I Needed Him More Than I Knew

 In my previous two posts, I reminisced about things that would change my life, and the world—even if I didn’t realize it at the time—that began during this time of year, specifically during a too-early-for-the season heat wave.

My most recent post described how a morning ride with a friend became a journey to the end of fifth grade, a time just before my body and so much in my surroundings would change irrevocably.

That was May of 1969. Now my “Time Machine”—in this case, Tosca, my Mercian fixie, on which I took another early ride—will bring us to 1991. 

My bikes in those days:  a Colnago Arabesque and Bianchi Aelle.  I’d spun the Colnago’s pedals up and down the “seven sisters” on the Jersey side before crossing the George Washington Bridge back to my place.  After showering and eating, I took the subway downtown to a workshop led by poet Martha Rhodes.

One of the workshop’s participants had a cat who’d just had kittens.  As much as I love anything with whiskers that meows and purrs, I could have understood had Martha been annoyed at my fellow student bringing her little ones to the class. But Martha adopted one.  I took another. Or, rather, he took me:  He gave me a look that combined vulnerability and confidence in a way I’ve never seen in any other living being before or since:  He seemed to say, “Oh, I’m just a little kitty” and “You know you’re taking me home” at once.

We didn’t look away from each other on my way home. When I brought him to the vet, the receptionist, technician and vet himself fawned over him: He seemed to be cuter by the minute. And he would develop a bond with me and Caterina, my other cat, that deepened.

I quickly became as impressed with his intelligence as his friendliness.  But at the time, I didn’t realize how much, and how soon, I would need him.  That is not to say that Caterina wasn’t loving. She was already eight years old (according to the vet) when I adopted her five years earlier.  My new “fur baby,” on the other hand, would become the first—and, to date, only—friend I’ve had from the beginning (He was two months old) until the end of his life.

I named him Charlie. Why? It just sounded right—like a “buddy” name.  Like someone who showed up at just the right time.

My ex and I had separated; it would soon become a divorce. Although I wanted our (dis)union to end, it was difficult. For one thing, she fought it, at least in the beginning. Part of me said I should give it one more try, because she wanted it,  but I knew, almost from the beginning, how untenable our relationship was. Also, as much as I wanted out of it, I never realized what else would end with it. Even in a bad relationship, there are some things that are pleasurable or meaningful only when you are together—like the cafe where the waiter knew us. I never went back. 

Sometimes the very people who knew your relationship shouldn’t have happened in the first place are the ones blame you for “abandoning” your former partner. Or you find out that people with whom you thought you would remain friends were really friends of the couple, so to speak, not you.

On the other hand, the breakup gave me a chance to do things simply because I wanted to: the bike ride, taking Martha’s workshop, adopting Charlie.

I joke sometimes that he got me through my first semester of graduate school and college teaching that Fall. Who do you think helped me read and write all of those papers? Seriously, though I was happy to be doing those things, they were at times stressful because they were new to me (and because I didn’t get my first paycheck until the middle of November even though I started teaching in late August). I had to relate to people—my students, my fellow students and colleagues—in ways to which I wasn’t accustomed, in part because more than a decade had passed since I was last a student, and because the environments in which I’d worked had been very different. And, of course, I looked at relationships, all of them, differently as a result of my marriage.

Oh, and there was one other reason why I would need Charlie in ways I could not have foreseen. A week and a half after I adopted him, I learned that a college friend, Robert, had died. While I stayed in touch with him episodically after we graduated, he was always important to me because he was the first person to utter the words, “I am gay” in my presence. I had suspected as much, but it mattered, in ways I couldn’t realize at the time, that he would make such a declaration. He wasn’t trying to get a date with me; it simply came up in the course of something he, another friend and I were talking about. In that place and time, such an admission could be anything from risky to deadly. To this day, I really don’t know why he told me; I don’t believe that I was one of the more sensitive or open-minded people, even in that environment.

Since we are in 1991, you might have surmised what took his life:  AIDS-related illness. By Christmas of that year, four other friends or friendly acquaintances would die the same way. Another took her life; still another was murdered. (Actually, I consider the AIDS deaths, like those from COViD, to be murders because they resulted, directly or not, from what health and government officials did or didn’t do. ) And on the day before Christmas Eve, Caterina passed away.

What would I have done without Charlie—or cycling?

(Note: The cat named “Charlie” in this post is not the same as the one I mentioned in some of my early posts, although they were eerily similar in looks and personality. Charlie II came into my life as an adult cat a few months after Charlie I died. Charlie II was rescued; his rescuer named him Charlie.)

From An Island To A Memory Of A Street

 

My friend Sam—one of the first people I met when I moved into my current apartment—took an early ride: me, on Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear and he, on the aluminum Trek road bike I fixed up for him.  The breeze we felt as we crossed the bridge into City Island and at the end of the island itself would be the last relief we would feel before the sun would turn brick-lined streets— which we followed from Pelham Bay  to Bronx Park—into ovens.

