Chapter Twenty-seven

Is it because of windows that I think the day’s square?

- 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.

Modesty itself is a temptation
like dry earth, rough tongue
you, like me.
Honeysuckle. Steam
A blue-gray scalding hiss.

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:

- Fingering your sticky little ears.

- Under her skin there are capillaries. The blood moseys along.

- There is milk in there somewhere. Maybe her throat.

- Orange peel.

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