Nine Months: A Season of Change

Three days ago, on Wednesday, it had been nine months since my surgery.  I am thinking now about when I was nine months from my surgery, back in October of 2008.  Funny, how that seems so long ago.  What's even weirder is that somehow I know I haven't changed much, if at all, except in my body.  But it seems that much, if not everything, is changing around me.

In one sense, that's literally true:  I'm living in a different place now.  It's not at all far from where I had been living, but it feels very different.  The block on which I had been living was definitely more blue-collar--although, ironically enough, the Noguchi Museum was on one end of it and Socrates Sculpture Park was less than another block away.  And the light was very different:  The combination of small brick and slate houses and apartment buildings along with the factories and workshops--some active--on the adjacent streets that parallel the river gave the light a quality that could seem as spacious as those lofts but as defined as the spaces between the sharp edges of the steel exteriors of some of the buildings that contained those lofts.  On a rainy or misty day, the light--an almost steely gray--could soften the edges of those buildings and make the horns of tugboats seem like serene echoes of the currents those boats plied while imposing a silence, like that of a Sunday during wartime, over the streets.  

Here, on the other hand, the light is more of a constant stream, like the traffic along the street on which I live during rush hour.  And if the street on which I lived had order, this one has more organization:  It's lined with townhouses, with apartment buildings near each end.  Around the corner is Broadway, along which I shop for food and household items, order and pick up Chinese, Mexican, Middle Eastern or Japanese meals, get my nails done and have my shoes cleaned and repaired.  Two blocks down Broadway is the subway; along Broadway is a bus that connects this street with the one on which I used to live as well as with two other subway lines and a few other neighborhoods.   Every morning, one can see the streams of teenagers headed in one direction--toward Long Island City High School, which is just a block and a half from the Socrates Sculputre Park.  And one will see another stream of people, mostly young, but some of whom are around my age, headed in the other direction--toward the subways and their jobs.  Most of them aren't dressed for blue-collar jobs:  Some are in suits, or at least white or light shirts or blouses, dark bottoms and dressy shoes, while others are in the sorts of outfits one associates with "creative" young people.  

In some odd way, this street and the ones nearby remind me a bit of the Paris neighborhood in which I lived.  I think it has something to do with the scale of the buildings and streets, and of the kinds of people I see coming and going.

But there has been more than a change in scenery during the past few months.  I've also noticed that people are relating to me--for better and worse--in ways that I hadn't expected.  As an example, James and I spent a good bit of time walking through the Village and Chelsea a couple of nights ago.  Our urban soujourn was interrupted every couple of blocks with spontaneous hugs.  He and I met several years ago.  I have always liked him, but I can honestly say that I've really gotten to know him just recently.  What I am seeing in him is--I hate to use this term, as it's been rendered so banal--an intensely spiritual but completely non-religious person.  In other words, he's turning out to be the sort of person with whom I can have a real conversation about things that matter.

When I first met him, he was just starting to transition into life as a man after living for more than thirty years as the partner of a woman who died almost two years ago.  He says he was one of a dying breed:  a "stone butch."  I must admit, I admire stone butches, although I cannot imagine myself as the lover of one, much less as one myself.  


I guess being a man now disqualifies him from being a stone butch.  But there's another reason why the label may no longer fit:  I think he wanted whatever my hug could offer him.  I certainly didn't mind that:  Being the good stone butch, he certainly gave me pleasure when he embraced me.  I just hope he enjoyed it as much as I did, if that's what he wants.


Yesterday, when I went to see Dr. Tran, a new employee at Callen Lorde rode the elevator with me.  I didn't even know her name, but she embraced me as the cab arrived at Dr. Tran's office.  Should I ask what that was about?  


After my appointment, I rode down to Bicycle Habitat.  There, I placed an order for a wheel that Hal will build for me.  As I usually do, I spent some time there catching up with Josh, Sheldon, Pancho and the other employees there.  On my way out, I exchanged "good-night"s with them and Charlie, the owner.  As I was leaving, he picked himself up and hugged me.  


I've known him for about twenty-five years.  That's the first time he's done that.  While he's always been friendly to me, he never seemed to be particularly affectionate, at least not in physical ways.  So the unselfconscious suppleness of his embrace surprised me a little bit.  Well, now I know of at least one thing his wife likes about him!


And then, just a little while ago, I went to Hannah and Her Sisters for a manicure as well as my first pedicure of the season.  Tonight, Annie, who doesn't speak much English, did my manicure as Karen did my pedicure. While filing the nails on my left hand, Annie propped her head against my shoulder.  And, as she worked, I noticed that she was holding on to my hand a bit longer than she usually does.  Later, as I sat with my toes and fingers in the nail dryers, she rubbed her hands on my forearms and, again, propped her head on my shoulders.  And, finally, as I got up to leave, she hugged me.


She said something to Hannah, which she translated:  "You are a really sweet person."


Hmm... Spring really is in the air, isn't it?  It certainly is a time of change!

St. Vincent's Hospital: What Will They Do Now?

Last night I was really, really tired.  I am now, too.  But at least I don't have an early morning class tomorrow, as I did today.


So what did I do yesterday?  I rode to work, then to Chelsea (right across the street from the Fashion Institute of Technology, to be exact) for a meeting with SAGE and representatives from a few other organizations that provide services to transgendered people.  Those reps numbered about a dozen; I was meeting five of them for the first time.  The others included a couple of people I hadn't seen in some time and who didn't know I'd had my surgery.


