Someone Else's Decision

Yesterday I was talking to a young man--a former student of  mine--who'd gotten a young woman pregnant.  I told him the sorts of things an older, and presumably wiser, person is supposed to say:  Having the baby, or not, is a serious decision, and whatever they do will have an effect on him, not to mention her.  I also advised him to get some really good counseling because, while he might make a good father, he still needs to work through some of the issues his own family left him.  

A part of me wanted to admonish him for getting the woman pregnant. But I knew that doing that would have been pointless.   I think that, on some level, he wanted to impregnate her, or some woman, because he's talked about having a child.  But he also knows that he doesn't have the sort of job or finances he wants; if he has the child, those won't improve for a while, and going for his master's degree, which he brought up the last time I talked with him, would be all but out of the question for a long time.

But most of all, I don't think he's ready to commit.  Part of me wants to say, "Typical guy!" But I also know that browbeating him into a commitment wouldn't do him, the woman, the baby or anyone else any good.  I have never believed the conventional wisdom that having a child "steadies" a man and makes him realize that it's time to "settle down."  I've seen too many men in whom the exact opposite happened:  They equated committing themselves to, if not marrying, the mother of the child and the expectation that they will help to raise, or at least support that child, as the proverbial "ball and chain."  They became even more reckless than they were before the birth of the child, or they simply spent most of the money they made on themselves.  

Now, lest you think I'm man-bashing, remember my history.  Yes, I have felt the same kind of fear and revulsion so many young men feel at the prospect of giving up their "freedom."  Interestingly, those feelings are not at all incongruous with wanting to have a child:  Many men see, in child's play, the very kind of freedom they want to keep.  I've heard more than one man say that he didn't like being married but he loved having kids.

I think the young man in question also wants kids more than he wants marriage--or a woman, for that matter.  Having been on his side of the fence, so to speak, I can see his point of view.  I could also understand his dilemma in one other way:  I've also gotten a young woman pregnant.  In fact, I did that twice.  One time my family knew about:  I was in my early twenties, if I remember correctly, and the young woman and I had talked about marriage.  But I knew, even before the tests were positive, that I was not suited to be a husband or father--for a variety of reasons.  Most of those reasons are still valid, at least for me.  

So the young woman had the abortion.  Our relationship didn't last very long after that.  Even then, I wasn't surprised, any more than I was the first time I got a young woman pregnant.  No one in my family  knows about it--unless they are reading this.  I was in high school and working a part-time job so that I could save money for college.   I usually gave my mother the money, who deposited it for me.  So of course she noticed when I wasn't giving her money. 

I don't remember what excuse I gave.  Whatever it was, it was better,or at least easier to tell, than the truth.  

I don't know who, if anyone, else that young man has told about his situation.  Whether or not he's told anyone, I can understand why.  Still, I firmly advised him to at least talk to a counselor.  

As I write about that encounter with him, it seems even stranger than it did when it was unfolding.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I was giving him advice based on my experience, but not necessarily my own life. 

Getting Used to Me

The other night, I was talking to an uncle of mine.  Actually, he's the last surviving uncle I have.  And he happens to be my godfather.

I haven't seen him in about a dozen years or so.  So, of course, he has not seen me since I began my transition, much less since my surgery. He's only heard about those things, from me and probably from other members of my family.  

Once during our conversation, he referred to me by my old name.  And, when my aunt called him for something or another, he told her, "Wait until I get off the phone with him."  He apologized; I told him not to worry and not to apologize ever again. "If I saw more of you, I could get used to it," he explained.

I understand what he means, but it seems so odd to me now that anyone would have to "get used to" the fact that I'm a woman named Justine.  I have always known myself to be female, and about a year or so into my current life, I stopped thinking of my old name in connection with myself in my past.  In other words, I would think about the day Justine, not Nick, split up with Tammy or about the bike tours Justine took in France.

What's ironic is that I think now of how much my uncle must have changed since the last time I saw him.  He sounds about the same over the phone, but I don't expect that he would look as he did twelve years ago.  Also, I wonder what he can and can't do as he did back in those days.  He's had some illnesses and was injured in a car crash.  I don't think those experiences have changed his core being, but I'm sure that they've made him different in ways I couldn't detect over the phone.

I wonder whether I might have to "get used" to him.

Typical Guy (or Girl)

Today I was talking with a friend of mine.  Let's call her Nell.  Last week, I saw her with her sister, whom I'll call Dolores.  I couldn't help but to notice that Dolores was not a happy camper.  Actually, she's looked that way the past few times I've seen her, going back a few months.  I gently reminded her that she has my phone number and e-mail address, and offered any help she wants.  She thanked me, but I knew that she probably won't take up my offer.


