Women and Men

by Joseph McElroy

  But her love for Grace became the power behind what we would discuss. And I could get puzzled—even by what Maureen said about my notebook when she sent it back—puzzled by having seen the Leader she followed in her and through her, when in fact that very visible Leader was between us: until I saw that it was me blocking the view and the view was of my future. And in the middle of one night, with Maureen’s words working in me, working away by dark, I found myself imagining that man they had known of who was supposed to have never had a night dream (what was his name? it went unmentioned), while Grace advanced the theory—but I was not awake . . . I was dreaming pretty accurately stuff I already knew.

  I had this letter from her. Not worth salvaging. From Maureen, that is.

  I had a dream of being a merman. And in it that man reappeared, who does not dream, and I thought I once knew him or his wife. I woke knowing it to be true. And that dreams are what they lead to.

  Of my notebook, or the part I asked her to read, knowing she would read only that, she said, "Luce, you could see both sides. The man’s and the woman’s. In fact a million sides sometimes. That’s a problem."

  It occurred to me that she might not have read even what I had asked.

  I pointed out to Grace Kimball that in wanting to be a "top," a business, a (God! a) vagina that is much more than a subtly hooded cock and its patient balls (lower extension of, i.e., shape of, outer lips), and its claims to ejaculate, and in sashaying around like a boy trying to look like a man or whatever I am trying to say, Grace was further confusing what a woman is. She said I might be right, but so what?, she had seriously considered how she might have a child by Maureen. She laughed, then, and disappeared into her kitchen to bring me some tea. She was talking about the neglected asshole and how she would like to raise its status. She said she felt more comfortable with some gay men than some women she could name. She had a habit of listening that made you feel she was right there with you—closer still—beyond closeness—and eyes much warmer than all her absolute talk re: eye contact could do for me. She emerged with my mug, her warm, wonderfully healthy body somehow covered, though not by the mug and not by sweatpants or sporty camisole, not a stitch. ("Mother provider, hostess house-mouse, that’s me!") She asked if I wanted to go into business with her. The phone was ringing and it was her mother hundreds of miles away, oh more than a thousand, who was speaking to Grace again after not speaking for several chilly months—and they were laughing and hollering—at least I assume her mother was, too.

  One day, Maureen phoned me and I knew who it was before I stepped free of the bluejeans I was getting out of when the phone rang; and knowing who it was, I knew I would never be bloodless and so never without whatever was in that bloodstream, whatever smoke or worm or liquor of future. And taking the receiver and drawing it close to my ear and my mouth, I realized that I didn’t see Maureen as a victim any more.

  Wall-to-Wall High Reaching for the Ground

  The black voices did not dispossess her in the slightest—

  THE LEADER INCULCATES IN THE TROOPS FIRST AND LAST

  SELF-RELIANCE WITHOUT WHICH THERE IS NO HIERARCHY

  and she felt them part of her home, their shoes, the bluejeans of the younger, darker one, the dark green chinos (near prison-green) of the older, lighter one, their friendly beef-acid bellies, the lumbering low-energy-seeming vibe-rest of their courtesy across her Body-Room bending to rip up the old carpet, lay out the new: lay it out so snug at the edges that the carpet in its slight abundant rise at the margins had to be restrained—tamped down—before the tacks were hammered in, along the mirrored wall, the bookcase wall (gotta unload them books, written by men, women, some who didn’t know who they were), the window wall, the sculpture-and-photo wall, all this behind her as she passed under the silver chinning bar to answer the hall phone as friendly as, well, her own mother alive in her and well also in the middle of America surrounded by furniture and sheet music, bottoms-up Revere Ware and a whole family of table lamps, but having at last some Pleasure. But this call wasn’t her mother, yet wasn’t just the person who’s talking.

