1982 Janine

by Alasdair Gray

  “She certainly isn’t hiding anything.”

  The other says, “Will I make sure of that?”

  “Yeah. Take your time.”

  And although Superb wriggles, curses and spits, strong fingers thrust slowly into pockets over her buttocks and breasts, pockets with hardly room in them for a credit card. Does this contact stimulate her nipples? I doubt it. In porny literature nipples erect anywhere, any time at the slightest touch, but I can’t remember nipples having a part in my own lovemaking, not even with forgethername during that summer when we were so busy and happy together. Wait. The editor, yes, though not fat had breasts so plump that her nipples were sunk in them and were only found after a while like lost little islands, each the tip of a submarine mountain in a bland globe of ocean. When discovered and gently tickled sometimes (not always) they did indeed increase and arise. Let Superb be so ignorant of her body that she is appalled to discover her nipples erecting pleasurably at the policeman’s touch. She goes icy calm and says harshly, “Is this why you joined the force?”

  “No, lady, it’s just one of the fringe benefits.”

  He lets her go, walks to the car and looks inside. The other policeman is speaking into a walkie-talkie set: “We’ve got the car all right, and the woman, I think. Her clothes don’t match the description but she could have changed, of course.”

  “Hey, look at this!” shouts the other, waving Superb’s brassière, “it was on the front seat.”

  28 POLICE STATION

  “Right, we’re bringing her in,” says the man to the walkie-talkie. Walkie-talkie sounds British and out of date. There must be a newer name for it which I can’t remember. Disconcerting.

  She is pushed into the back seat of her own car which is driven off by the policeman who searched her. She says once or twice, “You’re making a mistake,” and gets no answer atall. She decides to mention Max as soon as she thinks of a story to tell him about how she got to where she was arrested, unless the mistake can be corrected at the police station. What if she phones Charlie from there and he comes in and testifies that she is not and never has been a woman called Janine? There is no danger of anyone knowing her at the station, she has never let Max introduce her to his professional colleagues. Meanwhile her nipples tingle with embarrassment at the thought of being gaped at by a lot of strange policemen, possible? I don’t know, I hope so. These thoughts occupy her so completely that when the car stops she has not seen that the building beside it, and the door she is pushed through, lack the surroundings and sign of a usual police station.

  But she is led across a hall with MISSING and REWARD FOR INFORMATION posters on display, and into an office containing three desks. A small stout man sits telephoning at one, a big woman types at another, the policeman escorting Superb puts her suitcase on the third, he has carried it from the car. He says, “Here she is, chief.”

  The small stout man puts down the receiver, smiles and says, “Hullo Janine.”

  “That is not my name.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “Yes of can, but. course I can, but …” she hesitates, thinks a little then says, “Listen, if you knew my name you’d definitely let me go. I can promise that. My husband is a very important man. He rented me this car a couple of hours ago from some garage, you must be looking for the previous user. But I don’t want him to know I’m here, he has heart trouble, the doctors say he must not be upset or troubled in any way. I can ask my mother and a friend to come here and identify me if you like, but since this is all a mistake I don’t see why it’s necessary. Show me to anybody who knows this Janine woman and they’ll tell you she definitely isn’t me.”

  29 KINKY STORY

  “So you’d like to take part in an identity parade.”

  “Yes. I suppose so. Yes.”

  “Good. I was arranging one for you when you arrived just now.”

  This man (who is Stroud, yes, Stroud) stands, comes round the desk, leans on the front of it and lights a cigarette, watching her closely. She says, “Please take these things off my wrists.”

  He smiles at her in an amused, friendly way and shakes his head meaning: No. He clearly enjoys the sight of her like this, she blushes hot but feels she must keep talking and says, “You can at least tell me what I’m charged with, I mean what this Janine person is charged with.”

  “Theft,” says Stroud, “and drug-pushing. And murder. And whoring. But the last isn’t so important.”

  Superb stares at him. He mentions the town where Max works and says, “Know it?”

  “Yes I know it.”

