ninaherenorthere.com

For the most part, I am focused on my self. But I’m feeling particularly altruistic today. So please allow me to promote, or pretend to promote my some of my friends, while actually using them as launching off points to talk about myself.

Let’s start with my friend, Mat Honan, who basically got a book deal by telling his wife a joke (see book title) that he astutely turned into a website that attracted a publisher. His book, Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle: 366 Ways He Really Cares, is a compendium of all the wonderful things our next president has done to make himself such a lovable guy. Don’t forget that “Barack Obama left his W-Fi network open in case you wanted to use it,” and “Barack Obama folded you an origami crane,” and are you sitting down for this, “Barack Obama found out your ex was going to be there and warned you ahead of time.” How can you not love him for that? So, if you were uncertain what to get that Obamaniac in your life in celebration of this week’s Democratic National Convention, this is the gift. Or, for that person who treats their bicycle as the be all and end of life (is this everyone in SF?) and is looking for a change in obsession, then perhaps Barack Obama can be their new bicycle.

About my relationship with the author: I traveled with Mat and his wife, Harper, for two months in Asia. Highlights of our time together included two days of discomfort in a motorized dugout canoe traveling up the Mekong River, listening to Bush’s State of the Union address using Mat’s short-wave radio in an electricity-less town in Laos, and my bringing Mat and Harper french fries while they recovered from Dengue Fever in a Bangkok hotel. Traveling with Mat was like having my own wireless Wikipedia by my side; he knows shit about everything, which is why he’s a journalist. He currently edits and writes for Wired Magazine and wrote a damn good feature story in the August issue about coffee and an $11,00 machine that brews by the cup.

Another friend of mine, Cynjai Robinson, has a couple novels (is comic noir a literary genre?) coming out in 2009 and 2010. It may seem like a long time before you can have a copy of The Dog Park Club in your hands, but she just sent me the URL for her new website, which means you can get to know her before then, or pick up some tips on what a good “author’s website” looks like for when you need to pre-promote your next novel. There is a blog component and reading it reminds me of hanging out with her at a bar. Mostly I laugh, but I also just have to nod my head at the words that are too big for me to understand. I had my very first class (a six-week autobiography intensive) in the University of San Francisco MFA writing program with her. I remember reading that first submission of hers; “Oh,” I thought to myself. “That’s writing.”

And finally, my yoga teacher’s web site.

I. Love. Janet. Stone.

I’m not quite sure what to say about her since we’re not really friends. But I, along with over a hundred other people, am comforted by her words and poses, support and love, teachings and wisdom, every Friday night. I will buy her video and I will dream of following her to India.

The other day, I was walking the last block to my house after a run and a woman engaged me in one of those “I used to run, but now my body is broken” conversations. I’m a sucker for that kind of nostalgia, because despite being a white person in America with no real financial worries, I’m constantly needing to remember that I’m lucky. Last week, a particularly rough time for me, I rented Murderball, the movie about quadriplegic rugby players. I watched it in three installments so I could have a daily reminder, the gift of my able body, to give me perspective on my privileged woes.

The woman on the street told me she had run in a handful of marathons. She gave a specific number, but once the number is one, it might as well be four or five or whatever. Marathon runners kill me, and not so much in that impressive way. We are not made for twenty-six miles; it’s so much unnecessary stress on the body. And I tend to worry about the mental condition of someone who wants to run twenty-six miles. She told me that she used to run up the 17th street hill that we were standing on the lower part of. That impressed me. I don’t bike up that hill. There is a warning sign: 17% grade. “I’m not sure passing cars could tell I was actually running,” she said. “But if I could just make it up that hill, I knew I was okay.”

I have been working out a decent amount in the past few months and have come to count on sweating as a catharsis integral to maintaining a semblance of mental health. But I don’t really set goals or anything. I’ll occasionally leave spin class five minutes early just to spite the workout. Until the other day, I hadn’t bothered to figure out how far I usually run and now I forget, but I think it’s 3.5 – 5 miles, depending. I usually run for about 30 to 45 minutes, but I don’t wear a watch. (I’m scared of finding out that I run a ten-minute mile.) I have no interest in running marathons or a 10k. I’ve always run just to feel good and that’s it.

