by Joanna Russ
“Oh. How do you do?” says Janet. She’s remembered her manners. Ginger Moustache produces a smile and a cigarette case.
“Marijuana?” says Janet hopefully. He chuckles.
“No. Do you want a drink?”
She looks sulky.
“All right, don’t have a drink. And you’re—”
I introduce my cousin from Sweden.
“Why do you people catabolize foodstuffs in this way?” she bursts out. Still on her mind, it seems. I explain.
“Sickness,” he says. “I’m not an alcohol head; that’s not my bag. I agree with you. I’d just as soon see people eating the stuff.”
(Amicissa dreams: perhaps he won’t have the insatiable vanity, the uneasy aggressiveness, the quickness to resent any slight or fancied neglect. Perhaps he won’t want to be top dog all the time. And he won’t have a fiancée. And he won’t be married. And he won’t be gay. And he won’t have children. And he won’t be sixty.)
“A-a-ah,” says Janet, letting out a long breath. “Yes. Aha.”
I left them for a while. I was alert to any opportunity. I was graceful. I smiled.
My brassiere hurts.
When I got back they had reached the stage of Discussing His Work. He was teaching high school but was going to be fired. For his ties, I think. Janet was very interested. She mentioned the—uh—day nurseries in—well, in Sweden—and quoted:
“We have a saying: when the child goes to the school, both mother and child howl; the child because it is going to be separated from the mother and the mother because she has to go back to work.”
“The tie between mother and child is very important,” said Ginger Moustache reprovingly. ("Excuse me, let me move that cushion behind your back.")
“I’m sure Swedish mothers really groove on their kids, though,” he added.
“Huh?” said my Janet. (He took it as an ignorance of English and relented.)
“Listen,” he said, “some time I want you to meet my wife. I know this is a bad scene—I mean meeting you here with the plastic people, y’know?—but some day you’re going to come out to Vermont and meet my wife. It’s a great, heavy scene. We’ve got six kids.”
“Six you take care of?” said Janet with considerable respect.
“Sure,” he said. “They’re in Vermont right now. But after this work hassle is over I’m going back. You grok?”
He means do you understand, Janet? She thought it simpler to say yes.
“Hey,” said Ginger Moustache, springing to his feet, “it’s been great meeting you. You’re a real ballsy chick. I mean you’re a woman."
She looked down at herself. “What?”
“Sorry about the slang; I mean you’re a fine person. It’s a pleasure—to—know—you.”
“You don’t know me,” she was developing the nasty look. Not very nasty as yet but frustrated-angry, tapping-the-fingers, now-look-here-I-want-this-explained. She is quite spoiled, in her own way.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “How can we get to know each other in ten minutes, huh? That’s true. It’s a formal phrase: pleasuretoknowyou.”
Janet giggled.
“Right?” he said. “Tell you what, give me your name and address.” (she gave him mine) “I’ll drop you a line. Write a letter, that is.” (Not a bad fellow this Ginger Moustache.) He got up and she got up; something must interrupt this idyll. Saccharissa, Ludicrissa, Travailissa, Aphrodissa, Clarissa, Sposissa, Domicissa, the whole gang, even Carissa herself, have formed a solid wall around this couple. Breaths are held. Bets get made. Joanissa is praying in a heap in the corner. Ginger Moustache got up and Janet trailed him into the hall, asking questions. She’s a good bit taller than he is. She wants to know about everything. Either she does not mind the lack of sexual interest or—as is more likely in a foreigner—prefers it. Though he’s got a wife. The harsh light from the kitchenette strikes Janet Evason’s face and there on one side, running from eyebrow to chin, is a strange, fine line. Has she been in an accident?
“Oh, that!” says Janet Evason, chuckling, bending over (though somewhat hampered by her party dress), laughing, gasping with little feminine squeaks from the top of the compass right down to the bottom, hoarse and musical, “Oh, that!”
“That’s from my third duel,” she says, “see?” and guides Moustache’s hand (his forefinger, actually) along her face.
“Your what?” says Moustache, momentarily frozen into the attractive statue of a pleasant young man.