  “Know the chemist at the end of Main Street?”

  “No. There are several chemists on Main Street.”

  “He’s a nice old man who patronises the more specialised kind of call-girl. His favourite, Janine Crystal, plays all kinds of kinky tricks on him. She was seen going into his shop at lunchtime and soon after he shut up shop for the day. An hour ago he was found in his backroom, dead by suffocation. A lot of important drugs are missing from his store, also twelve thousand dollars in cash which he removed from his bank this morning, nobody knows why.”

  Do I find these details interesting? No. Go faster.

  “Also twenty thousand dollars in cash which he removed from his bank this morning, nobody knows why. Do you find these details interesting?”

  “I find them fascinating, really fascinating,” says Superb sarcastically, “But they have nothing to do with me.”

  “You’ve nearly convinced me of that. Janine always carries a big suitcase when she visits her clients. Do you mind if my colleague looks through yours?”

  30 MISTAKEN IDENTITY

  “She can look all she likes,” says Superb, “I only hope her hands are clean.”

  The woman opens the case and slowly unpacks it, holding up each article for a moment before laying it down. Superb sees her take out and lay aside housecoat, nightgown and bedroom slippers, and thinks, ‘Soon I’ll be out of here. Maybe in an hour I’ll be with Charlie again.’

  She thinks, ‘Maybe in an hour I’ll be with Charlie again,’ then her skin tingles and a dreamlike feeling comes to her, for the woman is holding up a white denim, no white suede button-through skirt – surely that isn’t hers? – and she puts it down and holds up black fishnet stockings, suspender-belt and black halter bra. And impossibly high-heeled black shoes. And straps with buckles. And a black leather hood with zips. And a cane. And bottles with pills and powders in them, with paper packets carefully labelled. And a large roll of money. Superb hardly notices the way the others are looking at her. She hears her voice say automatically, “My name is Terry Hunsler, my husband is Max Hunsler the police superintendent for the fourteenth division. Please contact him and tell him where I am.”

  Stroud chuckles and says, “You’re a real actress Janine but it’s time you relaxed a little. Look after her, Momma. Get her ready for the parade.”

  Superb leans forward, frantically shaking her head and tugging at the bracelets binding her wrists. Low cries pour from her lips: “No no no,” she moans, “please no!”

  “Yes yes yes honey, but don’t fret about it,” says a soft rich husky voice, and between the strands of hair that hang over her tearwet face Superb sees the woman Stroud has called Momma walking toward her looking like the biggest woman in the world. Huge wide hips and thighs are churning slowly toward Superb under a blue denim skirt that seems as large as a belltent, but the head above the great plump shoulders is small and young like a little girl, a greedy little girl who has just seen a plate of tempting cakes at a party. But she is looking at Superb. End of second part.

  3:

  DAMN SONTAG FOR LAYING WASTE NEARLY ALL MY SEXUAL FANTASIES.

  She was so knowing, so inquisitive, such a determined instructress. She saw herself as a sexual missionary to Scotland. I was Scotland, something frozen and dumb which she was going to liberate. “Tell me about that,” she would say greedily, “it is important to know. Besides, it is such fun
. Come, whisper to me, I cannot be shocked. What is it you would really enjoy? I may even dress up for you.”

  I could not tell her at first. I wanted to keep fantasy and reality firmly separate because surely that is the foundation of all sanity? And my highly unsatisfactory sex life with Helen ended when she learned some of the things I imagined doing when we were lovemaking. But Sontag refused to take my silence for an answer. At last I told her I had a mad passion for small children. This was untrue, but I found it less frightening to tell a lie than admit to a woman that I had a mad passion for women. She was very excited by this and pestered me for details which I could not possibly imagine. At last she said, “You have deliberately misled me,” and frowned for a long time with one finger pressing her lower lip. Then she sighed and said, “Come, I will make it easy for you. We will begin at the beginning. What is the first sexual excitement you distinctly remember? I am referring to infancy of course.”

