1982 Janine

by Alasdair Gray

  36 PHONE TALK

  A telephone on the desk starts ringing because I refuse to let Momma have more fun with Superb than I do. Momma groans, stands up, goes to desk, lifts telephone, sighs and says, “Yeah?” and a moment later tells Superb, “This call is for you.”

  Superb stares at her.

  “I said, it’s for you. Come here. Take it.”

  Superb approaches, shivers, takes receiver. A male voice says, “Terry, it’s me, are you all right?”

  “Max,” says Superb weakly, “Max,” and starts laughing wildly, then stops and says unsteadily, “Max?”

  “How are you, Terry?”

  “Max, you know where I am? You know what’s happening here?”

  “Only in a general way,” says Max.

  “Max, what kind of police station is this? When will they let me out? What are you trying to do?”

  “I’m trying to save our marriage, Terry.”

  “Max … You’re insane.”

  “No, but I’m desperate. I nearly lost you tonight, Terry. I pled with you not to go, remember? I put off doing this till the last possible moment, because I love you, Terry. That’s why I can’t stand to be with you during your course of treatment. It would upset me too much. But it’s the only thing that can save our marriage.”

  His voice aches with sincerity. Sontag was furious when I told her this bit. She shouted, “What compels you to invent such a despicably feeble villain?”

  37 FEEBLE VILLAINS

  I shrugged my shoulders. She picked at her lower lip with a finger and said, “I begin to understand you. Your dreadful mother, in her efforts to make you a member of the middle classes, destroyed your capacity for male companionship. She desolated your homosexual potential. How unfortunate. You lack the balls to invent a villain worthy of your villainettes.”

  Give me TIME Sontag. I’ve a wicked Doctor in mind.

  “I cannot hang around for ever listening to these stories, I have my own life to lead. Phone me in a week, perhaps. I am still quite fond of you.”

  But Max says, “I love you, Terry. I’m with you in spirit, so please remember that no matter how bad things get they’ll come right in the end. Perhaps I should ring off now.”

  But Superb whispers into the receiver, “Don’t go, Max, please, please get me out of here,” because

  Because Big Momma has taken off her denim waistcoat and blouse. Brassière too? Yes, let these huge globes swing freely as she strips off skirt, shoes, pantihose. No knickers. She fastens on the skirt again by the waistband, why am I so keen on unfastened buttons? The answer is obvious as she stands astride astride, lovely word, astride astride so that Superb can see the great rough triangular bush of golden-brown furze between her pendulous belly and cunt. For Momma is blonde, the only blonde I know with close-cropped ash-blonde hair on her small round girlish-looking head and a triangular bush of golden-brown furze. And her girlish face smiles sweetly as she lifts with her right hand a short length of thick rubber tube from her skirtpocket and softly smacks with it the palm of her left. Shut up Sontag there must be at least ONE lesbian like this in the world. Superb’s knees tremble, she holds the receiver as if it was saving her from drowning and whispers through it, “Help me, Max, I think she’s going to beat me.”

  “Listen Terry,” says Max gently and urgently, “that won’t happen until you’ve seen the doctor. They break the new girls in very gradually and they know you’re my wife. You won’t be whipped till the second or third week if you do exactly what you are told … Terry? Are you listening?”

  38 HEAVY BARMAID

  “She hasn’t hung up on you, Max,” says Momma on the other telephone. She sits at the end of the desk, and I must not imagine her too clearly for I am in danger of finding her more exciting than Superb. Why are large women also exciting? I suppose every human body is a potential sexual landscape and a very big body suggests the possibility of getting lost in it, running wild in it, enjoying fruit too heavy and abundant to be snatched away. There was a barmaid I enjoyed watching in a Glasgow pub. She wore a denim waistcoat over a shortsleeved blouse like Momma, and when she reached forward her deeply dimpled elbows were short of the tips of her breasts. She always looked bored and indifferent. Her buttocks were so heavy that she resented having to stand, having to move. Yet one customer, a slightly less fat woman with close-cropped blonde hair, wearing a black trousersuit, stood gazing at her with an expression of humble adoration and trying, without success, to engage her in conversation. I merely glanced at this other woman yet she gave me a surprisingly sweet smile and shrugged her shoulders in a resigned way. It was a signal to a fellow sufferer. My face must have had the same expression as her own. I wish I had spoken to the woman in the black trousersuit. She may have loved the barmaid but she didn’t hate men. Maybe we could have consoled each other. But I never know what to say to strangers. I stopped going to that pub. I don’t like people reading the expression on my face.

