The Wrong End of the Telescope Read online

  My parents didn’t know what to make of me, the poor sods. I was unlike anything they’d ever come across. I wasn’t exactly femme. I wasn’t exactly gay. I wasn’t exactly a boy. I didn’t want to wear a dress but rather a nice pantsuit, tailored just right—now that was me. When I developed my interest in The Avengers, my parents were thrilled, ecstatic that I was infatuated with Mrs. Peel. They believed that the interfering Almighty, through grace and timely intervention, had finally responded to their prayers for my normalcy. I thought of Emma Peel as my crime-fighting doppelgänger with gloved karate hands, terribly witty, of course. God’s grace didn’t even last as long as the electric can opener.

  It was in college, Harvard of all places, early eighties, that I was able to formulate who I was. By being around many accomplished women, mainly my professors, I discovered that even though I might be attracted to a pretty girl every now and then, I wasn’t one. I wasn’t even a girl. I was a woman. Watching my professors, particularly Jennifer, was the true Tiresian moment, the before and after.

  I attended Jennifer’s introductory anthropology class as an undergrad, and I was duly impressed. That she had command of the subject should have been expected—it was an elementary class, after all—but I was young, and her ability to pull wondrous anecdotes out of various hats felt magical to my untrained ears. Like a good anthropologist, she could spin a tale out of the skimpiest yarn, and hers was hardly skimpy: she was a primatologist. She would look at her students tiered inside the giant lecture hall, swing an arm in a giant arc, and tell stories of gorillas and chimps and bonobos and, best of all, delightful orangutans. She spoke slowly, with many a pause, during each of which I wanted to lift the desk arm, stand up, and urge her on from across the room to tell us what happened. Oh, the epics she spun. Homer had nothing on her. How a community of chimpanzees saved Jane Goodall’s life, the first time Dian Fossey bonded with a mountain gorilla. Jennifer’s orangutans would descend from Mount Olympus to educate us mere mortals, to frolic with us.

  I wished I could turn into a swan to be with her, but of course nothing happened then. As young as she was way back when, she was still a professor, I a younger sophomore. The Fates had to allow us some extra time. Not that I didn’t try. I hounded her at office hours. She enjoyed talking and I loved to listen to her, but once the term ended, I could not keep up the subterfuge. I had an inkling that she was a lesbian. It was probably why I was attracted to her. I would later come to realize that even when I sported a male body, I gravitated toward women whose passions were more Sapphic in nature.

  I hardly saw her for a couple of years, until the summer I graduated and was waiting for medical school to start. By that time, the relationship with my family was irrevocably severed. Hello, student loans. I noticed her in a café on Third Street, looking regal and beautiful, her dark eyes glued to the pages of a thick book. She smiled as she read, showing three dimples, two on her cheeks and one on her chin. Though it was early summer, she was covered in cashmere. I stopped by her table to say hello. She greeted me, but there was nothing in her rather hesitant look that indicated she had any idea who I was. I reminded her my name was Ayman, and I told her how much I had enjoyed her class. She bloomed as I poured attention, bade me sit with her. We talked for a couple of hours over lattes and pastries. She asked about my future plans. I asked for her number.

  I did not believe we would end up having sex, not at first; I simply wanted to be around her. Yet we did have sex. The first time, in her pastel-hued room, under and over luxurious sheets of cotton, she looked at me after her orgasm, rather surprised, as if asking who I was, what kind of being. I did not claim some masculine prowess, not then, definitely not now. I liked her. I wanted to make her happy. I wished to know where her skin was most sensitive, how responsive were her nipples, were her inner thighs more susceptible to a firm or soft touch, all kinds of questions to which her body delighted in offering answers. My coiled ears tuned in to the slightest turn of breath, my eyes recorded the most minute flutter of muscle. I was discovering that one of the best ingredients for great sex is curiosity. I wanted to discover her. All these years later, I can still feel the imprint of her body upon mine. My Jennifer.

