120 Handling Change
I thanked Vicky when we got to my door. “This is a first, isn’t it?” I commented morosely. “I’m pretty sure you’ve never walked me home before. A fitting burial for my erstwhile manhood.”
“Marsh, I don’t know what else to say,” she said, hugging me. “I’ll keep trying to think of something. I don’t think I’m very good at comforting, but… well, do you want me to come in and talk some more?”
I shook my head. “I think I just need time to myself for now. Thank you, though.” I hugged her back and then let myself in.
But ‘time to myself’ was not in the cards just then. Lee Ann popped her head out of her room and spotted me. “Marsh? What’s wrong?”
“I… just got some disappointing news,” I temporized. Then I remembered that she knew my secret – or at least part of it – and explained further. “We thought we had a lead on how to find the guys who did this to me – to us – and we did, only all the leads dried up.”
“And…?”
“Well, I’d really wanted to talk to them; find out how it all happened and if there was some way for me to change back.”
She rolled her eyes. “Because you think you’re too… small?” she scoffed, indicating her chest. “Marsh, you look great and you’ve got great friends, and from I hear, a great boyfriend, too.” By now she had come out of her bedroom and had grasped my hands. “I understand that this has been a great shock to you, but you’ve adjusted so well, and from what you’ve told us, you’re probably a happier girl now than before. Do you want to talk about it?”
My first thought was that if I were to tell her the whole truth, she’d have to be on my side – if she knew just how big the change had been, she’d never tell me to accept it. My second thought was that she’d be so horrified that she’d make me move out and would never speak to me again. I clamped my mouth shut and shook my head.
“I just need to be alone,” I told her, gently pulling my hands free. I started walking to my room, then stopped and turned around. She hadn’t moved. “Thank you,” I murmured before going inside.
I automatically started to reach for the guitar, but remembered that I could no longer play it properly. Badly played blues would just be annoying, rather than comforting, and the guitar itself was just a reminder of what I’d lost. With a sigh of resignation, I grabbed the next job on my garment rack and sat down at the sewing machine. At least that was something I could do while brooding, and it was more productive than smashing things in frustration.
I’d been sewing for maybe twenty minutes when I was startled by a knock at my door. Although I wasn’t really in the mood for further conversation, I stopped the machine and got up to answer it. To my surprise, Jeremy was standing there when I opened it.
“Wh- what are you doing here?” I gasped.
“Are you OK?” he asked, at almost the same time. I goggled at him, unable to form words. “Your roommate was worried about you,” he continued. “She said I should come over and try to make you feel better.”
“Uh…” was all I managed. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate him coming over; only right now, when I was mourning my lost masculinity, it seemed awkward to be playing girlfriend. OK, that really wasn’t fair. I wasn’t playing at anything. I really was his girlfriend; it just wasn’t something I wanted to think about right now. And then he put his arms around me and I humiliated myself by bursting into tears.
He said, “Oh boy,” and starting rubbing my back while I sobbed against his shoulder. “Do you… want to talk about it?”
I shook my head, still pressed against him. How could I discuss this with him, of all people? Telling my parents had turned out alright, and I’d been unable to avoid letting my roommates know part of the truth, but letting Jeremy know would be a disaster. Maybe I did need to talk things out, but not with him. Not about this.
He offered me his sleeve to wipe my eyes when I finally stopped bawling. “Feeling better?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said, “but thanks. I guess I needed to cry on somebody’s shoulder. I’m such a mess.”
“No, you look fine. I mean you’re beautiful. Um, do you want to talk? About something else, maybe? To take your mind off of… whatever it is you don’t want to talk about? You know, so you feel I’m here for you? That’s what makes girls feel better, right? Talking?”
I shrugged, and then he kissed me. “So should we talk? Or cuddle? Or… do you want me to leave?”
I smiled. “I don’t want you to leave. I guess we can talk about something. I don’t feel much like cuddling, but I don’t think I want to be alone, after all.”
He led me over to my bed and we sat next to each other. “So, what should we talk about?” he asked. “Um, sports? Do you like sports?”
I snickered. “Jer, you don’t even like sports.”
“How about what happens after school?” he suggested.
“You mean, like now?” I asked, amused. He was definitely making it harder for me to feel sorry for myself.
“Well… actually, I meant sort of after we graduate. Like, I told you I’m going to business school, right?” I nodded. “And I got decent scores on my GMATs, and I expect to get into a decent school, and then I figure with an engineering degree and an MBA I should be able to score a job that pays really well, even in today’s economy.”
“It’s really great that you know what you want for your future,” I said.
“And you?”
“You know I’m hoping to go to medical school.”
“Right, and then… internship and residency?”
I nodded. At least this was something that hadn’t changed in my life – it was an area of stability, and was all the more important as a result. “And maybe a fellowship, depending on what area of medicine I want to go into. I haven’t really decided yet.”
