About Me, Part 45: Going In Circles

A week after my girlfriend and I got back together, the second Sunday of June 2005, she made a revelation to me. She was an addict. Pot had been more of a problem than it seemed. She had struggled with telling me. She was also going to her first Narcotics Anonymous meeting that evening. I felt a great warmth for her when she told me; she looked so vulnerable and sad. I offered her my support feeling a need to do something to help. I held her close, feeling "I love you", but not saying it because it still felt early in the relationship. That evening, she was given a lift to her meeting in East Vancouver. I hoped for the very best.

Earlier that same day, I had gone to see a psychic friend from the Mastery. I had gotten a reading from her years earlier, leading up to my thirtieth birthday. I had called her while not long after the breakup; she had predicted my girlfriend and I getting back together. I booked another appointment to see her. By the time I got to the appointment, my relationship was on again. Like the previous time, the session was recorded on to a cassette. It would make an interesting document in the months and years to come.

*

The first time that we actually told each other that we loved each other was at my girlfriend's roommate's wedding at the end of June. I wore a black suit with a Nehru collar and a white collarless shirt, my face clean shaven. I bought a huge bouquet of flowers for her. When I gave them to her, she seemed a bit tense; I would find out why later. I hesitated a bit before making to kiss her. "What's wrong?" she asked, "Don't you want to kiss me?" "Yes," I said, eagerly, "Are you okay?" She nodded quickly before we kissed. Her hair was styled in a 1940s look, which all of the bridesmaids at the wedding had.

While the bride was downstairs getting ready, my girlfriend showed me her dress. It was a maroon two-piece, a sleeveless dress with a sleeved top. She looked radiant in it. With the two of us, it almost felt like it was our wedding.

The ceremony was at a Croatian church on First Avenue. The first photos of my girlfriend and I as a couple were taken after the ceremony was over. After that, we were separated as the wedding party went off to have photos taken in Burnaby's Deer Lake Park. My girlfriend's mother, one of her sisters and her husband and I went for lunch at Red Robin in Metrotown Mall. Afterwards, we headed to the International Union of Operating Engineers Hall for the reception.

After the bride and groom, and wedding party, had the first dance, my girlfriend came over to my table to see me. The food was served buffet style and we headed over into the line. It was while helping ourselves that she looked up tenderly and said "I love you." Thrilled, I answered, "I love you, too." Saying this did not come easy for either of us, and I know we meant it a lot. But building the relationship itself was much more challenging.

*

That summer was one of the happiest, yet giddy and unstable periods of my life (so far). We spent a lot of time together at restaurants, cafes, picnics, even just shopping for groceries. It was all beautiful. All of it. Just being together was enough; and I could not get enough. I already wanted to move in that summer, but knew that it was still too early. Still I dreamt about it.

There were also shocks throughout. Each new month milestone brought further issues between us. We both had difficulty with trusting. Our past relationships had been disasters. We had also learned not to trust, at least not easily, from our families: more so in her case. There was much I did not understand at the time, when someone recovering from addiction is triggered, when someone who is an abuse survivor relives their taruma and acts out, the trust issues, the friendships, jobs and relationships that seem fine and suddenly drop into chaos and dissolve. Not long after we celebrated our third month together at the Afghan Horseman restaurant, she told me that one of her previous relationships had involved some unprotected sex. She suggested that we get ourselves checked out at a clinic. Feeling very stressed, we did. While we were still waiting for the results, another situation presented itself. After an afternoon at Kitsilano Beach, we walked back to my apartment. On the way, we bumped into the woman that I had been dating earlier in the year. I suddenly felt a surge of anxiety. I was nervous because I sensed that our relationship was fragile and that my girlfriend was somewhat on the possessive side. Perhaps with other couples things may have been different, exes and current partners were probably friends, but this could never be the case with us. Things were just too delicate, and I did not want to lose her. Thinking mostly of keeping them separate, I stepped forward and said "hi" to my friend and introduced her to my girlfriend. They each said "hi" amicably, my friend seemed fine, but I could tell immediately that my girlfriend was not pleased. Continuing along my girlfriend walked angrily ahead and hurried to catch up; I offered my hand and she rejected it. "No!" she snapped. A little further along, she asked "Who was that?" I stammered as I tried to explain how the woman and I had dated, but that we were friends now. My girlfriend was not buying it. "Seeing someone else is a deal-breaker," she warned. I found myself aplogizing repeatedly. It took the rest of the walk for us to calm down.

Back at my place, we were both on edge. I because of my tactlessness, her because of her guilt over her dating history. We both had a cry and gradually came around. When we got the results from the clinic, they were negative, we were in the clear. I felt a huge relief. We spent the rest of the morning at my place before I got ready for work, walking on air once again.

*

In mid-August 2005, I flew back to Montreal. I had long since told my folks about my girlfriend and had sent them a copy of the photo of us at the wedding. I had hoped, and the psychic had predicted that I, my girlfriend and my folks would all be in the same place. I assumed that meant that we would be flying to Montreal together. But, when I saw the ticket prices, I knew that would not be the case. Things had changed radically since I had flown back as a student. One grand got me a round trip. I flew back alone.

With my heart in Vancouver, I phoned my girlfriend nightly, at 1:00 am Eastern Time (10:00 pm Pacific) while Sanford and Son reruns were playing on TV Land. I looked forward to each call. While in Montreal, I spent a lot of time with relatives, mostly my father's side of the family. We all went to brunch at a nearby bistro. I spent much of the time talking about my girlfriend and how amazing she was, and she was; with every new milestone, I saw the beauty of her opening up: a heartbreaking beauty. I felt that I could open up around her. With my family, by contrast, I was always on guard.

