The Senator shuffles, conscious of a draft drifting between his legs, a heaviness in his chest, hair tickling his usually clean-shaved nape. ‘But I’m a Senator! I need you in your proper place! Without you, I’m no better than a congresswoman, don’t you see? A congresswoman can do very well without a cock but I certainly can’t! This is a matter of the most profound honor and dignity and precedent. There are no women senators!’
‘Does anyone know what this putz is talking about?’ the Cock splutters to his fellow Justices. ‘I don’t have a clue what you mean. You’re wasting our time. If you have something important to say, say it plainly,’ the Cock spits, sounding impatient.
‘Your honor, please, I beg of you, I don’t know how to make it plainer,’ the Senator wails. He looks around the chamber for support from the other Justices, lawyers, members of the public, but everyone turns away from him, ashamed on his behalf. Dropping his voice to a whisper, the Senator pleads, ‘Don’t you see, your honor, that you are my cock?’
Disgusted by the suggestion, the Cock glares at the Senator. ‘I’ve never heard something so perverted! What an impertinence!’ it roars, gurgle-gurgle. ‘I am me! I am myself! And anyway, I’m a Justice and you’re nothing more than a senator. I got appointed for life. You just serve your piddling term of office. I outlast you. You’re wasting the Court’s time. I deny certiorari to your case. I find you in contempt! Get the hell out of here! Guards, escort this sex fiend from the Court!’
The Guards approach but the Senator brushes them off and runs from the building. As he descends the steps towards the Capitol, he is aware of his right hand rising at his side, wrist bent, fingers extended, arm sashaying. Billy is waiting for him in the car.
‘Billy, baby, I don’t know what to do! That fucking dick refuses to come! How can I be a senator without a propagator?’
It’s a bright floral day, cherry trees in bloom, bunnies bouncing on lawns, birds doing the dirty dance of spring, but the Senator’s world is ashen. The heaviness in his chest grows, his breasts swelling, straining the buttons of his shirt. His usually short hair is now hanging in his eyes and when he speaks again, his voice is higher than it has been since boyhood.
‘Billy, quick, take me to the FBI!’ When he hears the pitch of his voice and sees the threads of stubble that have already grown since his morning shave raining in a fine dust across his lap, the Junior Senator from Wisconsin shrieks in horror.
They arrive at FBI headquarters and the Senator rushes in to the office of the Director. ‘Is J. Edgar in?’ the Senator asks, breathless.
Hoover’s SECRETARY squints, as though the boy thinks he recognizes the Senator but can’t be sure. None of the parts seem to fit.
‘Let me check whether he can see you,’ the Secretary drawls. He picks up the phone, cups his hand over the receiver, and whispers into it.
‘I’m no pervert,’ the Senator protests, ‘don’t you know who I am? I’m the Junior Senator from Wisconsin.’
‘The lady...’ says the Secretary, ‘claims to be the Junior Senator from Wisconsin. Yes. Yes. No, I wouldn’t say so. She doesn’t... Okay, I’ll send her in.’ The Secretary puts down the phone and stares suspiciously at the Senator. ‘The Director will see you now, madam.’
As the Senator steps through the door, Hoover falls out of his chair. ‘Mac?’ he cries.
‘Speedy, you gotta help me.’
‘But Mac, is it really you?’
‘I don’t know anymore. I’ve lost my cock. It’s been appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It’s become the Cock Court! That tool’s going around as if it doesn’t know me. It has to be a Communist plot!’
‘You better let me see,’ the Director leers, licking his lips. ‘Drop those pants.’
The Senator unbuckles his belt, unbuttons and unzips his trousers, lets them fall to the floor, and steps out of his shorts. The Director stares in disbelief and then kneels before the Senator. He looks up between the legs, spits on his fingers, reaches inside the cavity, and rummages around. The Senator lets out a whimper, bracing against the desk as the Director’s hand sinks in up to the wrist making a squelching noise, like someone stirring a bowl of warm macaroni.
