In One Person

by John Irving

  "But why did you want to stay here in First Sister--or be at Favorite River Academy, which you say yourself is an awful school?" I asked her.

  I was only eighteen, but I already never wanted to come back to Favorite River Academy or the Podunk town of First Sister, Vermont. I couldn't wait to get away, to be somewhere--to be anywhere--where I could have sex with whomever I wanted to, without being stared at and judged by all these overly familiar people who presumed they knew me!

  "I have an ailing parent, William," Miss Frost explained. "My father died the year I started at Favorite River Academy; if he hadn't passed away, my becoming a woman probably would have killed him. But my mother hasn't been healthy for quite some time; I barely got through college because of my mother's health problems. She's one of those people who's been sick so long that if she ever got well, she wouldn't know she was cured. She's sick in her mind, William; she doesn't even notice that I'm a woman, or maybe she doesn't remember that her little boy was ever a man. I'm sure she doesn't remember that she used to have a little boy."

  "Oh."

  "Your grandpa Harry used to employ my dad. Harry knew I was the one who took care of my mom. That's the only reason I had to come back to First Sister--whether Favorite River Academy would have me or not, William."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "Oh, it's not so bad," Miss Frost replied, in that acting way. "Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you--they can't turn you away. And I got to meet you, William. Who knows? Perhaps I'll be remembered as the crazy cross-dressing librarian who got you started as a writer. You have started, haven't you?" she asked me.

  But the story of her life, so far, seemed extraordinarily unhappy to me. While I went on touching her penis through that pearl-gray half-slip, I thought about Giovanni's Room, which was all wrapped up in Elaine's bra, under my pillow, and I said, "I loved the James Baldwin novel. I didn't bring it back to the library because I wanted to lend it to Tom Atkins. He and I have talked about it--I think he would love Giovanni's Room, too. Is it all right with you if I lend it to him?"

  "Is Giovanni's Room in your book bag, William?" Miss Frost asked me suddenly. "Where is the actual book right now?"

  "It's at home," I told her. I was suddenly afraid to say it was under my pillow--not to mention that the novel was in contact with Elaine Hadley's padded pearl-gray bra.

  "You mustn't leave that novel at home," Miss Frost told me. "Of course you can lend it to Tom. But tell Tom not to let his roommate see it."

  "I don't know who Atkins has for a roommate," I told her.

  "It doesn't matter who Tom's roommate is--just don't let the roommate see that novel. I told you not to let your mother--or Richard Abbott--see it. If I were you, I wouldn't even let your grandpa Harry know you have it."

  "Grandpa knows I have a crush on Kittredge," I said to Miss Frost. "Nobody but you knows I have a crush on you," I told her.

  "I hope you're right about that, William," she whispered. She bent over me and put my penis in her mouth--in less time than it took me to write this sentence. Yet, when I reached under her half-slip for her penis, she stopped me. "No--we're not doing that," she said.

  "I want to do everything," I told her.

  "Of course you do, William, but you'll have to do everything with someone else. It is not appropriate for a young man your age to do everything with someone my age," Miss Frost told me. "I will not be responsible for your first time at trying everything."

  With that, she put my penis back in her mouth; for the time being, she would not explain herself further. When she was still sucking me, I said: "I don't think we had actual sex the last time--I mean the penetration part. We did something else, didn't we?"

  "Talking is not very easily accomplished during a blow job, William," Miss Frost said, sighing in such a way--while she lay down next to me, face-to-face--that I got the feeling this was probably curtains for the blow job, and it was. "You seemed to enjoy the 'something else' we did last time, William," she said.

  "Oh, yes, I did!" I cried. "I was just wondering about the penetration part."

  "You can wonder about it all you want, William, but there will be no 'penetration part' with me. Don't you see?" she asked me suddenly. "I am trying to protect you from 'actual sex.' At least a little," Miss Frost added, smiling.

  "But I don't want to be protected!" I cried.

  "I will not have 'actual sex' with an eighteen-year-old on my conscience, William. As for who you will become, I've probably been of too much influence already!" Miss Frost declared. She was certainly right about that, though she must have imagined she was being more theatrical than prophetic--and I didn't yet know just how much of an "influence" (on the rest of my life!) Miss Frost would be.

