The Female Man

by Joanna Russ

  “You ought to wear sunglasses,” said Jeannine, imagining how he might look that way. “Yes, Bud and Eileen were going. Would you like to join us?” The surprised gratitude of a man reprieved. I really do like him . He bent closer—this alarmed her for the canoe, as well as disgusted her (Freud says disgust is a prominent expression of the sexual life in civilized people) and she cried out, “Don’t! We’ll fall in!” He righted himself. By degrees. You’ve got to get to know people. She was frightened, almost, by the access of being that came to her from him, frightened at the richness of the whole scene, at how much she felt without feeling it for him, terrified lest the sun might go behind a cloud and withdraw everything from her again.

  “What time shall I pick you up?” he said.

  VII

  That night Jeannine fell in love with an actor. The theatre was a squat, low building finished pink stucco like a summertime movie palace and built in the middle of a grove of pine trees. The audience sat on hard wooden chairs and watched a college group play “Charley’s Aunt.” Jeannine didn’t get up or go out during the intermission but only sat, stupefied, fanning herself with her program and wishing that she had the courage to make some sort of change in her life. She couldn’t take her eyes off the stage. The presence of her brother and sister-in-law irked her unbearably and every time she became aware of her date by her elbow, she wanted to turn in on herself and disappear, or run outside, or scream. It didn’t matter which actor or which character she fell in love with; even Jeannine knew that; it was the unreality of the scene onstage that made her long to be in it or on it or two-dimensional, anything to quiet her unstable heart; I’m not fit to live, she said. There was more pain in it than pleasure; it had been getting worse for some years, until Jeannine now dreaded doing it; I can’t help it, she said. She added, I’m not fit to exist.

  I’ll feel better tomorrow. She thought of Bud taking his little girl fishing (that had happened that morning, over Eileen’s protests) and tears rose in her eyes. The pain of it. The painful pleasure. She saw, through a haze of distress, the one figure on stage who mattered to her. She willed it so. Roses and raptures in the dark. She was terrified of the moment when the curtain would fall—in love as in pain, in misery, in trouble. If only you could stay half-dead. Eventually the curtain (a gray velvet one, much worn) did close, and opened again on the troupe’s curtain calls; Jeannine mumbled something about it being too hot and ran outside, shaking with terror; who am I, what am I, what do I want, where do I go, what world is this? One of the neighborhood children was selling lemonade, with a table and chairs pitched on the carpet of dead pine needles under the trees. Jeannine bought some, to color her loneliness; I did, too, and it was awful stuff. (If anybody finds me, I’ll say it was too warm and I wanted a drink.) She walked blindly into the woods and stood a little way from the theatre, leaning her forehead against a tree-trunk. I said Jeannine, why are you unhappy?

  I’m not unhappy.

  You have everything (I said). What is there that you want and haven’t got?

  I want to die.

  Do you want to be an airline pilot? Is that it? And they won’t let you? Did you have a talent for mathematics, which they squelched? Did they refuse to let you be a truck driver? What is it?

  I want to live.

  I will leave you and your imaginary distresses (said I) and go converse with somebody who makes more sense; really, one would think you’d been balked of some vital necessity. Money? You’ve got a job. Love? You’ve been going out with boys since you were thirteen.

  I know.

  You can’t expect romance to last your life long, Jeannine: candlelight dinners and dances and pretty clothes are nice but they aren’t the whole of life. There comes a time when one has to live the ordinary side of life and romance is a very small part of that. No matter how nice it is to be courted and taken out, eventually you say “I do” and that’s that. It may be a great adventure, but there are fifty or sixty years to fill up afterwards. You can’t do that with romance alone, you know. Think, Jeannine—fifty or sixty years!

  I know.

  Well?

  (Silence)

  Well, what do you want?

  (She didn’t answer)

  I’m trying to talk to you sensibly, Jeannine. You say you don’t want a profession and you don’t want a man—in fact, you just fell in love but you condemn that as silly—so what is it that you want? Well?

  Nothing.

  That’s not true, dear. Tell me what you want. Come on.

  I want love. (She dropped her paper cup of lemonade and covered her face with her hands.)

  Go ahead. The world’s full of people.

  I can’t.

