What Did We, And Will They, Graduate Into?

As you may have noticed, I haven't had a whole lot to tell over the past few days.  I haven't had much of a life outside of work:  I have just barely had any time to post anything, and when I have, I've been ready to go horizontal.  

Commencement (what most people call "graduation") is tomorrow.  The first time I attended one, it was rather exciting:  I was still relatively new at the college and was still meeting various faculty and staff members for the first time.  It was also the first time I was present for any graduation since I walked up to the podium to shake hands with some administrator I had never before met and to take my degree out of the hand of some other administrator whose name I didn't know (and who didn't know my name, I'm sure).  I think it was more exciting for my family than it was for me:  By that time, I'd spent sixteen years in school and wanted out.  The last things I wanted to do were to enroll in another school and enter another classroom.  I'm sure a lot of students who are graduating tomorrow feel the same way.

Three years ago, I told a prof who was sitting next to me, "They're lucky.  They're the last lucky graduates we're going to see for a long time."  Now, I don't claim to be clairvoyant or anything like that.  Truth be told, I'm not so sure that I'd want to be.  But I knew then--in 2007--that within a couple of years the world was going to be a very different place.  I had some inkling of what changes were going to take place, but I couldn't describe the specifics.

The Class of 2007 was probably the last class of this generation, and possibly for some time to come, that could count on getting a job that paid well, or at least one that offered them some sort of opportunity for growth and advancement.  I don't know when another class will be able to enter the wider world with such confidence.

But that is not the only sea-change that I could foresee.  In some way, that class reminded me a bit of my own.  The funny thing about history is that it doesn't always proceed and change according to the labels and boundaries we place on periods of time.  As an example, some (like Paul Fussell, who was one of my professors at Rutgers) have said or implied that the Twentieth Century--at least, as most people think of it--really didn't begin until 1914.  I would say that what most people mean when they say "The Seventies" began around 1973 and lasted until 1982 or 1983.  So, while some would argue that I graduated at the end of the Seventies or the beginning of the Eighties, I would say that we were still in the thick of the former decade.  

What was it like to be young in the Seventies?  Well, you grew up with less lofty expectations than what young people would have in the Eighties or Nineties:  You knew that no matter what your major was or how well you did in school, there was a good chance that you weren't going to get a job, much less a good one.  On the other hand, you didn't have as much fear about basic survival:  It really didn't take very much money to get a roof over your head and something to eat.  And, even if you weren't making much, you still had something--however little--left over.  So, something as simple as a night at the movies and something to eat (or drink!) afterwards wasn't a budget-buster or debt-builder. In contrast, people who graduated a few years after I did wouldn't have that same fall-back.  Sure, they could make more money than we ever could ever dream of making.  But they also needed to make all of that money:  It seems as if money-making had become an "all or nothing" proposition in a way that it never was for me or my peers.

In a sense, the Seventies that I've described were an extension of the Sixties, or what people have  heard about that decade.  We may not have had our Woodstock, but we liked our trippy music just as much as the hippies did.  And we got high--well, some of us, anyway--and had as much commitment-free sex as they did.  Well, at least the males of our generation did.  Someone, I forget who, once said that in the so-called Sexual Revolution, men got their freedom but women got screwed. 

Just a few years after I graduated, all of that changed.  The music got louder, faster and--at least to my ears--more repetitive.  Our favorite band members had long hair; the new bands had big hair or dyed manes.  And, while males still were under the same pressure to gain sexual experience, both they and the females were admonished to "be careful."  As the years went on, more of them were:  I noticed that in the first freshman students I taught, in 1991.  At least, it seemed that way from their talk.

Plus, it seemed that women were leading the way in everything from class discussions to starting new enterprises in ways that I never saw during my formative years.  Some say this was a result of enlightenment about gender roles and oppression; I believe that it had more to do with the expectation, at least in some communities, that men wouldn't be there to head households or corporations.  I think now of the seventh-grade class in East New York with whom I conducted poetry workshops back in 1989.  One boy asked, "Mr. Nick (That's what they called me.) how old are you?"  After I revealed that information (something I would never do now!), he exclaimed, "Then you're the oldest man I know."  His teacher pointed out that he was probably right:  Many males in that neighborhood, at that time, weren't making it past 18, much less 29.  I understand things are still that way in some parts of this city, and other American cities.

By that time, a man didn't have to live in a place like East New York to have a shorter life expectancy than a man in Bangladesh or Somalia.  He could also have been around the intersection of West 12th Street and Greenwich Avenue, just a block away from St. Vincent's.  I knew four people who lived within a couple of blocks of that junction and died from AIDS-related illnesses.  And I knew others--and women--who died that way in the East Village, on the Upper West Side and in Connecticut.

I doubt that any of my classmates could have foreseen any of that.  I didn't.  Neither did two classmates whom I knew--and who died the same way.

Then again, I didn't foresee the changes I've made and the fulfillment I've experienced from them.  Back then, I could only hope and wish for them, to the extent that I could envision them at all.  At least I have the results of them now.

Memorial Heat

Today was one of those very hot days that, in some years, comes at this time of year:  at or near Memorial Day. When it's this hot earlier in the spring, you still know it was spring, even if you don't look at the calendar:  even the heat passes with the evanescence--almost a kind of delicacy or fragility, really--of the cherry blossoms, lilacs and other flowers with gossamer-like petals.  But now the heat, like the flora and fauna, have grown fuller--and heavier.  Between now and September, if we get a chilly, rainy day--as often happens just before the official start of summer--it will be merely an interlude, a passage in the hazy chamber of summer heat.

