Queenie

by Hortense Calisher

“So do we,” I say earnestly. “That’s why he’s in our basement.”

  Cutch flips me a look. Nix. Nix on the amity. And of course he’s right. “No Ma’am,” he says, “you can’t agree with me. I can’t allow that.”

  “Daughter,” she says, “who is this grand duke you’ve got here?”

  Oomph ignores her. “Din-din, Cutchy. Stop being a walking wounded. Let’s go.”

  But he’s weaving over Mrs. O. and on his toes now, into his song and dance; how high he is will come out in the rhetoric. “You mentioned money, Ma’am,” he says. “And I’ll eat on it. Because I was born eating. But our agreement stops right there. So don’t appropriate me. I was born eating free.”

  He was born like the rest of us. But he is carving out his doctrine with his bod. In our basement. Or the college’s.

  And Mrs. O. doesn’t get it; he doesn’t expect her to. He expects her not to.

  Sherry says, “I’m feeling terribly depressed. Think I’ll stay here and look around a bit.” Her put-on is so near the surface it’s almost her. But she knows that.

  Oomph says, “Come on, nymph. There’s always somebody at the Chinese restaurant.”

  What’s her put-on?—to be ice cold, I think. And to tell us ours?

  “Nymph!” Mrs. O. says through her nostrils and arching herself—maybe to remind us in the fifties she was one, once. And is still at her same weight. She flops in on herself for a mo, thinking, all hollow and tubercular. Then she says in her best high altitude maternity voice, “Where is this man Werner to be found?”

  Nobody answers her.

  A nymph is not the same as leading with your bod. Our night watches have discussed that. A nymph does it for herself and her own hang-ups. Which is why Sherry knows she is borderline.

  Meanwhile Mrs. O. is taking us all in as if she never saw us before. In the way that makes you take in yourself. And not like it, if she has anything to do with it. Tell her she doesn’t have anything to do with it though; she’ll collapse. Why else is she hanging around? Counting for something with us is her put-on.

  She says exhausted, “What is it you people really dig?”

  We look at each other. It’s kind of a pure moment for us. She has her uses.

  Oomph looks at Cutch almost tenderly. “He wants to walk with the wounded.”

  Sherry makes his speech for him. Longer than she could ever do for herself. She even stands up for it. She looks like La Belle France somebody smeared a mustache on. “His granpappy fought to save the Western world for us. His pappy in World War Two just saved his world. We have news for you.” She says it very softly. “We don’t save. Not anything.”

  I say, “He’ll eat you. But you won’t agree with him.”

  He’s our white plume.

  Mrs. O. says, “Oona, are you coming to lunch?”

  Cutch takes Oomph’s hand at once; he knows she hates her true name—for describing her even before she gets to you. Her mission in life is to describe herself. Oomph takes Sherry’s hand, to say sorry for calling her nymph. Sherry grabs mine, because she’s so proud of herself for acting real. I take Cutchy’s because it’s the rhythm to, and because I deeply admire him for being so colorful.

  And there we are—solidarity! E pluribus unum. We are describing ourselves. O happy, that’s what I’m learning here. Put your put-ons together, and they’ll hold you up.

  Mrs. O. stomps out alone, saying, “I will not go to lunch with anybody holding an axe.”

  Well, you know the old; they’re a value judgment for us.

  So we go down to the cellar and have some wheat. The rest of the afternoon we spend making a huge sign for over the archway Cutch hacked out between our two rooms; it looks wonderful there. Black paint on the red top of the receptionist’s desk we snitched during her lunch hour, WE DON’T SAVE. One of the Indiana girls wanders in. “What does it mean?” she says.

  Anyone who has to ask will never know.

  I am hoping I can live up to it. To all of my education.

  “Cutchy,” I say, “did your parents want you? Were you a wanted child?”

  I already know about Sherry and Oomph. Their parents wanted them like crazy. And got them, Oomph always says with a grin.

  “Queenie has a hang-up, she’s always asking,” she says now. She loves my background. And assumes I don’t.

  I let her. My motto is: Keep research dark.

  “Cutchy, were you?” I say.

