“Have you seen what’s moving in next door?” Julie asks.
“I met him. Big, blond… his name is Dave.”
“Chiseled features,” says Julie. “That’s what you call those. And he’s not the only one. There’s a little dark one, too, and a couple of brothers who haven’t arrived yet.”
Four of them. And four women inside Linda’s own apartment. There seems to Linda to be a certain inescapable logic at work here. She pictures a quadruple wedding (where she is the only one technically entitled to wear white, but no one need know this) and then life in a cozy suburban quadruplex. It is only with some effort that Linda remembers that Dave did not really seem to be her type, being unquestionably more attractive than she is. “Not my type” is the designation Linda applies to men who pay no attention to her. It is an infinite set. Those few men who are Linda’s type she invariably dislikes. She drinks her milk and makes the realistic decision to forget Dave forever. They’ll always have their elevator ride….
• • •
WELCOME TO Comparative Romance I. You have just experienced the Initial Encounter. The point of view is female: We shall be sticking to this perspective through most of this term. And we shall access only one mind at a time. This gives a more accurate sense of what it would be like to be an actual participant. It is not uncommon for those inexperienced in the process of absorption to have an uncomfortable reaction. Is anyone feeling at all queasy? Claustrophobic? No? Good.
Then let me make a few quick points about the Encounter and we will return. You must remember, owing to the time required by Transmission and Processing, that these events are not current. We are involved here in a historical romance. The location is the city of Berkeley, before its secession. The year, according to local calculation, is 1969, a time thought by some to have been critical in the evolution of male/female relationships. Can anyone here provide a context?
Very good. In addition to the war, the assassinations, and the riots, we have a women’s movement which is just becoming militant again. We have many women who are still a little uncomfortable about this. “I believe in equal rights for women, but I’m not a feminist,” is the proper feminine dogma at this time. To call oneself a feminist is to admit to being ugly. Most women are reluctant to do this. Particularly on the West Coast.
Are there any questions? If not, let’s locate ourselves and Linda at Encounter Number Two. Are we all ready?
Well?
I’m taking that as an affirmative.
• • •
LINDA MEETS DAVE again the next morning on the stairs. He is returning from campus and invites her in for a cup of coffee in exchange for her advice in choosing classes. She is on her way to the library but decides it would be more educational to see the inside of apartment 201. She has an anthropological curiosity about men living together. What do they eat? Who does the dishes? Who cleans the toilets? Her hands are cold so she sticks them into the opposite cuffs of her sweater sleeves as she follows Dave back up the stairs.
Her first impression is that the male sex is much neater than the sex to which she belongs herself. Everything has already been unpacked. There are pictures on the walls, tasteful pictures, a small print of Rembrandt’s thoughtful knight, the gold in the helmet echoing the tones of the shag carpet, a bird’s-eye view of the Crucifixion, a bus poster which reads WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT DOPE? The dishes all match; the avocado Formica has been sponged so recently it is still wet.
Linda is so busy collecting data she forgets to tell Dave she doesn’t really want coffee. He hands her a steaming cup and she notices with dismay that he has not even left her room to soften the taste with milk. She uses the cup to warm her hands, smells it tentatively. “Did you know,” she asks him, “that in Sweden they have a variation on our bag ladies they call ‘coffee bitches’? These are supposed to be women who’ve gone mad from drinking too much coffee. It gives you a whole new perspective on Mrs. Olsen, doesn’t it?”
She hears a key turning in the door. “Kenneth,” says Dave, and Kenneth joins them in the kitchen, his face a little flushed from the cold air, his eyes dark and intense. Kenneth gives Linda the impression of being somehow concentrated, as if too much energy has been packed into too small a package.
“This is Linda,” Dave tells Kenneth.
“Hello, Linda,” Kenneth says. He starts moving the clean dishes out of the drainer and onto the shelves. “I love this place.” He gestures expansively with a plastic tumbler. “We were right to come here. I told you so.” He is sorting the silverware. “I’ve been over at Sproul, what — half an hour? And in that time I got hit with a Frisbee, someone tried to sign me into the Sexual Freedom League, I listened to this whole debate on the merits of burning New York City to the ground, and a girl came up out of nowhere and kissed me. This is a great place.”
“What was the pro side of burning New York?” asked Dave. “I’ve got relatives there.”
“No more blackouts.” Kenneth puts a coffee cup away, then takes it out again immediately. Linda sees her chance.
“Take mine,” she urges. “I haven’t touched it. Really.” She gives Dave an apologetic smile. “Sorry. I meant to tell you before you poured. I hate coffee.”
“It’s okay,” he says evenly. “I’ll never ask you over for coffee again.” He turns to Kenneth. “Tell Linda what happened last night.”
“Oh, God.” Kenneth takes Linda’s coffee and sips at it. He settles into the chair next to her, leaning back on two legs. Linda decides she is attracted to him as well. She looks away from him. “Last night,” he begins, “this guy came to our door looking for a friend of his named Jim Harper. I said we were new to the building, but I didn’t think there was a Jim Harper here.”
“I don’t know a Jim Harper,” Linda says. “In fact, you’re practically the only men. Except for—”
“So he says Jim Harper might be living under an alias and have we seen any little brown guys around. I say, ‘Is he a Negro?’ and he says, ‘No, he’s just a little brown guy.’”
“So,” Dave finishes, “Ken tells him we’ll set out some snares tonight and let him know in the morning if we’ve caught anything. Who are the other men in the building? Are they little and brown?”
“There’s only one. Dudley Petersen. And no. He’s middle-aged, middle-sized, medium coloring. We think he’s a CIA agent, because he’s so cunningly nondescript and he won’t tell us what he does.”
“You could live your whole life in Santa Barbara without anyone coming to your door looking for small, brown men,” Kenneth tells Linda. “I love this place.”
Linda does not respond. She is thinking about Dudley. Last summer he’d gone to Hawaii for two weeks — on vacation, he said, but she wasn’t born yesterday. She knows a Pacific Rim assignment when she sees one. He’d asked her to water his ferns. Apparently she’d been overzealous. She wouldn’t have thought it possible to overwater a fern. There’d been bad feelings on his return. But while she had access to his apartment she’d found a shelf of pornographic books. Quite by accident. She’d brought them downstairs and shared them with her roommates. Really funny stuff — they’d taken turns reading it aloud: “He had the largest hands Cybelle had ever seen.”… “‘No,’ she moaned. ‘No.’ Or was she saying ‘More. More?’”… “Her silken breasts swelled as he stroked them. She drew his head down until his mouth brushed the nipples.”
It all reminded her of an article the Chronicle had once run in the women’s section. An expert in female psychology (an obscure branch of the larger field) had argued that small-breasted women were using their bodies to repress and reject their femininity because they would rather be men. Under hypnosis, with the help of a trained professional, these women could come to accept themselves as women and their breasts would grow. This happy result had been documented in at least three cases.