Now there is summer:  It could be a time of joy, a time of reflection or a time of death.  Last summer was certainly a time for the first two; in some sense, there had always been death and there would be more death.  I recall one year--so long ago now!--that this time of May began, literally, a season of death--and a prolonged one at that.  It seemed that lives could be submerged in the steamy, almost viscous heat of a season like that one.  James Baldwin has described that air--like an electrically-charged sky right before a summer storm that could just as easily become the strangest and most intense dream, one about which the dreamer can do nothing--filling  Southern summer nights and veiling the darkness in which lives are drowned and no one hears the scream.

Before that summer night of my life would end--after enveloping the months from Memorial Day until Christmas that year--six people who had been in my life before it began would be gone.   One would be murdered; the other five would die from AIDS-related illnesses.  Yes, I know, I am still affected by them, still grieving them, if I am still talking about them.  Why wouldn't I?  I have a chance at life, my own life, that they never had.  

In one sense, one might say that I died in a way, too, during that time:  After all, I was not the same afterward.  And, I also died in giving birth to myself.  No one is ever the same after giving birth as he or she was before.  Of course, for me, that was the point of it:  Why would I have gone through changing my gender and the surgery if it weren't?  That meant, of course death to the old person who lived through the body I had.  

A few hundred students--including a few of mine--will graduate on Friday.  Some speaker or another is going to talk at them about the challenges they'll face in the future.  I don't remember exactly what the speakers at my graduation said ours would be.  But I don't think any has ever said that real challenges would be dying and giving birth to one's self, as well as others, again and again.

If I ever had a chance of being anyone's commencement speaker, I probably blew it just now  Oh well.  I didn't want to do that anyway.  

The Homestretch, If Not a Homecoming

Now it's the last week of the semester. Two of my classes had their final exams; one more will have theirs tomorrow.  And now I have a new pile of essays that will grow.  Somehow, they'll all get read and the students will get their grades.  A few of them will graduate at the end of this week; another few will transfer to other schools; a few more will drop out or leave temporarily and a whole bunch more will be back next semester.

The ones who are graduating, or leaving in one way or another, I envy somewhat.  Some, I know, have uncertain futures:  The job market isn't too promising for them, at least right now.  Eventually, they'll find their way.  I think of myself when I graduated.  This year is one of those "milestone" anniversaries.  My college is having a reunion: I was tempted, for a moment, to go to it.  But then I realized that any desire I had to attend was motivated by the same thing that would motivate most of my classmates to talk to me, if they were so inclined:  curiosity.  I'm not talking about the scientific kind; rather, I'm thinking of possibly-salacious desire to find out information that confirms the suspicions, fears and fantasies that someone has about someone else.  Really, why else would some of them want to see me after not seeing me since we graduated?

Plus, my undergraduate years were by far the unhappiest ones of my life.  My high-school years were pretty bad, but somehow I felt the burden of expectations that I would be, or pretend to be, someone I wasn't in order to "fit in."  

After my experiences, I wonder how some of my students will or won't change in the next five, ten or twenty years.  How many of their changes will come by choice, and how many will be borne of necessity?  And how many will have been coerced?    And how many of them will realize that how much the directions of their lives are determined by a couple of or a few moments--or, more precisely, the decisions and choices they make in those moments?

Whatever the answers are, they're coming more quickly than most students--or people generally--realize.

A Little Less Than Half An Hour Forward

Today I got on my Mercian fixed-gear bike for a little less than half an hour. I got one of the saddles the doctor recommended.  I know I'll need to fiddle with the position:  That's always the case, at least for me, with a new bike or saddle.  I'm almost entirely sure, though, that I'm going to swap seatposts (the seat is attached to it, and it is inserted in the frame):  the new saddle, a Terry Falcon X, sits further back on the seatpost than my Brooks did.  Consequently, I used a seatpost that angled back a bit rather than the kind that goes straight up.


Whenever I've ridden after a layoff, I feel euphoric to the point that I don't notice the creakiness in my body--at least, for a little while. I didn't ride long enough to lose that feeling; I could have ridden longer, but I didn't want to risk anything.


The point is that I'm on my bike again.  That's what I'm telling myself.  Yes, I've gained weight, and I know it's harder to lose at my age.  But I'll do it--not just for my looks, but for my health.


 I felt good because, well, it simply was nice to be on my bike again.  But I also realize that I'm not thinking about the cyclist I once was.  I never will be that cyclist again. At least, it's not likely that I'll be that kind of cyclist.  Why?  For one thing, I'm older and my body is different.  But, more to the point, I'm not the same person as I was when I raced, worked as a messenger in Manhattan or rode up and down the Alps, Pyrenees, Green Mountains, Adirondacks and Sierra Nevada.  Or when I cycled those long, almost endless days along the ocean in New Jersey, Long Island, Florida and France or along the Mediterranean from Rome to Nice, then up the Rhone to Avignon and Lyon. 


For me, it is not simply the passing of my youth--or, as some might see it, an extended childhood.  Honestly, I probably could not have done much of my riding if I had any more responsibility than I had.  But I the reason I didn't remain married or have children, or embark on one career or another that I could have chosen,  wasn't that I wanted to avoid commitment.   The truth is that the path I took was the only one I could have taken, or at least the only one I knew how to take.  And, I probably did less damage to other people's lives--and possibly to my own--than I might have otherwise.