  It’s a temptation they can never resist, albino or not; it’s sad.

  “Sure they did, sure was,” he says proudly. “I was the most wanted boy in Plainfield, New Jersey.”

  I am not surprised.

  And it’s all only fifty blocks from home.

  Dr. Werner, maybe I’m writing this paper for you!

  Maybe it’ll help you with your put-ons. And you can tell the rest of the departments. Sociologically.

  Oh, Dr. Werner, I have so much to thank you for. And so many new words to do it in.

  Sociologically, college is simple, these days. And biologically. It’s the end of the secret life. For any person who already had one to start with. Some kids, like those Indianans, arrive here without one, and will probably stay that way. But for the rest of us, the secret life—when it’s out in the open—is very different.

  Dr. Werner, you’re one guy to appreciate that; it’s right in your field. First day of class, when you define your subject, I feel that. When you say political science isn’t a science, and it isn’t even politics, I think okay, there’s the put-on, now can he parlay? And when you never go on to say what it is, I sit right up. And say to myself, “Queenie, this guy shares your interest in the shiftiness of life. He may even be an expert on it.” After our conference, I am sure of it. I rush back to the girls—I mean my roommates—and say, “Whoever said the faculty isn’t teachable? He’s very interested in things that aren’t what they are!”

  Sherry says, “Werner sure has the fault of being a looker.” Gloomily.

  Oomph says, “Come on, Queenie, freshmen don’t have to settle for faculty. Leave that till we’re seniors and shaky. Sherry, why didn’t the kid tell us she was only holding back for somebody bright?”

  What with the openness of life here, they can’t help knowing I’ve been holding back. And with Cutchy always available. I can only hope they haven’t caught on how far back.

  So I daren’t refuse the orgy routine. Not even if I had wanted to.

  Way it happens, Sherry gets a telegram from her father, volunteering to pay for an apartment, if she and Cutchy want to shack up.

  Oomph says, “Obviously, when he was our age they never thought of fucking without first thinking of a place for it. I call that rather sweet.”

  He didn’t mention marriage though, I note. Wait till I tell my aunt, how the dirty bourgeoisie is closing in. When she and Oscar get back from Palm Beach. She didn’t wear her diamonds down; they hocked them to get there.

  I say, “Why’d your father pick on Cutchy?”

  Sherry says, “He’s the one he saw.”

  Oomph says, “Why a telegram?”

  Sherry explains those can go on the expense account.

  Cutch, who is on the floor practicing perfect repose, says, “Could the apartment?” If he could bring his wheat, he says, he would be willing to go. She could still pay for the milk. He knows a neighborhood where it’s still a penny cheaper a quart.

  “Pretty thrifty,” I say. “Watch out for Plainfield.”

  Cutch says, “You sound just like her.”

  Both of them swivel. “Which?”

  “We’re all sounding alike,” I say. “I’ve noticed that.”

  We all three turn on Cutchy. “What about you?”

  Then we all three giggle. He has a plummy, furry voice which gets to a girl. To the two of them. I just pay for the wheat.

  Cutch says, “Day that happens, I better move.” He’s testing us. He’s not as secure as he acts. Who could be?

  We reassure him we c
an’t do without him, but he’s still doubtful. “Her father’s willing for me, there must be something wrong with me.” Cutchy walks a very pure path.

  Oomph says, “Don’t you know the good old parents will do anything to establish us with a guy? Any one guy.” Oomph reassures better than anybody. “That way, they count on saving us from the orgies.”

  Sherry says, “I can’t convince Dad I like it one by one.”

  “Orgies——” I say carefully, “I’ve never been to one.

  All I know about them is from English thirty-six. De Sade. We have him for his relevance to modern thought.” While I good old Ffolliott speaks to the middle distance beyond us forty pair of panty hose lolling in front of him. “F-folly salivates. Very fuh-Frenchily.”