Today, I needed to feel good. I awoke to PG&E jackhammering outside my window at 7:45 am. If I had planned on being in a decent mood, this would have been a severe blow, but since I was already feeling crappy, the construction workers didn’t bother me. On my way to the cafe, the back door of a van of slid open revealing a bunch of queer kids who appeared no older than twenty. The ringleader called for my attention. She announced that the gay boy thought I was hot, but then the lesbians claimed me as one of their own. “We just want you to know we all think you’re hot,” she said, while her entourage giggled in the background and one of them shouted to the driver, “Go, go.” When that ego boost lasted a whole four seconds, the length of time it took for my smile to fade, I knew I was in trouble. My writing session was awful, if one can call staring at the computer screen writing. By 11 am, I didn’t think I would make it through the day without my mind combusting.

Running doesn’t always put me in a good mood. Sometimes, it is as hard as writing. Sometimes, like today, I know I just have to do it. When I left my house this morning, the sun was just starting to peek out. I ran the out portion of my longer route: down the hill, up and over Divisidero, along the panhandle, and into Golden Gate park to the turn-off for the art museum.

I would never tackle the 17% 17th St hill from my front door without a warm-up. But every since I met that former marathoner, I’d been contemplating hitting 17th St from the backside. It’s still the same height but the grade isn’t as steep, and I’m so desperately in need of a change of running route, or even an alteration, that I consider it a potential reason to move. So after I ran out of Golden Gate park, rather than continuing home, I headed up towards the backside of 17th St.

I barely noticed the uphill. I was in the zone, that adrenaline fueled fantasy where I believe I can run forever. At the top of 17th St, I could see the burnt brown mounds of Twin Peaks, the towers poking through a thin sheet of San Francisco summer fog. I was afraid of the post-euphoric slide, afraid that if I stopped running, I might die. A voice inside my head said, “If you just get to the top, you’ll be okay.”

I plugged along. Passing cars probably didn’t know I was running. By now my hair was wet, my face was dripping, and I felt like a shaggy dog. The noon sun was out in full force, pinking my cheeks as I headed up, up and up to greet it. I knew from biking that on the final climb to the top, the curvaceous switchbacks have a gentle grade. It didn’t take very long for me to reach the tourists lining the walled viewing area where I scooped my arm into the air in the subtlest of victory gestures. In almost nine years in San Francisco, I’d never run to the top of Twin Peaks.

It didn’t surprise me that I made it. It didn’t surprise me that the whole time I believed I would make it. It certainly didn’t surprise me when the tears that had threatened at the start of my run, the ones that were preparing themselves all morning, came spilling out; I know I’m okay.

I am horrified. Sorta rageful. Cringing fitfully. But I get it. I understand why Curve Magazine had to refer to me as a “woman,” at least once. The use of “girl” seems excessive and sloppy. (Is it a “woman’s journey” or a “girl’s bike trip”? Consistency copyeditors.) However, there is one phrase, the title of my article as listed in the table of contents, that makes my gender identity flare his nostrils in anger:

Cycling Sista

I always swore that I would never be one of those trans people to nitpick about pronouns, make a stink about bathrooms, be militant, bother every friend and lover with constant talk of my body “dysphoria,” or use “dysphoria” or “gender identity” without laughing. But that’s before I actually accepted that I am a trans person, an invisible guy, one who at least is still laughing at the title of his blog post.

Curve is a lesbian magazine. It says the word three times on the cover, including, “Best-Selling Lesbian Magazine.” The audience is Women and Womyn. In flyover states. If I had a quarter for every time a writing teacher told me you don’t have to be the audience of a magazine to write for the magazine; just know your audience…

Five months ago, during my unemployed stint, Curve posted a Craigslist ad seeking freelance writers. Since it’s hard to pitch travel magazines unsolicited, I pitched two travel stories to Curve, one about a permaculture farm in Costa Rica, the other about bicycle touring. I was fully aware that I was trying to sneak destination and adventure travel stories into the mag, so hidden in over 2,000 total words, I included less than 50 words about dyke soccer and a gay bar. (It was really a gay men’s bar.) I also used the following phrases in my pitch, “For the adventurous lesbian,” and “After reading my article, lesbians will know.” In my daily life, I NEVER use the word lesbian, because even my lesbian friends think the word sounds like a disease, but I looked at the cover of the magazine and tried to know my audience. I was complicit in this whole debacle.

