Blind Date

  After each high-diving-board evening, Levanter and Foxy Lady returned to their hotel suite. For Foxy Lady the night had not yet ended. In the nightclub she had once again proved to Levanter that the world was in love with her; now she needed proof from him that he was completely hooked on her. Still elated, she would reach for the glacier wine to which she had become almost addicted and which he had taken great trouble to procure for her. She quickly bathed, and came to Levanter radiant. She would stand before him, slowly exposing her body, which she knew mesmerized him. It was a perfect, sculptured body zealously cared for each day by experts, its hairless skin glowing without a blemish, its muscles tightened and toned by the experienced hands of trained masseurs. Sustaining Levanter’s arousal, guiding him up and down through the peaks of frenzy, was to Foxy Lady a final tribute to her own beauty.

  Every time Levanter returned from a short business trip out of town, Foxy Lady would tell him, with her accustomed candor, what she had done in his absence. As if to remind him of her desirability to others, she related in great detail descriptions of evenings spent in male company while he was away. There were other times, she said, when she wanted to be among women, who found her as beautiful and desirable as men did. For many, she became their first female lover.

  Foxy Lady would spin out the stories of her encounters one after another and Levanter would listen, trying not to feel threatened by her erotic exploits with others. He recognized that this was the stuff of her life: she was just as beautiful for everyone else as she was for him. To appreciate her beauty did not require special taste or unusual insight. Thus, his own desire for her appeared to him as ordinary as the desire of another man, who might at any time replace him. Levanter could no more ponder what her loss would mean to him than he could imagine ever possessing her entirely. He could think of her current lover as a rival, he could be jealous of two or three of her intimate friends, but how could he be envious of that stranger whom Foxy Lady had not yet met? He knew that in the constellation of her erotic adventures he was one of many stars.

  For her, dancing and sex were her only means of making contact with other people, just as caring for her body and her appearance constituted her only sense of herself. To be seen, to please and dazzle with her looks were her only motives. She hated any activity that required being alone; but she would rather not go out at all than go out and not be noticed and admired. When she saw someone’s eyes resting upon her, she seemed to come to life as if she were being touched by the eager hands of her lover.

  Because Foxy Lady saw herself as the source of Levanter’s desire, she willingly gave herself to him; she submitted to pain, if inflicting pain was what he needed to make him feel he finally possessed her. But as soon as he was about to give in to the release of his own excitement, she regained control over him; then it was she who was the instrument of his satiation and he who was her slave.

  He felt possessive of her beauty; still her sexuality was ambiguous to him. He could not pin down exactly what she wanted from their lovemaking, yet she seemed to understand everything he wanted. Whereas other women had at times responded as if his urgings were odd, she accepted his needs as if they were to be expected. She seemed to be proud of her ability to bring out all his secret lusts and longings. In a sensual vigil over his flesh, she monitored every detail of his release, anxious to know the duration and intensity of each spasm.

  In an effort to understand Foxy Lady, he began taking pictures of her, trying to capture her expressions, her gestures, her smiles. As the stack of prints grew, he would look at them, one after another, secretly hoping to discover in her looks what it was that both held and disturbed him. But just as the photographs failed to reveal her to him, they offered no insight into his compulsion.

  He started to photograph her on transparencies. The slides would rotate in the projector and, as images of Foxy Lady flashed on his portable screen, he felt as if the beauty they conveyed was coming from someplace in his brain, imprinted by an artist who chose to remain unidentified.

  He had known her for only a relatively short time, and whenever he mentioned his concerns about her sexuality, Foxy Lady answered that the tumor surgery had traumatized her body, upset her menstrual rhythm, and threatened to make her barren. Her body had not yet healed, and she had to have weekly examinations and injections. Midway between medical appointments, she grew depressed and unsure of herself; after the injections, she was euphoric and confident.

