Another Fine Spring Day

Just did some cleaning up and I'm feeling sleepy again.  And Charlie and Max are curled up by my sides.


I pedalled the Raleigh three-speed into Union Square and Soho today.  In the former neighborhood is my gastrointestinologist's office; in the latter, Bruce works and he and I had lunch.  From the doctor, I had to pick up a copy of a prescription  and instructions I lost.   With Bruce, I found that the take-out places had even longer wait times than some exclusive restaurants, and that almost every outdoor space in which one could conceivably sit and eat was occupied.  So we went into a rather cozy and cute Japanese restaurant with food that is definitely mediocre.   At least he seems to have gotten over the bout of the flu he had last week.


It really was a bright spring day.  Lots of people were out, walking, shopping and such.  And, it seemed that everywhere I turned, someone was looking at me as I pedalled my bike.  Both men and women smiled approvingly and, somewhere in Midtown, construction workers' heads followed my movement down the streets.  A woman who was working in an office next to the internist's said that I looked "very stylish and chic," like a woman cycling the streets of Paris or Milan.  I was wearing a long navy cardigan over a periwinkle-lavender scoop-neck top, a silky scarf in a print of blues and purples that draped down from either side of my neck to just above my navel, where I tied the two ends together.  And I wore a navy skirt with a leaf collage print in various shades of blue, from almost green to almost purple, that fell to just above my ankles when I stood up. Actually, I was feeling rather stylish, even if I have a bunch of weight to lose.  At least I'm starting to feel better on the bike.


I'd thought about doing the Five Boro Bike Tour as a "celebration" or "coming out" ride:  It would be my first long group (with a very big group) ride since my surgery.  But I've pretty much decided against it:  That ride is only two weeks away and, while I could probably do it (as it's a slow-paced ride with a lot of stops), I'm not so sure I'm ready to ride in a crowd.  Also, I don't want  to take any chances with my newborn organs.  They're probably ready for such a ride, but I don't want to take any risk, however slight, of injuring or damaging them.


There are other rides to come, and I'll be ready for them.

Rally for St. Vincent's, Vigil for Amanda. Where Do You Stand?

Is this when I turn into an activist?


What's a girl to do?


On Saturday at 1: 00 pm, there will be a rally for St. Vincent's Hospial.    Then, at four, there will be a vigil for Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar, who was murdered in Ridgewood, Queens.


If you're anywhere near either, I'm urging you to join in.  The rally will be held at 25th Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan and everyone will proceed to the hospital.  The vigil will assemble in front of the apartment building where she lived, which is near the Fresh Pond Road station of the M line.


On 14 April, Rasheen Everett was arrested in Las Vegas and returned to New York, where he's been charged with killing her.  When the story of Amanda's murder first broke, a lot of people assumed that it was a date gone bad:  He thought he was meeting a "real" woman but found out she was a pre-op tranny.  The police say that it wasn't the case; it was, they believe, a dispute over money.  Perhaps that is the case:  After all, according to witnesses, he left her apartment seventeen hours after arriving and took two full bags (the contents of which included her cell phone) with him.  


However, I can't recall the last time a robbery-murder victim was strangled and then stabbed.  I also can't think of a case in which a thief who, after killing his victim, doused the body in bleach.  And when was the last time you heard of someone settling a financial score by destroying the debtor's Marilyn Monroe memorabilia?


Those rhetorical questions asked, I will say that if Rasheen Everett is indeed Amanda's killer, it will distinguish her case:  In 2005, when I was writing an article about the issue for Women's eNews about the mistreatment transgender women incur from police officers, I found out that, according to Interpol, 92 percent of all killings of transgender people are never solved.  Too many of those cases were simply not pursued with the same zeal investigators bring to their probes of other murders--or are simply not investigated at all.  Too many inside and outside the criminal justice and law enforcement professions believe, on some level, what I read in some of the comments I saw on online news  reports of Amanda's death:  She had it coming to her.  


