“Yes, that sounds like Eunice. She was tolerant of people’s frailties.”
“My point is that, Eunice being the age she was, she was certain to be indifferent to—perhaps I should say ‘understanding about’—what Johann thought of as ‘perversities.’ But here’s what I’m getting at, Jake; I find Winnie sexually attractive. I also find Alec Train and Judge McCampbell sexually attractive. Startled me. And you—which did not startle me. But today was the first time I have been thoroughly kissed by very male men. And I liked it. Shook me.” (How about dear Doctor?) (None of your lip, sweet lips—we don’t tell Jake that one.)
Joan Eunice went on, “There is my dilemma. Which tune am I being homosexual? With Winnie? Or with you three very male bulls?”
“Joan, you ask the damnedest questions.”
“Because I’m in the damnedest situation a man ever found himself in. I’m not the ordinary sex change of a homo who gets surgery and hormone shots to tailor his male body into fake female. I’m not even a mixed-up XXY or an XYY. This body is a normal female XX. But the brain in it has had a man’s canalization and many years of enthusiastic male sex experience. So tell me, Jake, which time am I being normal, and which time perverse?”
“Uh . . . I’m forced to say that your female body controls.”
“But does it? Psychologists claim that sexual desire and orgasm take place in the brain—not in the genitals. My brain is XY.”
“I think you are trying to confuse the witness.”
“No, Jake, I’m the one who is confused. But possibly not as confused as the young people today. You know they claim to have six sexes.”
“Heard of it. Nonsense.”
“Not entirely. I’ve been doing lots of reading during my de-facto house arrest, trying to find out who I am, what I am, how I should behave. They label these so-called sexes both by behavior and physiology, with a new school of psychology—when wasn’t there a new one?—to account for them. The six are ortho-male, ortho-female, ambi-male, ambi-female, homo-male, homo-female—and some list a seventh, the solos or narcissists. Even an eighth, the non-sex, the neuters, both physical and psychological.”
“And I say it’s nonsense.”
“I do, too, but not for the same reason. From my unique experience, embracing both physiological sexes directly and not by hearsay, I say there is just one sex. Sex. SEX! Some people have so little sexual drive that they might as well be neuters no matter whether they are concave or convex. Some people have very strong sexual natures—and again the shape of the body doesn’t figure. Such as my former self, horny long after sex had abandoned me. Such as you, darling—taking a lovely young married woman less than half your age as your mistress. Such as Eunice—happily married at home, I think—”
“Yes, she was. I felt guilty about it.”
“But not too guilty to share her riches. Jake, I wouldn’t speak to you if you had scorned her. I was about to name Eunice as my third example of a person strongly sexed. Enough sexual drive in her body—I know!—for anything. Enough love in her heart—I feel certain—for any number.
I know she loved me, even though she was- too warmly empathic to mock me by offering me what I could not accept—and did give me, lavishly, the only thing I could accept—her beauty, for my eyes. Jake, I think Eunice was limited in her love only by time. She kept you happy—”
“She certainly did!”
“I’m just as certain she did so without depriving her husband. Jake, do you have reason to believe that she limited herself to you—and her husband?”
“Uh— Damn you, Johann! I don’t know. But I don’t think she had time. Uh, I used up all the sneak-out time she could manage.”
(Look, Boss, I’ll tell you about every time I struck a blow for equal rights. Don’t pester Jake.) (You’re missing the point, Eunice. I’m forcing Jake to move Saint Eunice off her pedestal—that’s the only way we’ll ever get him.)
“How do you know? Can you be sure she didn’t tell you the same sort of little white lies she told her husband? For that matter, Jake, Joe may have been as proud of his antlers as an old buck deer—the percentage of husbands who are pleased by their wives’ adulteries has been climbing steadily in this country at least since nineteen-fifty—see any of the kinseys. That he loved her we both are certain. That does not prove he tried to keep her in a cage. Or wanted to.”