Jackie and Ides

by Lon T. Ryden

It was my friend Dan that taught me the trick.

I'm not going to even mention how I found out he could do it. Suffice it to say we
were very close; on-again off-again lovers. We knew each other quite well. There
was very little unknown between us. And something as big as this was not something
easily kept secret. Although the actual exposing of the... the knowledge, I guess you
could call it... was quite an embarrassing moment. For me at least.

Later, he said, "I'm sure I'm not the only one. I mean, if I were... the only one I
mean... that would mean I was some kind of a freak or something."

And I thought he probably was a freak.

But instead of saying that, I said, "Show me," and the rest is history.

"First of all," he said. "It helps to be really wasted."

For this, we employed the aid of a bottle of scotch.

...

So then there was a policeman taking my statement.

He was a good-looking man. He had eyes of a color I imagined went nicely with
the blue steel barrel of his thirty-eight. While he was asking me questions I kept
thinking, Why couldn't we have met somewhere outside of this situation?

We were in the living room of my apartment at Valiant State University. Except it's
not just mine. I share the apartment with three other girls... women, if you prefer. It's
like a new concept in dorm-room living. We each have our own bedroom, with a lock
on the door, but we share the living, dining, kitchen and bath -rooms. The rent is
almost three times what a regular dorm-room's is, and for that you could have a studio
apartment downtown all to yourself, but my parents won't hear of having their little girl
living by herself downtown. It's too dangerous.

I could get raped and murdered.

"...And you didn't hear anything at all?" Incredulous: this handsome young officer
with the strong blue, piercing-eyes gaze and the chiseled chin and broad shoulders.

"Nothing," I said. For perhaps the twentieth time. What did I see? Nothing. What
did I hear? Nothing. What did I know? Nothing.

"There had to have been some sound," he said. "This has all the appearances of
having been a violent attack."

"Maybe she was into that kind of play."

"This was not... rough sex," said the policeman. A little hitch between 'not' and
'rough', like he didn't know what adjective to give these circumstances, or felt awkward
talking about it with me. "This was an assault. Rape."

"She probably encouraged him."

"You're saying your roommate invited a man up to brutally rape and beat her?"

"Not knowing ahead of time obviously," I said. "But yes."

"What makes you say a thing like that?"

"Sharon was a whore."

He just looked at me.

I said, "Aren't you going to write that down?"

...

Sharon was far from a whore.

But I hated her.

What she was, was a stuck-up, phony, self-absorbed, conceited bitch. But to the
best of my knowledge, she didn't sleep around, or, more accurately: get paid to sleep
around. On the contrary, she could never find a guy up to her standards; she dated a
lot, but never the same guy twice, and I never saw her bring one up to the apartment.
"Anyone I'm likely to meet in this city, or going to this school would just be 'settling',"
she said. "I deserve better. I'm setting my sights higher." I think the only release she
ever got was self-induced.

Dan met her once, at a party my roommates and I had thrown when we first moved
in; to get the place broken in: a dorm-room warming. He sat next to her, on the floor
by the sub-woofer, pulsing techno like a cyborg heart, and flirted with her between
beers. Dan says close to the sub-woofer is where you want to get a girl, because
certain low-end frequencies make us "resonate"... like a big sonic vibrator. Sharon told
me later that she thought Dan was cute... in an under-achieving, lower-class sort of
way, obviously unaware of the fact that he was my best friend. Which is to say we
were not, at that time, lovers: off-again.

So I asked her, "What exactly makes a guy worth your while?" Sick of listening to
her explain why all the guys I knew were beneath her.

"Rich," she said. "Ambitious. Socially established. Comes from a family with
name recognition."

"A Kennedy," I said.

"A Vanderbilt," she suggested.

I rolled my eyes.

"A senator," she said. Something in the way the word came out of her mouth; I
understood this was something she had put a lot of thought into. The life of Mrs.
Senator.

"Where are you going to meet a senator?" I asked.