Well, I just happen to believe that there is no way one human being can justify killing another.  (Paul Fussell, who taught a course I took when I was at Rutgers, voiced exactly that belief.  And he won a Purple Heart for wounds he suffered while fighting in France during World War II.)   But, if you must kill someone, I say do what you need to do to get the job done, and no more.  Why does someone have to strangle someone, then stab her?  Or--as in another case I've read about--beat the person to death, dismember her and leave the body parts in dumpsters? 


A killer does those things only when his or her motive is hate, pure and simple.     A thief who becomes a killer in the course of the crime simply kills; he or she doesn't resort to overkill.  Ditto for someone who murders from just about any other motive, let alone in the heat of the moment.  


I was reminded of just how great the potential is for any sort of hate-motivated violence when I read the comments some people left in response to news accounts of Amanda's murder.  (Thankfully, I didn't receive any such comments on this blog.)  The milder ones said she "had it coming to her."  Others contained the sort of jokes that adolescent boys in middle-aged men's bodies make.  And a few others said that, in essence, we deserve to be killed, or whatever other violence or cruelty we experience.


What's interesting--and even more chilling--is that none of the comments had any of the warped religiosity that ostensibly motivates so much anti-gay and -lesbian bigotry and violence.  None of them contained any "God Hates Fags"-type comments; they were all expressions of personal rage or echoes of someone else's hatred.  


One thing that has surprised me (and given me a sort of hope) is that none of the animus or pure and simple meanness to which I've been subjected has come from religious people.   In fact, I have been treated with respect, and even kindness, by people who have strong  religious beliefs.  Millie is active with her church; my mother attends Mass every Sunday and holiday and says she prays that I'll be safe and well.  My cousin says he doesn't "agree" with what I've done because of his religious beliefs, but he wants to be a friend to me--and, of course, I've taken him up on the offer.  And Bruce, who's been a friend for more than twenty-five years, is committed to his Zen practice.


I've also met other people who echo, in one way or another, what my cousin has said.  One woman who is about a decade or so older than I am (or so I would guess) and was a student at LaGuardia Community College when I taught there said, "My religion says that what you're doing is wrong.  But it also says God loves everyone.  And you're a really good person."  


I never thought I'd hear myself say, "Thank God for religion."  But I've found that at least some religious people are willing to entertain the possibility that I am not out to "convert" them, corrupt their children or destroy God's creation.  (Truth be told, doing those things is too much work!)  Or, they simply believe that if God made me as I am and put me on this Earth, He must have had a reason.


On the other hand, I've found that people who simply hate aren't reachable through human interaction or reason.   At least, I haven't found a way to change their minds.  Some of those people, like the ones who left the comments I saw, are "yahoos" or simply cases of arrested development.  But others--and these are the ones that disturb, scare and anger me most of all--are so-called educated people who profess to wanting a more egalitarian world as long as they don't have to deal with it personally.  Perhaps they see me as a threat, for whatever reasons, to whatever position they hold, or perceive themselves as holding, in the world in which live--or simply to whatever image they have of themselves.  In fact, one former longtime friend said, "I know the problem is with me.  But I just can't have you in my life."


In previous posts, I've said that sometimes I feel that other people have changed even more than I have, and that I see more change coming.  Somehow I expect that I'll see examples of one or both if I go to the rally and the vigil. But that, of course, is not the reason I would participate in either one.

Early Spring Morning

Today I rode to work in vibrant but not overly bright sunlight and a light but very cool breeze.  It's the sort of day on which you can practically feel every pore and orifice of your body opening;  wounds in cold rain are not even memories:  they almost seem not to have happened. 


For some reason, an early spring morning like the one we had today brings me back to very specific moments in my childhood.  Somehow I remember some Easter Sunday as being like today was--one from a time when I may not have even known what was being celebrated on the holiday.  I have, thankfully, a few memories filled with that kind of light.  For a long time I had forgotten that I had ever experienced it; for another long period of time, I denied it because somehow the memory of that light was even more painful than the hurtful things I experienced.  