  He had no reason to think that she fabricated the stories of her adventures, but he did suspect that what she knew about her own sexual life was incomplete, and perhaps unconsciously falsified. He had also developed a conviction that she was not truthful about the nature of her orgasms with him, that, at times, she claimed to have had them when she had not. He took this to be the aftermath of her operation; to him, she still remained sealed by gauze, and he kept wanting more of her. The time they spent together seemed to expand his life, the time away from her to shrink it. Foxy Lady became his habit.

  Levanter returned from one of his trips two days earlier than he had planned. It was late; Foxy Lady was not in their suite. He felt restless and went to the hotel lobby to buy the next day’s morning paper. On the off chance that he could find Foxy Lady, he asked the doorman whether he had seen her leave that evening. The doorman told him that, as it was raining and there were no cabs, the young lady had left in the hotel limousine about two hours earlier. Levanter said he was supposed to join her but had lost the address of the place where they were to meet and asked for the same car. The hotel driver took him straight to the club where, he said, he had dropped the young lady.

  Levanter had never been to that club. He opened the door and was scrutinized by a young, tough-looking bouncer. As he went through the crowded entrance hall on his way to the cloakroom, Levanter was greeted by a young woman in a short leather skirt with tight laces along the sides. Her eyebrows were plucked to fine lines and she pushed out her chest to show off the shapely breasts beneath her flimsy chiffon blouse.

  “I know you,” she said in a low, well-modulated voice. “I saw you once at a disco. You were with my friend.”

  “Your friend?” asked Levanter.

  She nodded. “You were dancing with her that night and a couple bumped into you two on the dance floor. My friend told me you call her Foxy Lady. She’s here tonight, you know.”

  “I know,” said Levanter. “I’ve come to join her.”

  He checked his coat and started walking along the corridor to the rooms that opened in the rear. The young woman strutted beside him on her high heels, clearly determined to keep him company.

  “She told me how the two of you met in Europe,” she whispered. “Between two countries. Very romantic. Like in an old Garbo movie.” The woman was so close he could smell her heavy perfume, and she brushed against him with her hips. “You were her first man, you know.”

  “Her first man? Couldn’t be!” Levanter exclaimed.

  “Yes. Her first man after the change!”

  “After what?”

  “You know after what. Her operation.”

  “You mean her tumor surgery?”

  The girl squeezed his arm. She laughed, covering her mouth with her delicate hand. “That’s a good one. I like what you call it: ‘her tumor’!” She batted her long eyelashes, flipping her hair off her cheeks and shoulders.

  Levanter was annoyed. “And what do you call it?” he asked.

  She just laughed. She took his hand and, guiding it, she pressed it under her skirt, pushing hard until she was sure he felt what she wanted him to feel. “I’ll call it whatever you want to call it, lover,” she said in a throaty whisper. “Soon I’m going to have my ‘tumor’ removed too, you know! Why don’t you look me up sometime?”

  Levanter pulled his hand out from under the skirt and walked toward the sound of dance music. In an instant, the entire length of his relationship with Foxy Lady coursed through his mind; his infatuation with her physical beauty did
not bother him, but for some reason he felt ashamed of what he had done with her in their lovemaking. He couldn’t help imagining how she thought of him. Levanter was no longer simply the lover of a beautiful and mysterious woman. Rather, he was a sexually spoiled partner demanding easy gratification from another man, a man who had all along understood his needs so well and satisfied him so easily. Levanter looked around. Many of the women were beautiful, though none was as striking as Foxy Lady. Now that he knew who they all were, he felt cheated.

  Foxy Lady was dancing. When she saw Levanter, she stopped abruptly and pushed away from her partner, a tall, muscular man. Out of breath, her hair mussed, she ran to Levanter, kissed him, and took him aside.

  “How did you find me?” Foxy Lady asked him in a hushed voice.

  “The hotel driver brought me here.”

  “I saw you talking to my friend.”

  “Yes. She told me you were friends.”

  She sensed his mood. “So she told you. Now you know,” she said.