I had spoken to my mother's side of the family on the phone from my father's. My maternal grandmother had been moved around to a few different facilities before settling into one in NDG. She had deteriorated much more since the previous Christmas. There had been an even closer call over the winter, where the funeral arrangements were being made. I felt that I needed to visit her as there might not be another opportunity. My father drove me down to the care home where we were told by staff that she had been taken the emergency ward at the Montreal General. Her heart was beating irregularly. When we got to the hospital and the correct ward, we met up with another relative that we had not seen in years. She took us to my grandmother's bed.

My grandmother was more frail than I had ever seen her, evoking memories of my late grandfather and mother. We had to be introduced to her again. She briefly remembered me and then asked how my mother was doing. Puzzled, I did not know how to respond. My other relative said that she could remember that my mother was gone. She demonstrated by telling my grandmother that my mother had died years earlier. "What?!" my grandmother said in shock, "My daughter is dead!" She began to sob. "Are you sure?" I was gripped by a wave of grief for years earlier as well as the present; I stumbled backwards. We said nothing for a while. My grandmother, seemingly composed again, asked how my mother was doing. My relative said fine. "Oh good," my grandmother said. The word shock did not do this situation justice. When we left the bed, as ambulance crew came in to take my grandmother to a surgical unit, I burst into tears. My grandmother and I had been at my mother's death bed ... she had no memory of it.

I spoke to a few of my uncles about the situation. Everybody thought that it was just a matter of time. I also found out that one of my maternal uncles was ill with lymphoma. He was about to travel the US for an experimental treatment. I wished him well and felt a weighing grief that had not felt for some time.

We went back to see my grandmother one more time, after she had been moved back to her care home. Her brother and sister-in-law had just been there. We spent an hour or so on the patio as she spoke in fragments about things that happened when parents were teenagers, when I was a teenager and when various relatives were around. We were careful not to mention my mother. I found out from one of the staff that, at one point, my grandmother had taped countless photographs of my mother to one of the walls in her room. She would spend hours gazing at them, until one day, in tears, she simply could not remember who this was.

*

The rest of my Montreal trip went lightly. On my father's side, my uncle took us out to an old pizza haunt on rue Papineau to meet up with my paternal grandfather and his girlfriend (those grandparents had divorced before my parents had). I was given an old framed photo of my father's father's family, taken in the late 1930s, in the old Little Italy, not far from where we were eating. My great-grandparents and great-great grandmother were in it. It was priceless. My grandfather's girlfriend grew misty-eyed as she presented it to me. I felt a lump in my throat. I was very moved and cherished the photo on the way back to Vancouver.

My plane landed by skidding a bit on the runway and my heart jumped. We steadied and slowed down properly, stopping at arrivals. When I got to the baggage area, my girlfriend was waiting for me. She drove us to my apartment. As we drove from the airport and over the Arthur Lang Bridge, the late summer night's breeze was intoxicating. I felt like I was floating. We spent the night.

The following day, we had another discussion about whether or not we should be together. Suddenly, it was as if we had gone back a few months in time, we were on shaky ground again. Another issue that came up was my identity. I had been trying to educate her about mine by answering questions about why I crossdressed and why I used to perform in drag. She and her mother had come to see me at the Illuminares Lantern Festival (my second and last performance there) a month earlier. She seemed to embrace my identity one moment and push it away the next. She confessed in late August that she felt awkward, like the guy in the relationship. I did not see it this way, although if it were, I would not have had a problem. But, at this juncture, it seemed to be a problem for her.

And so, we walked on thin ice towards the end of the month. At work one afternoon, I spent my break crying on a colleague's shoulder. She recommended a relationship therapist and gave me his business card. I made a mental note to call him soon.

*

For my thirty-fifth birthday, my girlfriend and I got a group of mostly my friends together a Japanese restaurant in my neighbourhood. It was actually a shared birthday with another friend of mine. I got a lot of gifts from that party and still have all of the photos, the ones of me still make me cringe.

A project at work took its mental toll on me towards the end of September. Work had been very stressful the past few years; so much so that I began to see my relationship as a refuge from it. From Monday onward, I would already be looking forward to the weekend when I would usually be staying over at my girlfriend's house. Ever since, her roommate moved out, she had been living with her mother, who had moved in soon afterwards, and her cat which she had had since she was a teenager. Staying over was a treat. I had grown tired of being alone.

I really realized this when we broke up for a second time at the end of September; we had just, the day before, celebrated six months together. But now, she said, she felt that she could be in a relationship, she was dangerous and could not be trusted. I tried to get through to her, but I could not. I had already bought her birthday gifts for the following week. After a long, phone conversation, I gave up. Over the next couple of days, I was numb. I went out to a concert with a friend of mine at the Anza Club, thinking that I was basically single again. Then, she called me. The next night we got together to talk. She apologized for everything that she had said and wanted to know if I was wanting to try again. I was torn between wanting to and not wanting to. Was it going to be like this all of the time? Very cautiously, more so than the first time, I agreed to try again. By the end of the week, we were tight once again.

I had the first Friday of October off work and so we hung out in the Punjabi Market neighbourhood, looking in the fabric stores and having lunch at the Himalaya Restaurant. It was a nice laid-back afternoon, overcast but not dreary. The following day was her birthday. I had her gifts in purple (her favourite colour) gift bag. They included a beautiful decoupage craft made by my fellow tenants downstairs and a Monkees CD (one of her favourite artists at the time). One of her sisters came over to her house with her boyfriend and made pasta carbonara. It was also Thanksgiving weekend and so things felt even more festive. More and more, I wanted the whole package, my girlfriend and the warm, comfortable home and vibrant neighbourhood that she was in.
And at that time, I was willing to submerge myself to get. I know that now. But then, I was learning just as she was.
 