When I first started my transition, and in my very first days of living full-time as Justine, I found myself going back to those times, and to that light that became them, very often.  Rob, my social worker and a female-to-male, said that it was probably because my gender identity was less of an issue than it would later become.  I recall knowing that I am female--a girl--but it somehow didn't affect my life, or anyone else's, in the way it later would.  


At that age, my world was my parents, grandparents, a few other relatives and a girl who, as I recall, was the daughter of one of my mother's friends whom I'll call Lola. I always liked playing with her; the grown-ups probably thought it was cute that I had a "girlfriend."  I believe that I knew--of course, in a way that I couldn't articulate then--that my mother and grandmother somehow knew otherwise.  Or, at least they didn't mind my playing with Lola if it made me happy and I wasn't causing any trouble.

Then, it seemed, that bright, cool sky had enough room for everybody--including anyone I was, am or could be. 


I haven't seen Lola since I was about five or six years old.  She is one of the few people from my past whom I'd actually like to meet again.  There are a few others about whom I'd like to know where they are and what they're doing now, but whom I have little or no desire to see again.  But I'd like to meet Lola, even though we probably wouldn't recognize each other at first, if at all.


What would she remember from her childhood?  


At least I have a memory that could be echoed in a morning like the one I expereinced today when I was pedalling to work.  There weren't the echoes of thunder muttering through my sleep; there was just the sun and cool wind.  Those things can sustain my through a ride; sometimes they're enough to get me through a day, or a lot more.

William Anderson: The Defense Is Not Resting

William Anderson, I have discovered, is a sort of soul mate.  No, he's not my new beau:  For starters, he's hundreds of miles away and I don't do long-distance romance.  (Been there, done that!)  What I mean is that he and I are skeptical in similar sorts of ways and have a similar distrust for the same sorts of public figures.  I mean, how could I not love someone who can write an article entitled "Why I Don't Trust Prosecutors" and make a solid case for his mistrust rather than lapsing into just another rant about the dishonesty of lawyers and politicians.


He played a very important role in exposing the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the so-called Duke Date Rape Case.   The young men who were falsely accused of the rape weren't the most sympathetic characters, at least to some people.  But, as Anderson showed, that's hardly a reason to assume their guilt, as too many in the media and elsewehere were all too ready to do.


Now he is cutting through the thickets of chicanery that has ensnared Tonya Craft in a child-abuse witch-hunt reminiscent of the one that ruined Kelly Michaels' life.    Unfortunately, the twenty years or so that have elapsed between Michaels' and Crafts' trial have not been free of such travesties of justice.  The causes and reasons for those "witch hunts" will be debated for decades, and possibly centuries, to come.  But Dorothy Rabinowitz has pointed out that in American society, they are all but inevitable:  every fifty years or so, she says, this country is "affected by some paroxysm of virtue--an orgy of self-cleansing through which evil of one kind or another is cast out." In other words, we have never gotten over our Puritan heritage:  the desire to rid ourselves of such "evil" is so great that too many of us will tolerate the prosecution of innocent people in exchange for some illusion of security.


Why do I care about those cases Anderson has pursued?  Well, having been witness to, and victim of, the dishonesty of some people who had one kind of authority or another over me, I distrust anyone who has both authority and ambition.  Even more important, though, is the fact that I also experienced sexual abuse from a family friend when I was a child.  While I want to see the truly guilty punished, I shudder to think that someone innocent could be accused and worse. It is precisely because I know how terrible it is to suffer such abuse that I know how serious it is to accuse someone of having done it.   As someone whose life was constricted by the shame and fear I felt as a result of the abuse, and the self-loathing I developed as a consequence of not talking about it with anyone for about 25 years after it happened, I know that convicting an innocent person will do nothing to heal the physical and emotional wounds of someone who has been abused or assaulted.  


