24. A Name Without a Memory

The way someone dies really doesn’t matter. Whether he’s claimed by metal or fire, through external ruptures or spontaneous combustion, or whether she breaks down from exhaustion (Contrary to popular belief, it is men who are consumed, who implode, from emotion.), the outcome is still the same. Someone is dead, and someone else isn’t.

Probably the most pertinent phrase ever written by a man (apart from “You have given me language, And the profit on’t is, I can curse”) is “The good men do is of’t interred with their bones.” Now, I’m not, I’ve never been, one to seek out a spirit or other essence that might live on after a person. Most of the dead—I include nearly all men and the person whom, I will soon cease to be—are best left buried. Most, in fact, would soon be forgotten had they not left behind—or someone hadn’t made—tangible monuments to them.

Whether they’re streets, bridges, churches or other machines, they remain as names. In time, people only know the name—whether it’s on a sign or enshrined in speech.

23. To Forget and Not to Dream

Sometimes I think memory is the curse of the human race. If it is, then recollection is the biggest practical joke, after consciousness itself, every played on our species. And forgetfulness is, if not its salvation, then at least a balm, a palliative: an opiate.

How many people have awakened from nights, weekends, or even whole weeks they couldn’t remember? Try as they might, they can’t explain the markings on their faces or the pain, throbbing from inside their temples, they didn’t have before those stories they were convinced were their lives stopped temporarily.

It happens to women all the time. They get stretch marks, sagging lines, sadness, resentments and all sorts of fatigue-not to mention twenty, fifty or a hundred pounds they didn’t have when their husbands began to express their ambitions as promises. The home they’ll make (where he won’t want to stay), the children, the cars and other objects ostensibly for the family he’s sworn to provide for and protect: all of these things, except for the children, pass just beyond the woman’s grasp—like dreams.

And they weren’t wanted or requested—at least not consciously—any more than those repetitive non-realities that parade through our sleep.

So I’ve made no effort to recall my dreams or any of my old wishes: I couldn’t tell you what I “wanted to be” when I “grew up”—or, for that matter whether I ever had any such daydreams. Maybe they weren’t so strong anyway; maybe there’s never been anything but necessity: I realize now that nothing could ever’ve motivated like the need to under go the transformation I’m about to complete (or, at least, the most dramatic part of it). It drove me, I now understand, long before I could even recognize it.

I wonder how much mother could recall. How did the girl she once was (This is as much as I know of that part of her life.) become the girlfriend—or whatever she was—to the man/ boy who injected her with his seed, which, in the swirling saline inside her, turned into the hallucinogenic pill from which her child descended, through airless haze, to mornings that didn’t surprise either her or the child even if they weren’t prepared for them?

Then again, not much in her life (or what I know of it), or mine, or anyone else’s was ever a matter of preparedness or lack of it. What could’ve prepared her for me? No one knows what to do with a kid who’s stuck with somebody else’s gender—least of all the child him or her self.

I can’t recall the part of my life when I didn’t know that the difference between boys and girls lay underneath their clothes. I’m not sure I can remember the time when I didn’t know that a man could erupt in hot, sticky streams from the touch of my hand—or his. Or that my organ between my legs—which soon be sliced open and spread--could do the same to another man’s touch, to my own—or to a woman’s. Or that women have organs—of which I will soon have rather pale imitations—they could touch to mine or that I could touch

And what did mother recall—or did she?—during our phone conversations? Or at the moment of her death? And what about the women at her funeral? Does Mrs. Littington recall the days when she lived across the street from me and mother or –Hey, is she still married? Is he still alive?

Actually , I hope she’s not thinking of the boy she accused of teaching her then-seven-year-old son how to curse—in English. Which is pretty funny, especially if you consider that he spewed all those bad words at me—for what, if anything, I don’t know.

Or that woman whose name I never knew. She never could direct her frustrations over changes at me as Mrs. Littington did, but mother’s boy wasn’t welcome. Nor, to my knowledge, were any of the other boys, of any age.

Someone—Vivian, I think—once said she wouldn’t want to revisit her childhood, not even the pleasant parts. She believed that reopening the pleasant surprises would make the house of mirrors behind the doors of the present even more painful and grotesque. And of course she didn’t want to relive the pain she endured from rapes and beatings she suffered.

22. What We Become

On this block, even in this day and age, most women become mothers, sometimes by choice but usually by circumstance. Some become wives—many more, I believe, than would ever’ve chosen such a fate. I always wonder whether I’d still come to such a conclusion had I been born female rather than to a female born. Would I’ve had a child—like the one I once was? Would I’ve wished him—given him—that long garden of childhood everyone wished he’d had or somehow remembers having had? For that matter, what would I make of a boy—or a girl? That is to say, what if I’d had a child who didn’t fall between his or her own nature and what teachers, priests, government authorities and others expect?

Long before I knew I could undergo the transformation I’ll soon culminate, I swore I’d never have children. It’s one of two resolutions—getting away from this block was the other—that I’ve ever stuck to. I knew, even then, I couldn’t bring anyone into this world to the same kinds of conflicts I had, or anything like them. Not that I regret them now: the struggle, the frustrations have turned me into a person who’s embarked on the most exciting, excruciating and ennerving experience one can have, I think, short of giving birth to another human being. Since I’ll never be able to do that (barring a sudden advance in medical technology) even after I’ve completed my transformation, I’ll never know for sure. But, as I said, I still have no wish to bring the needs of another mouth, another pair of eyes, another skin in to being.

I still can only wonder how many mothers…including mother…actually chose the role born to their children…and the role to which they’re always identified.

If you don’t give birth to or raise children, then the world –most men, anyway—will fix one of three labels to you: bitch, whore, dyke. A woman can be a bitch and and dyke, but one who isn’t a whore is a bitch. But somehow, the reverse doesn’t seem to hold true. And perceived lesbianism seems to preclude other two and men profess more hatred—because they feel more fascination—than for all of the other experiences put togther..

I’m curious as to where I’ll fit. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, in a way, because I’m not going to have any more to do with the male species than I have to. Hopefully, I’ll never have to turn tricks again, but I know better than to say “never again.” What I hope, at least now, is that I’ll never have to be of use to anybody again, for any reason or in any way.