King of the World

by Thomas Berger

  “Women,” said Charlie.

  “The choice has been more or less taken out of my hands.” Cornell took another bitter swallow from the mug, or intended to: a torrent escaped and wet the bosom of his beautiful dress.

  “Oh, shit!” Ordinarily he never talked like that, but now he didn’t care. He felt the clamminess reach his breasts, and said the worst: “Mother’s milk!”

  “Wow!” said Charlie. “You’re not the Nice Neil I thought.” He was still not taking Cornell seriously. But he did get up and fetch a sponge.

  “No,” Cornell said. “I know this fabric. I have to soak this out thoroughly and immediately, or the dress has had it.”

  He went to the bathroom, pulled the dress over his head, and plunged it into the basin under a running faucet.

  Charlie appeared in the doorway.

  “There’s a housecoat on the hook behind the bedroom door,” he said, pointing with his cigar butt. “It’s not in pristine condition, but a little better than my negligee, anyhow.”

  In half slip and bra Cornell entered the bedroom. He saw in the dresser-mirror that taking off the dress had disarranged his hair. He found a brush and used it, wincing as it clogged with the thick strands and pulled his scalp. His rolling eye saw the open closet, and therein a pin-striped woman’s suit on a hanger. Just like Dr. Prine’s. He went there and saw, next to the suit, a herringbone-tweed sports jacket. Gray flannel slacks. Double-breasted gabardine suit. Cordovan brogues on the floor beneath. On the inside surface of the door, a tie rack, filled: stripes, polka dots, solids.

  He really hadn’t dreamed Charlie went so far.

  He dawdled there, looking, touching. He went to the dresser and saw himself in the mirror. He wore the tweed jacket, unbuttoned, his brassiered tits sticking out. How weird. He buttoned up. The jacket was too large; there was room for his bosom. With his bare neck the effect was more that of a loose outer coat. He made a stern, woman’s face at himself in the mirror, squaring his jaw. Behind him, Charlie peeked in the doorway.

  “There’s some shirts in the middle drawer.” He withdrew.

  The shirt that Cornell chose was white with a candy stripe. He put a striped tie under the collar and tried to make a knot.

  “Charlie!” he cried. “How do you tie a tie, for goodness sake?”

  Charlie entered. “It’s not easy to be a girl, first time out,” he said in levity.

  He took the silken snake from Cornell, put it around his own neck, tied the slipknot, then took it off and handed it back.

  “Just put your head through the noose, old buddy,” said he. “Best way to learn is to have the teacher stand behind you, arms around your neck. But I’m still sensitive about your earlier suspicions.”

  “You’ll never let me live that down.”

  “I might even prove you right! You make an interesting-looking guy.” Charlie pointed to Cornell’s mirror-image, which was now feminine throughout the trunk, though the slip showed below the jacket and the very virile earrings hung above the shirt collar as did his fall of hair, and between the auburn wealth was his fair face with its cupid’s-bow lips and elaborate male eyes.

  “Well,” Cornell said, moueing, “might as well go all the way now. May I have a pair of trousers?”

  Charlie offered him a choice of the flannels or a cavalry twill in tan. He accepted the latter. The waist was too large. The half-slip fell down over the trousers.

  “Should have taken that off first,” said Charlie, as Cornell expanded the elastic and let the garment fall. He stepped out of the clingy folds. He still wore his higheeled shoes.

  “Take your pick,” said Charlie, bringing the cordovan shoes from the closet. In his other set of fingers was a pair of thick brogues in pebble-grain brown. Cornell took the latter because they were most outrageous, with soles a half inch thick and a heavy leather heel twice that and further reinforced with metal plates shaped like segments of an orange.

  So there he stood, in complete drag.

  “The hair is certainly wrong,” he said to himself in the glass.

  Charlie had an answer for that. He produced a black, woman’s wig, the interior of which proved sufficiently capacious to accept Cornell’s natural growth when piled up and stuffed in. He sighed as he thought of his long brushwork before leaving home.

  “I’ll look like a mess when I take this off,” he said. He pettishly poked up a sportive strand.

