Queenie

by Hortense Calisher

  Besides, we’re wise now that only freshmen go cruising. By at least sophomore year, you’ve got your crowd. After that, unless you’re living with some spoilsport who doesn’t approve of the open secret life—you find your goals.

  “Let’s be precocious,” I say, “let’s do that.”

  So, one fine morning, we shop the departments, and what do you know—if you look close enough, there’s a goal on every bulletin board in the school. And since it happens to be the day after the President of this land goes on an anti-youth kick again, yours, Dr. Werner, is kind of full of them. We finally pick a tiny typed slip tacked to one corner, which says, “Declare your rights in rites, in liberal company, at a good Riverside Drive address.” Top left.

  Meantime, I’m suddenly in a dilemma I know by now is classical—how to tell your folks what you are doing at school. My aunt and uncle phone to say they are back from the beach. She didn’t have her face lifted for it. But she and Oscar learned to ride the three-wheeler bikes. And on the bike next to theirs, they have met a tycoon who would like to buy my big diamond-in-the-bank. He hasn’t seen it yet of course, but he’s seen a picture of me, and considers it unfortunate I am not confined to a bank.

  I can see the three of them bowling down the tarmac, in a huddle over how easy it is to lose your diamond in a dormitory. I gather he might buy mine just to give it back to me….And what am I doing Saturday night?

  Oh, family influence!

  I say, “Date.”

  She says, “Who?”

  I say, “Nobody special. With a crowd.”

  She says, “How are they dancing, these days?”

  I say, “Nothing special. All together.”

  She says, “What are you wearing?”

  I say, “Nothing much.” Which should please her.

  She’s not prying, she’s only hungry for details. And it’s not that I can’t lie to her, by now. Only the more education I get, the tougher it is to know when I am doing it; the difference between good and bad faith is different here.

  She says wistfully, “I hope you’re in with a good crowd.”

  I say, “Good? They’re seniors.”

  Then there’s a mutual silence. Into which she says, “What is this party called, they don’t do anything special with nobody special and not wearing anything much? I hope you’re not wasting yourself.”

  I say quick that no, I’m applying myself. “It’s a grieve-in.”

  She says, “A what?”

  I repeat that.

  She says, “For who?”

  Here I have to think quick, since though from class discussion I suspect our goal may be general, I’m not sure yet. So I pick a certainty.

  I say, “For the President.”

  She says, “But he’s still alive!”

  Even she is politically aware!

  I say, “This one’s the kind you can do it for early.”

  And only twelve weeks ago, I didn’t even know I ought to know the name of my congressman. Or how far back he stands on what youth is for.

  I still don’t. But I know I ought to. And tonight I’ll find out our whole platform.

  So I tell her nix on the diamond; I’ll keep it until I know my goals.

  She says why don’t I take the tycoon to the party anyway, he could maybe use some.

  I say, “Uh-uh. Oomph says tonight we’ll find out everything we’re against. Nine out of ten, he’ll be one of them.”

  What she says next—I know how far apart fifty blocks can be.

  She says, “Who’s Oomph?”

  Queenie:

  THE GRIEVE-IN

  YOU GO ON ONE of these affairs, Doctor. Not to. The idea being you are only rising a very little higher on the excitement circuit than where you normally are.

  So that Saturday night, Oomph and I set off for Riverside Drive. On our way bumping into the two cookies, all kickied and curled; they are going on a date. With two scholarship boys from St. Olaf’s who’ve cut the term short to come east from Minnesota early—which these two consider very dashing. “Enjoy your evening,” they say side-eyed, and slide by.

  “Oomph,” I say. “They know we’re political.”

  She says education helps everybody some. But that the most those two can look forward to is getting laid Lutheranly and separately in the back and front of a Volks.

  Unless they are saving it, which I have found is still possible, but don’t say.

  Dr. Werner, is holding back publicly a revolutionary act? Because by now quite a few of us silent minority—who want world-selves but haven’t yet made our minds up on what to do with our personal ones—we’re committing it. Like it’s even easier than holding back privately.