But… Is there something about being a woman, or a girl, or a sista that is intrinsic to my story? NO! Is it necessary that a woman reading the story assumes that the first-person guide is a woman in order to identify with her? Yes and no. The exact same story (minus the 50 words with the two “dyke” mentions) could’ve been in a men’s magazine, but perhaps it would’ve been less inspiring to the readers of Curve. We seek connections with others like ourselves.

Which is why, even though I don’t think there is an appropriate angle for me to write a letter to Curve expressing my frustration, I am frustrated. I do not feel connected to women. At all. I might as well come out with it: I am NOT a woman.

My boy name is “Nick.” I don’t use it very often, and for now, at least, I don’t mind having two names. If you are one of my friends pulling for “Nino,” I suggest you start calling me that ASAP, because although I like how close it is to my name, it could take a while to get used to. So, I wonder, if I had submitted my article with the name “Nick” or “Nino,” would the editor have asked if I was a woman, would she have just as easily called me out as a woman in the table of contents and title, would she have assumed that in pitching Curve, I was one of the many dykes with a masculine name? Would it have been inappropriate for a man to write the article, a transman? What about a genderqueer boi?

When I walk down the streets, I access my superhuman power to jump into bodies of the dudes. I see myself in time-lapse metamorphosis, my breasts vanishing into pecks, my dick pressing out of my pelvic area. Then, I look in the mirror and see the flatness of my chest, feel the binder ripping into my armpits. I run my hands across my checks, soft as a pre-pubescent boy.

The word “woman” is nails on a chalkboard, a rude interruption of my reality. I am done with my silence, done passing. But even as I write this, I pass. “How’s it going, sister?” asks the plant guy in my office. I have known him for almost ten years. I see him only once a year, usually a run-in at one of my various office jobs. He is twenty feet away watering; I am at my cube; I want to shout, “Hey! Don’t call me sister.” I stay quiet.

If I end up transitioning, or partially transitioning, or changing my name, and someone asks me how I could be so sure, I will say that Curve Magazine helped. That I saw the words “woman” and “girl” and “sista” in print, applied to me, and that I simultaneously wanted to cry, die, disappear and breath fire.

I like my reality better than your reality. And I will chose mine over yours. But fuck you for making me choose.

The other day, construction workers for PG&E cut a coffin-sized hole in the concrete on the street that my desk faces. The sound was loud, like an electric saw to my skull. It was one of my last Tuesday mornings off. (I start working four days a week soon.) Nobody was home. I didn’t feel like going to a coffee shop. So, I moved my desk.

For the last two-and-a-half years my desk has sat in the same window pod in my room, a divot between the fireplace and the wall, well-suited to this end. When I first moved into the house, I lived in the smaller room next door, but I still wrote at this desk in what has become my room. The smaller room next door is now vacant.

Well, vacant is stretching it. The room is mostly my bicycle garage, housing two bikes, a couple of helmets, pumps and scattered gloves and locks. There are also a few empty boxes destined for the recylcing bin, a pile of linens and a comforter. The wood floor is partially covered by a $20 rug purchased at a thrift store because our downstairs neighbor alerted the landlord to the section of our lease that said 80% of the hardwood floors require rugs. (“Wait, you want us to cover a floor in a room that nobody uses?” – me to rental agency.)

The point is that the room, in terms of both size and contents, is basically a closet. The window faces a different street than the window by the desk in my room, and so last Tuesday, when PG&E started ripping up the road, I moved my desk and chair into the empty room.

