Understanding His Girlfriend

Today, I went to Bicycle Habitat again to bring Hal some small parts for the bike I’m building.  Hal, whom I’ve known for a long while, is putting it together.  Raul, another mechanic whom I haven’t known quite as long, but with whom I worked briefly in a Brooklyn shop, was putting together a not-bad but not-quite-as-nice bike.  We chatted about one thing and another, and he started to talk about his girlfriend.

He’s about my age, and his girlfriend is “a few years younger,” he said.  “She gets weird sometimes,” he added.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, sometimes she doesn’t want me to touch her breasts.  And sometimes she doesn’t want me to touch her at all.”

“Really?”

“Yeah…but this is the weird part:  She says, ‘It’s not your fault.  It’s not about you.’”

“Well, listen to her,” I said.

From the expression on his face, I could tell what he was thinking:  “She’s really gone over to the other side!”—or something like that.

“It probably isn’t about you,” I started to explain.

“You’re right,” he said.  “And I know why she’s that way.”

I anticipated, verbatim, what he said next:  “She was abused, by her ex-husband and by her family."

“That’s terrible.  And it takes a lot of time to get over it.”

“But she should get over it.”

Now, I am a layperson.  But I might know a bit more than the average layperson about the kind of trauma his girlfriend is suffering.  So I felt confident in saying what I said next:

“She needs to heal at whatever pace she needs to heal.  It’s not about you; all you can do is to be supportive.”

For an instant, his eyes narrowed and his jaw slackened.  On one hand, he seemed to be thinking, “She’s really gone over to the other side.”  But he also seemed to want to hear more.

“It won’t be easy.  You probably have seen that already.  But just remember…She’s not rejecting you.  She’s fighting something that won’t leave her so easily.”

He sighed.  “You’re right.”  Then, after thinking some more, he said, “You really understand this.”

“Well…” I said. After a very long pause, I continued, “I know something about these things from experience.”

“What do you mean?” 

I had an instant debate with myself.  It ended when I decided that I had nothing to lose by saying what I said next: “I was abused, too. I understand how she feels.”

He was less surprised than I expected him to be.  “It was a family friend.  That’s why he could do it:  My family trusted him.  So, as a child, I thought speaking against him was an act of betrayal.  That’s why, even though it happened from about the time I was six until I was nine, I didn’t talk about it until I was thirty-four.”

His eyes widened.  “You know, I thought you had a lot of courage.  But I didn’t know how much until now.” 

That, coming from someone against whom I used to race, and with whom I worked.  But it’s still weird to hear things like that.  So I demurred, “Well, you know, I just do what I need to do.  And I only do what I need to do when my back is to the wall, when I have no other choice.”

“Still,” he said, “You’re doing it. Thanks!”

“For what?”

“For helping me to understand.”

The funny thing about getting older is that you end up playing roles you never imagined you could.  What’s even more ironic is that you start relating to people in ways you previously couldn’t when you cross from their side of the street to the other.

Public or Private?

Here’s a dilemma that’s become familiar to me:  The one of “going stealth” vs. being more public about my identity.

Ironically, taking a long bike ride has made me think about that question.  I think taking that ride alone and feeling good about it further complicated the situation, albeit in a good way. 

When I first started my transition, I wondered whether I’d be able to take solo rides like the ones I used to take.  Don’t get me wrong:  Sometimes I enjoy company when I’m in the saddle.  But you don’t lose your taste for riding alone if you’ve spent weeks or months on your bike in countries other than your own.  Part of it has to do with having the freedom to follow my own whims, which is something cycling has always meant to me. I’ve purchased a plane ticket the day before my flight and packed that evening before going off to France with my bike.

Given the increased levels of so-called security, I don’t know whether I will ever again be able to take off with so little advance planning.  And, I don’t know how I’d bring my bike.  The last time I brought a bike on a plane was just before 11 September in 2001.

But, even more important were my concerns about safety.  I wondered whether that was the reason why I still don’t see very many women riding bikes by themselves.  I also wondered whether I would be self-conscious, as I sometimes am when I eat alone in a restaurant.

Well, so far things have worked out well.  Not only have I not had any problems, so far, with would-be harassers, I have been treated well, and with great courtesy.  People, especially men of a certain age, go out of their way to hold doors open for me and to be helpful in all sorts of ways.  And, of course, a couple have flirted with me.