  The mirror now showed the most bizarre image of the evening. He looked much more outlandish than when his hair had been down, for now he appeared as a woman who wore male makeup.

  Charlie handed him a jar of cold cream and a wad of Kleenex. “And take off the earrings.”

  The next time Cornell stared at himself he saw a woman. For an instant he was delighted, but then pleasure became fear. He had satisfied his curiosity. Why did he linger in women’s clothes? His fingers were at the jacket buttons when Charlie said something that halted them.

  “It’s hard the first few times not to be a parody.”

  “But that’s just what we are,” Cornell said in relief. A burlesque, a harmless little deriding of the sexual condition, both branches. He determined to enjoy the game. Goodness knows, he had not been amused in ever so long.

  After they had returned to the living room and more beer, Charlie stared at Cornell, and asked: “How long have you been going to Dr. Prine, Georgie?”

  Cornell was offended by this turn, but he didn’t want to give Charlie the satisfaction of a sensitive response. He counted on his fingers. His nails were still painted, of course, and looked strange with the shirt cuffs and tweed sleeve behind them. “Almost three years. But before that I went to a couple of others. I’ve been going to somebody for my entire adult life.”

  “Have you been helped?”

  “Let me put it this way: what I tell myself is that I might be a lot worse if I hadn’t had the treatment. I’m surviving. I’m not ecstatically happy, but on the other hand I haven’t slashed my wrists lately.” How much beer had he drunk by now? He felt it. And his legs were terribly warm in the trousers. He did not find women’s clothes enormously comfortable.

  Nevertheless, he said: “I guess all of us would rather be girls in the next life.” He laughed wildly. He didn’t mean that, exactly, but he wanted to get back at Charlie.

  “I don’t ever want to be a woman!” Charlie cried with heat.

  Cornell thought this statement very odd indeed, in view of their current costumes, but he merely took another drink of beer.

  Charlie began to rave. “Nothing in Nature, or in the history of the human race before the second half of the twentieth century supports the theory that women are superior to men. Again I’m talking about real history, as opposed to the lies we were force-fed in school.”

  Cornell shook his head. “I just can’t accept that a whole educational system could be completely wrong. I mean, it might be biased somewhat, but how could they lie about everything?”

  As suddenly as he had become abstractly belligerent, Charlie deflated. “Ah, hell,” he said. “I’m no militant. Too old, too tired, too scared. I begin to burn if I have a few drinks and think about the situation, but I wouldn’t have the guts to join the underground and do something about it”

  “Is there really an actual underground? I’ve heard that but never quite believed it.”

  “Haven’t you ever seen any of their literature?” said Charlie. “They leave it around men’s rooms and dressing rooms in stores. You sure never see anybody passing it out. You know the punishment.”

  “Castration, allegedly,” said Cornell. “But you never hear of anybody being arrested. If they really exist, they must be pretty careful.”

  Charlie shook his head. “The female Establishment suppresses that stuff, Georgie. They don’t want to give publicity to such a movement. You might think it would be a deterrent to advertise the capture and emasculation of a rebel, but they don’t want the public, especially the male part, to know there’s even su
ch a thing in existence.” Charlie rose, heavily. “And maybe there isn’t, in any organized form. Maybe just some little crank with a mimeograph machine in an attic somewhere. The System’s still here, anyway.”

  Cornell chimed in amiably: “Here before us and it will be here long after we are gone. You can’t fight Nature, Charlie: it made us men and we are stuck with it.” Yet here they were, wearing unnatural attire. Well, nobody expected logic from a boy.

  Charlie unzipped one of the sofa-cushion covers and took out the large manila envelope containing his filthy pictures.

  “Here’s your favorite, Georgie,” he said, handing Cornell the photograph of the woman giving suck to a baby.

  It had lost its excitement for Cornell. It seemed routine tonight, not shocking nor disgusting. Perhaps he had looked at it too often. But then it occurred to him for the first time that the picture might well be bogus.

  “You know,” he said, “this could easily be a fellow. There’s nothing feminine about it, after all.”

  “It’s an old picture, Georgie. It’s authentic, all right Breastfeeding really happened in the time when women reproduced.”

  “Why did you get me over here tonight? You said you had an idea.”

