Home Again

Charlie and Max can't get enough of me.

That's how it's seemed since I got home last night. I don't mind; in fact, I never mind when they want to give or get affection. If I did, why would they be the fourth and fifth cats I've had in my life?

Why, indeed, should we choose anyone to accompany us through our lives? Sure, some people are useful; others are necessary. But the ones we bring in to our circle; the ones we enfold in our arms: what other reason is there?

Then there are the ones we must have: the ones we have whether or not we want them. And, finally, there are the ones we simply can't not have, and who can't not have us.

I guess family falls into the last category. For some people, it's the worst sort of bondage there is. I know at least a few people who left their parents or other family members over things they did in the name of "love." But for others, including me, there is no choice but we choose it anyway. At least, I now realize, that's how I feel about my parents. And I suspect they feel the same way about me.

We all agreed that the week went well. I just talked to my brother Mike, and he says that's how Mom and Dad described my visit to them. There were a couple of awkward moments, but I felt that this trip affirmed the love--however complicated it may be at times--that we have for each other. I'm sure that, at times, they probably wish I could've continued to live as I had been. That's how they knew me for 45 years: someone who wasn't quite a normal guy, who possibly wasn't straight, but was their son.

But they did not distance themselves from me. When we went out to eat, when we went shopping, walking and to a movie, we were at each others' side. They called me by the name my mother would have given me if I had been born--at least if I'd appeared to be--a girl. She did not have that opportunity; instead, I took it. I'm happy about it; I think she--and he--are happy at least for the fact that I'm happy, if nothing else.

And they know that I am grateful for that. In fact, there is nothing I have ever experienced for which I am more grateful. It made the visit possible; it is the reason why they've offered to accompany me to the hospital when I have my surgery.

They have never been the most demonstrative people in the world, and I doubt that they ever will be. But I think they realize that I love them unabashedly because--well, because that's the only way I can love them. Because I am now unabashedly myself. And they know that. Mom has said as much.

Although the week I spent with her and Dad was fulfillilng, I cried as I was packing to go home. This is only the second time in my life I can recall feeling sad upon leaving. When I was younger, I--like most young people--wanted to get away. And I did. I forged a life seperate from them: one that they neither could have imagined for themselves nor chosen for me. It was the best I could do for myself; still--at least for me, anyway--it was a step in the "right" direction because it took me away from their walls and led me to things that opened wider than their windows. But sometimes I'd feel sad about it, for the same reasons I felt so the other night: that they should have had the opportunities to visit and live in the places I've seen and inhabited and get the sort of education and have the other choices I've had in my life.

One of those choices was to pursue what I need for my own happiness and fulfillment. Some might think that's a selfish, egotistical pursuit. What that means, of course, is that those people wish they had the opportunities and whatever else it takes to live a life of their choosing, on their terms.

Sometimes, though, choosing is one of the hardest things to do--especially when you have no choice but to make the choice. Mom and Dad are discovering this, I think, as they cope with pain and other physical diminishment--and the depression and anger that they feel as a result of it, and of all those things . They--especially Dad--are coming to terms with the aftermath of various trials they've had in their lives. They are doing so as they turn 70. I thought it took a lot of work for me to unravel--as I turned 34-- the feelings and other unconscious manifestations of the sexual abuse I experienced as a child. I can only imagine how difficult it must be for them--especially Dad-- to deal with the detritus left by the storm of childhood traumas.

I've had the opportunity and resources to reclaim myself from those who would and could have taken my life--literally as well as metaphorically--from me. I wish Mom and Dad had that chance earlier in their lives. What that means, of course, is that I sometimes wish that earlier in my life I had made the choices I'm making now. And I wish I could've given myself the choices that Mom and Dad are helping to make possible now.

Oh well. I hope I get to see them again soon--certainly before the operation. Mom and I were talking about that today.

Leaving for the Rest of My Life

Tomorrow I'll be headed back to New York. As you can imagine, I have very mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, I want to get back to the things that are familiar to me now, including my cats. On the other hand, I feel as though I am just getting to know my parents, just a teensy weensy little bit.

Then again, these past few years have been about getting to know myself. And during the next eleven months, I may learn things I can't even imagine now.

And I have learned things that I never could have imagined before. For one thing, I never realized how sand on one stretch of beach could differ so much from sand on another stretch only a few miles away.

Furthermore, I even entertained the thought of moving here. I was thinking mainly of my parents and their advancing age and declining health. I didn't want to move in with them; they both agreed that none of us could live with other people again. And my father pointed out that the adult children of friends and neighbors came here, thinking that they could make it. "But you'll never make anywhere near the kind of money you make now," he said. To which my mother added, "And it costs a lot more to live here than you think."

Still, she said, "Your father's been better since you've been here." Hmm...I didn't know I could have that kind of effect on anybody--especially my father. I can't think of a single thing I've done that he's approved of.

All right, so that last part is an exaggeration. But it certainly felt like the truth for much of my life.

Right now I wish I could spend some more time here. There seems to be so much, still, to catch up on, whether or not the words or the emotional context exists for doing so. For one thing, this has been my first visit here in nearly five years. And it's the first time I've seen them since we spent an afternoon together in New Jersey three years ago.


Of course, they have aged. But that is not the only reason why they look different to me. Actually, lots of people and things look different. I remember seeing Elizabeth for the first time in ten, maybe fifteen, years. She hadn't aged a day, or so it seemed, since I met her during my sophomore year of undergraduate school. I remember feeling, in a way I couldn't explain, that her apparent lack of change was the reason why she was, in some way, oddly unfamiliar to me.

I guess I'm starting to feel something like that about my parents. My father has always liked to hover over me to make sure I'm getting packed in a timely way, or even to see that I'm doing things that I know better than he how to do. He's always done that--to me, to my mother, to my brothers. Yet I have had to learn that about him all over again.

It seems that I have had to re-learn almost my entire life over the past few years. Even with those things I have done best--reading, writing, teaching and cycling--I feel as if I've had to start over. So sometimes I can't hide my physical clumsiness or social ineptitude.

So what does all that have to do with the prospect of going home? Well, I've seen how much they've accepted me as their daughter and, at the same time, echoed words and behaviors from times past. It's funny: They have habits that I don't expect them to change, but they have learned new ways of seeing me. Or, simply, learning to see me as I've seen myself. Somehow it makes sense, but I'm not sure of why. Will I have the opportunity to learn why?

I want to learn why those rides along the ocean--I took another the other day--mean so much more to me now, and why I enjoyed them so much more. And I want to learn why the bright colors of this place no longer seem alien to me.

Maybe that all seems a little obsessive or fey. But I get the sense that time is running out. It's not just that yesterday marked both 11 months until my surgery and one of those round-number birthdays for my mother. (I won't say which; I'll say only that Dad reached the same milestone in April.) I feel that there's so much I need to learn, and that I'm really going to need it. For one thing, I sense that the time until my surgery--during which I wanted to make as few changes as possible--will include change that I can't anticipate now. And, yeah, it's a little scary.

I guess leaving really means, somehow, starting those next eleven months: the rest of my life as I know it now.

The Woman Becomes a Daughter?

This morning I got to say "hello" to my mother's friend, Lee. She'd come to pick up Mom so they could visit the family of a friend who suddenly died the other day.

I was happy to meet her: Mom has talked a lot about her. She seemed every bit as friendly as Mom depicted her. And, even though our encounter was brief, I felt as if, for the first time in my life, a member of my family introduced me to someone and I felt like a peer.

Perhaps that was natural considering that I am middle-aged and Lee, like my mother, is in very, very late middle age. And Lee has a very warm and radiant smile.

But there was something else. Maybe it's simply that it's been so long since I met a friend of a family member: In fact, I don't think I have had such an introduction since I was under the legal age for just about everything. When you're a kid and you meet you parent's friends, no matter how well you get along, there is a generational and experiential divide. And, whenever I met my father's or brothers' male friends, I always felt that, no matter how much I may have liked them, I had almost nothing in common with them.

Now, to be fair, Mom did tell me that a relative of Lee's is transgendered and her daughter is gay. And Mom had told her about me in advance. However, I didn't feel pity or any special, contrived effort to show that she had nothing against who I am. (In other words, she's not like some of the white liberals I've met.) Rather, I felt as if she were talking to the adult daughter of one of her best friends. Which, of course, is what I am.