For some time, I've had the sense that Dolores' husband was cheating on her.  I had no specific evidence or reason for my belief:  It was just something I felt strongly.  Perhaps if I were a different sort of woman, I might have said something about that to her.  But a few of my experiences have left me with a strong aversion to getting tangled up in other people's relationship woes.  What good would have come of telling her, anyway?


Well, today Nell confirmed everything I'd suspected.  Dolores' husband indeed cheated on her.  In addition to his regular job, he's a D.J. "on the side."  For a man of his temperament, the DJ's microphone is a bit like the key to the distillery for an alcoholic. 


In any gathering of any size, there's bound to be the sort of woman who preys on weak-willed men.  That, apparently, is what happened.  She probably flattered and pretended to empathise with him.  Perhaps his new paramour saw him as "henpecked."  If she did, she would have been at least partly right:    As much as I like Dolores, I am very happy that I've never had to live with her!   Still, he had no right to yield to whatever temptations the other woman offered.  Call me Puritanical if you like.


The cynic in me snorted, to myself, "Typical!"  More specifically, I sneered, "Typical guy!"  


But later I asked myself, "What is a 'typical' guy?  Do they all cheat on their wives?"   For a long time, I believed that every male was a potential philanderer and worse.    Now I realize that the truth is a bit more complicated than that, to say the least.  The funny thing is that I was less willing to acknowledge that when I was living as a man than I am now.  Dolores soon-to-be-ex is no more representative of the male race than I was.  


That is not to say, of course, that all men are wonderful and supportive.  But it also makes no more sense for me to hate them simply for being men than it would for me to blindly trust all of them, given some of my experiences.


But, even after the experiences of  my previous life, I still can't tell you what a "typical" guy--or girl--is.

Another Day After: Bumping Into A Former Student

One year and one day after my surgery...All right, I'll stop counting, at least on this blog.  Still, it's hard not to think about the first anniversary of my surgery, which passed yesterday.


Tonight I was riding my bike home from my class.  I was in Jackson Heights, about two and a half miles from my place, when someone called out, "Hello, Professor!"


I recognized the voice, which I hadn't heard in a couple of years.  It belonged to Navendra, who'd been a student of mine.  He did well, and he was one of those students who always seemed happy to see me.  And the feeling has always been mutual.


He's working on his master's degree in accounting in Queens College.  He took a class with me on the recommendation of his friend Sajid, who took three and sent me a "Happy Birthday" e-mail.  Now Sajid is at the Harvard School of Public Policy.  He and Navendra are both the kinds of people who could do anything they set out to do.   I have written letters of reference for both of them and do the same for either of them.  


It's funny that yesterday I was reflecting on how I have changed, and am changing, since my surgery.  But seeing Navendra again, I felt that in some way I hadn't changed at all--and I felt good about it.  Somehow, neither he nor Sajid seemed consigned to my past, as some people with whom I was living, working and simply spending time with not much more than a year ago now seem--not to mention those who decided, for whatever reasons, they wanted no part of me after I  started my transition.


Perhaps my perception of Navendra and Sajid has to do with the fact that they're progressing with their lives. Of course, it hasn't always been a steady progression:  About a year after he graduated (three years ago), Sajid was having a tough time:  Something hadn't worked out as he'd hoped, and he had to re-evaluate some choices he'd made.  But I always have had confidence in him, and I think he knew that.  I'm sure other people did, too. Sometimes I think he was worried that he was letting us down.  Actually, I don't feel let down by anyone who's progressing in whatever way he or she needs to--even if that means taking a step back and re-thinking something.  


And, when I see someone growing and changing, I do not have a stagnant image of him or her.  On the other hand, some people are still in the same places, spiritually and even physically, as they were when I first met them.  I realized that about one former friend of mine, with whom I reunited (albeit briefly) after a long absence.  We were having exactly the same conversations as we'd had when we were college undergraduates--or, more precisely, I was listening to the same monologue as I was listening to back in those days.  I was simply hearing it again in a cafe on the other side of the world.  (It sounds like a dystopian version of Casablanca, if such a thing is possible.)  After that, I was really glad I've never gone to a reunion of any school I ever attended.


I remember telling Marci, only half-jokingly, that I want to be her when I grow up.  I'm starting to think that what you become when you grow up isn't as important as simply growing up--or just growing, period, and surrounding yourself with people who are.

My Birthday As Myself

I am one year old today!


To be exact, I had my surgery one year ago today.  The time has passed much more quickly than I ever imagined it would.  Somehow that always seems to happen after important events in my life--or, at any rate, events that are important to me.