"Most of them are married by the time they're elected," she said. "My plan is to
meet a senator's son. Politics runs in a family you know. It's in the blood."

...

Dan sat back, adjusting his legs, assuming the lotus position. We were sitting on
the floor in the basement family room of his parent's house, and his parents were gone
and all the lights except for the television were out. So everything was cast in eerie
shades of silver-white and black and blue, like one of the alien-abduction scenes from
the X-Files.

And we were both buzzing right along. It was taking me, like, two seconds to
blink. And it felt like the whole family room was riding by on a blurry carousel, even
though it clearly wasn't moving.

Dan said, "It's like a door in the back of your brain."

"Oh yeah," I said; sarcasm, like melted ice cream, dripping. "I've been to that
door. I wondered where it went." Snickering; a burp, and scotch rubbed heat into my
sinuses and the back of my throat.

But him, unfazed: "It's like, ever since you've known what the difference between
boys and girls is, you've been filling a room on the other side of that door with
information. Everything you've ever noticed for yourself. Everything you ever read in
Cosmo and Playboy, or Glamour and GQ.... and all the stuff they've said about it on
Seinfeld and Friends. That other room is like a construction of every experience
you've ever had, and every cliché you've ever read or heard. I suppose for everybody
it's different. But there's something like a room in your thoughts, in your mind, where
you store everything you believe the other sex is."

"You're some kind of new classification of moron," I said. "And you are, most
definitely, a freak."

"No," he said. "Close your eyes, Jackie. Think about what you know about men.
Go through all your files and boxes and luggage. Try and find that room where you
keep all your notes on men."

...

The cops sent a detective to interview me the second time.

He was a suspicious looking man, with squinty eyes and a black mustache that
clung to his lip like milk, and a complexion the color of ashes.

He told me to make myself comfortable. Then opened his can of cross-
examination.

He held out a six-by-eight, grainy, black and white head shot of a young man
whose resemblance to someone I knew well was quite disturbing.

The detective caught that: my initial reaction.

"You recognize this man." Telling me, not asking me.

"I think so," I said. I tried to sound unsure.

And he caught that too, I'm positive.

"Where have you seen him before?"

"I think he's one of the guys Sharon brought up here one time."

"Yes, well, Ms. Ides. About that. You made certain claims about the character
and reputation of your roommate in the interview before."

"I said she was a whore."

"Yes. Well. We've found no one to corroborate that aspect of your story. Her
friends and classmates reported that she was very hard to get to know. And that she
kept men at a distance."

"They don't live with her."

"Your other roommates express disagreement with that portrayal of Sharon as
well."

"Obviously she's been better at keeping her secrets from them."

To which he had no immediate response. He turned his attention back to the
picture. "This picture was produced using digital image clarification software on a still
frame taken from the apartment building's video security system in the lobby."

I said, "So she was bringing this man home with her."

The detective cleared his throat. "This is from the video taken the night she was...
attacked."

"So this is your suspect."

"Do you know him?" Foisting the picture on me. Getting it under my nose and then
releasing it into my hands, like a dealer "pushing" a card before he does a clever trick to
reveal which one you're holding.

"Like I said. I'm pretty sure he's been here before." I tried handing the picture
back but the detective wouldn't take it.

"What's his name?"

"I'm certain we were never properly introduced." I put the picture on the end table,
on top of someone's physics book.

"You never heard Sharon call him by name?"

"Not that I can recall. I may have heard it called out once or twice from the other
side of the bedroom wall, but it's not like I was trying to pay attention to that."

"You're saying she had a sexual relationship with this man."

"I'm saying she had a sexual relationship with every man. This guy is just another
face from the parade."

"This man was identified by friends of Sharon's as being a 'Chad Hollinsworth'."

"Chad," I said. I looked at the picture again, on the physics book on the table. I
screwed up my face, concentrating, or at least trying to look like I was concentrating.
"No, sorry. It doesn't ring any bells."

"Her friends said she met him at the main campus cafeteria. He introduced himself
as 'Chad Hollinsworth', and mentioned in passing that his mother was Susan
Hollinsworth."