  “He dropped one eff when he was an instructor,” Cutch says. “Put it back when he got his doctorate.” He doesn’t look at me; he is rubbing his axe with emery and oil. Oomph takes out her worry beads and nibbles on them. They’re for men and hippies, and to swing not to suck, but she says any pacifier in a pinch. Sherry takes out her hand mirror and practices her tic, to show to her shrink. Nobody looks at me. At college, even among friends it’s very daring to confess you don’t do something. Particularly in this field.

  I still find confession very comforting, Dr. Werner. Better than beads and tics, or even axes. Even though after nine weeks here I don’t believe in God anymore, except when I go home. Everywhere else, He has let the world go hang. But the old habit still gets to me. As a monsignor once said to me, for me it is a perfect release of bad faith.

  While what you don’t confess to can remain on the Q.T. Especially among friends.

  “Orgies,” says Oomph, spitting her beads out at me. “I thought you.”

  Sherry takes her left foot out of its sneaker, rubs it on the floor until the sole is black, and looks at it. This is her real tic, which she doesn’t know. “Oomphie. I thought you.”

  Then we bust out laughing. And that’s how we decide to go on one.

  Cutch won’t. Or not with us. For us, he disapproves hotly. As a retired orgiast.

  Sherry says, “It’s all very easy to disapprove of something for somebody else, after you’ve done it.”

  “I’m just telling you,” he says, very upset; he has put down his axe. Very Eagle Scout of course, in the wedge it lives in; he wouldn’t hurt a flea with it, not even an old one. “Dig, what if you three find out you even fuck alike?”

  Oomph strikes her forehead, sensitively. “That word. That effing word.”

  I say, “We could try spelling it with two effs.”

  Sherry says maybe we can think of a synonym while we’re doing it.

  After which Cutch, as a protest, pays for his own milk four days running. He walks a very pure path.

  It takes us that long, anyway, to find out where the compatible orgies are. Not that we’re snobs—but on campus the computer-dating frame of mind is still very prevalent. It’s not the VD we’re afraid of, it’s the personality quotient. Like finding the right coffeehouse for instance; you don’t pick your mind mates just anywhere. Or like on the barricades, you would want to protest with the right people.

  The same goes for when you hunt for a group grope. You want to be in a rather selective frame of mind.

  What you do, Dr. Werner, is get on the right mailing list. For hot news on fuck-ins. Frankly, the word “orgy” is out, even for your age group….For the ones who keep themselves up, that is, which with your teeth and waistline, you certainly are. Plus the way some of the seniors say you are hung. Why, you could fake down your age group ten years, they say—if you would consider not trimming your beard….

  Anyway, you’re sure to find your level somewhere among all these newsletters circulating Manhattan. And even the boroughs! We even find one for Sherry’s father’s life style, which she right off mails to him….I may even find one to include for you, by the time I finish this. Who knows, in another nine weeks of education, maybe I could fake my age group ten years up?…

  Meanwhile, here are all these dope sheets whizzing across the island; Ivy League to underground, it’s a new form of unity.

  “And class destruction,” Oomph says. “The City University registration can park its carcass right on the Park Avenue slopes.”

  I say, “And in groups. Which Doctor Werner tells us anything done that way tends to have more significance.”

  Sherry says, “And think how healthy! Because when you get right down to it, a fuck-in has nothing to do with dope.”

  Some do, of course. But a fuck-in can relate to anything.

  For, in only four days of research—which is why I cut conference last week—we turn up tip sheets for every gender. Or like classified by intended profession even. Even for members of Mensa, that superior IQ society you would think cubical chess would be enough for, but it isn’t. You can select from informal neighborhood arrangements down to very black-tie; there is even one hall that advertises itself strictly for exhibitionists. But basically, the basic human idea remains undefiled.

  I’m a little depressed by one bulletin, set in antique type, which has already latched onto my two effs. But Cutch advises give up the struggle to be original while you’re being educated; he’s in touch with any number of boys living in college basements; any day one of them will latch onto his axe.

  “You three plotting your pub crawl?” he says, and I admit it’s all set. We are both mournful.

  The night we go, he oozes up the stairs to watch us get ready; we are having trouble over what to wear. So would he, we tell him, if he were facing first a ballet grope—which we’ve picked as likely to be limber, then an art grope—because we are all three in the Appreciation course, and finally one from a leaflet called Rabble, which we hear gets the really exclusive activist trade.