Some of that, of course, has to do with the fact that we're older after each event, as we are after any sort of passage of time.  The more time spend on this planet, the more quickly the time ahead moves by us.  It's simple arithmetic:  One year is a smaller portion of a 50-year-old's life than of a child who is only five.  But I also think that because major events, for many of us, mark stages of our lives, those events widen the distance between ourselves and our past and bring us closer to our futures.  I think that happens whether the event is a graduation, marriage, divorce, death of a loved one, birth of an offspring, beginning or ending a career, or any number of other things with that can change a person's circumstances.


I also believe my perception of time is shaped, in part, by the knowledge that unless I live longer than 99.9999 percent (or thereabouts) of all people, I will have lived more time as a male than as a female.  That is to say, I will have spent more years as Nick--in the sense that families, friends, co-workers and others knew him, the law defined him and I projected him--than as Justine.  Even though I feel freedom and confidence that I never felt before my changes, I am very acutely aware that I have only a limited amount of time, at least in life as I know it, as the person I have always been in mind and spirit.


What I've just described, I realized for the first time as I was describing it.  I wonder whether other transsexuals feel anything like it.  If they do, it might explain why some change everything, or at least everything they can change, in their lives after their transitions and surgeries.  Some move to new cities, or to or away from cities generally.  A few move to other countries; still others change jobs and careers, whether or not by choice.  Many also get divorced; at least I don't have to worry about that!  Others marry or remarry, or take up with new partners.  


Nearly all--at least the ones I know--re-evaluate something or another in their lives.  It makes sense; after all, that is what each of us has to do at the moment we face the truth about ourselves and begin to think about what we will do about it.  Along with that, of course, we have to re-evaluate our notions about sexuality and gender--our own, and that of others--and some of us have to examine our attitudes toward those whose gender identity or sexuality resembles whatever we were denying in ourselves.  In my case, it meant examining the homo- and trans-phobia I absorbed (sometimes transmitted to me unwittingly)  and cultivated out of sheer desperation.


As you can imagine, you really do find out who your friends--and, equally important, your allies--are.  It also fine-tunes your bullshit detector.   There are some people, particularly in English and other humanities departments, who want you as another token for their collection--butch Filipina bisexual: check; one-armed Native American with learning disability: check;  tranny, check.  Perhaps I should be more understanding and indulgent than I am, but sometimes I really do get tired of listening to people who try to simply must show how much they really do understand and empathise with me after taking a workshop about what I live every day. 


On the other hand, what I've experienced makes the friendships and other relationships that have endured--and the new ones I've made--all the more meaningful and pleasurable.  Even more important, though, is that I am learning to find pleasure in my own company and--now I'm going to say something I never expected to say!--beauty in who and what I am, and what I've become.  Some of that has to do with having a body that more closely reflects the person I always have been.  But it also has to do with the fact that I have had to develop, and draw upon, wells of strength, knowledge, wisdom and beauty I never knew I had, much less that I could develop.  Some people gave me all sorts of reasons--no, I take that back, they tried to intimidate me with their fears about--why I should not undertake the transition I've made, and why it would never work or why it is wrong.  And, when I was in the Morning After House in the days after my surgery, I was among other people who endured such experiences and won similar kinds of wisdom.  For that matter, such a person performed my surgery!


Anyway...One year has passed since my surgery.  It is a year--already!--and it is only a year.  I am a year old, and a year older--and older but a year:  a year past and a year in coming.  And, I hope, another and another and more to come.

Etiquette: Will I Ever Get It Right?

Even though I lived as a woman for more than five years before I had my surgery, sometimes I don't think I'll ever understand etiquette--as it applies to either or both sexes.


I still reflexively hold doors and give up my seat when I see a woman who's pregnant, seems older or is simply burdened in some way that I'm not.   And, to me, it makes all the more sense to give my seat to an elderly or pregnant woman on a day as hot as today was.


Granted, the air conditioning was working perfectly on the train I rode to work--though, I must say, it somehow made me even more conscious of just how hot it was today.  And somehow it made me feel even more compelled to give up my seat to a pregnant woman who was standing a few feet away from me.


When I got up and gestured for her to sit, she looked baffled.  Now, I never have been and never will be pregnant, but I would imagine that at a very late stage of the pregnancy--which is where, chronologically, that woman seemed to be--I would probably want any available seat.


Now, I know that, at least in this culture, women aren't expected to offer their seats or hold doors open for other women.  But, I guess that because I was inculcated so deeply and at such an early age with  the expectation that I would offer what seem, to me, to be normal courtesies, I revert to such behavior.  Plus, it just seems like common sense that I could help, in whatever small way, someone who is having  a slightly tougher time than I'm having. 


But if you wanted to see real bewilderment, that came later, on my way to class:  After entering a stairway, I held the door to it open for a young man who'd been walking a few yards behind me from the time we got off the train.  I just don't think it's cool to drop a door in someone's face.  But, I think that young man wasn't accustomed to having a door held open for him by anyone, much less some middle-aged woman!

