Joanna Russ - The Female Man

That’s when she put her fist through the wall.

We went to a party on Riverside Drive—incognitae—with Janet a little behind me. At the door, a little behind me. The February snow coming down outside. On the fortieth floor we got out of the elevator and I checked my dress in the hall mirror: my hair feels as if it’s falling down, my makeup’s too heavy, everything’s out of place from the crotch of the panty-hose to the ridden-up bra to the ring whose stone drags it around under my knuckle. And I don’t even wear false eyelashes. Janet—beastly fresh—is showing her usual trick of the Disappearing Lipstick. She hums gently. Batty Joanna. There are policemen posted all around the building, policemen in the street, policemen in the elevator. Nobody wants anything to happen to her. She gives a little yelp of excitement and pleasure—the first uncontrolled contact with the beastly savages.

“You’ll tell me what to do,” she says, “won’t you?” Ha ha. He he. Ho ho. What fun. She bounces up and down.

“Why didn’t they send someone who knew what he was doing!” I whisper back.

“What she was doing,” she says unself-consciously, shifting gears in a moment. “You see, under field conditions, nobody can handle all the eventualities. We’re not superhuman, any of us, nicht wahr ? So you take someone you can spare. It’s like this—”

I opened the door, Janet a little behind me.

I knew most of the women there: Sposissa, three times divorced; Eglantissa, who thinks only of clothes; Aphrodissa, who cannot keep her eyes open because of her false eyelashes; Clarissa, who will commit suicide; Lucrissa, whose strained forehead shows that she’s making more money than her husband; Wailissa, engaged in a game of ain’t-it-awful with Lamentissa; Travailissa, who usually only works, but who is now sitting very still on the couch so that her smile will not spoil; and naughty Saccharissa, who is playing a round of His Little Girl across the bar with the host. Saccharissa is forty-five. So is Amicissa, the Good Sport. I looked for Ludicrissa, but she is too plain to be invited to a party like this, and of course we never invite Amphibissa, for obvious reasons.

In we walked, Janet and I, the right and left hands of a bomb. Actually you might have said everyone was enjoying themselves. I introduced her to everyone. My Swedish cousin. (Where is Domicissa, who never opens her mouth in public? And Dulcississa, whose standard line, “Oh, you’re so wonderful!” is oddly missing from the air tonight?)

I shadowed Janet.

I played with my ring.

I waited for the remark that begins “Women—” or “Women can’t—” or “Why do women—” and kept up an insubstantial conversation on my right. On my left hand Janet stood: very erect, her eyes shining, turning her head swiftly every now and again to follow the current of events at the party. At times like this, when I’m low, when I’m anxious, Janet’s attention seems a parody of attention and her energy unbearably high. I was afraid she’d burst out chuckling. Somebody (male) got me a drink.

SACCHARISSA: I’m Your Little Girl.

HOST (wheedling): Are you really?

SACCHARISSA: (complacent): Yes I am.

HOST: Then you have to be stupid, too.

A SIMULTANEOUS ROUND OF “AIN’T IT AWFUL”

LAMENTISSA: When I do the floor, he doesn’t come home and say it’s wonderful.

WAILISSA: Well, darling, we can’t live without him, can we? You’ll just have to do better .

LAMENTISSA (wistfully): I bet you do better.

WAILISSA: I do the floor better than anybody I know.

LAMENTISSA (excited): Does he ever say it’s wonderful?

WAILISSA (dissolving): He never says anything!

(There follows the chorus which gives the game its name. A passing male, hearing this exchange, remarked, “You women are lucky you don’t have to go out and go to work.")

Somebody I did not know came up to us: sharp, balding, glasses reflecting two spots of lamplight. A long, lean, academic, more-or-less young man.

“Do you want something to drink?”

Janet said “A-a-a-h” very long, with exaggerated enthusiasm. Dear God, don’t let her make a fool of herself. “Drink what?” she said promptly. I introduced my Swedish cousin.

“Scotch, punch, rum-and-coke, rum, ginger-ale?”

“What’s that?” I suppose that, critically speaking, she didn’t look too bad. “I mean,” she said (correcting herself), “that is what kind of drug? Excuse me. My English isn’t good.” She waits, delighted with everything. He smiles.

“Alcohol,” he says.

“Ethyl alcohol?” She puts her hand over her heart in unconscious parody. “It is made from grain, yes? Food? Potatoes? My, my! How wasteful!”

“Why do you say that?” says the young man, laughing.

“Because,” answers my Janet, “to use food for fermentation is wasteful, yes? I should think so! That’s cultivation, fertilizer, sprays, harvesting, et cetera. Then you lose a good deal of the carbohydrates in the actual process. I should think you would grow cannabis , which my friend tells me you already have, and give the grains to those starving people.”

“You know, you’re charming,” he says. “Huh?” (That’s Janet.) To prevent disaster, I step in and indicate with my eyes that yes, she’s charming and second, we really do want a drink.

“You told me you people had cannabis,” Janet says a little irritably.

“It isn’t cured properly; it’ll make you choke,” I say. She nods thoughtfully. I can tell without asking what’s going through her mind: the orderly fields of Whileaway, the centuries-old mutations and hybridizations of cannabis sativa, the little garden plots of marihuana tended (for all I know) by seven-year-olds. She had in fact tried some several weeks before. It had made her cough horribly.

The youngish man returned with our drink and while I signalled him Stay, stay, she’s harmless, she’s innocent, Janet screwed up her face and tried to drink the stuff in one swallow. It was then I knew that her sense of humor was running away with her. She turned red. She coughed explosively. “It’s horrible!”

“Sip it, sip it,” said he, highly amused.

“I don’t want it.”

“I tell you what,” he proposed amiably, I’ll make you one you will like.” (There follows a small interlude of us punching each other and whispering vehemently: “Janet, if you—“)

“But I don’t like it,” she said simply. You’re not supposed to do that. On Whileaway, perhaps, but not here.

“Try it,” he urged.

“I did,” she said equably. “Sorry, I will wait for the smokes.”

He takes her hand and closes her fingers around the glass, shaking his forefinger at her playfully: “Come on now, I can’t believe that; you made me get it for you—” and as our methods of courtship seem to make her turn pale, I wink at him and whisk her away to the corner of the apartment where the C.S. vapor blooms. She tries it and gets a coughing fit. She goes sullenly back to the bar.

A MANUFACTURER OF CARS FROM LEEDS (genteelly): I hear so much about the New Feminism here in America. Surely it’s not necessary, is it? (He beams with the delighted air of someone who has just given pleasure to a whole roomful of people.)

SPOSISSA, EGLANTISSA, APHRODISSA, CLARISSA, LUCRISSA, WAILISSA, LAMENTISSA, TRAVAILISSA (dear God, how many of them are there?), SACCHARISSA, LUDICRISSA (she came in late): Oh no, no, no! (They all laugh.)

When I got back to the bar, Clarissa was going grimly into her latest heartbreak. I saw Janet, feet apart—a daughter of Whileaway never quails!—trying to get down more than three ounces of straight rum. I suppose one forgets the first taste. She looked flushed and successful.