The Tiresias Club
I first met Eleanor on a warm summer afternoon. Gregor had asked me to rendezvous with him at one of our popular inner-city haunts, the Café Perdu, just by the riverbank. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” he had said. And then refused to say anything more.
So I turned up, and sought out Gregor at one of the sidewalk tables. He waved as I drew near, and my eyes turned to the woman he was with.
She smiled politely in my direction, but there was a touch of something reserved about her. I smiled back as brightly as i could. I noticed her leg protruding from under the table at an angle, and stopped short, momentarily mystified.
“Pull up a chair, my man,” Gregor said, while signalling to a waiter. “We just got here a few minutes ago. Oh, by the way”—he turned to his companion—“This is Eleanor.”
I offered her my hand, which she took with a nod and a gentle smile. “I’m Rand,” I said.
“Rand,” she repeated, as though tasting it on her dainty tongue. “Is that your given name or your family name?”
“That’s my given name,” I replied.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
I had to say, that made me laugh. “It’s OK, I’m used to it.” I gestured to Gregor. “And how long have you known this disreputable man?”
“We met at the Club.”
“What club is that?” I asked.
The two exchanged looks.
“We’ll take you some time,” replied Gregor. “That is, if it’s all right with Eleanor. She’s a full member, you see. I’m still just an ... associate.”
Eleanor waved a hand airily. “The club is always looking to entertain potential new members. Of suitable character, of course. Did you know Danell is also looking to join?”
“The playwright?” I asked.
Gregor nodded. “Have you seen his latest opus? Quite the talk of the town, is our young literary firebrand.”
And so the conversation turned to the works of Danell and his philosophy of intersexuality in culture. None of us seemed able to express much enthusiasm for such ideas, though with Gregor one could never quite be sure.
After we had finished our coffees, Eleanor said, ”I have to be back at the gallery. Some new works are coming in, and their artists are going to be there as well.”
“I’ll walk you to the station,” immediately offered Gregor.
We all stood up, and I got my first clear look at Eleanor.
She had to lean on the table to get herself to her feet, maneouvring that straight-out left leg to get it vertical. The slacks she wore had been cut off on the left side, leaving the prosthetic leg entirely exposed, along with part of her thigh stump, which was all that she had for a left leg. The prosthesis was made of some light, gleaming metal; she had no problem bearing its weight, only with aiming it with its lack of a knee joint, the problem worsened by the lack of leverage from the shortness of the stump. She walked with a pronounced, almost comical limp, grimaces of effort passing over her face, as though this was all a new experience to her.
“Are you all right?” I asked, concerned that she might fall.
Her only reply was to smile. “I’m fine,” she replied lightly. She held on to Gregor’s hand as they disappeared towards the subway station.
❦ ❦ ❦
We met again two weeks later, at the neighbourhood riverside park. We stayed on the paths, and Eleanor still held on to Gregor for support, but it seemed to me she was walking on her prosthesis a little more easily now. She still grimaced as much, but her movements were a bit more graceful, less of an effort. Had my eyes deceived me about the size of her stump before? It looked bigger than I remembered, and the prosthesis correspondingly shorter.
“You seem to be walking better,” I remarked.
She smiled. “It is getting easier.”
“Will you get be getting a better prosthesis?”
From her look, I thought for a moment I had said something tactless.
She gave a little laugh. “Oh, no. That won’t be necessary. This is perfectly fine.”
“But...” I didn’t understand.
“You asked about the Club,” Gregor interjected. “There’s a meeting Friday week.”
“Would you like to come?” added Eleanor. “Gregor’s going to become a full member.”
“Yes, I’ve decided to take the plunge.”
“What is this Club all about?” I asked.
Again, that exchange of knowing looks.
“At least tell me what it’s called,” I pleaded.
“Tiresias,” replied Gregor. “The Club Tiresias.”
“Wasn’t he the man—” I started to ask.
“—who also became a woman?” finished Eleanor. “Yes.” Then she laughed at the expression on my face. “Don’t worry, I’ve never been a man. Though Gregor tells me...” Her face took on a slightly faraway look.
“Sorry, my dear,” Gregor protested. “I just cannot see you as a man. You are so beautiful as a woman, what would be the point?”
Eleanor smiled at him, head tilted to one side, as though sharing a private joke. “What, indeed?”
❦ ❦ ❦
At ten o’clock on the appointed night, I turned up at a discreet, plush but understated address in a genteel suburb, and showed my invitation to the rather androgynous figure who stood at the door. He/she let me in to a dimly-lit room, where a number of well-dressed figures of several discernible sexes milled about, chatting in soft-spoken tones.
“Rand!”
I turned at the voice—it was Eleanor. I grinned at her in recognition, then stopped in shock.
She still wore that garishly ugly prosthetic leg, but it was now even shorter. I might have dismissed it as a mistake on my part before, but there was no denying the fact any more, because she now had a knee joint. There was no way I could have missed that before. She walked easily over to me, the limp now only moderately noticeable.