Maybe I’m seen as someone’s eccentric aunt or grandmother.  Whatever the case, no one seems to suspect or care about my past and, of course, I have no desire to talk about it with most people I meet.

This is a really nice position to be in.  Would I have to compromise it if I continue to advocacy about LGBT issues, or work with organizations that work with the community?  I think now of the panel discussion in which I participated last week.  I enjoyed it, but I was glad to be able to go back to being a “civilian” when it was over.  Even though I know I am “of transgendered experience,” to use the politically correct parlance, I underwent my therapy, hormone treatment and surgery so I could live as the woman I am.  That seems to be working well for me.  It’s nice not to have to explain myself. 

Still, I wonder whether, or how much, I am responsible to educate other people about us and to what degree I am obligated, or want, to advocate for us.

Passing Showers and Coming Weather

Last night, and for part of today, I felt sadness moving through me like showers that sometimes pass through the afternoons or evenings at this time of year.  In the day, sunshine follows; at night, the sky fills with bright stars and moonlight.  But you know that those showers will pass through again, if not tomorrow, then on another day.

Of course, the pattern of sun and rain and sun, or rain and stars, is simply the meteorological cycle, at least in this part of the world at this time of year.  However, the sadness that follows happy, or at least good, events is somehow less predictable, if just as inevitable as the weather.

What that play between joy and sadness means, I think, is that I’m working something else, whether consciously or not.  About a year after I started to take hormones, and had been experiencing giggle fits and crying jags for a few months, I realized that tears are a means for the psyche—and, sometimes, the body—to cleanse itself.  As with any kind of cleansing, it doesn’t happen all at once, which is why we (or at least I) need the crying spells or giggle fits to repeat themselves.

So what is it that I’m working out?  I suppose it has to do with the time I went to high school in Middletown, New Jersey and the years my parents lived there afterward.  Going to see my parents there—or, at least, a couple of towns over, in an area that was almost as familiar to me—was bound to make me think about a few things. 

During our conversations, my mother and father talked about some of the mistakes we made and the things we might do differently.  While I was often unhappy —Indeed, I was probably clinically depressed, or in some state close to it, much of the time—I don’t feel that I had a bad childhood or even adolescence.  We didn’t have much, at least materially, and I think we were trying to negotiate relationships with each other, and people outside the family, as well as various other types of situations, without much to guide us.  In my case, there wasn’t much that, or very many people who, could have shown me what I needed to do.

I tried to explain, as I have in some of our other conversations, that I don’t blame them—and, truthfully, I never did blame them, or at least not my mother—for whatever difficulties I might’ve had.  I was trying to deal with things for which I didn’t have names, much less explanations or other ways to portray.  Even if I did have the words and other knowledge that could have helped me to make sense of what I was feeling, I’m not sure that my mother, and I am certain my father, wouldn’t have had the means—whatever they might have been—to understand what I was thinking about, much less a way to deal with it and even less a way to help me with it.

My father had his ideas about the kind of man he wanted me to become and the career—that of a military officer—he wanted me to pursue.  But I don’t even see that as being as much a part of the problem as I once did.  I get the feeling that his own upbringing, and the milieu in which he grew up, didn’t give him very effective tools for understanding his own needs and wants, much less those of anyone else.

My mother, at least, has always been a very, very good listener and had plenty of empathy, at least for me.  I think she understood, at some point, that I really was trying to do the things that my teachers and others expected of me, and the things those people—as well as she and Dad—hoped and wished for me.  I’ll admit that I didn’t want to fulfill some expectations because, at best, they were incongruent with my psyche and at worst they could have destroyed me.  And there were others I didn’t want to fulfill simply because of my own anger.  In some way, Mom understood all of that. 

It may have had to do with the fact that, as she said, she married and had kids at as early an age as she did.  In her time, most young women married and had their first kids at about the same age as my mother did those things, but today almost any parent who’s not some sort of religious fundamentalist would not want his or her kid to marry or have kids at such an age.  She did what was expected of her and, I think, because of that, she knew I was trying to fulfill expectations, too.

I began to understand what those expectations were, at least for me, when I was in high school.  That was also when, I believe, gender roles started to become more rigid and the genders more segregated.  Furthermore, in high school, we were expected, for the first time, to seriously think about onthe course of the rest of our lives.  That would determine, among other things, how much longer we would go to school and what kinds of schools we would attend.