As she and Lee were leaving, Mom said that Dad wanted to take me to the Beall's outlet store. Dad said he wanted "something to do," besides, he had an errand or two to run. I thought it was an odd thing for him to offer me, but I did not protest. I simply gave him a mock-warning: You're going to take me clothes shopping? Do you know what you're getting yourself into?

He was remarkably patient. A couple of times he even brought over things he thought I might like: two--a pair of black velour and plaid tweed pants--I actually bought.

We must have spent close to two hours in that store. I bought two other pairs of dress pants, three skirts, two tops, a cardigan and two shirt sets--all name brands. All for $73.00, tax included.

And Dad was very gracious about helping me carry things. I joked, Did you realize what you were getting yourself into when you went shopping with me? To which he replied, I did; no problem.

What really made me happy about our shopping trip is that I got to talk with him a good bit more than we normally talk. I have been concerned about him: His health is worsening and, as a result, his mood has been darkening. Which means that I'm also concerned for my mother because she has to bear the brunt of his gloom. I don't know whether I can be any kind of example to him (or anybody). But I tried to help him understand that he has treated me well as I have made changes that must have been difficult for him accept; I understand how difficult that must have been. Now, I want him to take such good care of himself so he'll be around for me, my mother and everyone else.

He actually seemed to like hearing all of that from me. Maybe it's because I let him do most of the talking, and he expressed anxieties as he had never expressed, really, anything else before. I think he also senses that I am not going to give up on him, as I have at other times in my life.

It just may be that he and Mom are seeing their son-who-turned-into-a-female turning slowly into their daughter. They have offered to accompany me when I culminate that a very important part of that process next year.

Odd, isn't it? I've always thought that women were someone's daughter before they became women. Now, of course, my experience is different from that of most women (not to mention most men!) But, I wonder: Could there be other women--however they became women--who became daughters in ways similar to the way I have?

Another Journey

Turns out that Mom hadn't gone to church after all. She'd gone to the store, and after she got back, she and Dad and I had blueberry pancakes and sausages.


I ate more than I planned, but it turned out to be a good thing: I went for a bike ride immediately afterward.


Some might call that trip a sentimental journey. Others might think I'm living my own version of Au recherche de temps perdus. One problem with that analogy, of course, is that I ate blueberry pancakes, not madeleines. While those little butter-cookies are nice, I still prefer the pancakes--maybe because, well, Mom made them, just as Proust's mother made those madeleines.


Probably the best literary analogy I can make to yesterday's ride comes from the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet: Things I Didn't Know I Loved.


I had indeed forgotten how much I love the riding over the long, arching bridge from SR 100, over the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, to the Coastal Road in Flagler Beach. Turn left, and you can go to Marineland and almost to St. Augustine. Turn right, and you ride along ocean that's about the same color as this typeface, down to Ormond by the Sea and Daytona Beach.


In a way, it's reminiscent of the ride I used to take when I was living with, or visiting, my parents when they lived in New Jersey: over the long (at least in my memory) drawbridge from Highlands to the narrow strip of land between the Shrewsbury River and the Atlantic, from the southern end of Sandy Hook down through Sea Bright, Belmar, Elberon and into Long Branch. If I felt so inclined, I could continue to Asbury Park.


On both of these rides, to your left there's nothing but a few thousand miles of ocean between you and Portugal (from Jersey) or Morocco (from Florida). And, if you time either of them right, you can ride into the wind and let it blow you back home.


The differences, of course , are in the color of the ocean (darker and more grayish-blue off New Jersey) and how much hotter the ride from the Flagler Beach bridge was than almost any ride from the Sandy Hook-Highlands bridge. At least, for most of the ride down, I had a breeze off the ocean, which cooled me off a bit.


For yesterday's ride, I used a bike Dad borrowed from a neighbor who'd bought it for his wife. Even when I pulled the seat out as far from the frame as it could be raised, the bike was too small for me. It is an old Ross 3-speed with a coaster brake--you know, the kind that you back-pedal. I hadn't ridden a bike with such a setup in longer than I can remember: probably my childhood. So, imagine my surprise when I shifted back on the seat and backpedalled slightly!


It's actually not a bad bike, if basic. But it probably wasn't intended for someone like me riding as far as I rode it yesterday: about 60 miles in total.


Most important, though, is what the ride meant to me. I know I've ridden harder and longer, and in much more difficult conditions. However, I can't remember the last time a ride made me feel somehow more complete, as yesterday's ride did.


The last time I was here, nearly five years ago, I rode to near Marineland--a much shorter (and possibly easier) distance that seemed like an eternity. It was the day I "came out" to Mom and Dad; he suggested I go for a ride because he and my mother needed time to "take it in"--meaning, the news I'd just given them.


Even though I knew that at the end of that ride, I'd come back to this house, I had no idea of what would follow. Although, realistically, I didn't expect them to pack my bag and leave it outside their door, that possiblity was in my mind. I just wanted to see what would happen next; I can't think of another time when riding my bike--just being on it!--was so agonizing.


But this time I had nothing to do but ride and come back for dinner. And we'd talk and watch TV afterward. Just like old times, more or less. Of course, we are all different now: we have all aged and, well, you know about me. And I'm not in the kind of shape I used to be in.

Still, I love that ride, just as I always loved that Jersey ride. Those rides have helped me to think, to feel, and more often than not, simply to survive. So have those dinners--yesterday, it was Mom's lasgana, which I hadn't eaten in years. Even though she used ground turkey sausage rather than the chopped meat she used in the old days, I wouldn't have wanted anything else.

However, the best thing of all may have been that I wasn't running from anything or anyone. Hence, no loneliness or alienation. On a narrow, shoulderless stretch of I-1A (the road along the ocean), cars steered around me and drivers didn't curse or honk their horns. In fact, one even yelled, "Go, girl!" And, when I stopped to get something to drink, use a bathroom, and to hang out at the Daytona Boardwalk, people greeted me with "good morning..." or, later, "Good afternoon, ma'am." Teenaged boys held doors open for me. One man at the CVS store in Ormond asked about what I was doing and wanted to be sure I was not having problems.

What else would a courtly Southerner do for a middle-aged woman wearing a straw hat and riding a bicycle in the midday heat?

I don't remember who told me--probably long ago--that the world would become a more welcoming place when I began to accept myself and live as that person. What that person didn't mention is that even if I were slow and my moves were inelegant because I'd gotten flabbier, a journey would be more satisfying because, while I may not have known its purpose--if indeed there was one--when I began, I would have every reason to do it.

Why? If not to learn about the things I never knew I loved, then to admit that I loved those things.

The Silence

Mom has gone to church. She does that every Sunday morning. I know Dad is awake because I hear him coughing. It's that nagging, hacking kind of cough one usually hears from smokers. But Dad has never smoked.

The almost vacuous, though not deafening, quiet of this house used to be familiar to me--back when I used to come here more often. Now it is disquieting as the hissing of sprinklers on a New Jersey lawn once was to me, even before Joni Mitchell mentioned it in one of her songs.

I woke up just as the garage door opened and Mom backed the car out of it. Dad hadn't started coughing yet. I sauntered into the kitchen and over to the glass door that seperates it from the patio. I glanced at the canal that seperates Mom and Dad's lawn from someone else's. Like most canals I've seen in this country, it's barely more than a ditch and I have a hard time seeing how anything could've been navigated up or down it. Maybe it was wider or deeper at one time.

An alligator has lived there. Mom and Dad have told me about him. (They always refer to it as male. I wouldn't want to get close enough to know!). However, I have never seen him. Not that I don't believe Mom or Dad. I just want to see him, just once. Why, I don't know. I guess I could really say I've been to Florida if I've seen him.

Not that I've ever had any great desire to come to Florida. Before I left, when I told people I was going to Florida, they all had images of Miami or Tampa Bay or Key West, just as when I told people I was going to France, they had visions of the Eiffel Tower. I did indeed go to la Tour Eiffel, and have, in fact, spent more time in Paris than I have in any city besides New York. But I also pedalled through the countryside, all over that nation. On the other hand, what I've seen of Florida consists of this town (Palm Coast) and its environs, Miami Beach (where Eva's mother and siblings lived) and Jacksonville (when Mike Spinnato, the family friend who molested me, was living there). And I've been to St. Augustine and Epcot Center.

I just heard the garage door opening again. That means Mom has come back from church. It also means we'll have breakfast soon. I don't hear Dad coughing. Both of them certainly are aging. Of course one expects that. But even the last time I saw them, three years ago, I could say, perhaps, that they were in late middle age. Now I can no more think that than I can say I'm young, even though I feel rather youthful and people tell me I look younger than I am.