  32 LOGICAL SONTAG

  Infancy! I was about to tell her I had no sexual excitements as an infant when I remembered a very odd dream from when I was five or four or maybe even three. I imagined I was in a gang of boys of my own age who were riding across country on the shoulders of grown men. We made these men race each other, striking them with sticks to drive them faster, and I took special delight in forcing my man to jump the biggest ditches and plunge through the thorniest hedges. I cannot remember if this was a sleeping dream or a daydream but the feeling of exciting power it gave me was certainly erotic. I thought Sontag would find this homosexual revelation more interesting than my pretended paedophilia but she merely said, “Oedipal. Typical. Now tell me the earliest fantasies you had of intercourse with your mother.”

  I burst out laughing which made her very angry. She could never understand why I found her ridiculous when she felt most logical. She prided herself on her logical powers. Was she French or German? Her father was one, her mother the other. She told me that as a young girl, a week after her first menstrual bleedings, her mother took her to a doctor and, though it was illegal, bribed him into fitting Sontag with a contraceptive coil. This was before the days of the pill. As they left the surgery her mother said to her, “Now you may behave as stupidly as you wish.”

  That was logical of the mother but must have been very chilling, very isolating for Sontag. She was about ten years younger than me but sometimes, when she grew silent, I noticed her face take on a lonely, pinched, ancient look. There was not much warmth in her. Her conversation, especially conversation with women friends, was mostly hectic gossipy analysis and speculation about love affairs. They went into great psychological and even anatomical detail, but without much humour or sympathy. They sounded like men discussing football or politics. Would my mother have found that sort of chatter more interesting than the cosy gossip of the aunts, who never said a harsh word about their husbands and never admitted sex existed outside the lives of film actors? I think she would have heard it with the same silent contempt.

  33 MINISKIRT MASTERY

  I was a locked box to Sontag, something to be prised open so that she could pick out the contents one at a time, label them and fling them away. No. That is unfair, she only threw away the parts she tired of. I’m grateful to her, she became Janine for me. “Yes, buy these clothes and I will wear them,” she said. I wanted her to linger with me for hours around shops, discussing this and that until we both agreed upon what was nicest and I paid for it. But, “I cannot waste time on that kind of thing,” she said, “you have my measurements. You must do it all yourself.”

  I visited several women’s shops with the same sense of terror and trespass which I bring to obscene bookshops. I wanted to buy her a button-through denim skirt, but they were out of fashion that year. At last I found a shop run by a man who made leather clothes to order, and he had a specimen white suede miniskirt better than anything I ever imagined and just the right size for Sontag. She hears the two unfastened studs click with each step she takes. “That’s a sexy noise,” the voice says and giggles. I’ve been through that bit. Sontag became Janine for me and I should be grateful, we enacted a very jolly little rape together. I didn’t hurt her, I don’t hurt people but. I loved feeling ruthless and in charge for once. And afterwards, when I lay completely emptied, she said, “I must warn you not to become too preoccupied with these fantasies, they are likely to bore me very soon.”

  Honest woman. I wish she had been more of a prostitute. I would have paid Sontag anything to enjoy again in the flesh that illusion of ABSOLUTE MASTERY which real life has never never never allowed me in any way whatsoever. Sontag became Janine for me, briefly, but she refused to become Superb.

  She refused to become Superb whose mind is full of Max. Max put my case in the car, she thinks, Max planted those things in it, Max has planned all this, Max knows about Charlie, and the thought fills Superb with such numb astonishment that she hardly hears the big woman say, “They call me Momma because I take such good care of my girls.”

  34 SUPERB AND BIG MOMMA

  She is marching Superb along a softly lit brown-carpeted corridor by a hand which grasps her shoulder firmly but caressingly. The other hand carries the suitcase. She says,

  “Aren’t you glad to get away from all these men? I didn’t like the way there were looking at you, Janine.”

  “My name is Terry!” says Superb through clenched teeth.

  “Keep talking like that,” says Momma, giggling, “it’s sexy. It suits you.”