“So… that’s what… ten years after you get out of Piques before you’re done with training and really in the ‘real world’?”
“There’s an awful lot to learn, so yeah,” I said. “I mean, you’re playing with people’s lives.”
He looked a bit puzzled about something. “And are you… do you think you’re going to have children?”
Such a simple question, and six months ago it would have been so easy to answer. After all, getting married and having kids was something most people did when they grew up, right? I’d always expected that I’d find a wife sometime in my twenties and we’d have two children, just like my parents did. But until he raised the subject, it hadn’t occurred to me that now, I’d be the one bearing any children I had. And even ignoring the whole squickiness of the idea, that meant somehow working around my medical training and possibly having some restrictions in residencies… I’d have to find out about that. Agghh… it was so much easier when I was a guy!
The next thing I knew he had sprung away from me as though I were radioactive and was staring at me with horror in his eyes. Surely, I couldn’t have said that last thought out loud, could I? The blood drained from my face. I couldn’t blow my secret like that. I couldn’t lose him through such stupidity. I forced myself to laugh. “I was joking. I mean you should see your face. What I meant to say was that it would be so much easier if I was a guy.”
He stared at me warily and for a bit longer than I would have liked. Then he shook his head, but it looked as though he wasn’t completely sure. “I… no, you couldn’t be…”
“Of course not,” I said with confidence I didn’t really feel.
“I guess… for a moment I thought you were saying that you were trans.”
Again I forced a laugh. “Jeremy, you know I’m not just wearing girl clothes. You’ve seen me naked. You know I’m a girl under this outfit.”
He blinked. “Not transvestite, Marsh. Transsexual. You know, somebody who is born one sex and changes to the other?”
I winced, feeling stupid. “Oh. Right. Well, still, I don’t see how you could have thought that, even for a second. I mean, I don’t look like a boy at all, do I? I don’t know what they’re teaching you in those engineering classes,” I laughed, “but boys and girls are kind of different physically, haven’t you noticed? I mean, guys are tall and muscled, and, and girls are mostly short and curvy; it’s not just what you have between your legs. You can’t turn somebody who looks like you into somebody who looks like me.” Not without getting caught in an out-of-control time travel experiment, anyway.
“You can make a pretty good approximation, Marsh.”
He sounded so certain of himself. “Why would you think that was even possible?” I asked, incredulous.
“It’s kind of common knowledge, actually. But I actually know somebody.”
I stared again. “Somebody who… changed sex?”
“Mmhmm.” He sat next to me again. “Freshman year, my first lab course, I had this guy as a lab partner. He wasn’t what you might call the most masculine guy you ever met. I don’t mean he was gay or anything, he definitely liked girls, but there was something… different about him. The kind of thing that probably got him teased a lot in high school.
“Well, we got along pretty well, and even hung out sometimes outside of class, so I looked for him again as a partner the next semester. Only, he was gone. He hadn’t said anything, but he’d clearly dropped out of school, and none of our few mutual friends knew what had happened to the guy.”
Jeremy stood up and started pacing nervously. “Well, last year, second semester, I was helping out with the freshman lab, and this girl asked for my help, and she knew my name. Now, you know I’m not the most adept guy when it comes to girls…”
“I’m not complaining,” I whispered, but he ignored me.
“… but it really bothered me that a girl – any girl – would know me and I’d have forgotten her. At the end of the lab, she said, ‘You don’t know who am I, do you?’ and I had to admit that I didn’t, expecting her to tell me when we’d met, but she didn’t.
“I think it was like the third week of the lab when she asked me as we were walking out if I remembered the guy I mentioned to you earlier – my old lab partner – and then I realized why she’d looked familiar and I asked if she was his sister. And she just shook her head and said, ‘no, I was him.’”
“And you believed her?” I asked.
“I just stood there in shock for a moment. I mean I’d heard of sex changes but I’d never actually met anyone who had done it. But I ran after her and she agreed to meet me at the Grill and explain.”
“And she actually was a girl?”
“Well, I never saw her undressed, but yeah, she definitely looked female to me. Not that I’m an expert or anything, but I’ve been looking at girls for a long time, and I didn’t even suspect until she mentioned it to me.
“So we met and it turned out she knew way too much about me and my freshman lab to be a complete stranger. She said she’d had a lot of hesitation about telling me, but we’d been good friends in the past, so… apparently she’d had plastic surgery to make her face look feminine, and was taking hormones, which had changed her body, too…”
“That much?” I asked, not really wanting to believe him. “I thought it was just, you know, down there.”
“I don’t know about down there, but she looked pretty convincingly female to me. I didn’t ask to confirm, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t. But…” I stammered, “But what about body hair, and… lots of things?”
