She looked past him. On the bank was a group of smiling women, her grandmother, her mother, and her stepmother, too, her sisters and stepsisters, all of them smiling at her. They waved. No one said, "Put your clothes on." No one said, "Don't go in too deep now, dear." She was a good swimmer, and there was no reason to be afraid. She couldn't think of a single thing she wanted. She flipped away, breaking the skin of the water with her legs.

She surfaced in a place where the lake held still to mirror the sky. When it settled, she looked down into it. She expected to see that she was beautiful, but she was not. A mirror only answers one question and it can't lie. She had completely lost her looks. She wondered what she had gotten in return.

THERE WAS A MIRROR in the bedroom. It was dusty so her reflection was vague. But she was not beautiful. She wasn't upset about this and she noticed the fact, a little wonderingly. It didn't matter at all to her. Most people were taken in by appearances, but others weren't. She was healthy; she was strong. If she could manage to be kind and patient and witty and brave, there would be men who loved her for it. There would be men who found it exciting.

He lay among the blankets, looking up at her. "Your eyes," he said. "Your incredible eyes."

His own face was in shadow, but there was no reason to be afraid. She removed her dress. It was red. She laid it over the back of a chair. "Move over."

She had never been in bed with this man before, but she wanted to be. It was late and no one knew where she was. In fact, her mother had told her explicitly not to come here, but there was no reason to be afraid. "I'll tell you what to do," she said. "You must use your hand and your mouth. The other-it doesn't work for me. And I want to be first. You'll have to wait."

"I'll love waiting," he said. He covered her breast with his mouth, his hand moved between her legs. He knew how to touch her already. He kissed her other breast.

"Like that," she said. "Just like that." Her body began to tighten in antic.i.p.ation.

He kissed her mouth. He kissed her mouth.

HE KISSED HER MOUTH. It was not a hard kiss, but it opened her eyes. This was not the right face. She had never seen this man before and the look he gave her-she wasn't sure she liked it. Why was he kissing her, when she was asleep and had never seen him before? What was he doing in her bedroom? She was so frightened, she stopped breathing for a moment. She closed her eyes and wished him away.

He was still there. And there was pain. Her finger dripped with blood and when she tried to sit up, she was weak and enc.u.mbered by a heavy dress, a heavy coil of her own hair, a corset, tight and pointed shoes.

"Oh," she said. "Oh." She was about to cry and she didn't know this man to cry before him. Her tone was accusing. She pushed him and his face showed the surprise of this. He allowed himself to be pushed. If he hadn't, she was not strong enough to force it.

He was probably a very nice man. He was giving her a concerned look. She could see that he was tired. His clothes were ripped; his own hands were scratched. He had just done something hard, maybe dangerous. So maybe that was why he hadn't stopped to think how it might frighten her to wake up with a stranger kissing her as she lay on her back. Maybe that was why he hadn't noticed how her finger was bleeding. Because he hadn't, no matter how much she came to love him, there would always be a part of her afraid of him.

"I was having the most lovely dream," she said. She was careful not to make her tone as angry as she felt.

THE VIEW FROM VENUS:.

A CASE STUDY.

Linda knows, of course, that the gorgeous male waiting for her, holding the elevator door open with his left hand, cannot be moving into apartment 201. This is not the way life works. There are many possible explanations for the boxes stacked around his feet-he may be helping a friend move in, his girlfriend, perhaps. Someone equally blond and statuesque who will be Linda's new next-door neighbor, and Gretchen will point out that she is a sister, after all, and force everyone to be nice to her. Their few male guests will feel sorry for her, oppressed as she is by all that beauty, and there will be endless discourse on the tragic life of Marilyn Monroe.

The door slides shut. Linda reaches for the second-floor b.u.t.ton, but so does he, and they both withdraw their hands quickly before touching. He takes a slight step backward, communicating his willingness to let her punch in the destination. She does so; the outline of the b.u.t.ton for the second floor shines slightly. It is just below eye level. She watches it closely so as not to look at him, and she can feel him not looking at her. They share the embarra.s.sment of closely confined strangers. The elevator does not move.