To be continued ...

About Me, Part 44: No Easy Way Down

The second Saturday of March 2005, "Miss Penny" hosted a Caribbean potluck. I was suddenly feeling like I wanted to explore my ancestral roots. I wanted my friends to sample some Barbadian food and Caribbean music. I invited some of my fellow apartment tenants, including a lesbian couple living in a basement apartment who were still shaken up following a serious accident over a month earlier. In early February, Shambhala Day (Tibetan New Year) in fact, a bakery van collided with a speeding car in front of our building and slammed into their bedroom window on the corner of the building; they were still getting over trauma. Unfortunately, they were not up to the party, but made me a gift nonetheless. I invited my coworker and her partner, a fellow retreat participant and her boyfriend, the woman I had dated just a few weeks earlier who I was now friends with, a Mastery friend who had co-directed Vital Signs years earlier, and others from the bi community.

It was a fun, but low-key party. Many of my friends were going through some trying times of their own and so were preoccupied. I changed outfits three times. I had cut my middle finger the previous night and managed cook and change with it bandaged. By party's end, I was exhausted. Over the next few days, I began to feel a flu coming on. By St. Patrick's Day, I was feeling the familiar aches and pains. That evening, I and a couple of friends went to a French conversation group at the Maison Francophonie, a few blocks from the apartment. Then, we had a bite at a nearby Japanese restaurant. That was a Thursday; by the weekend, I was bedridden. I took the first three days of the following week off sick. But, even with the shorter week, it was action packed.

*

Queer Dharma was dwindling. Fewer and fewer people were coming to the meetings. No speakers. We had a member of the Shambhala community give regular talks. He was straight. Then, the controversy started. A lesbian in the larger Shambhala community took exception to our only speaker and tried to shame us into to why we had him. For weeks, I received emails and phone messages from them requesting a conversation. She had never been part of our group and had no such interest. She seemed to just want to call us out on the carpet. While the coordinators and I tried to figure how to approach this, she faded away. Suddenly, almost Zen-like, the issue dissipated. 

In the meantime, we volunteered for the second time with Friends for Life, cooking for another group of two dozen or so people. The week leading up to Easter weekend, I spent my first flu-less evening on a panel on queer spirituality at the Roundhouse in Yaletown. I had hosted some meetings at a gay community organization office the previous week. There were tentative plans to have a follow-up meeting at a nearby cafe on Easter Sunday, but I would not attend after all. 

After that, Queer Dharma meetings became more sporadic with many of them being cancelled for lack of attendance. But, I had had one foot out the door for some time.

*

The previous fall, a young woman from Douglas College came into work looking to place an interlibrary loan. When I spoke, she asked me to speak up as she was a little hard of hearing. I apologized and spoke more clearly while looking directly at her. Her eyes were a hypnotic blue and she had a smooth radiant face with gorgeous lips. She spoke quickly, but had a very sensuous voice. When she left, the loan placed, I felt tingly and hoped that I would see her again. I would, but I would not remember her at first.

On the Saturday of Easter weekend, I was invited to a Mastery friend's birthday party. We had hung out a bit the previous summer and I knew that she was a singer, studying music at Douglas College. I had invited her to my Caribbean theme party, but she was not able to make it. Her birthday party was held at a restaurant on Commercial Drive. I had bought her gift that afternoon and headed over just in time for dinner. When I sat down, I was introduce to the other guests. The woman that I had met the previous fall was sitting almost directly opposite to me at the table. We were introduced. It still had not dawned on me yet. When the food arrived, I took a group photo at the table.

After dinner, the others decided to go to Celebrities to dance. The club was on the other side of town and a little out of my way back home. I initially decided against it, but someone else in the group convinced me to go for just a short while, so I did. After taking a few photos on the way down to the SkyTrain station, we headed downtown. A little tipsy from drinking at the restaurant, I hoped that I would make it through the evening. On the way to the club, I noticed a few things about the new woman I had met (again). She had a beautiful operatic singing voice, much like our mutual friend, but her's soared much higher. Her voice pierced my heart. 

At the club, we were all dancing. I could not take my eyes off of her. After much moving around, in and out of the smoking room and over to the bar, we continued to get acquainted. I told her that I worked as a librarian. That I also crossdressed. That I had "done drag". I wanted to get those out of the way first. While dancing, she began moving up close to me. She asked if I was gay and I explained that I was bi. "Oh, so am I," she said. Bonus! At some point, we began dancing very close, and started to make out. "So, you're okay with what I told you?" I said into her ear. She nodded, "I find it hot." Relief.

We continued to make out in a more out of the way part of the club; a club staff member told us to cool it down which we found amusing. We were getting very overheated. I did not feel comfortable getting any more intimate in a club setting. "I don't live all that far from here, just over the bridge. Let's go there," I suggested. She did not want to, and I understood, but she seemed to wanted to continue our activity at the club. I suggested that we stop. After I insisted a few times, we stopped. When the rest of the group found us, we all got ready to leave. My new girlfriend and I traded numbers before I got into a taxi to go home. I would keep her number, written on the white side of a piece of cigarette foil, in my wallet for a few years. Some of the best, and most challenging, years of my life.

*

We spoke on the phone the next day. She mentioned that she was hanging out with her roommate that day, but we agreed to speak again the following day, Easter Monday. We spoke again that morning; we agreed to see each other that evening, at my apartment. She came over around seven pm. Nervously, I made tea and we started to have a conversation before making out. Within minutes, we were in my bedroom, where we spent most of the evening. After sex, we talked for a while. She seemed to have a hard shell, but also seemed very vulnerable, even sad, on the inside. "Do you feel that you're misunderstood?" I asked. She paused for a moment, then nodded. We connected.

