the girl tripping through my body when i walk.

[starfrosting]

When Calliope surfaces, she does so like a childhood speech impediment. Suddenly there she is again, doing a hair flip, or checking her nails. It's a little like being possessed. Callie rises up inside me, wearing my skin like a loose robe. She sticks her little hands into the baggy sleeves of my arms. She inserts her chimp's feet through the trousers of my legs. On the sidewalk I'll feel her girlish walk take over, and the movement brings back a kind of emotion, a desolate and gossipy sympathy for the girls I see coming home from school. This continues for a few more steps. Calliope's hair tickles the back of my throat. I feel her press tentatively on my chest- that old nervous habit of hers- to see if anything is happening there...But then, just as suddenly, she is leaving, shrinking and melting away inside me, and when I turn to see my reflection in a mirror there's this:...
-from Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

* * *
I was hesitant and reluctant to start this book, which my mom had read and recommended to me, since its narrator is intersexed and that just seemed like a breeding ground for a host of fucked-up things about 'hermaphrodites' to breathe air under the guise of literature. I must admit, though, it's incredibly well written. The family is Greek, which may be part of why I'm liking it thusfar. I'll have to wait to the end to really deconstruct the way it deals with gender (don't worry, I won't subject you to that) but right now the only main thing that really gets me about it is the inference that Cal is intersexed cos hir family had incestuous relations.

Comments

[starfrosting.livejournal.com]

hi. who are you? (I probably remember you if we've met.)

See, the whole thing of intersexuality being a 'condition' is interesting in and of itself...the ways in which bodies are sexed and disciplined and the ways in which some bodies fail to comply w/ those categories, etc-- All sorts of complicated stuff that I'm not entirely equipped to talk about, at least not right now when I can't be articulate.

[redfuzzyllama.livejournal.com]

anyway, to clarify, i'm rachael, class of '06...i was one of the sustainability bandanna people last year. i think we've also met through mutual friends and stuff. pat & paul, maybe?

[starfrosting.livejournal.com]

ahh, Pat and Paul. If that's the case, I probably haven't seen you (knowingly) since first semester, in which case we should at least greet one another when we're back at school ;). See you, Rachel. Nice to meet you again.

[redfuzzyllama.livejournal.com]

same here. not to sound like a stalker, but you seem really cool (judging by your journal), and it would be nice to get to know you. maybe we could chill sometime.