  Can’t? Why not? You’ve got a date here tonight, haven’t you? You’ve never had trouble attracting men’s interest before. So go to it.

  Not that way.

  “What way?” (said I).

  Not the real way.

  “What!” (said I).

  I want something else, she repeated, something else.

  “Well, Jeannine,” said I, “if you don’t like reality and human nature, I don’t know what else you can have,” and I quit her and left her standing on the pine needles in the shadow cast by the trees, away from the crowd and the flood-lights fastened to the outside of the theatre building. Jeannine is very romantic. She’s building a whole philosophy from the cry of the crickets and her heart’s anguish. But that won’t last. She will slowly come back to herself. She’ll return to Bud and Eileen and her job of fascinating the latest X. Jeannine, back in the theatre building with Bud and Eileen, looked in the mirror set up over the ticket window so lady spectators could put on their lipstick, and jumped—“Who’s that!”

  “Stop it, Jeannie,” said Bud. “What’s the matter with you?” We all looked and it was Jeannine herself, sure enough, the same graceful slouch and thin figure, the same nervous, oblique glance.

  “Why, it’s you, darling,” said Eileen, laughing. Jeannine had been shocked right out of her sorrow. She turned to her sister-in-law and said, with unwonted energy, between her teeth: “What do you want out of life, Eileen? Tell me!”

  “Oh honey,” said Eileen, “what should I want? I want just what I’ve got.” X came out of the men’s room. Poor fellow. Poor lay figure.

  “Jeannie wants to know what life is all about,” said Bud. “What do you think, Frank? Do you have any words of wisdom for us?”

  “I think that you are all awful,” said Jeannine vehemently. X laughed nervously. “Well now, I don’t know,” he said.

  That’s my trouble, too. My knowledge was taken away from me.

  (She remembered the actor in the play and her throat constricted. It hurt, it hurt. Nobody saw, though.)

  “Do you think,” she said very low, to X, “that you could know what you wanted, only after a while—I mean, they don’t mean to do it, but life—people—people could confuse things?”

  “I know what I want,” said Eileen brightly. “I want to go home and take the baby from Mama. Okay, honey?”

  “I don’t mean—” Jeannine began.

  “Oh, Jeannie!” said Eileen affectionately, possibly more for X’s benefit than her sister-in-law’s; “Oh, Jeannie!” and kissed her. Bud gave her a peck on the cheek.

  Don’t you touch me!

  “Want a drink?” said X, when Bud and Eileen had gone.

  “I want to know,” said Jeannine, almost under her breath, “what you want out of life and I’m not moving until you tell me.” He stared.

  “Come on,” she said. He smiled nervously.

  “Well, I’m going to night school. I’m going to finish my B.A. this winter.” (He’s going to night school. He’s going to finish his B.A. Wowie zowie. I’m not impressed.)

  “Really?” said Jeannine, in real awe.

  “Really,” he said. Score one. That radiant look of gratitude. Maybe she’ll react the same way when he tells her he can ski. In this loveliest and neatest of social interactions, sh
e admires him, he’s pleased with her admiration, this pleasure lends him warmth and style, he relaxes, he genuinely likes Jeannine; Jeannine sees this and something stirs, something hopes afresh. Is he The One? Can he Change Her Life? (Do you know what you want? No. Then don’t complain.) Fleeing from the unspeakableness of her own wishes—for what happens when you find out you want something that doesn’t exist?—Jeannine lands in the lap of the possible. A drowning woman, she takes X’s willing, merman hands; maybe it’s wanting to get married, maybe she’s just waited too long. There’s love; there’s joy—in marriage, and you must take your chances as they come. They say life without love does strange things to you; maybe you begin to doubt love’s existence.

  I shouted at her and beat her on the back and on the head; oh I was an enraged and evil spirit there in the theatre lobby, but she continued holding poor X by the hands—little did he know what hopes hung on him as she continued (I say) to hold on to his hands and look into his flattered eyes. Little did she know that he was a water-dweller and would drown her. Little did she know that there was, attached to his back, a drowning machine issued him in his teens along with his pipe and his tweeds and his ambition and his profession and his father’s mannerisms. Somewhere is The One. The solution. Fulfillment. Fulfilled women. Filled full. My Prince. Come. Come away, Death. She stumbles into her Mommy’s shoes, little girl playing house. I could kick her. And X thinks, poor, deceived bastard, that it’s a tribute to him, of all people—as if he had anything to do with it! (I still don’t know whom she saw or thought she saw in the mirror. Was it Janet? Me?) I want to get married.