Although there were no rules that said only males could go into certain occupations and that only females should work in others, gender expectations came into play when we were deciding what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives—or even in the immediate future.  For instance, only boys studied auto repair and only girls studied “beauty culture.”  Plus, in high school, many kids start to think about what kind of family life they would or wouldn’t want to make for themselves. 

I often think about what those years might’ve been like if I knew some of what I know now.  And I can’t help to wonder what Mom and Dad might’ve done.  Then again, some things could and would not have been different; others might've passed.

The Lone Cyclist

Yesterday I took a short and totally un-noteworthy ride locally through some local streets between my place and the World’s Fair Marina.   And I finally got the new phone –and phone plan—I’ve needed. 

Today, ironically, I found myself thinking—and talking—about cycling even though I didn’t ride and I spent the afternoon with my parents, who aren’t cyclists in any way, shape or form.

I met them at a place incongruously called Airport Plaza.  For years, it was the first stop for the bus that runs from the Port Authority Terminal, at the western end of Times Square, to the Jersey Shore.  Airport Plaza is one of those shopping plazas—It’s too old and small to be called a mall—that always looked rather forlorn and even a bit dusty even when business was booming.  It always seems to be filled with stores that started a couple of years too late and seem to hang on for a year or two longer than they should.  The Wetson’s restaurant that anchored one end of the plaza during the first few years my family lived in New Jersey may well have been the last of a chain that lost out to McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s about thirty-five years ago.

When Mom and Dad were living in Middletown, I occasionally took the bus I took today, and got off at Airport Plaza.  Other times, I pedaled to their house and spent a night or weekend with them.  When I was at Rutgers, the ride was about thirty or thirty-five miles, depending on which route I took; from New York, I’d pedal about fifty miles by the time I saw them.

Usually, I’d detour a bit through the areas just on the other side of Route 36 from Airport Plaza.  They were webs of streets that paralleled, skirted or ended at Sandy Hook Bay. 

Those streets wove through the towns of Keyport, Keansburg and a section of Middletown that used to be called East Keansburg, but is now called North Middletown.  They were Bruce Springsteen country before anyone heard of him:  Streets lined with houses that were everything from tidy to shabby, depending on the amount of money and time the blue-collar families that inhabited them could or would devote to their care.  Not even the best of them would have been considered for Architectural Digest; the worst looked like somewhat bigger and better versions of the shacks seen in rural Appalachia.

And, yes, it seemed that at any given moment, at least half of the late-teenaged and young adult males were torquing wrenches or strumming guitars or pounding drums in the garages of those houses.  Then, as now, American flags rolled and spilled in the breeze in front of many of the houses; some also had banners for whichever branch of the military in which the fathers or sons served.  Many of those houses also had boats and trailers parked in their driveways. 

In those days, I used to enjoy pedaling along that stretch of the shoreline because the views were actually quite nice and because, in those houses and the people who lived in them, there was an utter lack of pretention—even though I knew most of those people would disagree with me on just about everything. 

Also, while some of those people would swim, sail or do any number of other things in the water, they did not turn it into a commodity.  There was no status in living closer to the water.  So, riding along it was a calming experience.

Oddly enough, it was during those rides that I could most readily imagine myself living as a girl and, later, a woman.  The artist/romantic in me says it had something to do with the waters of the bay and the billowing sails on the boats.  What’s really strange, though, is that I could feel as I did in an environment that could be fairly called “redneck.” 

Along the shoreline, multistory condo buildings and stores have replaced the older one-and two-story, some of which, in their splintered and peeling condition,  looked as if they’d been left there by the tides.

Mom, Dad and I had lunch in Ye Cottage Inn, a restaurant that, so far, has survived the changes.  But, even though it’s been updated and has some nice views from its windows, I have to wonder whether it will survive the changes I’ve described.  The food was pretty good, if unexciting.

The place was about a third full, which, I guess, isn’t bad for a Thursday.  However, about half the people eating there were part of the same group of senior women who seemed to be having their “girls’ lunch.”  And I was the youngest person eating in that restaurant.

Not that I mind older people.  Back in the days when I was riding down that way, I used to enjoy talking with two of my mother’s friends.  In fact, I preferred them to nearly all of my peers. 

But most of the people one sees in that area are very old or very young.  Those shoreline condos are, I’m sure, full of commuters who are young.  There is a ferry nearby that goes to the Wall Street area, so they probably don’t see much of the town besides their condos and the ferry.  When those young execs and execs-in-training are promoted, decide to have families or have some other life-changing event.  Will they stay?  And when those old people die, who will replace them?

