Empathy (18 page)

“Okay,” Doc said, getting really exhausted. “Now, what if we took exactly the same scenario but with a woman. A woman has a job at a fancy newspaper. Okay, already she's either a frigid workaholic, slept her way to the top, or is an affirmative action hire. She gets up in the morning and all her clothes are wrinkled. How could that be
unless she'd stayed up all night downing a pitcher of martinis, fucking the boss, or working till the sun rose, thanks to her addiction to diet pills. We haven't even considered the ironing board yet and already she's a candidate for
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
. If she actually showed up at the office in a wrinkled blouse, we would have to spend the rest of the book justifying it. Now do you understand why I use
he
?”

“But Anna, what does that have to do with you being a lesbian?”

The sky was dead blue. A pool of chestnut, like a bruise.

What had white leather done to think she deserved such a confidence?

“I'm not trying to pass,” Doc said. “Except to myself. I mean, how many times can a person be told in a multitude of ways that she will never be fully human because she is not a man? The logical conclusion is to become a man to herself, simply to retain the most basic self-respect.”

The woman stood there smoking. She didn't say anything abusive so Doc took that as an encouraging sign.

“Since I was a child,” he said, “there have been two epithets that I have truly feared. I feared being told ‘You want to be a man,' and I feared being told ‘You hate men.' I feared them because they were spoken with such insidious innuendo by so many different kinds of people. And each time the most obvious message was that the man in that sentence was more important than me.”

Doc took a deep breath.

“I feared those accusations so much that I did everything I could to prove them both wrong. But it was like trying to avoid both sides of the coin. It was like being accused of belonging to the Jewish-Bolshevik-bankers' conspiracy. I was trying to prove that I was not something that could actually never exist. It was like the secret of the atom bomb. Freud says I was
driven into homosexuality
because I wanted to have my father's child. The end result was that I, Anna
O., could not exist. I was nothing. I only existed relationally. I only existed in relation to men. I'm sick of being a reflection. How many times do I have to come out? And do I always have to do it anecdotally? When it's not a story, but a constant clash of systems. When it's a traveling implosion?”

Doc looked closely at the woman in white, waiting for her to reply.

“You,” she said. “You're obsessed by your homosexuality.”

“What about yours?” Doc said.

“That's why you left me,” the woman answered, bitterly. “Because I wasn't a big enough
dyke
.”

Things were moving too fast for Doc. He didn't have time to observe. The only choice seemed to be to get involved or go comatose. He knew his name was Anna, but he didn't really feel like a woman yet. He still wanted so badly to exist.

“No, I left you because you don't listen,” Doc said. “But you weren't listening when I told you that, so you'll never ever know.”

“Forget it, Anna,” the woman screamed. “Don't tell me what to do. Don't tell me how to act. The next thing you know you'll be comparing yourself to me and trying to force me to invite you to my mother's house for Christmas.”

That was just the beginning. She was yelling and yelling. Watching her screams made this woman into an object. There had been a time, now past, when this woman's body had been a very close thing, sometimes as close as Doc's own body. Or at least as close as his wrists. Slender, fashionable, or anything that denoted shape, ceased. What Doc saw instead was the meeting of two fleshy thighs that could be parted. Or, the indentation left by elastic. He'd hear a word repeated mercilessly accompanied by a merciless gesture. It was that breakdown into sections that familiarity brings. He was being called Anna but he did not feel like Anna.

I've sometimes had sex with my worst enemies
, Doc flashed.
Because it was the only way to defeat them. If I have sex with them, then - for that
moment-Iam important in their lives. They need me to get off. It's a triumph, being important
.

“Uhh,” he said.

“Are you saying that as a man or a woman?” she asked spitefully.

“What difference does it make?” Doc sputtered. “As long as I mean it the same either way.”

“You can't mean it the same either way,” the woman answered. “Believe me. I'm a woman all the time and I know.”

Doc started to cry.

“What are you going to do now, Anna, cry in my ear? Crying is a manipulation. Saying how you feel is a manipulation because it gives information with the hopes of impacting on my behavior. Get it? Get it?”

Dock took out a gun and shot her.

Then the doorbell rang.

“Who's there?”

“It's me.”

Oh no
, Doc thought.
It's Cro-Mag
.

“What do you want?” Doc yelled through the door.

“Doc?” he said. “I figured it all out. I figured out the answer to my problem. I found a way to understand the world.”

Despite being covered in blood, Doc could not resist a good solution so he cracked the front door slightly and peeked out from under the chain.

“Yes?”

“Well,” Cro-Mag said. “I don't have to be guilty anymore. That way no one will ever ask me embarrassing questions again.”

Now what am I going to do?
Doc thought.

Chapter twenty-five is a lie. At least, the end of it is. That is not what happened. That was just Doc projecting his worst fears onto the page. Actually he and this woman stepped out for a cup of coffee.

“There's an Algerian Marxist with a falafel stand on Ninth Street,” Doc said. “There are two Palestinian brothers running a deli on Tenth. Across the street from them is the mosque and around the corner is the Halal butcher. There are worshipers standing around all the time. The Arabs stand together. The Pakistanis stand together. Each speaks and stands a different way. When I step into Di Robertis Italian Coffee Shop for a Sanka and an éclair, there are always a variety of Muslims standing in line with white caps buying coffee.