  “So I have, Georgie.” Charlie padded back to the sofa in his sneakers and sat down. “It’s your new job. You’ll have access to all the guys at work, in the only place where we get any privacy.”

  He reached into the envelope and came out with another photograph, an eight-by-ten glossy this time, and held it face forward at Cornell. It showed two naked persons, one supine with spread legs between which another, prone, was contained.

  Disingenuously Cornell asked, “Wrestlers?”

  Charlie ignored this. “I’ve got a source for all the prints I want.” He grinned.

  “So?”

  “You’re being pretty dense, Georgie. You’ll have a market for these in the men’s room.” He misinterpreted Cornell’s frown, got up, and came over, his thick forefinger on the picture. “This is a man on top. His penis is inside this woman’s vagina.”

  “But the one on the bottom has long hair, and the one on top has a crewcut,” Cornell said. “And you can’t see anything between them. It’s all theoretical.” He had inspected this picture the last time he visited Charlie, but as with the photograph of the alleged mother, only tonight did he question its authenticity. Wearing female attire had changed him somehow; he had a new skepticism.

  Charlie was exasperated.

  “What’s got into you, Georgie? Maybe I should make some coffee to sober you up. Now, be serious. I can get a wholesale price, see. We’ll put on a stiff markup. Real raw stuff like this isn’t easily come by. We’ll split the profit, you and I. Who couldn’t use a little extra loot these days?”

  Cornell grimaced. He had never been so insulted in his life.

  “Is that your proposition? I should peddle filthy pictures in the toilets? To warped secretaries?”

  Charlie lowered the photograph. He looked at Cornell for a long moment.

  “Do you have to be snotty about it, Georgie? Couldn’t you just say yes or no?”

  “I didn’t mean you, Charlie.”

  Charlie plodded to the couch and returned his pictures to the envelope. From the back he looked even more shapeless in women’s clothes than in men’s.

  Cornell had not intended to be cruel, but he was the one who had been insulted first. Still, there had been no malice in Charlie’s proposition: the insult arose from his assumption that he and Cornell enjoyed a common taste. And Cornell was not without responsibility for this error: he had on other visits shown interest in the picture of the so-called mother and child. Charlie was quite a sweet old thing; he always complimented Cornell; darn few other men were capable of generosity; Cornell wanted to be fair.

  “I shouldn’t have said that, Charlie.”

  Charlie shrugged the bag of his back.

  “I hope you won’t stay mad,” Cornell said winningly. “You’re a good friend.”

  “Forget it.” Charlie turned and made a reluctant gesture towards the beer bottle. “Pour you a nightcap?”

  “You want me to leave?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Charlie breathed heavily and poured Cornell’s mug half full.

  “You’re angry, though.”

  “Georgie, how would you react if I called you warped? Do I do any harm with my pictures? Sure, it’s against the law imposed on us by women. But whom does it hurt? No woman will look at me, so what chance do I have to be normal?”

  “I can understand that,” said Cornell.

  “Can you? I doubt it. First you suspect me of being homosexual. Now this.” Charlie sat down with his own mug.

  “I wasn’t attacking you, believe me,” Cornell said. “It’s just this new job. The very thought of it makes me craw! with shame. I don’t see how I can face the other boys tomorrow, mop in hand. Filling the toilet-paper holders. In comes that nasty receptionist, who has always hated my guts. Oh, Charlie!”

  Charlie remained preoccupied with himself.

  “Georgie, I warned you again and again that you were putting your ass in a sling with Ida. If you’re going to goof off, you must do it cleverly. Trouble with you is, you can’t help it. Look, in the long run, I don’t do any more work than you, if as much, but I don’t lose things and I don’t forget things. I haven’t got a raise in years, but I never get reprimanded. You call attention to yourself—probably because of your good looks. But then you don’t use your looks to benefit yourself. For example, if you had any sense now, you would call Ida at home and ask tearfully if you could come to her house and discuss the transfer. Be hysterical—that scares women. Most of them have some guilt about the way they treat men. If you howl and scream enough, she’ll see you. Then when you get there, be all soft and unresisting, weeping sadly. Most of them find that sexy. Basically, they’re sadists.”