  “You won’t be whipped till the second or third week if you do exactly what you’re told … Are you listening, Terry?”

  “She hasn’t hung up on you Max,” says Momma on the telephone extension.

  “Shut up Momma, this call is private,” says Max. “Listen carefully Terry, I’m going to ask you a question, and if you can honestly give the right answer now, I’ll get you out of there this minute, though it will cost a fortune and all my friends will laugh at me. Terry, are you listening?”

  Superb can only nod but Momma says, “She’s listening.”

  “Terry, have you something for me?”

  After a pause Superb says, “Max … Max, you must know I don’t have anything just now.”

  39 PENIS ENVY

  “That’s the wrong answer,” says Max. The telephone goes dead.

  “That’s the wrong answer,” and one final click.

  “My God, isn’t that just like a man?” says Momma putting down her receiver. “You’re standing half-naked and he wants you to give him something. Honey, you’re better off with a woman.”

  “You call yourself a woman?” says Superb with an aghast laugh.

  “I’ve done all I can to prove it,” says Momma cupping her hands beneath her breasts, the rubber tube is on the desk beside her, “but I admit I’m unusual. I don’t have penis-envy. You know about penis-envy?”

  Superb can only stare at her. Momma says, “Doctor Freud discovered penis-envy. He thought us girls were jealous of men because men have this THING between their legs, you know? But penis-envy doesn’t worry me because I have this other thing.”

  She touches the tube on the desktop beside her. Sontag told me all about penis-envy in order to explain that it didn’t exist. She said that Freud, being a man, wanted women to feel inferior and publicised penis-envy to persuade them they must always feel inferior. But the editor believed in penis-envy. She had a twin brother and first noticed his difference when she was very small and being bathed with him. She started girning and pointing and said, “I want one of those.”

  Her mother said, “I think there’s a spare one in my handbag.”

  And went away, then came back and said, “I seem to have lost it. You’ll have to manage without.”

  So penis-envy is possible, even without Freud. It must be upsetting to learn that half your parents have a fifth limb you never knew about. But no more upsetting than learning that the other half lack a limb you take for granted. In both cases the reaction must sometimes be, ‘Perhaps I’m a freak.’ And most mothers teach their sons to be ashamed of their penis. I don’t blame them. The churches teach us to be ashamed of our penis. They think our whole bodies are wicked. Arts and advertising teach us to be ashamed of our penis. From Aberdeen to London the fronts of Victorian insurance offices are decorated with carved nude women representing truth, fertility and the graces beside an occasional man in robes or armour representing science or fortitude. In art galleries the proportion of cunts to pricks is fifty to one, and without the male homosexual maga
zines the proportion in pictorial publications for men and women is nearly the same. Yes, art and advertising exploit women’s bodies for money, but to do so they promote the idea that these bodies are beautiful and good. Economics teach us to be ashamed of our penis. The penis has engendered more people than our organisations can use, it is the root of unemployment and poverty. If the labouring class reduced itself by birth-control the middle class would be forced to raise wages to attract their own members into it. Yet now that contraception just might, with sufficient use and support, free the world of the terrible weight birth brings to bear on it, the liberated women start teaching us to be ashamed of our penis. And they have the police on their side. The penis is a criminal hiding from the law. If you don’t believe me, sir, piss in the street and see what happens to you. It is widely agreed that the sight of an adult male penis in a public place has a terrifying and corrupting effect upon women and children. If this is true then men also are a very unlucky sex. No wonder some of us feel our penis is not an original part of us but an unwelcome addition. Not that I want to see legalised nude sunbathing in the public parks. I am a gentleman of the old school. I nourish my fifth limb in total privacy. It is seven or eight years since a woman shared it.