“She said she’d had to go through a lot. Like zapping hairs all over her body, and having her Adam’s Apple removed.” My hand moved involuntarily to my throat. “She made it sound really expensive. And there’s a long recovery time, too, which is why she’d missed two years of school.”
“I… I never realized all that,” I said, a bit shaken. “It sounds horribly painful. I guess I’d never really thought about it that much. I can’t imagine wanting it so badly – and after all that, she doesn’t wind up completely female, either, right? I mean, even if she looks the part.” I can’t say that I’d ever much considered the option for myself, for that reason. I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t have been happy with the result, even if I’d been willing to undergo all the surgery.
“She told me it was pretty much either that or suicide.” He looked at me closely. “Are you OK? Did I just upset you?”
“No, I just… I’m just a bit dumbfounded…” I wondered if that was why everything had fallen through. Had I just not wanted it enough to take even a semblance of manhood at great cost and great pain? I’d been hoping for an easy solution – I’d wanted just to wake up one day as a guy again, with my old body and… I shook my head. The sex change solution had never appealed to me; to look male on the outside but be female on the inside wasn’t good enough.
“Oh boy. I just messed up, didn’t I?” Jeremy said, putting his hands on my shoulders. “I came over to make you feel better and now I’ve made you feel worse.”
“You didn’t,” I reassured him, putting my hand over his and kissing him on the cheek. “You’ve just sort of surprised me, is all. I think the term too much information might apply. Thank you so much for coming over, but I think I need to be alone to rest now.”
“OK… are you going to be over for the study group on Thursday?”
“I will,” I promised him, and walked him out. I had a lot of thinking to do.
It’s been hypothesized more than once that Marshall never existed, and that Marsha has simply had some odd memories implanted by unknown means. There are problems with that theory, but so far I’ve discovered disqualifying factors for ALL the “what really happened” solutions I’ve heard. IMHO, the time travel/tampered with my past scenario presented by the story is the LEAST likely one – but I’m willing to suspend that disbelief until Russ does the Great Reveal.
Jim, I disagree that Marsh is (yet) ambivalent about reversing the change. S/he may well be, when presented with the choice; but for now, the reflex action would certainly be “hell, yeah!”
As far as von’s desired black and white moral tale… well, everyone’s different – we each project our own attitudes onto the characters we read about.
I get frustrated with Marsh. If I were in her shoes, (actually, I’d fall on my face) I’d concentrate less on living Marsha’s life and more on making it my own. Certainly I’d play with it a bit (quite a lot, probably) but there’s a lot she’s playing along with that she doesn’t need to. I’d also be more aggressive in finding “the truth”. But Marsh isn’t me. The hardest part for the reader (sorry, Russ) is that Marsh seems to be less intelligent than the readers here. Frankly, it takes a brilliant writer to allow readers to empathize with characters like that. And Russ is not (yet) Daniel Keyes.
>>There is middle ground. Coping.
There a couple problems with ‘coping’.
1) First of all, he is coping. He has coped. There is no tension left there, at least as far as I can see. He is good at pretty much everything now, never makes any real social faux pas.
2) Marsh doesn’t want to ‘cope’. Marsh seems to want lots of things, many of which are in contradiction, but one thing he isn’t projecting is ‘I want to just cope. I want to get to ‘coping’ and stop there. When he talks about coping it is usually with some kind of depressing comment like ‘since I can’t seem to figure out how tot fix this’.
I agree with April as to the existance of Marshall, and with Scott as to the non-viability of the time travel hypothesis. But, full disclosure, this is something we have enjoyed teasing Russ about ‘From the beginning’.
>>You have established that the university has an eye on him, and that admitting his predicament tends to ruin relationships (father, sister, best friend, ex-girlfriend, new boyfriend, etc…).
This is one of the more odd statements in an otherwise reasonable post; especially given that it is directly contradicted in the chapter it is commenting on. Marsh himself states that telling his parents ‘turned out OK’, and I don’t see that telling Chad, Jenny, Nikki, Vikki, or the strangers has had any particular negative effect either. Indeed, many of these people have provided him support.
Contrariwise it seems like much of his current problem with Jeremy is due to the fact that he hasn’t come clean, fessed up, been honest.
>> Every time he lets somebody he trusts in on the secret it is as if he has killed Marsha again,
Huh? I think what you mean is he has to deal with thier grief on discovering that the Marsha they knew no longer exists. One aspect of the story that has surprised me, however, is how little this occurs. I don’t really see a whole cast of wheepy characters all morning the loss of Marsha.
>>But I maintain that it was not irrelevant.
except it was ‘in this chapter’, if I understand you later point. I agree. As a blip with Chad in chapter four or so I can see it: Chad tentatively suggesting it, Marsh reacting with horror and disgust.
>>In any case, I have this strange feeling that nobody has disturbed time at all, so it might not matter.