Furthermore, the prosecution of an innocent person doesn't make everyone else safer.  If the wrong person is charged, it means the real perpetrator is free.  Or, if there is no actual crime, as in the case of those young men at Duke, it means that the criminal justice system is wasting its time and taxpayers' money when it tries, convicts and sentences some innocent person.  If anything, I think that going after anyone for the sake of punishing someone, let alone to further the ambitions of some district attorney,  actually makes it more likely that someone else will fall victim to the crime of which some innocent person has been accused.  After all, if those who are entrusted to uphold the law and apply it fairly are engaging in criminal activities (perjury and such), the disrespect for the rule of law and the sanctity of other human beings such behavior engenders can only send the message that, in essence, there are no de facto or de jure regulations or principles preventing the violation of another person.  What respect can anyone, much less some would-be criminal, have for the law if those who are supposed to enforce and apply it are as likely as those deemed criminal to circumvent it, if  not break or ignore it outright?  And what sort of a message does it send when those who are supposed to be the guardians of law and justice can not only behave in criminal activity, but are not held accountable, in any way, for it?


As someone who actually suffered from some of the acts of which Tonya Craft is accused, and for which Kelly Michaels was imprisoned, I am very happy that William Anderson has taken up their cause.  We need more like him!

Goodbye To All That? To What?

At this time last year, I was less than three months away from my surgery.  As you might expect, I was, in some ways, saying "good-bye" to being a man--even though for all intents and purposes, I had not lived as one for several years.  I had a very clear sense that  not just a phase, but a life I had once lived, was about to "become history," as people liked to say during my youth.  


I was excited though, surprisingly, not very nervous.  (When Marci Bowers called my mother just after my surgery, she remarked on how calm I was.)  In one way I was almost overprepared, as I had been going to support groups and therapy, and had lived full-time as a woman for almost six years.  But, at the same time, I had no idea of what to expect.  I recall that various women I knew--and I-- compared that time to the later stages of a pregnancy, for I was about to "give birth to myself."


Now more than nine months have passed since my surgery and I can't help but to think that some change or another is going to happen in my life.  I'm not sure of what it might be, but I get the sense that it will be major, or at least relatively so.  


I have talked about my job and workplace.  Perhaps one or both will change.  Sometimes I wish I had started a new job after my surgery,  but I realize that being in the place in which I'd worked the previous four years was probably good for me:  I'm not sure that making another major change at that time in my life would have been beneficial.  It's was probably good, in terms of my physical healing as well as my emotional state, that I didn't have to adjust to yet another transition.  


However, in one of my life's more perverse ironies, some of the people with whom I used to share lunch, and sometimes confidences, feel like strangers to me now.  I suppose that might have happened anyway; after all, most friendships (at least in my own life and those of people I know) have lifespans of their own.  Some simply stop working after a certain amount of time, or after whatever the friends had in common is no longer, for whatever reasons, a part of the relationship.   Or one friend simply "outgrows" the other:  I first  noticed that the only time I revisited my high school after I graduated. 


Julian, an adjunct instructor who's about ten years older than I am, even said--without my asking or prompting--that I have "outgrown" a lot of the people at the college, and possibly the college itself.  He became an instructor after technology rendered obsolete the business he used to own.  Like me, he earned a Master of Fine Arts, which is supposed to be a "terminal" degree.  However, he (also like me) doesn't want to pursue a PhD, for a variety of reasons, some of which are like mine.   Somehow I think he's outgrown more than a few people and situations along the way.


I'm thinking now of Belle, who was in charge of the office of academic advisement when I was an advisor.  She left, she said, because the college in which I work is a place where "people go to die."  I'm coming to see what she meant, and why she's urged me to get out of that college.  


Making a major change in your life can make a stagnant, stultifying place even more so.  I guess that's the lesson I'm supposed to learn from my current experience.


Then again, the change might not be in my workplace or job.  Could it be in my love life?  Or will I get my book published?   Or will it be something else wonderful or terrible or both?  I guess I'll find out in the coming months.

Learning The Laws Of Their Languages

Today I did something I normally try not to do:  I went to the post office on a Saturday.  The line was about as long as I expected it to be and, after spending about fifteen minutes on it (actually a bit less than I expected), I was served by the rudest employee in the post office.  At least he was efficient.