The bricks—faded, cracked and pockmarked like faces who have survived winter, poverty, betrayal and the births of those who have died along those streets—smoldered with their remains and the last buds blown away from cherry blossoms, magnolias, crabapples and early spring flowers like tulips and hyacinths planted around those trees.

The too-early-for-the season heat, which reached 95F (35C), turned their shadows, all of them, into the pores, wrinkles and cracks in bricks and concrete slabs that will endure, perhaps, longer than the street—at least, as I have know it—will.

I walked down a street like it, a couple of blocks from where I lived in Brooklyn, on a day like this, which had followed and preceded another like it, near the end of my fifth grade year.  1969: The world was about to change because of events I would know about as they happened—Woodstock, the Apollo 11 moon landing and protests against the Vietnam War and racial prejudice—and ones I wouldn’t know about until later, like Stonewall.

But, even though summer had not officially begun, it seemed to have always been. The faded, flaked bricks and pinks, purples and yellows turning green felt suspended in the haze of that heat. Just as the world beyond it was changing, I somehow knew that what I was seeing and feeling that day wouldn’t be there forever. Nor would I. The heat was no longer only a meteorological phenomenon: I felt, in a way I couldn’t describe, that it was flaring within me.  And within a year it would change me, as it would change my neighborhood.

On my way home that day, I saw a man who, at the time, seemed ancient to me, sitting on his stoop, as he did nearly every day. I would never see him again.

Sam and promised each other we’ll ride again, perhaps tomorrow morning. The afternoon is forecast to be as hot as today.

(More to come.)

Heat: A Harbinger?

I have taught my last class. Now I am reading stray overdue assignments, writing reports and doing the other bureaucratic things faculty members have to do at the end of a semester.  Oh, and I have been exchanging emails with the students I mentioned in an earlier post.

The AIDS walk has just ended in Central Park. I don’t know whether this particular date was chosen for any reason. But it just so happens that yesterday was the anniversary of what some have argued was the beginning of AIDS in the US, even if no one—including the young doctors who treated the first patient—knew it at the time.  Robert Rayford, a 16-year-old Black boy who had never been outside of his home town of St. Louis died.  The ostensible cause was pneumonia, but the two-year-long downward spiral of his health, in which his immune system basically shut down, baffled the doctors so much that they saved samples of his tissue for nearly two decades.

I could say something about why Rayford, raised by a single mother, was not recognized as “Patient Zero” even after tests confirmed the presence of AIDs proteins during the late 1980s. As a poor Black boy who never left his a hometown of St. Louis, his story didn’t fit the narratives constructed by LG (we—T’s and B’s—weren’t included) organizations, which were dominated mainly by White affluent and middle-class gay men.  

Anyway, I mentioned that episode because, in a way, it’s emblematic of this time of year, at least for me. We are in that part of Spring that’s a prelude to Summer and, perhaps, changes no one is anticipating.  An early heat wave is beginning today.  A week from tomorrow will be Memorial Day, the “unofficial” beginning of Summer, even if a cold spell, possibly accompanied by wind and rain, will strike before the “official” beginning of Summer.

That chronological and weather pattern transpired several times in my life, and each time was a prelude to changes in my life, or changes in the world that would affect me, whether or not I recognized, or even could recognize it at the time.

(To Be Continued )

Ross Willard R.I.P,

 About two weeks ago, I mentioned finding a Bike Library in Shirley Chisholm State Park. Until then, I was aware of only one bike library, in Iowa City, which I learned about by chance.

If the idea is spreading, I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, when I first encountered Recycle-A-Bicycle in my hometown of New York, I thought it was the only program of its kind. Now I see that the concept—which involves fixing bicycles for sale or to distribute to kids and people who can’t afford them—has spread all over the country.  Those programs often involve classes in which kids learn to fix, and earn, bikes as well as volunteer opportunities. 

One thing I have always loved about such programs is that they bypass the elitist racer mentality that intimidates people when they walk into shops.  I was once one of those cyclists who believed that if you weren’t pedaling what Grand Tour riders used and didn’t  live on and for your bike, you weren’t a real cyclist.  I now realize that riders like me were a reason why the US didn’t (and in most areas, still doesn’t ) have a cycling culture.  On the other hand, programs like Bike Recyclers show people that bikes can be a viable form of transportation and that you don’t need to have the newest, latest and most expensive, any more than you need a Formula One car to drive to your family’s holiday get-together in another state.

Folks like Ross Willard are the reason why at least some people understand that new bikes aren’t the only good bikes and,  most importantly, how tomake cycling practical and safe.  Best of all, he started Recycle Bicycle Harrisburg in a city that, while it’s Pennsylvania’s state capital, has faced economic challenges. Also, because it’s more spread out than, say, Philadelphia, and lacks public transportation, residents rely heavily on cars. 

Like most worthwhile change, the shift toward bicycling and other forms of non-automotive transportation has come slowly. But Ross Willard got the wheels rolling, if you will.  He, who passes away last weekend, should be remembered and honored for that.

Happy Mothers’ Day

 Happy Mothers’ Day!