Dwayne, the very first person to whom I came out, was also there.  So was James, who participated in the workshop I did last month but whom I hadn't seen for at least three or four years before that.  In fact, the last time I saw him before the workshop, he was a she--a "butch," to be precise--who was assigned the name "Jane" along with the "F" on his birth certificate.  Some--including James himself--might argue that he hasn't changed that much.  From what I saw, I'd agree, and mean it as a compliment.  He's still smart and sensitive--and tough yet vulnerable.  He even looks more or less as he did before:  as one of those men in late middle age or early in his "golden years" who's handsome, not in a pretty-boy sort of way, but in the way of someone whose face and eyes are entirely his own and as unique as the way he sees through those eyes.


I wonder how he sees me through those eyes.  In some ways. we're opposites.   First, and most obvious, is that he's FTM while I'm MTF.  Also, while he was living as a "butch," I was living, for all intents and purposes, as a straight man, even though I was, as some might say, a "switch hitter."  


We had supper in a Mexican restaurant in the  Village.  Afterward, I walked with him back to his apartment on the far western part of Chelsea.  Along the way, we passed St. Vincent's Hospital, which is in the process of closing.  Tomorrow ambulances will no longer bring any but psychiatric patients to the emergency room; all of the inpatient services will end in the middle of the month.  


Three ambulances were waiting in front of the hospital.  Their drivers looked shell-shocked.  They didn't look like they were new to the job:  I'm sure they've seen some terrible things.  The same is probably true for the two nurses we saw propped on the edge of the building.  They were on a break of some sort, but they--understandably--didn't look relaxed.  I leaned toward the more petite of the two and said, "I'm really sorry for what's happening to you guys."


"Thank you."  A tear dripped down her gaunt cheek.


"It's nice to know people like you care," said the other.


"Yes," James replied.  "You've been there for us."


The more petite nurse, who looked to be about my age, recognized James.  "You were here not too long ago."  James nodded.


"Where are you going to go after this?" the other, who had darker hair, wondered.


"Where are a lot of people going to go?" James sighed.


I would bet that at least half of the people in that meeting James and I attended had used, at some time or another, St.Vincent's.  Dwayne said it was the "go to" hospital when he was coming out as a teenager during the early '60's.  "You went out, you knew you were going to get beat up," he told me once.  "And you knew you were going to end up in St. Vincent's."


Most other hospitals wouldn't have treated Dwayne, James or any number of other people.  They were too poor or queer or something else for some of the other hospitals, and they didn't have insurance for any number of reasons.  In Dwayne's and James's cases, it had to do with the fact that they were too busy surviving to get a job that offered insurance, or one doing anything that would make them enough money to buy a policy.  They both left their home as teenagers to escape from the sexual and other kinds of abuse they experienced.  That is also the case of Clarence, another trans man I know.  All of them lived on the streets for long periods of time.  James and Clarence came to New York with no money, no friends and no credentials, educational or otherwise.  In fact, Clarence told me once, he couldn't read when he got off the bus in the Port Authority Terminal.


We talked about that, among other things, at the meeting in which James and I participated.  Among LGBT people--the T's in particular--it seems that there are extremes in education.  We have disproportionate numbers of people with advanced degrees, but we also have many people who didn't finish high school and even some, like Terrence when he first came to New York, are illiterate.  And we also have quite a few people who have learning disabilities of one sort or another.


It's hard not to think that some of those learning disabilities and educational deficiencies have at least something to do with the violence too many of us experience.  I know too many other LGBT people who stopped attending school because they were getting beat up or even were experiencing sexual violence.  


A good number of those people have used St. Vincent's.  Where will they go now?  What will James, Clarence and Dwayne do?


What would I do?

In The Flesh

On a warm, almost summer-like day, I am reminded of two things:  a.) Men are horny--I mean really horny--and b.) I have gained weight.


How are those two facts related?  Well, not by cause-and-effect, unless you or I are willing to believe that troubles with an ex led me to eat more than I otherwise might've.  That may well be, but it's even more true that I have been sedentary for such long periods of time during the past few months.  Just after my surgery, I didn't have much of an appetite and, actually, I was taking some fairly long walks. But as I got busier and the weather got colder, grayer and wetter, I did less of that.  And, after taking a few short bike rides (half an hour or less) in November, I did no riding until a few weeks ago. In the meantime, my appetite returned and there were dinners, parties and such.  


And so it happened that near the end of the day, I was sitting on a bench in a particularly lovely spot in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.  My Raleigh three-speed stood guard, keeping its stiff upper lip as I read student essays while basking in the sun.  Across a pedestrian path from me, cherry blossoms in ever-so-slightly-varying stages of bloom opened between me and the Unisphere.  As day descended into evening, the whites grew more satiny, like moonlight, and the pinks glowed more deeply as the sun began to set and the horizon behind the veil of blooms and the grids of the Unisphere filled with a radiance turned into itself as yellow rays turned orange, then red and finally to an almost lilac hue before paling the violet curtain that spread across the sky.


But the men who walked by weren't noticing anything I just described.  I mean, what kind of priorities do they have when they can totally miss such a scene and look at some fat middle aged woman who's reading papers through what the ex used to refer to as my "librarian's glasses"?    And, in crossing her legs, said woman could  only have revealed how pale and ungainly they've become.  


You mean to tell me they'd really rather look at her than at the beauty of a warm early evening early in the spring?  Well, I guess they need variety, right?  


Then again, I have often wondered how many men actually prefer those anorexic models they see in the media? Years ago, a former co-worker who was about the same age as I am now said that after her post-menopausal weight gain, she got--without trying to get-- more attention from men than she'd ever had before. Now, nobody would have said this woman was fat, or even overweight.  But she looked like she'd actually eaten within the previous few weeks.  So I'm guessing that she was rather skinny, if not exceedingly so, when she was younger.