Finally…Will anybody there take up cycling?  Although some of the streets are very cyclable, I cannot recall having seen, besides me,  anyone but very young children on bicycles.

If I pedal down there once again, will I be the Lone Cyclist?

The Childhood We Always Wanted

The other night, when Pauline and I were scavenging the racks at The Strand bookstore, I found a copy of "Blinded by the Right."  In it, author David Brock tells the story of how he sold out his principles to become the one who wrote "The Real Anita Hill," among other things.  


But what's truly heartbreaking about it is that he was, from his early adolescence onward, a closeted gay male.  His father was even more conservative (in the truest sense of the word) than his colleagues and bosses in the right-wing publications and think tanks for whom he worked.  As he became more and more enmeshed in the world of right-wing punditry (I was tempted to write "puppetry."), he became more and more fearful. As you might imagine, the circles in which he traveled were inhabited mainly by men who wanted to be, well, men, at least by their definitions of the word.  So homophobic and misogynistic epithets were as much a part of their vocabulary as the names of tools are in the language of a construction worker.


At times, Brock says he was trying to gain approval from his father, who never wanted to hear about his boyfriends or any other aspect of his homosexuality after he "came out."  You might say that he was looking for surrogate fathers among his editors, coaches and others who mentored him.  He also felt as if he were always the "outsider" and could operate in no other way. That is the reason why his first political hero was Robert F. Kennedy, but by the time he was a sophomore in college, he was hanging out with the Young Republicans.


Through it all, he felt intense isolation and loneliness, to the point that he couldn't form relationships even if he'd wanted them.  That sounded all too familiar to me.  


I think of that now when I replay, in my mind, a conversation I had with someone who said that he felt gays were always "throwing their preferences in other people's faces."  Now I wish I had explained this:  When you're straight and cisgender, you don't really need to assert your desires:  People assume that you want to have a relationship--in whatever form it might take--with a member of your opposite gender, and that you want to, in some ways, fit collective notions of how members of your gender comport themselves.  When you don't have the same attractions the majority of the population feels or don't think you are the gender to which you were assigned at birth, you must speak up for yourself, especially if someone thinks he or she can "change" you by finding someone for you.


But this self-repression that so many of us practice, whether we are forced into it or feel as if we are, is inevitably self-destructive.  It leads some of us to abuse substances, and others (or sometimes the same people) into abusive relationships.


Some people, of course, want us to conform to their notions of gender identity and sexuality no matter how much harm it may do us. But there are others who simply don't, through no fault of their own, understand why  you cannot be a part of the gender binary or the heterosexual world.  In other words, they simply don't know how to support us in the ways we need.  


Now, at least there are more people who understand than there were when Brock, Pauline and I were growing up.  But I hope there will be more.

Can I Stay Out And Move On?

The other night, I was part of a panel discussion that followed a showing of the film Trinidad.  


The other two members of the panel were a trans man and a trans woman, both of whom have much more of a history of activism than I have, and will probably ever have.  The trans woman, Pauline Park, is one of this area's better-known activists and was the Grand Marshal of the New York City Pride March a few years ago.  Jay Kallio, the trans man, has decided that activism and simply speaking up were the best way to "make the most" of the time he has left--which may not be much, given his medical conditions.


I met Pauline during the year when I was going to work as Nick and ducking into the coffee shop bathrooms to make my Clark Kent-to-Lois Lane change before going about the rest of my life.  I met Jay some time after that, when I hadn't been living full-time as Justine for very long.  


When I first met Pauline, I was only a few months away from living full-time as Justine, although I didn't know that.  When I met Jay, I saw the surgery in my future.  But I didn't know how far or near that future would be.


It was odd to realize that the thing to which I was so looking forward--actually, for which I was hoping--when I met Jay is now part of my past.  And the life I'd wanted to have when I first met Pauline is my life now, and when I think of my past, I don't think of Nick as the actor in it; rather, she was and is Justine.


During the discussion, someone in the audience asked us how we define ourselves.  Each of us mentioned an experience that showed us we were not of the sex marked on our birth certificates when we were born.   I said, "But I was a girl, a woman, even before that.  Most people think that I became a woman when I had my surgery and that I became transgendered when I started my process of transition.  But I was always a woman; I just had to live as male for much of my life."