“My duel,” says Janet, “silly. Well, it’s not Sweden, not really. You’ve heard of me; I was on the television. I’m the emissary from Whileaway.”
“My God,” he says.
“Ssh, don’t tell anyone.” (She’s very pleased with herself. She chuckles.) “This line I got in my third duel; this one—it’s practically gone—in my second. Not bad, hey?”
“Are you sure you don’t mean fencing?” says Ginger Moustache.
“Hell, no,” says Janet impatiently; “I told you, duel.” And she draws her forefinger across her throat with a melodramatic jerk. This mad chick doesn’t seem so nice to Moustache any more. He swallows.
“What do you fight about—girls?”
“You are kidding me,” says Janet. “We fight about bad temper—what else? Temperamental incompatibility. Not that it’s so common as it used to be but if you can’t stand her and she can’t stand you, what’s to be done?”
“Sure,” says Ginger Moustache. “Well, goodbye.” Janet became suddenly repentant.
“That—well, I suppose that’s rather savage, isn’t it?” she says. “I beg pardon. You will think badly of us. Understand, I have put all that behind me now; I am an adult; I have a family. We hope to be friends, yes?” And she looks down at him solemnly, a little timidly, ready to be rebuked. But he hasn’t the heart to do it.
“You’re a great chick,” says he. “Some day we’ll get together. Don’t duel with me, though.”
She looks surprised. “Huh?”
“Yeah, you’ll tell me all about yourself,” Ginger Moustache goes on. He smiles and broods. “You can meet the kids.”
“I have a daughter,” says Janet. “Baby brat Yuriko.” He smiles.
“We got homemade wine. Vegetable garden. Sara puts things up. Great place.” (He’s into his duffle coat by now after searching in the hall closet.) “Tell me, what do you do? I mean for a living?”
“Whileaway is not here-and-now,” Janet begins; “You might not understand. I settle family quarrels; I look after people; it’s—”
“Social work?” asks Ginger Moustache, extending to us his fine, shapely, tanned, uncalloused hand, an intellectual’s hand, but I have hardened my heart and I peep out from behind Janet Evason with the divine relief of my female irony and my female teeth:
“She’s a cop. She puts people in jail.”
Ginger Moustache is alarmed, knows he’s alarmed, laughs at himself, shakes his head. How wide is the gap between cultures! But we grok. We shake hands. He goes off into the party to fetch Domicissa, whom he pulls by the wrist (she silently protesting) to the hall closet. “Get on your Goddamn coat, will you!” I heard only whispers, vehement and angry, then Domicissa blowing her nose.
“So long, hey! Hey, so long!” cried he.
His wife’s in Vermont; Domicissa isn’t his wife.
Janet had just asked me to explicate the marriage system of North America.
Saccharissa has just said, pouting, “Po’ little me! I sho’ly needs to be liberated!”
Aphrodissa was sitting in someone’s lap, her left eyelash half off. Janet was rather at a loss. Mustn’t judge. Shut one eye. Peek. Busy, busy couple, kissing and grabbing. Janet backed off slowly to the other side of the room and there we met the lean academic with the glasses; he’s all sharp, nervous and sharp. He gave her a drink and she drank it.
“So you do like it!” he said provokingly.
“I would suhtinly like,” said Saccharissa with great energy, “to see all
those women athletes from the Olympics compete with all those men athletes; I don’t imagine any of these women athletes could even come neah the men.”
“But American women are so unusual,” said the man from Leeds. “Your conquering energy, dear lady, all this world-wide American efficiency! What do you dear ladies use it for?”
“Why, to conquer the men!” cried Saccharissa, braying.
“In mah baby brain,” said Janet, imitating quite accurately, “a suhtin conviction is beginnin’ to fo’m.”
“The conviction that somebody is being insulted?” said Sharp Glasses. He didn’t say that, actually.
“Let’s go,” said Janet. I know it’s the wrong party, but where are you going to find the right party?
“Oh, you don’t want to go!” said Sharp Glasses energetically. Jerky, too, they’re always so jerky.