As I stood on the queue, a man waited in front of me.  He was rather sexy, in an unshaven, rough-hewn, fatigues-and-field jacket sort of way.  He was also as fidgety as a kid waiting for a meal in a restaurant.  Everything, it seemed, annoyed him--especially customers who spent more than five seconds with a postal clerk.  In a way, I could understand his reactions:  After all, who wants to spend more time than is absolutely necessary to mail a package, especially on Saturday?  He seemed particularly exasperated when an older woman who was indecisive and didn't speak Queens English, much less The Queen's English and spent an inordinate amount of time at one of the windows, which held up those of us who were waiting on line.


He groaned and looked around him for sympathy.  "I don't believe this," he growled.


"Yeah.  Does she have anything better to do with her life?"


"Does she have a life?" he wondered.


Then, for the next few minutes, as the line snaked us toward the clerks' windows, he grumbled and let out sighs.  Finally, he said, "I'm sorry if I seem a little jumpy."


"Oh, that's quite all right," I nearly whispered, with a trace of a simper.


"But I'm not normally like this."  Somehow I knew that he didn't think I believed him.  Not that it mattered, really.  


"I've been really, really jumpy."


"We all have times like that," I tried to reassure him.


"Well, I've been like this for a month now, ever since I stopped smoking."


"Congratulations!  Whatever you're going through now will be worth it."


"I know," he said.  "I feel better already."


"And you'll feel even better...and save a bunch of money."


"Those are the reasons why I quit," he explained. "But it's really tough."


"Yes, people don't realize how addictive nicotine is," I assured him.


"Thank you for understanding."


"Oh, it's no problem.  I lived with someone who was withdrawing from nicotine, so I understand."


"You are very kind."


"No, just..."


"NEXT!"  The clerk called him to the window.  He mailed his package and left as I was walking up to the next available window.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him leaving; he waved to me.


Ever since I started my transition, I've had more and more encounters with strangers who revealed one thing or another to me, or who hugged me or cried on my shoulder.  I always wonder what they're seeing in me.  


I think that man knew that I found him attractive.  And the young woman who did my nails last week must have known that I was, shall we say, persuadable.  I'm certainly not upset that he talked to me or that she propped her head on my shoulder, any more than either of them seemed to mind the attention I was giving them.  But, even though I can "read" their intentions and desires, I still feel as if I'm learning how to act around people who share moments with me the way they did.  It seems that the rules for these encounters are somehow different from the ones that governed the interactions I used to have.  


Give me another fifty years and I'll figure it all out.

When Was The Past?

I must admit:  Today I didn't do much besides my laundry and cleaning.  It seems that I spend more and more of my days off recovering from work.  I went to bed and woke up late, and it started to the day's intermittent rain began not long after I had my cup of tea.  So I didn't have much incentive to go out, especially since Bruce was too sick to do lunch, as we had planned.


I don't know whether it has to do with  my gender change, or simply getting older (or sober)--or, for that matter, whether it has to do with anything at all--but "back in the day" Bruce and I would drink together.  Now we do lunch.  If you want to take that as a dissertation topic, be my guest. All I know is that one of the reasons why we're still friends is that we were able to make that transition from drinking buddies to friends who share lunch.


Lately I find myself thinking more and more about my previous expereinces, rather than merely my past.  What is the difference between them?  It seems that I don't learn much from the past.  Then again, most people don't, or so it seems.  On the other hand, experiences (as opposed to Experience with a capital E) are really the only teachers we have.  Or so it seems to me.


The past is always a sort of grab bag or potpourri.  There are some treasures in it, but there are also things that lose their relevance and usefulness.  Those things might outlive their obsolescence, but only because someone holds on to, and perpetuates, them--sometimes unconsciously.  I know I've done plenty of that.