Anyway, I wondered why she was getting so much more attention than she'd gotten when she was younger.  She was an interesting, intelligent woman, and I would have said that she was attractive, even sexy, because she had her own sense of style, as opposed to mere fashion.  But she had her own theory as to why men were looking at her:  "Well, if you believe that men are dogs, it makes sense.  All dogs like at least a little meat on their bones."


I guess that means I was a dog, and still am one.  Extremely thin people, of any gender or sexual orientation, never appealed to me.  In fact, at least a couple of women (and men!) with whom I  was involved could have been described as Renaissance or Pre-Raphaelite, if not Rubens-esque.


So why am I so worried about being fat?  Well, I don't want the health risks that go along with it.  Still, it's ironic that I am upset about my weight gain--and am beginning to harbor dreams of having a more feminine version of the athletic body I once had--when I was, if I do say so myself, rather tolerant of such things in other people.  Then again, I've always been attracted to people with dark or darkish hair but pride myself on my rather loosely-defined blondeness.  


You might call me a hypocrite.  I just don't see the point of being with someone who's just like me.  So does that mean that if I get skinny again, I'm going to date someone who's the "before" photo in a Jenny Craig commercial?

A Season Turning, Again

Tomorrow I go back to work, at the college.  It's been a while since I've read about Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  But I don't recall that it explained why time goes so quickly during holidays and vacations!


Yet it seems that so much time has passed.  In part, that's because the season almost literally changed from the time Spring Recess began until the time it ended.  The early part of the week was chilly and rainy; today was very much a spring day.  Actually, it would have seemed later in the spring had it not been for the trees that are just beginning to open buds.   It's as if they want and need to open themselves to the sunshine and the new warmth.  But it is difficult:  the dampness and cold and darkness have stiffened them--or, perhaps, made them simply reluctant and reticent, in the way of someone whose whose eyes are opening to the light they yearn for yet still feel the sting of the cold, like an old wound that's still fresh.


Trees like the ones I saw today inspired me--almost twenty years ago!--to write the following:


Magnolia

Buds throb red. Cold raindrops cling to bare branches after the first April storm. My fingertips swelling, my body pulses: the center of this old wound, still fresh. Still, I don’t pull off my gloves-- There are no leaves opening from this tree.

Each of the next couple of days will be progressively warmer, or so the forecasters say.  Then rain and chilly winds will return, and the weather will feel like early spring again by next weekend.  But, ironically, the leaves will be fuller, and there will be more of them.

Easter And New Beginnings

Today was even more beautiful, and a bit warmer, than yesterday.  I was tempted to go on another bike ride.  However, I am still not at the point of riding on consecutive days--or, at least, riding on the day after taking a ride of more than two hours or so.


It's not that I felt tired.  Rather, today I've  felt a bit  sore around my new organs, as I did after the ride I took a couple of weeks ago.  Today I didn't feel quite as sore and, in fact, as I'm writing, I don't feel it at all.  Still, I don't want to take any chances.  I don't want this girl to be interrupted!


Actually, I took a very short ride to Astoria Park, where young people as well as families who were just coming from church basked in the sun.  The study in contrasts was interesting:  the young hipsters or wannabes, who included a young woman whose arms were covered with tatoos, alongside little girls and their mothers in frilly pastel dresses and little boys who wore smaller versions of their fathers' suits.  


Later in the afternoon I went to Millie's house for dinner.  Her daughter, Lisa, has a new boyfriend.  (It's kind of strange to call someone someone's boyfriend or girlfriend when he or she is old enough to have kids who have boyfriends and girlfriends.  Neither Lisa nor the boyfriend have kids, though.)  Actually, they've been together for a few months, but this is the first time I've seen him at a family function. Stephanie, Millie's other daughter, was also there with her kids.  One of them is certainly old enough to have a boyfriend or girlfriend but doesn't seem interested.  She's very smart and attractive, so her lack of interest isn't a way of pre-empting  a lack of interest from others.  I think that she realizes, on some level, that most of the boys around her age that she sees every day are not on her level of awareness and are therefore not worth her time.  


It's hard for me to believe that when I first met her, she was just starting the third grade and her brother wasn't even in school yet.  It's odd--and a little sad--to see a friend's kid grow up in ways that I didn't have the opportunity to see in my nephews and nieces grow.  


Speaking of people whom you've seen growing:  Millie's friend, Cahterine, was also there.  She and Millie have known each other since they were four years old!  They have never lived more than a neighborhood or two apart from each other, and it's hard to imagine that they ever would.  


Most years, they've celebrated Easter together.  And that they did today as well.    Just as they probably won't live in different cities, let alone states or countries, it's hard to see that they would ever spend Easter away from each other.  


Sometimes I wish my life would have permitted me the opportunity to have such long-term friendships, just as I also wish, sometimes, that I could have lived my whole life as female. However, it seems that Easter is about rebirths or other new beginnings.  Sometimes they're scary because they're new and I judge myself for, in essence, starting my life in middle age.  On the other hand, new beginnings are also exhilarating.  And that is what this season is about, or at least symbolizes.

Healing In The Mist

I climbed the arc of the bridge from the Queens "mainland" to the Rockaway Peninsula, a long strip of land wide enough for only two roads that run its length.  One skirts the bay; the other, the ocean. Between them is an elevated railway that's part of the city's tranist system.


However, I could see none of it from the arc of that bridge.  I know it's all there only because I've cycled there so many times before.  


Sunshine accented the thin, wispy clouds that streaked the sky as I left my apartment for my ride.  But as I rode closer to the bridge, clouds gathered and thickened until the sky was overcast and the air filled with cold mist.  I've spent enough time around seashores to know that, in spite of the dense sky, there was no danger of rain.  The air and sky often grow gray--actually, almost silvery--by the ocean, especially at this time of year.


