Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk (best time to read books txt) 📕

clutching his breast, the fingers grip hard, and the woman says, “Don't.”

Someone else says, “I wouldn't mind having hooters that nice.”

They have to be silicone. Another hand reaches into the open blouse and grabs the second breast, rolling it, forcing it up against the pearl necklace, so we can look for a surgical scar underneath.

“Miranda” sits there, his arms bent forward at the elbow, each hand still holding half the pink bra, holding it open while we look. He starts to bring the bra back together, to seal things back inside.

And someone still groping a titty says, “Not yet.”

The driver's license still on the table in front of us, the big “F” printed under “sex.”

Someone else says, “Fake boobies don't prove nothing.”

Someone else says, “My husband's got bigger ones than that.”

Hands from around behind “Miranda,” they pull the scarf off his shoulders, pulling the pink blouse back and down until it slips off his arms. His skin glows, clear as the pearl earring in each ear. His nipples pink as the lizard-skin pocketbook, he lets this happen.

Somebody throws the blouse off into a corner of the room.

And somebody else says, “Let's see your pussy.”

And “Miranda” says: No.

It's obvious. This poor, sad, misguided fuck, he's using us. The way a masochist goads a sadist. The way the criminal wants to be caught. “Miranda” is begging for it. This is why he's shown up here. It's why he's dressed this way. He knows this shorty-short skirt, these big casaba boobs, they drive a real woman wild. In this case, “no” does mean “yes.” It means “Yes, please.” It means, “slap me.”

“Miranda,” he says: You're making a big mistake.

And everybody laughs.

We say how consciousness raising means coming to terms with your genitals. Other meetings we've had, we've all brought hand mirrors and squatted over them. We've all shared a speculum and studied the difference between the cervix of a virgin and a mother. We've had speakers from the women's health cooperative here to demonstrate period extraction with the Karman Cannula. Yes, all this, right here on this wooden table. Together, we've shopped for sex toys and studied the G-spot.

A little pushing, and “Miranda” is up on the table. Even on his hands and knees, his breasts still look round and solid, not stretched and hanging down. Six inches of zipper, and his skirt slides down his skinny ass. He's wearing pantyhose: more proof he's not a real woman.

The women in the group, we look at each other. To have a man here taking orders. Some of us were molested. Some of us, raped. All of us, ogled, groped, undressed by male eyes. It's our turn, and we don't know where to begin.

Somebody rolls the pantyhose down, off his ass. Somebody else says, “Arch your back.”

Nobody's surprised at how “Miranda's” labia look. The skin too frilly. The wet-flower look a stylist works hard to get in Playboy or Hustler. Still, the flesh doesn't look soft enough, and the color's too pale, not pink or light brown. Surgical scar tissue. The pubic hair trimmed and waxed down to a thin stripe. Perfumed. Not the way a pussy is supposed to look. The longer we look, the more we agree it's not real.

Somebody pokes at “Miranda” with a car key. Not ever a finger. Somebody pokes at the folds of her skin and says, “I hope you didn't pay a lot for this . . .”

Another member of the group says we should see how deep it goes.

Whatever he is, “Miranda” is crying. Caught up in his little drama, all his eye makeup and blusher mixed with his foundation and coming down his cheeks to each corner of his mouth. He's almost naked with his stretched pantyhose webbed between his ankles, his feet still in gold-elegant high-heeled sandals. His blouse is gone and his pink lace bra is open and hanging off his shoulders. His firm, round breasts shiver with each sob. He's on the conference table this way. His fur coat on the floor, kicked off into a corner. His blond hair falling down. His own little horror story.

Somebody tells “Miranda” to shut up. Shut up and turn over.

Somebody takes him by an ankle. Someone takes the other ankle, and they twist his legs until he lets out a little shriek and turns over. Now on his back, his feet are still pulled wide apart, each gold sandal gripped by a different set of hands.

This isn't a woman. Maybe if someone from the planet Mars only ever saw a woman in Cosmopolitan, this is what they'd create. We point out how the clitoris must be the penis whittled down. Somebody describes how the artificial vaginal vault is just the penis, gutted and stuffed inside, a section of mucus-producing lower intestine spliced in for depth. Where the cervix should be, they use the skin salvaged from the empty scrotum.

“Waste not, want not,” somebody says.

Someone gets a little flashlight out of her tote bag and says, “I've got to see this.”

Somebody else says, “All this fuss. It proves he's never had a pelvic.”

In hindsight, they should've just gone home. Oh, it's all so politically enlightened until somebody gets hurt.

Still, here they meet week after week, rapping about who didn't get what job. Who's stuck under what glass ceiling. Who feels her breasts undressed by the eyes of gas-station attendants and construction workers. All they ever do is talk. Here at last is their chance to strike back.

It's a team-building exercise.

They ask, Why is he here? Is he a spy?

Experts say a woman makes only sixty cents for every dollar a man makes doing equal work. He makes all this extra dough, and this is how he blows it. Makeup and plastic tits. Any real woman's gonna have stretch marks. Gray hairs. Cheesy cellulite thighs.

They ask, what did he expect to find?

Somebody is digging with her fingers. Someone holds the flashlight, pushing it forward.

The group asks, did he expect a gang of man-hating bulldykes getting together for some