‘By gosh, your whang’s really gone, isn’t it?’ The Director exclaims, retracting his hand. He grimaces, seems about to be sick, and fastidiously wipes his fingers on a handkerchief. ‘And you say your whizzbang is now Chief Justice?’
‘I’ve just been at the Court! I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’
‘I’ll have to inform the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff. A prong as small as yours will never be up to the job!’
‘What about the President?’
‘Truman’s the goddamn problem! This has gotta be his doing – a recess appointment! I’ve long suspected the old haberdasher of being a Russian agent but this proves it. Don’t worry, Mac, we’ll get your little pecker sniveling back in place before the day is out.’
LATER
It’s the end of the day, and nothing has happened to reunite the Senator with his missing part, so he goes home, examines himself in the mirror, and tries to accommodate himself to his new body, the ovoid pertness of his breasts, the hips still growing wider by the hour, the lustrous hair spilling across his shoulders. Billy looks at him in astonishment. ‘It’s going to take some getting used to,’ Billy mumbles dejectedly.
The next morning, no one will take the Senator’s calls. Word has spread that he’s a pervert given to dressing in women’s clothes and wearing a wig. Over the course of the week, the transfiguration continues until the Senator no longer recognizes the person he used to be. Shunned in the halls of the Capitol, he finds himself removed from committees and when he appears on the floor of the Senate, colleagues call him ‘Congresswoman’. There are threats of an investigation, removal from office, institutionalization, and even imprisonment.
MEANWHILE
Chief Justice Cock has been busy transforming the Supreme Court, fulminating from the bench against the Red Menace and expanding the powers of our nation’s highest court to handle matters of national security. A series of televised trials begins, each one condemning the accused Communists and homosexuals in government and civil society to life in prison. Six senators are tried and found guilty, forty-seven congressmen and congresswomen, one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, several dozen members of the FBI, CIA, and local law enforcement. Even the President himself is called to trial, cross-examined by Chief Justice Cock (who, when excited, begins to foam at the mouth), found guilty of being a Russian spy, and sentenced to life in federal prison. Chief Justice Cock appoints himself President-Chief Justice and moves into the vacated White House. The trials continue until the Junior Senator from Wisconsin is also arrested, charged, and delivered one morning to the Supreme Court to face trial.
Since the Senator was last there, the Court has been redecorated in fascist style, little parallel lightning-bolt cocks adopted as the symbol of the new order, black silk bunting flowing from the rafters. The WARDEN OF THE COURT calls for the public to rise as the Chief Justice and his fellow Justices, now looking like a group of cowed, terrified men relieved only by the fact they themselves have not been tried and sent to prison, enter and sit behind the bench. The Senator is called to the witness stand and, wearing a demure wool suit in pale blue tweed with a matching pillbox hat, swears to tell the truth. Trials are brief, with only the Chief Justice asking questions, ignoring the answers of the accused, never hearing other testimony, and passing judgment after a brief recess. Condemnation is swift and absolute because there is no court of appeal.
The President-Chief Justice is more erect than usual, head red and throbbing, a thin white stream dribbling from his mouth, but since his apotheosis the capacity to speak sense has declined appreciably. ‘The defendant’s accused of compromising national security by making outrageous, I mean totally unfounded, ridiculous... the defendant is a fantasist, made these claims against the President-Chief Justice, that is myself, and also compromised,
you know, by perverting his own body to that of a female while still, STILL, holding public office, so in the opinion of the court, this is, you know, a huge Communist plot and undoubtedly, I mean, it’s clearly, any dick can see, a contravention of the morals clause, the man is a pervert, disgusting, sad to see the state of the country, this is a national crisis, the clause in his contract with all you good – you American – people. How does the pervert plead?’
‘Not guilty, your honor,’ the Junior Senator says in a voice ringing with confidence.
The Cock purses its mouth and smirks, looking to the other Justices who, in turn, titter nervously. ‘What do you say in your defense? I mean, we shouldn’t even give you the chance, you’ve wasted our time, you’ve put the American, all those good Americans, the people of our country, they’re in grave danger, mortal, I mean moral, but I guess we have to do it by the, we’ll let you say what you have to say because we are the highest, due process and all that, I mean this is a great democratic, the institution is everything. What do you say?’