By the time I reached Rockaway Beach, a spring day had turned almost wintry.  That's not unusual at this time of year, because even though the temperature reached 68 F (20 C) today near my apartment, the ocean temperature is still less than 40F (5C).  That difference in temperatures was, of course, the cause of that mist that braced my skin.  


For the past eight months, I've been keeping myself warm and have swaddled myself in soft, cushiony layers.  That, I am told, is normal after surgery, even in the summer.  And of course we are now just emerging from winter. 


Still, I enjoyed feeling the cold mist against my face.  I didn't even mind when it grew denser and became a fog thick enough that I could just barely see the railings, let alone the sand or the ocean, as I pedalled along the Rockaway Beach boardwalk, or that I could only see a couple of cars from the Wonder Wheel when I was asecending a ramp only a block away from it.  


And I didn't mind that everything had turned gray, for it was a silvery, if not steely, hue.  It was actually very pretty, especially when I could see ocean at Coney Island well enough so that I could see the white of foam dissolving into the silvery mist as the tide spilled onto the beach and rolled back into the sea.  


The cold, gray and mist felt like a sort of healing.  It may have had to do with the way it all felt against my skin:   astringent, but not stinging, much less painful.  It was as if something was leaving my body, and spirit and a kind of serenity, if not joy, was taking its place.  


True healing is not all sunshine and rainbows and puppies and kittens.  (And, yes, those are a few of my favorite things:  No apologies to Julie Andrews, or John Coltrane!)  It is uncomfortable at first but, once it's underway, bracing.  And it opens as it cleanses; thus, one has to be willing to be opened in order to be healed.  At least that's been true in my own life.


And my gender transition has been about healing myself from a number of things, including the scars from the sexual abuse I experienced as well as the ways in which I internalized, and expressed, the hate that was part of my life.


After those things, it's almost odd to say that I was healing from my surgery, as that was part of my healing.  

Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar: More Thoughts About About A Transgender Woman's Murder

It was utterly gorgeous yesterday: the sort of fine early spring day one envisions during the dreariest winter hours.  So, of course, I went for a bike ride in the afternoon.  Almost all I could think about was Amanda, a.k.a. Edelbuerto, Gonzalez-Andujar.


It turns out that she lived and died only two blocks from the office of the Times-Newsweekly, the local newspaper for which I wrote.   Her apartment is also only two blocks, in another direction, from where Martin lives.  So, of course, I was thinking about him when I wasn't thinking about Amanda.


Perhaps the fact that it's Passover is influencing the way I'm seeing them.  As I pedalled the serpentine roads of Randall's Island, I saw a group of men whose long black coats covered all except the collars and top buttons of their white shirts.  Their wives--at least,that is what the women in wigs and long, loose-fitting dresses seemed to be--were serving various kinds of food and selling handicrafts that, I guess, they made.  I was tempted to stop and check it out, but even if I weren't unwelcome, I would certainly garner more attention than I would've wanted.


In other words, I couldn't have "gone stealth."  They can't do that, either, in any place save perhaps their own communities.  (Even in some of those places, such as Crown Heights, they stand out among their neighbors.)  That is why Jews are always under surveillance and suspicion and, as Jacobo Timerman and Primo Levi have written, they can't help but to think that any crime or misdemeanor committed against them is motivated by their identities.


And, of course, such is the case for any transgender who's the victim of any sort of violence, or who receives any kind of negative treatment other people aren't getting.  As an example, when I had a false accusation made against me at work, I couldn't help but to think that it had something to do with my gender identity--and, specifically, that I recently had my surgery.  


When you raise the probability of such motivations as a possibility, you're accused of being paranoid, if you're lucky, and psychotic if you aren't.  Some will even tell you that the fact that you entertain such thoughts--or that you are what you are and express it as you do--brings the ill treatment upon you. The latter, in other words, is a way of "blaming the victim" and of excusing the perpetrators of any responsibility for their own behavior.


I was reminded of what I've just described when I saw and heard some of the comments and reactions to the news accounts of Amanda's murder.  To be fair, there were a number of commenters who pointed out that no one deserves to die the way she did, or by the motivations of her killer.  A few said that the killing shouldn't be treated as a hate crime or even that hate crime laws are unnecessary because the authorities should treat the case as the brutal killing that it is.  My inner libertarian agrees with that position, but as a transgender woman, I cannot support it wholeheartedly.  Still, it is better than some of the other comments I read.  The more polite ones said that she "deceived" some man or, as one put it, "He was expecting a taco and found a sausage instead."  (Aside from the imagery, it is somewhat amusing in that it may be the first time I've read a bigoted comment that was pro-Mexican, however obliquely.)


Worse still were the ones who referred to Amanda as male, but worst of all were the ones were the ones that would have made "Dude looks like a lady" seem enlightened.  Such remarks reek of the sort of violence that was committed against Amanda, and too many other trans women.  They sound like they came from the sorts of guys who show what a dangerous combination alcohol and testosterone can be. (I'm not man-bashing:  My body has been filled with that caustic concoction, and under its influence, I did things I'm not proud of!)  Plus, they reveal the insecurities such people have about their own sexuality, if not their gender identity.


And that is what I and every other transgender woman fear.  In addition to the ostracism and suspicion we incur and the prospect of violence that underlies so much in our lives, we know that we are prone to some of the most particularly gruesome sorts of attacks.  It seems that every murdered transgender woman of whom I am aware was killed in a way that left grizzled police officers, detectives and coroners saying that it was the most grisly, or one of the most grisly, crimes they'd ever seen. Amanda was strangled and stabbed.  Gwen Araujo was strangled, beaten, hog-tied and buried in a shallow grave.  (I still can't read about it without crying.) Eda Yildirm's head and sexual organs were chopped off and thrown in a dumpster.  I could go on--but you get the picture.  All you have to do is type "transgender murder" in Google, click on to just about any link you find, and you will see some of the most horrendous kinds of killing you've ever heard of.