“There’s no need to stare,” she murmured softly to me, and I could feel myself turning red from embarrassment. “Gregor’s over there. Get yourself a drink and come and join us, and I’ll explain everything.”
I did as instructed. Eleanor was in a relaxed position on a sofa in an alcove, that prosthesis no longer jutting awkwardly in front of her but now parked naturally beside her own leg. She whispered something to Gregor as I approached, and I could see him laugh momentarily as he glanced in my direction.
“Enough with all the enigma and mystery, you bastard,” I growled at him. And to Eleanor, “Begging your pardon, madame.”
Gregor gave me a sly grin. “In answer to your obvious question, yes, her leg really is growing back.”
It took me a couple of drinks to digest that little bit of information. “How did you lose your leg?” I asked.
“Through the same process,” Eleanor replied. “Only in reverse.”
That I didn’t understand at all. “You deliberately got rid of your leg?”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re ... getting it back again?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head in bafflement. “Why?”
In answer, Eleanor undid the straps on her crude prosthesis and raised the stump of her leg, resting it in Gregor’s lap. He touched the end of it delicately, caressingly, and I could see the intensity of her feeling as her eyes half closed. “Because,” she murmured languidly, “it’s better than sex.”
❦ ❦ ❦
My head was spinning, and only partly because of the drinks. A dawning realization came over me: those grimaces that I had taken for pain and effort, when I first met Eleanor, were in fact expressions of pleasure.
Eleanor beckoned over one of the other women, whose name was Greta. She was missing her right hand. I didn’t notice this immediately; I put my hand forward to shake, and she touched her stump against it, her face and body spasming ecstatically in response. She smiled at my discomfiture, then murmured, softly, “Go on, touch it some more.”
“The part that is shrinking or growing becomes exquisitely sensitive,” explained Eleanor. “You know those first few seconds of an orgasm, when your pleasure is at its height? Imagine a continual sensation like that, multiplied tenfold, spread over the modified area. But if the shrinking or growth stops, then the sensitivity gradually fades away, over a week or so. So to maintain the pleasure, you must maintain the process.”
I noticed the look of longing on Gregor’s face. “That is what you want to have,” I said to him.
He nodded, with a half-smile. “Now you know. My ... initiation ... is planned for later tonight.”
“This is madness!” I exclaimed, perhaps a little too loudly. One or two nearby faces turned in our direction, their discussion interrupted. Eleanor gasped.
“Perhaps your friend has had a little too much to drink,” observed Greta.
“It was my fault,” said Gregor apologetically. “I exposed him to too much, too soon. Come on, man, I’ll take you home.”
“But what about your initiation?” exclaimed Eleanor.
“Insanity ... against nature ... self-mutilation ...” I muttered.
“What seems to be the problem?”
We all turned at this new voice. A tall, slim figure stood there, dressed in black. For a moment I wasn’t sure if it was a man or a woman—the softness of features ... but the voice was unambiguously that of a man.
“Doctor Tracius!” exclaimed Greta.
“My friend here has been acting a bit unruly...” began Gregor.
“Did I hear him say something about ‘self-mutilation’?” asked Tracius.
I may have mumbled something in reply.
“I suppose that is a matter of opinion,” added the Doctor. He softly stroked his chin, and I was shocked to notice something I hadn’t seen before, and that was he had six fingers on each hand. He noticed the direction of my stare and smiled just a little ironically, flexing each finger in turn to demonstrate that they were all real and fully functional. “That’s right,” he said. “The technique can also add entirely new body parts, it doesn’t just remove existing parts.
“In fact, that is what I was looking for when I discovered the process—I was trying to find a way to regenerate lost or damaged body parts. I succeeded, and I also found that it had a ... most peculiar side-effect: the most intense feelings of pleasure, similar to sex—parasexual, one might say—in the parts being regenerated. And the same pleasure happened when I discovered that the regeneration could also be run in reverse—there was enjoyment to be had even in degeneration.
“But that was not all. While the regeneration or removal of body parts was fully reversible, there was another effect that was not. It turned out that, after experiencing the heightened intensity of satisfaction from the Tiresias process—as I call it—one’s normal capacity for sexual function simply faded away. Normal sex no longer becomes possible. This may sound unfortunate, but the desire for ‘normal’ sex disappears as well, so there is no real sense of loss. The new experience becomes a more than adequate substitute. And so”—he waved his hands around—“we have this little community who have freely chosen, without coercion and with full knowledge of the consequences, to leave the world of the Sexuals, undergo the process and appreciate its rewards.”
“And the name of this process—and of your club?” I asked challengingly.
“Yes, a play on the similarity to my own name. And also an acknowledgement of the possibilities that the process makes possible. For I have sampled the full range of experience of what it is like to be a man as well as a woman. As have many of the others in this Club.”