But this silence: There is no other like it. It seems that Mom and Dad took it with them when they moved from New Jersey to Florida: I recall this silence, like a linen haze, from the Sunday mornings of the weekends I spent every couple of months or so at their house in Middletown, where we moved when I was about twelve. The aroma of pancakes and sausages or bacon would waft through that curtain; sometimes, it would wake me, for I used to sleep later on those Sunday mornings than I would at home.

Today I woke up just before 7:00, mainly because of the cup of tea I had before going to bed. That is later than I usually get up on weekdays, but definitely earlier than I wake up when I have nowhere in particular to go.

Dad is coughing again. I hear the bedroom door opening: Is Dad getting up or is Mom going in?

Visiting Mom and Dad

I'm taking a break from packing for the trip I'm about to take tomorrow.

I'm anxious, in every sense of the word, about it: I am eager yet nervous, for this may be the second-most important trip of my life.

OK, I'll stop building up drama. Where am I going and what am I going to do, you ask?

To the first part of the question, the answer is "Florida." I have been there many times; so, one would think, I shouldn't feel as much anticipation and anxiety as I feel now.

However, answering the first part of the question will begin to explain what I'm feeling. I'm going to see my parents. Again, that seemingly routine encounter shouldn't make me nervous.

Except that it won't be so routine this time. I talk to them every week, sometimes even more often than that. But this is the first time I'll be seeing them in the flesh in three years. And, this will be my visit with them, on their turf, since I began my transition. During my last visit, five years ago, I "came out" to them.

Although we've remained in regular contact, and they--especially my mother--have been helpful and supportive--it might've been easier for them if they had seen me more often, and for longer periods of time. My mother says as much. Back when they were living in New Jersey and I was in New York, sometimes I'd see them every month. Rarely would more than a couple of months pass without our getting together.

But now, things are different. Of course, that would have been the case no matter what: It's hard to visit so often when they're about 1000 miles away. Even so, I used to see them at Christmastime and maybe one other time--usually during spring break or at the end of the school year--during the year.

I'd spend a few days, sometimes a week--as I will on this trip--with them. My last trip there was a long weekend in the middle of November. The last time I spent a whole week there was probably about seven or eight years ago, maybe longer.

It's not that I dread spending so much time with them. Rather, I'm a bit nervous because, not having spent so much time with them in so long, I wonder what it will be like. Will they feel uncomfortable with me? Will they find that my worst qualities haven't changed? Or...

Well, they wanted me to come down. Mom said she and Dad were talking about it right before I asked about taking trip down there. I think they want to spend some time with me now--to reacquaint, you might say. They have volunteered to accompany me to my surgery, so maybe they want to see what they're getting themselves into. I know that I'd like to spend some time with them before the surgery (and after, of course.) After all, they'll be with me for a week when I'm in the hospital. Then I'm going to spend two weeks with them as I recover from the surgery. I don't think we've spent that much time together since I moved out.

On one hand, I feel confident: After all, they want me to come down and to accompany me to my surgery. On the other hand...Well, what's on the other hand? I guess that's what's making me anxious--not knowing. Maybe they'll think I've gotten fat or am not as pretty or feminine as they, or most any parents, would like a daughter to be. Or that, at age 50, I should've accomplished more.

Maybe they'll think those things. They've thought worse things before, I'm sure. Yet here I am, getting ready to get on a plane to see them, and anticipating their company during my surgery.

And I'll be there for Mom's birthday. I won't tell you how old she's going to be!

Zap that Beard!

It's hard for me to believe now that I had a beard, on and off, for about twenty years. Just as there are people in my life now who have known me only as Justine, there were people in my previous life who never saw my face: only the reddish hair that grew from it.

It's probably been seven or eight years since I last allowed my facial hair to grow. Until the other day, that is: I had to refrain from shaving until this evening. And it was an odd sensation to feel fuzz on my face, and to feel that itch I hadn't felt in so long: I felt as if my cheeks and chin had turned into nests for mosquitoes.

Do mosquitoes have nests? Don't ask me: I may be an etymologist of sorts, but I ain't no entomologist!

It didn't feel good, but I'm not sure that any of the few people I saw today noticed--except for the ones I saw tonight. I could hardly see my fuzz unless I held my face only a few inches from the mirror.

So why did I have to turn my face into a blonde Chia-Pet? It was for the people I saw tonight. Three young women, specifically.

No, I haven't gone back to the boy's life. And my "date" with those young women didn't involve drinks (which I don't do), dancing or...well, you know. (I promised to be faithful to Dominick, after all!) Hey, we were in Forest Hills, not Soho or Tribeca.

What was I doing with the young women? The answer is what they were doing to me.

This evening, those women gave me my very first electrolysis treatment. Actually, two of them did the work, and one looked on. They are all students at a school of electrolysis on Metropolitan Avenue. One of them, Tanya, is a southerner with a voice of slowly melted vanilla fudge that conveys her warmth and empathy. I just hope no one abuses those qualities in her: She is a reflexive nurturer, and men and women can find their own ways to take advantage of her. On the other hand, being a very intelligent and attractive young woman, she will attract enough people to her that she'll find at least a few good ones.

She is just the sort of person you want yanking hairs out of your face and zapping the roots with an electrically charged needle (I hear Wall Streeters pay good money for this sort of thing! ;-) ), especially if you're having it done for the first time. She's very encouraging: I could easily imagine her as a physical therapist or a counselor of some sort.

She could advise people like me who are complete wimps about pain and who are about to undergo the procedure for the first time. For the uninitiated: If you've ever tweezed your eyebrows, remember what it felt like the first time you did it. Now, imagine a spot is still throbbing, and someone dabbed it with a needle that injected a mixture of rubbing alcohol and lemon juice for a fraction of a second.

Certainly, it's not the worst pain anyone can experience. But I have no idea of what that feels like, so all I have are experiences like my first electrolysis. And, I'm sure, I'll get used to it: I will probably go back every week until I have my surgery.

You see, Barry, who's in charge, explained that it's better to do the procedure gradually. Most people who have scarring either had the procedure done too quickly or with the machine at too high a setting. And, if not done gradually, the chance of hair regrowing is greater.

And, before a facial procedure, you have to allow the hair to grow for at least two days beforehand. So, for the next year, I get to be a guy again, sort of, for two days a week.

Hmm... Maybe it won't itch after I let the lawn grow a few times. Still, I look forward to not needing a shave again because, well, now I have even bigger things to look forward to.

Ghost Town

Last night I had a dream that, when I woke up, I could've sworn I had before. In it, I walked down a street--I don't know where it was; it looked like it could've been in any number of places I've known. Anyway, this street led to a bridge, or at least a bridge was in sight. Which was strange, because it was transparent, almost to the point of being invisible. Yet it was as clear as the light of that day: fair, but not excellent: not gray and overcast, but not bright and refulgent, either. And there were no shadows.

I realized why--at least, according to the logic (if you will) of that dream--this was so: All of the houses along that street were shadows. Not literally, but they could just as well have been: No light glowed or blazed from inside any of them. In fact, there didn't seem to be anybody--at least nobody I knew, or knew of-- in any of them. That was strange because the houses all seemed to be in rather good shape, if not fancy. Yet they weren't austere: They didn't appear to ever have been elegant enough for that.

So were these houses abandoned? Soon to be abandoned? Should I go inside one of them, I asked myself. Someone heard me, or my thoughts: I'm not sure I voiced them. Anyway, a woman--who appeared to be constructed of vertical lines even though she was shorter than me--appeared, the way people just seem to come out of nowhere when you walk down a street. I just knew I'd seen her somewhere before--at least in the world of that dream.

Anyway, this woman, who was probably a few years older than me, said this: "You don't need any of those places now. Don't let them leave you."

Now, one of the reasons why I don't normally spend a lot of time thinking about my dreams--those few I remember--is that I can drive myself crazy by asking myself, "What the hell does that mean?"

As for the dream--I had the same one, more or less, years ago--long before my gender transition: long before lots of things. And the woman in that dream--yes, she was in it. But I could swear I've seen her in my waking life. I don't remember thinking that after I had the dream the first time.

As best as I can tell, that woman is the one I saw that day in St. Jean de Maurienne: the woman who, although we never spoke and our eyes never met, caused me to realize that I couldn't take another step in this world as a man.