The standard explanation for such brutality is that nothing makes people more insecure than having their notions about their sexuality challenged--or, at least, to feel that their notions about their identities and proclivities have been questioned.  It makes sense:  After all, the most phobic people are the ones who know, deep down, that they are what they hate.  Are we shocked when we learn that some homophobic preacher was patronizing teenaged boys or when some segregationist reveals, on his deathbed, that he was the "love child" of his father and housemaid? How surprised would you be to know that, as a teenager, I committed a gay-bashing?


But I think that the challenge to one's notions of one's identity and sexuality are the nucleus, so to speak.  The atom is one's place in the social and economic hierarchies.  Why is it that gay-bashings and murders of trans people are so often committed by young men who seem to have few prospect in life?  They are the ones who have no chance of going to college or getting the kinds of jobs their fathers (if, indeed, their fathers are in the picture) have or had.  They feel that others--immigrants, queers or others whom they might see only at a distance--are getting all the breaks and resentment.  If alcohol and testosterone is a combustible mixture, almost nothing will ignite it more quickly or reliably than the resentment and rage such young men feel. 


That spark can also come from the friction between the pressure a young man feels to fit into one role or another and his feelings of inadequacy or unsuitability for that role. That is how I would explain the way I was as a teenager, anyway.


And, when rage and insecurities seek a target, what's better than someone who "won't be missed?"  That is to say:  who would make a better punching bag than someone who's despised more than anyone else--by society at large as well as by the ones who actually deliver the blows, the shots, the slashes?


While every human being is responsible for his or her actions, the terrible thing  is that most of those young men don't realize just how duped, how "had," they are.  The fact that they are committing such terrible violence shows that they have never had the opportunity to think through their own assumptions, most of which were passed on to them.  The night I kicked a gay man in the stomach while he was writhing on the ground, I was trying to redeem myself as a "real man" in the eyes of my co-conspirators.  And we were all, wittingly or not, acting out of assumptions about ourselves and our genders that were so inculcated within us that we didn't even know that it was possible, much less permissible or sustainable, to question such notions.


All of those notions govern what we, as transgenders, fear--and what we all have to live with.  Some of the people who knew Amanda are, I'm sure, saying that she's "in a better place now."  I hope that's true.

Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar: A Transgender Woman Murdered In Queens

Yesterday afternoon Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar, a transgender woman whose given name is Edelbuerto, was found naked and strangled in her ransacked apartment.


It's hard not to think it's a murder, although (at the time I'm writing this) the police and city officials can't yet label it as such, for legal reasons.  It's equally difficult not to think that her death had something to do with her gender identity and expression.  I mean, why else would her Marilyn Monroe photos have been destroyed? And why would she have been stabbed in the neck and chest several times in addition to having been strangled?


She lived and died in Ridgewood, a section of the New York City borough of Queens that's only a couple of neighborhoods away from mine.  For two years, I wrote for the Times Newsweekly, the community's local newspaper. I felt as safe in Ridgewood as I have felt in any urban neighborhood in the United States.  I had no fear of walking even the more remote streets of the industrial areas of the neighborhood's periphery after dark.  I even left my bicycle--admittedly, my "beater"--unlocked while I covered school board meetings and other events.  My wheels were as untouched as they would have been had I parked in Bhutan.  I brought Tammy there once; after that, we talked about buying one of the stone or brick houses that line the neighborhood streets.  I really thought I'd introduced her to an urban oasis, if not a paradise.


Then again, I was living as a man in those days, and my waist was sculpted by thirty to fifty miles of daily cycling and my shoulders from the weights I lifted every day.  And my clothes, hairstyle and other markers of gender identity were completely congruent with those of other  men of that neighborhood, and American culture generally.  Plus--I never thought of this until now, at least not in reference to the time I spent in Ridgewood--I'm about as white as one can be.


Also, at that time, I didn't know Martin.  He has lived in the neighborhood all of his life.  (Technically, his place is in neighboring Glendale, which is a very similar kind of neighborhood.)  And he's gay.  While he seems never to have worried about meeting a fate like Amanda's, he has recounted incidents of harassment that stopped just short of physical violence.  Among those with and around whom he's spent his life, he seems to have lived, and to be living, by a variation of "don't ask, don't tell."  It seems that everyone knows about his sexual orientation, but he cannot talk to anyone about, say, his boyfriend(s), the way straight people can talk about their dates, lovers or spouses.  He seems to find the arrangement no more bizarre than his neighbors and friends think it is.


In an environment like that, you get along by going along.  The highest compliment someone can pay a neighbor is that he or she "doesn't bother anybody."  And that is what someone said about Amanda yesterday.


It's not a hard sentiment to understand, especially once you've cycled the neighborhood streets and talked to local residents, most of whom are blue-collar workers and their families.  People move to the fortress-like (though still very atttractive) stone and brick houses that line many of the neighborhood streets after working for years to save for the down payment.  Those houses look almost exactly as they did when they were first built between 100 and 80 years ago by German immigrants.  They are investments, shrines, heirlooms and fortresses, all at once, and their owners don't want them defaced.  (Nowhere is graffiti more detested than it is in that part of Queens.)  They help to make the neighborhood all but irresistible to those who want peace, stability and security above all else.