  “You are absolutely wrong about lesbians,” said Sontag when I told her this bit, “we are not atall hard and cruel.” We, Sontag?

  “Yes. Half my lovers have been women. These affairs are less exciting than with the opposing sex but they are more comfortable. I sleep and eat too much and get fat during them.”

  Shut up Sontag, I insist that a fat cruel lesbian procuress disguised as a policewoman pushes my superb tightjeaned tightbloused superbitch through a door, locks it behind them, then drops the key in a bulging pocket of her denim skirt. Can I have that skirt unbuttoned a little? Yes, enjoy yourself, have it unbuttoned enough to show the insides of her thighs when she stands astride but try not to get too excited.

  The room. Some mats and cushions lie on a polished modern floor marked with yellow lines. A long wall of big mirrors doubles its apparent breadth. Near the door is a desk with two telephones. “This is our paradeground,” says Momma, going to the desk and placing the case on it, “you’ll stand with your toes on that yellow line, and we’ll get some other chicks to stand beside you, then we’ll bring a witness to tell us if you’re the bad girl we think you are.”

  “Let me speak to a lawyer,” says Superb unsteadily, “I’m entitled to a lawyer.”

  “At this stage hookers like you don’t need lawyers,” says Momma, opening the case.

  “I’m not a hooker!” cries Superb but Momma lifts out the suede miniskirt and looks at it affectionately, shaking her head and saying, “Wow. For a non-hooker you own some real professional gear.”

  35 INSIDE THE GYMNASIUM

  Is gear an American word? It doesn’t matter, don’t stop because, “That isn’t mine!” says Superb, trying to keep hysteria out of her voice. “My husband, Max, planted it on me, he must have! He must have!”

  “So you’ve never worn it?”

  “Never. Never.”

  “Let’s have some fun. Give me a thrill. Try it on and see if it fits.”

  Superb, wide-eyed, shakes her head meaning: no. Momma takes skirt, stockings, suspender-belt which is that lacy kind advertised in the highbrow colour supplements, crumples them together, tosses them to the floor at Superb’s feet then goes behind her and murmurs in her ear, “Like me to remove these handcuffs?”

  And Superb, wide-eyed and numb with terror, shakes her head slightly meaning: no. Because suddenly the wrists linked behind her feel like security, for what may her hands have to do when they are free? In a wallmirror she sees herself standing straight upright, legs
pressed tight together, very white against the dark blowsy figure of Momma standing astride behind her, deftly unbuckling the red belt and letting it slide to the floor. Then Momma caresses Superb’s breasts through the silk of the blouse. Does she fondle Superb’s nipples? Do they erect at Momma’s touch? Indeed she does and indeed they do. Yet Superb trembles and cries, “No! Please!” on two sharp notes like cries of pain. “Just look at you in that mirror,” whispers Momma, “standing there so sweet and scornful. I bet you give that husband of yours one hell of a time. But you’re too stiff, honey, it’s good you came here. We’ll teach you to relax. We’ll have you bending like a flower in the wind,” and if there is no lesbian like Big Momma in the world then there is no God either because there ought to be, “We’ll have you swaying like a flower in the wind,” whispers Momma and slowly pulls the blouse off Superb’s superb brown shoulders, then suddenly drags it down and leaves it a wreath of crumpled white silk around Superb’s hips. Superb sees herself brown and nude to the waist. (Why brown? Suntan. This is in California.) She sees herself brown and nude to the waist, each heavy breast sagging sideways with its own sweet weight, sweet is a word I use too often. She stands exposed like a slave in a market, brown and nude to the waist, what is her hair like, apart from black and thick? A wild tangle framing her face, the silver earrings glittering in it, the mass of it spread halfway down her back. I want to thrust my face into that hair and tug it with my hands but I can touch no part of her because she is imaginary. Only Momma can touch that nude sweet scornful body because Momma is imaginary too, so Momma unlocks the handcuffs, and Superb covers her breasts with her freed hands, and Momma kneels behind her and reaches round Superb’s sweet belly to unzip her jeans. A telephone starts ringing.