  This time, she showed me the lotion she used--she let me smell it on her fingers. It had an almond fragrance. She didn't straddle me, or sit on me; we lay sideways with our penises touching. I still didn't see her penis, but Miss Frost rubbed her penis and mine together. When she rolled over, she took my penis between her thighs and pushed her buttocks against my stomach. Her half-slip was hiked up to her waist; I held one of her bare breasts in one hand, and her penis in the other. Miss Frost slid my penis between her thighs until I ejaculated into the palm of her hand.

  We seemed to lie in each other's arms for the longest time afterward, but I realize that we couldn't have been alone like that for nearly as long as I imagined; we truly didn't have much time together. I think it was because I loved listening to her talk, and the sound of her voice, that I imagined the time as passing more slowly than it actually did.

  She drew me a bath, like the first time, but she still wouldn't completely undress, and when I suggested that she climb into the big bathtub with me, she laughed and said: "I'm still trying to protect you, William. I wouldn't want to risk drowning you!"

  I was happy enough that her breasts were bare, and that she'd let me hold her penis, which I still hadn't seen. She'd gotten harder and bigger in my hand, but I had the feeling that even her penis was holding back--a little. I can't explain this, but I felt certain that Miss Frost was simply not allowing her penis to get any harder or bigger; perhaps this was, in her mind, another way in which she was protecting me.

  "Does it have a name--having sex the way we did it?" I asked.

  "It does, William. Can you say the word intercrural?" she asked me.

  "Intercrural," I replied, without hesitating. "What does it mean?"

  "I'm sure you're familiar with the prefix inter, in this sense meaning 'between,' William," Miss Frost answered. "As for crural, it means 'of or pertaining to the leg'--between the thighs, in other words."

  "I see," I said.

  "It was favored by homosexual men in ancient Greece, or so I've read," Miss Frost explained. "Not a part of my library-science studies, but I did get to spend a lot of free time in a library!"

  "What did the ancient Greeks like about it?" I asked her.

  "I read this long ago--I may have forgotten all the reasons," Miss Frost said. "The from-behind part, maybe."

  "But we don't live in ancient Greece," I reminded Miss Frost.

  "Trust me, William: It's possible to have sex intercrurally without exactly imitating the Greeks," Miss Frost explained. "One doesn't always have to do it from behind. Between the thighs will work sideways, or in other positions--even in the missionary position."

  "The what?" I asked her.

  "We'll try it next time, William," she whispered. It might have been in the midst of her quiet whisper when I thought I heard the first creak on the basement stairs. Either Miss Frost heard it, too, or it was merely a coincidence that she took that moment to glance at her watch.

  "You told Richard and me that you'd been onstage--that you had acted--only in your mind. But I saw you in those Drama Club photos. You'd been onstage--you had acted before," I said to her.

  "Poetic license, William," Miss Frost replied, with one of her theatrical sighs. "Besides, that wasn't acting. That
was merely dressing up--that was overacting! Those boys were clowns--they were just fooling around! There was no Richard Abbott at Favorite River Academy in those days. There was no one in charge of the Drama Club who knew half as much as Nils knows, and Nils Borkman is a dramaturgical pedant!"

  There was a second creak on the basement stairs, which both Miss Frost and I heard; there was no mistaking it this time. I was mainly surprised that Miss Frost seemed so unsurprised. "In our haste, William, did we forget to lock the library door?" she whispered to me. "Oh, dear--I think we did."

  We had so little time--as Miss Frost knew, from the beginning.

  UPON THE THIRD CREAK on those basement stairs, on that most memorable night in the clearly unlocked First Sister Public Library, Miss Frost--who'd been kneeling beside her big bathtub while she thoughtfully attended to my penis and we talked about all sorts of interesting things--stood up and said in a clarion voice, which would have impressed my friend Elaine and her voice-teacher mother, Mrs. Hadley: "Is that you, Harry? I've been thinking that those cowards would send you. It is you, isn't it?"

  "Ah, well--yes, it's me," I heard Grandpa Harry say sheepishly, from the basement stairs. I sat up straight in the bathtub. Miss Frost stood very erect, with her shoulders back and her small but pointy breasts aimed at her open bedroom door. Miss Frost's nipples were rather long, and her unpronounceable areolae were the intimidating size of silver dollars.