Linda is upset because she is nervous. This nervousness is in direct proportion to how attractive she finds him. She is very nervous. She tells herself sharply to stop being so juvenile.

He reaches past her and re-presses the b.u.t.ton. "It's always like this," Linda tells him. "When you're in a hurry, take the stairs."

He turns slowly and looks at her. "I'm Dave Stone," he says. "Just moving in."

"Linda Connors. Apartment Two-oh-three." So he will be living here. He and his girlfriend will move in together; they will both be neighbors, but she will still be a sister, and no one will be allowed to rip off another woman's man.

The elevator groans and shudders. It begins to lift. "I'm transferring up from Santa Barbara," Dave says. "Have you ever been there? I know how this is going to sound, but you really do look familiar."

"Nope." The elevator jerks twice before stopping. Linda is expecting it and is braced against the side. Dave stumbles forward. "Maybe you've confused me with some movie star," Linda suggests. "A common mistake." She gives the door a slight push to open it. "My roommate Lauren says I have Jack Lemmon's chin," she adds, and leaves him struggling to unload his boxes before the elevator closes up and moves on.

Inside the apartment Linda gets herself a gla.s.s of milk. Her mood now is good. She has stood next to a man, a strange man, and she has talked with him. She actually spoke first instead of merely answering his questions. And she tells herself, though it is hard to ever be sure of these things, that nothing about the conversation would have told him this was difficult for her.

The truth is that men frighten Linda. The more a particular man appeals to her, the more frightening he becomes. Linda knows almost nothing about men, in spite of having had a father practically her whole life. She believes that men are fundamentally different from women, that they have mysterious needs and a.s.sess women according to bizarre standards on which she herself never measures very high. Some years back she read in "The Question Man," a daily column in the San Francisco Chronicle, that men mentally undress women when they pa.s.s them on the street. Linda has never recovered from the shock of this.

One of Linda's roommates, a red-haired woman named Julie, is curled up with a book. It is a paperback ent.i.tled The Arrangement. Julie likes books with explicit s.e.x. Julie already knows she is destined to be some married man's lover and has told Linda so. Linda reads Jane Austen. For fun.

"Have you seen what's moving in next door?" Julie asks.

"I met him. Big, blond . . . his name is Dave."

"Chiseled features," says Julie. "That's what you call those. And he's not the only one. There's a little dark one, too, and a couple of brothers who haven't arrived yet."

Four of them. And four women inside Linda's own apartment. There seems to Linda to be a certain inescapable logic at work here. She pictures a quadruple wedding (where she is the only one technically ent.i.tled to wear white, but no one need know this) and then life in a cozy suburban quadruplex. It is only with some effort that Linda remembers that Dave did not really seem to be her type, being unquestionably more attractive than she is. "Not my type" is the designation Linda applies to men who pay no attention to her. It is an infinite set. Those few men who are Linda's type she invariably dislikes. She drinks her milk and makes the realistic decision to forget Dave forever. They'll always have their elevator ride. . . .

WELCOME TO Comparative Romance I. You have just experienced the Initial Encounter. The point of view is female: We shall be sticking to this perspective through most of this term. And we shall access only one mind at a time. This gives a more accurate sense of what it would be like to be an actual partic.i.p.ant. It is not uncommon for those inexperienced in the process of absorption to have an uncomfortable reaction. Is anyone feeling at all queasy? Claustrophobic? No? Good.

Then let me make a few quick points about the Encounter and we will return. You must remember, owing to the time required by Transmission and Processing, that these events are not current. We are involved here in a historical romance. The location is the city of Berkeley, before its secession. The year, according to local calculation, is 1969, a time thought by some to have been critical in the evolution of male/female relationships. Can anyone here provide a context?

Very good. In addition to the war, the a.s.sa.s.sinations, and the riots, we have a women's movement which is just becoming militant again. We have many women who are still a little uncomfortable about this. "I believe in equal rights for women, but I'm not a feminist," is the proper feminine dogma at this time. To call oneself a feminist is to admit to being ugly. Most women are reluctant to do this. Particularly on the West Coast.