  VIII

  Men succeed. Women get married.

  Men fail. Women get married.

  Men enter monasteries. Women get married.

  Men start wars. Women get married.

  Men stop them. Women get married.

  Dull, dull. (see below)

  IX

  Jeannine came around to her brother’s house the next morning, just for fun. She had set her hair and was wearing a swanky scarf over the curlers. Both Mrs. Dadier and Jeannine know that there’s nothing in a breakfast nook to make it intrinsically interesting for thirty years; nonetheless Jeannine giggles and twirls the drinking straw in her breakfast cocoa fancifully this way and that. It’s the kind of straw that has a pleated section in the middle like the bellows of a concertina.

  “I always liked these when I was a little girl,” Jeannine says.

  “Oh my yes, didn’t you,” says Mrs. Dadier, who is sitting with her second cup of coffee before attacking the dishes.

  Jeannine gives way to a fit of hysterics.

  “Do you remember—?” she cries. “And do you remember—!”

  “Heavens, yes,” says Mrs. Dadier. “Don’t I, though.”

  They sit, saying nothing.

  “Did Frank call?” This is Mrs. Dadier, carefully keeping her voice neutral because she knows how Jeannine hates interference in her own affairs. Jeannine makes a face and then laughs again. “Oh, give him time, Mother,” she says. “It’s only ten o’clock.” She seems to see the funny side of it more than Mrs. Dadier does. “Bro,” says the latter, “was up at five and Eileen and I got up at eight. I know this is your vacation, Jeannine, but in the country—”

  “I did get up at eight,” says Jeannine, aggrieved. (She’s lying.) “I did. I walked around the lake. I don’t know why you keep telling me how late I get up; that may have been true a long time ago but it’s certainly not true now, and I resent your saying so.” The sun has gone in again. When Bud isn’t around, there’s Jeannie to watch out for, Mrs. Dadier tries to anticipate her wishes and not disturb her.

  “Well, I keep forgetting,” says Mrs. Dadier. “Your silly old mother! Bud says I wouldn’t remember my head if it wasn’t screwed on.” It doesn’t work. Jeannine, slightly sulky, attacks her toast and jam, cramming a piece into her mouth cater-cornered. Jam drops on the table. Jeannine, implacably convicted of getting up late, is taking it out on the table-cloth. Getting up late is wallowing in sin. It’s unforgivable. It’s improper. Mrs. Dadier, with the misplaced courage of the doomed, chooses to ignore the jam stains and get on with the really important question, viz., is Jeannine going to have a kitchenette of her own (although it will really belong to someone else, won’t it) and is she going to be made to get up early, i.e., Get Married. Mrs. Dadier says very carefully and placatingly:

  “Darling, have you ever had any thoughts about—” but this morning, instead of flinging off in a rage, her daughter kisses her on the top of the head and announces, “I’m going to do the dishes.”

  “Oh, no,” says Mrs. Dadier deprecatingly; “My goodness, don’t. I don’t mind.” Jeannine winks at her. She feels virtuous (because of the dishes) and daring (because of something else). “Going to make a phone call,” she says, sauntering into the living room. Not doing the dishes . She sits herself down in the rattan chair and twirls the pencil her mother always keeps by the telephone pad. She draws flowers on the pad and the profiles of girls whose eyes are nonetheless in full-face. Should she call X? Should she wait for X to call her? When he calls, should she be effusive or reserved? Comradely or distant? Should she tell X about Cal? If he asks her out for tonight, should she refuse? Where will she go if she does? She can’t possibly call him, of course. But suppose she rings up Mrs. Dadier’s friend with a message? My mother asked me to tell you... Jeannine’s hand is actually on the telephone receiver when she notices that the hand is shaking: a sportswoman’s eagerness for the chase. She laughs under her breath. She picks up the phone, trembling with eagerness, and dials X’s number; it’s happening at last. Everything is going well. Jeannine has almost in her hand the brass ring which will entitle her to everything worthwhile in life. It’s only a question of time before X decides; surely she can keep him at arm’s length until then, keep him fascinated; there’s so much time you can take up with will-she-won’t-she, so that hardly anything else has to be settled at all. She feels something for him, she really does. She wonders when the reality of it begins to hit you. Off in telephone never-never-land someone picks up the receiver, interrupting the last ring, footsteps approach and recede, someone is clearing their throat into the mouthpiece.