We went out for a walk so that she could have a smoke. We continued to talk. At one point, years earlier, I had wanted to be a monk; she confessed that she had wanted to be a nun. We both loved, really loved music. We could talk about the same things for hours. We went back up the apartment so that she could collect her things. I asked her what she was doing the next weekend. She hesitated. I felt that perhaps this might be just a one time affair, but then she tentatively agreed to get together. My heart fluttered.

The following few weeks, we continued to spend evenings together. As spring began, the temperature warmed up. I felt incredibly light and bubbly. The first dinner we had at her place in East Vancouver, we ended up spending the night. One summer-like, hot spring Saturday, I decided that I would make a Middle Eastern meal for us at her house. I spent that sunny day gathering the ingredients and the music and headed over. I made couscous and brought Turkish delight and figs.

Over dinner we began talking about music again. I had switched the Moroccan CDs over to some of the reggae that I was listening to at the time. My girlfriend made an observation about one of the songs that made me feel for a moment that we were on exactly on the same wavelength. We were having so much sex at that point, that I thought we should have an evening together with nothing but lightness and fun, without the sex, so that we could get to know each other better. We went out to an Italian restaurant for dinner followed by bowling. It was a wonderful evening.

Often, people who spent a night together early on do not amount to much, but there are exceptions. In those, early weeks and months, sultry and summery ahead of schedule, I truly felt that we were one of those exceptions.

*

One of the former directors of Vital Signs had been teaching clown and mask workshops in the West End for years, since the 1970s in fact. I had been going to them occasionally. At one of them in early 2005, I was asked by another participant to audition for a play, a work-in-progress dealing with homeless through the story of a homeless young man who is killed when the dumpster he is sleeping in for the night is picked up by a garbage truck. I eventually auditioned for a couple of roles, a low income housing resident and a police officer.

The cast and crew were assembled and we began to rehearse at the same space where the workshops happened. The production, in progress as it was, was constantly being revised, and it became stressful on all of us. But the writer, a local anti-poverty activist, was passionate about it, an we all believed in the message of the production: homeless people were human beings, with dreams, not numbers. Members of the West End community, activists and local politicians were all invited to the eventual mounting of the play at the same venue as the rehearsals.

The play ran over three days in early May. I invited my girlfriend and some of my bi and Mastery friends. They came to the first night. Afterwards, we headed over to a cafe for a bite. My friends loved my girlfriend who I had been raving about for weeks. After the last performance, I headed over to her house to spend the night. The next day was Mother's Day. After we went to play's wrap party, we came back to her house to spend dinner with her mother. I met her mother for the first time that evening. A very nice woman, also a conversationalist, and originally from Montreal. At one point, my girlfriend asked me privately, if I would like to spend a moment remembering my mother. I was floored by her sensitivity. I paused for a moment, trying to visualize my late mother, happy that I had found a soul mate.

*

April had been heaven in the relationship, but May, soon after the play was finished, was tense. Early on, I figured out that my girlfriend used pot. I knew so many in BC who did that I was not shocked, but I vaguely sensed that it was more of a problem. Vaguely, it had not, it seemed, made any intrusions into the relationship. One night, when I slept over at her house, we watched my Festival Express DVD of the 1970 rock concert tour in Canada. In it, there is a scene with Janis Joplin and the members of the Band and the Grateful Dead high on acid. We both found the stoned humour funny, but I had no desire to emulate what the rock stars had done. Perhaps it was not so simple for my girlfriend. Then, on some other occasion, she mentioned in passing that there had been abuse in her family, physical and emotional. "Have you spoken to anyone about this?" I asked, obviously concerned. She nodded. She had been seeing a therapist, but was no longer. It sounded as if she had dealt with it.

But, strange things began happening by the middle of the month. Her mood had darkened by the time we attended a Hawaiian themed birthday party at the Mastery community house on the second Saturday of May. She seemed despondent and was looking for an opportunity to smoke up. The following day, we went out for Thai food and she said, "Our bowling night meant a lot to me." Then, she broke down. I tried to console her, but she seemed very confused. I was left irked by the whole situation.

We had made plans to get together the following Sunday, on Victoria Day weekend. When the day arrived, I met her after she finished work, near her house. We went back to her place where she was minding her roommate's cat while her roommate was away with her fiance. After making some tea, we sat down in her living room. Then, she took my hand, and said "sweetie" without smiling ... my heart plummeted. She mentioned that she could not be in a relationship with me any longer. "Why?" I asked. She told me that she had survived years of sexual abuse in her family. I was stunned, I had not realized the depth of what she had suffered. But, we were also breaking up. I had really allowed myself to feel like I had finally found my soulmate and the though of being without her, broke me. Soon we were both crying and she asked me to leave. She called me a taxi and I left, sobbing. As the taxi sped down the street westward, I turned to get a glimpse of her house zooming away. I tried to keep it in my mind. When I got home, I felt the sinking feeling of being alone again, and having lost my happiness.

We spoke a couple of times over the next week or so, but only exchanged a few numb words over the phone.

*

Over the next couple of weeks, I was not myself. I cried in the staff room at work. Two of my bi friends brought me out to a movie and lunch. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was distracting enough, but I was still so shocked that I almost forgot to pay for lunch at Max's deli. I cried through lunch and went home drained. The next weekend, I and some bi friends went to a friend's graduation party at their house in Dunbar Heights; this was the same house that I had gone to that Halloween party as a martian all those years earlier and I had been there the previous Halloween as well. It was a great evening and I felt my old carefree self coming back.