Whatever distance I rode today--it wasn't much--was, I hope, an integral part of my new journey.  I still haven't the slightest idea of where it might lead or what kind of a cyclist (or woman or anything else) I might become along the way.  Whatever happens, I probably won't be like Paola Pezzo or Rebecca Twigg.  Then again, I don't think I'm going to be like Angelina Jolie, either.


Wherever I go, I have those past rides as memories and resources.  But I cannot go back to them, any more than anyone can go back to any part of  one's youth.  Plenty of people have tried; I know I have.  


After I rode, I went to a new greenmarket that's opened in my neighborhood.  The smell was most enticing when I entered; as I had almost nothing beyond some cereal and cheese in my place, I bought as much as I could carry.    After that, I called Carol Cometto, the manager of The Morning After House, where I stayed before and after my operation.


I immediately detected a note of sadness, or perhaps resignation in her voice.  "I'm closing this place at the end of August."


At that time, she says, Marci Bowers is moving to Palo Alto.  I knew that she'd talked about moving there; she's always liked the Bay Area. However, Carol said she wouldn't go with her.  "I've been in Trinidad all of my life.  I was born in San Rafael"--the hospital in which Marci did my, and many other people's, surgery--"and everyone I know is here."  


I feel bad for Carol, but I can't say that I'm surprised.  I love them both, but they were a bit of an odd couple, to say the least.  Part of the reason for that is their differing histories and styles.  It's not odd to find Carol in a place like Trinidad: being soft-butch/grown-up tomboy is not at all incompatible with being a sort of modern-day pioneer woman.  Carol has worked on the railroad and performed other jobs that required her to endure extreme weather and other kinds of conditions.  In a way, she reminded me of the narrator of Stone Butch Blues, who--like the other "butches" around her--were able to find work and fashion lives for themselves in the factories of Buffalo during the 1950's and 1960's.  Years later, after the factories closed, those same women could find work only in the supermarkets and department stores, if they could find work at all.  Some of them even married men.


That leads to an interesting question that some academician might want to research:  What would happen to people like Carol if places like Trinidad, Colorado (which has never really recovered from the steep decline in coal mining) and the surrounding ranch and desert areas were to become, say, a new corporate headquarters?  What would become of a middle-aged butch whose work was mostly physical and done mostly outdoors?


Anyway...I realized, after talking to Carol that the whole Trinidad experience, as wonderful as it was, is past for more reasons than simply my own experience.  In a funny way, it reinforces what I sometimes feel:  that everything and everyone else in my life is changing even more than I am.    And, it seems, the only constants have been my writing, teaching--and gender identity--and bike riding.

One Wait Ends; I Extend Another

I went back to Dr. Ronica yesterday. Would she allow me to get back on my bike? 

I'm going to make you wait until the end of this post to find out, Dear Reader.

The culture samples came back.  I had a staph infection, she said.  It could have come from any number of things, but the tear, slight as it was, in my vaginal wall gave it a place to take root.  

Infections aren't fun.  Actually, this one was more inconvenient than anything else.  It didn't make me feel ill; it's just kept me off my bike and ruined some undies.  


Dr. Ronica and I were talking about one thing and another and I mentioned that I haven't been sexually active, and that I haven't been in a relationship since my surgery. Although I've met a few people who interested me in that way, I decided that I really didn't want to be involved, and that I wasn't in a hurry to become sexually active. 


"Why should you be?," she said.  "You've given yourself time to develop and to get used to the changes in your body.  I think that's really smart."


I am certainly curious to find out what sex will feel like.  It doesn't take any great perception to realize that a female orgasm has to feel different from a male one.  But how, exactly, I wonder.  I also want to see whether these changes in my body will affect, not only the way I have sex, but in what other ways I might relate to the next person who hooks up with me.  Will it affect, not only the physical sensations, but the emotional and mental aspects of my relationship?  


If my first meeting with any of the people with whom I was involved before my surgery were to take place now, rather than back in the day, I somehow don't think I'd even have an affair, much less enter a long-term relationship, with them.  Granted, I sometimes look back fondly on things I did with Tammy, and even some moments I had with Eva.  But I was a different person in those days.  The funny thing is that I don't see myself so differently, at least in some ways,  from how I saw myself when I knew them.  After all, I knew at least something about myself that I was trying to hide from Eva and hoping to integrate, somehow, into life with Tammy.  


Yes, I am still "getting used to" my physical changes, as the doctor and other people have suggested.  However, I am also how I have--and haven't--changed, mentally and emotionally.  


Dr. Ronica seems to understand that.  And, yes, she told me I could ride again.  Just change my saddles and proceed with caution, for now, she said.

Bikeless Blues

Today was one of  those drop-dead gorgeous days when I wanted to be on my bike.  Tomorrow I go to the gynecologist again.  Please, Dr. Ronica, say yes.  Tell me it's OK to get back on the bike.  


And what was I doing today?  Giving an exam, grading more papers...You get the idea.  Just like yesterday, except that today had sunshine and warm weather that I couldn't enjoy.


Yesterday it was chilly and rainy until the evening.  Then, a warm breeze swept through the darkened sky and seemed to break up the clouds.  I purposely got off the subway a stop earlier than I usually do just so I could walk a bit more.  


