The Female Man

Jeannine is going to put on her Mommy's shoes. That caretaker of childhood and feminine companion of men is waiting for her at the end of the road we all must travel. She swam, went for walks, went to dances, had a picnic with another girl; she got books from town; newspapers for her brother, murder mysteries for Mrs. Dadier, and nothing for herself. At twenty-nine you can't waste your time reading. Either they're too young or they're married or they're bad-looking or there's something awful about them. Rejects. Jeannine went out a couple of times with the son of a friend of her mother's and tried to make conversation with him; she decided that he wasn't really so bad-looking, if only he'd talk more.

They went canoeing in the middle of the lake one day and he said: "I have to tell you something, Jeannine."

She thought: This is it, and her stomach knotted up.

"I'm married," he said, taking off his glasses, "but my wife and I are separated. She's living with her mother in California. She's emotionally disturbed."

"Oh," Jeannine said, flustered and not knowing what to say. She hadn't liked him particularly, but the disappointment was very bad. There is some barrier between Jeannine and real life which can be removed only by a man or by marriage; somehow Jeannine is not in touch with what everybody knows to be real life. He blinked at her with his naked eyes and oh lord, he was fat and plain; but Jeannine managed to smile. She didn't want to hurt his feelings.

"I knew you'd understand," he said in a choked voice, nearly crying. He pressed her hand. "I knew you'd understand, Jeannie." She began reckoning him up again, that swift calculation that was quite automatic by now: the looks, the job, whether he was "romantic," did he read poetry? whether he could be made to dress better or diet or put on weight (whichever it was), whether his hair could be cut better. She could make herself feel something about him, yes. She could rely on him. After all, his wife might divorce him. He was intelligent. He was promising. "I understand," she said, against the grain. After all, there wasn't anything wrong with him exactly; from shore it must really look quite good, the canoe, the pretty girl, the puffy summer clouds, Jeannine's sun-shade (borrowed from the girl friend she'd had the picnic with). There couldn't be that much wrong with it. She smiled a little. His contribution is Make me feel good; her contribution is Make me exist. The sun came out over the water and it really was quite nice. And there was this painful stirring of feeling in her, this terrible tenderness or need, so perhaps she was beginning to love him, in her own way.

"Are you busy tonight?" Poor man. She wet her lips and didn't answer, feeling the sun strike her on all sides, deliciously aware of her bare arms and neck, the picture she made. "Mm?" she said.

"I thought-I thought you might want to go to the play." He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face with it. He put his glasses back on.

"You ought to wear sunglasses," said Jeannine, imagining how he might look that way. "Yes, Bud and Eileen were going. Would you like to join us?" The surprised gratitude of a man reprieved. I really do like him. He bent closer-this alarmed her for the canoe, as well as disgusted her (Freud says disgust is a prominent expression of the sexual life in civilized people) and she cried out, "Don't!

We'll fall in!" He righted himself. By degrees. You've got to get to know people. She was frightened, almost, by the access of being that came to her from him, frightened at the richness of the whole scene, at how much she felt without feeling it for him, terrified lest the sun might go behind a cloud and withdraw everything from her again.

"What time shall I pick you up?" he said.

VII

That night Jeannine fell in love with an actor. The theatre was a squat, low building finished pink stucco like a summertime movie palace and built in the middle of a grove of pine trees. The audience sat on hard wooden chairs and watched a college group play "Charley's Aunt." Jeannine didn't get up or go out during the intermission but only sat, stupefied, fanning herself with her program and wishing that she had the courage to make some sort of change in her life. She couldn't take her eyes off the stage. The presence of her brother and sister-in-law irked her unbearably and every time she became aware of her date by her elbow, she wanted to turn in on herself and disappear, or run outside, or scream. It didn't matter which actor or which character she fell in love with; even Jeannine knew that; it was the unreality of the scene onstage that made her long to be in it or on it or two-dimensional, anything to quiet her unstable heart; I'm not fit to live, she said. There was more pain in it than pleasure; it had been getting worse for some years, until Jeannine now dreaded doing it; I can't help it, she said. She added, I'm not fit to exist.