Queenie

by Hortense Calisher

  And when I finally turn around, Dr. Werner, I’m right up there with the rest of you. They could exhibit me in every museum of the country if they want to. My tears have collaged.

  “Oh, why did nobody tell me?” I cry. “That the human condition is current events.”

  Because nobody’s there, of course. They’re all inside already, doing like you say to. Externalizing it.

  It’s only me has my time lag. Which this time, what it does is to keep me sitting on that ladder for quite a spell thinking how wonderful you are. Or were three weeks ago when you left us for your world lecture tour. Like when you speak of suffering for all the suffering. Like when you remind us all these causes will go right down the drain of history, unless we quick connect with them.

  On that door is proper action for it. Petitions for every pulse, mass meetings as arranged!

  But I am feeling more personal.

  That’s the way women feel when they get universally excited, Doctor.

  God is for us, but there’s a catch in it.

  Because what I am thinking is—why just settle for an orgasm-in-the-round for the sake of humanity? Why not go all out and have a baby for it!

  I find I am actually willing to do that, to declare myself at one with the world.

  In fact, there seems no other way to say fuck the world and still put your bod on the line for it.

  And personally, I’m thinking that if a man like you cared to put out a little philosophy for me—I’d let it stay.

  Which is a good time to have a friend like Oomph.

  Because just then, the pigtail slips out of the meeting and shouts up at me, “Your friend’s in trouble.”

  I scramble down at once, and in there.

  Boy, is she! As the sparks fly upward. She has tangled with the camera crew, which has been shooting a few promotional highlights. And has busted the lens of the mini that her pick-up, the crew chief, had stashed away for spontaneity’s sake. In his beard.

  “Who she think she is——” he’s saying to his friends, who are dabbing the blood on his chin where she tore some of him off along with the tape. “A movie star?”

  Oomph is standing there, harem legs planted, burning right back at him. “Peeper! Whyn’t you put your whole life on film and coexist with it, then you wouldn’t need to worry. You would always be there!”

  I give her a warning look, same as she did for me in the elevator. I like film, Doctor. It works for you. While you wait. Which is finey with me. But on the question of film, Oomph’s the oldie. She says it’s the stockbroker in her coming out for active sports. Knowing her mother, Mrs. O., I’d say it’s the bluestocking. Neither one of them can bear just to watch. Or to be watched. It’s the one flaw in Oomph’s modernity.

  “My friend doesn’t like deceit,” I say. “Especially when it’s done to her.”

  I’m different from her; I know when I’m ratting. That’s my hang-up. But like any two girls going out for goals, it’s time for us to part anyway. And I see she and the beard still have a thing going. Sure enough, a minute later, he leads her off to convince her about cinema vérité. The last I look, they are being it. Under a sign that says Fuck All Flags.

  Because even though the room is as big as a ballroom, and probably was one, the arrangements are really ingenious. There’s a booth for almost every gripe. And a sign above to show what you are grieving for. Plus if somebody would like to stage her protest on a borderline—like say between the Soul Brothers Yonder booth and the All Sabras Kibbutz Here—why she would have to be very limber, but her comment could be beautiful.

  I also see that a non-joiner like me may be in trouble. The world is so full of dissent—and almost all of them are represented.

  I may have a hard time not finding a goal. In fact I might get stuck with one.

  Because, Dr. Werner—I can see a certain amount of arguing is going on, by the committeemen. Breaking away for your own personal yen is one thing—but in the field of world grievances it might be different.

  For the moment, though, I can make like I’m going shopping down the bazaar. And, Doctor, a moment when everybody is being something you are not being, can be very educational. You see things. And I see—that underneath all the fine mass action there’s some very peculiar flimflam being perpetrated here.

  For instance, the very first booth, East Village for Mao, I see this couple standing there, like two mummies waking up to each other at midnight in a wing of the Metropolitan.

  She’s in her Indian headband, zodiac armband and Mexican bellyband.

