Rubyfruit Jungle

by Rita Mae Brown

Once you buy into a definition of yourself that has been made by others, you’re a victim.

Victims draw great strength from banding together and declaring a common oppression and a common (always glorious, of course) culture. Perhaps, but you’re still a victim.

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.

Mothers and aunts tell us about infancy and early childhood, hoping we won’t forget the past when they had total control over our lives and secretly praying that because of it, we’ll include them in our future.

“I don’t care. It makes no difference where I came from. I’m here, ain’t I?”

In school they told us that the president was the best man in the whole country but I knew my father was the best man in the whole country; the country didn’t know it, that’s all.

How do you know someone is real if you don’t see him?

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.

A nurse, I wasn’t gonna be no nurse. If I was gonna be something I was gonna be the doctor and give orders.

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.”

I began to wonder if girls could marry girls, because I was sure I wanted to marry Leota and look in her green eyes forever. But I would only marry her if I didn’t have to do the housework. I was certain of that. But if Leota really didn’t want to do it either, I guessed I’d do it. I’d do anything for Leota.

I had to do the chores: dishes, ironing, wash, even cooking. That made me give up the idea of marrying Leota B. Bisland if she wouldn’t do the chores or at least half of them. I had to figure out a way to find out what Leota would agree to.

We threw our arms around each other and kissed. My stomach felt funny.

There were times when I felt kissing Leota wasn’t enough, but I wasn’t sure what the next step would be. So until I knew, I settled for kissing.

“I don’t care what the hell I am. And I ain’t staying away from people because they look different.”

I also had to stop talking the way we talked at home. I could think bad grammar all I wanted, but I learned rapidly not to speak it.

I decided to become the funniest person in the whole school. If someone makes you laugh you have to like her. I even made my teachers laugh. It worked.

“You can’t have one. Girls can’t have motorcycles.” “Fuck you, Leroy. I’ll buy an army tank if I want to and run over anyone who tells me I can’t have it.”

“How come you’re all of a sudden so interested in my being a lady?” “I dunno. I like you the way you are, but then I get confused. If you’re doing what you please, out there riding around on motorcycles, then what am I supposed to do? I mean how do I know how to act if you act the same way?”

“Keep doing it if it feels good. Hide it, that’s all. It’s nobody’s business what you’re doing anyway, Leroy.”

Leroy was getting more and more like any other red neck. It got to the point where he thought he owned me, just because we’d do it every now and then.

He followed the herd, like any dumb beast, vaguely realizing he was unhappy.

But then I had never thought I had much in common with anybody. I had no mother, no father, no roots, no biological similarities called sisters and brothers.

I wanted to go my own way. That’s all I think I ever wanted, to go my own way and maybe find some love here and there. Love, but not the now and forever kind with chains around your vagina and a short circuit in your brain. I’d rather be alone.

“I know. You’ll pay for it, honey. Tears and bitterness, ’cause you’ll be out there fighting all by yourself. Most people are cowards, like me. And if you try to get them to fight they’ll turn on you, bad as the people you originally fightin’ with. You’ll be all alone.”

“you go on and do whatever you want to do and the hell with the rest of the world. Learn from your old man. I never did a Goddamned thing and now I’m too old to do anything. All I got is dead dreams and a mortgage on that house with ten years left to pay. I worked my whole life and all I got to show is that square, pink house sitting next to the railroad tracks with other square houses. Shit. You damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, kid; don’t listen to nobody but your own self.”

“I’m not through, Molly, I don’t know if I can be your friend anymore. I’ll think about it every time I see you. I’ll be nervous and wonder if you’re going to rape me or something.”

Got to hang on. That’s what Carl told me once, you got to hang on.

Faye and I discovered a common bond for disruption

Faye was the spirit of generosity, maybe because she didn’t know what money was worth, but I loved her for it whatever her motive.

The whole thing was creepy and the Spanish moss in the night looked like ragged fingers of death coming to get me.

the women were dancing with other women. I had a sudden urge to clap my hands in frenzied applause, but I suppressed it because I knew no one would understand.

“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.”

We were eighteen, in love, and didn’t know the world existed—but it knew we existed.

Doesn’t this disturb you, my dear? After all, it’s not normal.” “I know it’s not normal for people in this world to be happy, and I’m happy.”

The next day in my mailbox was a letter from the scholarship committee informing me that my scholarships could not be renewed for “moral reasons” although my academic record was “superb.”

I left my books in my room except for my English book, left my term papers and football programs and my last scrap of innocence. 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.

Well, I hope I live to see the day you put your tail between your legs. I’ll laugh right in your face.” “Then you’d better live to see me dead.”

“Tell me the deal first.” “There’s this guy, Ronnie Rapaport, the grapefruit freak. This cat gets his kicks out of being blasted with grapefruits.”

was stainless-steel-chrome expensive. By looking at him, you couldn’t tell he was into grapefruit.

What’s the point of being a lesbian if a woman is going

to look and act like an imitation man?

“It seems to me that if I say I’m femme then the Mighty Moes of the world will descend upon me, but if I say I’m butch then I have to pay for the drinks. Either way I get screwed.” “The human condition.”

You know, of course, that we are heading toward the bedroom and that we’re going in there to make love?” “I know.”

“Pay no attention to Fritza. She was my first lover at Bryn Mawr and we’ve grown comfortable in our hostility.”

“Look, you stubborn shit, if you’d just bend a little you wouldn’t have to kill yourself like this—and you’d have some clothes, a decent apartment, a few little lovelies that make life easier.”

“You don’t understand, Holly, I don’t want to live here. I don’t want raggedy clothes. I don’t want to be running on nerves for the next ten years, but I have to do it my way. My way, understand. It has nothing to do with morality, it has to do with me.” “Oh, come off it, Horatio Alger.” “I don’t want a fight. Can’t we forget it for tonight?” “No, I’m not going to forget it because I know you’re making a value judgment on me.”

I’m not willing to have to watch you go through the ugliness you’re going through now and I don’t think I could face what’s going to happen after this—when

You’re strong enough to take it, but I’m not strong enough to watch it.