  40 PENIS TERROR

  “What is your earliest memory of sexual intercourse with your mother?”

  Honestly, Sontag, I cannot remember. My mother was not a person but the climate I grew up in. All I remember about sex with her is, sitting on the opposite side of a room which felt like a prison (there was sunlight outside, down by the river the colliers’ sons were guddling trout) a prison that gradually became comfortable, expansive and palatial as I imagined the games I would play with Jane Russell when we were married. Momma picks up the rubber tube and says, “With this thing I can have any girl I like squealing and squirming like a streetwalker being worked over by the toughest cop on the beat. But don’t worry. If you do exactly what I say I’ll be as gentle as I can. Nod your head if you want it the easy way.”

  41 BAD BOLD MOMMA

  Superb is now so passive that she has nearly vanished as a character. Her reserves of bitchcourage, bitch stubbornness are stupefied by the novelty of her situation. I am tempted to have her suddenly attack Momma and wrestle for the key in the skirtpocket. Momma would win, of course, and summon to assist her a slightly younger woman not quite as fat as herself and wearing dungarees with the legs cut off round the tops of her thighs. But if I introduce a new woman every time I encounter a difficulty I’ll soon have a gymnasium full of more women than I know how to handle. The house of happiness is entered through the gateway of self-restraint. Who said that? Plato? Mad Hislop? Chairman Mao? Maybe I thought of it myself. So Superb glares bitterly but nods her head meaning, yes she will do exactly what she is told.

  Big Momma still sits wearing this skirt which hides nothing but has a useful pocket and protects her bum from the coldness of the desktop. She lights a cigarette, crosses one leg carefully over the other and says softly, “Step out of those sandals. Peel down those tight jeans and anything else you’ve got on underneath. Be as slow as you like.”

  Superb is not interested in giving a slow striptease. She kicks the sandals and removes anklerings, jeans, knickers as briskly and casually as she can, folding them carefully along with the crumpled blouse into a neat pile on the floor. Then she slips the anklets on again, because Momma wants that, and faces the desk with a bored expression, legs together and one knee slightly bent, breasts compressed by folded arms. What is her body like apart from strong, large-breasted, average height? She could be like the editor who had a long straight graceful upper body swelling downward into hips which swelled out into the thighs of rather short plump legs. She was like a plumper than usual Botticelli Venus above the waist and a smaller than usual Rubens Venus beneath, a strange body but lovely when naked. She looked ordinary in clothes because she was ashamed of her legs and disguised them under wide skirts and dresses with higher waists than her own. She deliberately made herself ordinary, for if a man looked at her in the street she grew uneasy, thinking he was laughing at her short legs. Once, when we were getting drunk together, I explained she ought to dress for her body and not against it. She said,

  42 TWO TIMID DRESSERS

  “You want me to dress like a tart.”

  I said, “Only idiots think attractively dressed women are tarts. You mix with fairly intelligent people, they would be pleased if you dressed less timidly.”

  She said, “Why don’t you dress less timidly?”

  I said, “My friends are perfectly satisfied with my clothes.”

  She said, “Liar. You’re like me. You have no friends, only colleagues and an occasional one-night stand with women as lonely as you are.”

  I said, “You are trying to change the subject. My clothes are well cut and fit me perfectly.”

  She said, “They are also terribly dull.”

  “Men don’t need to look interesting.”

  “Neither does this woman.”

  I said, “There is a difference between us which has nothing to do with gender. I don’t need friends, but you would be happier if you were less lonely. You are, and I really believe this, a very fine-looking woman. If you would spend just a bit of imagination on your appearance folk would know you were willing to give yourself socially, not just sexually. They would notice you and want to be with you, women as well as men.”