But wait: The first time I had the dream was about ten years before I saw that woman. And, I'm assuming, she's French--or, more precisely, Savoyard. Maybe she speaks English. But unaccented, the way she spoke in the dream?

I assure you that I have taken no mind-altering drugs, and drunk no alcohol, in more than twenty years!

I don't know, or at least remember, what might have brought on the dream the first time, or to what in my life it might have been connected. I vaguely remember writing a really bad poem about it. But as to what it might have been "about"--you've got me.

On the other hand, it makes some kind of sense that I had the dream last night. After all, for the past few years, I have had to leave some things behind me, including lifestyles and careers other people wanted for me, and the lives of other people I tried to live, which included all sorts of thoughts, emotions and wishes that weren't my own. Yes, there has been loss; I am sure there is more to come: Otherwise, how could change ever happen?

And what did I abandon, or at least lose? A life with Tammy: We had been planning on that before the transition; or more exactly, I was going along with what she was planning. And two friends and one brother cut off contact with me. I was expecting to lose relationships with somebody, but not those friends or that brother.

Those were relations I had in an otherwise fairly solitary life. I've left that behind, too--mostly by choice. I finally admitted to myself that sort of life wasn't so enlightening or rewarding: Maybe for some other kind of person, it might be--but not me.

Yes, I have made new friends, and relationships with other people who've been in my life have changed in gratifying ways. And I'm about to start a new job as a faculty member at the college. Most important, I am actually starting to enjoy being with myself, which is the reason I enjoy other people.

But I did indeed abandon the possiblity of ever becoming--well, whatever it was I would've become if I'd spent the rest of my life with Tammy or some other person who wanted the kind of relationship he or she, or someone he or she knew, had with someone else, whether of the same or another gender. And whatever I might've become if I'd contunued to pedal everywhere, for hours on hours every day, and went to the gym before or after. And what I might be now if I'd continued to take long trips in faraway places, alone. And remained skinny.

Oh well. Then there is the ghost town, like the one (metaphorically) I saw yesterday at the college when I went to talk to the department chair about my new job and schedule. Almost everyone else gone, including the ones I'd love to see again as well as the ones I wouln't miss. Another year passed; another season winding down; yet another year--my last, in what I don't know--to come. And, perhaps, to be abandoned one day. After all, isn't that what we do when we move on and leave any part of our lives behind us? When we look back, all we can see is a ghost town.

Back In The Day...

Today I did a bike ride I used to do just about every weekend. But today was the first time I'd done it in about two, and possibly three years: from my place to Nyack, in Rockland County, and back.


You get yourself to the George Washington Bridge. Time was when I lived about half a mile from it, on Fairview Avenue in Manhattan. So I could practically roll out of bed and ride across. Now I live about ten miles or so from the span, in Queens. But it feels longer than that, not because it's difficult, but for the labyrinthine routes I must take to get to it. No matter which way I go, there are backtracking and detours, as streets lead to cul-de-sacs or turn back on themselves. Or they suddenly turn into one-ways or end abruptly. Then, of course, there's always the decision as to whether to go around or through Central Park. If you decide to transverse the Park, you won't have to deal with car traffic, but you will have to contend with rollerbladers and runners with power strollers skateboarders--all of whom, it seems, are listening to music through earphones. Then, of course, there are tourists who are snapping photos or simply looking up and away at the wonderful skyline views, but are totally oblivious to anyone moving faster than they are. Not to criticize them: I have been such a tourist in the places from which most of those people come.



Anyway...Today I didn't ride through the Park. Instead, I pedalled up First Avenue to 111th Street. Above 79th Street or so, there's usually not much traffic on a Saturday, and today was no exception. Stores come and go, but the vibe of it never seems to change: Youth and proximity to power, or at least wealth. Of course, they have to have money to live there, but compared to the denizens of Madison and Park Avenues--less than half a mile away--they're paupers. So, while it appears to be more casual than the Upper East Side's so-called Gold Coast, there's also a kind of self-consciousness that one doesn't find amongst the townhouses up the hill. Although people around Park and Madison in the 60's, 70's and 80's are usually well, or at least expensively, dressed and coiffed, it seems as if they don't have to think about it. Perhaps they don't have to impress anybody because, well, nobody there can be impressed. Not so for the residents of First Avenue.


But I digress. (So what else is new?, you ask.) Anyway, at 111th, I turned left and transversed the Island, at least to Frederick Douglass Boulevard: one of the central thoroughfares of Harlem. I know that it's changing, but it's still strange, at least for me, to see young white people unloading their cars and rented U-Hauls at those townhouses. It's not that I fear for them: even when its reputation was at its very worst, I never had any fear when I walked or pedalled through Harlem. For one thing, I always thought its rep was very exaggerated: There were crime and other problems, and there still are. But other places, including the neighborhood in which I lived, had them, too. Most of the people in Harlem--yes, I did get to talk to quite a few--were just trying to make it through the day. So was I. Frankly, a lot of them were doing a better job of it than I was.


Anyway...If you ride north (uptown) through Harlem, Hamilton Heights, Sugar Hill and Washington Heights, you're riding up an incline, all the way to the Bridge (and beyond, if you don't go to the Bridge). Most of the way, this climb is very gradual: just enough for you to notice, especially after three miles or so.


And I noticed it because I haven't ridden it in some time and because, well, I'm getting older. And the estrogen has taken hold, as the doctor said it would. You lose muscle strength and possibly stamina. All right: I want it all. I want to ride like a girl but with the strength I had as a guy. That'll come about about the same time as medical science offers real, working ovaries for transgender women. Not to say those events will be related: They'll come at about the same time. Why, I don't know.



Time was when I pedalled up this incline almost every day, when I was working on 53rd and Lex and living on Fairview. I didn't even have to think about it: Half an hour after I'd slung my leg over my bike, I was home, and none the worse for the ride. Of course, I was also twenty-plus years younger than I am now. And I was full of testosterone and anger. About the latter, just ask Bruce or anyone who knew me back then.



That was before Eva. Before Tammy. Before the women in between them, and the women and men who preceded them. Before I'd dealt with my alcohol and other substance abuse problems and the molestations I endured as a child--not to mention my gender identity issues. Before lots of things--including births and deaths.


As my first ride to Nyack was. I can't give you the exact date, but I guess it was during that first spring or second summer after I returned to New York. That would be 1984. It was a good bit longer than today's ride, since I was doing it for the first time, and because of my navigational skills, about which I like to tell people I'm a direct decendent of Columbus and inherited his sense of direction.


On the Jersey side of the Bridge, you turn left. On your left are the office buildings and houses of Fort Lee, which, were it not for its views of the Big Apple, would be one of the most charm-free cities in the country. On your right, beyond a stone wall and a berm, is the Palisades Parkway. You follow this road for about two miles to its end, take a left, then the next right to Route 9W.



On any weekend day when the weather's decent, hundreds, if not thousands, of cyclists ride up and down this road. Again, you're riding up a slight incline for a few miles. If you're riding early in the afternoon, as I was, most of the cyclists you see will be on the opposite side of the road, riding toward the bridge.


I've ridden this route alone, with friends, with two different cycling clubs and with people I met on the road and never saw again. None of those people, except Bruce, are in my life now.



I glanced at the cyclists coming in the opposite direction. As far as I know, none of my old riding partners were among them. Then again, I wasn't looking for them. A few smiled and nodded their hands in my direction.


As I looked at them, I couldn't help but to notice how much they looked alike. Sure, they were of various ages, colors and shapes. Most of them were male; the few females I saw accompanied male riders. But that wasn't the reason for their sameness.



I thought back to how I used to own a dozen or so cycling jerseys and half a dozen or eight pairs of cycling shorts--all of them made of lycra. The shorts were almost always black, but the jerseys sported all sorts of graphics and colors. Some of them were replicas of jerseys worn by cyclists in the Tour de France and other major races. Tammy--another past companion on this ride-- used to say that wearing cycle clothing was one of the few opportunities men had to be peacocks.



But even with all of those colors, the cyclists all seemed to be in uniform. Then I understood why I recently got rid of my last jerseys and now have only one pair of cycling shorts left. Yes, bike clothes are lightweight, wick moisture and, I guess, make you more aerodynamic. But I took some long rides when I was young and "didn't know any better" in regular clothes--as I did today. Today, my only concessions to cycling regalia were practical: my helmet (If you have a brain that's worth protecting, you need one.), gloves and shoes. And I'm even thinking of getting rid of my click-in pedals, which require cleated shoes, for platform pedals and toeclips like the ones I rode for I-don't-know-how-many years, so I can wear sneakers, loafers or whatever else I want to wear.