  He’s in the same, except there’s no fringe, just bells on his jockstrap.

  As to action, they are like in a frieze—beautiful.

  They are having a lipless dialogue—like the two of them have each swallowed one half of a ventriloquist.

  She is saying through her teeth, “When you gonna make your move?”

  He’s saying through his teeth, “Now.”

  A long wait, then she says it again.

  Then he does.

  And if you listen close, you can hear he is making it. But at this rate it will take them two days to connect.

  So I pass on to where a homophile for Africa is making a clear play for what looks very like an African for homophilia. Then on to where an anti-World Bankist is getting very cozy with one of the hostesses from Swissair For Socialism. Of course that’s not too far apart ideologically. And he’s only using his nose to balance a penny on her stomach, which when a girl is doing a backbend, isn’t too difficult.

  But I only have to pass a few more booths to realize what is really going on here.

  World dissent is in peril here! People are agreeing with one another.

  And mass action is in trouble too. Couples are trying to connect.

  But don’t worry, Dr. Werner. Wherever you were at the time, your steering committee is very alert.

  What really tips them off is the chansoneer. Something has excited that girl.

  She is on the speaker’s dais, in the middle of the floor, in front of the atrocity blowups. She’s putting her bod on the line all right. For herself! And the guy she’s with of course. Who must be the public relations man. And boy—do they know show biz.

  You have a marvelously handsome steering committee, Dr. Werner. The way the best politicals ought to be. They are in there on the double. At first, the way those studs of yours grab the girls and vice versa, some dopes might think those opportunists were just going into action for themselves. But in a minute, we can all see how selfless they are. Mass action is what they’re after! Public brawls—with plenty of infighting! Those smart dogs are helping everybody put his bod on the line—together.

  And in less than ten minutes—what do we have but a classic instance of revolutionary action!

  Like you say in conference, even young people can see what time means, if they try! Because here was a ballroom where people of the old regime never did anything but maybe shimmy for themselves. And now here is a whole goddam hall of dedicated people, rocking, rocking together for social action. Collaging for Grief! And God, are they affirmative.

  “Poison nerve gas!” a girl right next to me yells, rearing up from a pile of bodies like a Martha Graham soloist.

  “Strontium in Utah!” yells a seconder, shivering out a leg with crotch evident. Then come “Tear gas against the marchers!” “Hormones in chickens!” “Thalidomide babies!”—in fact all the protests for the environment that you can think of—but with the gesture that is appropriate.

  Gestures in favor of life, Dr. Werner. Postures for it. I have never seen so many remarkable ones. Everyone is moaning now, connections almost forgot. That’s how selfless some people are.

  But then your strong-arm boys start up again, with ritual limb-gnashing—and that takes care of it.

  Some themes are more favored than others, and there are cynics here like anywhere; a guy who shouts he’s doing it for the workers is hooted at, and “Vietnam!” doesn’t make for easy symbolic
humping. But like anywhere, there are also some lightweights; their great favorite seems to be BREAK THE DATING SYSTEM IN SCHENECTADY.

  I horn in with them, since I am a lightweight here too. Because I am in trouble with my grief already, Doctor.

  I have made the usual discovery; among yea-sayers I am always a nay-sayer. In my political self, I am a pig. Everything politics has to give, I want for myself.

  Here are all these fine, open people giving their all for the welfare of all—and I can’t manage it. My world-soul in that direction is personal. No matter how many people are in a bed—for me, talk kills bed.

  I can have a kid for the world, maybe, but only in private. In public, I can’t give myself for the world.

  While to complete my shame, up on that dais, in an awed circle of what I see at once are the hard-core serious, I see a girl who’s going all out for it.

  It’s the charisoneer! All she needed was a suggestive suggestion. She is going positively ape over the human condition. And these two morphs are being a great help.

  I am just elbowing my way out of Schenectady, who are backsliding into couples again, when I hear behind me, “Not having it, honey? What’s your bag?”

  I say quick, “Oh, I’m a dilettante”—then I see it’s the beard.