Are there any questions? If not, let's locate ourselves and Linda at Encounter Number Two. Are we all ready?

Well?

I'm taking that as an affirmative.

LINDA MEETS DAVE again the next morning on the stairs. He is returning from campus and invites her in for a cup of coffee in exchange for her advice in choosing cla.s.ses. She is on her way to the library but decides it would be more educational to see the inside of apartment 201. She has an anthropological curiosity about men living together. What do they eat? Who does the dishes? Who cleans the toilets? Her hands are cold so she sticks them into the opposite cuffs of her sweater sleeves as she follows Dave back up the stairs.

Her first impression is that the male s.e.x is much neater than the s.e.x to which she belongs herself. Everything has already been unpacked. There are pictures on the walls, tasteful pictures, a small print of Rembrandt's thoughtful knight, the gold in the helmet echoing the tones of the s.h.a.g carpet, a bird's-eye view of the Crucifixion, a bus poster which reads WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT DOPE? The dishes all match; the avocado Formica has been sponged so recently it is still wet.

Linda is so busy collecting data she forgets to tell Dave she doesn't really want coffee. He hands her a steaming cup and she notices with dismay that he has not even left her room to soften the taste with milk. She uses the cup to warm her hands, smells it tentatively. "Did you know," she asks him, "that in Sweden they have a variation on our bag ladies they call 'coffee b.i.t.c.hes'? These are supposed to be women who've gone mad from drinking too much coffee. It gives you a whole new perspective on Mrs. Olsen, doesn't it?"

She hears a key turning in the door. "Kenneth," says Dave, and Kenneth joins them in the kitchen, his face a little flushed from the cold air, his eyes dark and intense. Kenneth gives Linda the impression of being somehow concentrated, as if too much energy has been packed into too small a package.

"This is Linda," Dave tells Kenneth.

"h.e.l.lo, Linda," Kenneth says. He starts moving the clean dishes out of the drainer and onto the shelves. "I love this place." He gestures expansively with a plastic tumbler. "We were right to come here. I told you so." He is sorting the silverware. "I've been over at Sproul, what-half an hour? And in that time I got hit with a Frisbee, someone tried to sign me into the s.e.xual Freedom League, I listened to this whole debate on the merits of burning New York City to the ground, and a girl came up out of nowhere and kissed me. This is a great place."

"What was the pro side of burning New York?" asked Dave. "I've got relatives there."

"No more blackouts." Kenneth puts a coffee cup away, then takes it out again immediately. Linda sees her chance.

"Take mine," she urges. "I haven't touched it. Really." She gives Dave an apologetic smile. "Sorry. I meant to tell you before you poured. I hate coffee."

"It's okay," he says evenly. "I'll never ask you over for coffee again." He turns to Kenneth. "Tell Linda what happened last night."

"Oh, G.o.d." Kenneth takes Linda's coffee and sips at it. He settles into the chair next to her, leaning back on two legs. Linda decides she is attracted to him as well. She looks away from him. "Last night," he begins, "this guy came to our door looking for a friend of his named Jim Harper. I said we were new to the building, but I didn't think there was a Jim Harper here."

"I don't know a Jim Harper," Linda says. "In fact, you're practically the only men. Except for-"

"So he says Jim Harper might be living under an alias and have we seen any little brown guys around. I say, 'Is he a Negro?' and he says, 'No, he's just a little brown guy.'"

"So," Dave finishes, "Ken tells him we'll set out some snares tonight and let him know in the morning if we've caught anything. Who are the other men in the building? Are they little and brown?"

"There's only one. Dudley Petersen. And no. He's middle-aged, middle-sized, medium coloring. We think he's a CIA agent, because he's so cunningly nondescript and he won't tell us what he does."

"You could live your whole life in Santa Barbara without anyone coming to your door looking for small, brown men," Kenneth tells Linda. "I love this place."