  She let slip the first time that no man had ever made her feel that way before. Had she made love to women? She’d dallied, she said. Naked, unembarrassed, her hair on the pillow lank, her flush gone. She told me she found sex with another woman more fulfilling, but she insisted that she did not see herself as bisexual. She was right about that. She wasn’t.

  We rarely left the bedroom that first week. The sex was glorious, and it kept getting better and better. I felt like Wonder Woman, all-powerful and engaged in and with humanity. On a Friday evening, while we were in bed, I told her I should go home, that I needed my toothbrush, a change of clothing, etc. She said I was using her extra toothbrush already, and as for clothing, who needed it if we never left her bed. I laughed, stood up to go to the bathroom. I was stretching my back languorously when I heard her crawling on the bed. I felt her lean forward and reach for my butt—to be more precise, my lower back, right above the cleft of my butt. I told her I would be right back and playfully slapped what I thought was her hand behind me. The slap was much harder than I intended, and as soon as I hit her, I realized that was not her hand. The sound was unmistakable. She was trying to kiss my lower back and I had smacked her face. I turned around quickly. She was sprawled on the bed, her palm covering a cheek that blushed a scarlet red. Her eyes were wide and bright with unadulterated terror, a tear began to form in her left. I started to apologize. I had not meant to slap her. I’d thought it was her hand. I was being playful. I’d assumed she was trying to touch my back, not kiss it. I was so sorry. Yet my apologies elicited an unexpected response. She bawled, mewling, heaving and heaving, a flood of unstoppable tears. She regarded me with such horror I was unsure what to do. I promised her that I had never hit anyone ever. In my life. She cried harder. I knelt on the bed, approached her, and she did not shrink away. I reached out to her; she shifted closer. I held her and she wailed in my arms. I kept repeating I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, until between sobs she finally said it was not me. Not you, she said, not you. We remained enmeshed for a while, until she was able to calm down, to breathe normally.

  I tried to find out whether the slap had triggered memories of some past experience. She regarded me as if I were an alien spouting nonsense. She was returning to her quotidian self.

  She hesitated, seemed to be considering her options. I told her she could trust me. I would not betray her. It took her a minute or so. In a childlike voice, she admitted that she might be a masochist. She had not done anything of that sort; she could not conceive of doing anything so perverted. She had had these strange feelings since she could remember. She had thought she had everything under control, had her desires stored in a kist, under lock and key. But when I slapped her, all her hells broke out. She had enjoyed it. She wanted it.

  The first thing I thought, and it popped right out of my mouth, was that I could work with that. I ran through all the usual clichés. Sexuality came in all shapes and sizes. Yadda yadda. She was neither the first to have these desires nor the last who would. What the unconscious found erotically charged was impossible to explain. Freud tried, but he was a mess, wasn’t he? I went on and on, spouting comforting nonsense. I told her we were consenting adults. We could explore if we wanted to, and no one—no one had to know.

  I was able to read different emotions on her face, hope, relief, and even titillation. Was I excited by the prospect? she asked. Had I considered sadomasochistic sex? I said I had not but I was turned on by turning her on. I’d loved pleasing her. And in any case, if it came to a choice of slapping or being slapped, I would choose the former. If that was what she wanted, if it was what would make her happy, then I could certainly try out this new role.

  That was not the end of the conversation that evening. She was still in my
arms, explaining how relieved she felt, how strangely vulnerable and happy. I made my decision right then and there. She had shared her secret. I could share mine. The bed felt safe, appropriate. I told her I was a woman, that I had been for as long as I was conscious, that something about my body, about my existence, felt off-kilter. Jennifer was the first person I told, and until we broke up three years later, the only one. Telling her was a revelation. Speaking it out loud opened both my eyes and my heart, and yes, my soul as well. I felt energized, as if I’d gone through an Ovidian metamorphosis. I thought I could move a mountain or at least fifty pounds of dirt. Francine, ever the yoga practitioner, compares coming out, even to oneself, to a kundalini awakening. If such a thing exists, telling Jennifer slapped my kundalini, shook it, told it to get to work. That evening, I began to be in alignment with my dharma.