Birthdays

The other day I mailed a birthday card to Marilynne's daughter.  She and I underwent our surgeries on the same day last year.  

If that day is our birthday, then I'm only about five hours older than she is.  Hmm...That sounds like the makings of some sort of science fiction story.   If any of you want to take the idea and run with it, be my guest:  I seriously doubt that I'll ever write science fiction.  I just don't think it's in me.


Anyway, in one sense, we were both born that day. If that's the case, how long was our gestation period?  Was it the time we had been living as female?  Our entire lives?


But today is what most people--as well as the laws of just about every jurisdiction in this world--would define as my birthday.  It is the date on which I came, a whole bunch of years ago, from my mother's body into this world.  I probably will always celebrate this date as my birthday, partly out of habit and, well, because it's the biggest national holiday of the country in which I was born and have spent most of my life.  It's a bit like being born on Bastille Day in France or Christmas in any country that celebrates it.  


The only times I wasn't in this country on the Fourth,  I was in France.  Three times I was in Paris; the other time I was in a town called Auch in the southwest.  Unless you've been there or know something about French history, you've probably never heard of it.  I ended up there on my birthday ten years ago in the middle of a bicycle tour I took through the Pyrenees.   It's a lovely place, and if you should go there, you should certainly go to la Cathedrale Sainte-Marie.  It may very well have the best acoustics of any place of worship in the world.  It certainly has one of the best organs and choirs.    The singers were rehearsing that day.  I got into a conversation with a sweet-faced alto-soprano who was about twenty years older than I was.   Even before she talked, I could sense her enthusiasm and passion for that cathedral and for her music.  


When she asked where I came from, I said, "Les Etats-Unis."


"Eh...Votre jour d'independence."


"Oui.  Et mon anniversaire."


Her already bright eyes perked up.  "Voulez-vous une chanson speciale?"  With a smile, I nodded, and she and the choir gave a little impromptu concert for an audience of an American cycling solo in France on his birthday and his country's day of independence.


Whatever my birthday is, I believe I have an interesting heritage.  And I feel honored to share at least something with Marilynne's daughter.

Upcoming Anniversaries

One year ago today, I was making my final preparations to go to Trinidad.  I would leave the following day, which was Independence Day--and my birthday.


As I recall, I was making trips to the drugstore and supermarket so I would have at least some of what I needed when I got home.  I didn't expect to be in any physical condition to shop or do other errands; even if I were, I thought, I might not be in the mood.


It's funny how last-minute logistical preparations take on such importance when you're about to embark on a life-changing journey.  If I recall correctly, the narrator of Sophie's Choice--a movie I hated, by the way, in spite of Meryl Streep's presence and the fact that it was based on a very good book--was getting ready to go off and fight in World War II.  He enlisted in the Navy, but he was underweight.  So, he said, he spent the days before he had to return to the recruitment station engaged in eating bananas and masturbating.


Of course, there was a practical reason for eating the bananas.  So it would make sense to recall that.  But why did he recall masturbating?  In the face of a war one is going to fight, that would seem to be one of the most banal detail of all.


Now I remember that the surgery was four days away, and I was making my final preparations to go to it.  And now I am preparing for two birthdays, if you will:  my natal one, and the anniversary of my surgery.  I wonder if I will dread or look forward to subsequent anniversaries of my surgery as I and other people do to our birthdays.  

Cameos

In the past two days, I've experienced two very interesting "cameos," if you will, with two very different people.  Although they have practically nothing in common, the time I spent with was satisfying for much the same reasons.


The other day, I sold a rug I've had rolled up and propped in the corner of my foyer.  I sold it for the same reason I sold another rug I had:  I've kept them stored away because my allergist recommended that I not have any carpets or drapes, as I am allergic to dust mites.  


Well, I tell myself, at least I'm not allergic to my cats or chocolate!


The young woman who bought the rug has been living in Flushing for a few months.  She's from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, but she has lived in Istanbul, California and a couple of other places.   At age seventeen, she left home and now she's twenty-five.  Now she speaks five languages and has done every kind of work from landscaping to tutoring.  And she spent time with Americorps, which is like a domestic version of the Peace Corps.


I tried, for a moment, to imagine her in college--not just the one in which I teach, or any in which I've taught, but any college at all.  I couldn't.  Well, maybe I could have imagined her in college during the late '60's or early '70's, but not just any college.  Even so, the thought of her on a campus taxed my imagination.


Maybe she'll go one day.  If she does, I'm sure she'll know why and what she's doing there.  I never brought up the idea:  It just didn't enter into the conversation, except for once--when she brought it up.  However, a part of me hopes that she doesn't go.