"The Senator?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know she had a son that went to Valiant State. I'd expect him to be going
to a private college. Somewhere more expensive."

"He does attend a private college. Upstate. The man in this photo is not Chad
Hollinsworth."

"Huh," I said.

"Sharon's friend's said it had always been her plan to find herself a senator's son to
marry. This man in this photo is obviously someone who knew that."

"You think he stalked her out, using a cover story to get close to her?"

The detective nodded.

"Who would go through all that trouble for Sharon?"

...

Sharon said to me, "I'm surprised to see you up so soon." She was at the dining
room table hunched over a hot spoonful of oatmeal, blowing to cool it off. Puckered,
her mouth looked like a glossy red tulip. She was all ready for classes. She looked
like a picture from a catalog: miss perfect and blond, with her ridiculously expensive
sweater, long black skirt, and gold hoop earrings.

I had my face in my hands. My hair felt like a tangled skein of yarn. Standing in
the kitchen with the cool, smooth linoleum beneath my bare feet, in an extra-large T-
shirt that covered me down to mid-thigh. I was heating a cup of yesterday's coffee in
the microwave. I muttered, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"And you're not walking funny or anything," she said.

Suddenly I could feel my cheeks burning.

"He left his coat," she said, and pointed to the green felt and white leather letter-
man's style jacket hung on the back of the entryway closet door. "What's that
emblem?" she asked. "Oh yes: The Pizza Emporium." In red and orange on the back.
"A delivery boy," she said. The word 'boy', slapping in my face like a length of barbed-
wire, the way she said it.

"He's very nice," I said. And immediately had regrets. The word nice is just a
catch-all you use when you don't really have anything good to say about a person.
Nice is nothing. Saying a guy was nice was like saying, "He walked upright, could
speak coherently, and had taken a bath at some point in the past two days." I added,
"We had a lot of fun last night."

"It sounded like it," she said. "I had to sleep with my headphones on."

I remember stuff like that and I don't feel bad for her at all.

I really hated Sharon. She made me feel stupid. Inadequate. Cheap. Nothing I
did was something she would stoop to doing.

I wanted to tell her she was human too; wax eloquent over how we were both
nothing but fallible human beings, soft machines of flesh and blood, and we had needs:
for contact and companionship, for love, and perhaps even rutting. But I could never
talk to her, because she had that aspect about her, of being an ivory goddess, so cold
and aloof, and also, I knew that words from me would never affect her.

What I needed to do was demonstrate.

...

Dan said, "It's like a trick of perception. Like when someone shows you how to
see both the young and old woman in the optical illusion at the same time."

"Whatever," I said.

"Except it's more than just an illusion. It's a state of mind."

"I said, whatever."

"The training of a ninja used to include state of mind tricks that would allow him to
pass invisibly before the faces of his enemies; that used to allow him to appear as the
ghosts of people known to his victims."

"Where do you get this crap?" I asked.

"Shhh," he said. "Find the door... an open mouth scares away secrets."

"Is that from a fortune cookie?"

"Shhhh," he said.

...

My parents called. My dad, specifically. He had a question about some of my
recent expenditures. I have one of those Visa-Buxx cards that allow my parents to give
me a monthly allowance on the card, and then the issuing bank shows them a billing
statement on the internet so they can check up on where my money is going. It's
supposed to teach me fiscal responsibility or something.

"The Palermo," he said. "$186. What is that about?"

"Palermo?" I asked. "When was that?"

"Last week. And $284.78 at someplace called Ziedler & Zane's."

"I needed a couple new outfits."

"They sell men's clothing."

"I like men's clothes. They're made better. They fit better."

"You wasted your whole allowance for the month on two purchases."

"Yeah, but I decided against the purchase from Zane's. It's going right back."

"That still leaves dinner at the Palermo. College students do not have that kind of
money to spend on dinner."

"It was a special occasion."

"Oh?"

"Dan published a paper," a lie. It would be difficult for Dan to publish something,
given the fact that he did not write anything. But it somehow never prevented him from
introducing himself to new people as a writer. "We were celebrating."

"Dan published something? That dead-beat loser?"

"He is not a loser," I said it, but without passion or conviction. I had argued with
my father about Dan's worth as a human being so many times I could no longer get
myself worked up about it.

"What did he publish?"

"An essay," I said. "On self-destruction." A subject my father would have no
problem believing Dan had experience with.

"Then why wasn't he paying at the Palermo?"

"You don't make money writing essays, Dad. No one wants to read them."

...

"Tell me the truth about men, Jackie."

"Hmmm," I said. At some point during the course of the evening, sitting there with
my legs crossed and my arms out akimbo and my palms facing upward, listening to Dan
softly giving me direction on how to find 'the door' and live inside 'my room', his words
had stopped being gibberish and had started to have weight and structure and
substance. It was like I could see them, his words; they were like 3-D computer
graphics that I could touch with my hands, and they felt like wood, or stone, or liquid,
or foam. And it was very weird.

I was relaxed. I could hear my heart beating. And I could feel my pulse in
whatever part of my body I stopped to think about: my fingers, my tongue, my eyes.
My nipples were stiff; I could feel my pulse in them too. And I felt like I was floating, in
a pool-like, but in space. There was a motion, like a large body of water, but there
was no water, only emptiness, through which occasional images of the words Dan was
speaking would silently drift.

"What do you know about men?" he asked.

I was inspecting his words, they had different textures. 'What do you' felt like
goose down feathers, and 'know about' felt like jello cubes, and 'men' felt like warm,
well-muscled skin.

"Think about it," said Dan.

'Think' like a wet sponge. 'It', like an inflated balloon.

I was so drunk.

But I did like he said. Thought about what I knew about men.

I thought, They're callous. And insensitive. They like cars and violent sports.
They're controlling. They're hung up on what women look like. All they care
about is tits and ass. But stopped myself. That's not fair, I thought. They're not
all that way.

And maybe I said that out loud. Because suddenly Dan was saying, "Don't censor
your thoughts. You can't get in touch with your masculine side if you try to define it
before you know what it is. Maybe the man inside you isn't a good, fair person.
Maybe he's shallow and womanizing."

...

The detective, taking his picture back, held it up for a moment, doing a comparison
between the features of the face in the photograph and mine.

He said, "You know, this guy could be your brother. The nose, the eyes."

"Except I don't have a brother," I said.

"It's hard to tell from a black and white, but it looks like his hair could be the same
color even."

"Would you like me to strip for you, so you could check to see if I'm concealing a
penis?"

...

At a place like the Palermo they exercise a certain amount of tact in expressing
doubts as to whether or not a credit card belongs to you. The waitress approached me
and said, "We're having some trouble getting approval for this purchase from your
bank..."

I knew what it was immediately. An obstacle I had never counted on.

I excused myself from the table, apologizing profusely to my dinner guest.
Followed the waitress to a discreet podium behind a potted palm, with a touch-screen
computer and a locked cash drawer.

We spoke in whispers.

I said, "I know what the problem is. I can assure you, the explanation is reasonable
enough."

The waitress was tapping my Visa card, where it said JACKIE IDES, saying, "You
don't look much like a Jackie to me, sir."

"I know, I know," I said. I felt fire in my cheeks, and was grateful for the dim
candle-lit ambiance of the restaurant. "I momentarily forgot myself. Jackie is my step-
mother. I misplaced my own card so she loaned me hers for the evening. Look, she
even gave me her driver's license."

The waitress was not so easily convinced. Looking at my driver's license with the
green, 'under 21' color bar across the top. "This is your mother?"

"Step mother," I quickly reminded. "My father is at that stage in his life. You
know? He just bought a new Audi Quattro. I think he may be taking Viagra. Listen.
I can give you her number if you really think you need to call first." Pleading with her
with my eyes.

She crossed her arms, defying me, but a second later uncrossed them.

"I better not get in trouble for this," she said.

"I guarantee you won't," I said. I winked at her.

And so she gave in; said 'All right,' and had me sign at the line with the 'X'. I made
a C, and a smudge that might have been 'H-A-D', and then a capital 'H' and a swirl.

I'm sure it would not have been that easy was I not so much better looking as a
man, and had I not looked so good in my olive gray double-breasted suit from Zeidler
& Zane's.

I returned to my table, caressing Sharon's shoulder as I passed behind her.

"Sorry for all that," I said. "A slight mix-up. Nothing the Hollinsworth name
couldn't rectify."

Sharon had had almost a full bottle of champagne. She would sip, and I would top
off her glass, while my own glass stood untouched, and she never noticed. She was
warm and melted, and her eyes swirled when they went to follow movement. I traced
circles on the back of her right hand with my finger-tips.

...

Dan's name was Danyelle when he was his other self. He had short auburn hair
that framed his face in curls, and a body like a sixteen year old figure-skater. Like
Axhana Bayul.

Danyelle said, "There's probably some kind of sound, biological explanation for it.
Some kind of advanced hormonal control or something. I bet some guy in Tibet
discovered this before I did."

All I could say was, "Oh, my God."

I was Jack at first, but Jack was a hyper-libido monster. All I ever wanted to do
as Jack was fuck. And it was fun; so much easier getting to the point of climax. No
wonder guys are so pre-occupied with getting laid. Danyelle and Jack probably did it
four times that first night, the first time I successfully found the door after so many times
trying, and came out of the trance finding I had a conspicuous bulge in my panties; and
thicker arms, and broader shoulders, and a stronger flatter chest. Danyelle tried to
resist the last two times, but I just made her. She could've gone back to being Dan, but
didn't; that's as good as consent. All Danyelle ever did was quit calling me Jack and
start calling me Mr. Ides.

She said, "Ms. Jackie and Mr. Ides."

"How clever," I said. In between grunts, holding on tightly to her hips, plunging
myself into her ass. Savoring the tightness of her. "Robert Louis Stevenson would've
been proud."

...

But I never intended to attack Sharon. I was only trying to seduce her.

It was when she resisted me, and told me I should go. When she was separating
our lips, pushing me away with a hand on my chest. Saying, "Don't," so softly it was
like a breeze from butterfly wings. Her: extricating the hand I had slipped up under her
skirt. Saying, "This is too fast," buttoning up her blouse, the three buttons I had so
deftly undone.

But her face was flushed, and I could feel her heat, and I thought she was just being
a tease. Everything had gone so well, I couldn't believe I was about to be sent away
without my reward. I whispered, "Come on, baby," in her ear, and tickled her knee...

At first I was just trying to convince her it would be okay. That she would like it. I
don't remember when it turned into threats. I don't remember when I grabbed her by
the throat. I don't remember punching her in the face, or tearing off her skirt and panty
hose. I remember she bit me, and I remember pulling her off by a hold I had of her
hair.

But I don't remember when I choked the life out of her: if it was before or after I
was done. If she finally resigned herself to me while she was yet alive. I would like to
think I didn't fuck a dead body.

But I may have.

This is the thing I recall very clearly:

Sitting there, on the edge of Sharon's bed, nervous and spent, with the beginnings
of an adrenaline hangover, and my head in my hands, thinking, I can't believe Chad
did that. He seemed like such a nice guy. I can't believe he would act that way.

...

It was, of course, easy to do: separate myself from the crime, the criminal, the guilt.

It wasn't me.

I woke up the next morning and I was Jackie Ides. I was a college girl, not a man,
not a murderer; most certainly not a rapist. I got out of bed, and showered, and
shaved my legs, and spent a long time curling my hair; got dressed in a long denim skirt
and a button-up pink shirt. I put perfume on: a mist around my throat, a drop rubbed
between my wrists. I went to class. My second class of the day was Feminist Issues.