Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 6, Issue 6 Read online

  Volume 6: Issue 6

  Frank Moorhouse & Zoe Fraser

  Imprint

  Published by Review of Australian Fiction

  “The Spirit in the Flesh” Copyright © 2013 by Frank Moorhouse

  “Dancing in the Dark: a prose album” Copyright © 2013 by Zoe Fraser

  www.reviewofaustralianfiction.com

  * * *

  This project has received financial assistance from the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.

  And support from the Queensland Writers' Centre

  The Spirit in the Flesh

  Frank Moorhouse

  1980

  Lis had been Sønny’s psychiatrist for a few years when he was younger, after the death of his father. Now, following ‘the discovery’, additional sessions had been arranged, more in the form of counselling to prepare him for the special international college in Lausanne to which he was about to go. More than counselling—it included, also, female tips.

  Over the months of these counselling sessions they’d talked about many things: ‘the third sex’; the idea of the ‘phallic woman’ in folk lore; and about the berdache, those American Indians who were seen as a sexually ‘two-spirited’.

  During these sessions, Sønny had become increasingly aware of Lis as a woman, as distinct from her as Lis-the-Therapist, counsellor, mentor, friend of her mother.

  He knew that Lis and his mother were sexual-friends, from time to time spending nights together. Some mornings he found Lis in the breakfast room as, occasionally, he found a man. But a banal, sleepy, brief encounter over the open refrigerator door was no relationship. The fantasies she had were about changing their relationship or, he preferred the classier word, their affinity to something more profound. Nor was it transference. They had long ago dealt with transference; no, he wanted not to love her: he wanted to cross the invisible line into her world, and then by passing through her world, she would be able to reach the transsexual world which lay beyond the consulting room, but he somehow knew that membership of this world could be reached only through the consulting room and through Lis.

  This, his last visit to Lis before leaving the gymnasieklasserne for the college in Lausanne, would be the right time for him to fulfil the unfulfilled, to cross. Through the years of therapy, she’d come to know him as a feminine boy, to know his fantasies and desire to switch publicly to a feminine self.

  On this his last day with her, under his navy, gabardine school burberry and tracksuit pants, he wore a black leather miniskirt with a lace-up side and a black satin blouse; a simple silver chain around his neck; another around his wrist; and another on his ankle. He felt the chains and the leather skirt were slutty, but in a classy way. His mother had helped him choose the clothes but had laughed and shaken her head about the ‘tone’. She hadn’t known what Sønny had in mind when he chose them. And nor, precisely, had he.

  When the receptionist told him he could go up to Lis’s room, Sønny found himself tight with anticipation. Before going up to the room, he went to the toilet and took off the burberry and tracksuit pants, straightened his miniskirt and then went up the stairs and in through the door to her room, through which he’d passed so many times, into Lis’s tasteful room with its arranged informality and its collection of miniature terracotta totemic animals. Sønny went over to her and they kissed on both cheeks. With a swinging, sexy walk, he went and hung the raincoat and tracksuit trousers on the coat stand.

  He then came back to where she was sitting at her desk and stood, hands on hips. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well?’ Lis said back.

  ‘Say something.’

  She looked him over, putting on the face of some sort of assessor, then using the voice of a fashion parade commentator, Lis made admiring remarks about his clothing, his manicure, and his hair and general appearance. ‘And now, we see Sønny, dressed in a knee-length, soft, black, deer-skin skirt, laced up the side with a grey lace made of deer thong, the looping loose enough to be a little vampish, an aperture which issues a special invitation…’

  ‘I wanted to be sluttish.’

  ‘You succeeded.’

  ‘You’re not surprised?’

  ‘I’m surprised.’

  ‘You didn’t show it.’

  ‘I am trained not to be surprised. Sadly.’

  ‘Of course, I should’ve remembered that.’ Sønny made a face at her. He went to one of the Breuer chairs and flopped himself down.

  As was customary, Lis left her desk and went to the other of the two Breuer chairs, arranged to face each other.

  Sønny sat, knees together, legs swung a little to one side.