For the last week, I’ve been writing in there, and it’s been wonderful. There’s something about closing the door to my room, walking one step and opening the door to another room that makes me feel like I’m going to the office. But I don’t want to make it a true office or invite my roommate to do the same. I like that my writing room is so empty that the sound of the door closing nearly echoes. I have no files, no books, no trash can, no printer, and no papers other than the ones I think I’ll need for that session. The walls are bare, painted some type of off-white, but they might as well be insane asylum white.

There is nothing to look at, think about, distract myself with when I’m in this barren room. It is the perfect spot to write.

About 6 months ago, I got involved with an adult literacy organization affiliated with the public library. It is a well-funded nonprofit, meaning the office is not a  linoleum-tiled janitor’s closet with turn of the millennium Macs. It is also means there’s lots of free stuff: food, books, training workshops. (There is even a monthly bookclub, for which all of the tutor/learner pairs receive free books and audio books if they want to participate.) But most importantly, it means that I can stomach the volunteer, do-good aspect of my participation because my “service” is kind of pampering.

When I met my guy (we’ll call him Jim), I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I started tutoring because somewhere in the back of my head, I wondered whether I might be interested in trading the ease of sitting in an ergonomic chair all day with my headphones on, casually writing a couple of error messages a day (as in: “please correct the address field below”) for a low-paying, energy-draining education job. Perhaps teaching ESL, or literacy. To adults, of course. After years of failed endeavors trying to work with youth, I realized I don’t like to babysit or stare at  zits or engage with my inner child.

I’m pretty sure I lucked out with Jim. He shows up every single Tuesday night on time, raring to go. He is happy, genetically or something. He owns a growing business, shuttling patients to dialysis appointments. He has been married for over thirty years. He is a partial season-ticket holder for Warriors games. He is over sixty, goes to the gym regularly, and could probably bench press me. He is close to his granddaugther and pays her money based on her grades ($100 for A’s $50 for B’s). He is totally and completely my kind of guy. 

Before I met Jim, I was told he’s an “advanced” learner. Jim has a high school degree and my uneducated guess is that he reads at an 8th grade level and writes at a 4th grade level. During one lesson, I tried to explain the sentence: capitalize the first word and end with a period. He told me that if we focused on the sentence, it would detract from the things he really cares about.

Jim loves to spell. Often when we spell words, he’ll say something like, “Really, that’s how you spell broccoli!” He is amazed to see words he uses all the time in print. He carries around an electronic dictionary, exactly like the one I have except his announces words in monotonous vibrations that pass for speech and he refers to it as a “computer” because he doesn’t use it for definitions. He uses it when he knows the first few letters of a word, which generates a list that he can choose from. Sometimes he cannot get the first few letters. Sometimes he guesses an “R” instead of a “D.” He doesn’t seem to get phonics; I’ve wondered if he hears the sounds at all or if he has just memorized all of the words he can spell. I can’t tell if he’s dyslexic or occasionally spells “on,” “N-O” because he is tired.

On our first day together, I asked what his “goals” were. I expected “big” goals, things we discussed in my training, like reading the mail, or advancing at a job, or getting a GED. He told me his goal was to be able to write down his thoughts. Maybe I made a disappointed face. “I can’t even spell thoughts,” he said.

He writes regularly in his journal, usually 3-4 times a week but sometimes 6-7. After three months, we wrote an email to one of his old tutors. The following week, he didn’t notice her reply in his inbox because of all the junk mail. (He always opts-in, not quite getting the junk factor.) I pointed out the email right before we left. He lit up, reading the email aloud straight through with a big ass grin on his face. Then he turned to me, “How does it feel to be the one to bring joy to my life?” All I did was point out that he’d received an email.

Once Jim started to write his thoughts, he wanted to express them to others, a feeling I more than relate to. We started to email his other tutor. He wrote to her that it was the beginning of their correspondence. Now when he writes in his journal, he sometimes writes a draft of an email he will type during our session. He eventually wants to be able (i.e. have the confidence and set aside the time) to email her from his home computer.

