Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy

LIVING IN A NOVEL

Let there be a form distinct from the form.

–G. spencer brown, Laws of Form

Jo Malik once thought she was a transsexual. She had even gone to Dr. John Money, the pioneer of transsexual therapy and surgery, at Johns Hopkins, back in the mid-sixties.

"I think I'm a man living in a woman's body," she said.

Dr. Money nodded; that was normal in his business. He began asking her questions-the standard ones-and in only a half hour she was convinced that she was not a transsexual; she was just a confused woman. Dr. Money kindly gave her the name of a good psychiatrist in New York, where she lived, for a more conventional form of therapy.

After three months the psychiatrist announced that Jo's problem was not Penis Envy. That was hardly exciting; she had never thought her problem was quite that simple.

The therapy ground along. She learned a great deal about her Father Complex, her Mother Complex, her Sibling Rivalries, and her habit of hiding resentments. It was enlightening, in a painful way, but she was still confused.

Then the Women's Liberation Movement began, and Jo dropped out of therapy to enter politics.

She no longer defined herself as a man trapped in a woman's body, but as a human being trapped in male definitions of femininity.

It was a very satisfactory resolution of her problems. She no longer had to take responsibility for anything; everything was the fault of the men. There was no need to stifle resentments-the correct political stance was to express them, in a strident voice and with a maximum of emotional-territorial rage. She had finally learned the ABC's of primate politics. She even learned to swell her muscles and howl.

It was all so much relief after years of self-doubt that Jo remained in 1968 while the rest of the world moved into 1970 and 1974 and 1980 and 1983. That was why she was wearing a BRING BACK THE SIXTIES button at Epicene Wildeblood's party.

Jo still had one problem left over from pre-Women's Lib days. Sometimes just before sleep, she heard a voice saying, "No wife, no horse, no mustache."

Of course she knew that everybody occasionally heard such voices in the hypnagogic reverie before true sleep. You were wigging out only if you heard them all day long. Still, she wondered where it came from and why it had such a cryptic message.

Jo Malik hadn't had a sexual relationship with a man since 1968, and looked it.

She was also sixty-four years old, and looked it.

Nevertheless, there was an Unidentified Man at the Wildeblood party, and Jo suspected him of having designs on her bod. That was because he kept trying to get into every conversation group that she intercepted. He was following her, she was convinced.

"Mother very easily made a jam sandwich using no peanuts, mayonnaise, or glue," Blake Williams said.

"Of course, Skull Island was Cooper's Chinatown," Jus-tin Case said at the same moment.

"Wham! That arbral with his showers sooty? The fugs come in on tinny-cut foets," Moon droned along.

Jo decided that she had taken perhaps a little too much of the Afghan hash that was going around. It seemed that everybody in the room-the creme de la creme of Manhattan intelligentsia-were all talking gibberish. She eased out onto the balcony for some fresh air and restful silence.

Eight stories below a marquee blinked up at her: DEEP THROAT, it said. Male chauvinism.

She breathed deeply, mingling oxygen with the cannabis molecules in her blood.

And the Unidentified Man appeared. "Hello," he said casually. "I thought I'd find you out here."

"Who the hell are you, buster?" Jo barked-the first warning.

"My name doesn't matter," he said. He was tall, and handsome, and very gentle in his eyes. The worst kind of Male Chauvinist Pig. The Seducer.

"You don't matter, either," Jo said snappily. "I'd like to be alone, to enjoy the view, if you don't mind."

She showed more teeth, emphasizing the second primate warning.

"I'm Hugh Crane," the handsome stranger said quickly. "I have been sent by the Author of Our Being with an important message for you. Please listen; it's vital to your future. We are all.. living in a novel."

"Take it and stick it," Jo said, leaving the balcony.

Another male chauvinist squashed, or at least squelched.

Unfortunately, back in the Wildeblood soiree, the first voice she heard was Benny Benedict complaining. "Women's Lib? Christ, what we need now is Men's Lib. Do you know how much alimony I'm paying?…"