These days, when I talk to almost anyone I encounter from the academic world, I find myself disappointed, if not frustrated or sad.   Maybe I'm getting old and cranky and less tolerant of claptrap.  I'm realizing, I think, how few truly educated people I met among those who have been anointed by some institution or another, or by their peers or themselves, as intellectuals and authorities on something or another.  


You will never see so many insecure and pretentious people as you will among university faculty, or those students who aspire to be one of them.  English departments are the worst of all; next might be sociology or education departments.  In those departments, you find exactly the sorts of people who've spent their entire lives in school so they wouldn't have to actually learn anything--not about the world, or other people--or, most of all, about themselves.


The young woman--Larissa--said, "I simply couldn't imagine going to college at that age.  It never made any sense to me:  A kid who's  been in school all his life is told, 'OK, pick what you want to do for the rest of your life and study it.' What eighteen-year-old knows enough to make that choice?  And who wants his parents or anyone else to decide for him?"


Thank you, Larissa.  I want to say something like that to the parents (or whoever's in charge of) at least half of the freshmen I've ever taught, and a good number of upperclassmen.  I'm against the draft and the military, but sometimes I think they might actually do some new high school graduates more good than going to school, at least for the time being.  Or they might be better off by simply to going and working somewhere, whether in a store or as an apprentice to a carpenter or beautician or whatever.   Maybe the young person will find him or herself in the work.  Then again, he or she might become bored or frustrated. But I think that young person will learn lessons about work and him or her self.  College would then become a much more relevant and interesting experience for those who choose it.


And, really, that's the only way I can see escaping from the worst thing schooling does to young people:  It keeps them in a state of suspended adolescence in which they learn little more than how to obtain more schooling.  If that isn't the antithesis of learning from experience and learning how to think, I don't know what is.  That is because to remain in school, at any level, you have to do what you're told when you're told in the way you're told.  And you get approval--which, as often as not, translates into higher grades--by showing some kind of enthusiasm as you choke off your thought centers.


On the other hand, I don't think there is any way to learn anything save through experience.  You learn by doing; there is no other way.  Larissa has done quite a bit, which is why she understands so much--and, most of all, has confidence in herself.  That's the first thing some teachers and professors would try to destroy.  Have you ever noticed that so many educators talk so condescendingly, not only to their students, but to almost anyone who isn't an educator of some sort.  Education administrators are the worst offenders.  If you're a parent and tried to explain to an assistant principal that you simply can't take time off from work to meet with him or her, you know what I mean.


Larissa has escaped everything I've described.   My cousin has escaped from other things, I think.  He apologizes to me for his "lack" of "education" even though I insist that he has no reason to defer to me.  

We went out to dinner last night.   Back in August, I saw him for the first time since I was ten years old.  He'd heard about my transition and surgery, and the people who weren't talking to me because of them, and offered to be a friend.  He hasn't tried to "study" me or, thankfully, tried to fit me into some gender-studies category.   


I am happy that we've reunited after the decades we've been apart.  And he's been very kind to me.  But last night, I started to believe that he wanted my friendship as much as he wanted to give me his.  I don't mind that at all.  As we talked, he described some rejections he has experienced from people who were related, or simply close, to him.  While he lost those relationships for entirely different reasons than I've lost mine, I do understand, at least somewhat, how he feels about them.  So, while he may not need me (which is also fine), I realized that, perhaps, he felt that I have something to offer him besides our familial (if peripherally so) relationship.


And, as with Larissa, it's nice to have a conversation with him because I can sense real efforts at, rather than mere gestures of, thought and feeling.  It's really nice not to listen to received opinions conveyed through rehearsed lines--or simply to feel smugness practically  oozing out of someone who's never met the kinds of people he or she is talking about.  


Oh well.  Two nice encounters in two days.  I am fortunate indeed.

Hair and Tatoos

Today I rode the LeTour to work for the first time.   I was running a bit late--or, at least, I left my place a bit later than I'd planned--and forgot to bring my camera with me.  So I have no photos of myself or the bike or the commute.  But I'll tell you a bit about it.

First, fashion:  I feel as if I cheated a bit here.  I didn't ride in a skirt and heels.  Rather, I wore a sundress and my Keen sandals.  In a tote bag I stashed in my rear basket, I carried a short cardigan from a dusty blue twinset.   When I got to work, I slipped it over my dress, which was black with a hibiscus flower print in varying shades of blue.  One of those shades matched the sweater from the twinset, more or less.  And I also brought a pair of somewhat dressy black wedge sandals.  

I was glad to be wearing the sundress, as it was hot (though not as humid as yesterday).  And, of course, the Keen sandals were very comfortable.  

I didn't have any wardrobe malfunctions.  But the bike had a bit of a mishap.  Actually, it wasn't the bike itself; it was the rear rack.  The bolts that fasten the body of the rack to the arms that connect it to the seat stays fell out.  That caused my rack to flip backward and land on my fender.