Then, I had a very strange sensation.  On one hand, I was enjoying the talk, and people in the audience were mostly sympathetic.  But, on the other, a part of me was asking myself, "What am I doing here if I am a woman?"  At the same time, I realized that being a woman was the reason why I was there.


This is a dilemma, to say the least.  I can see why some post-op trans women completely leave the world of transgender activism (if they were involved in it) and the other vestiges of the trans community behind them.  Then again, I can see why some remain in a kind of transgender subculture:  We have histories that are different from those of cis-gender women--or men, for that matter.


Marci Bowers didn't approve of the fact that Sabrina Marcus allowed her kids to call her "Dad," even after her transition and surgery.  I can understand that, but at the same time, I wouldn't know what to call a transgendered parent.  As Sabrina's daughter said, she can't call her "Mom" because she already has a mother:  the woman who gave birth to her.  


So, the question is:  How much of a break can or should we make with our pasts?  Marci sees herself as a woman, and that of all the things she is, "transgendered is about eighth."  But everybody knows that she was once a man named Mark.  These days, no matter how much you distance yourself from your past, it's not that difficult for someone else to learn about it.  Even if I'd never written a word about my transition, someone with a little too much time on his or her hands would have  found me out.


Sometimes I am tempted to go to get a new job or to move to some place where nobody knows me.  But, even though I'll probably never be famous, I somehow doubt that I'll be completely anonymous, either:  It's hard to do that when the things you do for a living involve--or are--communication with other people.  And it seems that I'll always be doing that sort of work, whether or not I get paid for it--or whether or not I'm any sort of transgender activist.

The Choice: Intellectual, Not Academic

I'm still thinking about the conversation I had last night with the "invisible man."  He said it was one of the most intelligent conversations he's had in a long time, and he is about my age.  He is certainly a very intelligent person who, lately, has had to answer a lot of questions for himself.  That's the key, I think:  He's had to answer them for himself.  No one else could have given him the answers he found for himself; without aggrandizing myself, I can say I understand what an excruciating process that can be.  I am lucky in that sometimes it has been exhiliarating, or at least a relief, to have come up with the answers I've found, or at least to have found my own way, wherever it might lead.


Now I am starting to understand why, although I often enjoy teaching, I find myself hating the academic world and, even more, its institutions.  I can say, in all honesty, that every year I have taught has left me hating the military/industrial/educational complex even more than I did the year before.  And, during the past few years, I wondered how in the world anybody could want to become a gender studies professor--or, for that matter, a professor in almost any area called "studies."   


What I am realizing is this: I had assumed that I could never fit into the academic world because I'm not an intellectual.  At least, I was loath to call myself one.  Isn't that ironic?  For so long, I was completely unwilling to acknowledge that in my heart of hearts, I am not a straight male.  Actually, I didn't have to acknowlege or indulge it; it was simply a fact of my life, just as the sun rising and setting are facts of this world.  And how foolish would anyone look in denying them?


Now I realize that, in some way, I had no other choice but to be an intellectual.  I can no more deny or suppress that than I could my femaleness.  All of us, even those of us who have been considered "stupid" or otherwise "less than," have had to think our way through some situation or another when our physical abilities, no matter how great they were, would not have been enough--or simply would have been useless or unusable.  When your body fails, or is just inadequate, you have no have no choice but to become a creature, and creation, of your mind.


That is not the same as living in your head.  That is what many in the academic world do.  That is why there are so many petty, pointless arguments in meetings of almost any department or office you can think of.  There is seldom any discussion or even fighting about actual ideas.  The latter is something you do when you are really looking for answers; you fight over procedures and "stuff" to score points, which can feed only your ego rather than your mind.  That's just as dangerous as eating Twinkies when your body is crying out for vegetables and fruit.


In other words, when your life depends on it, you're looking for answers.  Whether or not you find them, the search will keep you going.  The problem with that is that when you're doing something because your life depends on it, those who don't have that sense of urgency and peril can't understand why you're thinking and testing everything they say.  


Now I understand why I have never wanted this site, or anything else I write, to be academic.  It's exactly the same reason why I hope I will challenge, or at least stimulate, people mentally.  And most important of all, I want to continue learning. 


 Really, I have no other choice.  I can no more pretend that I can live in a non-intellectual way than I could pretend that I could live as a man.

Invisible In The Same Fight?

This is a first for me:  I haven't posted on this blog for four days.  The bike ride (which you can read about in my other blog, Mid-Life Cycling) is part of the reason why:  I focused on that, and on cycling generally.  