I got together with other friends over the following week. I hoped at the time that I could be my former girlfriend's supportive friend. I began to read up on abuse survivors and their allies, preparing to do just that. The following weekend, early June, my former girlfriend called me and asked if I wanted to get together with her and our mutual friend for a coffee on the east side. I accepted. Lightly bearded and dressed in baggy clothing, I headed over to the cafe. We hung out and talked small talk for about an hour and then, our mutual friend left. The two us relocated to another cafe and then to the restaurant we had met at for the second time. 

We began to talk about the relationship and, eventually, decided to give it another try. Weary, but also relieved, we headed around the corner to her house where we cuddled and talked, warmly but also cautiously. She mentioned that she had remembered me at our mutual friend's birthday party, from our original meeting at the library. She remembered thinking that she would like to date a librarian. We laughed. Her wish had come true. As had mine.

To be continued ...

About Me, Part 43: The Weight

The summer of 2004 cooled off very gradually. I had my thirty-fourth birthday party at home, a potluck with friends. The food, the music and the company were all fantastic. Towards the end of the party, two friends (one co-worker and her partner) invited me over for a small get together, sometime over the fall, where I could present as myself. By this point, I had begun to think of myself as a crossdresser, although I still used "Penny" or "Miss Penny" as my name en femme. I took them up on their offer and promised to have a look at my schedule.

In the meantime, I was doing much in the way of inner work. I assisted at a Mastery workshop in mid-September, probably my most enjoyable assisting experience to date. But, my time with the workshop and the community around it was was just about over. I felt ready to move on and away from it all, and over the following year or so, I would do just that. I had long begun to sense that there were folks using the whole experience to build up their own egos. One person had declared that their biggest wish was to make millions more dollars. There were some others who seemed to gain much pleasure from being emotionally manipulative of others who were more vulnerable. It began to sicken me. After the assistants' team Thanksgiving dinner that year, I began to make tracks.

My work with Queer Dharma and the Shambhala community, by contrast, was doing much better. Rather than carry all of the responsibility for Queer Dharma myself, I had two other members join me in co-coordinating it. However, slowly, people stopped attending the meetings and we ran out of speakers. Social outings, like movie nights, became less frequent. I was still going to regular open house nights and meditation practice weekends, but I was seeking a much more intense experience. I had done the five Shambhala training levels and was looking into doing further practice and study. Finally, I made the decision to do a dathun, a month-long meditation retreat, which our community had begun to offer that year. It was scheduled to take place during the month of December at a United Church camp on the shores of Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island. Not able to afford the full month, I registered for the last two weeks instead. By November, I was eagerly anticipating the time to do very little besides study and practice meditation.

At the end of November, I co-coordinated a Level One workshop at the Center. It was nerve wracking and exhilarating. I came out of it with a much stronger, deeper sense of leadership than I had ever known before.

*

At my co-worker's townhouse for a small get-together over drinks, in mid-November, I presented myself en femme. I must say that I was well received, even that I passed, which I doubted highly, but appreciated hearing. I had taken a huge step in some kind of direction, but I was not sure which one. I made tentative plans to have everyone back over to my apartment for a themed dinner sometime in the New Year, but I was back at their place for a Christmas party the night before I left for the meditation retreat. That time, as much as I enjoyed the company, I felt very outside myself, en drabbe.

*

I had begun to date again, barely, before the end of the year. I had decided that I would set up an online dating profile, as a bisexual male, and begin to search for those of like mind and interests. I had one coffee date out of it before the dathun, but it was a step. I had no idea what kind of person I really wanted, but was putting myself out there nonetheless.

Someone from the Shambhala community came to pick me up and we drove to the Tsawassen Ferry Terminal. On the other side of the Straight, we drove over to the Malahat and up towards Camp Pringle, where the dathun was happening, arriving in late afternoon. Settling into dinner, done oriyoki style, I found out that there was going to be a small party to celebrate the mid-way point during the dathun. Things were a bit more whimsical that evening than they would be over the next couple of weeks.

*

I woke up on my first full day in temporary lodgings; I had been placed in a shared room for the first night before being moved to another lodge on the other side of the grounds. The routine soon became familiar: rising at 5:30 am, showering in a bathroom facility in another building, heading to the dining hall for morning chants in Sanskrit, walking meditation outdoors, breakfast served by a rotating (a rota) team of volunteers, clean-up, meditation followed by a morning talk, followed by meditation, then a break, followed by lunch, followed by another longer break and assigned afternoon chores, followed by meditation (sitting and indoor walking) and an afternoon talk, then dinner and an informal evening talk, then a break for the night (usually around 9:00 pm). There was a lounge area behind the kitchen which included a steady supply of bread, peanut butter and fruit as well as tea and coffee. Any number of people could be found there after the evening talk was over, reading, writing or talking about practice and its applications. The atmosphere was like a bohemian coffeehouse, a summer camp, an ashram and a ski lodge all mixed into one.

Relationships became very subtle, very little words exchanged, much was conveyed in looks, eye contact and gestures. Most of the dathun was functional talking only. The were a few days where we observed noble silence, where no talking was done. The meal servers unfurled signs with the day's menu on them. Chanting was the exception. I felt like, in the absence of words, a huge gap was opening up in my awareness; I wanted something to fill it, so that I could feel less ... stupid, inadequate, clumsy ... but, I tried to just stay with it. Somewhere during my first week, I began to feel the onion skin over my heart get scraped and began crying for no apparent reason, or more like, every reason. Others, to their credit, said nothing and just let me be.