  “Yes, I know,” said Levanter, “about your ‘tumor.’”

  “It won’t make any difference, will it? We will stay together, won’t we?” she asked, looking at him anxiously.

  “We won’t,” said Levanter. “I must leave you.”

  Foxy Lady pleaded. “You haven’t given me enough of a chance. I don’t even know myself yet. In a week my gauze will be removed,” she said. “You won’t be able to tell the difference between me and any other woman.” She paused. “I’ll be the only woman you’ve ever known who gets her orgasm entirely from inside,” she joked.

  “I was hooked on the mystery of you,” he said. “And now it has been solved.”

  “But I haven’t cheated you. No woman could have served you better than I have — you didn’t want me to have a baby.”

  She looked at him attentively, then gently steered him to another corridor. Muted voices came from above a staircase. She stopped him before they reached it.

  “As a child, I knew nature had made a mistake,” she said. “I felt I was beginning to look like a girl and to be driven by needs I did not understand. By the time I was twelve, I would spend at least a few minutes each day in front of my mirror dressing up in girls’ clothes or putting on make-up or a wig. I wondered about altering my sex. But in a Moslem country women are owned like animals.” She laughed bitterly. “It’s bad enough to be born a female. It’s utterly unthinkable for a sane male ever to change into one.”

  Foxy Lady led Levanter over to a bench and urged him to sit down beside her. She took a deep breath.

  “My family,” she began, “was one of the richest and most influential in our country, and my father was a distinguished diplomat. As his only son, I was my father’s pride, and the sole successor to his wealth.” She thought a moment, then spoke in a detached voice. “When I was about sixteen, my father became alarmed as he realized I was losing my masculinity, so he summoned a team of French doctors, who spent weeks injecting me with male hormones. But Allah was not to be bested.”

  Levanter touched her hand, thinking how delicate and feminine it looked. She kept on as if nothing could stop her tale now that she had finally begun it.

  “Despite these treatments, my breasts grew, as my body seemed to be insisting I was a woman. I felt there was no one I could turn to. My mother had died when I was small, and I had never felt close to either the young woman my father married soon after or their two daughters. Thus, I was really surprised when my step mother came to my aid. Only later did I realize why she did it.”

  Levanter looked at her questioningly.

  “I was still the only legitimate successor to my father’s wealth,” Foxy Lady explained. “She had not borne my father a son, but here was her chance to get rid of the only obstacle between herself and her daughters and a vast inheritance. While I was studying in America, my stepmother came to see me and secretly arranged for me to see an American doctor who specialized in transsexuals. He suggested psychological therapy to prepare me for an operation — and for life as a woman. Of course, he didn’t know I was already preparing myself by coming here, or going to other clubs like this, every evening. Without my father’s knowledge, my stepmother transferred a substantial amount of money to my Swiss bank account. I went through the psychotherapy and hormone injections, and soon I was ready to go to Switzerland for the final transformation.”

  She gazed at Levanter. He said nothing, and she went on.

  “While I was still in the clinic, an anonymous caller, no doubt hired by my stepmother, told my father that I had been disfigured in an accident. Within hours, he was at my side, anxious about my injuries. The doctor lifted the covers and told him proudly that the surgery was successful, his son was now a woman. My father ran out of the room, screaming that he had no son.” She paused, as if to swallow the pain in her voice. “Before I left the clinic, an embassy clerk came as an emissary from my father to tell me that I was to be prevented from discrediting my father, his family, and his post in the service of the King. My passport was no longer valid; I had no further right to use the family name, for my father said his son was irretrievably lost. The emissary informed me that my father had secured testimony from various medical authorities to have me declared insane. If I ever returned to my country, I would be apprehended as a self-mutilating mental defective and dumped into a mental asylum. And if ever, anywhere in the world, I publicly reveal who my father is, his men will make certain that I won’t live to slander him again.”

  It was clear to Levanter that she did not doubt her father’s threat.