Linda does not respond. She is thinking about Dudley. Last summer he'd gone to Hawaii for two weeks-on vacation, he said, but she wasn't born yesterday. She knows a Pacific Rim a.s.signment when she sees one. He'd asked her to water his ferns. Apparently she'd been overzealous. She wouldn't have thought it possible to overwater a fern. There'd been bad feelings on his return. But while she had access to his apartment she'd found a shelf of p.o.r.nographic books. Quite by accident. She'd brought them downstairs and shared them with her roommates. Really funny stuff-they'd taken turns reading it aloud: "He had the largest hands Cybelle had ever seen." . . . "'No,' she moaned. 'No.' Or was she saying 'More. More?'" . . . "Her silken b.r.e.a.s.t.s swelled as he stroked them. She drew his head down until his mouth brushed the nipples."

It all reminded her of an article the Chronicle had once run in the women's section. An expert in female psychology (an obscure branch of the larger field) had argued that small-breasted women were using their bodies to repress and reject their femininity because they would rather be men. Under hypnosis, with the help of a trained professional, these women could come to accept themselves as women and their b.r.e.a.s.t.s would grow. This happy result had been doc.u.mented in at least three cases.

What had struck Linda most about the article was its very accusing tone. Men liked women to have large b.r.e.a.s.t.s; it was highly suspect, if not downright b.i.t.c.hy, the way some women refused to provide them. Linda feels Kenneth looking at her. Mentally undressing her? Why, even as they speak, Dave and Kenneth are probably asking themselves why her b.r.e.a.s.t.s are so small. Because she is cold and nervous, Linda has been sitting with her arms crossed over her chest. Now she deliberately uncrosses them.

"When do the rest of you arrive?" she asks distantly.

Dave looks himself over. "I'm all here," he says. "This is it."

"No. Your other roommates. The brothers."

There is a moment's silence while Dave and Kenneth drink their coffee. Then they both speak at once. "We couldn't afford the apartment just the two of us," Kenneth says, while Dave is saying, "The Flying Zukini Brothers? You mean you haven't met them yet? You are in for a treat."

"They're here already," Kenneth adds. "G.o.d, are they here. They have presence, if you know what I mean. Even when they're not here, they're here."

"Go home while you can," advises Dave. "Go home to your small brown men." His eyes are just visible over the tilted rim of his coffee cup.

Footsteps stamp at the doorway. There is a sound of keys. "Too late," says Dave ominously as the door swings open. Two clean-cut men in T-shirts which show their muscled arms try to come through the door together. They catch, in charmingly masculine fashion, at the shoulders. They are nice-looking, but somehow Linda knows the quadruple wedding is off. No one would take the last name of Zukini anyway, not even if they hyphenated it.

"I got a car!" says the first of the brothers through the door. "I mean, I put the money down and it's sitting in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I drove it home!" He accelerates into a discussion of RPMs, variations in mileage, painless monthly payments. Man talk. Linda is bored.

"Linda, this is Fred," says Dave. "The other one is Frank."

"You want to go see the car?"

"I got a cla.s.s."

"Good thinking."

Linda shifts from one foot to the other, feeling awkward and grateful for Fred's noise, which makes it less obvious. She wants to say something intelligent before she pushes her way through the clot of men blocking the door, and the longer she puts it off the more awkward it becomes. She gives up on the intelligent part. "Thanks for the coffee," she says to Dave. She narrowly misses Fred's fist, which has swung good-naturedly past her ear and settled into Kenneth's shoulder.

Kenneth covers the spot with his right hand. "Don't do that again, Fred," he says, his tone deceptively light. And then Linda is out in the hall and the door closes behind her.

WE HAVE REACHED the end of the Second Encounter. Let's take a moment to reorient ourselves, and then perhaps you have questions I can answer. Yes? You. In the back.

The Chronicle? No, I believe it is a major newspaper with some particularly well-known columnists. Did you have another question?

