“Twenty-six years, pushing twenty-seven.”
“Yes. And while I was never given to copping feels from female employees—would you say that ‘horny old bastard’ was an honest description of me?”
“I’ve never known your behavior toward women to be other than gentlemanly.”
“Oh, come now, Jake! You’re talking to Johann at the moment. Level with me.”
Salomon grinned. “Johann, I think you were a horny old bastard right up to the day we took you in for surgery.”
“That’s better. Years after I was benched in the matter…first for social reasons, the fact that an old man looks a fool if he behaves like a young stud, and later through illness and physical incapacity—years after I was benched my interest in a pretty face or a pretty leg was unflagging. Then I acquired Eunice’s healthy young body. Female. Look at me Jake. Female.”
“I’ve noticed!”
“Not the way I have! Even though you’ve kissed me—a real kiss and I loved it, dear—you can’t have noticed the way I have been forced to. I’m cyclic now, Jake, ruled by the Moon; I’ve menstruated twice. Do you know what that means?”
“Eh? Natural phenomenon. Healthy.”
“It means that the body controls the brain as much as the brain controls the body. I’m tempery and inclined to tears just before my period. My feelings, my emotions, even my thoughts are female—yet I have almost a century of male emotions and attitudes. Take my pretty little nurse-companion, Winnie—and would you like to take her?”
“Uh…damn you, Johann! She’s a nice girl. Fifth Amendment.”
“She is indeed a nice girl. But because I’m Eunice as well as Johann I know how she feels. She’s as female as a cat in heat—and you’re an old bull, Jake, and dominant, and if you wanted to take Winnie, she wouldn’t put up more than token resistance.”
“Joan Eunice, don’t talk nonsense. I’m three times her age.” (Boss, what are you getting at?) (I’m not sure but I’m getting there.) (Well, don’t get Winnie knocked up on the way. I thought we were saving Jake for us.) (Don’t be a pig, little piglet. Winnie’s a nurse; she sees to her contras as carefully as she cleans her teeth.) “Jake dear, I’m not much older than Winnie in my body…and you’ve known and loved this body, even though I have no memory of it. We know that Eunice was always a lady—so how did you ever manage to get started with her? Did you rape her?” (Hell, no, I raped him—but he was a pushover.)
“That’s a most unfair question!”
“It’s a very female question. Knowing you from many years of association—and knowing Eunice both from some years of association but most importantly from now having her body and glands and hormones and deepest emotions—I suspect that you were far too proud to make a pass at her so she found some way to make clear that you were welcome. Once you were certain that Eunice was not trying to make a fool of you—that settled it. Well? Am I right?” (If he says No, he’s lying. It took five minutes, sister—and would have been all over in ten but we were interrupted. Had to wait till next day. Remember the mermaid getup? Had to scrub it off before I went home; Jake and I ruined it—and I had to tell Joe a sincere fib.) (Did he believe you?) (I think so. He was painting…which means he hardly notices anything else.)
“Jake, are you going to answer? Or let me draw my own conclusions—possibly mistaken?”
“I could answer that it’s none of your business!”
“And you would be right and Johann apologizes. But not Eunice. Jake, that’s what Eunice’s body tells me must have happened. But I can’t be certain and I do want to be like her and if that is not what she would have done because it is not what she did—then tell me. I’m not asking for intimate details.” (Aw, get the juicy parts, dearie—I want to know how it seemed to him, every sweaty detail. I already know how it seemed to me—and I’ll tell you.) (Don’t be so right-now, darling—I’m trying to gentle him.)
“Joan Eunice—no, ‘Eunice!’ You always have had the damnedest way of getting your own way.”
“Is that an answer, Jake? I don’t have Eunice’s memory.” (Says who? Boss, I’ve figured out something—and it’s not flatworms. Everyone has erasable memory and non-erasable memory, just like Betsy—and that non-erasable part is the me that’s still here now that I’m dead. ‘Soul’ maybe. Names don’t matter; it’s that part that’s not just glands and plumbing.) (Save the philosophy until we’re alone in bed tonight, Eunice; I’m trying to cope with a man—and it’s heavy going.) (Do you think we’re going to be alone in bed tonight? Want to bet?) (I don’t know—and I’m scared.) (Don’t be scared. When it happens, you recite the Money Hum and I’ll drive. Once around the course and you’ll be ready to solo. Except that I’ll always be with you. Know sumpin, Boss honey? It’s even nicer to be you than it was to be your secretary. Or will be, once we’re back on ground rations.) (Huh?) (Soul talk, dear—means sex. I had it for fourteen years—and I’m hungry.) (I had it over five times that long—I’m at least five times as hungry.) (Could be—you’re a horny bitch, Boss.)