  Naturally I say, “Where’s Oomph?” To my surprise he fades, just like that.

  The next approach is from a meek little guy who may even be playing my game. He looks awfully like a husband.

  I say, “Can’t stand the music.” Which is electronic Bach. “Want some raga. Go get me some raga. It’s the best thing for labor pains.”

  He lights out like I’m asking for chop suey or something. I do like raga. For yen-over-yen, the truth is best.

  And then I find myself at the booth where I started at. But what I am looking at is not déjà vu. Those two with the headbands, they have connected! Time was on their side after all, I was the pessimist. Though happy as I usually am, that’s encouraging.

  Anyway, those two—they’re looking neither backward nor forward. And scarcely moving it. Like they are just saying—“Hark!”

  …Doctor, when the world is swallowed up in dissent, what is to come upon a political action that is perfectible! There they are, working out their world-sorrow in the present. And I haven’t even found my past yet.

  Thinking that, I grab a curly-haired boy in jeans next to me, and we start kissing up a storm. Then we both bug off backward into the fleshpile. I’m embarrassed, and so is my kissee, each of us recognizing a natural instinct in the other. We’re both girls.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I’m not wearing my contacts.”

  But both of us are gratified—a natural instinct isn’t easy come by, these days. Or this evening. She hauls out a joint, lights up and two-fingers it to me; I draw for a while, then pass it back, saying “Peace!” And watch her go down the line to find somebody she can make it better with.

  I feel lonely, unstoned and unfucked, even dreaming of the days of yore you tell us about, when just not being a Commie was enough to get you ostracized. But now, even to be anything anti-anti, you still have to do it with the bod; anything purely mental is insincere. And I agree, oh, I agree—but why can I only do it mentally?

  This is what I’m thinking, meanwhile watching a group in the middle of which is a girl with her face half around somebody who certainly isn’t a girl.

  Only this communal stockpiling isn’t for me either. I’m stuck with this sneaking perversion for a twosome. I have come face to face with my yen. I am an I. Who is an auk.

  And then I notice that the girl on the other end of that boy is Oomph, and both of them are being forced. Only he’s beyond protest; he’s agreeing all right. Couple of guys behind him are watching, and cheering him on in the modern way—but the guy who’s got Oomph by the neck and from behind, is for real.

  Or as real as anything gets here.

  Because three others behind him have their cameras trained. It’s the crew, getting their revenge.

  And I thank God for the stuff that’s being taken in here, whether it’s grass, or politics!

  For with everybody by now as stoned or as grieving as they are, almost all you have to do is point a finger, and like phantoms they fall back.

  Provided you also thumb their eyes, meanwhile kneeing them in the groin—which when the girls back home teach me, they never dream they are setting me up for a BA.

  I do both to the boy behind Oomph, and pull her out—she’s willing.

  The three behind him back off too, when they see how I’m serious. A guy with a good camera in front of him is almost as sensitive as a guy with balls.

  Then I hustle her down the long hall, stepping over some gigs on the floor, who are making it bobsled-style, or making like they’re making it. In politics, Dr. Werner, there’s more yen-over-yen than most people would ever believe, isn’t there?

  We get to a bathroom easy enough; the flat is one of those rambling West Side ones has about four; the first one we try is in normal use, but the second one is vacant. This doesn’t seem to be the old-fashioned kind of party where people interested in intercourse go off by themselves. Or so I suppose.

  I hold Oomph’s head while she’s gagging—like Aurine used to do when I had the stomach ache. There’s something simple-homey about it.

  But in the distance here, is the nearby throng.

  I hear cries of, “Come on, this train isn’t being made up in Boston.” Like in that old joke, if all the girls at the Harvard prom were laid end to end—well here they are. I grab a washcloth, and hand it under to Oomph. Who is finished now and just looking into the bowl.

  A toilet bowl is very philosophical, isn’t it? Like a little shrine you can find anywhere. Manufacturers ought to put little Buddhas there, anchored so they won’t go down.