Well, yes. I know it wasn't painted by Rembrandt and you know it wasn't painted by Rembrandt and in fifty years everyone will know it wasn't painted by Rembrandt, but in 1969 it was a Rembrandt. There was another question, wasn't there? Yes. You. Speak loudly, please.

Well, I'm not sure I want to answer this. We are experiencing these events as Linda does; to give you an objective a.s.sessment of Linda's physical appearance would taint this perspective.

Let's imagine a reality for a moment, an objective, factual you. How do others perceive you? How do you perceive others' perceptions of this you? We are now at two removes from the objective reality; we have pa.s.sed it through two potentially distorting filters-others' perception of you and your perceptions of others-and yet for the purposes of relationships this is absolutely the closest to reality anyone can come. So this is where we will stay. Linda is small and thin; you experience this with Linda. She perceives herself as ordinary so you will share this perception. But I will point out that, although Linda imagines her appearance to be a liability, still she dresses in ways that support it. She cultivates the invisibility she feels so hampered by.

The point you raise is an interesting one with its own peculiarly female aspects. The entire issue, women's perceptions of their own bodies, is strange and complex and one of you might consider it as a possible term paper topic. Let's collect a little more data and then discuss it further. We'll pick up the Third Encounter a bit early to give you a chance to see the women together first. And let me just give you this bit of insight to ground your thinking on this subject. There are four women involved in this next Encounter, four relatively intelligent women, and yet all four share the same basic belief that anyone who looks at them closely will not love them. They feel that their energies in a relationship must go primarily to the task of preventing the male from ever seeing them clearly.

Are we ready? All right.

DINNER IS OVER, and the women of apartment 203 are still sitting around the table. They are holding a special financial meeting. Item one: Someone has made two phone calls to Redwood City and is refusing to acknowledge them. This is of interest only to Linda; the phone is in Linda's name. Item two: Was the Sara Lee cake which Julie consumed una.s.sisted a cake bought with apartment funds or a personal cake?

Julie's position is completely untenable. She argues first that it was her own private cake and second that she most certainly did not eat it alone. It is the most flagrant case Linda can imagine of someone trying to have her cake and eat it, too, and Linda says so. Julie is a closet eater and has developed a number of techniques for consuming more than anyone realizes. She will open the ice cream container from the bottom and shovel away unnoticed until someone else tries to serve herself and the ice cream collapses under the spoon.

Julie can seldom decide if she is dieting or not. This ambivalence forces her to rely on an ancient method of weight control. If, after polishing off a chocolate cake, it turns out she is on a diet after all, she throws it up. Of course this step, once taken, is irrevocable. Julie thinks that she is fat, although the whole time Linda has known her she never has been.

"Self-induced vomiting is hard on the stomach lining," says Gretchen. Gretchen is as short as Linda, but more muscular and athletic. She is a feminist and says so. "This is what finally destroyed Roman culture."

"Lead in the pipes," contends Linda.

"What?"

"They used lead in their water pipes. Eventually they were all brain-damaged."

"The process was accelerated by self-induced vomiting."

Julie is not listening. She is holding her red hair in her fingers, isolating single strands and splitting the ends. Julie does this routinely, although she spends extra money on special shampoos for damaged hair. Gretchen bites her fingernails. Lauren, who is black and so beautiful that strange men approach her on the street and say, "Hey, foxy lady," to her, pulls out her eyelashes when she is nervous and has done such a thorough job she now wears false eyelashes even to cla.s.s. Linda bites her lips. She was told once as a child that her eyes were her best feature; she ceased to have any interest in the rest of her face. And then later she read in Chekhov that an unattractive woman is always being told she has beautiful eyes or beautiful hair. Linda's most recent compliment is that she has nice teeth. It is hard to get excited about this.

Someone knocks on the door. The women's hands all drop to their laps. "Come in," says Lauren.

It is Dave. Linda's breath quickens slightly. He has brought a penciled sign which he claims to have found Scotch-taped to the doork.n.o.b of 201. Attention!! it says. Emergency!!! Clothes drier in bas.e.m.e.nt refusing to fonction! Suzette.