Fortunately for me, I had just passed a hardware store, where I bought a package of screws and nuts, some lock washers and blue Loctite.  I've stopped there a few times before, as it's along one of my routes to and from work and other places.  Sometimes the guy behind the counter is an oldish Russian Jew who looks the way Alexander Solzhenitsyn (sp?) might have had he shaved.  But today I got this guy who is covered with tatoos and whose yellowing white hair  is longer than mine and beard is longer than mine ever was.  It's really odd to find him in that shop because it's at the corner of Metropolitan and 71st Avenues in Forest Hills, which is possibly the most resolutely bourgeois part of the city.  But he knows his stuff and is very helpful, which is one reason why his shop stays in business.

At one time in my youth, my hair was almost as long as that of the man in the hardware store.  And my beard, while not as long as his, was thick around my jaws and chin.   With all of the anger I felt in those days, I didn't need tatoos (which I've never gotten and probably never will get) or studded jacket to help me project an aura that said, "Stay the ---- away from me!"  I was like a cross between Charles Bronson and a hippie without the charm of either.

One hot day, I was riding my bike to my parents' house.  At the time, I was living in the town where I attended college (New Brunswick, NJ) and my parents were living on the Jersey Shore.  It was a thirty to thirty-five mile ride, depending on which route  I took.

Well, on that day, I peeled off my bike jersey before  I passed through Milltown, after which one of the early sedative drugs was named.  At that time, it was noted in the area for cops that were rumored to have been recruited in Alabama or from the KKK.  

One of those redneck officers actually pulled me over when I was riding along one of the streets.  In those days I didn't carry ID with me; most people didn't. 

"What are you doin' here?"

It took everything I had not to answer him sarcastically. But, fortunately for me, I managed to check that impulse.  

"What are you doin' here?"

"Riding my bicycle, sir."

"To where?"

"My mother's."

"All right.  Have a good day."

I haven't thought about that encounter in more than twenty years.  Now I wonder:  What would it have been like if I were covered with tatoos.

When You Can't March, You Can Still Follow In Their Footsteps

I'd wanted to go to the Pride March today.  But I got sick:  Something I ate last night didn't agree with me, or with something else I ate.  My condition would have been utterly incompatible with marching.


I feel a little sad about that, mainly because I got a bit of a rush from marching in last year's procession.  Then again, that was a special march, for the LGBT community as well as me personally.  Last year, we marched on the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion.  And I was "counting down":  Only nine days stood between me and my surgery.


Maybe it was a good thing, in a way, that I couldn't go this year.  Would  following, or trying to follow,  the footprints of a memory have been a good idea?  Perhaps that works collectively, but for me personally, it usually doesn't work very well.  


Here's a definition of frustration:  I am a person who holds on to, and treasures, memories.  But doing something "for old time's sake" usually has disastrous consequences for me.  Or, at least, it has unintended consequences.


This year is the 40th anniversary of the first march.  I guess that's significant, but it doesn't have quite the same resonance as the anniversary of the rebellion.  Maybe it's because last year's march passed in front of the Stonewall.  Of course, nearly all of us stopped, or at least slowed down, there.  Many marchers, of course, had firsthand memories of the event.  All I had was what I've read about it, and my imagination.  All I could think about was the story, perhaps apocryphal, of Sylvia Rivera tossing out her red patent stiletto-heeled shoe at the cops as they were about to storm the tavern.


With that toss, or whatever else she did that night, she helped to launch the gay rights movement as we know it.  And she became one of its first victims.  Perhaps, in a way, that's not surprising, as rebellions and revolutions have a way of cannibalizing themselves.  


Even though she and other transgendered people played important roles in the Rebellion and the early days of the LGBT rights movements, they were left behind or tossed under the bus, depending on who's narrating the history.  It didn't take long for LGBT organizations--indeed, the entire community--to be dominated by white professional gay men.  Marginalized as they were, they still had much more wealth and influence than lesbians, let alone transgendered people.  


I met Sylvia Rivera once, briefly, not long before her death.  Plenty of people were put off by her, and I could see why.  For one thing, she was very loud and often combative, if not belligerent.  Plus, she lived a hard life and didn't age well:  No one was going to do a fashion shoot with her.


But there was something else, which I have not been able to articulate until now:  She not only used the seductive rhetoric which succesful movements generate in their early days (Think of "Power to the People!"); she helped to make the rhetoric--and, in turn, was shaped by it.  Even after the battles are won or lost, or at least changed, it's hard to give up those slogans and chants of one's youth, even if they are no longer the lingua franca of the people for and by whom revolutions are fought.  


