that fact to myself: I told myself that I was falling into an old habit of waiting for the other shoe to drop. But, if nothing else, I finally learned why the other shoe would invariably drop. And it had nothing to do with cynicism or bad karma: The shoe dropped because it couldn't stay on my foot--because it didn't fit.

By the day I met Dwayne, the shoe had dropped and hit the floor with a loud thud. So, I knew that trying to put that shoe back on wasn't the solution. Whatever I wore next would have to fit, whether it was a combat boot or a candy-apple red patent stiletto pump--or a bedroom slipper.

I was thinking about all of this as I saw Dwayne, and about the post I wrote yesterday. Now I have, and am finding, what fits me. Of course, I'm talking about the results of my surgery, not to mention the therapy and all of the work I've done on my own. Dwayne helped me to take the very first steps I took in the shoes that fit, along a path that has turned out to be right for me.

And tonight I got to spend time with him after I finally wrote those words yesterday: my vagina. My life. My name. My work. My relationships. My thoughts, my impressions, my observations, all rendered in my language, as ungraceful as it may be. Or, its lack of refinement may just be a reflection of its newness to me, and mine to it.

The funny thing is that because that language was really a part of me all along, it's that much more of a struggle sometimes to learn, just as I'm experiencing the growing pains of my new body parts taking me through a new puberty--one that is entirely my own.

Throughout my life, I've learned all sorts of things as quickly as I could forget them. Sometimes I meet one of my classes in a room in which a math class met the hour before my class. When I arrive, the blackboard is full of equations and other symbols that mean nothing to me now, but that I learned long ago--and forgot the day after the class in which I learned them ended. Likewise, I once learned some German with surprisingly little effort. But whenever I see anything in that language, it's as indecipherable to me as the equations some math prof left on the board of my classroom.

Perhaps learning what is truly mine takes effort simply because it reaches deeper into myself than those other things I learned, including so many of the skills I used to live as a male. Maybe I feel a good kind of tiredness from the work I put into what I'm learning now--and from the way my body and soul are developing--because I am so much more engaged, and learning has become a passionate rather than a passive experience for me. You might say that nothing I'm learning now is theoretical or hypothetical: It's all as concrete and immediate as learning how to walk or use my hands. Except, of course, I'm learning so much more than that!

Dwayne understands that. He saw how it all began for me. Maybe it's true that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. But sometimes a woman can use a really good "butch" like Dwayne! --or anyone who can help her learn what is or isn't hers.

Mine: Becoming Mine

Neither the students nor I can believe that the winter session is almost over: just two more days of classes. This means, of course, that the year is more than two weeks old. Is it still a "new" year?

It is for me, in a way. After all, this is my first year after my surgery. A lot of things still seem new. What that means, of course, is that they're still in flux. I realize that when I look at my new body parts: They are becoming what I envisioned, only better. Still, they seem to be different every time I see them. I guess that even though the major healing is completed, what Marci created is still developing and, I guess, taking shape to my body. In other words, it looks like a vagina; it is a vagina and it's becoming my vagina.


That may be the first time I've used the "v" word three times in the same sentence. Then again, I'm not Eve Ensler. (That said, her play is canonical, as far as I'm concerned.) It's funny that I now feel, upon using it, what kids feel when they use a "forbidden" or "bad" word. Of course, there's nothing wrong with the v-word (!), but it's funny that it's still novel for me to use it in reference to a part of my own body. I guess I'm still getting used to the idea that what it refers to is mine.


My vagina. Through all of those years, I wanted a vagina rather than what I had. I guess that was the only way I could think of her. (At times like this, I wish my first language was Italian, French or Spanish: It seems so weird to call such an intimate part of one's self "it.") I had seen enough women's genitalia to know generally what they looked like--though, I must say, I still have no idea of whether what I saw represents a fair cross-section of what the world's women have. I just knew that I was meant to have one of those.


What I didn't know was what mine would be like. I'm not sure that, save for her origins or a couple of things she'll never be able to do, she is so unusual. I mean, the size is about right for a woman of my proportions, and her folds are in all the same places. Even my clitoris is like others I've seen, and has a "hood." The hair is still growing around her: I don't know whether this rite of puberty is progressing at more or less the same rate as does for other females. Or am I developing slowly? If that's the case, I guess it would be appropriate: After all, it took me a long time to get to where I am now.


Whatever...The development is happening at my pace, and not someone else's--certainly not that of the boy who was experiencing the puberty he so dreaded. I'm talking, of course, about me when I was about thirteen or so.


I never felt that same sense of ownership over what developed then as I do over what's been developing for the past six months. Perhaps "ownership" isn't quite the word: It commodifies whatever I'm talking about. Somehow claiming ownership of something is not quite the same as saying that it is mine: I take ownership, but something becomes mine in an inevitable, even organic, way.


And I know that my vagina is becoming mine by the way it feels in my body: At times I can feel the tension and energy of muscles and tissues that have been growing together and working with each other in ways that, while seemingly natural, are still new. Other times, I just feel--comfort is not the right word; perhaps inevitability is. Though my vagina is only six months old, I find it hard to believe that there was ever anything else in that part of my body. Even her color, a sort of pale pink, seems more of a match with the skin of the rest of my body than the tone of the organ I had before.


My vagina is mine because she's becoming mine. And I expect--and hope--she will continue that way. She's still new, after all, even if she's always been a part of me.

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.