Those qualities make such a neighborhood attractive to transgenders, too.  After Tammy and I split up and I started to live as Justine, I nearly moved there myself.  It's never been known as an LGBT enclave, as parts of Jackson Heights and Astoria (where I now live) are.  However, in addition to Martin, I know of a few other gays and transgenders who live there.  I won't tell you who they are, as the only person I'll ever "out" is myself!  Any LGBT person I mention on this blog has made his or her identity public or has been cloaked with a pseudonym.


Anyway...I never knew Amanda, so whatever I say of her thoughts or motivations is speculation on my part.  Still, I am confident in saying that she probably felt some level of safety and security in living there.  I'm guessing that she also lived "under cover":  From the photos I saw of her, I'd say that she "passed" well enough to go "stealth."  And, because most people in the neighborhood don't want to upset its serenity, they probably left her alone, even if they knew her identity.


Of course, the scenario I've just described has its own perils.  One is isolation.  Most people in the neighborhood are polite; some are cordial.  But the extent of people's interaction with their neighbors is dictated by the amount of time they spend outside those stone and brick walls.  This may have been one of the reasons why it took several days for anyone to realize that Amanda had gone missing, or that some other terrible fate had befallen her.


Now they are mourning her.  So, in my own way, am I.  If we--that is to say, our souls--go anywhere after this life, I hope Amanda finds love and acceptance there.

Penner Agonistes

Last night, Gunnar sent me an article about Mike Penner/Christine Daniels.  I guess it was supposed to be a sort of post-mortem.  As such, I guess it's all right.  It does talk about Penner/Daniels' career and gender identity conflict.  


(From this point, I will refer to Penner/Daniels by male pronouns and his given name.  I do not mean this as a judgment of his gender or identity.  I never met him, so I cannot even form an opinion about that.  Plus, I don't think it's my place to decide whether or not someone is "really" trans, or gay, or anything else.  I am referring to him as male only because he was living as one, and by his given name, at the time of his death.)


However, the article shares the same flaw with just about every news story I've read about transgender people:  It focuses on the ways in which its subject fits into the traditional narrative about transgender people--almost to the point of making the subject a caricature-- and why that is ultimately the subject's undoing.


One thing the article doesn't do is to discuss the role the Los Angeles Times--whom he served as a sportswriter for 23 years-- played in his coming out, transition and decision to return to living in his former identity.  I guess that's not surprising, given that the article appeared in that same newspaper and was written by one of its staff writers.


I'm not saying that the Times is responsible for his suicide.  What I do believe, however, is that they treated his plight as any media outlet would:  as a sensational news story.  And just about any print newspaper is desperate to sell copies these days.  What could be more of an attention-getter than having one of the newspaper's more prominent writers--who covered sports, which is the most "macho" of beats with the possible exception of crime--"come out" in full view of the public?


If nothing else, it gave the newspaper "creds" with a good part of its readership.  The "quiet, circumspect" Mike became "ebullient and outgoing" Christine under the tolerant auspices of the nation's second-largest newspaper.   What newspaper wouldn't want that sort of publicity, especially in a place as cosmopolitan as L.A.?


On the other hand, Mike wanted to "quietly" transition into becoming Christine. I can fully understand why:  My own social worker, himself a female-to-male, warned me about making my transition "too public."  Turns out, he was right, in some ways:  Transitioning publicly, even for the smallest of audiences, puts you under a microscope.  Everything you do becomes evidence that you've either "gone too far" in living in your "new" gender or that you're not really fit to be part of it.   Sometimes the very same people will make those seemingly-contradictory judgments!  And, if you haven't yet developed a strong sense of who you are, it can destroy you.  Something like that happened to Mike Penner.


Also, when you are transitioning in a very public forum, institutions as well as people will try to "use" your transition for their own purposes.  One minute you make them look good and feel good about themselves for having "tolerated" you or, worse (at least when you're just starting to live in your "new" gender), you become a tool for whatever other purposes or causes they may have.  And, sometimes they'll publicize or simply expose you in ways for which you're not yet ready.   Worst of all, those people and institutions start to act as if they're entitled to use all the details of your life in whatever ways they see fit--and in ways they would never tolerate anyone using their lives and secrets.  


And everything they say about you has an undertone or overlay of sex.  That is, of course, the reason why they'll shun you or stab you in the back later on.


In brief, they build you up so they can use you and tear you down, stab you in the back or cast you aside when you've become "too big" or when you're simply no longer the flavor-of-the-month.


I have experienced everything I've described in the two preceding paragraphs--in the place where I was working during the first two years I lived as Justine, but also with an LGBT organization for which I was a volunteer.  Somehow I got through it:  I guess that my sense of who I am developed, along with the thickness of my hide.


And that is what, it seems, didn't happen to Mike Penner.  I can't say exactly why; from what I've heard and read, it seems that he found himself living as Christine before she had a chance to develop and she had a chance to understand her.


That is what people like the writer of the article never seem to understand:  The "new" gender is an identity that is developing, not just a costume to be stepped into.  Anyone who's being born and goes out into society for the first time--at whatever age--is embryonic, a work in progress or whatever you want to call it.  The way I see myself now, not to mention what I've become, is in some ways different from what I envisioned when I first started my transition, not to mention what I foresaw when I was "crossdressing."  


That, of course, is one of the reasons why we have a "real-life test."  But I think some trans people need even more than that.  I feel sometimes that transgenders are expected, and expect themselves,  to take over the role of a full-formed, full-fledged member of their "new" gender, whatever that may mean to them.  So living full-time in their "new" gender is a sort of bullfight that has to end in the death of the person in the "old" gender.  However, as we've seen, it sometimes ends--as it did for Mike Penner and Christine Daniels--in the death of both selves.  