  What you do is play musical chairs. And get left out.

  Not that I think you’d be interested.

  But if you’re me—the first thing you notice there is how everybody’s acting very nonchalant—like having four hands come at you plus an unassorted head is simply your daily bread. The other point is that when anybody does get made, everybody has to know—it’s only honorable. So what with everybody seeing to it how nonchalant they are, and you are, or emitting little savage cries to the general committee—how can anybody ever really say what has happened with who?

  But the most important thing is, whatever is not your bag, everybody is very tolerant. You just indicate your bag is something else. And if it’s something new, you might even gain admiration for it.

  Say you’re a girl, and you are surrounded by three or four fat-bellies. You merely let it be known you’re waiting for a team of acrobat friends who are expected shortly; you haven’t been able to make it any other way for the past month. If they’re cynics and crack wise, let ’em; you’ve already broken away to another group in a corner, who likely are acrobats. To whom you can say in a moment or two, “Oh, excuse me. I see my friends.” Just like a cocktail party. By the time either of these groups is checking up on you, there you are having an apparent yen for a football type! To whom you shortly say sorry, but you seem to be building up to a thing for homos lately. Which is catching on from both sides, but is still fairly new.

  All you ever have to do is pick carefully—and keep claiming the wrong yen. A yen is always respected by youth, Dr. Werner. Especially a sudden one. And so, hand over hand, tight corner to tighter, a girl can still spend a quiet unsuccessful evening almost anywhere.

  It could even happen to a boy.

  And, Doctor, it helps too that these events take place in a fog. Incense, joints or cigarettes, all according to neighborhood. Or political affiliation. If it’s tea party though, watch out, the hop haze has to be gotten rid of at intervals, maybe air-conditioner if it’s that kind of middle-brow pad, or punkah fans if it’s psychedelic style, or just a lot of White Owl cigars being passed.

  Because the fuzz is always expected. And a party’s made if they turn up. Doesn’t have to be real ones. Sometimes only a mad rumor will scatter the pack. Or else a couple of very butch fags I meet once, masseurs on the side, who will hire out for the night.

  Otherwise, it’s very politically free, Dr. Werner. Just you on your own in the fog, with everybody else.

  So I am not too surprised when that Riverside Drive address turns out to be on Central Park West. But lobby to lobby, grief travels fast, and soon we all pile out of cabs at the correct apartment house. From all those columns, it’s one of the great ones, once. But now whatever can’t be nailed down is gone, including some of the marble—and suddenly I recognize it. I can remember my five-year-old Mary Janes walking across sixty feet of Oriental rug. Nila’s old place! Nosey was born in it. It’s not a slum yet; there’s still one of those foot-long Tenants’ Committee notices telling you what to do if you are stabbed in the elevator. But still I lose my cool and say, “My God, I used to know people who lived here!”

  We are crammed in that elevator by now, which is a slow one, and the griever kneeing me from behind says over my head, “You still do.”

  So I am
covered with gaucherie.

  Beside me Oomph says, “My friend here likes to hark back.” She’s not ratting; she has to constantly help me with my hang-ups.

  Like I know the past is a property has been condemned.

  She’s from L.A. though; for her it’s easier.

  But still I blush my way up ten floors. The pack in the car don’t have knives in me but I’d almost rather. Queenie, my one hot cheek tells the other, can’t you remember? Never hark back in a group. In a group, you can only hark forward.

  And when we get to that apartment door, on it are all the reasons why.

  There must be thirty-forty people in the line ahead of Oomph and me, waiting to study what’s posted on it, and to add their own comments. So I have more time than usual to rally myself. Parking my poncho—they have racks, this place is organized!—I see the usual leotards, but a lot of the dress is more meaningful. I myself have a little paste-on jewelry here and there and between my bikini, but nothing that says anything.