  “Skin’s always in,” Cutch says.

  “Not on the subway,” Oomph says. “Which is all we can afford on an itinerary like ours.” And has our cozy furnace room made him forget it’s still winter?

  Sherry explains that since we are unknowns, we want to make a good showing. “Fur coats over nothing is too much like those call-girl jokes. Besides, we don’t all have the coats.”

  I suggest, “Why not go as we are? With maybe a few mad touches.”

  So soon, there we are:

  A leotard under a poncho—to which Oomph adds her mother’s Indonesian silver evening bag in the shape of a cat—to carry our addresses in.

  A body shirt under a ski sweater with matching high socks, which gives me the idea of the ski pole; we’ll be in some rough neighborhoods.

  Sherry has already washed her hair and let it out to sit on—which means nerves. And she is wearing blue jeans. Which means God knows what new insight. But at the last minute, she adds her old suede shorts.

  When Cutch sees this, he volunteers as bodyguard.

  “Don’t be divisive,” Oomph says. She wants to conceal from him tonight is just a tour. Unless we’re taken by surprise, Oomph says, or enthusiasm, Sherry says—we’re not yet really planning to connect.

  And, Dr. Werner, do you know we have trouble! Touring, I mean. That first night’s a fizzle; we might as well be selling encyclopedias. Half those bulletins must’ve been put-ons; the rest give the wrong address or the party has moved; we even go to Queens. Queens Boulevard, when it’s snowing! Those doormen don’t even know the number of the high-rise across the way, much less which of their own tenants is having a “community skin-in for all sociables.” Which is the term the regional letter has advised.

  “We’ve been had,” our leader decides. “Or is this some jokester’s idea of it?”

  Sherry grumbles it is far easier to connect one by one. She only brightens when I remind her of the address on the tip she sent her father—in back of the bandstand in the ball park, on the other side of Old Lyme.

  I do not have to be consoled.

  And in the end, turns out we freshmen just take the printed word too seriously. Everything worthwhile
here goes by word of mouth. Plus a corner of the gym bulletin board the Phys. Ed. people haven’t caught onto. Bottom right.

  For the faculty though, maybe I better describe what even a swinger like you might be up against. Because an orgy isn’t just an orgy these days, Dr. Werner. Which is why I thought you would be interested.

  Dr. Werner, orgies are not what they were. Or not like in English 36.

  No masochism to speak of, absolutely no bullwhips—at least not in the college crowd.

  And nothing in Latin anymore, which kind of disappoints Oomph who had six years of it.

  But all those ploys can get along without it, believe me; as Sherry reminds her, you don’t have to know the name of what you are doing.

  Nature’s what’s in; we’re young and we have a lot of it.

  Unless you have a real hang-up; well these days, hangups are sacred anywhere.

  But most of all—the trend in our orgies is to the affirmative.

  If you could just take the message back, Dr. Werner. Oomph says it best:

  We’re not out to destroy everything destructively. We’re out to fuck the world in a positive way.

  Sound minds in sound bodies, and all together! Put your bod on the line for the universe.

  Or at least for the improval of local government.

  Ideally, every fuck-in is a creative thing.

  But the night I want to describe to you in detail is the night I go into politics.

  By this time, which is shortly, only Oomph and I try to make the route; Sherry has momentarily dropped out. She’s always going off in a corner with just one guy anyway, leaving us open to “Who’s your snooty friend?” Her alibi being, she makes more progress toward reality like that. And now she has got there, in a wild oat sort of way; her father is sending her to Puerto Rico for a short vacation with clinical confrontation—she’s preg.

  Which, even if you don’t know who by, is a serious moment for your female friends.

  “We go out Saturday night——” Oomph says “——I want it to be someplace with meaning.”

  And I feel the same.

  We’ve already copped out quick from the Phys. Ed. secret program. Too many push-ups—and too many big, well-coordinated girls. A fast rebound to a French-conversation grope hasn’t done much for us either. Endless prelims, which Oomph got impatient with, and I knew the French was terrible.