Tonight I was talking to another prof who's been teaching about as long as I've been.  We concurred that this indeed has been a stressful semester. "Usually, I feel burnt out during the last week or two of the semester.  But this time, I felt that way about five weeks before it ended." The difference between me and him, I said, is that I think I started to feel spent, used up or whatever you want to call it even earlier than that.  I realize now that we came to drag ourselves through significant parts of this semester for essentially the same reasons:  our workload and class sizes increased, we're getting older and the atmosphere in the college and department is not a happy one.  And I think that the negative energy in there wore on me even more than it did before mainly because I noticed it more.  Actually, I didn't notice it so much as I felt as if I no longer had a filter against it, as I seem not to have some of the other filters I used to have.  Whether that's a consequence of my operation or anything related to it, I don't know.

Georgia On My Mind in The Salt Mines

"Another day in the salt mines."  That is what one prof says every time we are about to begin a workday.  He said that today, too, even though most of us didn't have classes.  We have been meeting with students, a few of whom begged us to accept assignments that were due weeks or even months ago.  In between, we're reading and grading said assignments and doing various end-of-semester paperwork.

I feel fat, ugly and tired.  Well, how does that saying go?  "Misery loves company."  Others here at the college would probably say the feel one, all or some combination of those things.

At this point of every semester, I think of what it must have been like to be in one of Hitler's bunkers.  We're in a very institutional setting in a post-industrial landscape.  That's a fancy way of saying the college is in a blue-collar neighborhood without the jobs.  This part of Queens has the highest foreclosure rate in the city, and, according to one report, the greatest concentration of foreclosures outside of  Florida, Arizona or Las Vegas.  Maybe it's not quite as grim as, say, Elkhart, Indiana, or what the media would have us believe about it.  I've never been there, so I wouldn't know for sure how it really is.

When I was checking my e-mail (Students have been sending me assignments that way.), I saw a link for a listing of faculty openings at a place called Georgia Highlands College.  It's in a town called Rome and has satellites in other nearby towns.  Now, I know about as much about that area as I do about Indiana.  I couldn't tell you where in Georgia Rome is.  I've been in the state of Georgia only once since I was about six months old. Dad was stationed in Albany, in the southwestern part of the state, with the Air Force,  and as a consequence, I was born there.  Halfway through my first year of life, or thereabouts, they returned to Brooklyn.  And, of course, I went with them. 

So, let's see:  If we'd remained there, and I had been born with two X chromosomes, I could be a Southern Belle.  How would my life have been different?  Somehow I get the feeling I would've been very, very bored.  Then again, I might've been one of those Southern country girls.  If I became an educator of any sort, I probably would've been an elementary school teacher.  And, if I wrote, would I have been like Eudora Welty?  Carson McCullers?  Or, perhaps, I'd've had a bunch of kids, and the males would've played football.

I wonder what it would be like to move to Georgia.  No one who doesn't work for the Office of Vital Records would know that I'd been born there unless I mentioned it.  So I'd be "going stealth" in more ways than one!

If I could get to do some more cycling, and writing, it just might be worthwhile.  A Southern Belle Biker Chick?  Hmm....

The End of the Semester: From the Shy Young Man to Dr. Klein

It's the time in the semester when students who haven't done their work all semester try to do it all.  And, most of the time, what they submit is predictably bad.  Thankfully, only a few students have tried that this semester.  However, I'm not looking forward to having to deal with them when they learn of their grades.


After work, I went to my appointment with Dr. Noah Klein, my opthamologist.  I've been going to him for six years:  When we were reviewing some of my records, he mentioned it.  The funny thing is that he actually seems younger to me now.  He doesn't look any different from the way he looked back then, and his demeanor hasn't changed.  And I don't mean that he's less mature or more boyish.  I guess he seems younger simply because he seems not to have aged and time has passed.  And, I'm told, I've changed.  I remain skeptical about that.  Then again, I'm skeptical about lots of things people take for granted.  If I were a scientist, I'd probably be skeptical about the law of gravity until I tested it for myself.


Back to Dr. Klein:  I've always liked him. I am probably the first (and, for all I know, I'm still the only) transgender patient he has ever had.  I remember my first visit with him, when he asked whether I was taking any medications.  First I mentioned Premarin.  He knew about that, probably because many of his female patients are in or past menopause.  He probably assumed that I was, too.  But then I mentioned that, at the time, I was taking Spironolactone.  I no longer take it, as it's an anti-androgen and my body no longer has the capacity for producing male hormones.  They probably didn't mention it when he was in ophthalmology school, so I had to explain what it is and why I was taking it.  He treated it as simply another relevant piece of information:  Neither the Premarin nor the Spironolactone was likely to have any effect on anything for which he might examine or treat me, but it was important for him to know nonetheless.


From that moment on, I knew I could at least trust him professionally.  At that time, it was especially important to me, as I had been living as Justine for less than a year and he was really the first medical-service provider I went to who wasn't part Callen-Lorde.  From then on, I have never been anything but a female patient of a certain age.   And, back in November, when I saw him for the first time since my surgery, I mentioned that I'd had it simply because it's part of my medical history.  He congratulated me but, as with the other things I've disclosed about myself, he treated it as simply another fact about a patient.  