There's a prof in my department who, in that sense, reminds me of her.  He still refers to female students and colleagues as "sistas" and their male counterparts as "brothas."  When he introduced me, at a poetry reading, as "Sista Justine," I was, in a way, flattered.  But at the same time I felt sorry for him (even if he has tenure!).  The battle has not been won; rather, it has moved on and re-formed.  Yet he still talks about people--and movements--as if Huey Newton and Stokey Carmichael were running the show.


Likewise, in some way, Sylvia never moved on from those heady early days.  In one sense, I can understand why:  It could be argued, and I would agree, that the direction the movement took benefited a relatively small part of the community.  Sylvia was not one of those who benefited, just as I would not have been.  


I can't help but to wonder what her role--and, more important, what kind of person she would be now.  Although she was born only seven years earlier than I was, there is more than a generation's remove between us.  When she was igniting the Rebellion, I was unaware of it:  I would not learn of it until many years later.  She was fighting battles that I and others are just beginning to learn how to fight, much less win.  


And, I sometimes feel that she's shadowing me, or that I'm following her shadow:  I met her at the end of her life, and attended her funeral just as I was starting toward the life I lead now.  And, she died at the same age at which I had my surgery.


While I wish I could have marched today, I am still following in her footsteps, and those of other Stonewall veterans.  That, I suppose, is the best homage I can pay to them.

"You Ride Like A Girl!"

"You throw like a girl!"

Hearing that'll ruin any boy's day.  I heard it again, today, except that it wasn't directed at me.  Then again, I wasn't throwing anything.

If I were to throw anything, would I throw like a girl?

I just got another catalogue from Terry Bicycles.  Some of their products are printed or emblazoned with the logo "Ride Like A Girl!"

That got me to wondering whether one rider in the Tour de France peloton ever told another, "Vous pedale comme une fille!"  What, exactly, would "pedalling like a girl"  look like?

I remember the time a couple of years ago when I passed a couple of guys on Greenpoint Avenue, just after crossing the bridge from Long Island City.  They caught up to me when I stopped for the light at the intersection with Manhattan Avenue.  One of them yelled, "You ride real good for a lady!"

Then, there was the time--not too long ago--when I was riding down Van Sinderen Avenue in East New York.  A bunch of young guys and a couple of slightly-older men looked like they were having a campfire, sans the campfire, on their bikes.  A couple of the younger guys yelled, "Hey, babe."  Another added, "Wanna ride with us?"  As I passed, I heard one guy say, "That's no chick.  She rides too fast!"

So...Fast women aren't supposed to ride bikes?  Hmm...Well, I'm not a fast woman.  First of all, I just ate.  And I am--and always have been-- monogamous, if serially.  

Now let me get this right:  I might ride like a girl because I ride real good for a lady, but I'm too fast of a woman to ride like a chick.  Now, if I can formulate a relevant syllogism from all that, I might get tenure someplace--unless, of course, some student actually understands anything I said.

Besides...How can you be offended to hear "You play like a girl" after you've seen Mia Hamm?  And why would "You ride like a girl" stick in your craw if you've seen Rebecca Twigg or Paola Pezzo on their mounts?

The irony is that all of the time I spent riding with guys so I could ride like them, only better, actually helped me to my current path.  So where will riding like a woman take me?

Soccer In The Nail Salon

The other day, I was having my nails done at Hannah and Her Sisters, where I usually go.

One of the manicurists, Annie, looks younger than her daughter, who just graduated from a university in Korea. It seems that when I've seen her lately, she hugs me any chance she gets.  I don't mind:  She really seems to be a nice person.  And, I notice, she likes holding on to my hand for as long as she can.  It has me curious.

What was almost as intriguing, though, was her passion for soccer.   Whenever I'm there, the TV is on--usually to NY 1 News or one of the cooking shows that's on the cable channels.  But the other day, they were showing the World Cup soccer match between South Korea--the home country of Hannah, Annie and all of the other manicurists--and Nigeria.

At first, I thought they were tuned into the game merely as a matter of national pride.  There are plenty of people, especially here in the United Staes, who don't pay attention to the sport unless their country's team is playing in the World Cup.

But the women in the shop actually seemed to understand--and care about--soccer itself.  Angela (the women all go by Western names) was criticising one of the Korean players for holding onto the ball too long before shooting--or for not taking shots when they had good opportunities to score.  

I remarked that the Koreans had been playing well-organized, disciplined soccer until that day's match, and that Korea would have been well ahead of  the Nigerians if they continued to play that way.  But, they were playing a surprisingly undisciplined game and not shooting well.  "They have the chances, " I said. "They're just taking too long.

I was getting my pedicure; a woman in the chair next to mine asked whether I'd ever played.  I allowed that I had.  "It shows.  You know more about this than most other women," she remarked.