“But I do,” said Janet.
“Of course you don’t,” he said; “You’re just beginning to enjoy yourself. The party’s warming up. Here,” (pushing us down on the couch) “let me get you another.”
You’re in a strange place, Janet. Be civil.
He came back with another and she drank it. Uh-oh. We made trivial conversation until she recovered. He leaned forward confidentially. “What do you think of the new feminism, eh?”
“What is—” (she tried again) “What is—my English is not so good. Could you explain?”
“Well, what do you think of women? Do you think women can compete with men?”
“I don’t know any men.” She’s beginning to get mad.
“Ha ha!” said Sharp Glasses. “Ha ha ha! Ha ha!” (He laughed just like that, in sharp little bursts.) “My name’s Ewing. What’s yours?”
“Janet.”
“Well, Janet, I’ll tell you what I think of the new feminism. I think it’s a mistake. A very bad mistake.”
“Oh,” said Janet flatly. I kicked her, I kicked her, I kicked her.
“I haven’t got anything against women’s intelligence,” said Ewing. “Some of my colleagues are women. It’s not women’s intelligence. It’s women’s psychology. Eh?”
He’s being good-humored the only way he knows how. Don’t hit him.
“What you’ve got to remember,” said Ewing, energetically shredding a small napkin, “is that most women are liberated right now. They like what they’re doing. They do it because they like it.”
Don’t, Janet.
“Not only that, you gals are going about it the wrong way.”
You’re in someone else’s house. Be polite.
“You can’t challenge men in their own fields,” he said. “Now nobody can be more in favor of women getting their rights than I am. Do you want to sit down? Let’s. As I said, I’m all in favor of it. Adds a decorative touch to the office, eh? Ha ha! Ha ha ha! Unequal pay is a disgrace. But you’ve got to remember, Janet, that women have certain physical limitations.”
(here he took off his glasses, wiped them with a little serrated square of blue cotton, and put them back on) “and you have to work within your physical limitations.
“For example,” he went on, mistaking her silence for wisdom while Ludicrissa muttered, “How true! How true!” somewhere in the background about something or other, “you have to take into account that there are more than two thousand rapes in New York City alone in every particular year. I’m not saying of course that that’s a good thing, but you have to take it into account. Men are physically stronger than women, you know.”
(Picture me on the back of the couch, clinging to her hair like a homuncula, battering her on the top of the head until she doesn’t dare to open her mouth.)
“Of course, Janet,” he went on, “you’re not one of those—uh—extremists. Those extremists don’t take these things into account, do they? Of course not! Mind you, I’m not defending unequal pay but we have to take these things into account. Don’t we? By the way, I make twenty thousand a year. Ha! Ha ha ha!” And off he went into another fit.
She squeaked something—because I was strangling her.
“What?” he said. “What did you say?” He looked at her nearsightedly. Our struggle must have imparted an unusual intensity to her expression because he seemed extraordinarily flattered by what he saw; he turned his head away coyly, sneaked a look out of the corner of his eye, and then whipped his head round into position very fast. As if he had been a bird.
“You’re a good conversationalist,” he said. He began to perspire gently. He shifted the pieces of his napkin from hand to hand. He dropped them and dusted his hands off. Now he’s going to do it
“Janet—uh—Janet, I wonder if you—” fumbling blindly for his drink—“that is if—uh—you—”
But we are far away, throwing coats out of the coat closet like a geyser.
Is that your method of courtship!
“Not exactly,” I said. “You see—”
Baby, baby, baby. It’s the host, drunk enough not to care.
Uh-oh. Be ladylike.
She showed him all her teeth. He saw a smile.
“You’re beautiful, honey.”
“Thank you. I go now.” (good for her)
“Nah!” and he took us by the wrist “Nah, you’re not going."
“Let me go,” said Janet.
Say it loud. Somebody will come to rescue you.
Can’t 1 rescue myself?
No.
Why not?
All this time he was nuzzling her ear and I was showing my distaste by shrinking terrified into a corner, one eye on the party. Everyone seemed amused.