But something else is going on.  You might say that now there's less to write about my transition, or my gender identity generally.  Frankly, I simply don't find myself thinking about it much unless someone brings it up in conversation.  That's probably a good sign.  At least, I'm happy about it:  I don't want to spend all of my time thinking and talking about it.   And why should I, really?  After all, I just took a bike trip and even when I was grungy and sweaty, and not wearing any makeup, I was taken for the woman I am.  


It's not just about other people's perceptions, though.  In previous posts, I've mentioned that whenever I think of an event from my past--specifically, one that I experienced  "as" Nick--I see myself as Justine in that event. I did nothing to alter my thought processes:  I've simply come to see myself as always having been Justine.  I must admit, though, it is rather strange to think of Justine as a Boy Scout or altar boy!  


In some weird way, I've been rendered invisible.  In some not-so-weird way, I'm happy about that.  At least some of my physical safety is predicated on that; so is the courtesy and respect I experience.  


What's odd about my invisibility, and my satisfaction with it, is the way it contrasts with the invisibility of a man I talked with last night.  All right, I didn't talk to an invisible man:  It's been at least twenty-five years since I've taken any substances that would give me the ability to do that!   What I mean is that the man in question feels that he has become an invisible man, like the one Ralph Ellison depicted in his novel by that same name. 


(By the way, I just happen to think it's one of the best novels written by an American.)


He made a very interesting comment to the effect that after 9/11, it seemed that white men and women retained their dominant status in American culture, but that Asian women joined them.  Black men , he said, fell by the wayside and it seemed that Asian men were simply forgotten.  He has a Korean girlfriend and says that "all the Asian women are going out with or marrying white men--or, if they're very young, they might "go for a Rastafarian, or at least some young guy who looks like one."


So here is the dilemma:  My invisibility helps me, while his hurts him.  It's enough to make me wonder whether being transgendered has anything in common with any other oppressed minority group, save for the fact that we experience prejudice and even violence simply for being who are.

Locker Room Talk

This morning I did a short ride down to Battery Park and along the greenway that skirts the Hudson on the West Side of Manhattan.  I just wanted to get in a few miles before the heat came--which it did, like a blast from an old furnace. 


En route, I stopped at Bicycle Habitat because I wanted them to check a wheel I want to ride tomorrow when I go to the Delaware Water Gap.   Hal wasn't in, so Raul, who actually worked with me briefly when we were both at Open Road Bicycles in Brooklyn, did the work. 


He and I don't go as far back as I do with Hal, but I'd guess that our paths have crossed for close to twenty-five years.  And he's been respectful yet still friendly about my changes.  He doesn't have a story about a gay family member or some such thing, but he understands that my expereince is not a tragedy or a sin, for he has experience with the former and has his own ideas, shall we say, about what constitutes the latter.


Plus, he--like Sheldon and Hal--have respect for me from the rides that we did together.  When I was in shape, I could keep up with just about anybody, or so it seemed. It was one of the few areas in  my life in which I had any real confidence.


Anyway, when we talk, we fall into a kind of banter that male friends and friendly acquaintances sometimes engage in with me.  It consists of more than a bit of locker room talk, and sometimes contains the kinds of sexual references you might admit.


I mentioned someone we knew back in the day--an old employer of Raul's, as a matter of fact.  That got us to reminiscing about some of the man's quirks and foibles.  Finally, Raul blurted out, "He should have been a girl!"


I squinted.


"He's not a man," Raul explained.  "He has no balls."


Realizing what he said, he turned red.  "I'm sorry.  I didn't mean that.  I feel stupid."


I started to giggle.  He looked even more embarrased.


"I didn't mean to upset you."  My giggle turned into a laugh.


I mean, how else could I have responded?  Not so long ago, I'd laugh when he or someone made such an assessment because I'd probably agree with it.   As a matter of fact, I probably would have said something like it myself.


"I'm really sorry."


"For what?"


I almost told him:  "You're a guy.  You say stuff like that."  But, instead, I said something about having heard it all before.


What's really funny, though, is that if what Raul said were true, I would have been envying his old boss.  What Raul said today reminded me of an encounter I had with the editor of a newspaper I wrote for.  He was like one of those city editors from '40's noir movies:  foulmouthed, cynical, chauvinistic almost to the point of misogyny.  And he smoked and drank way too much.  Had things just been slightly different, he might have been one of the cops or perps we were writing about.