Regardless of what actually happened, whatever it is that happened ‘matters’. Even to produce just the results we have seen the technique used is incredibly powerful, way beyond anything we have currently. And the ‘threat’ that it might happen again is, to any intelligent observer, an important issue.
Speaking of Marsh thinking things turned out “OK” with his parents, I do hope there is some continued development along those lines. The Marsh/Dad dynamic is one of my favorite relationships to read about. It does make me terribly heartbroken when I read about it, and I think Marsh definitely feels a bit of loss for how things have turned out, as well. And I don’t know if there’s any way to fix it, even if Marsha wanted to, which only makes it more depressing. I personally wouldn’t characterize things as “OK”, but then again, I’m not Marshall.
>>I do hope there is some continued development along those lines. The Marsh/Dad dynamic is one of my favorite relationships to read about.
Von leaps from his feet, clapping loudly. If April only knew how many Skyp hours I have dedicated to that relationship.
What do you see as ‘not OK’ about the relationship? Do you feel it was made worse, as Jim suggests, by Marsh fessing up, however reluctantly?
In this case, I do. I think the current situation is both worse than Marsha/Dad and worse than Marshall/Dad. Certainly for the Dad, but it seems to me that Marsh misses the more intimate relationship that Marsha had, prior to telling Dad, as in chapters 105 and 115.
Interesting. I suppose it is for me a relationship built on lies is always brittle and, in Marsh’s words, “fake”.
There’s a difference between a relationship “built on lies” and one where extraneous and likely hurtful information is… not volunteered. Personally, I think people who believe in telling “the absolute truth” – if such a thing even exists – have an overly simplistic view. Without re-reading scores of chapters, I’d have to say that Marsh’s surprisingly free revelations have had a universally negative effect on every person. How could it be otherwise? Her parents no longer know how to interact with her, her sister is anxiety-ridden, and everyone else, at very least, has things on their minds that they’d prefer not to.
Marsh needs at least one person to confide in; sometimes needs actual help from someone; and in some cases revealing her situation is a better solution than letting her bizarre (to them) behaviour go unexplained. Aside from those, a wise and kind person would do the people she cares about the great favor of keeping her mouth shut.
In contrast to that, I have ongoing misgivings about her interaction with Jeremy. Marsh believes if she can get the History Eraser Button pressed, none of that “will have” happened; those of us looking in from the outside may not be so sure. However, not even she is sure that she’ll be able to follow through with the relationship he apparently expects. THAT’s dishonest.
If there is a parent out there that believes their teenage (and older) child is being absolutely honest with them, then I may have some very interesting bridge real estate offers they might be interested in.
I wouldn’t say that Marsha’s revelations have had a universally negative effect: her relationship with Chad has changed, but not badly. And I think it has led to a much closer relationship with Nikki than would have been possible otherwise.
But I agree about the parents thing: I find myself hard-pressed to see any way in which the relationship has improved, unless you are of the belief that telling the whole truth is a universal positive. It has driven a wedge between Marsh and both parents. While they obviously still care a great deal about Marsh — they are Marsh’s parents after all — you can see how they’re treating Marsh more like a friend and peer than their child. And I think that’s a big loss, even if Marsh doesn’t see it that way.
When you’re transgender like Marsh is, you do absolutely need some people to confide in, or else you start to go a little crazy from hiding so much of yourself. But going around and telling everyone, especially when you’re post-transition, accomplishes little and mostly serves to alienate people, or at the very least, cause them to treat you quite differently (and usually worse) than they would have otherwise.
Honestly, I did and do find it more distressing that Marsha hasn’t told Jeremy than I ever did find it distressing that she hadn’t told her parents. Transgender people have, by far, the highest homicide and hate crime rate of any minority group. Not telling your sexual partner — and they will find out, someday, somehow — can be quite dangerous. And it gets more dangerous the longer you go on. I’m not saying that Jeremy is the kind of person who would react this way, but many men get quite angry and violent when they find out they’ve been (as illogical as it is) attracted to and/or had sex with a “man”.
Well I disagree most vehemently with much of what both of you write (I agree with some of Scott’s), but most of it would have to be on my blog, not here, as it involves overall ‘moral’ issues, feelings, etc.. However in this case Marsh seems to be on my side: having declared both that he is glad to have told them, and having declared that he feels like a fake.
>>they are Marsh’s parents after all
Interesting POV. Given what Marsh believes happens, this is actually a false statement. They were Marsha’s parents, they are not Marshall’s parents, and this new “Marsh” has no parents.
One quick attempt at communicating my POV here without getting my posts deleted. Imagine if Marsha was Jeremy’s biological sister, unbeknownst to him. Would you, Scott, still call this “extraneous and likely hurtful information [which] is… not volunteered.”??