Jake finally answered, “Joan, I don’t think it’s fair to Eunice’s memory for me to tell tales about her—but I’ll concede your point, assuming that you want to learn, for your own guidance, as much as possible about how she behaved. Eunice was honest and straightforward”—(I’m devious as a snake—but that’s what I wanted Jake to believe.)—“and she apparently decided that she liked me that much…and made it easy for me. It was neither rape nor seduction.” (It was both, but I did not want him to think so. He’s a darling, Joan. When he’s gentled enough—slip the bit into his mouth. But let him think he asked for it.) (I’ll try. Meantime I’m still doing this emotional strip-down—and you listen instead of interrupting; you might learn something about me.) (I’ll be good, Boss. Mostly.)
“I felt certain that it must have been that way, Jake—knowing you, knowing her. But that’s only one side of me as I am now—the ‘Eunice’ side. The other side is Johann, with almost a century of male orientation. I told you I now understand Winnie, as a girl—because now I am a girl. But there is still Johann, alone with Winnie every day—and it’s all I can manage to keep my hands off her.” (Hmmph! You don’t keep your hands off her.) (I said, Shut up! I haven’t let it get past heavy cuddle. If you and I ever stroll Gay Street, you shameless mermaid, it will be dessert, not the pièce de résistance.) (That piece won’t resist!) (Hush up!) “Do you understand, Jake? Old Johann—me!—thinks that Winnie is quite some dish.”
“Well… I understand it—in Johann.”
“I wonder if you would understand it in Eunice? Jake, how do you feel about homosexuality?”
“I don’t feel anything about it. Never been interested.”
“Not even curious? Jake, I’m a full generation older than you are. When I was a kid, homosexuality or ‘perversion’ as it was called, was hardly even a myth; I never heard of it until long after I was centered on girls. Oh, I don’t mean there wasn’t any; I know now that there was, lots of it. But it was spoken of seldom and kept under cover. When I was fifteen, a man made a pass at me—and I didn’t know what he was after; he just scared me.
“Would a fifteen-year-old boy today be that innocent? You know he wouldn’t be; there are books and magazines and pictures—and other boys—to make certain that he understands even if he doesn’t join in. The Government just misses endorsing it as a way to hold down our outlandish overpopulation—would endorse it openly, I feel sure, if it were not that a large percentage disapprove of it publicly while practicing it in private. It reminds me of that weird period in my youth when people voted dry and drank wet and the bootlegger was more sought after than the black-market butcher is today. How long has it been since the last ‘sex offense’ was prosecuted?”
“Rape by violence is still prosecuted; I can’t recall any others in the last twenty years. Blue laws about sex are dead letters; Supreme Court decisions have made them impossible to prosecute. Correction: Unlicensed pregnancy is a Federal offense under th
e General Welfare’ clause…but I’ve often wondered what would happen if a case were ever allowed to reach the Supreme Court.”
“That’s the only ‘sex crime’ which was not a crime when I was a kid, Jake. But I was talking about the ‘crime against nature’ which is no longer a crime; it isn’t even a peccadillo, it arouses less disapproval than smoking. However, by the time homosexuality was socially acceptable, my attitudes were long frozen. But I wonder what Eunice thought about it? Did you ever discuss it with her?”
Jake snorted. “Believe me, Johann—sorry, Joan Eunice—that was not a subject we had time for!”
“I suppose not. Nor did she discuss it with me.” (Fibber!) “But she gave me a gentle reprimand about it once.”
“So? How?”
