An Illustrated Interpretation of Stone Butch Blues Chapter 24 | PART I
A REPRINT / ODE TO LESLIE FEINBERG’S (1949 – 2014) AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL, STONE BUTCH BLUES, CHAPTER 24.*
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TEXT :
IT WAS THE FIRST DAY of spring, when everyone who lives in this city agrees to feel good at the same time—a day when it seems as though every woman, man, and child is flirting. I browsed at the farmer’s market in Union Square, killing time. The sun dipped behind the buildings to the west of the island. Ruth made me promise not to come home until late afternoon. It was time to discover my surprise.
I knocked on my own door and waited for Ruth to answer it. She wiped her hands on a cloth and led me into my bedroom. “Close your eyes,” she urged. “Remember you told me I could do anything I wanted to to it?” I smiled and nodded. “OK, open your eyes.” I looked around and then up at the ceiling—There it was.
I sat down on my bed and fell back to look at the ceiling. Ruth had painted it velvety black with pinpoints of constellations I recognized. The darkness softened to light around the edges. I could see the outline of trees against the sky.
Ruth lay down next to me. “Do you like it?”
“It’s just incredible. I can’t believe you’ve given me the sky to sleep under.
“But I can’t tell if its dawn or dusk you’ve painted.”
She smiled up at the ceiling. “It’s neither. It’s both. Does that unnerve you?”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, in a funny way it does.”
“I figured that,” she said. “It’s a place inside of me I have to accept. I thought it might be what you need to deal with, too.”
I sighed. “I really do have trouble not being able to figure out if what you’ve painted is about to be day or about to be night.”
Ruth rolled toward me and rested her hand on my chest. “It’s not going to be day or night, Jess. It’s always going to be that moment of infinite possibility that connects them.”
Ruth’s face was very close to mine. We became aware of the symmetry of our breathing. She slid her hand slowly along my body from my chest to my stomach. She dropped her eyes.
“I’m afraid,” I answered the question she hadn’t asked out loud.
“Why?” she asked. “Because I’m neither night nor day?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. I knew I would lose her if I wasn’t honest; I knew I might lose her if I was.
“Yes,” I told her. “That’s part of it. Remember your geometric theory? More than double the trouble?”
Ruth rolled onto her back. “I’m not suggesting we do it in the road.”I stared up at the sky. “You know what I mean. But that’s only part of it. If I really have to be honest, it’s because I’m afraid not to be with someone who is night or day. I guess I felt like the femmes I was with anchored me. It was the closest to normal I’ve ever felt.”
Ruth curled up into my arm. “Were you her dawn or her dusk?”
I smiled sadly. “In the beginning I was her dawn. By the end I was her twilight.”
We both sighed.
“You want more truth, Ruth? There’s a place somewhere inside of me where I’ve never been touched before. I’m afraid you’ll touch me there. And I’m afraid you won’t. My femme lovers knew me well, but they never crossed those boundaries inside of me. They tried to coax me across the borders into their arms, but they never came after me. You’re right there with me. There’s no place for me to hide. It scares me.”
Ruth smiled sadly. “Isn’t it funny? That’s exactly why I would like to make love with you.”
We lay quietly. I kissed her hair. “Oh, Ruth, I haven’t had to navigate sex in a long time, with anyone. I don’t even know who I am as a lover anymore. But I’m scared you’ll leave me now. Can’t we figure it out as we go along? Please stay in my life. I need you so much.”
Ruth got up on one elbow and kissed my lips. “I need you, too.” I held one of her hands, marveling at how small mine looked in hers. She dropped her eyes while I kissed each one of her knuckles.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about my life since my jaw got broken,” I told her. “I once read about warriors who resolve before they go into battle that ‘Today is a good day to die.'”
Ruth smiled. “It’s a brave thought, but I don’t want to die.”
I nodded. “At first I thought it meant resigning myself to death. But now I think it means facing my own life at the moment I’m facing my enemy. Maybe that’s the key to fighting fearlessly, to surviving. I’ve left a lot of things unfinished in my life. It makes me more afraid to die. It holds me back in a fight.”
Ruth frowned. “Like what?” “I always wanted to leave something important behind. Remember the history book you gave me for Christmas?” Ruth nodded.
“I’ve been going to the library, looking up our history. There’s a ton of it in anthropology books, a ton of it, Ruth. We haven’t always been hated. Why didn’t we grow up knowing that?”
Ruth propped herself up on her elbow and watched my face as I spoke.
“It’s changed the way I think. I grew up believing the way things are now is the way they’ve always been, so why even bother trying to change the world? But just finding out that it was ever different, even if it was long ago, made me feel things could change again. Whether or not I live to see it.
“At work, when everyone else is at lunch, I’ve been typesetting all the history I’ve found, trying to make it look as important as it feels to me. That’s what I want to leave behind, Ruth—the history of this ancient path we’re walking. I want it to help us restore our dignity.” Ruth pressed my hand to her lips.
“But I want more, Ruth. There’s things I’ve been afraid to face in my life. They may sound small, but they hold me back from pride. Remember when I told you about Butch Al? I want to find out what really happened to her.
“And there’s a stud I once dissed because I couldn’t deal with the fact that she got turned on by other studs. I thought being butch automatically meant being attracted to femmes, just like I assumed transvestism meant gay.”
Ruth smiled. “It’s an easy misunderstanding. You were hanging out in gay bars.”
I nodded. “Yeah, but I always wanted all of us who were different to be the same. I can’t believe I rejected a butch friend because she took a butch lover. I want to tell Frankie I’m sorry.”
Ruth kissed my cheek. “Anything else?”
I nodded. “Yeah. There were two little kids—Kim and Scotty. I promised I’d come back and find them someday. Oh, and there’s one more thing I need to do.”
Ruth ran her fingers through my hair. “What?”
I lay back and stared into the universe on the ceiling. “I want to write a letter to Theresa, a woman I still carry around in my heart. We parted in a real rough way. I want to finally find the words, even if she never reads them.”
My eyelids felt heavy. Ruth curled up against me as I yawned. “You’ll find the words,” she reassured me.
I sighed. “First I have to let my own memories come back. I put them away somewhere because they hurt. Now I have to remember where I put them.”
The breeze from the window chilled me. I pulled the tie quilt over both of us and snuggled up against Ruth. She felt warm and comforting beside me. “Sleepy?” she asked me.
I nodded. “Stay with me for a while, Ruth. “Please?”
She nodded. I buried my face in her neck. She stroked my hair and kissed my forehead.
“Sleep now, my sweet.”
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Design and illustration by TAY-BIRD.COM, 2025. | ORIGINAL PUBLISHING INFO : Feinberg, Leslie. Stone Butch Blues: A Novel. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1993. | TYPEFACES USED : “Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries Font” BY GENDER FAIL, “Lacrima senza” BY MILIEU GROTESQUE, Helvetica by Max Miedinger.
*In this edition, some transmasc synonyms have been updated to reflect expanded understandings of the masculine and gender-variant spectrum. Download the original text free, or listen with ads.
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