From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [196]
“Its really quite the thing any more, a profession in itself, the excising of the uterus. When they excise the uterus, they take all the rest out with it. Its no good to you any more, with the womb gone. They take it all out, the tubes, the ovaries, all of it. Just in case theres some of the pus producing tissue left. They even take your appendix out too. They throw that in free.
“But after they sew you up, you suddenly discover you’re not a woman any more. Oh, the outside’s still there, the part the men care about, its not at all like castration. Some doctors even intimate you’ll like it better with the fear of getting pregnant gone. You still look and dress the part of woman, your skin and hair dont change, nothing like that, even your breasts dont dry up because they’ve got some little pills to keep the shell acting just the same as though you werent changed. Hormones, they call them.
“See?” she said; she got a little square green bottle out of the overnight bag she had brought. “You take them every day. The pills you’ll never be without. Its really remarkable, isnt it?” She put the bottle back.
“But,” she said, “you’re still not a woman any more. You still go to bed, the men still get what they want, but the purpose of it all is gone. The meaning of it is gone, too. You’re not a woman and you’re certainly not a man, you’re not even a poor freak of a hermaphrodite. You’re not anything. You’re a gutted shell. What they need to make next is a pill that will give the meaning back, or at least the illusion of the meaning, then you can take two kinds of pills a day and life will be wonderful. But now—now you’re still the rich ripe grape, only the meat has been ripped open and the seed plucked out. You’re an empty hulk and the meaning of sex is gone, you cant have children.
“Maybe,” she said, “maybe thats why it is you hunt so hungrily for love, why you have to hunt for it, even though you know they all are secretly laughing at you, winking behind your idealistic romantic back—another neurotic woman at the change of life who wants to change the world and give it love, as if the world ever needed love! What would the world do with love?
“But love, if you can find it, you think, might give sex meaning—and give you meaning—might even give life meaning. Love is all you’ve got then—if you can find it.
“No,” she said, “no, dont say anything. Not yet. I’m not finished yet. Let me tell it all, first.
“I’ve never told it to anybody before, you know. Never talked about it to a living soul—except my doctor, until he wanted to find out what it was like with a woman who had her organs out, after my recuperation.
“So just let me tell it all.
“You know what caused my hysterectomy? I bet you couldnt guess. Gonorrhea caused this one. Gonorrhea causes most of them. Not all of them, of course, but a large majority.
“And where do you think I got my dose of gonorrhea? I bet you couldnt guess that either. I got it from my husband, where most of the wives who get it get it. From Capt Dana E Holmes. Only he was still a 1st/Lt then.
“Dont look so shocked. I’m not being bitter. Wives also give it to their husbands, I’ve heard. Its not unusual, not nearly as unusual as you think.
“We had been married three years then; when it happened. I had already had the baby then. The heir. The proud bearer of the line. The inheritor of society’s blessing. I had already done my duty and had my son. That was lucky, wasnt it?
“Of course, we hadnt been married two months before I knew he was stepping out on me. But then that was no different from the lot of other women. That was all part of being a wife. Your mother tells you that is life. Even your mother-in-law is sympathetic. I finally got used to that, fairly easily; although it wasnt quite the picture of marriage I had been brought up to expect. You see, your mother doesnt tell you all this until after it has happened to you.
“Then after the baby was born he gradually stopped sleeping