On another tack. I was watching a TV movie the other day and the plot was a lady was in an accident and woke up having forgotten the last several years of her life: including her marriage and children. The show seemed to present it as the ‘right’ thing for her to do to refuse to sleep with her husband (let her see her undressed, etc, etc.) until she had ‘fallen in love’ with him again. Is that y’alls view?
“Right” thing morally? Or from a comfort standpoint? You can certainly understand her internalized feelings that she wouldn’t feel comfortable sleeping with a man she didn’t really know well, no matter how persuasively people argued that she used to know him very well.
Hey, you have an avatar too now, what’s up with that.
Come on Russ, you are really asking me whether I am inquiring about her feelings or whether it is the right thing morally??? How long have we talked?
>>a man she didn’t really know well, no matter how persuasively people argued that she used to know him very well.
interesting translation of ‘husband’.
I don’t think Scott was talking about Marsha/Jeremy at all, because Marsh hasn’t “come out” to Jeremy at all. It sounds like he doesn’t think Marsha’s behavior towards Jeremy is terribly appropriate.
I can’t imagine being told I had to sleep with somebody who was essentially a stranger, even if everybody around me told me we were married. Nor do I think knowingly concealing incest is any way comparable to Marsha not telling Jeremy or her parents.
I think this may be the first time you’ve cited a television show as an authority on morality 🙂 Clearly, the TV show cannot have been talking about morality – they just don’t do that.
I was using the TV show as a thought experiment to explore your view of morality.
And I would rather disagree that they don’t ‘discuss’ morality. Hollywood has it’s own version of morality… it is just a very, very immoral morality, if you see what I mean. So, back to the question?
Von has an Avatar, Von has an Avatar!!!
Such interesting translations:
>>I can’t imagine being told I had to sleep with somebody who was essentially a stranger, even if everybody around me told me we were married.
I didn’t say anything at all about either ‘being told to sleep with’ (no one in the show did that, they all agreed that she shouldn’t). My question was do you agree wither her moral choice? Do you agree that she was right to decide to not sleep with her husband until she ‘knew him better’? And he is not ‘essentially a stranger’ he is ‘actually her husband’… unless you have some strange new meaning of the word ‘husband’ or ‘stranger’. She has slept with him hundreds of times, and she has had two children by him… she just doesn’t remember doing so.
The movie ‘fifty first dates’, ironically, took the opposite tack.
>>Nor do I think knowingly concealing incest is any way comparable to Marsha not telling Jeremy or her parents.
I didn’t ask you whether you thought they were comparable (since that would lead us down the moral path that Russ wants to avoid) but whether, in that circumstance, you would find her relationship with Jeremy… where she didn’t tell him who she was, morally acceptable, right, good, honest, fair…. etc.
It seems to me that they (and possibly you) are finessing the question. Just because it is moral for a wife to sleep with her husband that doesn’t mean that she must if she feels uncomfortable doing so.
>>One quick attempt at communicating my POV here without getting my posts deleted. Imagine if Marsha was Jeremy’s biological sister, unbeknownst to him. Would you, Scott, still call this “extraneous and likely hurtful information [which] is… not volunteered.”??
I’m at a loss to comprehend why Marsha is more likely to be Jeremy’s unknown biological sister than anyone else. Neither would this be changed, ostensibly, by “whatever” happened to Marshal. Citation, please. Or do people normally ask random people they’re thinking of dating if they might be unknown relatives?
>> On another tack. I was watching a TV movie the other day and the plot was a lady was in an accident and woke up having forgotten the last several years of her life: including her marriage and children. The show seemed to present it as the ‘right’ thing for her to do to refuse to sleep with her husband (let her see her undressed, etc, etc.) until she had ‘fallen in love’ with him again. Is that y’alls view?
Without question. Memory IS identity; the personality currently in that body is NOT married. To suggest that someone has a ‘right’ to their physical self, when they don’t acknowledge the relationship is extremely distasteful to me – and supported in (current) law, too.
>>Just because it is moral for a wife to sleep with her husband that doesn’t mean that she must if she feels uncomfortable doing so.
Sigh. I was asking what the right thing for her to do was; not the thing others should pressure her into doing. When she stood on the doorstep of her new-to-her home, ready to ring the bell and be let back in (you had to be there) should she be thinking “but I’m not going to sleep with this guy until I get to know him better”? Or should she be thinking, “It isn’t his fault I’ve had this accident, it isn’t fair for me to treat my husband like a total stranger and make him sleep on the couch just because I don’t remember marrying him. I did marry him, my parents and everyone else assure me I did, those are my kids, which I had with him. I have slept with him hundreds of times, the only difference this time is I don’t remember him. But, I committed to him, so here I am.”
What should SHE do. If you were she, if you were the wife (or the husband, altho that is an easier question) what would you say to yourself? They literally presented it as morally wrong for her to sleep with him ‘until she got to know him well (ie days/weeks, not minutes).
