Robert Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land

Nor could Mike understand why it now pleased her to be stared at. The only time when their two attitudes had been even roughly similar had been as they left the carnival, when Jill had discovered that she had become indifferent to stares—willing to do their act “stark naked,” as she had told Patty, if it would help.

Jill saw that her present self-knowledge had been nascent at that point; she had never been truly indifferent to masculine stares. Under the unique necessities of adjusting to life with the Man from Mars she had been forced to shuck off part of her artificial, training-imposed persona, that degree of lady-like prissiness a nurse can retain despite the rigors of an unusually no-nonsense profession. But Jill hadn’t known that she had any prissiness to lose until she lost it.

Of course, Jill was even more of a “lady” than ever—but she preferred to think of herself as a “gent.” But she was no longer able to conceal from her conscious mind (nor had any wish to) that there was something inside her as happily shameless as a tabby in heat going into her belly dance for the enticement of the neighborhood toms.

She tried to explain all this to Mike, giving him her theory of the complementary and functional nature of narcissist display and voyeurism, with herself and Duke as clinical examples. “The truth is, Mike, that I find I get a real kick out of having all those men stare at me… lots of men and almost any man. So now I grok why Duke likes to have lots of pictures of women, the sexier the better. Same thing, only in reverse. It doesn’t mean that I want to go to bed with them, any more than Duke wants to go to bed with a photograph—shucks, dearest, I don’t even want to say hello to them. But when they look at me and tell me—think at me—that I’m desirable, it gives me a tingle, a warm pleasant feeling right in my middle.” She frowned slightly. “You know, I think I ought to get a real naughty picture taken of me and send it to Duke. Just to tell him that I’m sorry I snooted him and failed to grok what I thought was a weakness in him. If it’s a weakness, I’ve got it, too—but girl style. If it is a weakness—but I grok it isn’t.”

“All right. We’ll find a photographer in the morning.”

She shook her head. “I’ll simply apologize to Duke the next time we go home, I wouldn’t actually send such a picture to Duke. He has never made a pass at me—and I don’t want him getting ideas.”

“Jill, you would not want Duke?”

She heard an echo of “water brother” in his mind. “Hmm, truthfully I’ve never really thought about it. I guess I’ve been ‘being faithful’ to you—not that it has been an effort. But I grok you speak rightly; I wouldn’t turn Duke down—and I would enjoy it, too. What do you think of that, darling?”

“I grok a goodness,” Mike said seriously.

“Hmm… my gallant Martian, there are times when we human females appreciate at least a semblance of jealousy—but I don’t think there is the slightest chance that you will ever grok ‘jealousy.’ Darling, what would you grok if one of those marks—those men in the audience, not a water brother—made a pass at me?”

Mike barely smiled. “I grok he would be missing.”

“Mmm… I grok he might be, too. But, Mike—listen to me carefully, dear. You promised me that you wouldn’t do anything of that sort except in utter emergency. So don’t be hasty. If you hear me scream and shout, and reach into my mind and know that I’m in real trouble, that’s another matter. But I was coping with wolves when you were still on Mars. Nine times out often, if a girl gets raped, it’s at least partly her own fault. That tenth time—well, all right. Give him your best heave-ho to the bottomless pit. But you aren’t going to find it necessary.”

“All right, I will remember. I wish you were sending that naughty picture to Duke.”

“What, dear? I will if you want me to. It’s just that if I ever make a pass at Duke—and I might, now that you’ve put the idea into my little pointy head—I’d rather grab his shoulders and look him in the eye and say, ‘Duke, how about it?—I’m willing.’ I don’t want to do it by sending him a naughty picture through the mail, like those nasty women used to send to you. But if you want me to, okay. Uh, I needn’t make it too naughty—I could make it obviously a show girl’s professional picture and tell him what I’m doing and ask him if he has room for it in his scrap book. He might not take it as a pass.”

Mike frowned. “I spoke incompletely. If you wish to send Duke a naughty picture, do so. If you do not wish, then do not. But I had hoped to see the naughty picture taken. Jill, what is a ‘naughty’ picture?”

Mike was baffled by the whole idea—Jill’s reversal from an attitude that he had never understood but had learned to accept into exactly the opposite attitude of pleasure—sexual pleasure, he understood—at being stared at… plus a third and long-standing bafflement at Duke’s “art” collection—it certainly was not art. But the pale, wan Martian thing which parallels tumultuous human sexuality gave him no foundation for grokking either narcissism or voyeurism, modesty or display.

He added, “‘Naughty’ means a wrongness, usually a small wrongness, but I grokked that you did not mean even a small wrongness, but a goodness.”

“A naughty picture could be either one, I guess—depending on who it’s for—now that I’m over some prejudice. But—Mike, I’ll have to show you; I can’t tell you. But first close those slats, will you?”

The Venetian blinds flipped themselves shut. “All right,” she said. “Now this pose would be just a little bit naughty—any of the show girls would use it as a professional pic… and this one is just a little bit more so, some of the girls would use it. But this one is unmistakably naughty and this one is quite naughty… and this one is so extremely naughty that I wouldn’t pose for it with my face wrapped in a towel—unless you wanted it.”

“But if your face was covered, why would I want it?”

“Ask Duke. That’s all I can say.”

He continued to look puzzled. “I grok not wrongness, I grok not goodness. I grok—” He used a Martian word indicating a null state of all emotions.

But he was interested because he was so baffled; they went on discussing it, in Martian as much as possible because of its extremely fine discriminations for emotions and values—and in English, too, because Martian, rich as it is, simply couldn’t cope with the concepts.

Mike showed up at a ringside table that night, Jill having coached him in how to bribe the maître d’hôtel to give him such a spot; he was determined to pursue this mystery. Jill was not averse. She came strutting out in the first production number, her smile for everyone but a quick wink for Mike as she turned and her eyes passed across his. She discovered that, with Mike present, the warm, pleased sensation she had been enjoying nightly was greatly amplified—she suspected that, if the lights were out, she would glow in the dark.

When the parade stopped and the girls formed a tableau, Mike was no more than ten feet from her—she had been promoted her first week to a front position. The director had looked her over on her fourth day with the show and had said, “I don’t know what it is, kid. We’ve got girls around town begging for just any job with twice the shape you’ve got—but when the lights hit you, you’ve got what the customers look at. Okay, I’m moving you up where they can see better. The standard raise… and I still don’t know why.”

She posed and talked with Mike in her mind. (“Feel anything?”)

(“I grok but not in fullness.’)

(“Look where I am looking, my brother. The small one. He quivers. He thirsts for me.”)