If any of those riders notice, I might lose face. Oh well. Barbara and Sue, with whom I sometimes ride, couldn't care less. More important, I couldn't, either. But back in the day--not so long ago, really--I would've.


And, after you've pedalled up 9W--past the suburban sprawl, the mansions, the rock ledges and patches of woods and Columbia University's geological station where you cross back into New York State--you descend the steepest hill (which you have to climb if you come back this way) of the ride. Not long past the bottom, I like to turn off on the road for Tallman Mountain State Park, twisting between the wooded areas and some rather charmingly bucolic houses--to the side of a small stream or a canal that's fallen into disuse: I'm not sure of which. Then you pass through one of those strips of boutiques and cafes that's too cute to be truly charming but will do just fine for a mindless Sunday brunch. And on past houses that look more gingerbread or Victorian or Alice-in-Wonderland than they really are: Somehow I imagine the people in them were once hippies, or pretended to be, and now that they make money, they want to keep the artifacts and gestures of whimsicality. A lot of them had "Vote for Obama" signs on their lawns; a few Ron Paul postings remained. I don't recall seeing any for McCain.

The last time I did this ride, I hadn't heard of Obama. I knew a little about Ron Paul, and McCain didn't impress me any more than he does now.

And on, past a wedding party floating out of a church next to the Hudson River, underneath the Tappan Zee Bridge, and up two small hills that can be difficult only because you make sharp turns--and you may have to stop for traffic--before you start the climb. Then, finally, the main street of Nyack and every cyclist's (at least in this area) favorite cafe: the Runcible Spoon.

Back when I used to drink coffee, they made some of the best French roast you could get without taking the next flight to Charles de Gaulle or Antoine Saint Exupery. And they made a flaky cinnamon pastry laced with cinnamon and sugar that I loved. But they were out of that and, as appetizing as the terrine of three mousses and the cupcakes looked, I thought they might've been a bit much. So I had only a large iced green tea.

Because it was just past three when I got there, there weren't as many cyclists as I remember from rides past. But even though I'd met none of them before, they were familiar: They came in those familiar racing uniforms on the latest carbon-fiber bikes in the flashiest graphics you can imagine. The wannabe racers. I used to be one of them. Actually, I did race, but I kept up the facade for nearly two decades after I stopped.

Again, all were male--except for a tall blonde woman who accompanied her boyfriend or husband. They rode the only steel frames besides mine. But theirs weren't Mercians: they were rather generic TIG-welded bikes with well-known names on them. But no matter: They rode in each other's company, seemingly without any intention to impress anyone but each other.

One guy--a black man about ten years younger than me--looked kinda sorta familiar. I wondered whether he recognized me. He seemed not to look my way. If he hadn't seen me coming in, he probably didn't notice me at all. Nor did his friend. I used to gain entry into groupings like theirs--some, anyway--by the way I used to dress back in the day on rides like these. I didn't want to join in their conversation--such as it was--but I wondered whether that one guy was someone I used to ride with. If he wasn't noticing me because I wasn't wearing bike clothes, he reminded me of people with whom I used to work: They couldn't see--or hear--anyone who wasn't wearing the same kinds of business suits as they were. And I wasn't working in the fashion world!

I'd bet that next year, those guys won't be riding the bikes they have now--indeed, if they are still riding. Nor would anyone there, except for the couple--and me. Anyone who buys a high-quality chrome-molybdenum steel frame these days--especially someone who has one custom-made, as I did with my Mercian--is buying for the long term. As long as I don't crash it, I may well be riding my Merc for the rest of my life.

And I'll be riding it on my own time, for my own reasons. Not like I did back in the day.

The Older Woman

A busy week it's been. If I can grow as tired as I am without having (or having had) kids or to take care of anyone but me and Charlie and Max (and, for them, Iams does the cooking!), how could I ever have been a parent? Oh, dear....

The funny thing is that when I feel tired and ragged and useless and fat and incompetent and hopeless, someone tells me I did (or do) something really well or that I look good. Sometimes that someone is a complete stranger. As happened to me the other day, and today.

And I think of the past spring semester. I felt like I was doing the worst teaching I'd done in my life. It seemed as though nothing went right, at least for me, in the classrooms. And what happened? I got one of the best evaluations I've ever had--from someone who's regarded as one of the toughest evaluators, if not the toughest, in the college. And the students gave me excellent evaluations on the surveys at the end of the semester.

Still, I find myself wondering if I've remained an educator for longer than I should have. Sometimes I think most people shouldn't teach for more than, say, five years. Any longer than that and it's easy to lose one's sense of what the rest of the world is like. In other words, it's too easy to lose any sense of what life is like on the outside. Then again, I suppose that one can do that by growing old in any one place.

So what happened? Just when I think I'm beyond my expiration date, so to speak, the provost told the English Department chair he wants me to teach there full-time. I guess he hasn't heard the news about me: That I'm getting tired and old and soon my students will try to sell me as an antique so they can pay their tuition. Just one thing: no-one's going to mistake me for one of those goddesses whose likenesses are on coffee cups in diners.

Ok, so I'm not a Greek statue. Good thing. Otherwise, I'd be even older than I am now. Then again, some rich collector just might like older women--as long as they're made of stone or plaster.

As for the ones who like us in the flesh: I have great love and respect for them. Of course I'm going to tell you that! After all, when I was talking to my friend Bruce the other night, I realized that I am indeed the "older" woman. What a twist of fate, a reversal of karma, or whatever you want to call it, is my lot in life!

If I believe in karma (which I am willing to do), I guess it makes perfect sense that I'm the older woman now--for Dominick, anyway. (Then again--not to boast--he is not the first younger man who's been attracted to me!) According to karmic knowledge, he has me because when I was his age, or even younger, I was dating women who were just about the age I am now. Which is to say they were/are more-or-less my mother's age. Make what you will of that.

So what is it about the "older woman," anyway? I think that having lived on both sides, if you will, I can explain, at least somewhat. Why are young or youngish men like Dominick attracted to antiquities like me? (Remember: Neither he nor most of the men I'm talking about are historians, archeologists, curators or appraisers for Sotheby's.) Why was I, when I was young--and, in fact, through most of my life as a male?

Some say it's a mother fixation. Maybe. I'll admit that for me, it probably had something to do with having a mother who's a formidable human being. That's been a blessing in my life, especially now. Anyway, if you have, as I do, a mother of substance, as you grow to love and learn to appreciate her, you simply come to value women more in general. At least I think that happened to me. And I find that men who like "older women" --at least for reasons other than money or green cards or such--generally appreciate, value and even love women more in general.

All right, so I've described the man-to-older woman dynamic a bit. So what have I learned from living as female and being the "older woman?" That a truly beautiful woman--as opposed to a generically cute young woman--is all her own, sui generis. She has her own face: She doesn't look like any number of other people who might pass by her. She has her own thoughts and ideas, some of which she's had to pay dearly for. She has her own expereince which, while it shares common traits with other women's experience, is still all her own, as are her responses to it. And, finally, the kind of woman I'm talking about has her own style, whatever it is. It may not be in synch with the latest fashions, but when you meet the sort of woman I'm talking about, you wouldn't want her to dress--or look--any other way.

I think now of a professor at the college where I work. She's probably 60, or close to it, and is an attractive woman who dresses plainly and wears very little, if any, makeup or jewelery. I think much of her attraction, though, is that she's a very intelligent and intuitive woman. She's the sort of prof about whom students say things like, "I never could do (or "I always hated") math until she taught it to me."

Anyway, one day, one of my students--who's probably a third of this prof's age--confessed to me that he had a crush on her. He felt embarrassed and apologized. I tried to reassure him there's nothing wrong with his attraction, though I wouldn't advise him to act on it. (She's married, she's your prof, etc.) Instead, I advised him to think about what he finds so attractive about her.

"She's not like anybody else."

"Well, that's a good start."

"And she's really smart and caring."

"I see you really do appreciate her--and women."

"So what are you saying?"

"Just remember what appeals to you about her and you'll find a woman--of whatever age, and whenever time in your life this happens--with those qualities. It shouldn't be hard for you: You appreciate women, and the good ones will see that."

"You think so?"

"Oh, I'm sure of it. Just don't try to be anybody you aren't, because that's what those women don't do."