My view is obvious, what is your view to the actual question. If you were this woman…
Well, she may be legally be his wife, but he is still a stranger to her.
stran•ger (noun): a person whom one does not know or with whom one is not familiar
So, yeah, he’s a stranger to her. In either case, it’s not morally right *or* wrong for her to choose to sleep with her husband or not. But it is her choice and it is the morally right thing for her husband to respect her decision, whatever it is.
And yes, I would feel that she would be morally obligated to tell Jeremy in such a case where she knew that she was related to him, and he didn’t. However, since you are saying you weren’t asking if they were comparable, it doesn’t make much difference either way.
>>I’m at a loss to comprehend why Marsha is more likely to be Jeremy’s unknown biological sister than anyone else. Neither would this be changed, ostensibly, by “whatever” happened to Marshal. Citation, please. Or do people normally ask random people they’re thinking of dating if they might be unknown relatives?
Sigh. I was not asking about our Marsh at all. I was asking:
What if a girl, who we will call Jane, developed a relationship with a boy, who we will call Joe. After they have developed the relationship, she discovers that they are actually biological brother and sister. Is it moral and right for her to not tell Joe, since that would make him ‘feel uncomforatable’??
>>Without question. Memory IS identity;
Wow, really. Without even question, eh? Wow. I guess I don’t exist then.
I agree with you that modern (immoral) law supports your contention, however.
it is the morally right thing for her husband to respect her decision, whatever it is.
I am not asking about the husband!!!
In either case, it’s not morally right *or* wrong for her to choose to sleep with her husband or not.
Wow. OK. I disagree, obviously, but that is a subject for my blog.
However, since you are saying you weren’t asking if they were comparable, it doesn’t make much difference either way.
I was not asking (or saying) since that would get my comments deleted 😉 Again, my blog if you want.
1. One who is neither a friend nor an acquaintance.
2. A foreigner, newcomer, or outsider.
3. One who is unaccustomed to or unacquainted with something specified; a novice: a stranger to our language; no stranger to hardship.
4. A visitor or guest.
5. Law One that is neither privy nor party to a title, act, or contract.
Definition three above might apply, but none of the others do.
1) A husband is obviously more than a friend or acquaintance
2) He is not foreign, new, or (in the graphic sense) an outsider
4) He is definitely no visitor or guest, he belongs
5) She is privy to a contract with him.
I wonder how many other contracts would you consider yourself out of if you bumped your head and forgot them?
From the first person perspective, he is neither a friend nor an acquaintance. From a third person omniscient perspective, of course, but you were asking me to put myself in her shoes.
Irrelevant non-sequiter: marriage is not a contract for two people to have sex with each other. People are free to have sex without marriage and they are also allowed to refuse sex inside of a marriage.
>>marriage is not a contract for two people to have sex with each other.
You may be right according to modern law, although even there I think you would have problems with this. However historically speaking this utterly false, and, obviously, from a religious perspective it is also utterly false.
Without the sexual contract, marriage is a meaningless noise.
(That will probably get this post deleted. Oh, well…)
From the first person perspective, he is neither a friend nor an acquaintance.
True, he is infinitely more than that, he is a husband. Even outside of the sexual contract, there would be incredible legal implications still present: joint custody of children, ownership and inheritance issues, dual signatories on legal contracts, etc. etc.
(The really funny thing is, this question would look so different from the male POV, or, at least, it would to me. I suppose that April will say that is a stereotype 😉 )
Maybe I will just put this in a seperate post, and then Russ can delete it all by itself if he wishes:
The comparison between the girl who is a sister and Marsh is the following:
1) In both cases the person they are forming a relationship with thinks one thing about the relationship, while another thing is actually going on.
2) In both cases the thing that is actually going on may prevent the relationship from moving further, and the first person doesn’t know this.
3) In both cases the first person, if they knew the truth about the relationship, might feel uncomfortable (from mild to extreme) if/when they find out the truth.
4) In both cases the differences are such that might well have moral or legal implications.
Thus my question. It seems as if you are perfectly comfortable with the “Marsh who thinks he used to be a boy and is hiding this from Jeremy’ but you would be more uncomfortable with the “Marsh (or Jane) who is a sister and is hiding this from Jeremy (or Joe)”. I am not sure on what basis you see the distinction between the two relationships… especially if you assume (as Marsh here implies) that they would both break off the relationship short of consummation into marriage. (Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Marsh offered to have sex with Jeremy).
Stranger and husband are not mutually exclusive categories. One is related to the state of the character’s mind and other is a legal and religion contract. He is both her husband and a stranger. She is both married to him, and unfamiliar to him.
