In One Person

away; it had had that profound an effect on me. It was the first novel I’d wanted to reread since
Great Expectations
.
    Now, when I’m nearly seventy, there are few novels I can reread and
still
love—I mean among those novels I first read and loved when I was a teenager—but I recently reread
Great Expectations
and
Giovanni’s Room
, and I admired those novels no less than I ever had.
    Oh, all right, there are passages in Dickens that go on too long, but so what? And who the trannies were in Paris, in Mr. Baldwin’s time there—well, they were probably not very passable transvestites. The narrator of
Giovanni’s Room
doesn’t like them. “I always found it difficult to believe that they ever went to bed with anybody, for a man who wanted a woman would certainly have rather had a real one and a man who wanted a man would certainly not want one of
them
,” Baldwin wrote.
    Okay, I’m guessing that Mr. Baldwin never met one of the
very
passable transsexuals one can meet today. He didn’t know a Donna, one of those she-males with breasts and not a trace of facial hair—one of those totally
convincing
females. You would swear that there wasn’t an iota of anything masculine in the kind of transsexual I’m talking about, except for that fully functioning
penith
between her legs!
    I’m also guessing that Mr. Baldwin never wanted a lover with breasts
and
a cock. But, believe me, I don’t fault James Baldwin for failing to be attracted to the trannies of his time—
“les folles
,” he called them.
    All I say is: Let us leave
les folles
alone; let’s just leave them be. Don’t judge them. You are not superior to them—don’t put them down.
    In rereading
Giovanni’s Room
just recently, I not only found the novel to be as perfect as I’d remembered it; I also discovered something I had missed, or I’d read without noticing, when I was eighteen. I mean the part where Baldwin writes that “people can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents.”
    Yes, that’s true. Naturally, when I was eighteen, I was still
inventing myself
nonstop; I don’t only mean sexually. And I was unaware that I needed “mooring posts”—not to mention how many I would need, or who my mooring posts would be.
    Poor Tom Atkins needed a mooring post, in the worst way. That much was evident to me, as Atkins and I conversed, or we tried to, on the subject of crushes (or
thrushes!)
on the wrong people. For a moment it seemed we would never progress from where we stood on the stairs of the music building, and that what passed for our conversation had permanently lagged.
    “Have you had any breakthroughs with your pronunciation problems, Bill?” Atkins awkwardly asked me.
    “Just one, actually,” I told him. “I seem to have conquered the
shadow
word.”
    “Good for you,” Atkins said sincerely. “I’ve not conquered any of mine—not in a while, anyway.”
    “I’m sorry, Tom,” I told him. “It must be tough having trouble with one of those words that comes up all the time. Like the
time
word,” I said.
    “Yes, that’s a tough one,” Atkins admitted. “What’s one of your worst ones?”
    “The word for your
whatchamacallit
,” I told him. “You know—dong, schlong, dick, dork, willy, dipstick, dipping wick, quim-stuffer,” I said.
    “You can’t say
penis
?” Atkins whispered.
    “It comes out
penith
,” I told him.
    “Well, at least it’s comprehensible, Bill,” Atkins said encouragingly.
    “Do you have one that’s worse than the
time
word?” I asked him.
    “The female equivalent of your penis,” Atkins answered. “I can’t come close to saying it—it just kills me to try it.”
    “You mean ‘vagina,’ Tom?”
    Atkins nodded vigorously; I thought poor Tom had that verge-of-tears aspect, in the way he wouldn’t stop nodding his head, but Mrs. Hadley saved him from crying—albeit only momentarily.
    “Tom Atkins!” Martha Hadley called down the stairwell. “I can hear your voice, but you are
late
for your appointment! I am
waiting
for you!”
    Atkins started to run up the stairs, without thinking. He gave me a friendly but vaguely embarrassed look, over his shoulder; I distinctly heard him call to Mrs. Hadley as he continued up the stairs. “I’m sorry! I’m coming!” Atkins shouted. “I just lost track of the time!” Both Martha Hadley and I had clearly heard him.
    “That sounds like a breakthrough to