WEBCAM - A Novel of Terror (The KonrathKilborn Collective) by Jack Kilborn & J.A. Konrath

Author:Jack Kilborn & J.A. Konrath [Kilborn, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Published: 2016-04-15T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 28

Though she had too many people in her cell phone address book to ever possibly remember—so many that her assistant needed an entire day to send out holiday cards—Joan didn’t really have any close friends. Joan’s criteria for being close was crying on their shoulder, and the only person she ever did that with was Tom, and it was only after something truly horrible happened.

So Trish crying on her shoulder made Joan uncomfortable. The fact that she was uncomfortable made Joan dislike that part of herself, which made her even more uncomfortable, which is the reason she didn’t have any close friends.

Trish was Joan’s go-to when she came to Chicago to visit Tom. They enjoyed eating out, shopping, seeing an occasional show. They talked about their boyfriends, and sex, and stupid things in general that men did (which covered a lot of ground). But this was the first time Trish was asking Joan for emotional support. Joan could do it; she’d talked more than one A-list actor out of quitting, but it reminded her of work.

“I don’t think I could find another man to love me,” Trish said. She’d been saying variations of that since Joan had arrived. The poor waitress hadn’t even taken their order yet, and Joan was on what felt like her second pot of mediocre coffee.

“He loves you.”

“I can’t have babies.”

“You can adopt.”

“Men want to pass on their genes. It’s a macho thing.”

“Did Roy tell you this?”

“No. But I know men. Technically, I’m a man.”

Joan stopped short of rolling her eyes. “Fine. Slap your balls on the table and show me.”

Trish laughed. “I don’t have balls. But I do have testes, Joan.”

“You have them in your vagina,” Joan said, loud enough to make the surrounding tables peek their way. “Look, Trish, you were upfront with Roy about this when you started dating, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And he was fine with it?”

“Yeah.”

“So even if he is cheating on you—and that’s still an if—why do you have to play the gender card here?”

Trish leaned over the table. “Do you know what it’s like to not feel like you belong?”

“You know the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? It’s eighteen percent women.”

“And how much of it is intersex?”

“Point made. But you asked what it feels like to not belong. I’m not African American. I’m not transgender. I don’t know what these things are like. But I do know how it feels to be dismissed because I don’t have a Y chromosome. And I know what it’s like to be objectified rather than taken seriously. I walk past the old boy’s locker room, and know they’re making deals in there, and that I’m not allowed in. There’s a long way to go before we see anything close to real equality. But you can’t use gender as your default excuse. Once you define yourself by what you’re not rather than what you are, you’re playing their game.”

Trish was nodding at her, but Joan wondered if she truly believed her own words. Because she could play the boy’s game, better than most of the boys.

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