John Irving - In One Person

“Hi, Gee,” I said. “Is Manfred here? Are we ready?”

“No—we still don’t have our Tybalt,” Gee told me. “But I have a question. It’s about act one, scene five—it’s the very first thing I say, when the Nurse tells me Romeo is a Montague. You know, when I learn I’m in love with the son of my enemy—it’s that couplet.”

“What about it?” I asked her; she was stalling for us both, I could see. We wanted Manfred to arrive. Where was my easily outraged Tybalt when I needed him?

“I don’t think I should sound sorry for myself,” Gee continued. “I don’t think of Juliet as self-pitying.”

“No, she’s not,” I said. “Juliet may sound fatalistic—at times—but she shouldn’t sound self-pitying.”

“Okay—let me say it,” Gee said. “I think I’ve got it—I’m just saying it as it is, but I’m not complaining about it.”

“This is my Juliet,” I told young Kittredge. “My best girl, Gee. Okay,” I said to Gee, “let’s hear it.”

“‘My only love sprung from my only hate! / Too early seen unknown, and known too late!’” my Juliet said.

“That couldn’t be better, Gee,” I told her, but young Kittredge was just staring at her; I couldn’t tell if he admired her or suspected her.

“What kind of name is Gee ?” Kittredge’s son asked her. I could see that my best girl’s confidence was a little shaken; here was a handsome, rather worldly-looking man—someone not from our Favorite River community, where Gee had earned our respect and had developed much confidence in herself as a woman . I could see that Gee was doubting herself. I knew what she was thinking—in young Kittredge’s presence, and under his intimidating scrutiny. Do I look passable ? Gee was wondering.

“Gee is just a made-up name,” the young girl evasively told him.

“What’s your real name?” Kittredge’s son asked her.

“I was George Montgomery, at birth. I’m going to be Georgia Montgomery later,” Gee told him. “Right now, I’m just Gee. I’m a boy who’s becoming a girl—I’m in transition, ” my Juliet said to young Kittredge.

“That couldn’t be better, Gee,” I told her again. “I think you said that perfectly.”

One glance at Kittredge’s son told me: He’d had no idea that Gee was a work-in-progress; he hadn’t known she was a transgender kid, on her brave way to becoming a woman. One glance at Gee told me that she knew she’d been passable; I think that gave my Juliet a ton of confidence. I realize now that if Kittredge’s son had said anything disrespectful to Gee, I would have tried to kill him.

At that moment, Manfred arrived. “The wrestler is here!” someone shouted—my Mercutio, maybe, or it might have been my gay Benvolio.

“We have our Tybalt!” my strong Nurse called to Gee and me.

“Ah, at last,” I said. “We’re ready.”

Gee was running toward the stage—as if her next life depended on starting this delayed rehearsal. “Good luck—break a leg,” young Kittredge called after her. Just like his father—you couldn’t read his tone of voice. Was he being sincere or sarcastic?

I could see that my most assertive Nurse had pulled Manfred aside. No doubt, she was filling the hot-tempered Tybalt in—she wanted “the wrestler” to know there was a potential problem, a creep (as she’d called young Kittredge) in the audience. I was ushering Kittredge’s son to an aisle between the horseshoe-shaped seats, just accompanying the young man to the nearest exit, when Manfred presented himself in the aisle—as ready for a fight as Tybalt ever was.

When Manfred wanted to speak privately to me, he always spoke in German; he knew I’d lived in Vienna and could still speak a little German, albeit badly. Manfred politely asked if there was anything he could do to help me—in German.

Fucking wrestlers ! I saw that my Tybalt had lost half his mustache; they’d had to shave one side of his lip before they gave him the stitches! (Manfred would have to shave the other half of his lip before we were in performance; I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a Tybalt with only half a mustache.)

“Your German is pretty good,” young Kittredge, sounding surprised, said to Manfred.

“It ought to be—I’m German,” Manfred told him aggressively, in English.

“This is my Tybalt. He’s also a wrestler, like your father,” I said to Kittredge’s son. They shook hands a little tentatively. “I’ll be right there, Manfred—you can wait onstage for me. Nice lip,” I told him, as he was going down the aisle to the stage.

Young Kittredge reluctantly shook my hand at the exit door. He was still agitated; he’d had more to say, but—in at least one way—he was not like his father. Whatever one thinks of Kittredge, I can tell you this: He was a cruel fucker, but he was a fighter. The son, whether he had wrestled or not, needed just one look at Manfred; Kittredge’s son was no fighter.

“Look, here it is—I just have to say this,” young Kittredge said; he almost couldn’t look at me. “I don’t know you, I admit—I don’t have a clue who my father really was, either. But I’ve read all your books, and I know what you do—I mean, in your writing . You make all these sexual extremes seem normal—that’s what you do. Like Gee, that girl, or whatever she is—or what she’s becoming . You create these characters who are so sexually ‘different,’ as you might call them—or ‘fucked up,’ which is what I would call them—and then you expect us to sympathize with them, or feel sorry for them, or something.”

“Yes, that’s more or less what I do,” I told him.

“But so much of what you describe is not natural !” Kittredge’s son cried. “I mean, I know what you are —not only from your writing. I’ve read what you say about yourself, in interviews. What you are isn’t natural —you aren’t normal !”

He’d held his voice down when he was talking about Gee—I’ll give him credit for that—but now Kittredge’s son had raised his voice again. I knew that my stage manager—not to mention the entire cast for Romeo and Juliet —could hear every word. It was suddenly so quiet in our little black-box theater; I swear you could have heard a stage mouse fart.

“You’re bisexual, aren’t you?” Kittredge’s son then asked me. “Do you think that’s normal, or natural—or sympathetic ? You’re a switch-hitter !” he said, opening the exit door; thank goodness, everyone could see he was finally leaving.

“My dear boy,” I said sharply to young Kittredge, in what has become my lifelong imitation of the way Miss Frost so pointedly and thrillingly spoke to me.

“My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me—don’t make me a category before you get to know me!” Miss Frost had said to me; I’ve never forgotten it. Is it any wonder that this was what I said to young Kittredge, the cocksure son of my old nemesis and forbidden love?

Jamey Bradbury

Rob Buyea

David Calicchio

Dean Cooke

Emily Copeland

Peter Delacorte

David Ebershoff

Amy Edelman

Marie-Anne Esquivié

Paul Fedorko

Vicente Molina Foix

Rodrigo Fresán

Ruth Geiger

Ron Hansen

Sheila Heffernon

Alan Hergott

Everett Irving

Janet Turnbull Irving

Josée Kamoun

Jonathan Karp

Katie Kelley

Rick Kelley

Kate Medina

Jan Morris

Anna von Planta

David Rowland