What is needed, then, is room for someone who wants to live as the "opposite" gender not only to do so, but to really find out what that might mean for him or her self.  That way, if someone decides that he or she has a different idea about his or her  gender identity--or what living in the "new" gender may mean--he or she can modify his or her course, or abandon it altogether.  There would be no shame or accusations that he or she "flip-flopped," and it would be possible to live enriched by the experience of both selves, even if one is aborted.


These days, most people-- even most sportswriters, at least in this country--don't care much for bullfights.  So why should they encourage someone to live one--or try to live one themselves?  

Palm Sunday During Wartime

Yesterday I took a walk "around the block" that turned into an eight-mile trek.  I started out late in the afternoon, knowing that there were still a few hours of daylight remaining and the possibility of more rain looming.  But the rain held out until I was literally around the corner from my apartment, and then the soft cascade turned into a torrent literally as I entered the doorway to my building.


Some girls have all the luck, eh?  


My walk took me through past the quiet facades of brick houses.  Inside many of them, families--some consisting of two or three people who may or may not have been related to each other by blood, others that were, in essence, miniature villages--were eating those Sunday meals that are neither lunch nor dinner because they encompass and eclipse both.  Nobody partakes in such a repast if he or she is living alone, and not many young couples or roommates do it.  In other words, it's not for those who "do brunch." The sort of Sunday meal I mean is, almost by definition, a family affair. And, as often as not, it follows said family returning from mass or some other religious gathering--especially one of a Sunday like yesterday, which happened to be Palm Sunday.


Even when the bustle spilled out of doors, the streets were still enveloped in that silence--proscribed and followed as if by some unseen, unheard command--that has sealed the people inside those houses away from the cries that, perhaps, they don't or can't see.  Or, by now those voices may be, as far as most people are concerned, mere background noise, like the shows that blare from their televisions during their meals.   


I first noticed that silence--that of damp Sunday afternoons--some time during my childhood.  It seemed to grow more intense, somehow, a year or so into the USA's invasion of Iraq.  By that time, armed Americans had been plying the valleys of Afghanistan for a few years, though it and the Iraq invasion seemed to have endured for far, far longer.  


Some of the funerals that resulted from those imperialist misadventures have, I'm sure, taken place in some along some of those streets I walked.  I saw more than a few flags and banners--and bumper stickers on the parked cars--that read "Support Our Troops" or "Semper Fi."  


What's interesting is that in those working-class Queens neighborhoods--home to many immigrants, some of whom are Muslims--one doesn't find the more overtly aggressive and violent messages (e.g., the bumper sticker that's a "license" to hunt terrorists and features a photo of Bin Laden with a target drawn over it) one finds in other areas.  Instead, people in the areas I saw today seem to have the idea that by "supporting" the troops (whatever that means) or "remembering" 9/11, they are showing that they are loyal Americans.  Given the political and social climate--and what it could become if the economy worsens--I can understand why they'd feel the need to do that.


So why am I talking about the wars or immigrants now?  I don't know.  I just got there somehow, just as I somehow ended up four miles from home on my walk yesterday.


Well, all right:  I think about those wars a lot.  The invasion of Iraq started not long after I'd begun to take hormones and was preparing myself to live full-time as Justine.  I recall understanding, for the first time in my life, that invading another country--especially if no citizen of said country has ever done anything to harm any member of the invading country--cannot be anything but an expression, on the part of the invaders, of profound disrespect for people who just happen to be different from themselves.  I understood, for the first time, that up to that point in my life, I had been part of the very structure--even if I were at the bottom-most rung of its ladder and owned almost nothing of its spoils--that not only carries out such invasions, but doesn't see them as such.


Of course, I wasn't thinking that during my walk--at least, not consciously.  There were only the silence of those streets, the dampness of the air and the rhythm of my steps, all of which somehow kept me walking.

Wind In The Beginning of Spring

Last Saturday was balmy: I was riding in shorts and a T-shirt. Today I didn't go riding, even though the sky was clear. When I went outside today, I wore a bulky cardigan and my leather jacket.

A cold, windy day very early in the spring has long evoked a particular set of sense-memories for me. You might say they are all related to loneliness.

It has something to do with the fact that my the first couple of days my family spent in New Jersey, after moving there from Brooklyn, were much like today, if I recall correctly. We moved about this time of year: I recall that because spring break was beginning, as it is now. Also, Easter came early that year; on that day, snow and ice fell and covered the still-barren trees and sere grass that surrounded that almost disarmingly (at least for me) spacious house.

So, a day like today, in the early days of spring, makes me think of an empty suburban house with branches still shorn of leaves and a lawn sapped of its color. Some would see that emptiness as spaciousness and the relentless brightness of the sun unfiltered by apertures of leaves as clarity. But for a kid who's just moved from the one and only place he'd ever known, it's enough to turn him into an agoraphobic. On top of that--unbeknownst to him--he would soon enter puberty. For me, it was a kind of prison. Or, more precisely, it was like interment, except that I was alive but couldn't kick because there wasn't enough room. It was confined enough for me to hear the echoes of my own breathing yet just spacious enough for it to reverberate back to me and magnify my pain.

Fortunately for me, that pain--and that puberty--are memories now, evoked by the cold and wind we had today. Those memories include a house into which I could not fit myself, at least emotionally, and a body that would become more inhospitable to, and incongruous with, my spirit.

A New Girl In Town

Tonight, as I was walking from the bus stop to my apartment, I heard someone call my name.

She was a young trans woman whom I met, by chance, at an ATM the night our second blizzard of the year began. We've talked a couple of times since then.

Marta hasn't been in town very long. She came here from the Philippines, by way of California. She's been trying to get work and her boyfriend just got a job. One thing she knows: Things ain't easy when you don't have work.