“And down here, on the other corner, is Babu who sells
New York Post
s and
People
magazines from his newsstand. He has a PhD in political science from the University of Delhi and has a hard time meeting American intellectuals.”

Doc had so many things he wanted to tell her.

Doc felt good walking next to this mean woman. There was something great about it.

“What do you like about me, Anna?” the woman finally asked.

“I like the way you like flowers,” Doc said. “I like your muscles. I like the way you kiss when you come.” Then Doc added, “I haven't been myself lately.”

“Why, because you've been alone?”

“No,” Doc answered, “because I've been without you.”

They never spoke to each other again.

-
EILEEN MYLES

 

Finally, the inevitable happened. Doc met a woman on the subway. Her name was Dora. She listened quietly while Doc told her everything.

“You don't look like a man to me,” Dora said. “You don't smell like one, you don't feel like one or act like one.”

“Okay,” Doc said, trying to relax and trying on the label
Anna
at the same time. “Okay, but that woman in white really made me feel like one of the guys.”

“Well,” Dora answered, “obviously you couldn't give her what she needed.”

“What was that?”

“She needed you to prove that she is heterosexual.”

That resonated so thoroughly with Anna. She felt so suddenly at ease.

“Where are you from?” Anna asked.

“Oh, a small town in Pennsylvania,” Dora answered. “And then the Bronx.”

“Finally,” Anna said, “do you have any idea of how long I have been waiting for you?”

Anna O. had been out in public and had seen Dora some time before. Later, as they were fucking, Dora made little sounds, said
little words here and there that Anna could play back later.

“How could you possibly think you were a man?” Dora said. “When you have such a big, hungry pussy.”

Anna was fast while Dora was slow and sharp. It took her forever to get ready. Once in bed, Anna came on strong and was rough. But Dora really knew how to make love. They were gorgeous girls with lips of glass until they kissed. Then their fucking was a carefree heedless motion. It was emotionally connected. It made them want to be friends for a long, long time.

“I'm good at service but bad at surrender,” Anna confided.

“Just left your skirt over your head,” Dora said, whispering to her the way shadows fall.

“I forgot I was a woman,” Anna said, following orders.

“Don't do it again,” Dora said. “You don't have to.”

“I feel a little crazy,” Anna said. “Look, goose bumps.”

“You don't have to compete with men when you're here with me. I want
you
, honey.”

It was different this time. It had gone beyond anything fleshy. It was carnal desire both ways but Dora liked to speak directly of love and Anna only let it spill out.

It was one of those rare moments where temptation and joy were the same things. They were lucky, these two. Touching each other was right.

Now Anna had everything. She was a woman again. She did not have to be Doc. She could be loved instead. She learned that what she had been taught about right and wrong was created for a world that no longer existed and actually never did exist. She learned that a person positions herself on quicksand. She learned that every single individual has to rethink morality for themselves and at the same time come to a newly negotiated social agreement. That's how Anna learned to be many people at once and live in different worlds of perception at the same time each day.

She lived in the world where she was a man. She lived in the
world where she was a woman. She lived in the world with an unresolvable past and a world with a resolvable future. She lived in the world that could be explained and in the one that could not.

At night one woke to touch the other. She responded by turning. Gray light. Light blue. Her bones turned underneath. Even her shifts were tender. Simple words are the best.

Anna looked at herself in the mirror. She was attentive and flirtatious; the room smelled of whiskey, blood, and sex.

“Dora, tell me a story while I admire you. Tell me about the first time you fell in love.”

Dora was lying back, neatly, on the pillow. Her lips were relaxed so she looked like herself as a young girl.

“The first time? It's been a while since someone has asked me that. Let's see, it was back in Lancaster, PA, when I was seventeen. My first real girlfriend was named Pauline Greene. I was working on Broad Street before the mall
-
selling, like what I do now. And she used to come by on her motorbike claiming to be shopping for nylons. I didn't have a boyfriend. I just didn't want that. And she kept hanging around pretending she was looking at the hosiery but she was really looking at me. Finally she asked me out on a formal date. I remember I was so nervous. I was wearing a white blouse and no bra. We drove around and listened to the radio and talked until she parked the car so we could make out. It was so exciting. I had my arms around this strong woman who wanted me and it was so exciting. We stayed together in that house for five years. Everybody knew about it but I didn't say anything so they didn't say anything either. Then she left me.”

“Were you surprised?”

“One day I was all curled up next to her and then she wasn't in my life anymore. But all around were these … remnants. I would find strands of her hair on the sheets. Her fingerprints were on the glasses. I couldn't do anything but wait until it all disappeared. And it did. The day I realized that everything was gone I cried so hard I
couldn't believe I was actually alive. But you have to work. I was alone for a long time after that. Then I moved to New York.”

“What happened next?”

“I changed completely,” Dora said. “I look back on my own life story now and I see the history of the distortion of our imagery. I'm talking about something that has nothing to do with nostalgia. Within that story there is the total history of my oppression and my refusal to be oppressed.”

“I think I may be like you,” Anna said. “I too have undergone a radical reorientation toward existence.”

Then Anna thought of a short poem about being like Dora.

All night they talked about what living is like.

Later, Anna got out that old book
Romantic Sentences
that Mrs. Noren had given her. There she wrote:

“I want to write on your face with Magic Marker,” Anna said. “It is so in front of me.”