  Oomph and I think that putting a critique of our lousy civilization on your tit is a critique on it. So she has nothing there.

  But there is always at least one exhibitionist. The girl ahead of us has nothing there either, but below, she is wearing a cache-nombril, which I already know is a sort of locket on a belt, to frame your navel in. Every time she turns, it tweakles. Which engages the attention of some committeemen. Wiretaps.

  “Hell no,” we hear her say, “I’m a chansoneer. This is a mike.” She says a PR man she knows asked her to meet him here. He has kind of a crunch on her. “He says this place is a showcase for repertoire.”

  But all that blood and ink on the door up there, what looks like photos of people in dirty positions—she don’t go for it.

  “Oh, war dead. That’s different. Listen, you must be college kids.”

  Well, she wants us to know about herself. “I’m as broad-minded as anybody. But I never vote, see? I never vote on anything.”

  Dr. Werner, to say you never do anything, do you have to be a member of the proletariat?

  Right next to me is Oomph, a girl who can’t even recall losing her virginity. “It’s like learning to swim,” she says once. “In all that splashing, when was when?” She has taken to group culture just like to the water. And assumes my backwardness is intellectual. Which it is of course.

  She’s still attracted by my background. But she’s not sympathizing anymore, she’s analyzing. She says it gave me no room to rebel. One humble way never occurs to her. She takes a look at me now and says, “Trouble with you, you confuse these trips with being a professional.”

  “Coupling in couples,” I say in a whisper. “I just can’t get it off my mind.”

  She says, “Queenie, if you’ll only just analogize.”

  I say, “I’m not as bright at it as you.”

  She says exhaustedly, “Who is?”

  So considering all, I’m lucky she’s the assuming type.

  Because, though privately I’m still in a very romantic state—which as every girl knows means hot pants you know for what, you just don’t know for who—I have made another rock-bottom discovery about myself.

  I am not only frigid in grottoes; I am frigid in groups!

  O boy, am I in intellectual trouble! In the halls of Venus, any public hall, and no matter how many corners it has—a man’s hand on me turns straight into philosophy. And a woman’s too, if you should ask me.

  It all goes straight to my head.

  Dr. Werner, are you familiar with referred dental pain? Like when your upper tooth hurts, though it’s the lower one has the cavity? My whole bod is like that. Just let more than one kind, loving person slide a little philosophy up my kneecap, and my brain kicks them off!

  What do you do, if your virginity goes all the way to the top?

  And in public?

  By now, I can see through the crush that the door is really a huge piece of plywood, on which people are scrambling to tack petitions, or significant streamers, or to draw with paint and pen provided; there is a ladder to help. And a collection box beside it.

  Which if you are me and stuck in the past, you think is maybe for the joints or the drinks, or to reimburse the owner of the apartment with a uniformed maid afterward. No eats, I already know; there never are. With some kinds of political action peanuts are ridiculous. And you have to keep your hands free.

  But a big beard who Oomph is now talking to tells us the fund is for silk-screening the door to make like wallpaper. And a whole line of promotions they expect places like America House to be avid for. After which the door itself will be sent on a nationwide museum tour, under the title of our theme for this evening. We are to be a Collage for Grief.

  Oomph looks at me meaningfully and says, “That’s all right with us, we’ve been grieving for a friend all week.”

  I say, “Even with my astigmatism I can see that door is beautiful.”

  He says, “Oh but grief is groovier now, it isn’t private anymore.”

  Oomph nods thoughtfully and looks down at herself and sighs, “If it ever was!”…

  If she had a hat and gloves on, instead of being à la Gauguin over harem pants, she’d be a ringer for my aunt’s friends at the funeral parlor wake for Lalla, the first one who ever died on them.

  And the beard—even in a purple singlet with the arms hacked off instead of a double-breasted, he reminds me of the dashing heir of the deceased…

  They are baring their beautiful teeth at each other in the same grieving way—and so in decency I move back to let them go on ahead of me. They are ready for politics.