I never expected him to be as warm and embracing of who I am as, say, Dr. Jennifer or Marci Bowers have been.  He has a Magden David and a bas-relief of the Magillah on his door, and every Friday his office closes an hour before sundown.  But, he always has been very respectful:  That, I've found, is how Orthodox Jews are toward educators of just about any sort.  What that means is, among other things, that he's not condescending, even when I ask questions that are sub-elementary.  And, if he's reserved, it's in the way of a shy kid who's grown up rather than someone who's standoffish.


It's easy to imagine one of my students growing up to be like him.  That student is in the first class I taught today--and this semester.  He and an Orthodox friend sit together.  The friend is talkative and rather outgoing; the student in question is shy and rather awkward socially.  But he, like his friend, is very smart and is genuinely interested in learning.  


Even if he doesn't become an ophthalmologist, or any other kind of doctor, he can look forward to seeing them twice a year, as I do now.  I told him that when I mentioned that I was leaving work to go to my appointments.   Unlike most young people (including me at his age), he actually seems to understand that.  What's more, he doesn't seem to mind.

Getting Out: Anonymity In Chelsea

Another gorgeous spring day when I couldn't ride and all I could do was read a bunch of papers.  So what's a girl to do?


Well, between papers, I did some saddle shopping.  It's scary to have to start over again, trying a whole bunch of different saddles.  Well, I hope I don't have to do that.  I'm looking at the ones with the cutouts:  what are sometimes called the "donut" saddles.  They're what Dr. Ronica recommends.  I want something that fits, but I don't want hideous graphics, either.  That was one nice thing about the Brooks saddles:  They always looked good.


It seemed like everyone in New York was riding bikes today.  Everyone except me, that is.


I took some time off (for good behavior?) to run an errand.  I sold two of my Brooks saddles on eBay and I promised the guys who bought them that I'd ship them tomorrow.  This semester, I've had some time late Monday afternoons when there weren't department or college meetings.  But then I remembered that tomorrow I have an appointment with the ophthalmologist after work.  So, I decided to go to the main post office in Manhattan to mail those saddles.  


That post office is the only one I know of that's open on Sundays.  Besides, it's a beautiful building, and it's right across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.   All you have to do is walk in any direction from it to find something to amuse, annoy, shock, entertain or endanger you.  


So I strolled down Eighth Avenue toward, then past, the Fashion Institute of Technology.  I taught there one semester--a geological age ago, it seems.  While there, I dated another part-time faculty member who was divorced and about a decade older than me.  Back in those days, I was the "before" photo:  a triangular torso and a shock of a beard along my jawline and chin.  I really fit in!


Anyway, one day, she and I went to an exhibit that was held at FIT.  I forget what, exactly, the theme was, but I recall seeing dresses from 200 years ago or thereabouts in France and England.  I pointed to one.  "That one's beautiful," I exclaimed.  Catching myself, I intoned, "I'd be interested to know how they made it."


"No," Lea said.  "You want to wear it."


That was the only time that my gender identity ever figured, in any way, into any of our conversations.  But, it seemed that it was rearing its head any time I entered or left the campus.  You see, it's near the end of Chelsea.  Because I was in such good shape in those days, I had at least one man approach me for sex any time I walked that stretch of Eighth Avenue.  


And, when I first started to venture out "as" Justine, some guy would hit on me.  Some of those men took me for a drag queen, if not a very glamorous one.  (Wearing lots of glitter never appealed to me.)  I don't think they were the sorts of guys who liked transsexual women:  It's been my experience that such men usually aren't gay.   The guys who were hitting on me in those days thought I was one of them.  I might've spent the night with one or two of them, but in those days I wouldn't simply because I didn't want to see myself as anything but a heterosexual male--albeit one who knew that A-line didn't refer to a segment of the New York City transit system.  


Today I walked down that way for no particular reason except that it's pleasant on a day like today.  (Then again, what isn't?)  I practically brushed elbows with dozens of gay men who were coming as I was going, or vice versa, depending on your point of view.  


Not one of them paid me any mind--at least not that I noticed.  What's really ironic, though, is that it didn't upset me.  At other times, I fret when I think I'm not being noticed, at least a little.  Lots of us go through that when we know we're aging and we don't look the way we once did.  Then again, I don't have a memory of myself as young and pretty.  I wasn't really good-looking as a man; whatever attractiveness I had came from my physical conditioning.


So...I walked down eight city blocks and not one man paid attention to me.  Funny, how that, in other circumstances, could be a source of sadness for me or other women.  Or it could cause us to feel relieved, especially if the streets were in a rougher neighborhood or the guys were drunk.  But today I experienced what may be the ultimate irony:  I walked by hundreds of men, and they walked by me without giving me a second glance, or even noticing me in the first place---and I took it as an affirmation of my womanhood.  Who'd've guessed that I could go to Chelsea to be sexually anonymous?!

Off The Bike, Under the Papers

I really must have been paying for some past misdeed or another.  It's been an utterly gorgeous spring day and I can't ride my bike. Worse yet, I've had to spend most of this day reading papers, and tomorrow it looks like I will do the same.  


Eventually, I won't have to grade any more papers.   Eventually, I'll get back on my bike--or so I hope.   Dr. Jennifer is on a leave of absence, so I saw another gynecologist, Dr. Ronica.  She says to stay off the bike for now, but won't tell me when I can get back on.  Hopefully, I'll do that when my infection heals and, hopefully, it will heal soon.