Let’s say that, this morning, you woke up in a hospital room. A doctor, noticing you’re awake, comes over to you tells you that you’ve been in a horrible accident and been in a coma for three months. Startled, you ask for your wife and children and the doctor says he’s going to call them immediately and have them come into the hospital.
A few hours later, an unfamiliar woman and three unfamiliar children come over. The woman greets you as her husband, and these children greet you as as their Dad. When you ask for your wife of… (20? years) and your six children, the woman just looks at you with confusion. She says there is no other wife and you only have three children; perhaps that was all a dream you had in your coma. Surely not, you say… there’s so many memories. It all seems so real. But it’s definitely true: she shows you your driver’s licenses — you have the same last name. You’re wearing matching wedding rings. The children look like you.
At this point, you say it’s the moral and right thing to do to go home and start having regular sex with this woman? Even though you know nothing about her, or her children? Even though you’re so very certain that your “real” wife and your “real” children definitely existed? I mean, I can imagine taking responsibility for these children, but jumping right into a sexually intimate relationship with a woman you know nothing about? That’s what you would do?
I don’t think anybody here has said that what Marsha is doing with Jeremy is the right, moral, or safe thing to do. I’ve certainly not said it, and Scott said, “In contrast to that, I have ongoing misgivings about her interaction with Jeremy.” So, I’m not why you keep pressing us as if we did?
(and unfamiliar to her, I meant to say)
>>At this point, you say it’s the moral and right thing to do to go home and start having regular sex with this woman? Even though you know nothing about her, or her children? Even though you’re so very certain that your “real” wife and your “real” children definitely existed? I mean, I can imagine taking responsibility for these children, but jumping right into a sexually intimate relationship with a woman you know nothing about? That’s what you would do?
I would take one more step and ask my parents, brother, pastor, neighbor, etc. (ie someone who would have absolutely no interest in a fraud) to make sure that we were, indeed, married; but other than that yes, I would. Immediately… I might not even wait until I got home 😉
And as for Scott’s earlier point, I believe the actual term for what Marsh is doing is ‘living a lie’.
I wonder what you imagine the reaction of the various actors in the play would be to this question. If you were to ask Mom, Dad, Chad, Tina, Nicky, and Vicky if they are glad that Marsh ‘fessed up’. And if you were to ask Lee Anne, Terry, Jeremy, etc. and ask them if they were happy that Marsh lived this lie this whole time? I, personally, imagine that they would each say that they (would have) preferred that Marsh come clean from the very beginning, at least with them.
Yeah, but only if you pose the question in a way to reveal Marsha’s secret to them. If you were to simply ask them how they felt about Marsha, both in the hypothetical state of knowing his secret and the hypothetical state of not knowing his secret, then the answers would probably be quite different.
Of course, it’s not possible at this point: the cat is already out of the bag. But based on my observations as a reader, Tina/Mom/Dad were all at least quite happy before knowing, and considerably less happy after knowing. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. But, Marsh has to do what is best for Marsh, and if he feels that being out to his parents was worth the price of admission, then that’s a perfectly valid choice.
I might take one more stab at your question just to completely clarify. You seem to bring up two issues that are, to me, completely separate:
1) Is this woman my wife
and
2) Do I ‘feel’ ‘have memories’ etc. of this woman as my wife, these children as my children, etc.
My answer is:
1) I would do my due diligence, but quickly, appropriately, and tactfully. I would under no account ‘reject’ this woman or her children until their fraud was proven.
2) Assuming one is proven (ie that it was proven that she is, indeed, my wife), I would understand my memories themselves as fraudulent and immediately, cheerfully, and completely have sex with my wife; love, discipline, teach my children; get to know my friends, pastors, etc. I would make what has happened clear, very clear, to those closest to me (pastor, family, close friends, etc.) and make enough clear to everyone else to avoid ‘living a lie’… i.e. tell them I had massive memory loss and confusion which included not recognizing those closest to me.
>>Yeah, but only if you pose the question in a way to reveal Marsha’s secret to them.
I have no idea of the purpose of the hypothetical; this here is what I meant. If you could actually tell them and ask whether they would have appreciated knowing right from ‘the beginning’, I think they all would say yes. This, to my mind, indicates what a good relationship is all about… ‘better and worse, richer and poorer, in sickness and in health’. Mom and Dad might ‘feel’ more uncomfortable now, but they and everyone else knows that they are very glad that they were told. And, if the book was more honest, very angry about not being told earlier.
If you were to simply ask them how they felt about Marsha, both in the hypothetical state of knowing his secret and the hypothetical state of not knowing his secret, then the answers would probably be quite different.
I doubt it.
“Hey, Lee Anne. Something really big and important happened to Marsh, which she hasn’t told you. It is really important to her, and she has been struggling with it for weeks now. But she is really afraid that you won’t like her so much if you find this out about her. And you will probably be a lot less happy about your relationship with Marsh if she tells you. Would you rather know, or not know?”