  I moved in with Jennifer less than a week later, joked that moving in quickly was further proof that I was a lesbian after all.

  She and I were happy that first year, lived in a smooth household. I was in medical school. She published three separate papers and was beginning not only to be invited to major conferences but to give keynotes as well. Our home life was stable, our erotic life adventurous. Had she suggested that we get married in the first year instead of the second, I would have done it, but by the time she did I was beginning to have doubts—not about our relationship but about myself.

  During a summer evening in Cambridge that made one forgive all Massachusetts winters, Jennifer and I ate ice cream on the porch, spooning it out of three different cardboard containers, my feet on her lap. The screens defended us from insects, but we hoped for a glimpse of a firefly beyond. Humidity was high enough that things seemed to be deliquescing about us, she and I so relaxed that we could have joined them. I was complaining about something, my family or my finances, possibly my immigration status, how much the attorney was going to cost. She said it casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Well, we could get married, she said. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I didn’t reply right away. She made some nervous joke about fear of monogamy and orangutans, which made no sense to me. I explained that I wasn’t averse to monogamy, that since we had been together, I could not imagine an assignation with anybody but her—the usual “it’s me, not you.” As happy as I was with her, I said, I was unhappy with myself. I was a woman. I knew she saw me as one, but that was not enough. I wanted the world to see me for who I was. Her response was quick. We had each other, what the world saw or didn’t see was irrelevant. Who cared about the world? Well, I did.

  I couldn’t break through to her. I didn’t have the skills or the experience to understand how to present myself in this complicated world. I tried that night and on many nights that followed. Even little things would annoy me. I couldn’t stand my name, for example. Ayman was the wrong name. It was a male name. Jennifer considered it silly to change my name since no one in America knew the name’s gender. As if America were the only thing that mattered. Everyone mispronounced the name in any case, she said. Many called me Eye-man, which was how many Americans pronounced the female name Iman anyway. I did not want to be called Iman, which sounded too religious, yet I couldn’t settle on a name that felt right, not until we were in Sumatra, glorious Sumatra, but that would not be till 1986. Until then, we marched on.

  Jennifer began making arrangements for a return to Indonesia, where most of her work with orangutans was based. I desperately wanted to go; I’d have to miss two weeks of school, but I knew I could manage that. I was inordinately excited about the trip. I wanted orangutans, I wanted monkeys, I wanted jungles, I wanted bananas and mangosteens and nasi goreng. Because we had both been busy with work and school, the overseas trip would be our first together.

  We arrived at the airport in Medan rather late at night. I’d assumed we’d be taking a taxi to our hotel downtown to rest for the night, but outside, under canopies and high humidity, a colleague of Jennifer’s, Kemala, waited for us. Her English was better than that of most native speakers of the language. She’d studied at Oxford, received her doctorate from Leiden, and, more interesting, her classical Arabic was better than mine. She was a devout Muslim, had studied the Koran as a youngster, and kept taking university courses in Arabic literature throughout her life. Both Jennifer and I adored her. She would be our companion during the trip. We stayed in a fancy hotel for one night, but I barely slept. Early the next morning, we threw our luggage into Kemala’s car and headed to the jungle. We’d be staying in her house in Bukit Lawang, a village on the banks of the Bohorok River, bordering the rain forest. It would be a three-hour drive, she told us, even though it was no more than seventy kilometers away. There was one stretch of road that the locals called Rock and Roll Street, since giant potholes meant that there would be a whole lot of shaking going on.

  Kemala, Jennifer, and I walked into the jungle, and my life would not be the same again. I would soon shed the last vestiges of a past life. We had no guide. I was with two women who were experts in the field, but that meant that most of their conversation excluded me. I did not mind. I was buoyed and enchanted by my prelapsarian surroundings, my boots sinking into layers of crackling leaves, my eyes dazzled by colorful butterflies and incomprehensible flora. My companions ignored me for the most part, except for when I bent down to examine what I thought was a tiny worm standing erect on a fallen leaf, waving itself back and forth as if calling me. Well, it was calling me, and Jennifer had to pull me back with the admonition to stay away from bloodsucking leeches.

