The Female Man

J-one (Janet, by her gait) is examining the paintings on the wall; J-two and J-three stand hand in hand, Babes in the Wood. Boss finishes his drink, chewing on something in the bottom of it like a large teddy-bear, with comic deliberation: chomp, chomp. He waves grandly toward the other drinks, his wife having abandoned the tray on top of what looks for all the world like a New Orleans, white-enamelled, bordello piano (Whorehouse Baroque is very big in Manland right now).

I shook my head.

He said, "You have any children?" Pregnancy fascinates them. The rank-and-file have forgotten about menstruation; if they remembered, that would fascinate them. I shook my head again.

His face darkened.

"I thought," said I mildly, "that we were going to talk business. I'd like to do just that. I don't mean-that is, I don't want to be unsociable, but time's passing and I'd rather not discuss my personal life."

He said: "You're on my turf, you'll Goddamn well talk about what I Goddamn well talk about."

Let it pass. Control yourself. Hand them the victory in the Domination Sweepstakes and they usually forget whatever it is they were going to do anyway.

He glared and brooded. Munched chips, crackers, saltsticks, what-not. Doesn't really know what he wants. I waited.

"Personal life!" he muttered.

"It's not really very interesting," I volunteered, "You kids screw each other?"

I said nothing.

He leaned forward. "Don't get me wrong. I think you have a right to do it. I never bought this stuff about women alone having no sex. It's not in human nature. Now, do you?"

"No," I said.

He chuckled. "That's right, cover up. Mind, I'm not condemning you. It's only to be expected. Eh! If we'd kept together, men and women, none of this would have happened. Right?"

I put on my doubtful, slightly shamed, sly, well-you-know, all-purpose look. I have never known what it means, but they seem to. He laughed out loud. Another drink.

"Look here," he said, "I expect you have more intelligence than most of those bitches or you wouldn't be in this job. Right? Now it's obvious to anyone that we need each other. Even in separate camps we still have to trade, you still have to have the babies, things haven't changed that much. Now what I have in mind is an experimental project, a pilot project, you might say, in trying to get the two sides back together. Not all at once-"

"I-" I said. (They don't hear you.)

"Not all at once," (he continued, deaf as a post) "but a little bit at a time.

We have to make haste deliberately. Right?"

I was silent. He leaned back. "I knew you'd see it," he said. Then he made a personal remark: "You saw my wife?" I nodded.

"Natalie's grand," he said, taking some more chips. "She's a grand girl. She made these. Deep-fried, I think." (A weak woman handling a pot of boiling oil.)

"Have some."

To pacify him I took some and held them in my hand. Greasy stuff.

"Now," he said, "you like the idea, right?"

"What?"

"The aversive therapy, for Chrissakes, the pilot group. Social relations, getting back together. I'm not like some of the mossbacks around here, you know, I don't go for this inferior-superior business; I believe in equality. If we get back together, it has to be on that basis. Equals."

"But-" I said, meaning no offense.

"It has to be on the basis of equality! I believe that. And don't think the man in the street can't be sold on it, propaganda to the contrary. We're brought up on this nonsense of woman's place and woman's nature when we don't even have women around to study. What do we know! I'm not any less masculine because I've done woman's work; does it take less intelligence to handle an operation like the nurseries and training camps than it does to figure the logistics of War Games? Hell, no! Not if you do it rationally and efficiently; business is business."

Let it go. Perhaps it'll play itself out; they do sometimes. I sat attentively still while he gave me the most moving plea for my own efficiency, my rationality, my status as a human being. He ended by saying anxiously, "Do you think it'll work?"

"Well-" I began.

"Of course, of course," (interrupted this damned fool once again) "you're not a diplomat, but we have to work through the men we have, don't we? Individual man can accomplish ends where Mass-man fails. Eh?"

I nodded, picturing myself as Individual Man. The "woman's work" explains it, of course; it makes him dangerously irritable. He had gotten now into the poignant part, the mystifying and moving account of our Sufferings. This is where the tears come in. It helps to be able to classify what they're going to do, but Lord! it's depressing, all the same. Always the same. I sit on, perfectly invisible, a chalk sketch of a woman. An idea. A walking ear.