I don't know if I helped him to understand why he's attracted to an older woman, and how, at least in some fashion, can follow that. Maybe he'll find his "older woman" in someone who's his own age, or older than his grandmother. Whatever he does, I think he'll be fine.

And he'll have an "older woman" to thank!

The Frontier

Today I saw part of the Tour de France coverage on TV. The Tour is divided into 21 stages, each lasting a day. One stage might be long and flat, another a race against the clock, still another--like today's--an arduous ride, full of climbs.

Today the TDF cyclists pedalled through the Alps from France into Italy. I recognized the road: I pedalled up and down it myself seven years (already!) ago, on my last bike tour. You don't forget a road like that: beautiful and treacherous, like the countryside and the journeys some of us take through it.

Seven years ago, I cycled in the opposite direction from the ones in which the racers rode today: I was coming back into France from Italy. But I encountered the same kinds of climbs and descents--through a cloud, then and now. Except they descended into light rain and slick roads; I, on the other hand, was pedalling under a preternaturally clear sky just a few minutes after emerging from nearly opaque air.

For today's riders, the wet roads were a danger: A wrong turn or even pedal stroke could send half of the pack tumbling to the pavement. What a lot of people don't realize is that a road surface slicked by a light rain is even more hazardous than one washed by hard rain: The light rain mixes with oils and other substances that would be swished away by a harder rain. The resulting film has ended the day, and the Tour, for more than one rider past.

Rain is not the only hazard. At high altitudes (2000 meters+ on that ride), clear, sunny skies sap moisture from your body: Cyclists, hikers and other sorts of adventurers have met their endings without realizing they were dying. So you drink even when you don't think you need it.

Clouds or sun, wet or dry, coming or going, there is also the frontiere--what we call the border, what others might call the boundary. There stands one of the longest and steepest climbs of all. On one side it's called Col d'Agnel, on the other, Colle d'Agnello. For me, for today's riders, for anyone who crosses, this climb is one of the most difficult anyone will face. (If I recall correctly, it's the second-highest peak in the Alps, after Mont Blanc.) For the racers in the Tour, it is an ascent that will soon be followed by a descent and a stretch to the end of the day's stage; for me, it was a climb that prepared me for yet another, one of which I had a premonition while pumping and gasping my way up Agnel/Agnello.

After decending the Agnel side, I pedalled another thirty kilometers or so to a village that was probably abuzz during the ski season but was, on that summer day, all but deserted. It was late in the afternoon; even though I was in much better shape than I am now, I was ready to eat and collapse, in no particular order. I spotted an uncharacteristically boxy building which I figured--correctly--to be a ski dorm. A couple of young men, probably caretakers or other workers of some sort, looked like they were fixing a pump or some other necessity of the building.

Pardon, monieur. Y-a-t'il une lit disponible?

J'en y crois. Demandez l'acceuil.

So someone was at the reception desk. Good sign. I found him; he explained, "nous voulons fermer ce nuit; il n'y a pas des voyageurs."

Sauf moi, I deadpanned.

Oui. Yes, I was the only one.

Je suis arrive d'Italie. J'en ai ascende le Col--I pointed in the direction of Agnel.

He stared. Je suis tres, tres fatigue, I sighed in a tone of voice I almotst never used, especially around another male.

D'accord. Quelque chose sera possible. He said perhaps he could do something, just aller a manger--he pointed to a cafe down the road--et reviens. Yes, I would come back, I said. He motioned for me to follow him and pointed to a shed. "Velo--la": I could leave my bike there.

I walked down a road that crossed a creek to the cafe. The Eagles' "Hotel California" played on the radio; the Beatles' "Get Back" followed. I remembered reading somewhere that "Hotel California" is one of the most widely played songs, and the Beatles the most commonly played group, on French radio.

Aside from me, there were only a few regulars, all of them at the counter. Actually, considering that it was a Sunday evening during the off-season, I was surprised to see even those few. They were chatting; I glanced down the road and the mountains I had just pedalled. For the following day, I'd planned to continue on toward Annecy and Chambery. I knew there would be a few more climbs--one of them, Izoard, is one of the more famous ones on the Tour. Beyond that, I only knew there would climbs, though I didn't know which ones.

That was part of the premonition I had on Agnello. The rest of it went something like this: I would have to repeat a climb, but after that, I wouldn't have to do any others.

I had no idea of what any of that meant. However, I knew somehow that I would confront something and that afterward, I could not remain as I was. After crossing the frontier, so to speak, I couldn't go back.

Two days later I pedalled le Col du Galibier, one of the two most famous Tour climbs. And I had that revelation that I'd never have to do it again; later that day, I finally confronted myself in the person of a middle-aged woman going home from work in the town of St. Jean de Maurienne, practically next to the frontier I'd crossed at Agnel/Agnello. After seeing the way she occupied time and space, as a woman--the way I'm supposed to-- I knew I couldn't go back, though I tried.

Now I'm here and don't want to be anywhere else. Nor do I want to go anywhere else but wherever's next, whether or not I have to cross a frontier. And I'll climb if I have to, but only then.

Name Change (I'm Still Justine!)

Tonight I had to make another name change.

No, I didn't have to become another person. I am still Justine Nicholas Valinotti, nee Nicholas Valinotti Jr. It's my progeny, so to speak, that got a new identity.

You see, I found out there's a website called Tranny Times. (So much for my originality!) Therefore, I had to come up with a new name and link.

I thought about a couple of others. I wanted to stick with "Times" because it reflects my aim to describe some of the quotidian details of my last year before my gender reassignment surgery. And, of course, I wanted to keep "Trans", or some form of it, in the title to encapsulate the blog and to keep the alliteration I had in the title. But "Trannygirl Times" and "Trans-lady Times" sounded too much like porn sites. While I may discuss sex (You have been warned!), I will not (consciously, anyway) satisfy anyone's voyeurism. After all, I am a lady!

The Second Puberty

On days like this, I'm not sure of whether I've underachieved or simply gotten the restoration my mind--and body--needed.

I slept until almost 8 this morning. I don't get to do that during the workweek, and it seems like a luxury even though I'd gone to bed some time after midnight. So, according to doctors and sleep experts, I still didn't get as much sleep as I'm supposed to.

Then again, I don't know anyone who sleeps that much, except on a holiday or sick day. Even then, people don't get that much more sleep than they normally get.

One thing I've noticed since I've started taking the hormones: I get to bed later and sleep later than I used to. These days it's harder for me to get up very early. And I find that I'm not as consistent as I used to be in the amount of sleep I get every night.

Other trans people have described similar experiences to me. I don't know why the transition affects our sleep. But I can, if nothing else, venture a guess based on my own experience.

When I was about to start my tranisiton, my doctor told me that I would go through a "second puberty." In other words, my body would go through changes very similar to those experienced by 12- to 14-year olds. What that meant was that, among other things, I would grow breasts, some of my facial features and other areas of my body would become more feminine, and I would become more intensely emotional. And I could gain weight, as kids often do in their puberty. All of those things have come true: I'm somewhere between an A and a B cup (Conventional wisdom says that a trans woman's will be one size smaller than her mother's: That's about right, in my case.), I am always addressed as "ma'am" or "miss" by strangers--even today, when I was riding my bike in shorts and a baggy T-shirt and without makeup--and, as for my emotions, well, if you've been following Tranny Times, you don't need any explanation of that. And, as for my weight gain, I hope I follow another pattern of puberty in losing it as my new bodily characteristics mature.

The point is, in puberty and in the adolescence that follows, one is living on a child's external clock while the rest of the world is running on Grown-Ups' Standard Time (GUST). Or vice versa: You have a GUST bodily clock while the world is running on children's time. And, most of us yo-yo between both states. That is why it seems that we're sprinting ahead of or falling behind everyone else when we walk. We, like kids in their early teens, never seem to keep abreast with the rest of the world. You might say--sorry, Thoreau--that we're hearing different drummers from the rest of the world.

That, I believe, is also the reason why kids of that age will often write poetry--sometimes very intense--or engage in other creative pursuits that fall by the wayside somewhere in their late teens or early adulthood. I think now of the poetry workshops I used to do as a visiting artist in the schools: The most incredible stuff was written by sixth, seventh and eighth-graders. And most of them would never write poetry or short stories again after they left adolescence.

That is one way I'm different from pubescent boys and girls. I've been writing in one fashion or another for as long as I can remember; if I haven't abandoned it by now, I don't think I ever will.

