Chapters (63)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ACT I EARLY SIGNS
- 1. AN UNMADE MOVIE
- 2. FIRST LOVE
- 3. A FIRST-NAME BASIS
- 4. DETERMINED NOT TO LEARN
- 5. BUT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED IN ASPEN?
- 6. LITTLE RAY
- 7. ALL ABOUT SEX
- 8. HAVE YOU SEEN THEM?
- 9. MOVIES, GIRLFRIENDS, FOREIGNNESS, OUTLIERS
- 10. NOT TARZAN
- 11. SMALLNESS AS A BURDEN
- 12. INTENDED FOR LITTLE RAY AND ME
- 13. THE SNOWSHOER KISS
- 14. A JUDGMENT CALL
- 15. SEEING THINGS
- 16. WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT
- 17. SON OF THE BRIDE
- 18. WHAT THE STONE SPARROWS SAW
- ACT II THE HONEYMOON ON THE CLIFF
- 19. “I SAW ME IN YOUR EYES”
- 20. A LITTLE BEHIND GIRLS HER AGE, SOCIALLY; DEFINITELY AHEAD OF; DEFINITELY BEHIND
- 21. IN CONTROL
- 22. MY SECOND-MOST UNMARRIAGEABLE GIRLFRIEND
- 23. “ALMOST PERFECT” OR “NO STRINGS ATTACHED”
- 24. MELANCHOLIC ENOUGH
- 25. THE “POLICE REPORT”
- 26. THE GETAWAY DRIVER
- 27. SEXUAL POLITICS, A FIRE, JEALOUSY
- 28. STILL GROWING
- 29. THE GOOD SHEPHERD
- ACT III RULES FOR GHOSTS
- 30. THE WOMAN WITH THE BABY CARRIAGE
- 31. WHERE HAVE THE BANANAS GONE?
- 32. A TURN IN THE ROAD
- 33. JUST SMALL ENOUGH
- 34. OUR MARINE
- 35. AT THE WHALE SHIP
- 36. BOOK SIGNINGS
- 37. THINGS TO DO WITH A PENIS
- 38. PLAGUE SONG
- 39. WENGEN
- 40. THE NIGHT OF THE SANTAS
- 41. STARTING SOMETHING
- 42. A NORMAL LIFE
- 43. A BOHEMIAN LIFESTYLE
- 44. MEN WHO SHOULD BE CASTRATED
- 45. LOGE PEAK
- 46. “FOUND YOU!”
- 47. WRITTEN IN THE SNOW
- 48. FIVE YEARS, FOUR MOVIES
- 49. NOT A GHOST
- 50. EM AS ISHMAEL
- 51. “O CANADA”
- 52. THE LESBIANS’ CHILDREN
- 53. THE VOICE ON THE SUBWAY; THE SILENCE IN THE ROCK GARDEN
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- ALSO BY JOHN IRVING
“We’re at the Whale Ship now,” the snowshoer inexplicably said, while we were enduring the smell that was probably octopus. We’d complained to the little English teacher about her idea of the Whale Ship. She never said what happened at the Whale Ship, once you and your perfect penis or your perfect vagina were admitted, once you were let in the door. “What could possibly be as big a deal as getting into the Whale Ship—what could ever happen inside the place that means as much as getting in?” Mr. Barlow asked us. “It’s getting harder to tell jokes about hatred,” the little English teacher told us, but she could see she’d lost us.
To begin with, Nora and Em didn’t go to the memorial service for Coach Dearborn—they’d not met “our marine,” as Elliot Barlow and I called him. And what Elliot meant about jokes and hatred went over my head, too. I was as lost as Nora and Em by what the snowshoer had said. In the years ahead, there were hard times coming for comedy of any kind. For Em and me as writers, for Nora and Em onstage at the Gallows, it was going to get harder to be funny—about anything. Just imagine trying to call yourselves Two Dykes, One Who Talks today. You can’t tell jokes about hatred today. I can tell you when today’s hatred was just beginning—at the end of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s, the pushback was already there.
Did an imaginary sex club like the Whale Ship represent the sexual unknown? Would sexual differences and sexual minorities eventually be accepted? Would sexual intolerance become outdated, or just go away? If you remember, sexual hatred used to be different. Sexual hatred was always there, and it was already changing or beginning to change, but it wasn’t like it is today. I remember our marine. I would never say I miss him, or his hatred, but his hatred was restrained—at first, he tried to hold it back. He wouldn’t hold it back today. Guys like our marine are at the Whale Ship now, intent on doing damage. I know that’s what the snowshoer would say. Whatever went on at the Whale Ship, guys like our marine got in. Guys like our marine are worse now, but their hatred was always there.