Some of those things that lose their pertinence are the reactions to, or other ways of coping with,  things we may have experienced at one time but do not not encounter now.  I think now of so much of the anger I used to carry with me.  It helped me to survive, among other things, sexual molestation and attacks.  I may very well not be alive now were it not for the rage that roiled in me for so long.


But what happens when all you have are survival skills and you're in a situation when your survival is more certain but all you have are those survival mechanisms and responses?    That sounds like a script for becoming one of those perpetually angry people you run into sometimes.  I guess that's how manipulative people become manipulative, too.   Some of those people may have grown up in--much as it pains me to use this term--dysfunctional homes or other situations.  


In other words, they are living in their pasts.  And, for them, the present is nothing but an endless repetition of the past.  They have never learned any new ways of responding to new people and situations. Instead, they yell and throw tantrums because they came from homes where everybody did that and therefore learned no other way of getting what they want.  Or they knew they could get what they wanted by sneaking around people, and they think that nobody means what he or she says; when someone says "no," there's always a way around it.  I've had more than a few students who were like that:  They didn't believe that a professor would actually drop them from his or her class, or that they would fail, for not attending classes and doing assignments.


What people in situations very often don't realize is that whoever called their bluff or wouldn't negotiate with them may actually have something to offer that they want and could never have found in their pasts.  I think now of a time when I was upset with a class full of freshmen.  They had been a good group of young people until the day we had a library information session.  The librarian who conducted the session has rubbed more than a few people the wrong way, so I could understand why they didn't like the way she talked to them.  However, I pointed out, that is no reason to be disrespectful. 


When I paused one wide-eyed young woman exclaimed, "Wow!  You weren't yelling at us. You didn't raise your voice at all."


At that moment, I would have loved to have known what her home life or previous schooling were like.  What was interesting was that after that day, she regularly came to talk to me about situations she'd encountered in the college, her boyfriend and any number of other dilemmas a young person faces. Along the way, I could see her becoming more confident about herself.


I get the feeling that I'm going through a similar process myself.  That's one reason why I think of a change in workplace scenery.  I realize that I'm in a place where I react to dysfunction rather than respond to appeals to reason and sensibility as well as sensitivity.  That's not how I want to spend my life.  I now realize that, for me,  living in the past in such a way is not a cause of, or recipe for, depression:  It is depression.  Trust me on that one:  By every clinical and medical definition, I was depressed for the majority of my life before I started my transition.


And the remedy for that is not to live in this moment, or any that will follow, as if it were the past.  In a way, I can't, anyway, because when I think about it, that past wasn't really mine.  Only my experiences were.  It seems that a good part of living involves knowing which ones are useful.  And the ones that aren't have to be gotten rid of like those undergarments I no longer had use for after my surgery.

Riding Home

I rode to work again today.  I must be regaining my form, or  something, because men were slowing down their cars as they passed me.  Three different guys complimented my legs.  And a woman in a BMW said she liked my skirt.


All right.  I'm making small steps toward one of my goals:  that of becoming the best and most stylish cyclist in the world. Both are terribly subjective judgments, I know.  But just about everything I do is based on, or evaluated by, subjective judgment.  What would my life be like if more of it were measurable in ways that could be rendered into statistics?


Let's see:  I rode about ten miles to work and another nine to get home--on my 1968 Raleigh Sports women's bike.  It's a 21 inch frame on 26 inch wheels, with three speeds in a Sturmey Archer rear hub.  My skirt--I won't tell you what size it is!  Now I'll be merely factual:  It's a skirt made up of three tiers of a crepe polyester material that's covered with a pretty interloc print in shades of purple/magenta, coral/peach, brown and a shade that's somewhere between cream and gray.  The bottom of each tier is ruffled. When I wear it, as I did today, with my deep pink jewel-neck top and purple overshirt with three-quarter sleeves, people say that I look as if I'd lost weight.    But that's not the only reason I wear that outfit.