Whenever I meet young trans people, I feel a combination of envy toward, as well as fear --and hope--for, them. My envy comes, as one might expect, from my own experience of starting my transition in my 40's. And the fear is, perhaps, also a result of my own story: As much as I would have liked to transition when I was younger, I can hardly imagine what it would have been like. I had fewer emotional and spiritual resources--or, at least, I didn't know how to access them--in those days. Plus, the world was a very different place for LGBT people. That, paradoxically, is what gives me hope: More people understand us, at least in some way, and more also accept us. So girls like Marta (and young trans men) may come of age, and make their lives, in a more tolerant environment than we've had.

Even so, it's hard to start a new life in the gender of our spirits--which so many of us have suppressed--and in a new city. I've done both. I can't say which was more difficult. On one hand, when I lived in Paris, I had some (albeit limited) command of the language and the sheer bullheadedness young people have when they're trying to show that they can do things their elders said they couldn't. But I knew no one, and officials in the City of Light sometimes act like Princes (or Princesses) of Darkness. I don't know what, if anything, I had going for me, save for the fact that I'd been travelling by bike and was therefore not seen as a "typical" American tourist.

On the other hand, when I started my transition, and to live full-time as a woman, I had online as well as face-to-face networks from which I could draw upon other trans people's advice and experience, as well as those of our friends, families, co-workers and those whose missions--whether voluntarily or professionally--are to support us. Those networks didn't exist in my youth. Even so, finding out how to navigate my new path wasn't always easy.

As far as I can tell, I am one of the first parts of the network I hope Marta will develop. She's nervous because she still needs to develop the sense that she has the same right to be who she is that anyone else has to realize themselves. I just hope she doesn't become embittered by other people's hatred and opprobrium. At least she won't get those things from me.

On The Right: Wishing You Weren't There

One of the courses I teach is Writing for Business. The majority (though not all) of the students in the course are business or accounting majors. That has led me to do something I never would have imagined doing: I now read Business Week and The Economist and peruse various business-related website. Plus, the depression that no politician or banker wants to admit we're in has motivated me to elevate the level of my understanding of economics from non-existent to rudimentary. So I've been reading what I can of various economists and experts in related matters.

As a result, I get almost-daily e-mails from an organization called the Sovereign Society. Now, I haven't nearly enough money to follow any of the strategies they advocate. But their stuff is still interesting to read, for they have been studying and analyzing the situation in ways that nobody in the mainstream media--or in the old-boys' networks of government and finance--more than likely ever will.

One of those writers and advisers for Sovereign is a gent named Bob Bauman. I noticed something in his photos--a sort of body language, if you will, that is visible even in his head shots--that said "gay." (I also saw it in Jim McGreevey before he was "outed.") So I looked him up, and sho' 'nuff...my suspicions were confirmed, big-time.

About thirty years ago, he was one of the rising stars of the nascent modern conservative movement. He represented the Eastern Shore of Maryland in Congress. He played more than a bit role in helping Ronald Reagan win the presidency. But just a few weeks before the election, Bauman was caught soliciting a sixteen-year-old male prostitute. So, while other Republicans swept into office on Reagan's coat-tails, Bauman lost his re-election bid. He tried to withdraw from the race, but his party's leaders wouldn't let him.

In short order, he lost--in addition to his congressessinal seat-- his family, his historic home and most of his wealth. Onetime friend and allies like Richard Viguerie villified him; so did people on the left, including most LGBT activists.

He would become an advocate for gay rights--reluctantly, he said. And he claimed that if he had his "druthers," he wouldn't be gay. But, he realized, he had no choice in the matter.

If I had been paying attention to the story at the time it unfolded, I don't know how I would've felt about him or his actions. It's no surprise that, for a long time neither the conservatives who were once his fellow-travellers nor gay activists trusted him. Nor did anybody in between. Honestly, I couldn't blame any of them: I probably wouldn't have trusted him, either.

But, I must say, becoming a gay-rights advocate counts for something. And, I respect--greatly--that he would not "out" anyone.

Even more important, though, I can empathise with him, at least to some degree. Now, I am not sure that I would choose to be anything but what I am, at least in regards to my gender and sexuality. For a long time, I wished I could live as a heterosexual man, and I took a sort of behaviorist approach: If I acted like a straight guy, I'd be one. Or so I told myself. And nearly every gay man or lesbian who married someone of the opposite sex--as Bauman did--is engaging in the same sort of denial as I was. Now I feel at least some sympathy for anyone who feels the need to do similar things--especially for people like Bauman, who are about my parents' age. There simply was practically no other way for someone of that time to negotiate his or her sexuality.

Some might argue that his conservatism was a way of "butching up." Perhaps it was. So, for some gay men and trans women, was playing sports or doing any number of other "masculine" activities. But I think that it's not the whole story. Rather, I believe that Bauman's political conservativism was an attempt to integrate himself with mainstream Americans who want the house in the suburbs and the things that go along with it.

Plus, it's still difficult for me to believe that governments can actually make life more tolerable--by keeping people from expressing prejudices--when said governments have been the very agents, at times, of the violence and oppression we experience. Also, if you're anything like me, you simply have difficulty trusting anyone with authority.

That is one reason why I'm not sold on the new health care law and, in some way, I don't want to be. Likewise, I don't really like supporting gay marriage legislation because I really believe that the government shouldn't be in the marriage business at all. However, if the government is going to decide who is married and who isn't, I want gay marriage to be a guaranteed right if only so that gays will be that much closer to equaity with everyone else. It's probably the best we can do under the system we have. But I still don't think it's a great idea.

Oh...If only I were naturally inclined to be a liberal or progressive. Well, at least I'm not in denial about the woman I am: I've embraced it. After that, how hard can anything else be? Right, Bob Bauman?