On Christmas morning, at dawn when we did the outdoor walking meditation, our meditation leader was sporting a Santa Claus hat. Just a little bit of humour added to the seriousness. We were just ending our first noble silence period that morning. During breakfast, one of the coordinators, approached me and tapped my shoulder. He was holding his cell phone. "Your father called," he said "He wants you to call him back. He said your grandmother is in the hospital and is not doing well." I felt like I had been stabbed in the chest. My breathing becoming shallow, I grabbed the phone and stood up; light-headed from standing up so suddenly, I rushed outside into the rain. There was no one on the phone. So, I asked the coordinator if I could call long-distance and he said yes.

My maternal grandmother's health had deteriorated throughout the year. She had developed Alzheimer's. Her phone calls had become very sporadic and when I called, she answered in a panic, sounding very disoriented, forgetting that I was living in BC and how I had got here. I had heard that she had been moved to a care facility at the beginning of the fall. Then, nothing. I had left the Camp Pringle phone number with my father in case of an emergency. I had not expected one. But, now, an emergency had happened. My grandmother had suffered cardiac arrest and had been brought to the hospital where my uncles had gathered making final arrangements. One of them called my father who then left a voice message at the Camp Pringle main office. The camp manager had relayed the message to the dathun coordinator who then told me. I dialed my father's number anticipating the worst news.

I was probably shouting, while the silent breakfast continued in the dining hall behind me, but I had lost any sense of how I sounded. My father was at my stepmother's niece's. He told the above-mentioned information and said that he would keep me posted. I hung up the phone and handed it back to the coordinator, then sat back down on my zabuton cushion to finish eating. Everything had been collected. Everyone was getting ready to do closing chants and bow. Just then, the coordinator tapped me on the shoulder again. "Your father just called again, he said your grandmother's doing fine." I nodded and he made to leave, but I held his hand on my shoulder and began to sob uncontrollably. Hesitating a moment, he began to sooth my shoulder: "Okay, okay, your grandmother's going to be okay." Across from me, another participant, seemed struck in the chest just as I had felt and immediately clasped it with one hand, shutting her eyes and seemed to be chanting silently. We were united by a painful, raw, beautiful tenderheartedness.

The rest of the day went by nonchalantly; the morning's drama was hard to beat. The following day did as well. The only thing of note was the food. It was horrible. For most of the retreat, we had eaten fairly well. The cook was a trained chef who was excellent at preparing vegetarian and vegan meals that had a charming visual appeal as well. But the chef had gone back to Victoria for a day to spend some of the holidays with his family. Another staff member prepared the meal on Boxing Day. Breakfast consisted of very bland rice porridge, roast parsnips and radishes. Come the midday break, there were lineups in front of all of the washrooms.

Most of the next day passed without anything significant. After chores, we sat down to afternoon meditation. When one of the dathun leaders entered, it was urgently and earlier than usual. He was accompanied by two others. All of them were dressed formally. A gong was struck to signal the beginning of an announcement. He announced that we were all going to do a sukhavati : a Buddhist funeral service. We all gasped. What had happened? Who had died? Many people had left the camp for home after Christmas. Were they okay? This was to be for thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of dead and missing people in a vast part of the world. I was terrified. What had happened? The dathun leader held up a newspaper headline and explained, his voice breaking, that a massive tsunami had struck the coasts of southern and southeast Asia, eastern Africa, a various islands throughout the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. The losses were in the tens of thousands at the very least. Were all stunned and began weeping.

The camp's manager's had been away for a few days and had returned with the news that afternoon. The rest of the world already knew. The sukhavati was a very sombre one after which we meditated and then took a break. Later that afternoon, we began to come up with ways that we could help including raising some money for relief. A participant began collecting money that evening.

The next day, noble silence began again for the final time; it was to end on December 31st. I spent my last turn on meal duty, filing out behind the other servers, bowing to my row of participants then moving along kneeling and offering my hand for someone's bowl to fill and filling it carefully. The servers than ate in the kitchen, doing a mini-oryoki.

The meals, the chanting, the meditation, the chores, it was all practice and very much worth it. I felt that I had glimpsed an integrated life, something I had never had. I also knew what a deeper relationship with others could feel like and mean. And despite the beard that I had grown while on retreat, I felt very soft, right to my core. Not just soft and tenderhearted, but also very feminine. It was still there.

Breakfast on the last full day of the dathun was silent, and then, the team of leader served us our meals, dressed as commedia dell'arte characters. The laughter was welcome and a relief. The noble silence ended, followed by a closing talk after which we began to clean up the dining hall for the New Year's Eve oryoki banquet and party. Everyone let their hair down that night. The food was scrumptious, the beverages effervescent. We were drunk on each other's company. We did skits that evening, laughing heartily. We got to bed late, after cleaning up the hall.

Waking up the following day, it was snowing. Magic! A few of us, found ourselves, briefly, in the midst of childhood, throwing snowballs. I remembered how I had anticipated snowfall as a child and felt sentimental. After breakfast and goodbyes, I got a lift with a couple of women heading back to Vancouver. We drove out over the snowy back roads, the sound of the few cars on the road muffled. Listening to CBC, we heard some soft music followed by the Queen's speech. As we headed down the Malahat, it began snow more heavily, and then, wet snow mixed with rain. Back at Schwartz Bay Terminal, it cloudy and cold, but no snow had fallen. By the time we got back to the mainland, it was sunny and milder.

I was dropped off at home where I immediately shaved off my beard and my body hair. I felt overwhelmed by stimuli around me, ready to rejoin regular life, but with a zeal that I had never known.

