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hair could be cut better. She could make herself feel something about him,
yes. She could rely on him. After all, his wife might divorce him. He was
intelligent. He was promising. "I understand," she said, against the grain.
After all, there wasn't anything wrong with him exactly; from shore it must
really look quite good, the canoe, the pretty girl, the puffy summer clouds,
Jeannine's sun-shade (borrowed from the girl friend she'd had the picnic
with). There couldn't be that much wrong with it. She smiled a little. His
contribution is
Make me feel good;
her contribution is
Make me exist
. The sun came out over the water and it really was quite nice.
And there was this painful stirring of feeling in her, this terrible
tenderness or need, so perhaps she was beginning to love him, in her own way.
"Are you busy tonight?" Poor man. She wet her lips and didn't answer, feeling
the sun strike her on all sides, deliciously aware of her bare arms and neck,
the picture she made. "Mm?" she said.
"I thought I thought you might want to go to the play." He took out his
handkerchief and wiped his face with it. He put his glasses back on.
"You ought to wear sunglasses," said Jeannine, imagining how he might look
that way. "Yes, Bud and
Eileen were going. Would you like to join us?" The surprised gratitude of a
man reprieved. I
really do like him
. He bent closer this alarmed her for the canoe, as well as disgusted her
(Freud says disgust is a prominent expression of the sexual life in civilized
people) and she cried out, "Don't! We'll fall in!" He righted himself.
By degrees. You've got to get to know people
. She was frightened, almost, by the access of being that came to her from
him, frightened at the richness of the whole scene, at how much she felt
without feeling it for him, terrified lest the sun might go behind a cloud and
withdraw everything from her again.
"What time shall I pick you up?" he said.
VII
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Joanna Russ - The Female Man
That night Jeannine fell in love with an actor. The theatre was a squat, low
building finished pink stucco like a summertime movie palace and built in the
middle of a grove of pine trees. The audience sat on hard wooden chairs and
watched a college group play "Charley's Aunt." Jeannine didn't get up or go
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out during the intermission but only sat, stupefied, fanning herself with her
program and wishing that she had the courage to make some sort of change in
her life. She couldn't take her eyes off the stage. The presence of her
brother and sister-in-law irked her unbearably and every time she became aware
of her date by her elbow, she wanted to turn in on herself and disappear, or
run outside, or scream. It didn't matter which actor or which character she
fell in love with; even Jeannine knew that; it was the unreality of the scene
onstage that made her long to be in it or on it or two-dimensional, anything
to quiet her unstable heart;
I'm not fit to live
, she said. There was more pain in it than pleasure; it had been getting worse
for some years, until Jeannine now dreaded doing it;
I can't help it
, she said. She added, I'm not fit to exist
.
I'll feel better tomorrow. She thought of Bud taking his little girl fishing
(that had happened that morning, over Eileen's protests) and tears rose in her
eyes. The pain of it. The painful pleasure. She saw, through a haze of
distress, the one figure on stage who mattered to her. She willed it so. Roses
and raptures in the dark. She was terrified of the moment when the curtain
would fall in love as pain, in in
misery, trouble. If only you could stay half-dead. Eventually the curtain (a
gray velvet one, much in worn) did close, and opened again on the troupe's
curtain calls; Jeannine mumbled something about it being too hot and ran
outside, shaking with terror; who am I, what am I, what do I want, where do I
go, what world is this? One of the neighborhood children was selling lemonade,
with a table and chairs pitched on the carpet of dead pine needles under the
trees. Jeannine bought some, to color her loneliness;
I did, too, and it was awful stuff.
(If anybody finds me, I'll say it was too warm and I wanted a drink.)
She walked blindly into the woods and stood a little way from the theatre,
leaning her forehead against a tree-trunk. I said Jeannine, why are you
unhappy?
I'm not unhappy.
You have everything (I said). What is there that you want and haven't got?
I want to die
.
Do you want to be an airline pilot? Is that it? And they won't let you? Did
you have a talent for mathematics, which they squelched? Did they refuse to
let you be a truck driver? What is it?
I want to live
.
I will leave you and your imaginary distresses (said I) and go converse with
somebody who makes more sense; really, one would think you'd been balked of
some vital necessity. Money? You've got a job.
Love? You've been going out with boys since you were thirteen.
I know
.
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Joanna Russ - The Female Man
You can't expect romance to last your life long, Jeannine: candlelight dinners
and dances and pretty clothes are nice but they aren't the whole of life.
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There comes a time when one has to live the ordinary side of life and romance
is a very small part of that. No matter how nice it is to be courted and taken
out, eventually you say "I do" and that's that. It may be a great adventure,
but there are fifty or sixty years to fill up afterwards. You can't do that
with romance alone, you know. Think, Jeannine fifty or sixty years!
I know
.
Well?
(Silence)
Well, what do you want?
(She didn't answer)
I'm trying to talk to you sensibly, Jeannine. You say you don't want a
profession and you don't want a man in fact, you just fell in love but you
condemn that as silly so what is it that you want? Well?
Nothing.
That's not true, dear. Tell me what you want. Come on.
I want love. (She dropped her paper cup of lemonade and covered her face with
her hands.)
Go ahead. The world's full of people.
I can't.
Can't? Why not? You've got a date here tonight, haven't you? You've never had
trouble attracting men's interest before. So go to it.
Not that way.
"What way?" (said I).
Not the real way.
"What!" (said I).
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Joanna Russ - The Female Man
I want something else, she repeated, something else
.
"Well, Jeannine," said I, "if you don't like reality and human nature, I don't
know what else you can
have," and I quit her and left her standing on the pine needles in the shadow
cast by the trees, away from the crowd and the flood-lights fastened to the
outside of the theatre building. Jeannine is very romantic.
She's building a whole philosophy from the cry of the crickets and her heart's
anguish. But that won't last. She will slowly come back to herself. She'll
return to Bud and Eileen and her job of fascinating the latest X. Jeannine,
back in the theatre building with Bud and Eileen, looked in the mirror set up
over the ticket window so lady spectators could put on their lipstick, and
jumped "Who's that!"
"Stop it, Jeannie," said Bud. "What's the matter with you?" We all looked and
it was Jeannine herself, sure enough, the same graceful slouch and thin
figure, the same nervous, oblique glance.
"Why, it's you, darling," said Eileen, laughing. Jeannine had been shocked
right out of her sorrow. She turned to her sister-in-law and said, with
unwonted energy, between her teeth: "What do you want out of life, Eileen?
Tell me!"
"Oh honey," said Eileen, "what should I want? I want just what I've got." X
came out of the men's room.
Poor fellow. Poor lay figure.
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