  “Hello?” (It’s his mother.) Jeannine glibly repeats the fake message she has practiced in her head; X’s mother says, “Here’s Frank. Frank, it’s Jeannine Dadier.” Horror. More footsteps.

  “Hello?” says X.

  “Oh my, it’s you; I didn’t know you were there,” says Jeannine.

  “Hey!” says X, pleased. This is even more than she has a right to expect, according to the rules.

  “Oh, I just called to tell your mother something,” says Jeannine, drawing irritable, jagged lines across her doodles on the telephone pad. She keeps trying to think of the night before, but all she can remember is Bud playing with his youngest daughter, the only time she’s ever seen her brother get foolish. He bounces her on his knee and gets red in the face, swinging her about his head while she screams with delight. “Silly Sally went to town! Silly Sally flew a-r-o-o-und!” Eileen usually rescues the baby on the grounds that she’s getting too excited. For some reason this whole memory causes Jeannine great pain and she can hardly keep her mind on what she’s saying.

  “I thought you’d already gone,” says Jeannine hastily. He’s going on and on about something or other, the cost of renting boats on the lake or would she like to play tennis.

  “Oh, I love tennis,” says Jeannine, who doesn’t even own a racket.

  Would she like to come over that afternoon?

  She leans away from the telephone to consult an imaginary appointment book, imaginary friends; she allows reluctantly that oh yes, she might have some free time. It would really be fun to brush up on her tennis. Not that she’s really good, she adds hastily. X chuckles. Well, maybe. There are a few more commonplaces and she hangs up, bathed in perspiration and ready to weep. What’s the matter with me? She should be happy, or at least
smug, and here she is experiencing the keenest sorrow. What on earth for? She digs her pencil vindictively into the telephone pad as if it were somehow responsible. Damn you. Perversely, images of silly Cal come back to her, not nice ones, either. She has to pick up the phone again, after verifying an imaginary date with an imaginary acquaintance, and tell X yes or no; so Jeannine rearranges the scarf over her curlers, plays with a button on her blouse, stares miserably at her shoes, runs her hands over her knees, and makes up her mind. She’s nervous. Masochistic. It’s that old thing come back again about her not being good enough for good luck. That’s nonsense and she knows it. She picks up the phone, smiling: tennis, drinks, dinner, back in the city a few more dates where he can tell her about school and then one night (hugging her a little extra hard)—“Jeannie, I’m getting my divorce.” My name is Jeannine. The shopping will be fun. I’m twenty-nine, after all. It is with a sense of intense relief that she dials; the new life is beginning. She can do it, too. She’s normal. She’s as good as every other girl. She starts to sing under her breath. The phone bell rings in Telephoneland and somebody comes to pick it up; she hears all the curious background noises of the relays, somebody speaking faintly very far away. She speaks quickly and distinctly, without the slightest hesitation now, remembering all those loveless nights with her knees poking up into the air, how she’s discommoded and almost suffocated, how her leg muscles ache and she can’t get her feet on the surface of the bed. Marriage will cure all that. The scrubbing uncleanably old linoleum and dusting the same awful things, week after week. But he’s going places. She says boldly and decisively:

  “Cal, come get me.”

  Shocked at her own treachery, she bursts into tears. She hears Cal say “Okay, baby,” and he tells her what bus he’ll be on.

  “Cal!” she adds breathlessly; “You know that question you keep asking, sweetheart? Well, the answer is Yes.” She hangs up, much eased. It’ll be so much better once it’s done. Foolish Jeannine, to expect anything else. It’s an uncharted continent, marriage. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand; X can go to hell. Making conversation is just work. She strolls into the kitchenette where she finds herself alone; Mrs. Dadier is outside in back, weeding a little patch of a garden all the Dadiers own in common; Jeannine takes the screen out of the kitchen window and leans out.