She is something of a cyclist herself:  She told me she has two bikes and rides every chance she gets.  So, I take her seriously when she says she has seen other cyclists who developed a tear and an infection, as I have.  And I'm listening to another of her recommendations, even though it goes against one of my cardinal beliefs (at least, as pertains to cycling):  that I get one of those saddles that has a hole in the middle--and a softer nose than the ones I've been riding.  So, it looks like that means bye-bye Brooks and hello...Specialized?  Terry?


Oh well.  I used to think that real men rode unpadded leather saddles.  Now I don't have to worry about being a real man--especially now that I know that nothing in this world takes more balls than being a woman.  And that's one of the reasons why I wouldn't trade it for anything--not even to ride a leather saddle with copper rivets again!


Then again, if I never much cared for leather with studs on it, why should I be so focused on a saddle with rivets?


Once those papers are all done, the students have their grades and I'm back on my bike, I can think about other things.  Well, I'm thinking about other things, anyway.  That's pretty much what I've tried to do for the past few months.  Actually, I haven't tried; it's what I have done.  I never knew that would be a consequence of my surgery, or my transition.


Given what a workload I've had this semester, I think my students have done pretty well.  Some would say it's because I've done pretty well.  Maybe that's true, at least to some extent.  I guess I can say I've been a pretty good instructor, at least given the circumstances under which I've worked.   It'll seem better once I start cycling to work again, I'm sure.  I just hope that day comes soon, and that I don't have to miss riding on another day like today.

Brunch At The End, No Furlough For Now

There's no furlough...at least for now.   A judge issued a restraining order against it, and there will be a hearing on the 26th.


So it was business as usual at the college. Some classes met for the last time yesterday; others will meet for the last time on Monday or Tuesday.  Then the final exams begin.  This is the time of year when students you haven't seen in weeks come out of the woodwork and the stories  grow longer by the second.  Maybe it seems that way because I got so little sleep last night.


Yesterday there was a brunch for the English majors and minors who are graduating.  In a way, it was bittersweet:  I'm happy for them because they're graduating, but I'm also a bit sad the see them go.  One young woman, who was presenting the research she did as her honors project, was a student of mine during her--and my--first semester at the college.  Another student, in talking about the work she did, said that all she would miss about the college are the department and her professors.


Then there was Joan, a Haitian woman who did some fine research on the poetry of Leopold Senghor.  She took the hip-hop course I taught last year.  Last semester, I saw her in the hallway one afternoon, looking exasperated.  "You look upset," I said.


"That man is driving me crazy!"


"Typical guy.  What's his problem?"


"I can't figure him out."


"Well, you know, guys are simple." (Who would know better, right?)  


"Not him"


"Oh, dear."


"So tell me about him."


The man to whom she was referring was William Butler Yeats.  At the end of our conversation, she exclaimed, "I've got to have a talk with that man."


She's been accepted into a master's-Ph.D. program.  I have mixed feelings about that.  She may well have a successful career as an academic.  She has the commitment to scholarship and the intelligence she'll need.  I just hope the experience doesn't destroy her love of literature, as it does to so many other graduate students.   That's one of the things that made the course I took last year such a dreadful experience:  None of those students seemed to have any love of literature.  Most of the young professors I've seen don't have it, either.  In fact, I daresay that some of them, and my fellow students in that class, hate it.


I really wouldn't want to see Joan lose her passion for poetry and other kinds of expressive language.  I also wouldn't want her to become the petty, vindictive kind of person too many academicians are.  You could see some of those kinds of people on display at the brunch.  Predictably, they are parts of cliques, and will remain in them as long as those little, watered-down fraternities and sororities suit their purposes.  


And, I am reluctant to encourage any student, no matter how intelligent or talented, to pursue graduate studies in literature because the job market is so dismal.  Even during the so-called "good times," there have been hundreds or even thousands of applicants for every new position in any English or literature department.  I said as much to Jonathan, who's a bit socially awkward but who is, at least, achieving what he is on his intelligence and talent rather than on subterfuge.  He is quickly becoming one of the exceptions.


Another example of the petty politics that runs the department and college was evident at the beginning of the brunch.  At the department meeting the other day, a new chair was voted in.  She defeated the incumbent chair, who was supposed to host the brunch.  She had a "commitment" develop at the last minute, so the deputy chair stepped in.  


It was a good time and place to be a student.  I hung out with them after the presentations and speeches.  They, and the food--fried chicken and corn on the cob, along with some sides that I skipped--were the best reasons to be at that brunch.

Waking Up To A Pay Cut

Last night, I fell asleep sitting up.  When I woke up, I decided to go to bed, even though I still had work to do.  I also decided not to set my alarm clock:  I was going to let my body get whatever sleep it needed, everything else be damned. 


I still made it to work on time.  And my work doesn't seem to have been any the worse for it.  Anything I've done today is more useful and interesting than the meetings I had to endure yesterday and today.


Probably the most useful thing I've learned in the past two days is that my pay is about to decrease by one-fifth.  I am one of the people who's being held hostage because the State didn't pass its budget.  So I won't be paid for one day every week until the budget is passed. 


Thousands of other people are in the same boat as I am.  None of us is the captain; in fact, none of us has access to the navigation system.  But we're being penalized for the course the boat is taking. 