“Oh, one day before I was bedfast, a messenger delivered something to my office. He was a real nancy-pants—lots of makeup, false eyelashes, curled hair, and waved his hips. A high, girlish lisp and oh so graceful in his gestures. After he was gone I made some intolerant remark and Eunice told me gently that, while she didn’t find such one-way boys attractive, she didn’t see anything wrong in a man loving man, or a woman loving a woman.” (Hey! I don’t remember any such conversation.) (So I’m a liar. But you could have said it—and I’m making a point.)
“Yes, that sounds like Eunice. She was tolerant of people’s frailties.”
“My point is that, Eunice being the age she was, she was certain to be indifferent to—perhaps I should say ‘understanding about’ what Johann thought of as ‘perversities.’ But here’s what I’m getting at, Jake; I find Winnie sexually attractive. I also find Alec Train and Judge McCampbell sexually attractive. Startled me. And you—which did not startle me. But today was the first time I have been thoroughly kissed by very male men. And I liked it. Shook me.” (How about dear Doctor?) (None of your lip, sweet lips—we don’t tell Jake that one.)
Joan Eunice went on, “There is my dilemma. Which time am I being homosexual? With Winnie? Or with you three very male bulls?”
“Joan, you ask the damnedest questions.”
“Because I’m in the damnedest situation a man ever found himself in. I’m not the ordinary sex change of a homo who gets surgery and hormone shots to tailor his male body into fake female. I’m not even a mixed-up XXY or an XYY. This body is a normal female XX. But the brain in it has had a man’s canalization and many years of enthusiastic male sex experience. So tell me, Jake, which time am I being normal, and which time perverse?”
“Uh… I’m forced to say that your female body controls.”
“But does it? Psychologists claim that sexual desire and orgasm take place in the brain—not in the genitals. My brain is XY.”
“I think you are trying to confuse the witness.”
“No, Jake, I’m the one who is confused. But possibly not as confused as the young people today. You know they claim to have six sexes.”
“Heard of it. Nonsense.”
“Not entirely. I’ve been doing lots of reading during my de-facto house arrest, trying to find out who I am, what I am, how I should behave. They label these so-called sexes both by behavior and physiology, with a new school of psychology—when wasn’t there a new one?—to account for them. The six are ortho-male, ortho-female, ambi-male, ambi-female, homo-male, homo-female—and some list a seventh, the solos or narcissists. Even an eighth, the non-sex, the neuters, both physical and psychological.”
“And I say it’s nonsense.”
“I do, too, but not for the same reason. From my unique experience, embracing both physiological sexes directly and not by hearsay, I say there is just one sex. Sex. SEX! Some people have so little sexual drive that they might as well be neuters no matter whether they are concave or convex. Some people have very strong sexual natures—and again the shape of the body doesn’t figure. Such as my former self, horny long after sex had abandoned me. Such as you, darling—taking a lovely young married woman less than half your age as your mistress. Such as Eunice—happily married at home, I think—”
“Yes, she was. I felt guilty about it.”
“But not too guilty to share her riches. Jake, I wouldn’t speak to you if you had scorned her. I was about to name Eunice as my third example of a person strongly sexed. Enough sexual drive in her body—I know!—for anything. Enough love in her heart—I feel certain—for any number. I know she loved me, even though she was too warmly empathic to mock me by offering me what I could not accept—and did give me, lavishly, the only thing I could accept—her beauty, for my eyes. Jake, I think Eunice was limited in her love only by time. She kept you happy—”
“She certainly did!”
“I’m just as certain she did so without depriving her husband. Jake, do you have reason to believe that she limited herself to you—and her husband?”
“Uh—Damn you, Johann! I don’t know. But I don’t think she had time. Uh, I used up all the sneak-out time she could manage.”
(Look, Boss, I’ll tell you about every time I struck a blow for equal rights. Don’t pester Jake.) (You’re missing the point, Eunice. I’m forcing Jake to move Saint Eunice off her pedestal—that’s the only way we’ll ever get him.)
“How do you know? Can you be sure she didn’t tell you the same sort of little white lies she told her husband? For that matter, Jake, Joe may have been as proud of his antlers as an old buck deer—the percentage of husbands who are pleased by their wives’ adulteries has been climbing steadily in this country at least since nineteen-fifty—see any of the kinseys. That he loved her we both are certain. That does not prove he tried to keep her in a cage. Or wanted to.”