  When my grandfather stepped tentatively into Miss Frost's basement room, he was not the confident character I'd so often seen onstage; he was not a woman with a commanding presence, but just a man--bald and small. Grandpa Harry had clearly not volunteered to be the one to come and rescue me.

  "I'm disappointed that Richard didn't have the balls to come," Miss Frost said to my embarrassed grandfather.

  "Richard asked to be the one, but Mary wouldn't let him," my grandfather said.

  "Richard is pussy-whipped, like all of you men married to those Winthrop women," Miss Frost told him. My grandfather couldn't look at her, with her bare breasts showing, but she would not turn away from him--nor did she seek her clothes. She wore just the pearl-gray half-slip in front of him, as if it were a formal gown and she had overdressed for the occasion.

  "I don't imagine Muriel was willing to let Bob come," Miss Frost continued. Grandpa Harry just shook his head.

  "That Bobby is a sweetheart, but he was always a pussy--even before he was pussy-whipped," Miss Frost went on. I'd never heard Uncle Bob called "Bobby," but I now knew that Robert Fremont had been Albert Frost's classmate at Favorite River Academy, and when you're in a boarding school in those formative years, you call one another names you never hear or use again. (No one calls me Nymph anymore, for example.)

  I was attempting to get out of the bathtub without showing all of myself to my grandpa, when Miss Frost handed me a towel. Even with the towel, it was awkward getting out of the tub, and drying myself, and trying to put on my clothes.

  "Let me tell you something about your aunt Muriel, William," Miss Frost said, standing as a barrier between my grandfather and me. "Muriel actually had a crush on me--before she started hanging out with her 'first and only beau,' your uncle Bob. Imagine if I had taken Muriel up--I mean on her offering herself to me!" Miss Frost cried, in her best Ibsen-woman fashion.

  "Al, please don't be crude," Grandpa Harry said. "Muriel is my daughter, after all."

  "Muriel is a bossy bitch, Harry. It might have made her nicer if she'd ever gotten to know me," Miss Frost said. "There's no pussy-whipping me, William," she said, looking at how I was managing to get myself dressed--badly.

  "No, there isn't, Al--I daresay!" Grandpa Harry exclaimed. "There's no pussy-whippin' you!"

  "Your grandpa is a good guy, William," Miss Frost told me. "He built this room for me. When I first moved back to town, my mother thought I was still a man. I needed a place to change before I went to work as a woman--and before I went home every night, to my mother, as a man. You might say it's a blessing--at least it's easier for me--that my poor mom doesn't appear to notice what gender I am, or should be, anymore."

  "I wish you had let me finish this place properly, Al," Grandpa Harry was saying. "Jeez--there should have been a wall around that toilet, anyway!" he observed.

  "It's too small a room to have more walls," Miss Frost said. This time, when she stood at the toilet and flipped up the wooden seat, Miss Frost didn't turn her back on me, or on Grandpa Harry. Her penis was not even a little hard, but she had a pretty big one--like the rest of her, except for her breasts.

  "Come on, Al--you're a decent fella. I've always stood up for you," Grandpa Harry said. "But this isn't right--you and Bill, I mean."

  "She was protecting me!" I blurted out. "We never had sex. No penetration," I added.

  "Jeez, Bill--I don't want to hear about you doin' it!" Grandpa Harry cried; he cupped his hands over his ears.

  "But we didn't do it!" I told him.

  "That night when Richard first brought you here, William--when you got your library card, and Richard offered me those roles in the Ibsen plays--do you remember?" Miss Frost asked me.

  "Yes, of course I remember!" I whispered.

  "Richard thought he was offering the part of Nora, and the part of Hedda, to a woman. It was when he took you home, and he must have talked to your mom--who talked to Muriel, I'm sure--well, that was when they all told him about me. But Richard still wanted to cast me! Those Winthrop women had to accept me, at least onstage--as they've had to accept you, Harry, when you were just acting. Isn't that the way it happened?" she asked my grandfather.

  "Ah, well--onstage is one thing, isn't it, Al?" Grandpa Harry asked Miss Frost.

  "You're pussy-whipped, too, Harry," Miss Frost told him. "Aren't you sick of it?"

