Jane the Modernist: Part II

[I wrote this a year before I graduated modeled after Robert Gluck's "Jack the Modernist." The language is a bit overwrought, but that was intended. I also used this piece to explore postmodern desire. Elizabeth Grosz's "Space, Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies" also heavily influenced me. This is part of a series.]
Lauren: I had a dream last night.

JANE: What do straight girls dream of?

Lauren: I dreamt that my brother was watching me take a piss on a toilet atop of a building. He had to use the bathroom, and he wouldn’t leave me alone. I just wanted some fucking privacy. He is angry and predatory. When I realize that my yelling isn’t working I start punching him in the stomach and jaw. I run to my father who for some reason is already yelling at me. I explain to him this is the third time I dreamed it, that it is not my fault. Then suddenly, my father’s face gets redder and redder and he is screaming so loud the entire campus can hear—he asks me—ARE YOU QUEER?

Jane: We’re not even dating yet, are you sure you want to come out? Besides, you’re a straight
girl. (She gives me a wink and undoes the top button of my pants)

Lauren: That’s not the point, my dad would never use a the word “queer”

Jane: He’s a republican, he’s your dad. (Her hands travel lower, and I am on the verge of un-remembering. But I persist; there is a point to be made.) That's not bashing, not his vitriolic use of "queer"--my dream dad meant the theory, the umbrella term of ambiguity. May dad doesn't know that, all he knows is "dyke" (JANE's tongue is now down my throat. Despite this, I have developed an ability to keep talking.)

Look, sexuality in itself is not transgressive (I raise my fist) it can't be out of the norms because it is all within the spectrum of human sexuality. Being gay, or bi, or pan-sexual (she loves it when I give my theoretical shout-out to the trans community...as much as a butch lesbian can. She shows me this by penetrating me with her fingers) is only defined as difference just because we live in a hetro-normative phallocentric society.

JANE: I'm not into three-somes

Lauren: Did I say "phallocentric?" I suppose that works but (I finally move my had from her hip down to her stomach, my fingers are starting to warm from this heat.) maybe I should have just said "patriarchal"--similar but different. Just like us.

She says nothing to this--I want this to be because she is unimpressed with the idea that lesbianism lubricates so well because it is rooted in sameness. But if I draw my mind/tongue back from her nipples, I realize this just because I read it somewhere. Some kind of feminist philosopher I read was unimpressed with the idea so I figured I should be unimpressed with it too. I am projecting but Jane doesn't know this. She is whispering to me breathily, fogging my mind and the windows simultaneously. “You’re fucking a girl for the first time.” She repeats this over and over, I think to cement this action, but I’m not sure. Perhaps she’s insecure that I want to be doing this. I try to tell myself that romance is overrated anyway, that it’s better to just abandon myself sensation now. I do this in hopes of romance later. (This is how I will explain it to Amy the next day.)

My attention turns to Jane's body: short, and curly Irish hair, and a small, hard body. Full of muscles, acquired through a lifetime of spending her time on a soccer field, it serves the dual purpose of turning me on and highlighting the differences in our own bodies. I tell myself that I shouldn’t fetishize her body—but this is a new lust: its nature is to straddle a dusky, faint line between a cult of worship and distant eroticized object.  “Erotic” sounds terribly demeaning to me though, as if I were trying to pigeonhole her skin into some cheap paperback romance novel. But how else can I describe the terrible sexuality she exudes, but as one that not only excites but elicits a harmony of joyous, ecstatic melancholy? She is my Calamity Jane, my appropriated muse, my colonized femme fatale.