In the meantime, the Governor has increased the salaries of his staff.  And I wonder whether he or any of the State legislators is being furloughed, as we are. 


And, of course, we at the college are being furloughed just as we--at least some of us--are working even more hours than most corporate executives.  Many people see only the number of hours we spend in the classroom.  But for every hour each of us spends in the classroom, we spend a lot more on preparation, reading and grading papers and other work related to our teaching.  That's not to mention the amount of time we have to give in service to our departments and the college.  And, oh, did I mention that we're expected to do writing and research? 


Now all of my family and friends know why they have such difficulty contacting me sometimes.  When I'm done with all of that other stuff, then I cavort with my secret lovers. ;-)


Well, I guess I'm really a woman now.  After all, we make 79 cents to every dollar a man makes.  So, I guess I should give up another 1 percent of my pay.  To whom or what is another story.  Then again, even if I did that, I'm not going to convince anyone who isn't already convinced that I'm a woman.  There are a few--including a onetime friend and the prof who made false accusations against me--who will never be convinced until I menstruate and have at least one baby or abortion.  The funny thing is that there are other women in my life who are convinced that the fact I haven't had those experiences actually makes me as much of a woman as they are.  Of course, I know there are plenty of women who have never had or aborted babies.  And, most women my age have stopped menstruating.  Does that make them less womanly?


I must say, though, David Patterson has truly accomplished something.  I mean, how often do liberal Democratic African-American public officials get transgendered college English faculty members pissed off at them?  Granted, my politics are not always what some people would expect from someone like me.  (As if they've ever known anyone else like me!)  But, still....


Anyway, I'm going to end this.  I have another gyno appointment and work to do after that.  Oh, yeah, and I have to render services unto those secret lovers!

Losses, Actual and Possible

Yesterday and today felt more autumnal than spring-like.  This is amazing, when you consider that we had summery weather only a week ago.  It's supposed to be chilly--at least for this time of year--for the rest of the week.  


I'm tired, again.  After my classes, I had two long meetings and then students wanted help with one thing and another. And I would have spent even longer than  I did at work--As it was, I was there for nearly another five hours after my obligations for the day ended!--had I not simply decided that I needed to leave.  For that, it looks like I'm going to be subjected to a furlough.  So I'm supposed to take a unilateral 20 percent pay cut for doing the same work.  And my bills won't decrease by 20 percent.


On top of that, I found out why I haven't heard from Janine and Marie-Jeanne for a long time.  They are two friends of mine in Paris.  When they came to New York in the summer of 2003, they, our friend Diana and I took a lunch and shopping trip to Brighton Beach.  It was my first "girls' day out" and, as Diana said tonight, none of them knew what to expect:  I had "come out" to them over the phone and by e-mail, but they had only seen me as Nick, not as Justine.  Diana, recalling that day, said, "I said to myself, 'I hope she's pretty.'  Then, when I heard you were having your surgery, I said, 'I hope she doesn't become prettier than me."


"Don't worry.  You're safe," I deadpanned.


"I'm not so sure about that."


"Well, I'll never be upset with you for being better-looking than I am.  You're a wonderful person."  I could almost see her blush over the phone.


That banter was just an interlude in a litany of bad news.  Janine's has gotten much worse since the last time I talked to her or Diana.  Janine had a tumor which grew malignant.  Then she had a stroke back in the fall.  She had to move from her apartment to a hospital to a nursing home.  Of course, she's angry:  She is one of the most independent and creative people I've ever known.  Now she can't even go outside by herself and can't always remember people.  


"It must be so hard on her," I said.

 Diana agreed.  "But," she added, " it's really hard on her sister and the people around her.  It's hard to see her that way."

"It hurts just to think of her that way," I lamented.  "Whenver I saw her, I felt as if I were in the presence of life itself."  


"All we can do is hope.  But things don't look good."


Still, we hope.  Maybe, just maybe, we tell ourselves.  

The Way To A Woman's Heart

As a trans woman, I know all of the secrets of human life.  Well, I'm supposed to.  Or, at any rate, some people think I do and I don't do anything to disabuse them of that notion.  That's why my female friends and students (and even some female strangers!) talk to me about their guy problems, and males in my life talk to me about their girl problems.  Then again, if I really knew all the secrets, girls would talk to me about their girl problems and guys about their guy problems, right?


Well, whatever else may be true, I can say that I know a thing or to about how one gender can, should or does relate to the other.  So, if any of you guys read this, I'm going to tell you the secret way to a woman's heart.


It isn't what you think it is.  Sure, we love flowers and chocolates.  And we like candlelit dinners and such.   And we--most of us, anyway (I include myself.) like lingerie--but not when you guys give it to us.  You see, when one of  you guys gives one of  us lingerie, it's no more a gift for any of us than a kitchen appliance is  for your mother.  Then again, if a guy gave me lingerie, it might not be a gift for me but, given my physical condition, but it wouldn't be completely for his own pleasure, either.


All right...So what's the secret way to a woman's heart?  It's this: Say something nice to us.  Say it without any strings attached. In other words, don't tell us how nice we look because you need a favor of whatever kind.  And don't tell us that you love us when you're envisioning us in the missionary position.


Just say something nice to us, for its own sake.  Better yet, say it to some woman who's a stranger you'll probably never see again.  If she seems to be a bit older than you, wish her a Happy Mother's Day.