❦ ❦ ❦
I must have left at some point soon after, as I have little recollection of the rest of the evening. I remember Greta opening her dress (in full view of everybody else in the room, who showed little reaction) to show me the extra pair of breasts she had acquired, and explaining that, instead of regrowing her right hand immediately, she was going to get rid of the left one as well, and then shrink both arms down to nothing. And something about changing her feet to hands to see if they would serve as a substitute.
I must have passed out after that.
Anyway, I woke up the next morning with a throbbing headache, and decided to go to the park to try to walk it off. And who should I meet there but Eleanor.
“Hello,” she said cheerfully.
I cringed. “Did I make much of a fool of myself last night?”
She shrugged. “Not enough to derail the festivities. Gregor has been
initiated, anyway.”
A feeling of revulsion came over me. “What wonderful body part is he going to get rid of first? Will you enjoy making love with a mutilated man?”
She flinched at the word, but the look she gave me was not what I was expecting—instead of showing hurt, she was showing me pity.
This irritated me even more. “Maybe I am more of a man than Gregor ever could be. Would you like to find out?”
There was a flash of fire in her eyes. “If you like.”
“What would Gregor think of you cheating on him?”
She laughed lightly. “Only Sexuals ‘possess’ each other and ‘cheat’ on each other,” she replied. “Gregor and I are friends who enjoy the deepest of pleasures together, and with other Tiresians, without obligation or hypocrisy.”
“Enough of your fancy words,” I retorted. “Come on, show me.” I pulled her towards a thick clump of bushes, almost roughly enough to make her trip on her artificial leg, only relenting when she pleaded with me to slow down.
Safe from prying eyes in the midst of the bushes, I kissed her hard on the mouth. She responded willingly, but with something I would describe more as affection than passion. I pulled up her skirt, to discover that she wore no panties.
And there I sat frozen, staring at the space between her legs, as she leaned back, breathing only slightly heavily. At the blankness of the smooth skin of her crotch, where her sex should be—there was nothing.
“But ... but...” was all I could manage.
“I told you,” she replied. “What we have is better than sex. We feel pleasure wherever in our bodies we choose. Sex organs become rather ... superfluous, wouldn’t you say? Some keep them because they like the sight of them. As a woman, I enjoy having breasts, and showing my breasts. But for me, I always felt my genitals were something to be ashamed of--something unclean. So I was not sorry to get rid of them. Besides, the removal process was most enjoyable.” She undid the straps of her artificial leg and thrust her stump forward. “But now, if you wish to pleasure me, pleasure me there.”
I pushed her leg away. She pouted in disappointment, slowly reattached her leg, stood up and straightened her skirt.
❦ ❦ ❦
I began to avoid seeing Gregor or Eleanor again. But try as I might, I could not stop thinking about the Club. I went there again on a Friday-night meeting, but without an invitation, the attendant politely but firmly refused to let me in. Mentioning Gregor’s and Eleanor’s names were to no avail.
Undeterred, I went around to the back, and found myself among some bushes. In the darkness, I crept to the house, and crouched against a wall. Several windows were open to the mild summer night, and here and there voices could be heard in conversation or laughter. I found a window looking into a brightly-lit back room, and carefully peered in.
There was a large jacuzzi filling most of the room. There were maybe half a dozen people in it, with room for as many again. It was a genial crowd; none of them had clothes on, and they made no effort to avoid touching each other’s bodies—indeed, they positively sought out physical contact with each other, seemingly without shame or embarrassment.
By now I was beyond shock. I stared at them with morbid fascination, unable to take my eyes off the missing parts, the altered parts ... It was a feeling of revulsion and horror, and yet also a powerful attraction. Some part of me was asking, why the horror? They were clearly enjoying themselves, and hurting nobody. But another part kept insisting this was Wrong! Unnatural! Even Diabolical! The term “self-abuse” came unbidden into my mind, and I almost chuckled aloud...
I checked out other windows, into other rooms, some just as brightly-lit, others where the lights were low, and saw other groups equally engrossed in pleasuring themselves and each other. And the more I saw, the more enraged and upset I became.
Yes, it was me—I committed the act. I planned it very carefully: three Molotov cocktails, and a ring of gasoline right spilled round the lawn surrounding the house. Light the ring, and before the flames got too high, there was enough time to run around and throw in the firebombs through open windows. By the time the alarm was raised, the wall of fire surrounding the house would ensure that nobody could escape.
I killed them all. I reduced that accursed Tiresias Club to a smoking ruin. I was determined to put an end to this abomination, and wipe any trace of the unspeakable Doctor Tracius and his works from the face of the Earth. To this day, I can still hear their screams.
And now they keep me here in this locked room, and the only people I see speak to me and to each other in low, soothing voices. I know I am subject to delusions! For every now and then, these well-dressed figures appear, claiming to be Gregor and Eleanor, seemingly unscathed from the fire. They say they were badly burnt, along with many others, but the Tiresias process was able to regenerate their bodies and heal them.
But I know those are just my own nightmares coming back to haunt me.
❦ ❦ ❦