  "Come on, Bill," my grandfather said to me. "We should be goin'."

  "I always respected you, Harry," Miss Frost told him.

  "I always respected you, Al!" my grandfather declared.

  "I know you did--that's why the craven fuckers sent you," Miss Frost said to him. "Come here, William," she suddenly commanded me. I went to her, and she pulled my head to her bare breasts and held me there; I knew she could feel me shaking. "If you want to cry, do it in your room--but don't let them hear you," she told me. "If you want to cry, close your door and pull your pillow over your head. Cry with your good friend Elaine, if you want to, William--just don't cry in front of them. Promise me!"

  "I promise you!" I told her.

  "So long, Harry--I did protect him, you know," Miss Frost said.

  "I believe you did, Big Al. I've always protected you, you know!" Grandpa Harry exclaimed.

  "I know you have, Harry," she told him. "It might not be possible for you to protect me now. Don't kill yourself trying," she added.

  "I'll do the best I can, Al."

  "I know you will, Harry. Good-bye, William--or, 'till we meet again,' as they say," Miss Frost said.

  I was shaking more, but I didn't cry; Grandpa Harry took my hand, and we went up those dark basement stairs together.

  "I'm guessin' that must have been some book Miss Frost gave you, Bill--on that subject we were discussin'," Grandpa Harry said, as we walked along River Street in the direction of Bancroft Hall.

  "Yes, it is an awfully good novel," I told him.

  "I'm thinkin' I might like to read it myself--if Al will let me," Grandpa Harry said.

  "I promised to lend it to a friend," I told him. "Then I could give it to you."

  "I'm thinkin' I better get it from Miss Frost, Bill--I wouldn't want you to get in trouble for givin' it to me! I believe you're in enough trouble, for the time bein'," Grandpa Harry whispered.

  "I see," I said, still holding his hand. But I didn't see; I was merely scratching the surface of all of them. I was just getting started with the seeing part.

  When we got to Bancroft, the idolatrous boys in the butt room seemed disappointed to see us. I suppose they now expected the occasional sighting of
the idolized Kittredge in my company, and here I was with my grandfather--bald and small, and dressed in the working clothes of a lumberman. Grandpa Harry was clearly not a faculty type, and he'd not attended Favorite River Academy; he'd gone to the high school in Ezra Falls, and had not gone to college. The butt-room boys paid no attention to my grandfather and me; I'm sure Grandpa Harry didn't care. How would those boys have recognized Harry, anyway? Those who'd ever seen him before had seen Harry Marshall onstage, when he'd been a woman.

  "You don't have to come up to the third floor with me," I told my grandpa.

  "If I don't come up with you, Bill, you'll be doin' the explainin'," Grandpa Harry said. "You've had quite a night already--why don't you leave the explainin' to me?"

  "I love you--" I began, but Harry wouldn't let me continue.

  "Of course you do, and I love you, too," he told me. "You trust me to say all the right things, don't you, Bill?"

  "Of course I do," I told him. I did trust him, and I was tired; I just wanted to go to bed. I needed to hold Elaine's bra to my face, and cry in such a way that none of them would hear me.

  But when Grandpa Harry and I entered that third-floor apartment, the assembled family gathering--which had included Mrs. Hadley, I only later learned--had dispersed. My mother was in her bedroom, with the door meaningfully closed; maybe there would be no further prompting from my mom tonight. Only Richard Abbott was there to greet us, and he looked about as comfortable as a dog with fleas.

  I went straight to my bedroom, without saying a word to Richard--that pussy-whipped coward!--and there was Giovanni's Room on top of my pillow, not under it. They'd had no right to poke around my bedroom, pawing over my stuff, I was thinking; then I looked under my pillow. Elaine Hadley's pearl-gray bra was gone.

  I went back into the living room of our small apartment, where I could tell that Grandpa Harry had not yet started "doin' the explainin'," as he'd put it to me.

  "Where's Elaine's bra, Richard?" I asked my stepfather. "Did my mom take it?"

  "Actually, Bill, your mother was not herself," Richard told me. "She destroyed that bra, Bill, I'm sorry to say--she cut it up in small pieces."

  "Jeez--" Grandpa Harry began, but I interrupted him.