  The wiry voice was Kate’s friend, Rima, a learner certainly, with a lot of balls, who would never give a guy the worship that would take him out of circulation on a permanent basis so he would never know if he had a personality or not, and who had come to three sessions of a workshop and dropped out because she had to check out some similar operations and the Esalen trip on the Coast. Rima was phoning like every week to ask Grace’s opinion. What was the real, bottom-line, everyday effect on "one’s" sexuality of one’s parents (like, what had gone on in Grace’s home?); or, what was the breakdown of activities at swings in terms of preferences (well, Grace had begun to orgy-out, desiring regular hits of solitude, one day a week of silence, for, you know, Silence = Rest, if, as the Chilean woman Clara had said weeks and weeks ago, Rest is Silence—wasn’t that what she had said? although the A. A. friends still got together—yet more for raps than sex); well, was it helpful to the women in the workshops (that is, was it really sharing information) to have heterosexual demonstration as part of the format? (you dropped out too soon, honey!)—and did "self-sex" as Grace called it, as versus either s-s in company (you mean jerkeen off with others?) or one-on-one, conserve energy for someone on the way up in a demanding executive position? But what was Rima’s new name, it was sort of feminist-literary as if she had gone Muslim, but it was a real pen name. But she was asking all these questions, she’s in some crisis but maybe inviting others in. The crisis didn’t feel so personal. Awkwardness bled into Grace from somewhere.

  Now Rima had surfaced after a month, etcetera—obviously O.D.’d on work like Maureen O.D.’d on the science of sprouts, catching them at their life point to maximize duodenal flow to make the body feel concept. When Grace said, "What’s going on?—how was the Esalen trip?—are you taking time for self-love?—I’m planning on a rich Arab once a month who knows his place," she sensed in the easy breeze of her own words that this call was different, and knew another self or body had come into her to warn her that this Rima might be O.D.ing not on work but on good old patriarchal-facsimile exploitation.

  THE PROFIT SYSTEM MAY LEAD INEVITABLY TO WAR BECAUSE

  MEN SEE BUSINESS AS TOTAL VICTORY OR NOTHING. HOWEVER,

  TO GIVE THE SYSTEM A CHANCE, WOMEN MUST NEVER DO ANY WORK

  WHATSOEVER

  EXCEPT FOR MONEY.

  "Can I ask you a personal question?" Rima asked, and Grace knew that some trip for herself was just around the bend and wanted to be off the phone and watching the black dudes sling their hammers at the new carpet.

  "What if I say Yes I do mind if you ask me a personal question?"

  "I would understand, Grace."

  "Why would I mind when you’ve been doing it for weeks?"

  "It was sharing information, I thought."

  "It’s definitely information, dear. Listen, I got some people here."

  What followed wasn’t "in" either of their minds. Still doing workshops? seriously thinking of running for President? Yeah, yeah, on an orgasm platform, you know me, right out there in Macy’s window. But did Grace mean a single-issue platform? Oh an everything platform, an abundance platform, we’ll even include a department of patriarchy, and Rima could be assistant media secretary while we give the fields back to the people so we can do the grazing, and we’ll bring Maureen back into public life to be commissar of agriculture. "Listen, I got some guys here."

  "Is it true you’re going into men’s workshops, Grace?"

  Coming close now, and what was Rima’s new last name? Grace was supposed to be good at names. "That’s right, wall-to-wall: tonight’s the night."

  "Aren’t you making problems for yourself?—I mean with nudity and the emphasis on sex."

  "It’s 1977, dear. Can’t wait. Body-Self, remember? The men have more problems being with themselves than we do."

  "Does this mean that you’re reversing your ground on segregation of the sexes?"
>
  "Hey man," Grace heard the younger black man in the next room say softly and knew he was pointing.

  "That was never my trip," said Grace. "Just a nationwide moratorium on relations, that’s all. How are you doing, Rima?"

  Everything was wonderful, she heard Rima say.

  "Every one of them is different," said the younger black guy in the next room, and Grace heard chuckling.

  She should have this woman in front of her, she sounded about as orgasmic as her neighbor with the lonesome dog who couldn’t let go of the leash when the elevator door closed abruptly, leaving the dog on the lobby marble pointing (the right direction) toward a fantastically thin-bred gray monster-beauty leash-less and masterless and at the ready, while the leashed dog began to strangle and the elevator alarm went off. Pets needed to be jerked off too—but off, that is.