— absolute no brainer. I dislike Lee Anne, but even she isn’t such a jerk as to say, “Oh, I’d rather not know.”
But, Marsh has to do what is best for Marsh,
Von shudders at this example of Post-modern philosophy.
I think it’s really easy to be of that opinion as an impartial observer. And while Marsh has, by and large, gotten lucky with his siblings, parents, and friends, it’s not generally always that easy. Marsh’s parents may well say that they are glad he told them the truth, if they were being totally honest, I’m sure they would also say they miss their little girl.
When I came out to my parents, I was told I was a freak, I was going to hell, I was making them miserable, that I was ruining their chances at grandchildren, destroying my life, and that I would never be happy. And my sister barely talks to me anymore. Although they all would have found out eventually, they were and are demonstrably less happy about knowing the truth.
And while Lee Ann might well say that /now/, if Marsh had completely come out to Lee Ann from the very beginning, they might not have ever gotten the chance to form the friendship they have now.
Your situation and Marsh’s are diametrically opposed. Marsh’s is a state of being, your’s a state of action. As far as actions Marsh has in no way behaved inappropriately according to his assigned, physical, gender role. He is wearing makeup (yuck), high heels (ditto), dating and kissing boys, uses the little girl’s room, etc.
Thus the situations are in no way comparable. If, on the other hand, you had come to your parents and said, “I feel this way (which, it might be added, Marsh is not even saying) but I am committed to nevertheless acting in a way consistent with my gender assignment,” then that would be comparable.
Let us say that I admit, to my pastor and my wife, that I am tempted to sleep with other women. That is a far, far different thing from my going to them and stating that I am going to act on those feelings. Marsh went to his parents and stated that he had a certain set of memories… not that he was suddenly going to be dating girls.
So, as I see it, Marsh:
1) Has the memories (prior to the last few months) of a boy
2) Was created with a girl’s body.
3) Has the feelings, including sexual feelings, of a girl.
4) Is committed to acting in a ‘girl’ fashion: ie performing according to the gender norms of his subculture, avoiding gender taboo’s, etc.
5) Is accepted in his gender role of a girl by those who know of his current situation and are in a position to advise him (his parents, sister, chad, Nikki) except for someone whose own motivations are self-confessedly selfish (Vicky).
As regards (4) he is, currently, a bit reluctant to follow completely through with the ‘girl’ life commitment of marriage: but his reasons are not because he feels like a boy, or would like to be a boy, but because he feels a ‘fake’ and because it would not be fair to his prospective husband.
Yeah, I wish it was a state of action. My life would have been immeasurably easier. Alas, 15 years of wishing, hoping, and praying didn’t make it so. :\
As far as number (4) goes, I have absolutely no idea why Marsha is continuing to follow gender norms so closely, especially towards the femme-y side of things. She past her commitment to Tina, and she’s hardly hiding her state of being from anybody these days. Not that there was any reason she *had* to wear heels, makeup, and dresses, but now she has even less reason to do so.
Actions are those things which we do. Part of what separates humans from the animals is that we can behave in a way contrary to our feelings.
I may feel like going out and sleeping around. That is my state of being.
I may go out and sleep around. That is my state of action.
The first may very well be involuntary. The second is always voluntary.
Marsh, as you pointed out, deliberately decided to engage in gender appropriate ways, even in the beginning when his feelings were most dramatically not in accord with those actions. As time past, regardless of how he has felt, he has continued to do so.
This brings us full circle to our earlier discussion about the amnesiac. The amnesiac who, in spite of their own feelings of alienation, lives up to the physical aspects of her marriage contract, is someone who is acting at their most human. The one who refuses on the grounds “I don’t know you” and, as a result, hurts and offends those around her, is acting… not as a human being can act.
Well, in any case, I hadn’t actually done anything at the time of confession. So it was entirely just a state of being. Unless telling the truth is a state of action, in which case I should have just not been honest in the first place.
It does make me curious, though. What if you had awoken, and when you asked for your wife, the doctor had brought in your married (let’s say in MA) male partner of twelve years and your two adopted children? I assume the most human thing to do would be to raise those children and continue having sex with this guy?
>>It does make me curious, though. What if you had awoken, and when you asked for your wife, the doctor had brought in your married (let’s say in MA) male partner of twelve years and your two adopted children? I assume the most human thing to do would be to raise those children and continue having sex with this guy?
Not at all, but Russ feels that any comment that I believe is appropriate to make at this point is not appropriate for his blog, so you can find my response here…
http://vonstakes.blogspot.com/2011/01/contract-to-evil.html
Replies welcome there.
>>Well, in any case, I hadn’t actually done anything at the time of confession.
Then what were you ‘confessing’?? A confession is typically an acknowledgment of some wrong done or contemplated.