  Well, I did it,” she says. “I hope Mamma will be pleased.”

  So that’s her hang-up.

  O, Aurine. If she were here! My heart leaps when I think of it; her rage for me and at me would be so terrible. I see her, an avenging Venus, advancing on us to plug what can happen between couples, at the head of a great swinging, satin cotillion of the girls. Your past is no good to me, I’d have to tell her. Still, at the very idea, I feel my mouth corners turn up.

  I look down at myself. Bod, bod, you’re always still there. Going on seventeen years of you. Are you sincere?

  My body jewelry surely is. Compared to the hard stuff from Cartier’s. It’s from the dime store. But that is absolutely all I have done for politics.

  “Oomph,” I say.

  She looks up at me. From her washcloth. “What?”

  “We have experienced confusion,” I say. “But I found out something.”

  “What?”

  At once, I have to hedge. Like always. If I say: I’m a wallflower in the modern world, Oomph—she’ll say: “Oh, everybody has his kick, just find a likely wall.”

  I say, “I find out—that I always find out the same thing.”

  “Uh,” Oomph says. She’s looking at me. Really looking. Which, after her experience, is kind. “Know your trouble? You haven’t enough hang-ups, that’s all.” She looks ghastly. “But in all that snakepile, in case you didn’t get laid—that makes two of us.”

  I am stunned! The corners of Oomph’s mouth do not turn up. But I have always thought it was heredity!

  I say, “Mean to say you’re still a virgin too?”

  At once I know my mistake. So okay. Okay, the past has no point to it. But this is my present.

  Now she’ll put it to me, though. Why you frigid little voyeur, I wouldna believed it, she’ll say. No darling—she’ll say. Virgin just for tonight.

  I could record our whole monologue.

  Instead, she shakes her head at me. How, I can’t express. But I know it’s for herself. Then her eyes open wide.

  “Queenie! You’re talking!” says Oomph.

  …Beautiful Queenie who never really says boo, Cutch always says.


  Beauty’s like film, Cutch. It works for you. While you wait. While you have to wait…

  “Oh, Oomph,” I say. “Inside me, I never stop.”

  What she does then—she gives me the other end of that washcloth. And we stand there, holding it. Female kinship, Dr. Werner—it’s not as fat-tongued as Damon and Pythias. Can all the man-talk, our little smiles are saying. We’re just two girls holding onto the same rag.

  So there we are, kind of clutching each other mentally, when the door opens and in walks the beard.

  With a girl from school—one of the rich ones. She has long blonde hair almost to the top of her hundred-dollar boots, and nothing in between, except on a piece of grocer’s string around her neck one of her father’s 2000 B.C. five-thousand-dollar Luristan bronzes. And as you say, Dr. Werner—a conspicuous waste.

  The two of them start to back out. But Oomph gives me a smart push, and bows them in. “Imagine you two’ll need your privacy,” she says, and closes the bathroom door on them.

  I say, “What’s with you and him?”

  She says, “The crew started taking a pic of us again. And he lost it. Right in front of his friends.”

  I say, “That why they gang you?”

  She says, “Oh, me yelling ‘Screw the revolution!’—maybe they misinterpreted.”

  I say, “Wait ’til he finds out she can’t make it unless there’s a bidet.”

  We stand there deep in thought.

  Oomph is really a brilliant administrator. She turns the lock on them.

  Then we scram. At the hall door, Oomph strikes her forehead in that way she has. “Wait here, huh? Gotta go back.”

  She takes her time. I need to go, so I duck in the last

  John I see down the hall. Which has the light on, and the door ajar.

  Oh, Dr. Werner.

  Spiritual revelation is enough for one evening. Without getting the facts, too…

  I know it’s you at once of course. Naked though you are, I’d know you anywhere. Even with your beard un-trimmed, even with the beret. Even with the earring. Put two and two together, top and bottom, and still I get Werner. That must have been some lecture tour.