I left work at 6:46 this evening.  I took a slightly shorter route than I did in going to work because I wanted to get home before it got dark--or rained.  I did feel a couple of drops as I pedalled from Jackson Heights into Woodside, about a mile from my place.  The drops turned into a sprinkle by the time I crossed underneath the Amtrak line near Northern Bouleard, then stopped just before I crossed underneath the elevated tracks for the "N" and "W" lines.   On the other side of those tracks--on 31st Street and Broadway in Astoria--is Parisi's Bakery, where I bought a small "twist" loaf.   It's only three blocks from my apartment, so I was no longer worried about getting caught in the rain.


The ride home gave me an odd sense of deja vu that had nothing to do with my familiarity with the route.  Rather, I found myself recalling rides in which I'd dodged, or remained one or two steps ahead of, rain. I've done plenty of those in coastal areas in which I've lived, and I've also done them on the multiday (and multiweek) bike trips I've taken in France and other places.


Now I shudder (or, on occasion, laugh) when I recall how much time I spent "playing chicken" with, or simply dodging, one thing or another.  In those days, I was running from, even when I was going home, wherever and whatever happened to me along the way.  


Tonight, at least I made it home, even if I had been finishing something that someone else started on a bike that I didn't have last year.  Even though the fit still isn't perfect, it felt just fine.

It's Not Because You're A ....

I didn't ride my bike yesterday:  I didn't have enough time to get to the doctor after finishing work.  The sad thing is that I almost didn't make the appointment because I almost didn't get out of work at the time I'm supposed to.


And I fully expect that someone went looking for me long after my appointed hours, didn't find me and will make--or has already made--a complaint about me.  Then my department chair, the provost or the legal compliance officer will give me a lecture, if not a dressing-down.  And the fact that I've stayed until nearly midnight on days when my commitments ended at 4 pm will be conveniently forgotten.

Heaven forbid that I should leave workplace when I'm done with whatever work I had to do, whether or not said work was in my job description.

I work all those hours and go well above all expectations explicit and implicit expectations, yet I make less than a bus driver.  And people from whom one normally believe an account of current weather conditions suddenly have more credibility than the Pope once had among Catholics when they make a complaint about me.  The powers-that-be insist that it has nothing to do with my being transgender.  Uh-huh, and Hemingway accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun.


Is it any wonder that I'm always tired, or seem to be?  Wait a minute:  I didn't feel as tired after riding as I do now.  And, after pedalling there and bike, I don't have the kind of anger I've been expressing.  Could it be that I'm having "withdrawal" symptoms--from missing one day of riding after riding two days in a row? 

On the other hand, a lot of other profs and employees at the college feel the way I feel--or so they've told me, without my prompting or asking.   So maybe it really isn't about being trans, after all.  It's great to know that I'm in such an egalitarian place.

Two In a Row, Nine Months Later.

Today I did something I haven't done since June:  I rode my bike to work for the second consecutive day.


When I was parking my bike, Vanessa, a former student of mine, was sitting by a window in the college's day care center.  "I'm so happy to see you on your bike again!" she cooed.  A girl who looked to be three or four years old said, Lady on bike!"


Yesterday was cool but very bright:  The sort of early spring day that's like an Easter Sunday one might remember from very early childhood and to which, if one is very fortunate, he or she will return in dreams.  About a dozen or so years ago, my mother made an album for me.  On a couple of pages are photos of visits to grandparents and great-aunts and uncles on Easter Sundays past.  Whenever I look at them, I can practically taste the cool, crisp air and feel the sunshine.  


The skies thickened with clouds and threatened rain  and early afternoon.  Although I saw a few people with umbrellae during my lunch break, the sidewalks, paths and streets were all as dry as they were yesterday. 


And I made it to the college on my bike!    Now I'm even more tired than I was yesterday.    But I couldn't be happier, at least about the fact that I made it back...just in time to fall asleep!

How Many Degrees of Separation?

Today I went for a ride with Barbara and Sue, my sometime riding buddies.  I first started riding with them during my second year of living as Justine.  I met them, ironically enough, through the now ex-wife of  a guy with whom I used to ride "back in the day."


