Love Is Not Love Which Alters When It Aberration Finds

Today marks the one-week anniversary of The Day I Came Down With the Creeping Crud, and I am truly sick and tired of being sick and tired.  I woke up last Tuesday with that "Uh-oh, I think I congratulated myself too soon on having gotten through an entire winter without getting even one really bad cold" feeling. This was something of a disaster, because I had been looking forward to hearing one of my favorite authors, Jennifer Finney Boylan, give a reading at Barnard that afternoon.  And here I was - sick.

I spent much of the day on the fence about whether or not to force myself to walk up to the Barnard campus, less than 20 blocks from my apartment.  I kept setting up little "If this happens, then I won't go" roadblocks for myself and then setting up other "but if this happens, then I will go" counterpoints.  Boylan is touring her latest book, Stuck in the Middle With You - a book about her life as a transgendered male-to-female person who has remained married to her original spouse - a woman who was unaware that James was ultimately going to become Jenny when they were wed - and with whom Boylan has two sons, now college age, but who were quite small when she began her transitioning process.  The latest book is about the parenting aspect, which I imagine is pretty similar for all of us (like myself) who have a kid or kids who are now applying to college.  In other words, sometimes you are so proud you are practically swooning, and other days you wonder what on earth ever possessed you to even have children, when the alternative was having a healthy bank balance, lots of nice vacations that didn't involve Disney characters, and blessedly peaceful breakfasts free of surly senioritis snarlings about how nobody is getting to that first period science class on time, now that they have their college acceptances in hand.

So first I thought I'd get on the subway and see whether I could pick up a copy of Stuck in the Middle With You at the 82nd St. B&N.  Unfortunately, the book, too is in a transition stage - the paperback is coming out later this month, and therefore all the hardcovers have been pulled from the shelves and sent back to the publisher.  So - the "Personalized Author Inscription" incentive to get to that lecture was off the table.  I checked a few used bookshops, just in case, but no luck.  Well, then - clearly, I was meant to stay home and nurse my cold.

The reading was at 4:30, and I stayed in bed under the covers until 3:00, willing myself to fall asleep and thus have the decision taken out of my hands. I couldn't do it.  The thought I'm never sorry for the things I've done, I'm just sorry for the things I didn't do kept nagging at me like a whining dentist's drill.  It's the truth.  I have always regretted missing out on cultural activities after I've opted out.  Okay - there has been the very occasional Broadway play I've walked out of - but most of the time, I wind up glad that I made myself do it.  And Boylan is a known quantity to me - I had heard her read seven or eight years ago when she was touring I'm Looking Through You, another memoir, and she was terrific.  Which, come to think of it, led me to another Cultural Enrichment experience I owe directly to Jenny Boylan - in that book, she mentioned spending a lot of time as a teenager visiting the Barnes Foundation, an institution I'd never heard of - the fabulous collection of Impressionist art assembled by a certain Dr. Albert Barnes, who lived in the Philadelphia area and spent his time buying up every Cezanne and Renoir he could get his hands on whenever he wasn't treating patients.  Thanks to Jenny Boylan's description of the museum, I'd gotten online, had done a bit of research, was blown away by what I read, and had gotten my ticket to see the collection in its original setting - a magnificent manor set amid beautiful gardens, with an enormous Matisse mural gracing the main room, before the collection was moved to its present quarters behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Yes - that did it.  I would have to blow my nose, get my clothes back on and  just do it!

I was a student at Barnard in the early eighties, when the student center was still called MacIntosh and when MacIntosh didn't even mean computers yet. (My senior thesis was typed on corrasable paper.  If you don't know what that is, you are young and the only revenge I can take on you is to make you look it up yourself.) MacIntosh has since been torn down and replaced with a much taller, sleeker building (it's ugly, but then, so was MacIntosh).

The lecture hall is deep in the bowels of this new building; it is oval, and lined with shiny wooden wainscoting.  As Professor Boylan observed, looking at our surroundings with much of the bewildered admiration I was experiencing mirrored on her face, it was quite a lot like being in a very posh submarine.

Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, née James Boylan, hit the New York Times Bestseller List in 2003 with her memoir She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders.  Prior to her gender reassignment surgery, Boylan had lived the average unconventionally conventional life of a typical English professor/author.  (We are all a little off-center...that's why we wind up in the English Department.  Kooky people who hate taking orders tend to wind up in the English Department and then crab about having to do committee work.)  Happy marriage to a beautiful and intelligent woman, two nice kids, a few published novels, tenured position, best friends with fellow English Department colleague Richard Russo - in short, an enviable life.  But there was always this problem of being conscious of having been born into the wrong body, and what, if anything, was to be done about it.

Boylan's journey of self-discovery, self-awareness, and ultimate self-actualization is beautifully set forth in She's Not There.  Prior to reading the book, I already had friendships with several transgendered people... I live in New York City, and one of the perks of life in Manhattan is that we get the benefit of every conceivable type of person or group feeling free to come here and be exactly who they are, without disguise or apology.  My closest transgendered friend happened to be a gifted mathematics tutor, and since I am hopeless at math and very good at verbal studies, this particular friend (who is also named Jennifer) and I teamed up to tutor a high school student who was studying for the SAT.  But Boylan's memoir opened my understanding of transgender issues in ways that conversations with my friend had not.  That's because Jennifer Finney Boylan is a gifted writer.  You can hang out and talk with with your friend Steve, who is cheating on his wife, and you might understand what makes him tick - or you can read Anna Karenina and let Tolstoy explain to you what is making Stiva Oblonsky, who is cheating on his wife Dolly, mess around with their French governess, and if you're me, you'll understand Stiva better than Steve, because now you've had a genius explain it to you.

I don't know whether "genius" is the word to use for Jenny Boylan.  It's a much overused word, in my opinion.  What I can, however, say with confidence is that she is such a warm, engaging and totally human writer that I found it impossible not to relate to her.  Who among us has not experienced the sensation of not being able to fit in?  Who has not had a deep, dark secret that we had planned to hug to us beyond the portals of the grave?  Who has not had a moment of epiphany that cracked open the painful and dazzling revelation that everything in our lives up until this moment has been a mere prelude to a turning point of decision that will change us, and everything we hold dear - forever?  Who does not know the fear of losing everything that attends such a moment, or the sense of freedom and relief that follows the courageous decision that we have no choice but to forge ahead anyway, because silence equals death?  It was not the circumstances that were important - it was that I could completely identify with the feelings.  And this, I think, is what put She's Not There on the bestseller list.  This is a book, not only about transgender experience, but also about the human experience, and this is what accounts for its universal appeal.

As a speaker, Boylan is just as warm and engaging as she is on the printed page.  There is the wry, somewhat self-deprecatory sense of humor that makes her books such delicious reads.  There is the same earnest desire to make the world a better, safer and more tolerant place.  There is the frequently tossed-off casual literary reference in which English major geeks of all stripes delight. There is the educator/explicator who will out (an occupational hazard for those in academia).  And there is profound truth expressed in simplicity of language that it in itself an art.  Professor Boylan began by remarking that she had never originally thought of herself as an activist, but that "Writing and telling our stories is a great form of activism."  Well - yes.  And that is true for all of us who write and tell our stories.

Her talk was witty and never had the flavor of the "canned" lecture; many of her remarks were extemporized.  Perhaps my favorite moment was when she quoted Shakespearean Sonnet 116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds...

Only, she messed up and said "Which alters when it aberration finds."  She jangled to a confused halt, stammered, "I'm so sorry - I totally screwed that up - it should have been 'Love is not love when it alteration finds'" - and everyone began roaring with laughter.

During the Q&A, she called on me, and I was able to relate the true story of a friend who had read Boylan's book and whose relationship with their child, who was having gender-identity confusion, improved as a result of reading the book.  Because my friend had gained a deeper understanding of some of the pains, fears, and conflicts the child was experiencing by reading She's Not There, parent and child were able to have a serene, productive and meaningful conversation, in which the parent was not judgmental, and refrained from giving opinions, advice, or prognostications about the future.  At the end of the discussion, the child smiled and said, "Thank you...I feel complete now."

At the end of the day, if our child turns to us, after a long period of having grappled alone with a seemingly insurmountable problem and, as a result of having confided in us, is able to be at peace and say, "Thank you...I feel complete now" - that is the greatest reward any parent can ask.

And for this reason, despite having a bad cold and an even worse case of inertia, the fact that I made myself leave the house and get up to Barnard for that lecture was one of the best things I did all week.  I'm never sorry for the things I've done...I'm just sorry for the things I didn't do.