S. I don’t know. You’re telling me. O.K. I thought it was only to punish you. What about the ice cream?
G. It's all the same thing.
S. O.K. I’m understanding better. When you drop in the window, once your whole body, even your toes have passed through, that’s the end of being a man. And once you are walking, you are what . . . uncertain? . . . until you get fucked.
G. Then it’s all kinds of things, you know. The fucking is for being bad and for being what I am and for not being what lam...
S. I want to go back. You have dropped in. What are you then? You’re not sure. You pick up the thing. Do you get a little bit more sure, or does it stay the same?
G. Yeah, then, see, I ... if you saw me, you’d be con* fused. I don’t know.
S. But do I get less confused or do I stay equally confused from the minute you drop in until you get fucked? Isn’t there a changing in the degree of confusion? Don’t you get more like a woman as the time goes on?
G. Yeah.
S. When you walk into the ice cream . . .
G. But see, that’s not really fair.
S. Why?
G. Because I don’t know if that’s what I’m supposed to be: a woman.
S. Do you do it to become a woman?
G. Sure.
S. The craving is partly to become a woman when you want to steal?
G. To know . . . what I’m supposed to know about ... See, when I have it in my hand, I almost remember ... I can’t remember. I’ve tried so hard. I feel it in my breasts and in my—everything. Did you . . . when you were a kid did you ever go and catch pol-liwogs and keep them in ajar and then they got legs? A polliwog looks like I do. That’s what I really was, I was a polliwog. Before I lost my tail. When I was four and a half months old I was already too old, I was too old to keep on being whatever I was; it was too late then.
S. You’ve left something out. When you slide in the window, what happens immediately after you're in? What do you feel in your body?
G. It’s really very confusing ... If I didn’t wear the underwear, I wouldn’t be a woman when I had it in my hand. I don’t have any breasts when I go through the window. How can a man have breasts?
S. What happens to those things on your chest which are inside your brassiere as you go over the windowsill, whether you tell yourself they’re there or not? What happens to them? How do you keep from knowing they’re there?*
G. It isn’t a matter of knowing they’re there. Men don’t have breasts. I guess by not touching them or ... I guess I just ignore [disavowal? splitting? suppression? repression? What is the subjective experience these technical terms cannot quite capture?] them. I don’t remember knowing they’re there. It’s just not logical to have breasts when you’re a man. Why do you have to do anything if you know they’re not there?
S. Do you know what you are when you go through the window? What does it feel like?
G. It’s like getting into a warm, tight place.
S. When you go through the window, are you a man or are you a thing?
G. I was a man when I started to go in the window. I must be a thing, because I’m not anybody. Then it feels strong and good and ... I really do want to just be me. Do you know . . . when I was a patient here on the ward and they’d say, “You look confused” or “You sound confused” or I would say, "Oh, well, I’m confused about this”—that was all so irrelevant: there is no confusion like the confusion about not knowing whether you're real or not or what you are or . . . [My italics; she spoke softly.]
S. Let me go back for a moment. When you go out and wear a woman’s underwear, what do you do about that when you turn into a man?
G. The same thing I do with my breasts. But there must
*1 am trying here to comprehend the moment—the state of consciousness, the yearning for regression—when hysterical conversion
occurs.
be a part of me that knows it, because I know when I get in that house I need that underwear and I need those breasts.
S. Yes. But, before that, when you’re going through the window, you are an erect penis. Does that sound right? Yet it doesn’t do anything once it gets through the window. You know penises in a way I don’t. For you a penis can go away, and still you don’t get left with anything incomplete or complete. It’s enough just to be an erection. I guess that’s what you are: you are a phallus, which is different from a penis. A penis is something that really exists; a phallus is a symbol. And as you walk toward that house, you’ve got breasts and a belly and a vagina and a uterus out of which babies came. You—now listen to me because this is really grotesque, I mean you’re grotesque when you do that: a woman, a complete biological woman in her underwear is walking toward a house saying that she’s a prick, a penis, a phallus rather. It’s grotesque. That is, if you really want to be you, then you’ve got to be embarrassed [p. 182] . . . for having shown me that you, who are a woman, were a phallus. As you walk up the driveway to that house, you deny your self. How can you do that to yourself? The answer is: you have to. But how can you deprive yourself even during those few minutes? You’re not a phallus. Why do you want to cry?
G. I don’t know. Just because I’m relieved or something. [Silence.]
Next hour.
S. The thing you steal is the most real thing in the world, isn’t it? Nothing could be more solid and substantial. It’s just the right size. It isn’t a great thing . . . it’s little. Is it something female? [Shakes head yes.] Is it a feminine object always, something that a woman has? [Shakes head no.]
G. I don’t know. I was thinking of children’s things. The music box, a doll in a glass case, a little ... a picture of a mother and a child.
S. O.K. So the object has something to do with your relationship with your mother.
G. Oh, come on, leave my mother alone, will you? Leave me and my mother alone. I’m tired of my mother. I want nothing more to do with her. Why does it always have to be my mother? Why couldn’t it be my aunt or my grandmother or . . . You know my mother steals things too. [This has never come out before.] I guess everybody does that. No, I guess everybody doesn’t do it. She never goes to a restaurant or to a motel or any place without taking something . . . ash trays or something. Her house is full of shit that she’s stolen. We all steal. The whole family steals. My father used to steal . . . funny things, you know. One time he stole a truck of oranges—I’ll never forget that. I don’t know . . . [Chuckles] . . .
S. What have you stolen from your mother?
G. Nothing. Money. I stole money from her. Lots of times. (I’m going to go. I am. I don’t want to hear this bullshit. Let me put my boots on . . . and get out of here.) I never stole anything from my mother except money, and since that was the only thing she valued, that was very pertinent. (I’ve got a cramp in my toe again and it’s your fault.) I stole money. She would hide it. She would go through all these horrible rituals to keep me away from her money, and I always got it. She knew it was me. I can remember I was six or seven years old—this was the first time—and she sent me to the store to get bread and I lost the money. So she said, “You stole it.” And I said, “I didn’t,” and she said, “You did, and if you don’t tell me, I’m going to beat you”; so I said, “I did.”
S. And so you won.
G. Right.
S. And after that you tried to steal from her.
G. Right.
S. Because if she said you were going to steal, you might as well steal and get the fun of it.
G. My mother was always right. I stole it and stole it. And money was so precious to her: “Oh, my God!" A dime—you’d think her life depended on that dime —maybe it did, I don’t know. She had five kids she was trying to feed.
S. And what you stole [when entering homes] was nickels and dimes kind of stuff—isn’t that true?