“Joan, I would just as lief you didn’t run down Eunice to me.”
“Jake darling! I am not running her down. I am trying to find out what you know about her, so that I can model myself more closely after her. I loved her—and love her still more today. But if you told me that you knew she was mistress to six other men, a whore on the side, and playing girl games in her spare time—well, I’ve never known you to lie to me, Jake, so I would try to go and do likewise. You haven’t told me much but what you have told me confirms what I believed—that Eunice was a perfect lady, with enough love in her heart to love three men at once and give each of them exactly what he needed to make him happy.” (Thank you, Boss. Shall I bow?) (Quiet, little darling.) “But not a wanton, never a slut, and—while she wasn’t prudish—I doubt if Winnie would have interested her.” (Now wait one frimping minute!) (I’m telling him what he wants to hear, dear—if you want Winnie, we’ll keep it out of Jake’s sight.) (Who wants Winnie? You dirty old man!) (We both do—but it may be smart never to let it hatch. Dearest, Winnie wouldn’t look at us with a man around.) (Want to bet?)
Joan sighed. “Jake, with my unique double inheritance it would be easy for me to turn ambi-female. I’m not going to, because I don’t think Eunice would. With the deep female drive this body has—bloodstream brimming with hormones and gonads the size of gourds is the way it feels—I could easily become ‘No-Pants Smith, the Girl Most Likely To.’ Very easily—as Johann Smith was an old vulgarian who regretted only the temptations he had been forced to pass up. But I’m not going to do that, either, as Eunice did not behave that way. But if I don’t get married fairly soon, I’m going to find it hard to stay off the tiles.”
“Joan, I love you—but I am not going to marry you. It’s out of the question.”
“Then you had better help my granddaughters to swindle me.”
“Eh? Why?”
“You know why. A multimillionaire who is young and female stands as much chance of getting a good husband as that well-known tissue-paper dog had of chasing that asbestos cat through Hell. Lots of them in our country—and all they ever got were Georgian princes, riding masters, and other gigolos. I don’t want one, won’t have one. I’d rather be broke, like Winnie, and take what love I can find. Jake, besides the fact that you understand me and no one else can, you’d still be in my top ten because my money does no
t impress you. Quite aside from wonderful fact that I love you and you love me, any marriage broker would call us a perfect match.”
“Hardly. There’s still the matter of age—body ages. Joan, a man who marries at my age isn’t taking a wife, he’s indenturing a nurse.”
“Oh, frog hair, Jake! You don’t need one and I’ll lay even money that you’ll stay strong and virile right through my breeding period. But when you do need one I’ll nurse you. In the meantime we’ll sing ‘September Song’—you lead, I’ll harmonize.”
“I sing bass. And I won’t sing ‘September Song.’”
“Jake? We could buy you a new body. When you need it.”
“No, Joan. I’ve had a long run and a good one, most of it happy, all of it interesting. When my time comes, I’ll go quietly. I won’t make the mistake you did, I won’t let myself fall into the hands of the medics, with their artificial kidneys and their dials and their plumbing. I’ll die as my ancestors died.”
She sighed. “And you called me stubborn. I’ve taken you up on a high mountain and shown you the kingdoms of the earth—and you tell me it’s Los Angeles. All right, I’ll quit pestering you—and humbly accept any love you can spare. Jake, will you take me out on the town and introduce me to eligible young men? You can spot a fortune hunter—I think Eunice may be too naïve, too inclined to think the best of people.” (Rats, Boss, I bought me a gigolo with my eyes open…and, since I wasn’t kidding myself, I bought top quality.) (I know you did, darling—but the Joe Brancas in this world are as scarce as the Jake Salomons.)
“Joan Eunice, if you want me to escort you, I’ll be honored…and I’ll try to keep pascoodnyaks away from you.”
“I’ll hold you to that, you not-so-very-old darling. Jake, I asked if you believed in ghosts. Do you have any religion?”
“Eh? None. My parents were Orthodox, I think you know. My Bar Mitzvah speech was so praised that I had to fight to study law instead of being trained as a rabbi. But I shook off all that before I entered college.”