Sometimes we do basic computer stuff and I hardly feel like I’m tutoring. For a sixty-year old, he’s really good with the Internet. But sometimes he doesn’t remember where the URL goes, and to move the cursor around it seems to travel through an obstacle course first. We spent a half-hour one day registering his Starbucks card. He insisted on a userID like 12345 or 67891011. He refused to write it down. A month later, we spent ten minutes trying to remember it, but couldn’t. He had to re-enter all of the information again. It’s one of the few lessons I feel has sunk in: write down your userID.

This Tuesday, he told me he was surprised that I let him do everything himself: write, spell, forget his userID; other tutors grabbed the keyboard or the pen. At the end of every session, he thanks me. Sometimes he shakes my hand. He tells me I’m doing a great job. Sometimes I forget who is helping out whom.

Until yesterday, I had completely forgotten that whether I have a good writing morning or a bad writing morning completely affects my mood for the rest of the day.

Elements of a bad writing morning - I plan on setting aside 45 minutes to an hour before work to “sit at my desk,” but by the time I open the document, I only have 40 minutes. During my last writing session, I’d left off at the end of a section or chapter and I need to read myself back into my story. More than once, I get up to microwave coffee I no longer want to drink. I write a sentence. I decide to move to a different section of the chapter. I take the opportunity in between sections to use the bathroom. I read myself into this section. Ten minutes doesn’t feel like enough time to get anything done. I check my email. I read another paragraph and bold the sentence I want to start with the next morning.

It doesn’t sound too awful. I mean, shit, I tried, right. But there’s some serious repercussions to my tinkering. I find myself in pain at work: physical, emotional, and mental. My lack of productivity exacerbates my personal problems. Monday morning drags. My job, which I claim is for the purpsose of having the time and energy to write, feels more useless than usual. I have to do that visualization my mom suggests to help me get to noon: I hear the cha-ching in Pink Floyd’s “Money” while visualizing cherries coming up in Vegas slots.

Then, it hits me: I’m banking on the future while throwing away the present. I realize I’ve just extended my job contract for longer than I’ve been at my job. Six months is interminable. I picture the end date, my bulging savings account, the number of stops I can add to my round-the-world ticket. My travel plans nullify my book plans, and it’s a damn good thing because I remember all too clearly that leg-tapping, finger-picking morning in which I penned a whopping nine words.

It’s finally the afternoon, as in post-lunch, but the sun hasn’t burned through the August fog and writing at work is impossible because if I couldn’t do it this morning, I certainly can’t do it now. All of a sudden I’m Gchatting about jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. Luckily, everyone knows I’m kidding because if I’m really going to do it, there’s a balcony about ten feet from my desk. And then it strikes me, just leave work, which I do. At 3pm. Consider going to the gym. Kill my brain instead. Call it decompression. File it under being a writer.

I honestly forgot that this is what my life is like when I’m writing regularly. For the past few weeks, I’ve been so excited, engaged, and encouraged by sitting at my desk that any writing was good writing. Not a bad motto to follow, but one that isn’t always easy. Today was a much better writing morning.

Elements of a good writing morning: I spend a half hour reading over a chapter, but instead of folding my laundry on the way to the desk, I sit down. I open a document I don’t expect to open — the chapter outline. I remember hating it, crashing into the big cement wall of it three months ago, but it isn’t half bad. I realize that over the past few weeks I’ve actually read about 70 pages of my book without vomitting, and that it is much easier to stay at the desk and write when I’m not throwing up in my mouth often. I work through the chapter summaries for the first four chapters and barely take a break between each one. I build momentum. Believe that by working chapter by chapter, I can compete the outline. Soon. I saunter out of the house into the sunny day, blissful and accomplished.

At work, my job is still meaningless. An awful smell emanates from the kitchen by my desk. People walk by, holding their noses, looking at me like I’m nuts for sitting near whatever it is: rotting quiche, moldy vegetables, the half and half that’s been in there since our move-in breakfast months ago. Someone calls human resources to remove the stink. The hiring manager walks down the hall spraying everyone with cancer in a can from the bathroom. I don’t care. About any of it. My book will be published. I will be famous. Or so I will believe until my next bad writing session.