“Again! Cursing again! All right!” Mrs. Potter told Penny the name and address. “Now go to work! Curse your head off! I’m your mother, but I just don’t care anymore! What have you got to say to that?”
“Fuck you!” Penny said distinctly and slammed the door. “Fuck you!”
CHAPTER SIX
Wails of shocked hysteria followed Penny down the stairs. They translated into protestations that Pennington P. Potter had never in his whole life spoken to his mother like that before. Nor was Penny accustomed to using such language to parents.
But there are limits. Penny had reached them with Mrs. Potter’s nagging. Still, once annoyance abated, there was a feeling of guilt.
This guilt rode the subway with Penny and mingled with the welter of other feelings stemming from the body-switch. The world awaited and Penny couldn’t help feeling trepidation at the prospect of facing it as a man for the first time. Small things marked the difference at first, but they were jarring.
The subway, for instance: As a girl—and an attractive girl to boot -- Penny was used to men standing aside when the car doors opened to allow her to board the train first. Men stepped back so that Penny might take the empty seat if there was one. If there wasn’t, quite often a man would rise and offer Penny his seat. A weary, questioning smile on Penny’s part almost always served to call forth such an offer. This was the sort of subway treatment an attractive girl took for granted.
Today was different — and traumatic. When the train pulled in the man beside Penny turned into a centipede of elbows and knees. Crunch! Penny’s foot was stepped on hard. Thwack! An elbow to the ribs. Hap! A shoulder snapped Penny’s head back. It was all done with the practiced skill of a lineman taking out the opposing tackle. By the time Penny recovered, the opposition had scored its goal and was firmly ensconced in the only available seat in the car.
Haughtily, with a withering 1ook——answered by a self satisfied smirk on the part of the man in the seat-—Penny marched past and kept going all the way to the other end of the car. There was a pleasant, mild-looking man seated there. He was just the kind of man who ordinarily would have offered Penny his seat. He glanced up; their eyes met; he returned his attention to his newspaper. There wasn’t even a glimmering of the expected sacrifice in his eyes.
Penny waited. After a while the man became aware of the eyes focused on him. It made him uneasy. He glanced up again. Body slumping wearily, Penny shot him a dazzling, questioning smile. The man started, looked to either side, shrugged and went back to his newspaper.
From habit, Penny persisted. Automatically, weight was shifted from one leg to the other and back again, a sequence of movements which made the hips roll in an extremely feminine manner. Now other people were looking up at the young fellow with the increasingly effeminate bearing. Eyebrows were raised and looks were exchanged. Not noticing, Penny continued trying to sway the seated man to relinquish his seat.
The train pulled in at the next station. Among those who boarded was an attractive girl who elected to stand just behind Penny. The girl latched onto a strap, slumped wearily and waited. Ill-at-ease, surreptitiously, the seated man looked up to see if that swishy fellow was still rolling his hips at him. His eyes met those of the strap-hanging girl. She shot him a sad, questioning smile. Her ample body wriggled insinuatingly as she switched hands on the strap.
The man fell all over himself folding his newspaper, tipping his hat and getting out of his seat. Penny, not having seen the girl, jumped to the wrong conclusion and moved in to fill the vacancy. The girl shot the man a surprised and injured look and he leaped to her defense.
“Move off, buddy,” he snarled at Penny.
“Huh?” Penny didn’t understand and kept trying to edge past to get to the seat.
“Of all the nerve!” The girl spoke up.
“Dese fruits is really takin’ over!” A tough-looking man across the aisle put in his two cents. “Whyncha belt ’im one?”
Encouraged, the meek-looking man put the flat of his hand against Penny’s chest and pushed. “I got up to give my seat to the lady, buddy. Now why don’t you just tiptoe away and let her have it?”
A sudden realization of the situation turned Penny’s cheeks red. Unfortunately, it also made Penny’s voice rise shrilly. “I’m sorry. I thought you were offering me the seat. I didn’t see—”
“I was reading in Good Housekeeping the other day where the feminization of the American male is assuming the dimensions of a national problem worse even than riots,” a lady standing nearby said loudly and pointedly to her companion.
“I can certainly believe it,” the other lady replied. “Why, it’s getting so bad you even trip all over them in the subways!” She shot Penny an openly hostile glance.
Just then the train pulled into the next station and the doors opened. Brick-red, feeling the stares like darts piercing flesh, Penny dived out of the car. A slender young man followed close behind.
“They just won’t let us live, will they, sweetie?” The slender young man’s voice was a murmur in Penny’s ear as the train pulled out.
“Huh? What did you say?” Penny was still flustered.
“I saw the way they treated you and it’s a damn shame. They have no sensitivity, none of them. And no tolerance either. But our day is coming. And soon too. But we have to stick together to make it come.” He tittered. “Oh, aren’t these double entendres just awful, sweetie? Well, anyway, in unity there is strength. So, if you’re interested—” He handed Penny a leaflet.
“What’s this?”
“Read it.”
Penny read it. “Homosexuals of the World, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Chinos!” it announced in heavy black type. Beneath these words, in smaller type, was a notice of a meeting to be held that evening.
“Do come, sweetie,” the young man urged Penny.
“Uh . . . I don’t know.”
“Well, I could be more convincing.” The young man patted Penny’s behind lingeringly and moved off toward the entrance to the subway men’s room. “Want to see for yourself?” he cooed.
Head shaking a violent “no,” Penny bolted toward the opening doors of the train which had just arrived at the platform. The last Penny saw of the young man was a wistful glance as the doors closed again. The rest of the ride was uneventful.
Still, it was with a sense of relief that Penny entered the premises of the Fuller Lawn Manure Co., crossed to the door marked “COMPTROLLER” and closed it to insure privacy. The incident on the subway had been jarring. Once alone, Penny was struck by the realization that jarring incidents affected male kidneys. Once again Penny faced the trauma of the bathroom. Only this time there was no Mrs. Potter to take things in hand.
Well, it had to be faced up to alone sooner or later. Head held high, Penny sailed out the door and down the hall—to the ladies’ room!
Hell, when you’ve been going into ladies’ rooms all your life, the question of choice simply never arises. It was as natural for Penny to go into the ladies’ room under such circumstances as it would have been for LBJ to go through the door marked “HAWKS.” Gender, like they say backstage at the Jewel Box Revue, is a state of mind. So Penny sailed into the ladies’ room. . . .
“YIII!” The female scream bounced off the tile walls at the sight of Penny. Then it died out as Clytemnestra Hodgkiss raised her eyes from the unexpected sight of male trousers invading the sacrosanct premises and focused on the startled face above them. “Penny! What are you doing here? I mean, the stockroom is one thing, but this is something else again. Suppose one of the other girls comes in and finds you here! How could we ever explain it?”
“It would be difficult, huh?” Penny hazarded a guess.