  ‘You’ve never seen me dressed as a girl—have never asked to see how I looked. It’s like a surgeon who doesn’t want to see the scar of the incision.’

  Lis laughed at the parallel. ‘Ok. Now you have shown. Some mornings when I’ve stayed at your home, I’ve seen you in your nightdress, remember.’

  ‘You haven’t seen me dressed super-sexy.’

  ‘No. And you are “super-sexy”. But it is not, I hope, a scar you are showing.’

  ‘You’ve left no scars. Only healing, Lis. No scars.’

  ‘That’s a fine compliment.’

  They stared at each other saying nothing.

  Then Lis spoke, ‘Tell me more about your feelings—about coming here in female clothing.’

  Sønny was aware that Lis was trying to return to the clinical relationship. ‘It’s more than “female clothing”. It’s me.’

  ‘Quite right. Tell me about how you feel dressed as this self.’

  Sønny had thought about this and in his journal had made a list. He rushed to tell her, ‘I love the lubricous movement of the body against satin, or silk, or nylon; when lying, say in bed, the very, very slight movement of the body brings delicious awareness of self. I love the sensation of alive coolness when my legs have been waxed, and then inspecting them, stretching them out before me, admiring their elegant smoothness. I love the sight of my shoulders free and white above the sheen of satin, the sight of my shoulders in a night dress with spaghetti straps. I love the feel of one layer of feminine fabric, say satin, moving against another on my body. I love the sensation which comes from the weight of my new breasts, as small as they are. I love brushing my arm against my breasts, I feel very alive around my breasts. I love the feeling of a bra holding my breasts. I love the wonderful sensation of having a very alive bulge between my legs when encased in silk. As you know I do not see it as a penis anymore. I love having it confined, the new sexuality of it. I love having a shaven penis. All these things change it from a male thing to something else—I am uncertain what: it is not changed to a female thing but nor is it any longer a male thing. I love the wonderful feeling of a skirt swirling or moving against my nylon stockings, or nylon pantyhose as I walk. I love the look of my feet in stockings, the black reinforced toe, the painted nails showing through the sheer nylon or silk. I love the grown-up girl look when I see my toenails painted. I love the bra when it displays the cleavage of my breasts. I love shoes that display the cleavage of my toes. Of being, I suppose, in this place, the place of the third-sex.’

  ‘Blahnik.’

  Sønny queried her with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘He created the toe-cleavage in shoes.’

  ‘Blahnik. What a wonderful thing to have done for the world. And I love the way my legs tighten and my body is thrust out by stiletto sandal backs. I love the look of my hands with painted, manicured nails, and with rings. The sheen of my stockings when I hoist up my dress to my knees and place my hand under my skirt to slide on to the seat of a car. All
of it, all of it. All of it.’

  He finished.

  Lis smiled at him.

  ‘I think that’s all,’ he said, ‘I memorised my list.’

  ‘You’ve come a long way. You remind me of some of the sensations from when I came to puberty. And even as a grown woman—we feel those things too—especially with our new clothing and lingerie, our favourite lingerie.’

  ‘We’ve been two bodies sitting opposite each other talking about bodies. But we don’t reveal—we don’t properly show each other these bodies.’

  ‘Surely, here,’ she gestured at the room, ‘we talk about personality, the inner self? The mind?’

  ‘In my case, personality and body are terribly intertwined?’

  ‘The words we’ve used in our sessions stood in for the physical.’

  ‘In all the sessions I’ve shown you my body from the inside. The body-self which was submerged during childhood and which you’ve helped to bring out to life. Or to use one of your sayings, you have brought alive “the spirit that resides in the flesh”. Now I am showing it to you from the outside, at least showing the body dressed in its proper clothing—but no—the clothing and ornaments are part of my true expression of my spirit. I think you once said that only those who share a physical relationship can share the spirit of the flesh with all its intensity.’

  ‘Sønny, my dear, I’m twenty years or more older than you. Moreover, I’m your doctor, your healer, your mother’s friend.’