Funny how "back in the day" is--in terms of my own life, not to mention the greater continuum of time--not so long ago, really.  About ten years ago I was riding with Sheldon and a few of  his friends on some days, and on others I was riding with Mark, the husband of Carolyn, who introduced me to Barbara and Sue.  A few months ago, I learned, Carolyn left Mark because of another woman.  And Carolyn is the reason why Mark's first ex-wife left him.


All right:  I'm not going to write an expose on the secret lives of cyclists or some such thing.  Mark and a few other men I know give lie to a rumor that circulates every ten years or so:  that cycling causes male impotency.     If anything, it makes real men out of would-be men.  I know:  After all, as they say, it takes a real man to be a tranny.  Or, at least, it takes balls to be a woman.


Anyway...Barbara, Sue toand I rode from the Brooklyn Bridge Plaza out to the Canarsie Pier, by way of Ozone Park.  Yes, that way is not "as the crow flies."  But none of us were crows the last time I looked.


The Canarsie Pier itself offers quite the panoramic view of Jamaica Bay as it opens out to the ocean to the east and toward Breezy Point, Coney Island and Sandy Hook, New Jersey to the west and southwest.  You can forget that you're in Brooklyn, or any other part of New York City when you're on the pier--and looking toward the water.  Only a few hundred yards in back of the pier is the Belt Parkway and, on the other side of it, Rockaway Parkway and the neighborhood for which the pier is named.  And, near the entrance to the pier is one of those buildings that really looks like an oversized gazebo and is found on boardwalks.  Hot dog stands and such usually operate from such edifices, but the one on Canarsie Pier looks as if it's been vacant for about ten years.    At least I don't go to the pier for the architecture.


I sent Barbara and Sue on their way from the pier.  Actually, Barbara had to go to some family function and Sue had her business to take care of, and I didn't want to keep them. Plus, I wanted to spend some time on the pier, to which I used to ride at least a couple dozen times a year but hadn't seen since well before my surgery.


The first time I went to the pier was about twenty-five years ago.  I rode there with Mike and Gregory, with whom I worked at American Youth Hostels.  Gregory had lived in Canarsie all of his life and could recall when truck farms near the pier supplied stores and restaurants in the city.  He also took me on the one and only sea kayak ride I've ever experienced.  It's something I'd do again; I haven't only because I haven't had a friend or even riding buddy who has a kayak and access to a launch since I lost touch with Gregory.


As for Mike...I wonder whether or not he's alive.  I hadn't thought about him or Gregory for a long time until now.  Gregory was about ten years older than me; Mike was about my parents' age.  The last time I saw him, he was not much older than I am now. Last I heard--about ten years ago--he was on dialysis.  I heard about it from Holly, who worked with us in those days and whom I didn't see for about fifteen years until I bumped into her in a bookstore on the Upper West Side.  I have absolutely no idea of where she is now.  


I once introduced her to Morris, whom I met while working at AYH.  After they split up, Holly declared herself to be a lesbian.  Of course, there is absolutely no cause-and-effect relationship there! Still, I have made no attempt to be a matchmaker since then.  


It's really odd to think about those times.  I did a lot of things I enjoyed, and I did them with people whose company I enjoyed.  But I was still dreadfully unhappy.   It got to a point that I would warn people who wanted to develop friendships or other kinds of relationships with me that no matter what they did, they couldn't make me happy, so they shouldn't even try.  


I will probably never see any of those people again.  It's probably just as well:  Resuming friendships, much less love relationships, after a long hiatus has never worked for me.   I guess people never can do things they did "back in the day."  Or, at least, they can't do those things in the same way, with the same people as they did the first time around.  Then again, they may not want to.  I wouldn't, simply because of the price that my past extracted from me--and, sometimes, from the people who were involved in it.  


After I sent Barbara and Sue on their way, I sat on a wooden bench on Canarsie Pier, among fathers and sons who cast hooks and lines or cages with chicken necks inside them, and among the young lovers and old reminiscers.  None of them know me now; none knew me "back in the day."  I am happy for that.

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?