Two men who live in my neighborhood did that for me today.  Not surprisingly, at least to me, they're both Latino.  It seems that any time a man offers me his seat on the bus or subway, he's Latino.  So was the first man to wish me a happy Mother's Day.  That was five years ago:  the second Mother's Day in my life as Justine.  Then, it was exciting because it was (or seemed to be) an affirmation I so desperately wanted.  Now, when a man makes such a wish for me, I appreciate, if nothing else, his good manners and imagine that, perhaps, he has (or had) a warm and respectful relationship with his own mother.  At least, I would hope that, for anybody.

But I also feel like I've been given something I didn't earn.  After all, barring some major advance in medical technology, I will never be a mother.  People have told me I could adopt; a few have even suggested that I should because they think I could be a good mother.  I like kids, but I think those people are giving me more credit than I deserve.  Plus, if I were to adopt a very young child, I will be very old by the time that kid is ready to go to college or do whatever he or she wants to do after I raise him or her. 


Then again, other people have told me--and I still believe, at least somewhat--that it's probably better that I've never had kids.  I might not have been able to do some of the things I've done, including my transition and surgery, had I raised kids.  That may well be true, but I've met other trans people--including Joy, who had her surgery just after I had mine--who had kids and said they're glad they did.  From what she and her spouse say, the kids--who, if I remember correctly, are around 12 and 14--have taken well to her transition. And her spouse--Well, what can you say about spouse who, after her husband became her wife, gleefully intoned, "Well, I'm a card-carrying lesbian now!"


Now there's someone who deserves to have a Happy Mother's Day.  So does Marilynne.  And Millie.  And, of course,  my mom.  And a rather frail but alert black woman whom I saw in the candystore/newsstand on the corner should have a wonderful holiday, too.  She was with a girl who appeared to be about twelve or thirteen and her granddaughter.  For no particular reason, I wished her a happy mother's day.   That made her--and, interestingly, the girl--happy.


As I was leaving, a young white man walked into that store.  He wished her a Happy Mother's Day. I can still see her smiling now.  


Guys, take note.  Girls, too.

Off The Bike, Again!

Yesterday marked ten months since my surgery.  Before I know it, I (as I am now) will be a year old.


I just hope I can take a really nice ride that day.  Yesterday I found out I'm going to be off my bike again for another week or two. Just when the weather was getting good!


Over the last few days, I thought I might be developing an infection.  There was some yellowish discharge and I felt twinges, but not a burning sensation.  (The latter would have been an almost sure sign.)  So I went to see Dr. Jennifer.


She found a small tear inside and said that I should stay off my bike at least until my next visit, which will be next Friday.  Oh, dear.  I don't think of myself as superstitious (I have slept in cemeteries twice and walk, even at night,  by the one that abuts the campus where I teach.) but now I think that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't have said anything about starting a bike blog!  


I will visit Dr. Jennifer again the week after next as well.  I just hope I heal before then.  Oh, please, great goddess of the transwoman cyclists, let me heal so I can get on my bike again.  Yes, even though my motives are selfish:  I want to ride and I've gotten fat.  


Now, without sounding too much like Joseph Campbell or anyone like that, I guess it's really true that one creates one's own mythology.  It doesn't even have to involve deities or powers:  Any belief by which someone chooses to live is a myth.  That, of course, doesn't necessarily mean that said belief isn't true.  At least, that's what I tell myself when I think that I'm going to win Lotto and that Elvis is coming back. ;-)


Oh well. I'm going to be very busy during the next couple of weeks.  So, maybe I wouldn't have been able to do much riding.  At least it's good to think that way.  But some is better than none.  And riding to work again has definitely made my workdays go by more quickly.  


Whatever I tell myself, I want to ride.  

My Next Blog.

Coming soon:  New blog.


Yes, I've decided that I am going to start another blog.  It will be related to bicycling.  I'm just thinking about whether I want it to be free-form or to have a focused theme.  I'm leaning toward the latter, as there are a number of cycling blogs on the web already.  I just happen to subscribe to a few of them, in addition to Gunnar's blog, in which he often mentions bicycles and cycling.


That doesn't mean I'm going to discontinue Transwoman Times, at least not yet.  I'm not quite ready to let go of it, even though I'm starting to sense there isn't as much for me to say here as I had, say, a few months or a year ago.  


I'm guessing that my new blog will start some time around Memorial Day.  By that time, the current semester will have finished.  Plus, ironically enough, the holiday seems appropriate for starting a new venture. No, I won't drape my new blog with banners and flags and such.  However, if my new blog has begun by that time, I will at least make mention of the tributes made to those who serve.  Now, what they serve is definitely debatable.


Now I'm thinking about that because I just may have talked a student out of joining the Armed Forces.  Like many others who've joined, he sees it as a way of guaranteeing that he has a job for at least a year or two, and of paying for college.  I pointed out that there are other ways of getting the same things, and though he may have to spend more time, effort or money in the beginning, those outlays will be worthwhile.  No matter what else he does, he will have more freedom than he would have in the military.  "Once you sign up, they own you; you're their property," I pointed out to him.  "And they can do whatever they want to you.  In fact, when your tour of duty is finished they can keep you."


He thanked me for telling him those things.  I think that deep down, he knew he didn't really want to join, but he has all sorts of pressures and is therefore anxious about the future. Those anxieties are still better than the alternatives.


Anyway, I'm feeling very sleepy, so it's good night and fair adieu and all that.'