The Senator shimmies at the lectern, looks to the Press and then to the Cock, and speaks:
‘You are in fact my own cock, and by some magic you removed yourself from my body and in that removal, my body, through no fault of its own, turned into a woman. I don’t want to be a woman, but I will be since I have no other choice. The real perversion would be if I continued to dress as a man while clearly now being a woman. I don’t know what you would wish me to do. You refused to reattach yourself to me, and yet you condemn me for being a woman. Would you have me steal another man’s cock? That would amount to theft and assault and a perversion all its own. There seems no possibility of me answering you to your satisfaction.’
‘The Court finds the defendant guilty,’ yells the President-Chief Justice, banging his gavel.
‘But you haven’t even conferred with your fellow Justices,’ the Senator protests.
‘Quiet! You shut up! You’ve had your say!’ the Cock sputters, a white stream shooting across the chamber and blinding the Press corps. ‘The guilt of the defendant is, you know, it’s obvious. Any fool can see, you’ve made, how you’ve just made the same claims against the President-Chief Justice you’re charged with yourself, and you, right here, you said it, I heard you say, you admitted to being a woman. Nothing could be plainer. I’d say “Off with her head” and maybe I should, but for nostalgia, because I remember and whatnot, I won’t. I sentence you to life in a secure psychiatric facility along with all the other Communist agents. It’s sad, really, the state of this country. Huge mess. You caused it, people like you. Disloyal. Sex perverts. Thinking you can change your sex just like that, overnight, like it’s a choice. You should be ashamed of yourself. The Court is recessed.’
A couple of Supreme Court thugs muscle the Senator into a straitjacket for the journey to a federal asylum in Virginia. En route, the Senator rants about the plotting of Red Fascists.
WEEKS LATER
One morning, the former Junior Senator from Wisconsin wakes from a sound sleep to find his cock back in its place, his chest as flat as it once was, ample hips almost as narrow as they once were. Just as astonishing, the doors of the asylum are open and when the Senator returns to Washington he discovers the President-Chief Justice has disappeared, the real President returned to office, and life carrying on as it had only a short time earlier. Because his hair is long, he goes immediately to see his barber, Irving Jakobson, who greets him with a look of surprise and not a little fear.
Irving cuts the Senator’s hair, gives him a shave, and offers a tonic rub, which the Senator, repossessed of his cock and eager to see if it works, happily accepts. As he lies on the massage table in the backroom, enjoying the capable hands of the barber, he thinks about all that his cock so quickly accomplished. Before the day is out, he vows to subpoena everyone he suspects of being Communists and sex perverts, many of whom were locked up with him in the asylum. Like his cock before him, he will bring them to trial and condemn them for subversion, perversion, and plots against the state. He has to admit, privately of course, that the other great Joe of the moment, the Uncle Nemesis on the other side of the globe, got something right in his purges and show trials. Create fear and chaos, and you can do whatever the hell you want.
5
Tonight, my neighbor is holding a party, a book launch for an Austrian writer whose new novel has just been published in Italian. The young writer, who is dressed as I imagine Hans Castorp might have been, with an Alpine crispness, also reminds me of you, Myles. At first, spotting him from behind, across the salon with its modernist furniture beneath a ceiling of grotesques, waiters passing trays of canapés and glasses of prosecco to Marchesas and Contessas and Baronessas, to the mayor and heads of local cultural organizations, I think for an instant that this blond young man is you, that I am seeing you as you were in 1950. While I know this cannot be true, the fantasy is so bewitching it makes my heart beat faster.
