Rubyfruit Jungle

by Rita Mae Brown

The most revolutionary thing you can do is be yourself, to speak your truth, to open your arms to life, including the pain. Find your passions.

I wish for you something that enlarges your life, teaches you to respect all life forms, and helps you connect to other people.

I’d never seen men hold each other. I thought the only things they were allowed to do was shake hands or fight. But if Carl was holding Ep maybe it wasn’t against the rules. Since I wasn’t sure, I thought I’d keep it to myself and never tell. I was glad they could touch each other. Maybe all men did that after everyone went to bed so no one would know the toughness was for show. Or maybe they only did it when someone died. I wasn’t sure at all and it bothered me.

You have to do some of the things everybody does or people don’t like you.” “I don’t care whether they like me or not. Everybody’s stupid, that’s what I think. I care if I like me, that’s what I truly care about.”

Leota was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was tall and slender with creamy skin and deep, green eyes. She was quiet and shy so I spent most of sixth grade concentrating on making Leota laugh.

Getting painted was so much fun that Leroy confessed he liked it too, although boys aren’t supposed to, of course. I told him not to worry about it, because he had a beard and if you had a beard, it must be all right to wear lipstick if you wanted to because everyone will know you’re a man.

Molly, I do want to make love.” She hugged me and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “Okay, so maybe part of it is curiosity but another part of it is that I have more fun with you than anyone else in the whole fucking world. I probably love you more than anybody. This is the way it should be, you know, a lover who is a friend and not that moonie crap.”

Drink a toast to me and then fly away.

I closed the door forever on idealism and the essential goodness of human nature, and I walked to the Greyhound bus station by the same path that I had taken on my arrival.

There was something pathetic about all that intelligence of hers squandered in the murky past and defined by the dusty priorities of academic life. But she was intelligent, and I had lived long enough to know that’s cause for celebration.

“I mean men bore me. If one of them behaves like an adult it’s cause for celebration, and even when they do act human, they still aren’t as good in bed as women.”

Why the entire world must look different to you.” “It does. It looks destructive, diseased, and corroded. People have no selves anymore (maybe they never had them in the first place) so their home base is their sex—their genitals, who they fuck.

“When I make love to women I think of their genitals as a, as a rubyfruit jungle.” “Rubyfruit jungle?” “Yeah, women are thick and rich and full of hidden treasures and besides that, they taste good.”

She didn’t spend the night although I wanted her to. It’s nice to curl up next to a warm body, then wake up in the morning for a hello hug.

At least in New York City I can be more than a breeder of the next generation.

“Angry words, angry words. You should know a mother don’t mean angry words to her child.”

hell. I wished I could be that frog back at Ep’s old pond. I wished I could get up in the morning and look at the day the way I used to when I was a child. I wished I could walk down the streets and not hear those constant, abrasive sounds from the mouths of the opposite sex. Damn, I wished the world would let me be myself. But I knew better on all counts. I wish I could make my films. That wish I can work for.