The Female Man

When we pass a baby carriage with a baby, we both run over to look at it. He can't make up his mind, either. I never heard of a man like that. Last fall we were going to go to a Russian restaurant and I wanted to go to this place so he said all right, and then I changed my mind and wanted to go to the other place and he said OK, fine, but it turned out to be shut. So what could we do? He didn't know. So I lost my temper.

ME: Nothing, nothing, nothing.

SHE: He's just too much. Do you think I should get rid of him?

ME: (I shook my head)

JEANNINE (Confidingly): Well, he is funny some-times.

(She bent down to pick lint off her blouse, giving herself a momentary double chin. She pursed her lips, pouted, bridled, drooped her eyelids in a knowing look.)

Sometimes-sometimes-he likes to get dressed up. He gets into the drapes like a sarong and puts on all my necklaces around his neck, and stands there with the curtain rod for a spear. He wants to be an actor, you know. But I think there's something wrong with him. Is it what they call transvestism?

JOANNA: No, Jeannine.

JEANNINE: I think it might be. I think I'll throw him over. I don't like anybody calling my cat, Mr. Frosty, names. Cal calls him The Blotchy Skinny Cat Which he isn't. Besides, I'm going to call up my brother next week and go stay with him during vacation-I get three weeks. It gets pretty dull by the end of it-my brother stays in a small town in the Poconos, you know-but the last time I was there, there was a block dance and a Grange supper and I met a very, very handsome man. You can tell when somebody likes you, can't you? He liked me. He's an assistant to the butcher and he's going to inherit the business; he's got a real future. I went there quite a lot; I can tell, the way somebody looks at me.

Mrs. Robert Poirier. Jeannine Dadier-Poirier. Ha ha! He's good-looking. Cal – Cal is-well! Still, Cal is sweet. Poor, but sweet. I wouldn't give up Cal for anything. I enjoy being a girl, don't you? I wouldn't be a man for anything; I think they have such a hard time of it. I like being admired. I like being a girl. I wouldn't be a man for anything. Not for anything.

ME: Has anyone proposed the choice to you lately?

JEANNINE: I won't be a man.

ME: Nobody axed you to.

III

She was sick in the subway. Not really, but almost. She indicated by signs that she was going to be sick or had just been sick or was afraid she was going to be sick.

She held my hand.

IV

We got out at forty-second street; and this is the way things really happen, in broad daylight, publicly, invisibly; we meandered past the shops. Jeannine saw a pair of stockings that she just had to have. We went in the store and the store owner bullied us. Outside again with her stockings (wrong size) she said, "But I didn't want them!" They were red fishnet hose, which she'll never dare wear. In the store window there was a zany-faced mannequin who roused my active hatred: painted long ago, now dusty and full of hair-fine cracks, a small shopkeeper's economy. "Ah!" said Jeannine sorrowfully, looking again at the edge of the fishnet hose in her package. Mannequins are always dancing, this absurd throwing back of the head and bending of the arms and legs. They enjoy being mannequins.

(But I won't be mean.) I will not say that the sky ripped open from top to bottom, from side to side, that from the clouds over Fifth Avenue descended seven angels with seven trumpets, that the vials of wrath were loosed over Jeannine-time and the Angel of Pestilence sank Manhattan in the deepest part of the sea. Janet, our only savior, turned the corner in a gray flannel jacket and a gray flannel skirt down to her knees. That's a compromise between two worlds.

She seemed to know where she was going. Badly sunburned, with more freckles than usual across her flat nose, Miss Evason stopped in the middle of the street, scratched her head all over, yawned, and entered a drugstore. We followed.

"I'm sorry, but I've never heard of that," said the man behind the counter.

"Oh my goodness, really?" said Miss Evason. She put away a piece of paper, on which she had written whatever-it-was, and went to the other side of the store, where she had a soda.

"You'll need a prescription," said the man behind the counter.

"Oh my goodness," Miss Evason said mildly. It did not help that she was carrying her soda. She put it down on the plastic counter top and joined us at the door, where Miss Dadier was trying-softly but very determinedly-to bolt. She wanted to get back to the freedom of Fifth Avenue, where there were so many gaps-so much For Rent, so much cheaper, so much older, than I remembered.

Miss Dadier looked sulkily up at the sky, calling on the invisible angels and the Wrath of God to witness, and then she said, grudgingly: "I can't imagine what you were trying to buy." She did not want to admit that Janet existed. Janet raised her eyebrows and directed a glance at me, but I don't know. I never know anything.

"I have athlete's foot," said Miss Evason.