Back to sleep: Ever notice that that kids in puberty can stay up all of one night and the next but sleep all through the next day? Or so it seems. And--I think back to being a camp counselor--you practically have to lift them by their feet with a crane and drop them if you want them to wake up early enough to be on time for anything? Or so it seems. I couldn't count how many kids showed up at the mess hall just as it stopped serving breakfast!

(All right. If there's a pubescent kids' defamation league, I'm probably on their "hit list" now. Some days I'd be more worried about them than the Mafia, FBI, Mossad or any so-called terrorist organization. Other days, I'd be about as worried over them as I am over the prospect of a blizzard on this hot midsummer night.)

Now I'm ready to sleep again. Tomorrow: Same time (well, more or less), same pages.

Another Ending

So another day ends. And in this case, another week and another class.

Most of my co-workers and I are on four-day weeks until the middle of August, when registration begins. During the four days on the job, we come in earlier and/or leave later and/or take shorter or no lunch breaks. I'm going in an hour earlier and taking a shorter lunch break. I really don't mind either (actually, coming in early I mind somewhat, but it's not the worst thing in the world.) And, of course, it's hard to argue with a three-day weekend.

Except that this won't be a real three-day weekend. You see, I have a whole bunch of papers to grade for the class I've been teaching. Officially, Tuesday is our last meeting day: that's when the final exam is supposed to be administered. However, I'm not required to give a final in that class: Writing for Business. What do you give for a final exam in a class that has involved writing letters, memos, e-mails, reports, proposals and plans--and giving a speech?

So the class is essentially over. The campus will be a ghost town after next week. I'll probably enjoy the quiet and miss the students. That sounds contradictory but, as Walt Whitman wrote, "I embrace my contradictions."

Actually, I'm starting to miss the class already: They're one of the nicer groups of people I've taught. As in so many classes at York, the women clearly outnumbered the men: 20 to 5. This ratio is not so unusual at York, particularly in an upper-division course like the one I taught.

One of the males was one of the few students in that class who was under 30: Jay, who is the second student to take three diferent courses with me. Another, Ratesh, is just under 30 and left Guyana by himself at age 15. I enjoy talking with both of them, as I frequently did outside class, because they have experienced much but are very open-hearted and sympathetic. In that way, they're much like the majority of that class: Women in their 30's and 40's who are looking to turn their current jobs into careers or to move into other lines of work altogether--or, possibly to restart their lives. I'm sure that at some have had abusive boyfriends or husbands: I could tell that about one or two of them simply by looking at them, even though I could not see their bruises.

And then there's Dianne, an African-American native of Jacksonville, FL (not far from where my parents live now), who is around my age. As a child, saw a black man's body hanging from a tree while visiting relatives in Alabama and stumbled on a KKK rally near her home.

Where was I during that time? In Brooklyn, in a neighborhood bisected by the McDonald Avenue elevated tracks, where the F train runs to Coney Island or Manhattan and Queens. The boundaries, at least unofficially, of that neighborhood were an expressway, a cemetery, a New York City transit maintainence yard (full of rows of brick-red, black and stainless steel subway cars), the ocean and Ocean Parkway.

In our neighborhood, nobody starved but nobody had a lot, either. Sometimes my mother would make pasta with sauce and very small amounts of chopped meat, peas or beans--or sometimes even pancakes--for me and my brothers for dinner. I didn't mind those dishes at all; in fact, years later, when I started living on my own, I made such meals for myself and didn't wish for anything else. Why? For the same reasons my mother made them: To stretch the few dollars left until the next paycheck. And, let's face it, those foods are satisfying as well as filling.

In one sense--a very literal one, of course--those days ended for me, my mother, my brothers and my father--because time, and we, moved on. That's the chief reason why things end. But, just as important, those and other experiences form and change us. So, in another way, things have to end simply because we're not the same people as we were when they started.

One of the things I didn't know back then was that my family, and nearly all the others around us, were "working class." (Someone once said that once you learn you're working class, you aren't anymore. ) I didn't know anything different; nor did most people in the neighborhood. I saw starving children in Africa and India--on TV. That's also where I saw the rich and famous--again, in places nowhere near our home. The starving and the wealthy were so distant and abstract that I--and, I suspect, most everyone else in that neighborhood--couldn't compare ourselves to them.

Here's something else we probably didn't have to think about: That neighborhood, at least as I remember it, was entirely white. Most of us were Italian or Jewish; a few Irish: none more than a generation or two removed from the "old country." However, that neighborhood was so insular that neither I nor most of the other kids had any idea of who or what was beyond those boundaries I mentioned. All we knew was that we weren't supposed to cross them. Nobody told us that; it was something we simply "understood."

Many years later, after I'd moved to Manhattan, I took a Sunday subway ride to the old neighborhood. And I did something I never did when I was living there: I crossed Ocean Parkway, on foot. Sometimes my father drove us across it when we went to visit relatives in Queens or some other part of town. But I'd never actually set foot on the center lane, much less the other side.

Before that day, before I crossed Ocean Parkway, I had already crossed the ocean. I'd seen the other side-- England, France and the Netherlands--but I hadn't seen East 8th Street, the next street on the other side of the Parkway.

If that neighborhood hadn't ended for me when my family moved out of it, it was certainly done, finished, when I set foot on the opposite side of the Parkway.

So, dear reader (Could that be me?), you're probably asking what's changed tonight. Well, nothing monumental, or so it seems. Another workweek ends: That has happened hundreds, perhaps thousands (I haven't done the math.), of times for me already. Another class comes to an end, too: That's happened dozens of times. Another academic term--in this case, a truncated version. OK, that's no big deal either. In a few weeks, another semester will start.

Well, the class that just ended is the last summer class I'll be teaching for a while--possibly forever. All right: That's a small denouement in the scale of things. In a couple of weeks, I expect to see my parents: After that, I may not see them again until the surgery.

I guess every day is an ending as well as a beginning. And there's another boundary, street or ocean to cross. Some people talk about light at the end of the tunnel. What's more frequent, I think, are the lights where we cross. Sometimes I wonder whether I'm dashing (as much as I can do that now) through the intersection as the light's changing.

Georgia Blue; Marriage?(!)

Georgia Blue. Sounds like the name of a poem from Langston Hughes. Or maybe a musical collaboration between Ray Charles and Thelonious Monk. (Now tell me, how likely would that have been?)

But Georgia Blue is what you see on this page. I mean that literally. This typeface is called Georgia, and the color is, well, what you see. So is Georgia Blue a synonym for "What you see is what you get"?

So why am I thinking about Georgia Blue? The phrase just popped into my head before I realzed I was typing the state in which I was born and the color of the sea or the sky, depending on where you are.

Georgia Blue. Could be the name of a soul singer? Hmm...I like that one. Years ago, the radio station WBAI used to have a musical program hosted by someone named Delphine Blue. Guess what kinds of music she played. With a name like that, what else could she do? And can you imagine how many guys are "distracted" by a name like that.

This makes me think of a student I had three years ago. Are you ready for his name? Get this: Teddy Neptune. Yes, that was his real given name. I told him that with a name like his, he really should go on stage. Now that I think of it, he should be a calypso musician.

And then there was one of the East Village's most sui generis characters: Adam Purple. During the brief time I was living and working in that part of town, I met him. He used to ride his old Schwinn around the neighborhood, always lugging around bags of cans and bottles (in the days before recycling mandates and bottle deposits were in effect) or garden tools. He's the one who turned an empty, seemingly ruined, lot near the Bowery into "The Garden of Eden." Yes, that's what he called it. The Tuileries it wasn't. But it was a welcome sight, full of color in a pocket of cement blocks and bricks. It made a lot of people happy, until the city took it away and tore it apart in the name of "gentriification."


I wonder where Adam Purple is now. Maybe he's hanging around Georgia Blue, Delphine Blue or Teddy Neptune.

Maybe Teddy Neptune would sing "Sweet Georgia Blue." How would the world be different if we'd had that instead of "Sweet Georgia Brown?"

How does Justine Lilac Valinotti sound? Justine Lilac Nicholas Valinotti? Justine Nicholas Lilac Valinotti?

Won't happen because if I get married, I'll have to add another name. How many names can I have?

Ah...now I'm thinking about the future again. Marriage. Dominick and I have talked about it. We'd do it after my operation, of course. I don't know whether I'm more surprised at myself or him. Myself, for thinking about marriage, after what I've experienced. And that someone would actually think about marrying me. Or him, because he's younger than I am and good-looking.