*

The first couple of months of 2005 were a swirl of sensation and energy. I wanted to engage everybody and everything. At work, they said that I looked great, rested. Among my friends, I felt vibrant. Intellectually, I was coming up with more ideas. I toyed with the notion of doing a radio program and during a dinner out with friends, where I was giving back the sleeping bag that one of them had lent me for the retreat, I asked them about what they thought of a vintage Jamaican music show. They thought it was a great idea. I jotted down a few notes. I attended several talks at the Shambhala Center in January before finally taking a break. I returned to trying to co-lead Queer Dharma whose membership continued to dwindle.

Around mid-month, not long after a brief spell of snow and ice, I returned to the dating game with a vengeance. Searching around the dating site that I was on, I found a young woman whose profile indicated a very intelligent, bright and bubbly personality. After a couple of emails exchanged, we met for lunch at Sophie's Cosmic Cafe in Kitsilano. We seemed to hit it off and agreed to see each other again. We spent the next month and a half, seeing each other regularly, kind of dating. I was very smitten at the time, however something just did not click on that level, and ultimately, during the first week of March, we decided to be friends. In retrospect, I am glad that it turned out that way, I met one of my most precious and dear friends this way, one who would become very supportive in the years to come.

But, in relationships, regardless of temporary setbacks, I was on my way.

To be continued ...

About Me, Part 42: Explosion In My Soul

Beginning in the summer of 2003, I decided to give acting/modeling one last shot. I felt that I had not much to lose. As my Miss Penny routines were winding down, I was anticipating doing something much more elaborate and challenging, lip-synching in other languages, developing routines into mini-musicals ... I felt that I needed more theatre in my performances. Hence, when I bid on, and won, a gift certificate to an acting class at a silent auction that summer (I also got a set of nice, glazed dishes) I followed up on it immediately. The classes were given at someone's home in the northeastern part of Vancouver, between the PNE and Boundary Road. After the initial session, which my certificate had covered, I paid for weekly classes through the remainder of the year and into the following spring. I learned some method acting, script memorizing, improv, and character development. All in all it was a lot of fun. But no actual acting opportunities were forthcoming.

*

My thirty-third birthday get-together was the least the enjoyable one that I had ever had. Only two guests showed up at the Reef Restaurant on Main Street; and they were both on the way somewhere else. I tried to take it all in stride, you can't always get what you want. An event earlier the same day provided a positive contrast; I had been asked by the founders of the Queer Dharma study and practice group at the Shambhala Center to take over as coordinator. I accepted. I began leading the Thursday night meetings the very next week. I brought in taped talks by various Buddhist teachers and we began each meeting by meditating. In the beginning there was also an agreed upon topic of discussion for the evening. The renewed practice centered me and also gave me the feeling that I was contributing to the well-being of the local LGBT community. As autumn began, I felt like my life was settling into place once again.

I also continued to do some personal growth work that fall. I signed up to do the sequel workshop to the Mastery, called The Next Step, at the end of September. It had taken me two years to take it, as it kept getting rescheduled. The workshop weekend was exquisite; I stretched myself much further than I had doing the earlier workshop. I also used some of the material that I was working on in my acting class in the workshop. I used my monologue, about a deeply repressed transperson, to tap into my own sense  of self-hate and shame. It was painful, but I think, a worthwhile experience. The follow-up meetings happened three times after that, in October, November and January 2004. In the last one, I came up with some goals around becoming more centered in my sexual awareness and developing more confidence in relationships.

In November, I had one more modelling experience, this time for a fashion show fundraiser at the (now defunct) Odyssey nightclub. It was a strange, disillusioning experience; I had begun to find the whole modelling world very superficial and off-putting. After the show ended, I went home relieved that it was over and vowing to never model again.

*

I had Christmas with my acting coach and her family and neighbours. There was a lot of laughter and felt a great deal of gratitude towards them for having me over. I had tried to have another orphan's Christmas that, but no had voice interest in it. I had come perilously close to spending the holidays alone. I did spend New Year's Eve alone, but that was not as big a deal. I had had a small Christmas potluck in my apartment for Queer Dharma, complete with colourful desserts, my Christmas tree and holiday tunes from a doo-wop CD and the Phil Spector Christmas album. I had also had someone from the Shambhala Center offer paint my living room in a bright, clean white egg-shell coat (another silent auction in which I bid for a painting job). Just after New Year's I went to an world clothing and textiles shop on West 4th Avenue and bought a Nepalese tapestry. The shop was going out of business and the fabric was 50 % off. My large living room now looked very comfortable indeed.

During a cold snap during the second week of January 2004, I flew back to Montreal for a week. Eastern Canada was, at that point, in the midst of a deep freeze with and average daytime temperature of minus 25 degrees Celsius plus windchill. I had prepared by buying a new winter coat, gloves and long underwear. Walking out of Trudeau airport and into the cold was a shock to the system. It had been a long time since I breathed in cold air, only to have my nostrils stick together.

I spent the week at my father and stepmother's new apartment a couple of miles north of their previous one, in Chomedy, Laval. We did visit my maternal grandmother one afternoon. My mother's mother's health had begun to deteriorate since she had moved back to the old neighbourhood in St. Leonard. She had begun to forget taking her medication or to cook her own meals. The family were discussing plans to move her into a home, but nothing had been finalized yet. I felt some sadness when I saw that a loaf of Christmas cake, one of her staple recipes, had been left for me with my name in icing on the top. A couple of nights later, we went to my father's mother's apartment, nearby, to have dinner. One of my aunts joined us. Outside, the temperature had dropped to minus 40, with the windchill. Drifts of snow blew all night. 