  “I couldn’t possibly do that,” Cornell said. “I just couldn’t”

  Charlie displayed his fat palms. “There you are.”

  “I’ve got some pride,” said Cornell.

  “So use it to push your mop,” Charlie said.

  “Suppose she made a pass at me.”

  “That’s the idea,” said Charlie.

  “I couldn’t go through with it. The idea of being touched by that loathsome creature…”

  “O.K., then.”

  “It’s difficult enough even if I like the girl.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “You mentioned that.” He was bored and unsympathetic. He scratched his belly inside the shirt and looked at his nails.

  Cornell swallowed more beer, though he was indeed badly bloated by now, his abdomen pressing against the belt. He also got that way from Coke and other gaseous soft drinks, and sometimes from sheer nervousness. When he suspected he would be offered effervescent beverages, he took the precaution of wearing his panty girdle, but then, of course, he tended to suffocate. It was always a choice of either vanity or comfort. He decided against mentioning the subject now: Charlie’s belly was naturally protuberant.

  “Do you suppose,” he asked, “that any men really enjoy sex?”

  Charlie got interested. “I’ll tell you this, Georgie. In my years I’ve learned one thing: that you never know what’s in the other fellow’s mind or soul when it comes to that subject. I don’t mean just that there are liars around: I mean that I think often enough a man doesn’t really know what he feels. You know what you are told to feel. An anal orgasm is supposed to be a fantastic experience. You can read that in almost any issue of any men’s magazine. And wasn’t that the point of that sex manual we published last year?”

  “I didn’t read it.”

  “That was one of Myra’s projects,” said Charlie, who was secretary to Myra Turlish, another of the senior editors. “Something like thirty-five thousand letters came in, most of them from men, and most of them confessing they had never had an anal orgasm.”

  “Frankly, it
doesn’t surprise me,” Cornell said. “I have never understood how it could appeal to anybody. And what do you suppose a woman gets out of it, when it comes to that?”

  “Power,” Charlie said. “Pure and simple.”

  “I can understand necking and petting,” said Cornell.

  Charlie persisted. “What more brutal and obvious assertion of power could you find? There you are, on your stomach, helpless, and they’re riding you.”

  “Maybe if the facts were out, something could be done.”

  “What?”

  “Well, therapy,” Cornell said. “There must be lots of poor boys who don’t know where to turn for help. That’s sad.” He went ahead and opened his belt before his swollen stomach burst it. He now had room for more beer or more anxiety, whichever was bloating him worse.

  “The way you’ve been helped,” Charlie said. He thrust his mug into the air between them. “Yeah, yeah, I know what you said: you might be worse. But that could be said of anything, right? I developed some back trouble a year ago, and the doctor strapped me in a support which didn’t give me any relief but added more discomfort. ‘Without it you’d be worse,’ she said. After a while I threw the damn thing away, and the trouble eventually stopped by itself. Cost me a week’s pay for nothing.”

  Cornell said solemnly: “I didn’t have a choice when I first began my therapy, years ago. Either that or killing myself. And now it’s gone on so long that I wouldn’t know what to do without it. And Dr. Prine’s better than the others I went to.” He paused. “I think. She’s tougher, but then that’s supposed to be good, I think. She insists the whole thing about not being able to experience orgasm is self-indulgence.”

  “Yeah,” said Charlie. “It gives you pain instead of pleasure. It’s selfish and lazy to feel that way.”

  “Wait a minute, Charlie. It makes sense, you know. I mean, it’s reality, isn’t it? You can’t change it, so you have to accept it. There’s no other alternative.”

  “There used to be,” said Charlie, tapping the envelope of pictures.

  “You mean that deviate stuff.”

  “It wasn’t perverse in those days.” Charlie shook his head. “I don’t know, Georgie, you’ve been thoroughly brainwashed. You’ve swallowed everything you’ve been told. You think that’s the masculine role, to sit and wait and accept passively. You’re a nice little boy, there’s no getting away from that. But if you really were happy with that role, you wouldn’t be spending your time at Dr. Prine’s—and you wouldn’t be a janitor.”