  "So what are you doing with your spare time, Rima?"

  "Oh you know me, Grace."

  "Oh shit, Rima."

  "Grace, I’m glad I’m a woman; I wouldn’t want to be a man."

  "Well, whatever it is, I hope you’re doing it every day."

  "I never know what’s kidding and what’s totalitarian."

  "Oh, you’re either a top or you’re a bottom, dear."

  "When’s a new women’s workshop starting?"

  If she had this woman in front of her, she could lay a gentle hand on her, for God’s sake. "Next week. It’s not full. I’m broke. Lucille’s helping out. You don’t know Lucille; she’s got more brains than all of us."

  "Is she in with you?"

  "No, she can’t handle that. She’s a hospital administrator. I’m working on her."

  "But what happened to the nationwide women’s bathhouse idea?"

  "I decided to be President instead. I’m going into consultation at a decent hourly rate, Rima. We don’t get paid for what we know."

  "Hanging out a shingle?"

  "Sex consultation mainly. You know me, Rima."

  "You don’t need a degree, Grace. Therapy with demo."

  "Any information that needs to be shared, Rima; you can understand that."

  "How’s Maureen?"

  "She’s doing fine."

  "That’s what I heard. I heard Cliff’s working with you?"

  "For me," Grace said, and the hammering resumed, and she thought, Of course. Cliff standing nude except for a Nikon, like nose-box binoculars, taking photos like his own life depended on it—the long gray page-boy streaked with brown, her oldest New York friend and still a ram (ask him) especially when he said he wanted Grace to wear the pants and what ram ever went around wearing pants, he inquired, with words, words, words.

  "I’ll let you know about the workshop, Grace. How many men are coming tonight?"

  "Nine brave men, one of them a part-Sioux Indian he says—plus two reluctant flashers who are on the fence but may go the limit."

  "How do you feel about a woman running a men’s nude workshop?"

  "I’m glad it’s me."

  "Have you checked them all out? Is it the Anvil Chorus?"

  "You’ve got me on the chorus but we don’t divide the rodeo stars from the fence sitters."

  "I meant the Anvil downtown." Rima just wondered if Grace knew what she was getting into. "Thanks for talking to me, Grace."

  "I’ll send you a bill." Grace saw Rima lying down, a naked horizon, but it was Grace’s.

  RENT IS THE PRICE YOU PAY PER UNIT OF TIME

  FOR THE SERVICES OF A DURABLE GOOD.

  "Do you think swings are consistent with socialism, Grace?"

  "You mean you think the state should be running them? I’m pretty well orgied-out."

  "I mean in their emphasis; that’s what I meant. I mean it isn’t exactly one big happy family."

  "Swings are anti-acquisitive. No one belongs to another person, O.K.? That’s why you need a space that isn’t bound by furniture. But I think we should hang up before we start a new interview."

  She felt the woman’s fighting breath. "You sound like that woman in your workshop who’ll insist on two minutes of silence in the middle of a conversation?—it’s embarrassing."

  "I’m ready for two lifetimes."

  She had to speak to these two dudes laying the carpet, only to them; but Rima went on, There was one other thing . . . and Grace knew its dynamic, which was all that mattered; she was braced for its content.

  In the next room the hammer duet stopped and energy rose into her ears like a heat binding the beats ("One more thing, Grace . . .") of some future-size bongo or possible flashing of the menopausal current she was readying herself one day to ride: a new trip, after all, maybe on a blue mare by some reports ridden by her incarnation as that Navachoor love-addict energy-scientist hero of the buffalo tongue’s power, in the finest dried portions, to fuel change or so a number of people divined, including the Prince himself, who had grown in her heart since Lincoln had touched a power or a story in Grace that had been there all right, native Paiute as she surely was at least a small fraction to her fingertips or, the label came out of nowhere if there were such a place, Far-Orient Mountain-Tribe, air-expressed (as fast as credit-card payments by telepathy get through the mails) into her (no matter the distance) just as fast as her own sixteenth or thirty-second blood from the southwest territories of old America or other continents in her flesh—and as fast as Rima’s real reason for calling from behind the (of course closed) John door of Rima’s straining little spirit that was getting it on with the business trip, give her credit.

