"Jake, are you going to answer? Or let me draw my own conclusions—possibly mistaken?"

"I could answer that it's none of your business!"

"And you would be right and Johann apologizes. But not Eunice. Jake, that's what Eunice's body tells me must have happened. But I can't he certain and I do want to be like her and if that is not what she would have done because it is not what she did—then tell me. I'm not asking for intimate details." (Aw, get the juicy parts, dearie—! want to know how it seemed to him, every sweaty detail. I already know how it seemed to me—and I'll tell you.) (Don't be so right-now, darling—I'm trying to gentle him.)

"Joan Eunice—no, ‘Eunice!' You always have had the damnedest way of getting your own way."

"Is that an answer, Jake? I don't have Eunice's memory." (Says who? Boss, I've figured out some­thing—and it's not flatworms. Everyone has erasable memory and non-erasable memory, just like Betsy—and that non-erasable part is the me that's still here now that I'm dead. ‘Soul' maybe. Names don't matter; it's that part that's not just glands and plumbing.) (Save the philosophy until we're alone in bed tonight, Eunice; I'm trying to cope with a man—and it's heavy going.) (Do you think we're going to. be alone in bed tonight? Want to bet?) (I don't know—and I'm scared.) (Don't be scared. When it happens, you recite the Money Hum and I'll drive. Once around the course and you'll be ready to solo. Except that I'll always be with you. Know sumpin, Boss- honey? It's even nicer to be you than it was to be your secretary. Or will be, once we're back on ground rations.) (Huh?) (Soul talk, dear—means sex. I had it for fourteen years—and I'm hungry.) (I had it over five times that long—I'm at least five times as hungry.) (Could be—you're a horny bitch, Boss.)

Jake finally answered, "Joan, I don't think it's fair to Eunice's memory for me to tell tales about her—but I'll concede your point, assuming that you want to learn, for your own guidance, as much as possible about how she behaved. Eunice was honest and straightforward"—(I'm devious as a snake-but that's what 1 wanted Jake to believe.)—"and she apparently decided that she liked me that much... and made it easy for me. It was neither rape nor seduction." (It was both, but I did not want him to think so. He's a darling Joan. When he's gentled enough—slip the bit into his mouth. But let him think he asked for it.) (I'll try. Meantime I'm still doing this emotional strip-down—and you listen instead of interrupting; you might learn something about me.) (I'll be good, Boss. Mostly.)

"I felt certain that it must have been that way, Jake—knowing you, knowing her. But that's only one side of me as I am now—the ‘Eunice' side. The other side is Johann, with almost a century of male orientation I told you I now understand Winnie, as a girl—because now I am a girl. But there Is still Johann, alone with Winnie every day—and it's all I can manage to keep my hands off her." (Hmmph! You don't keep your hands off her.) (I said, Shut up! I haven't let it get past heavy cuddle. If you and I ever stroll Gay Street, you shameless mermaid, it will be dessert, not the pièce de résistance.) (That piece won't resist!) (Hush up!) "Do you understand, Jake? Old Johann—me!—thinks that Winnie is quite some dish."

"Well... I understand it—in Johann."

"I wonder if you would understand it in Eunice? Jake, how do you feel about homosexuality?"

"I don't feel anything about it. Never been interested."

"Not even curious? Jake, I'm a full generation older than you are. When I was a kid, homosexuality or ‘perversion' as it was called, was hardly even a myth; I never heard of it until long after I was centered on girls. Oh, I don't mean there wasn't any; I know now that there was, lots of it. But it was spoken of seldom and kept under cover. When I was fifteen, a man made a pass at me—and I didn't know what he was after; he just scared me.

"Would a fifteen-year-old boy today be that innocent? You know he wouldn't be; there are books and magazines and pictures—and other boys—to make certain that he understands even if he doesn't join in. The Government just misses endorsing it as a way to hold down our outlandish overpopulation—would endorse it openly, I feel sure, if it were not that a large percentage disapprove of it publicly while practicing it in private. It reminds me of that weird period in my youth when people voted dry and drank wet and the bootlegger was more sought after than the black-market butcher is today. How long has it been since the last ‘sex offense' was prosecuted?"

"Rape by violence is still prosecuted; I can't recall any others in the last twenty years. Blue laws about sex are dead letters; Supreme Court decisions have made them impossible to prosecute. Correction: Unlicensed pregnancy is a Federal offense under the General Welfare' clause...but I've often wondered what would happen if a case were ever allowed to reach the Supreme Court."

"That's the only ‘sex crime' which was not a crime when I was a kid, Jake. But I was talking about the ‘crime against nature' which is no longer a crime; it isn't even a peccadillo, it arouses less disapproval than smoking. However, by the time homosexuality was socially acceptable, my attitudes were long frozen. But I wonder what Eunice thought about it? Did you ever discuss it with her?"

Jake snorted. "Believe me, Johann—sorry, Joan Eunice—that was not a subject we had time for!"

"I suppose not. Nor did she discuss it with me." (Fibber!) "But she gave me a gentle reprimand about it once."

"So? How?"

"Oh, one day before I was bedfast, a messenger delivered something to my office. He was a real nancy-pants—lots of makeup, false eyelashes, curled hair, and waved his hips. A high, girlish lisp and oh so graceful in his gestures. After he was gone I made some intolerant remark and Eunice told me gently that, while she didn't find such one-way boys attractive, she didn't see anything wrong in a man loving man, or a woman loving a woman." (Hey! I don't remember any such conversation.) (So I'm a liar. But you could have said it—and I'm making a point.)

"Yes, that sounds like Eunice. She was tolerant of people's frailties."

"My point is that, Eunice being the age she was, she was certain to be indifferent to—perhaps I should say ‘understanding about'—what Johann thought of as ‘perversities.' But here's what I'm getting at, Jake; I find Winnie sexually attractive. I also find Alec Train and Judge McCampbell sexually attractive. Startled me. And you—whichdid not startle me. But today was the first time I have been thoroughly kissed by very male men. And I liked it. Shook me." (How about dear Doctor?) (None of your lip, sweet lips—we don't tell Jake that one.)

Joan Eunice went on, "There is my dilemma. Which tune am I being homosexual? With Winnie? Or with you three very male bulls?"

"Joan, you ask the damnedest questions."

"Because I'm in the damnedest situation a man ever found himself in. I'm not the ordinary sex change of a homo who gets surgery and hormone shots to tailor his male body into fake female. I'm not even a mixed-up XXY or an XYY. This body is a normal female XX. But the brain in it has had a man's canalization and many years of enthusiastic male sex experience. So tell me, Jake, which time am I being normal, and which time perverse?"

"Uh... I'm forced to say that your female body controls."

"But does it? Psychologists claim that sexual desire and orgasm take place in the brain—not in the genitals. My brain is XY."

"I think you are trying to confuse the witness."

"No, Jake, I'm the one who is confused. But possibly not as confused as the young people today. You know they claim to have six sexes."