The next night I met my old high school friend downtown; she had driven from Guelph via Ottawa and parked on a side street. We went for a bite at a diner in the Gay Village on east Ste. Catherine Street. She gave me a lift home; on the way, we drove past the old high school. Long faded images of our group of friends hanging around outside the school or in the park across the street on lunch break filled my mind; the songs we listened to, the things we joked about, the long distance we had traveled since then. We talked about me coming out to my folks, which I had not done. One thing I like was that my friend never pushed me to come out to them until I felt that I was ready. And I was not yet ready. She said hi to my folks when she dropped me off, exchanging a few words with them, before leaving. I left for Vancouver the following day.

*

The spring of 2004 was very eventful. I went to the first anniversary anti-war march (it had been a year since the invasion of Iraq), in March. Thousands of us marched over the Burrard Bridge, through downtown south and down to Sunset Beach where we listened to Noam Chomsky speak to us from the roof of the custodial building in the park. It was a great speech on the anti-war movement in general and the necessity to keep up our protests..

In everything that spring, I tried to incorporate work in the world as part of my approach to life. Those of us in Queer Dharma decided to volunteer for the Friends for Life program in the West End. Friends for Life was an organization which offered health and well-being programs to those suffering from chronic and terminal illness (initially AIDS). They operated out of a community center in a converted Queen Anne style house, named Diamond House, and offered a meal program on Sunday evenings called Dinner with Mom. We offered to cook dinner for twenty-five people including salad, a main dish and dessert. We decorated the dining room table with a table cloth and flowers. The dinner guests were a great group who offered their thanks with a signed card, but, card were not necessary; we were honoured just to have the opportunity to do something good for our community.

The last Queer Dharma meeting of the season, in May, was a potluck at a member's apartment near Hastings and Nanaimo Streets. It was a nice, light end to a great year of practice and social engagement and we looked forward to more again in the fall.

*

Two major figures in the Buddhist world came to visit us in 2004. The first was the Fourteenth Dali Lama himself. It was the first time he had been to Vancouver and he was coming to give a few public talks. In late April, he took part in a panel at UBC. He then gave a both a private talk to Buddhist practitioners and a public one at the Pacific Coliseum on the PNE grounds. I was on a team of volunteers at the Shambhala Center's information table. I helped hand out flyers announcing the visit of the next major figure, the Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, son of the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and head of the Shambhala community.

The Sakyong came to visit during the first week in May. Myself and another member of Queer Dharma were interviewed on CITR's Queer FM radio program about our group and our thoughts about Buddhist practice. The Sakyong gave a community talk at the Unitarian Church on Oak Street. He then gave a public talk at the Chan Center on UBC campus. In my brief interview with him at the Unitarian Church, I told about my ongoing battle with insomnia. He said that it, being up at night, was a great opportunity to practice meditation. I took note. After his talk (in which he mentioned the issue of sleep) at the Chan Center, I had him sign my copy of his new book. "That talk about sleep was for you," he said as he signed. I thanked him, glad that I had received some much needed guidance.

*

My acting classes ended in May; I had had my fill and had learned a lot, but had decided to put acting to rest as a serious pursuit. I had given it a fair shake and it was time to move on. The only public performing I did that year was as a roving clown in that summer's Illuminaires Lantern Festival. I still shaved my face and body and painted my nails happy for the opportunity to present in feminine fashion, but my costume was just that, a costume. After a fun evening and night, I packed costume up and gave it back to the Public Dreams Society from whom I had borrowed it and, en drabbe, I headed out into Trout Lake Park to get a gelato at one of the vendors' canteens. A wave of melancholy swept over me as I felt the dysphoria of being in the body I had.

The previous week I had gone to Vancouver Folk Festival with a friend from the Mastery. We spent the whole weekend taking in performers like Odetta and Janis Ian. That summer was a scorcher and Jericho Park felt like a frying pan. The music was memorable, it was one of the best festivals that I had seen since being in town.

But the highlight of the summer was the Pride Parade that year. My Illuminaires gig had gotten me another one in the parade courtesy of a member of the Carnival Band. They had been hired by the Co-op Housing Federation of BC to play behind their float. The band needed a few extra dancers and asked me if I wanted to be one of them. I agreed. Of course, it was a carnival theme. I went in one of the gaudiest get-ups I had ever worn. The parade was also a scorcher, broken only by the nice cool breeze off of English Bay as the parade rounded onto Beach Avenue. Afterwards, I met up with some friends and we went for lunch on Denman Street. A few pictures of me were taken there and on the way to a friend's apartment to shower and change. Vividly, I remember feeling the same dysphoria when I changed back into my "regular" clothing afterwards. A picture of me (which I still have), without make-up or outfit, shows me looking very glum indeed.

In August, I went to a couple of film events. One, with a Mastery friend, was of a new print of Fellini's La Dolce Vita. The other was a showing of a film about sexual fluidity set in Dublin, Ireland called Goldfish Memory which I went to see with a friend from the bi community. I found both films entertaining and fascinating. But the thing I remember most about the Out In Screen Film Festival that year was filling out a survey in which I had the option of indicating my identity. I did. In addition to selecting "bisexual", I placed a check beside "transgender" before hastily folding my survey form and dropping it into the raffle box. I hurried away trying to put my selection out of my mind.

*

At a work retirement party that long, hot summer, I was sitting around with some co-workers in the host's vast backyard garden when a discussion about music led to me having one of those light bulbs come on in my head. What if I had my own radio program? I was listening to a lot of vintage Jamaican music at the time, so I imagined doing such a show at either CFRO Co-op Radio or CITR UBC Radio. I would eventually do a show, but my idea would undergo a few changes first.

To be continued ...