  "Maureen said you ran a workshop at a prison; is that true?"

  "Oh it’s very true, it’s so true—it was probably an all-time organic high."

  "Orgasmic, Grace?"

  "Money in the bank, dear."

  "You had trouble with one inmate?"

  "Yeah, yeah—one guy; don’t we all."

  "Yes I knew it was a men’s prison. One wouldn’t necessarily assume it was, I mean in your case; I mean, just hearing ‘prison.’ "

  "I like men, too. I just believe in segregation for the time being."

  "I gather it was a masturbation workshop."

  "We gathered information and exchanged it. We rapped. You can imagine all this from your experience. I told them weeping is like sex. You know those guys can’t put a curtain up, so they gotta go public. Energy level up to the rafters, Rima."

  "I don’t really know what that means, Grace. But it was through Clara, right?—the wife of that Allende economist?"

  "That which economist? Maureen didn’t tell you that. I found out I knew the legal liaison woman who goes up there twice a week; she got me in."

  "How did you manage a masturbation workshop at a men’s prison?"

  "We rapped. We exchanged information. It was beautiful."

  "Who’d you have trouble with?"

  "We reached an understanding."

  "Thanks, Grace. I’ll call you about the workshop next week."

  "Do what you want to do, Rima."

  "I always do, Grace. Oh, one other thing ..."

  Grace was glad, oh so glad, of the men’s experimental starting. She would handle it. It would be great. It would be tense and explosive. It would be strangely loving. Some of them didn’t know how to masturbate. They stroked too far down the shaft. And some didn’t know how to brush their teeth correctly. She wanted to say to Rima—but then did, "Sometimes I can’t stand women. Did you ever take that trip?"

  "I don’t get the vibes on your ‘sometimes,’ Grace. But, you know, my mother—"

  "I can’t hear about mothers and daughters any more. Oh shit, baby, you’re not all women." She was getting everybody else’s shit short-waved direct but not her own.

  "What do you mean, I'm not?"

  "Don’t quote me, Rima, I’m experimenting. That’s where the surprises are. Women never had the chance to just experiment."

  The hammering resumed. Energy breathed away into the clammy phone, and what came back? Someday she’s gon’ be not there for some of these peopl
e.

  "One other thing, Grace ..."

  A fat woman loomed—perhaps an obsession of some of Grace’s workshop daughters—and Grace had encouraged this fat woman to take off her clothes and the woman said she never took her clothes off even in front of the television, which she watched four weekday afternoons, and had long ago given up expecting her antique-dealer husband to tell her she was fat.

  ": . . . I hesitated to ask . . ." said Rima, and it was part-Grace, part-Rima clogging the phone line.

  A thin, athletic woman Grace knew was an as yet unknown woman who in future would come for help (validation, support), sat cross-legged and leaned toward a great dark-peach-colored goddess-candle and put a hand on her Romantics Anonymous tummy and groaned and cried like the gripe was in her gut; she said she rotated upside down sometimes, dizzy like pre-meno-pause, but she’s too young—and told Grace O.K. she had a smashing job now and was split from her documentary-director husband who needed her but needed her to be there because otherwise he couldn’t ignore her and she said Grace had helped her see that his way of having her was inside him, inside his chest, so he and she would live together but all she—God, all she could seem to want was to go back, she’d even had a fine, upstanding lover to give her a sendoff back to Hobby, her still not legally separated ol’ man (ouch, ouch, ouch)—so this must be the first time she had come to Grace. Had Grace forgotten her? Was she to come?—

  "... one other thing," Rima was continuing, "since I have you here on the phone and you’re going to run for President: you gave your bike to a black kid, right? a messenger? autistic? retarded?—"