  “My banks immediately informed me —” Foxy Lady stopped, then began again. “The day I met you, in fact, my banks had just notified me that I was deemed legally unfit to be responsible for my share of the family’s oil revenue left to me by my grandfather, all my foreign and domestic bank accounts were closed, my weekly allowance was stopped, and all my savings and income reverted to my father.”

  She touched Levanter’s arm and looked up at him. Her eyes were as sad as her voice.

  “That’s how it all happened,” she said, sounding as if her story were as much of a shock to her as it was to him. “In a matter of days, my transformation was complete: Once a man, I was now a woman. Once rich, I was rich no more. Along with my manhood, I had lost both my father and my country. I had become a vagrant whose residence in any nation is secure only as long as I can support myself and pay for the medical treatments that I continually need.”

  A good-looking young woman, slender and long-legged, her breasts set high on her chest, walked toward them. Foxy Lady stood up, and they greeted each other with a kiss. Levanter rose, and Foxy Lady introduced him to the other woman, who gave him a whimsical, teasing smile and walked away, swinging her hips.

  Levanter glanced at Foxy Lady. He was crushed to think of the hopelessness of her condition, yet he knew that at this moment he must consider only himself.

  “Same breed!” Foxy Lady exclaimed when the woman was out of earshot. “I don’t think there is a God-made woman in this place. This one was once a clerk in a big city bank.” She laughed. “Half the time behind the counter, a man in a business suit. Nobody in the bank knew about the other half of his time, spent as a grand lady here. Finally he left the bank, took hormones, grew breasts and long hair. All the lady needs now is a bank loan for her final cut. And they say only secret agents live in disguise!”

  She saw that Levanter was looking around, making no effort to hide his discomfort.

  “We think of ourselves as ideal lovers,” said Foxy Lady, “each one a sum of passions both of a man and of a woman. But in fact, all we combine are the vanities of both. After all, if not the vanity, what else could sustain us, except maybe the fun. All kinds of things happen here,” she said. “Occasionally, an unsuspecting out-of-towner drifts in, thinking he’s showing his wife the big city. She’ll go to the ladies’ room to fix herself up, and there they’ll all be — a troop of man-made women in high heels, skirts hitche
d up at a row of wall urinals, or comparing breasts, cosmetics, fancy stockings, and, reluctantly, their not-so-atrophied ‘tumors.’ The out-of-town lady takes one look at them and, shocked out of her skull, rushes away as fast as she can. Meanwhile, at the bar, her all-American husband is being conned by a young thing showing off her brand-new boobs.”

  She paused. Then she moved toward Levanter, nuzzling his neck, kissing his cheeks and eyes.

  “During those in-between years,” she said, “whenever a man or a woman made love to me I kept wondering whether I was wanted as a woman or as a man. Or was I merely being used to help other people make up their minds? Even when I knew my lover wanted the woman in me, the male part of me stood in the way, denying who I was and mocking what I felt. There was only one way out of my dead end and I took it.”

  She stopped again. Upstairs a glass crashed to the floor. The voices rose, then quieted again.

  “You, George, were the first straight man who knew me only as a complete woman. I was a virgin with you,” she said. “When you first came to me in that no man’s land, you personified the whole of manhood which I had cut myself off from forever. You were the challenge I had to meet from then on.”

  She looked at him. Levanter saw once again how beautiful she was, the skin on her face radiating light; her eyes, like her hair, appeared jet black; her breasts felt firm against him. He put his arms around her, but for the first time he felt no desire to touch and possess her. It was strange not to want the body that he had enjoyed for so long, but Foxy Lady now seemed incapable of providing him with the view of the world and of himself he had so desperately wanted from her.

  “I do wish you would stay with me,” Foxy Lady whispered. “Even if I didn’t tell you the whole truth, I didn’t lie to you. And, after all, what’s important in sex is to be excited and to stay excited — to be yourself. With you I always am.”