Now...The feminists are going to excommunicate me for this one. The prospect of marriage appeals more to me now than it ever did while I lived as a man. I've read countless articles saying that, in essence, women want and value marriage more than men do. Based on a sample of one, who happens to be me (real scientific, huh?) , I'd agree with it.

Then again, I know women--mainly older than me--who say that if they could do it over again, they wouldn't get married. One friend, Sonia, who actually is one of the founders of the modern feminist movement, says that the only two things in her life that disappointed her were her marriage and daughter. Another friend, Millie, says, "I married a good man and I love my children and grandchildren. But if I were young today, I wouldn't get married or have kids." And my mother says that if she knew now what she knew then, if she married, she'd do it much later in life than she did. "And I'd get more education and probably have a career," she says.

Of course, I love all of them--especially my mother--exactly as they are. But what if...

What if they hadn't gotten married or had the careers they couldn't have (or, in Sonia's case, if there were fewer cultural and legal barriers to it)? What if I'd been a member of their generation--and born as genetic female?

What if the song had been Sweet Georgia Blue?

Tuesday Afternoon, Expectations

Tuesday afternoon. Remember that Moody Blues song? It's actually called "Forever Afternoon," but its repeated refrain of "Tuesday Afternoon" gave it its unofficial title.

And it's not really a "song": progressive rock albums, especially "concept" albums, didn't really have differentiated songs. "Forever Afternoon" was really part of a larger suite that included "Peak Hour" and "Evening."

So what is it about Tuesday? It's almost always been, for me, the longest day of the week besides Thursday. Of course, right now I'm teaching a class on Tuesday and Thursday nights after my regular job. But it seems as if Tuesday has always been a "packed" day for me, even when I'm on vacation.

Of course, the sea and the sky don't know what day of the week it is. Nor does my body, at least in theory. But when my body adjusts itself to the pace and schedule of my schedule, it seems to know when it's Tuesday or Thursday. If that's the case, my body surely knows I'm 50: I feel as if I've gained a few pounds since my birthday.

OK, call me paranoid. Tell me that I'm falling for the body-image mind-fuck that is inflicted upon so many females when we're young. But if you saw my body, you'd know that I'm just, well, fat.

And I feel bloated. I don't know what I ate in the last couple of days, but my stomach has felt and sounded like a missed shift on my father's old stick-shift VW bus.

Not very ladylike to talk this way, is it? Oh well. I guess I'm just a wimp about pain. At least I have an excuse: Neither a baby nor my blood has ever come out from between my legs, so maybe I don't really know about sickness or pain.

Or maybe I've never even really experienced Tuesday. Perhaps I've only experienced an idea, an expectation, of it, just as some people can only experience their expectation of a place. I can't count how many times I've told someone about a trip to France, and the first thing that person said was, "They hate Americans, right?" If I tell them about my impending surgery, they'd say--or think-- something like, "So you're going to get it cut off?"

I still don't know what to expect, really. I've read about it and talked to people, and I've thought for a long, long time about it. I know more or less what the doctor will do and what will, and might, happen as a result. I also know that, should the operation succeed--and there's little reason to see why it won't--my body will conform, at least in perhaps the most important way, to my vision of myself.

Speaking of bodies--of mine specifically: When I was about to start taking hormones, my doctor said I would be more vulnerable to certain maladies, at least for a while. I doubt that the hormones have anything to do with the current state of my stomach. Or Tuesday.

Then again, if my body does act in concert with the tides and the moon, maybe it does know, after all, what day of the week it is. Or, perhaps, as Marcia P. "Pay It No Mind" Johnson might've said, it knows what time it is.

I knew, too. It just took me a long time to do anything about it: a lot of Tuesday afternoons.

Liberte, Egalite, Sororite: Comment m'apelle?

Ten days ago I celebrated my 50th birthday. And people celebrated the birthday of this country.

Today the French have their fete nationale. Many people see it as the "birth" of France, or at least France as they know it, or think they know it.

So what was else was born on the 14th? Let's see: my freedom (at least for a time), my wellness (at least relative to what I was before) and my current identity.

You see, on the 14th of July, I was discharged from the Army reserves (honorably), lived my first day as an adult without alcohol or drugs (as I have ever since) and became Justine, at least officially.

Vive la revolution! If I were a French revolutionary in my past life (as a friend and spiritual advisor says I must have been), which one would I be? Maybe I would just be the Marquis de Sade, who supposedly was incarcerated in the Bastille when the revolutionaries stormed and destroyed it.

Before I continue, I want you to know that each of my events of le quatorzieme juillet happened in different years. Now, if I'd gotten discharged, sober and my name changed all in one day, I'm not sure how I'd've coped. Then again, if none of those things had happened, I might not be here now.

And so what did I do today? I made another chage. Of course! What else could I do on the fourteenth? But, just so you know, I didn't choose the forteenth for the other three events that occured on this date. However, what I did today, I did on this date mainly for expediency. Imagine that: Liberte. Egalite. Expedience. At least, I think that's how it's said in French--with an accent grave on the final "e".

So, what monumental change did I make at my convenience? (Sorry, Gil Scott-Heron!) Well, I went to the court to file for another name change.

Since the 14th of July in 2003, I have been Justine Valinotti, a.k.a. Justine Nicholas. For professional purposes, I've been going by "Justine Nicholas." I thought I wouldn't have to spend so much time telling people how to spell my name. Well, I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had things addressed to "Nichols." Or someone thinks "Nicholas" is my first name and, well, I don't have to tell you about some of the spam that reaches my mailbox!

Today I filed to make myself Justine Nicholas Valinotti, and no one else. I feel ready for that; I feel as if I no longer need "Justine Nicholas" to build a new creative and professional identity. My new life is still in its early stages, but I think I've developed as Justine to the point that I can reintegrate my experience with my future. I can move forward now with the resources my life as Nick Valinotti gave me. I promised myself long ago that I would not abandon him, any more than I would abandon my parents or my cats. Even though I never wanted to be him, I cannot deny that living his life has, at least in some ways, allowed me to live the one I've been living for the past five years.

It's as if I had to live his life in order to learn how to live my own. And now I feel ready to honor his while taking flight on my own.

So, I went down to the Civil Court in lower Manhattan, as I had done five years before. And the clerk to whom I presented my papers was as friendly as the one I encountered five years ago. Yes, I had to wait on line, and the place isn't the most cheerful (a typical concrete-block government space). But for some reason, the people with whom I've dealt were pleasant and helpful, at least to me.

I still haven't quite figured out why, for the most part, people in "official" situations are more helpful and friendly than I remember them being when I was still living as Nick. I guess it has something to do with my own happiness: More than one person has told me that other people respond to that. I mean, people were even nice to me at the dreaded DMV when I went there early in my current life. Of course, there are still assholes; there always will be. And there was the time I was harassed by two "cops" whom I think were bogus. But on the whole, most of my dealings with people are happy and satisfying.

It may just be that blondes have more fun! ;-)

After taking care of business, I wanted to see the "Waterfalls" installations along the East River. (I very stupidly forgot to bring my camera with me!) So, after meandering a bit into Chinatown, I looped back around to the area near the courthouse, and found myself at One Police Plaza. I walked up to an officer at the information desk and asked whether he knew the best place to go for a view. He directed me to the South Street Seaport, a place where I hadn't gone in I-don't-know-how-long. At least he had the right idea: the views of the "Falls" were divine from there.

It's actually one of the more beautiful installations I've seen in some time. I still haven't decided whether it's pristinely complex or has complex pristineness. Like so much great art, it seems to be simpler than it actually is. Maybe that's why just about everyone, it seems, enjoys it, and some appreciate it.

When we think of waterfalls, we think of currents cascading down rock escarpments or other features of a natural landscape. However, we don't have that sort of thing in the city, and if we did, it's long gone. So what's our landscape? The bridges, the buildings and such. And, appropriately enough, one of the cataracts I saw streamed from underneath the towers on the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge. With its weathered brown stones, the bridge can seem almost like an outcropping of rock, were it not for the steel cables. Actually, I think the way the bridge resembles a large rock formation is a sort of inverse analogy to the way a cave full of stalactites reminds people of a cathedral.

Anyway, I plan to see the Falls again--and bring my camera. That will be another legacy of the 14th. That, and blondes having more fun, by whatever name!