SEX IS OUT
Reading edition
According to Dr. Max Hartmann (I used to have a dentist named Dr. Hartmann, but he was a dentist) there is no such thing as absolute sex. If 60% of your cells are masculine, you rate as a male. If 60% are feminine, you sit with the girls. All combinations are possible up to 99 and 1, but the 100 percenter in either sex is a myth. Dr. Hartmann says so.
This is going to be a big surprise to a lot of people. If the Government should ever take it into its head to make public lists of sex-percentages, as it now does income taxes, whole communities would be upset and perhaps “topsy-turvy” would not be too strong a word for what things would be.
We are concerned in this course, however, merely with the effect of this negation of sex on the drama. It looks from where we are sitting (G-112-113) like the death blow to the Living Theater in this country. And in France—well, it will simply mean that they can’t give even Punch and Judy shows. What would be the fun in sitting through a scene like the following?
(The scene isn’t quite set yet; so the orchestra will play the overture over again.)
Roger: Ever since that night I met you at the dance, my male percentage has been increasing. I used to register 65%. Yesterday in Liggetts I took a test and it was eighty-one.
Mary: You had your heavier overcoat on.
Roger: Please, dear, this is no time for joking. I never was more serious in all my life. And that means only one thing. Haven’t you—aren’t you—do you register just the same as you did?
Mary (looking at her finger-nails): No. I have gone up seven points. But I thought it was because I had cut down on my starches.
Roger: Starches nothing! Can’t you see, dear? Don’t you understand what it all means?
Mary (pulling away): Why am I letting you talk to me like this? We mustn’t. Fred will be home at any minute.
Roger: Fred! Hah! I suppose you know what his last test was? I suppose he told you?
Mary: Why—er—no. That is—of course he did. Fred tells me everything.
Roger: Well, then, I suppose you know that when he was examined for life insurance last week they found that his masculine cells totaled up to forty-seven and that included his American Legion button, too.
Mary: Fred? Forty-seven? Why, it isn’t possible. Why, only yesterday—
Roger: Never mind that! Figures don’t lie. The best that Fred can ever be to you from now on is a sister.
Mary: This is all so sudden. I must have time to think. Fred my sister! It seems incredible!
Roger: Don’t you see, Mary dear, what the percentages tell us? (Song Cue)
You and I Total Up to a Hundred
Oh, Love brings a message of roses, And Love a sweet litany tells, Of the girls I have known, and the girls who have blown, And their respective number of cells.
Cho.
There was Alice who rated a cool sixty-two, She wore knickers and called me her “matey,” There was Betty so true, with her large eyes of blue, On a clear day she registered eighty. There was Norma, my queen, who gave seventeen, As her quota of masculine units, But my heart it now yearns, on the latest returns, (Spoken: Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine!) For M-A-R-Y, my sweet Winona.
You can see for yourself, there is going to be no fun in figuring out sex on the back of an envelope. We might as well give the whole thing up and go in for hockey.