  Sønny kicked off his shoes and drew his legs up, lying back in the reclined chair, allowing his skirt to move up and show a glimpse of stockings and the fasteners of the black, lace garter belt. He saw Lis’s gaze fix on to this glimpse of his revealed upper legs, that aperture between stocking top and lacy brief.

  Sønny slowly pulled the skirt up further, revealing his black, lace-edged briefs and their lace crotch. ‘Voila,’ he said, ‘yet more of my body-self.’

  Sønny made a coquettish face at Lis which said, ‘Wouldn’t you like to touch?’

  Lis’s smile melted into a small laugh, pushing back her hair nervously, dodging the invitation by again saying something complimentary. ‘You present a beautiful picture. Your thighs, framed there in your fabulous underwear, the leather skirt, all, all beautiful.’ A vibrancy coloured her voice. She coughed. A cough of attempted self-control. Lis straightened her own skirt, pulling it down over her knees.

  Sønny could see that her breathing had quickened.

  Sønny looked at himself and took pleasure at the perfection of the arches of his feet in their nylon stockings, the painted toenails showing through, his hairless legs in the stockings, the exposed thighs so well-shaped and adorned by the garter belt.

  They sat there for a second or two, their eyes engaged in wordless query—each of the other.

  Lis then rose uneasily from her chair and moved over to Sønny, where she crouched down, and using two fingers in the clinical way of an examining doctor, she probed under her silky briefs, found the soft cock in its tight, new, black, silk restraint, the cache that his mother had brought to hold his cock.

  ‘Is the cache uncomfortable?’

  ‘I’m used to it now. The discomfit has become a small pleasure.’

  ‘We’ve talked about the new role of your penis but not about the cache?’ Lis spoke in her session voice. ‘You hardly need it.’

  Sønny spoke in his session voice also, ‘The cache isn’t there to pretend that I don’t have a penis. It’s to keep it from spoiling the fall of the dress and underwear. And it’s to change the shape of the cock. It becomes something else in the cache. My penis has become part of my body again but not as a penis. I’ve told you this before. We need a new word.’

  She returned to her chair. ‘Clitoris?’ She said it without confidence.

  Sønny moved in his chair impatiently, ‘No, no—we have talked about this—I am not a girl—I am something else—it isn’t a clitoris and, for me, it isn’t a penis.’

  ‘Pussy? Maybe the word could be shared?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He said it in his head.

  ‘Maybe for today?’

  That sat in silence. From her shifting in her chair and from her breathing, her slightly heaving chest—she again played with her hair, taking out the comb and bunching the hair and replacing it—he could see that she was losing her clinical control.

  Sønny said, ‘Do you want to see my new breasts?’

  He didn’t wait for a reply. He unbuttoned his satin top to reveal a skimpy, black, cobweb-lace bra and pushing out in the bra, his small, pert, growing breasts.

  Sønny pulled down the bra and released the breasts, placing his hands under them to present them and their enlarged pink nipples and the surrounding rosy, pink areola. ‘My nipples are now very sensitive. Because of the hormone treatment. They’ve enlarged, too: the nipples as well as the breasts.’ Another doctor was supervising the hormone treatment.

  ‘Your breasts will learn about their eroticism through sexual play.’ Lis said in a jokey way and then looked down, as if having said something she had not quite intended to say.

  Sønny gave her a saucy smile, ‘I suppose, the playing comes later.’ He smiled and also risked a joke, ‘Not too much later, please.’ He addressed his remark to the heavens. ‘Feel them.’

  Lis smiled and again left her chair and came to him. ‘Are they lactating?’ Lis’s voice was still clinical as she lightly squeezed on a nipple. Sønny trembled with pleasure.

  ‘That’s stopped,’ Sønny said his voice husky.

  She crouched before him and cupped his breasts in a faux-clinical way. He could see that Lis’s breathing was now very uneven as she crouched there.

  It was touch which had been absent in the clinical correctness of their long-standing involvement in this room. It was in this very room on and off over three years that his transformation had been happening, word by word, incrementally and imperceptibly, day by day, insight by insight.

  Still kneeling there at his knees Lis said, ‘Your breasts are for your pleasure and for the pleasure of others, something that is already there in your being, in your male physiology: after all, men have breasts and some men are aroused by the touching of them. Your mother and I want only that you’re able to take delight in your extraordinary différence.’ Her voice was slipping from control.

  Lis always used the French word when talking about this.

  Lis now gave a deep sigh and rested her head against Sønny’s arm, one hand dropped to his lap, he began to swell. ‘Oh Sønny—you are différent—way, way, différent—it’s not only the nature of your gender—you are… celestial,’ her voice breathless. ‘We have been trying to prepare you for this state of différence. You are right—it’s more than our femininity—it is this state, this condition which is both and neither.’

  It was happening. Sønny tried to keep talking but now realised that his adult-like ‘session voice’ had gone, ‘And I want my anus to be sexual,’ he said in a small voice.

  Lis kept talking but her professional voice had gone, had softened, ‘We’ve talked about that. You know that poses no physiological problems. How are the tantric exercises going?’

  ‘Well. Very well.’

  They exchanged lingering smiles. ‘You’re still a virgin?’

  ‘Yes, regretfully.’ Sønny had told Lis about what had happened between him and his mother and they agreed that it was not really a loss of virginity.

  She squeezed his arm and stood up, one hand resting on the chair. ‘Both girls and boys have to learn how to use those muscles,’ Lis said. ‘The Kegel muscles. They’re vaginal also.’

  Sønny then asked something he had never before asked. ‘You and my mother wanted me to turn out like this? You planned it?’

  ‘We didn’t plan it: we surmised it.’

  ‘I like the idea that you both planned it.’

  ‘As I have said many times before, my dear Sønny, gender is determined in the early years by a conflux of influences. But we
speculated that you might be thus genetically. And, yes, we were not averse to it. We talked about it a lot. But it was not a plan.’

  ‘You both played a part?’

  She stood up, one hand resting on the back of the chair. ‘I suppose we did. Simply by being who we were. We were open to you becoming what you are. There was no plot.’

  Sønny curled up in the Breuer chair and, reaching up, took Lis’s free hand and placed it back on his breasts. ‘Teach my breasts,’ Sønny said, softly, provocatively.

  Lis then crouched down again, and lightly and knowingly, her fingers began to play with Sønny’s nipples and around the areolas which he felt through his whole body. She rested her head against his arm. It seemed to be a surrender to confusion, but the confusion was a positive thing, the right way then to be, she and he, and her shoulders, her whole body, seemed to collapse into this tender, milky confusion, and he collapsed with her.

  Instinctively, Sønny put his hand on Lis’s hair and tentatively stroked it.

  ‘Oh yes. Yes, Sønny. Yes.’

  Sønny ran his fingers through her hair feeling her scalp—she shivered—and he removed the hair clip, mussing her hair, breaking it free from its styling. He felt a new boldness.

  Lis crouched there, basking in Sønny’s touchings, her own fingers slowly reaching over to fondle Sønny’s stiffening pussy and his stiffened nipples. After a time, she leant and kissed Sønny’s silk-stockinged knee, rose reluctantly to her feet, kissed Sønny’s cheek, and as she moved away she trailed her fingers over Sønny’s exposed thighs, pointing to the telephone, as if to reassure him that she would return. She went over to the door and locked it. She went to the telephone and rang through to her receptionist. Sønny heard Lis say, ‘Cancel my next appointment.’ All the while, Lis’s eyes never left Sønny’s eyes.

  She went back to him and stood above him as he lay curled there on the chair. With a graceful deliberation, Lis unbuttoned her blouse and took it off, dropping it the floor, and she then unzipped the side of her skirt, pulling it down, stepping out of it, allowing it to drop to the floor with the blouse. Lis was wearing stunning underwear, a high brief, and a lace-up corselet which almost met with the high brief; the underwear was from the same designer as Sønny’s and, of course, his mother’s. Sønny was surprised that Lis wore a corselet at work. She had on low-heeled sling backs.