Middlesex

Sing, Muse, how cunning Calliope wrote on that battered Smith Corona! Sing how the typewriter hummed and trembled at her psychiatric revelations! Sing of its two cartridges, one for typing and one for correcting, that so eloquently represented her predicament, poised between the print of genetics and the Wite-Out of surgery. Sing of the weird smell the typewriter gave off, like WD-40 and salami, and of the Day-Glo flower decal the last person who’d used it had applied, and of the broken F key, which stuck. On that newfangled but soon-to-be obsolete machine I wrote not so much like a kid from the Midwest as a minister’s daughter from Shropshire. I still have a copy of my psychological narrative somewhere. Luce published it in his collected works, omitting my name. “I would like to tell of my life,” it runs at one point, “and of the experiences that make myriad my joys and sorrows upon this planet we call Earth.” In describing my mother, I say, “Her beauty is the kind which seems to be thrown into relief by grief.” A few pages on there comes the subheading “Calumnies Caustic and Catty by Callie.” Half the time I wrote like bad George Eliot, the other half like bad Salinger. “If there’s one thing I hate it’s television.” Not true: I loved television! But on that Smith Corona I quickly discovered that telling the truth wasn’t nearly as much fun as making things up. I also knew that I was writing for an audience—Dr. Luce—and that if I seemed normal enough, he might send me back home. This explains the passages about my love of cats (“feline affection”), the pie recipes, and my deep feelings for nature.

Luce ate it all up. It’s true; I have to give credit where credit’s due. Luce was the first person to encourage my writing. Every night he read through what I had typed up during the day. He didn’t know, of course, that I was making up most of what I wrote, pretending to be the all-American daughter my parents wanted me to be. I fictionalized early “sex play” and later crushes on boys; I transferred my feeling for the Object onto Jerome and it was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies.

Luce was interested in the gender giveaways of my prose, of course. He measured my jouissance against my linearity. He picked up on my Victorian flourishes, my antique diction, my girls’ school propriety. These all weighed heavily in his final assessment.

There was also the diagnostic tool of pornography. One afternoon when I arrived for my session with Dr. Luce, there was a movie projector in his office. A screen had been set up before the bookcase, and the blinds drawn. In syrupy light Luce was feeding the celluloid through the sprocket wheel.

“Are you going to show me my dad’s movie again? From when I was little?”

“Today I’ve got something a little different,” said Luce.

I took up my customary position on the chaise, my arms folded behind me on the cowhide. Dr. Luce switched off the lights and soon the movie began.

It was about a pizza delivery girl. The title was, in fact, Annie Delivers to Your Door. In the first scene, Annie, wearing cutoffs and a midriff-revealing, Ellie-May blouse, gets out of her car before an oceanside house. She rings the bell. No one is at home. Not wanting the pizza to go to waste, she sits down next to the pool and begins to eat.

The production values were low. The pool boy, when he arrived, was badly lit. It was hard to hear what he was saying. But soon enough he was no longer saying anything. Annie had begun to remove her clothes. She was down on her knees. The pool boy was naked, too, and then they were on the steps, in the pool, on the diving board, pumping, writhing. I closed my eyes. I didn’t like the raw meat colors of the film. It wasn’t at all beautiful like the tiny paintings in Luce’s office.

In a straightforward voice Luce asked from the darkness, “Which one turns you on?”

“Excuse me?”

“Which one turns you on? The woman or the man?”

The true answer was neither. But truth would not do.

Sticking to my cover story, I managed to get out, very quietly, “The boy.”

“The pool boy? That’s good. I dig the pizza girl myself. She’s got a great bod.” A sheltered child once, from a reserved Presbyterian home, Luce was now liberated, free of antisexualism. “She’s got incredible tits,” he said. “You like her tits? Do they turn you on?”

“No.”

“The guy’s cock turns you on?”

I nodded, barely, wishing it would be over. But it was not over for a while yet. Annie had other pizzas to deliver. Luce wanted to watch each one.

Sometimes he brought other doctors to see me. A typical unveiling went as follows. I was summoned from my writing studio in the back of the Clinic. In Luce’s office two men in business suits were waiting. They stood when I came in. Luce made introductions. “Callie, I want to you meet Dr. Craig and Dr. Winters.”