  We observed the orangutans from afar, males, females, families. We were even able to see a courtship and its consummation, gymnastic sex way up in the trees, which made my companions deliriously happy. Neither had ever witnessed a mating in the wild. Jennifer filmed, Kemala took photographs, and I oohed and aahed.

  At some point, Kemala said we had to avoid a certain path because we would walk into the range of a semiwild female who attacked human males. We didn’t want to risk meeting her, not with me tagging along. Apparently her captors had abused her horrifically. She had recovered at the sanctuary and was friendly to all the women, but she kept attacking the male staff. Since her release into the wild, she had attacked one tourist, an Australian, biting him on the calf, and had terrorized quite a few more. She was to be avoided. Her name was Mina.

  Of course, on our walk back to the sanctuary, we encountered the angry lady. Call a demon by her name and she will show up. Mina had ventured far from her usual haunts. We did not realize she was around until we saw her hurtling toward us at an inhuman speed. I wish I could tell you that I was heroic or that I had a smidgen of courage. I froze. Kemala, bless her, reacted quickly but not quickly enough. She placed her left arm across my chest, trying to shove me behind her. I barely moved; my fear grew roots that spread into the jungle floor. Mina rushed at me, but then she froze. Terrifyingly close. I could stroke her face if I reached out. She looked for a second or two before crouching down from her full height, seeming a bit confused, addled. We stared at each other. I heard Kemala whisper not to move, as if I could have. Mina might have been angry, but her eyes were the softest—into them I fell. I knew I was projecting and romanticizing, but I saw the world in those gold-green eyes. I saw wisdom and pain, much pain. Scratch a cyst of anger and the pus of pain will ooze out. That expression, both human and not, the hair around that face, shaggy strands of different shades all pointing toward her eyes, a modish haircut. She looked mature, though there was no gray in her beard. She reminded me of one of my professors, whose prognathism was not as pronounced, of course, but still. Kemala began to baby talk Mina, but the ape ignored her and saw nothing but me. I understood that I was safe. I knew deep down from the core of my being that Mina saw me as I was. She saw me. I heard Kemala say that what was happening was incredible, magical.

  I wanted to sit down. I was no longer frightened and immobilized. Before I could do anything, Mina reached out, her hand touch
ed mine, her fingers tapped the dorsal side of my hand, as if she were riffling piano keys in a slow, sultry melody. And she was off, ambling away from the path we were on. Into the forest she went.

  “I have never seen Mina behave this way with a man,” Kemala said.

  “I am not a man,” I said.

  Dead leaves came alive underfoot. I felt life flow through my roots. My spine straightened. My soul burst into sylvan bloom, healing old wounds. Jennifer had been silent throughout the encounter. She knew. A fire raged through me while hers dulled into a dying ember. I did not have to utter another word. We both knew we were over. She wouldn’t admit she was a lesbian, and I could no longer hide. In that eternity, under a gunmetal sky, as we looked at each other, a reversal, Ayman seeped down to the ground and Mina sprang to life.

  On the Road to Skala Sikamineas

  The drive back in the dark to Skala Sikamineas seemed endless, a long first day on Lesbos. I did not have to share my fears with Emma because she had already deduced our patient’s condition. She was a good diagnostician. Sumaiya was going to die, and soon. A couple of days, a week or two or six, we couldn’t be precise without full imaging and blood panels. Her cancer was likely advanced, there for over a year, and unresectable. Any treatment, if she qualified, would barely extend her time by a month. We should convince her to get hospital tests tomorrow, I said.

  Sumaiya and her husband had tried to keep the news from their girls, but Asma had guessed that her mother was not going to last long. We wondered how much pain Sumaiya had endured to get to Europe. I told Emma that I had a bottle of oxycodone and if we needed more, I could get Francine to next-day some. Emma assured me that she had access to pain medication, from pills to fentanyl patches.