“Give us a good-bye kiss,” said the host, who might have been attractive under other circumstances, a giant marine, so to speak. I pushed him away.
“What’sa matter, you some kinda prude?” he said and enfolding us in his powerful arms, et cetera—well, not so very powerful as all that, but I want to give you the feeling of the scene. If you scream, people say you’re melodramatic; if you submit, you’re masochistic; if you call names, you’re a bitch. Hit him and he’ll kill you. The best thing is to suffer mutely and yearn for a rescuer, but suppose the rescuer doesn’t come?
“Let go, -----,” said Janet (some Russian word I didn’t catch).
“Ha ha, make me,” said the host, squeezing her wrist and puckering up his lips; “Make me, make me,” and he swung his hips from side to side suggestively.
No, no, keep on being ladylike/
“Is this human courting?” shouted Janet. “Is this friendship? Is this politeness?” She had an extraordinarily loud voice. He laughed and shook her wrist.
“Savages!” she shouted. A hush had fallen on the party. The host leafed dexterously through his little book of rejoinders but did not come up with anything. Then he looked up “savage” only to find it marked with an affirmative: “Masculine, brute, virile, powerful, good.” So he smiled broadly. He put the book away.
“Right on, sister,” he said.
So she dumped him. It happened in a blur of speed and there he was on the carpet. He was flipping furiously through the pages of the book; what else is there to do in such circumstances? (It was a little limp-leather—excuse me—volume bound in blue, which I think they give out in high schools. On the cover was written in gold WHAT TO DO IN EVERY SITUATION.)
“Bitch!” (flip flip flip) “Prude!” (flip flip) “Ball-breaker!” (flip flip flip flip) “Goddamn cancerous castrator!” (flip) “Thinks hers is gold!” (flip flip) “You didn’t have to do that!"
Was ist? said Janet in German.
He gave her to understand that she was going to die of cancer of the womb.
She laughed.
He gave her to understand further that she was taking unfair advantage of his good manners.
She roared.
He pursued the subject and told her that if he were not a gentleman he would ram her stinking, shitty teeth up her stinking shitty ass.
She shrugged.
He told her she was so ball-breaking, shitty, stone,
scum-bag, mother-fucking, plug-ugly that no normal male could keep up an erection within half a mile of her.
She looked puzzled. ("Joanna, these are insults, yes?")
He got up. I think he was recovering his cool. He did not seem nearly so drunk as he had been. He shrugged his sports jacket back into position and brushed himself off. He said she had acted like a virgin, not knowing what to do when a guy made a pass, just like a Goddamned scared little baby virgin.
Most of us would have been content to leave it at that, eh, ladies?
Janet slapped him.
It was not meant to hurt, I think; it was a great big stinging theatrical performance, a cue for insults and further fighting, a come-on-get-your-guard contemptuous slap meant to enrage, which it jolly well did.
THE MARINE SAID, “YOU STUPID BROAD, I’M GONNA CREAM YOU!”
That poor man.
I didn’t see things very well, as first off I got behind the closet door, but I saw him rush her and I saw her flip him; he got up again and again she deflected him, this time into the wall—I think she was worried because she didn’t have time to glance behind her and the place was full of people—then he got up again and this time he swung instead and then something very complicated happened—he let out a yell and she was behind him, doing something cool and technical, frowning in concentration.
“Don’t pull like that,” she said. “You’ll break your arm.”
So he pulled. The little limp-leather notebook fluttered out on to the floor, from whence I picked it up. Everything was awfully quiet. The pain had stunned him, I guess.
She said in astonished good-humor: “But why do you want to fight when you do not know how?”
I got my coat and I got Janet’s coat and I got us out of there and into the elevator. I put my head in my hands.
“Why’d you do it?”
“He called me a baby.”
The little blue book was rattling around in my purse. I took it out and turned to the last thing he had said ("You stupid broad” et cetera). Underneath was written Girl backs down—cries—manhood vindicated . Under “Real Fight With Girl” was written Don’t hurt (except whores) . I took out my own pink book, for we all carry them, and turning to the instructions under “Brutality” found: