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.