Of Water and Definitions
As I think of the second half of Eugenides’ saga, the image two images seem to beg further investigation: Calliope at the library, finding out who she is (at least as far as a dictionary definition can limit) and Cal in Bob Presto’s peepshow, head above water and body visible to all, who pay a token, through the porthole below. I’d like to comment on the second first.
Nothing seems more definite than the dichotomy between air and water. It is a natural binary, so it would appear. Yet, in Presto’s smut tank, Cal straddles that binary, fitting not completely in either, plunging the depths of the water, eyes closed, then, after Presto finishes his narration, climbing out. What is significant about this scene is the feeling of acceptance Cal develops towards his body. It is in this place, where a binary can be not necessarily disregarded, but at least be made to accommodate that which does not fit its strict definition, that Cal can move beyond Dr Luce’s attempt at “fixing” to a place in his own life where intersex does not equal monster, but simply something between, in the middle, to play with the novel’s title. Water, in fact, is a powerful symbol of transformation in this novel. Water is the source of multiple reinventions: Lefty and Desdemona are no longer brother and sister but become husband and wife after a journey at sea; Jimmy Zizmo goes ice fishing and returns as the prophet Fard; and so Cal, in the tank, can transform from a medical monster to an acceptably different human as he straddles the divide between air and water.
In stark contrast to this scene is that of Calliope at the reading room of the NYPL (which I thought was at Mid-Manhattan, the drab one on 41st and 5th, not at the big one with the lions across the street next to Bryant Park–but I may be wrong). In this scene, slowly Calliope makes her way from a medical definition of a term she has heard Luce use, to the word “monster” as a synonym for intersex people. In this scene, clear definitions that allow no exception are at work–and, dare anyone attempt to leave the normalizing confines of a world in a binary, they are led directly from a medical diagnosis to a label: monster. It is just a few steps from condition to characterization. These definitions immediately inform the person they describe that clinical terminology, though very neutral-sounding behind its Latin roots, still leads to a societal diagnosis which can be much stronger in its emotional impact, and is only bolstered by the medical “proof” behind it.