During the speeches – one from our host, one from the publisher, one from the Austrian novelist himself – a Spanish novelist I know is holding my arm, whispering to me about the Austrian’s book, which reviewers in Germany have savaged as racist. When the Austrian eventually turns so that I can see his face, I realize he is not particularly young, perhaps already in his fifties, and he looks nothing like you except for being blond, his skin bronzed, his height more or less your height. But his face is plump where yours has always been lean (even in the most recent pictures I can find, from ten years ago, how angular you remain), his skin pocked and uneven. At last seeing him for who he is, the fantasy shatters and my heart collapses in on itself. I lean against my Spanish novelist friend for support, but he is on fire, trashing this Austrian in my ear because he does what the Spaniard regards as being in unthinkably bad taste in contemporary literature: he writes about dreams, employs the weather as a signifier of narrative and characterological affect, overtly references myth: the new novel, set in the Caribbean, uses Homer’s Iliad as a structuring device. None of this is possible, not anymore, says my friend. Modernism killed all of that, but all of it. Now we must only write about the real. Satire is dead. Symbolism is dead. Even comedy, it has no place anymore, not in serious writing.
I touch his hand, the long beautiful fingers of a caballero, fingers I suspect may recently have been running through the hair of my companion Alessio, have perhaps done even more than that. I stare into his blue eyes and tell him I think we have a different notion of literary rules and timelines and what may or may not be possible. Nothing is dead, Néstor, nothing verboten, anything remains possible, I tell him. Otherwise, why even try? He smiles beneath his moustache, a smile that disarms and devastates me. A different tradition, perhaps, he says, and offers to fetch me a drink.
Alone in my corner, gazing at this salon full of people in beautiful clothes each in their different way trying to ignore the crisis of this moment, when Italy is leaderless and it feels as though anything might happen, I am struck by what has changed. Our host, my neighbor, is queer, the Austrian writer is queer, my Spanish novelist friend and myself and Alessio and more than a dozen other men and women in the room are queer, and we no longer apologize, at least not in a gathering such as this. We no longer suggest we are anything other than ourselves when the Marchesas and Contessas and Baronessas (who claim in many cases to be Communists) ask us how we have been. They know the names of our partners. They know Alessio is not a ‘friend’ or ‘assistant’ or ‘roommate’ but my lover, however much younger he is, however increasingly emotional rather than physical our love becomes. They invite us for dinner, treat us as friends, and I have no sense of myself as an ornament or pet, no suspicion that when the door is closed and they are speaking with one another or their husbands or children that they gnash their teeth and make disparaging remarks about us because of who we are, by nature, destined to love. Was it always this way in a certain milieu? I am sure it was not so among the people you and I once knew professionally. We could
never be certain of safety without prior knowledge. We were always on our guard and wondering if we might be betrayed. And we would never have been so flagrant as the two men I watch now across the room, arms and legs draped over each other, paging through the Austrian’s impossible book.
You may wonder whether I regretted my decision to accompany John that morning in April long ago. The truth is I doubted nearly everything I did that day and the intervening years have done little to reassure me the decisions I made were the right ones. I should have told you sooner of my plans. In not telling you I should at least have remained in your presence. Or, in leaving your side, I should have done something to fight for my place, even if that meant going to war with my own conscience.
The trolley had already rattled back towards the soundstages and John and I were left alone on the shores of an artificial lake. A bridge led us into the African Jungle, which was neither of the things its name proclaimed. It had done service as Africa and Asia and South America, even as North America and Europe, but was nothing more exotic than a stand of eucalyptus trees interplanted with a thicket of tropical ferns, palms and cycads garlanded with artificial vines of varying tensile strengths from which Tarzan could swing. The air was heavy with the astringent scent of gumtrees, the ground dry, and the day was already hot.
Of course I regretted my decision.
John swept his hand across his brow and stared at me with a wild eye, as if he suspected me of betrayal as much as he did Mary. I had the impulse to run after the trolley, recognizing that in following John I was allowing myself to be led, and certain that even if we did find Mary, we would fail to convince her to do anything other than what she intended. Mary did not take direction, she was direction, all force and speed and bearing. Believing you might convince her to do anything other than what she wished was like sneezing into a passing freight train in hopes you might derail it.
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