One day, he thought I could have been "tougher" in my questioning of a precinct commander.  "When you're trying to get to the bottom of the matter, you've gotta go after 'em," he yelled.  "Otherwise--I don't mean to offend you--otherwise, people'll think you don't have any balls!"


"If only..." I sighed to myself.

For Carl Walker-Hoover and Evelyn Hernandez

For the past two days, I was busy with the end of the course I've been teaching.  The nice thing about summer classes, especially the ones in the evening, are the students that take them.  The bad thing is that they're so rushed, especially at the end.


OK, so now I've given you an excuse about why I haven't posted during the last couple of days.  But there's another reason why I haven't posted:  I simply haven't thought much about the sorts of things I write in my posts, at least for this blog.


Today, though, I noticed some news coverage about a girl who'd been bullied and committed suicide.  You've probably heard about Phoebe Prince by now.  Of course, the suicide of any young person, or anyone is tragic and devastating to the people they leave behind. (Trust me, I know:  Two friends and three friendly acquaintances of mine ended their own lives.) But, I have to ask this question:  Why has her death garnered so much attention while comparatively few people have heard about Carl Walker-Hoover?


He lived not far from Phoebe Prince, and he was only eleven years old.  But, for starters, Phoebe looked like the sort of girl that anyone in "flyover country" would want as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece or pupil.  Not only was she pretty, she was--according to whom you believe--bullied for "taking" the boyfriends of other girls in her school.  And, on top of being straight, she was--although an immigrant--white.


On the other hand, Carl was taunted by other kids who perceived him as gay.  What many people forget is one doesn't have to be gay, lesbian or transgendered in order to suffer from bigotry and violence; rather, one only has to be perceived as non-heterosexual or non- cisgendred.   On top of his perceived identity, he had the cross of actually being part of another stigmatized group:  He was black.


The disparity between the amount of attention paid to the suicides of Phoebe Prince and Carl Walker-Hoover reminds me of a similar disparity between the coverage of the murders of Laci Peterson and Evelyn Hernandez, which occured only a few miles and months apart.  Both women were killed while pregnant; their bodies later washed up on the shores of San Francisco Bay.  But, while Ms. Peterson was a pretty white (actually, mixed-race, but her facial features were Caucasian) woman who, as a teenager, had been a cheerleader in an upscale San Francisco suburb, Ms. Hernandez was a Salvadorean immigrant who lived and worked in the Outer Mission.


When I think of Carl Walker-Hoover and Evelyn Hernandez, I can't help but to think of just about any non-cisgendered person who was murdered or who, like one friend and one friendly acquaintance of mine, committed suicide over their gender identities.  One almost never hears about them outside of Transgender Day of Remembrance events.  And, too often, when LGBT people--or immigrants from Third-World countries or African-Americans-- are killed, many people believe they "had it coming to them" simply for being who they are--or being perceived as what they're not.  They do not get the sort of sympathy or generate the kind of outrage that Phoebe Prince and Laci Peterson did with their tragic deaths.  


Evelyn Peterson was just as much someone's wife and mother as Laci Peterson was.  Just as Phoebe Prince was someone's beloved child, so was Carl Walker-Hoover.  And so am I and so, I hope, are you.

Redemption Through Marriage?

Today I saw my cousin again.  He returned from Florida on Friday, where he visited my parents and one of his cousins.  And, my mother gave him a set of pots and pans, as well as a shawl and a bracelet, to bring to me. 


After we had lunch at the Bel Aire Diner (highly recommended!), he asked whether I'd want to take a ride to my  great-aunt's house.  There are two things he really likes to do:  talk and drive.  So, of course, he was completely in his element, and I saw something--not so much a "side" or "dimension" of him as much as his sometimes-contradictory values.


He asked me whether I could marry.  I said that now I could marry a man.  OK, it's not the first time anyone has asked me that.  Then he asked another question I've heard before:  "Do you think you will?"

After I said I probably won't be married, he expressed concern.  "I haven't ruled it out," I explained.  "But I really would have to meet the right person."


"But don't you worry that you'll grow old alone."


"People get married and have kids and still end up alone.  I've seen it."


"Yeah, but if you were to have a few kids, chances are that one of them, at least, will take care of you."


"Well, that's not the best bet to make.  It doesn't seem like a good reason to get married or have kids."


"It's not.  But you should think about marriage."