  She said, “You don’t need friends?”

  “No. I am perfectly happy without them.”

  She giggled and said, “You liar. You poor, poor liar.”

  I said nothing because I was close to becoming angry. She said, “Tell you what, let’s do a deal. Buy me the sort of clothes you want me to wear and I’ll spend the same sum on clothes for you.”

  “What sort of clothes would you buy me?”

  “Jeans and corduroy slacks. A leather jacket. Coloured T-shirts. Perhaps a caftan to wear at home.”

  “I’m too old for that sort of nonsense.”

  “In America and the continent even grandfathers dress like that and nobody thinks them ridiculous.”

  43 BAD MOMMA NOT MY MUM

  “This is Scotland.”

  “Then the deal is clearly off.”

  Her figure would be lovely for Superb if it did not remind me of her loneliness, her habit of telling me to leave as soon as we had made love, her sadness which is starting to infect me although I haven’t seen her for eight or nine years. Someone told me she had a stroke which paralysed her right side and keeps her indoors, I ought to have visited her, I meant to visit her. Let Superb have Marilyn Monroe’s body no, she was vulnerable and friendless too, Jayne Mansfield’s JESUS, NO head cut off in car accident, give Superb Jane Russell’s body and face. Remember nobody but Jane Russell, I mean Superb, and mother, I mean Big Momma, why did I confuse my mother with Momma, there is NO CONNECTION ATALL, my mother was a respectable woman (until she ran away from home) and no lesbian (she ran away with a man) she was tall and not a bit fat, I got Momma’s body from that Glasgow barmaid and the whore under the bridge AND MOMMA’S NATURE IS BASED ON NOBODY REAL ATALL. My mother may have hated women, sometimes, but they trusted her. She never enjoyed humiliating people in her imagination the way I do. I’m almost 100 per cent certain of that. So I am not 100 per cent certain of that?

  Finish the whisky in the tumbler. Nobody can be 100 per cent certain of anything. The mechanics of the universe make it impossible to look at anything without altering it. She must have found some satisfaction in thwarting my friendships, keeping me beside her, encouraging my studies, but she cannot have enjoyed the thrill I feel as Momma stubs out the cigarette, points to the small scatter of Janine’s clothes on the floor and says softly, “Put these on. Start with the suspender-belt.”

  But can I imagine my Superb obeying that order? Even if she hesitates first, and sees Big Momma pick up the rubber tube in her right hand and once again suggestively smack the palm of her left? Of course I c
an imagine it. Mad Hislop was a small man and he terrorised six boys, one bigger than himself, into standing in a row, holding out their hands, and receiving six blows each from his three-thonged Lochgelly tawse. And five of the boys wept real tears, though the biggest merely scowled. Hislop glared at us then said in a tone of supreme contempt, “Lassies! You’re nothing but a bunch of big lassies. Excepting you, Anderson. There’s a spark of manhood in you. Get back to your seats.”

  44 MAD HISLOP REAL TEARS

  And we went weeping to our seats except Anderson, who sat down radiantly smiling. The more I think of my childhood the queerer it seems although it was perfectly ordinary. So Superb scowls furiously but yes, she picks up Janine’s suspender-belt, holds it round her waist then cries out, “It’s too small! I told you these clothes aren’t mine!”

  But Momma smiles sweetly and says, “Make them stretch. Pull hard. Imagine you are a poor little orphan girl with nothing else in the world to wear, because as from now, that is indeed the case.”

  And tears stream down Superb’s cheeks as she fastens the lacy Reger suspender-belt although a lot of it disappears into the crease it makes in the flesh round her waist. She pulls on the black net stockings although some of the mesh splits as she tugs them up to attach the suspenders. As she thrusts her arms into the satin blouse, which is sleeveless, the armholes split down the side. She can only fasten the waistband of the miniskirt. And Big Momma, still seated on the desktop, gently teases her clitoris with the end of the rubber tube, is that anatomically possible in that position? and watches Superb dreamily through half-shut eyes and murmurs,