The Female Man

ME, A THTRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH (dazed with boredom): Gee, how clever you are to know about things that never happened.

THE FRESHMAN (bewildered): Huh? OR

EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD GIRL AT A PARTY: Men don't understand machinery. The gizmo goes on the whatsit and the rataplan makes contact with the fourchette in at least seventy percent of all cases.

THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD MALE PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING (awed): Gee. (Something wrong here, I think)

OR

"Man" is a rhetorical convenience for "human."

"Man" includes "woman." Thus: 1. The Eternal Feminine leads us ever upward and on. (Guess who "us" is)

2. The last man on earth will spend the last hour before the holocaust searching for his wife and child. (Review of The Second Sex by the first sex)

3. We all have the impulse, at times, to get rid of our wives. (Irving Howe, introduction to Hardy, talking about my wife)

4. Great scientists choose their problems as they choose their wives. (A.H.

Maslow, who should know better)

5. Man is a hunter who wishes to compete for the best kill and the best female, (everybody)

OR

The game is a dominance game called I Must Impress This Woman. Failure makes the active player play harder. Wear a hunched back or a withered arm; you will then experience the invisibility of the passive player. I'm never impressed-no woman ever is-it's just a cue that you like me and I'm supposed to like that. If you really like me, maybe I can get you to stop. Stop; I want to talk to you! Stop; I want to see you! Stop; I'm dying and disappearing!

SHE: Isn't it just a game?

HE: Yes, of course.

SHE: And if you play the game, it means you like me, doesn't it?

HE: Of course.

SHE: Then if it's just a game and you like me, you can stop playing. Please stop.

HE: No.

SHE: Then I won't play.

HE: Bitch! You want to destroy me. I'll show you. (He plays harder)

SHE: All right. I'm impressed.

HE: You really are sweet and responsive after all. You've kept your femininity.

You're not one of those hysterical feminist bitches who wants to be a man and have a penis. You're a woman.

SHE: Yes. (She kills herself)

X

This book is written in blood.

Is it written entirely in blood?

No, some of it is written in tears.

Are the blood and tears all mine?

Yes, they have been in the past. But the future is a different matter. As the bear swore in Pogo after having endured a pot shoved on her head, being turned upside down while still in the pot, a discussion about her edibility, the lawnmowering of her behind, and a fistful of ground pepper in the snoot, she then swore a mighty oath on the ashes of her mothers (i. e. her forebears) grimly but quietly while the apples from the shaken apple tree above her dropped bang thud on her head: OH, SOMEBODY ASIDES ME IS GONNA RUE THIS HERE PARTICULAR DAY.

XI

I study Vittoria 's blue-black hair and velvety brown eyes, her heavy, obstinate chin. Her waist is too long (like a flexible mermaid's), her solid thighs and buttocks surprisingly sturdy. Vittoria gets a lot of praise in Whileaway because of her big behind. She is modestly interesting, like everything else in this world formed for the long acquaintance and the close view; they work outdoors in their pink or gray pajamas and indoors in the nude until you know every wrinkle and fold of flesh, until your body's in a common medium with theirs and there are no pictures made out of anybody or anything; everything becomes translated instantly into its own inside. Whileaway is the inside of everything else. I slept in the Belins' common room for three weeks, surrounded in my coming and going by people with names like Nofretari Ylayeson and Nguna Twason. (I translate freely; the names are Chinese, African, Russian, European. Also, Whileawayans love to use old names they find in dictionaries.) One little girl decided I needed a protector and stuck by me, trying to learn English. In the winter there's always heat in the kitchens for those who like the hobby of cooking and induction helmets for the little ones (to keep the heat at a distance). The Belins' kitchen was a story-telling place.

I mean, of course, that she told stories to me. Vittoria translates, speaking softly and precisely: "Once upon a time a long time ago there was a child who was raised by bears. Her mother went up into the woods pregnant (for there were more woods than there are today) and gave birth to the child there, for she had made an error in reckoning. Also, she had got lost. Why she was in the woods doesn't matter. It is not germane to this story.