Now, I should mention that this cousin has religious beliefs that I don't share.  He doesn't quote the Bible directly; he does it second hand, as in, "a man isn't supposed to lie with a man."  Normally, I try to keep myself out of Bible (or religious) discussions:  Unless you totally agree with the other person /people, those discussions  don't turn out amicably.  But I did challenge him on one point:  He said the Bible also said a man shouldn't "change into" a woman.


I'll admit, I'm not a regular Bible reader.  But I don't recall any verse that said that.  


Anyway, I found it very interesting that even though he doesn't approve (because of his religion) of my "sex change," he's giving me the most traditional, even conservative, arguments for getting married to a man. He said that if I were to meet the right man, he would "take care of" me.  It's almost as if he were trying to "redeem" me through the sorts of marriage sanctioned by his church.

A Dream In Sunset Park

I am going to make the most audacious claim you'll hear for a while.

I am going to show you a photo of a dream:

Here's another photo of that same dream:

Believe it or not, the place in the photo looked more or less as you see it back around 1961.  Yes, it's a place I'd actually been to before today.  This is how I got there today:

OK, so now you know I'm not in some exotic foreign land.  To give you an idea of where I am, here's another shot.

Those of you who are familiar with Brooklyn, NY--or part of it, anyway--now know where I am.  It's Sunset Park, which is on a hill surrounded by the eponymous neighborhood. 

Save for the views, not many people would call it their "dream" park.  But it has become mine, through no choice of my own.

I don't make any great effort to remember my dreams.  Some of them just happen to stick with me, for whatever reasons.  But I know that I have had more than a few dreams in Sunset Park, or some place that looks very much like it.  

One of those dreams came during my first night in France.  That day, I took the boat from Dover to Calais.   After I'd gone through French customs, I went to a bar.  In those days, Calais was fairly gritty and, being a seaport town, full of sailors, dockworkers and such:  the very kinds of people who were in the bar.  

Every one of them was even more inebriated than I would become.  Given the sort of person I was then--at age twenty-one--that's saying quite a bit.  However, I'm not sure if the libations were lubricating their tongues and making them start conversations with me.  

I wasn't worried about them.  I was, however, worried about this:  The only word I understood of what they were saying was "miss-shyure."  Did I not work hard enough in my French classes?  Was I taught a dialect they didn't speak?  

Anyway, we all got laughs at each other's expense and I managed to ride to Boulogne-sur-mer.   It wasn't very far, but the town had a hostel listed in the Hosteling International guide.  It was clean and relatively quiet.  At least, it was quiet enough for me to fall asleep not long after I had supper.  Or maybe the alcohol had something to do with it--or the dream I would have in Sunset Park.

My grandmother was in that dream.  I spent a lot of time with her and my grandfather when my mother had to go to work. My grandparents lived not far from the park and, very early in my childhood, they used to take me to it.  In those days, it had a garden in the middle of it.  Of course, in my memory, it's one of the most beautiful gardens in the history or horticulture--or, at least, one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen.  So is the view I've shown, which--as I've said--is much like the view I have in my memory.  

The following day after my first dream in that park, I cycled into a town called Montreuil-sur-mer.  It's a few kilometres inland from the English Channel, but a few centuries ago, before its harbor silted up,  it was right on the coast and was a fairly major port.  It's the town in which Jean Valjean of Les Miserables becomes one of  les bourgeois and serves as mayor--and where Inspector Jalabert tracks him down.

Nothing quite that dramatic happened to me.  (After all, we're talking about life, not fiction, here!)  However, I did come to a garden in the town that overlooked the sea and gave me a clear view--even on that overcast day--of the coast from which I'd sailed the day before.  And the grayness of the day did nothing to dampen the vibrancy of the colors in that garden:  there were sunrises, sunsets and dusks, and all of the seasons, in it even thought the sky wasn't expressing any of them.  Perhaps the view of the sea had something to do with that.  

Now, remember that I was twenty-one years old when I say what I'm going to say next:  That was the first time I cried during that trip.   At least, it's the first time I recall crying.

That evening, I got to a town called Abbeville and called my grandmother.  Somehow I knew she sounded better than she actually was.   And, without my asking or prompting, she talked about that park, and that we used to go to it.  "You loved to go there."

"Yes, I did.  I always loved going there with you and grandpa." 

"It seems like only yesterday that we used to go there."

I didn't tell her I had indeed been there the night before.