Down the street, there's a bar that's shown every one of the matches so far.  I couldn't help but to wonder what it would be like if I had the sort of conversation I was having, not in the nail salon, but in that--or any other--sprorts bar.  Of course, I wouldn't go there for a variety of reasons, but mainly for the same reason I generally don't go into bars:  I don't drink alcohol.  Plus, I've discovered that alcohol and testosterone are a very toxic combination.

And to think...I never would have known that Hannah and her sisters were such fans!

Anniversaries to Come

On my way to class, I bumped into Anne, whom I hadn't seen in months.

She's a geneticist and biology professor who came to the college two years ago.   At an orientation the September before last, she greeted me and recalled something I hadn't:  A couple of months earlier, she was on campus for the first time and was trying to find an office.  I walked with her to that office--human resources, if I recall correctly--and gave her a sort of mini-tour.  


And, not long after that orientation, I saw her again and she mentioned that she'd found this blog.  She really liked it, she said, and admired my courage in my transition and in discussing it publicly.  It's still odd, to me anyway, when people say I have courage for doing what I've done.  I did only what I needed to do.


We met several times during the subsequent year, my last before the surgery.  Ironically, she gave birth around the same time I had my surgery.  She was on leave in the fall and was in only part-time--mainly for her research--in the spring. That's why I haven't seen her.


Now her baby is about to turn one year old at just about the same time as I am.  I would like to mark the occasion with her; we talked about having lunch one day.  


She has said that I was also giving birth--to myself.  I agree with that, but I think the purposes and outcomes of those births are different.  The surgery is already starting to seem less like a point of demarcation than it had  been, or than I thought it would be.  I've had the surgery; I'm continuing and changing my life, and while the surgery has been important, it is really, at least in some way, nothing more than a means to an end.  Some would argue that seeing the surgery in that way, and that it's "fading into the background," as someone else remarked, is a sign that it and my transition were successful.  I would agree with them.


On the other hand,  Anne's child will always be a reminder of her having given birth.  Or so I would expect.  As an event, I'm not sure that it would "fade into the background" because I do not know what purpose, if any, having a child fills--especially for the mother who already has a child.  


I know that many women--including a few I know--had children because they wanted to be mothers.  While I can understand, at least to some degree, wanting that, it seems to me that having a child and becoming a mother are not things most women do in order to fulfill some other purpose.  Instead, giving birth and becoming mothers are things  that women seem to do for their own reasons, possibly to fulfill some inner purpose.  Somehow I don't think they do those things with the expectation that they will think less about them over time.


Anyway:  Anne, if your reading this:  J'en souhaite une bonne anniversaire pour l'enfan--et pour toi.
r

Talking To My Father

Today I made it a point of calling my father when my mother was out.   Even though my relationship with my father has improved greatly, I still talk much more, much longer and in more intimate detail with my mother than I do with my father.  Most likely, it will always be that way.  But, because today is Father's Day, I wanted to get into a conversation with my father that wasn't just an afterthought of calling my mother.


He was apologetic about the fact that my mother wasn't there.  Of course, it made no sense:  After all, he didn't tell her to go shopping.  But, given our history, I can understand why he'd still think I was calling to talk to my mother and that I was talking to him only because he happened to answer the phone.




Sometimes I wish I could've had a different relationship from the one I had with him when I was growing up.  Then again, I could say that about nearly all of the relationships I had.  In fact, I could say that I wish many other things had been different.  But, of course, that would have meant my being--or, at least, living as--a different person from the one I had been.  I think he understands that now.  I know my mother does.  Sometimes she berates herself for not knowing--about me, about her own life and life generally--what she knows now.  And he has wished that he could have been a different sort of father from the one he had been to me and my brothers.


Still, even though I  would have liked for him to understand me better than he did--and that I could have spared myself and others, especially my mother, all sorts of pain--I don't regret any of it.  Perhaps that seems contradictory. But I know that had I not lived the life I lived until my transition, I couldn't have understood, much less helped him or her or anyone else to understand, why I need to live the life I'm living now--which, of course, is to say, to understand that I am the person I am.  


That may have been more difficult for my father to learn because, first of all, we didn't have the kind of relationship that my mother and I have shared.  But, equally important, I, and then he, had to learn that I simply could not be the sort of man he might have hoped I would become because, well, I simply couldn't have become any sort of man at all.  And I think he now understands that I really tried--and, it seems, he respects that, and the fact that I've been doing what I need to do in order to be successful in any sense of the word.


The man has tried.  That's really all I can ask of anybody.  And, I'd say, he's learned and showed me a facet of himself I didn't think he had--or, perhaps, that I couldn't allow myself to see:  that he is a man who's capable of compassion, if not empathy.  Right now, that seems to be working pretty well. 


Perhaps I'll never be able to say, as Cordelia says to Lear, "My love's richer than my tongue."  But if we have more respect and understanding for each other than we did before, then I think he's definitely achieved something.