  Besides, on my left, a beardless boy, with a pigtail though, seems to be indicating that he is ready for me. Also two on my right and one in front—is that a tribute! I am getting the prom rush, and I haven’t even peeled yet.

  So I link arms in the middle of them; it’s always better to enter a party on somebody’s arm, all the better if there are five of us. Even if two of them are polymorphous perverse.

  So now, considering our goals, all I have to do is wipe off my smile.

  Harder than you think, for somebody whose mouth corners turn up, even if it is only inherited. Plus my inscape. Which Dr. Ffolliott, after my paper for him, says is the most frivolous ever to come to his attention in his ten years of American Studies. Plus two years at the Sorbonne.

  I tell him I don’t mind; in only twelve weeks to find your inscape is kind of wonderful. “I knew I had it,” I say, “I just didn’t know what it was.”

  Meanwhile, me and my phalanx, we’re the last of the queue.

  And, in a minute and a half, I’m about to have the spiritual revelation of my life! Now that I’m at last in the proper surroundings for it.

  And, Dr. Werner, you aren’t there. That’s always the teacher-student situation, isn’t it? The faculty of the world!—against the undergraduates! After all our conferences, you don’t get to see it because you’re up ahead of me. You’re already inside.

  Oh Dr. Werner, that door!—it had all world-grief on it, didn’t it? You probably passed it by without blinking; it’s your department after all; you’re used to it.

  How can I extrapolate the parasociological effect on an inscape like mine?

  Dr. Werner, we never had much world welfare in our family. The most was the donkey ads in the London Times my uncle subscribed to for other business—“Thousands of donkeys are being mistreated in Algiers!”—to which Gran always sent a check for Christmas. With “Albion” her terrier’s name on it.

  Plus my aunt’s friends being particularly partial to those orphan ads that say, “Kim never knew who her father is.”

  My aunt and uncle read the papers, of course. And we had the human condition in church. But both the church and the Daily News put loving your neighbor strictly ahead of the public news—like knowing who’s murdered in your street is what counts. Or else the palatial details of that tomato-sauce tycoon’s divorce your spaghetti will be paying for…

&nb
sp; Oh, we loved the moon walk! But like ours is still a village mentality to a citizen of the world like you, Dr. Werner. My uncle and aunt know the moon is our neighbor now. But they still go to Palm Beach.

  “Not that they’re dumb,” I say to my roommates, when we first rap. “My uncle knows the world is changing, and is keeping it from my aunt. She’s keeping it from him. And I’m keeping it from them. I come from very personal people, that’s all. Some people are personal about everything.”

  Oomph says, “Three generations of women in my mother’s family have been helping the world impersonally. And where has it got to?”

  Sherry says, “Old Lyme is clean. But it knows very well the rest of the world is dirty.”

  Cutch says to them, “Catch that white racist complexion on the girl, ladies. Bet it’s never suffered one international pain.”

  I say, “No, it hasn’t. But meeting you three has been wonderful.”

  But a mass meeting is best. Even though all the others have gone ahead into action, and I am now alone with my two morphs.

  One of them starts reading off from that door.

  Oh, Doctor—I don’t have to tell you! Grief maps, grief distribution curves—everything wrong with the world your whole course could think of is there!—plus a canful of bullets that have been in somebody, and a neat tube of blood marked “Not for TV.”

  Though maybe—did you catch that poem on a red typewriter ribbon that begins, “Down here in youth, our abattoir——”? Even in the voice of a morph that sounds very fine.

  “Hoist me up,” I say to the other morph. “I forgot my contacts.”

  With a joint tickle, they oblige me. They’re two who don’t care which gender they’re with as long as they’re together with it.

  After a minute one pipes, “Let’s go, dear. She’s queer for art.” The other answers, “But is Art queer for her?”

  I don’t care. For the first time in my life I am alone with all the grief that can be posted on a door and read from a ladder, and I am making the most of it! Of everything from which a happy childhood was deprived.