Leaving: The Road Ahead

 

Yesterday I rode down to Rockaway Beach. From there, I pedaled into wind that, at times, reached 40KPH (25MPH) to Brighton Beach.

Along the way, I thought,  among other things,  about the encounters with students I mentioned in my previous post. They could’ve changed my mind about a decision I made earlier. But something one student said made me realize I made, if not the right choice (if there was one), but one that could work out in ways I hadn’t planned.

Someone asked a food writer or chef—I forget which—what he would choose for his last meal. “Wait—I thought you hated those foods,” the interviewer interjected. “Exactly. I don’t want to be unhappy about leaving this world.”  For me, the conversations I had with the two non-binary students, particularly a comment one of them made, left me satisfied that this coming week, I will be teaching my last classes.

Not long after I had the dream about a classmate I hadn’t seen since graduation—and finding her name on my high school’s “In Memoriam” list—I wrote my letter stating my intention to retire as of 1 June, just after the semester ends. While there are ways in which college teaching has changed that are not to my liking (e.g., online classes), I am not leaving because of dissatisfaction or even burnout, though I find that the work seems to take more of my energy than it did years ago. Rather, I am satisfied that I am leaving on a good note: The in-person class that included those two students is one of my favorites, and the two online courses I taught this semester at least had students who seemed friendly and worked diligently.

My student is right: Wherever I go and whatever I do next, I will offer people like them, young and old—and myself—what  I have given them and what I did not have when I was their age or when I started my gender affirmation process.

What Next?

 The semester is ending. Although my workload hasn’t been greater than in previous years, this has been a pretty intense time. Some of that has to do with the students themselves, though not entirely in a bad way. But I have also been experiencing things outside the classroom—or, more precisely, within me—that have made my interactions seem more fraught and rewarding at the same time. 

The ride I took to Point Lookout on Saturday and a Sunday visit to the Botanical Garden were what I needed: both invigorating and restorative. I will return to them again, barring some unforeseeable (for me, anyway) tragedy or disaster. Monday, on the other hand, included the last session of one of my classes. Students thanked me as I’ve never heard before. One stayed after to tell me that, for the first time, they felt confident about their future.

You may have noticed that I used gender-neutral pronouns. The student identifies themself in that way. I “outed” myself in that class: something I hadn’t done in any class in some time. “That made me realize the life I want is possible,” they explained. I urged that student, and another who identifies as non-binary, to stay in touch with me, and not only for a reference or letter of recommendation.

I told them a bit about how I began my gender affirmation process. Although I participated in support groups and was working with a therapist who helped other trans people through their affirmation processes and a clinical social worker who was a trans man, I didn’t have role models in my day-to-day life.  Some lesbians and gay men were supportive, but their journeys were, in some ways, very different from mine. For them, not to mention family members, friends, co-workers and other people in my life, I was the first person they knew who was making that “transition.” “Now I hope,” I told those students, “I am giving you what I didn’t have.”

I confided to them that I’ve been thinking about leaving the US. Sometimes I feel I need it for my mental health. Other times I feel I should stay because of people like them. “Well, whether you stay or go, you’ll offer the same thing you’re giving us,” one student assured me. “If you move to France or Italy or wherever, there are young people like us.”

Where, and how, will my midlife journey continue? Perhaps there is no right or wrong answer—as there is for so many of the questions I, and they, pose.

When Your Cup (Or Bladder) Runneth Over

 What determines what your ride will be like?

Is it the weather? The kind of bike you ride? Its condition? Or, maybe, what you had for breakfast?

Did you drink tea or coffee? If you did, did you have o e cup too many?

Pure Spring

Perhaps I should have taken this day more seriously.

After all, on this date exactly 140 years ago, more than 300,000 workers in the US—50,000 in Chicago alone—went on strike for an eight-hour workday. The walkout in the Windy City led to the Haymarket Riot.

In other countries, this date—May Day—is observed, formally or informally, as Labor Day was in the US before it became an occasion for “last chance” summer parties and sales on stuff nobody needs.

Today, though, it was easy to forget how solemn this day could be. The sky was bright, the air clear (for NYC anyway) and brisk and the colors bold. It wasn’t like days in late March or early April that carry memories of a brutal, seemingly endless Winter that one has somehow survived, nor did it mirror or echo hints of Summer heat. It was Pure Spring.

So what did I do? I took Tosca, my Mercian fixed gear bike, for a spin among blossoming magnolias and beds of red, white, yellow and violet tulips on Randall’s Island.

And when I got home, I turned on music. Tchaikovsky’s “Rites of Spring?” Not quite. The Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun?” Not even. Rather, I clicked onto a YouTube video of pure bubble gum:  The Monkees’ “I’m A Believer.” 

It may not be deep, but it expresses a moment when someone loses his cynicism—in this case, about finding love. Perhaps I chose it because the first time I can recall hearing it was on a day like this: Shadows of the past (of which, to be fair, I was too young to have very much of) did not cling to it; if a darker future lay ahead, I had no hint of it.

It was the first Pure Spring day I can remember. Others followed; perhaps more will come. I can only follow the journey, I can only ride through and with it.