As we made our way from the parking lot to Lenora’s building, I heard echoes of my grandmother in the words of my partner, the two people I loved most in the world, one I’d left for a life in America, the other I was about to leave so that I could be a woman. It hurt so much to know that the man I had been was dead to Ralph along with a love I thought would last our lifetimes, when to me that man I had been was still with him, just in a different form.

In their utter generosity, both Ralph and Nanay Coro let me go out of fairness to me, yet I wondered then why they didn’t demand of me what was fair to them. At the same time, it was true that I would always wonder what it was like on the other side of gender, that the wondering would be even worse than staying where I was for this man I loved.

Ralph and I managed to walk into that goodbye party together. Richard was there, along with my two half sisters, who took the bus from New York, sixteen and fifteen at the time, pictures of innocent beauty. Papa and his wife had to work, so they couldn’t come, and he ended up not being able to take the time off to be at the surgery with me, so I was going to Thailand by myself. I wanted to invite Ben to the party, but his phone was disconnected, and he didn’t respond to my email; I hoped he was all right.

There were no speeches that night, no public goodbyes, just conversations among friends, which fortified me because I would have the actual experience alone, of becoming a woman, naked or dressed, legally and medically, in the eyes of the world. I boarded the plane to Thailand the next morning, and that flight became my bridge in a direction I wanted to travel, even when I wasn’t sure what it would be like when I arrived.

—

The last time I came to Harvard, May 2018. The old Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus, now the Harvard Gender and Sexuality Caucus, had invited me to speak at their commencement dinner and receive an award. I’d boycotted that group for over a decade because it refused to change its name to incorporate trans people, and I was pleased to be invited to address it once the organization finally did, as someone who was in a position to affect the perspectives of others through my writing.