Gender As Performance, Age Six: The Mouse Game. Gender as Performance, Age Six: The Mouse Game I met Miranda Munro when my family joined the local synagogue, so long ago that no one remembers our earliest encounters. I was three years old and she was four, with flaming red hair and an equally fiery temper. Our families hit it off and two years later I found myself halfway down the block from the Munros. Life in the Munro family was a series of arguments and power struggles between dominant women, and Miranda proved no exception. My readiness to accept her ?strong will? (often, sheer bossiness) made me into a far less combative option than most of her other interactions. And she provided me with the chance to act a little wild, or at least to experience life in the wilds of the Munro world. Miranda and I grew into close friends. We found that we shared a passion for intricate games of imagination and we quickly created one that we would play on every of my frequent visits to her house: this was the Mouse Game, acted and re-acted religiously over a two-year time span. Merely standing in Miranda?s house was an assault on the senses. Always a hefty meal bubbled, a tape of Mozart or Tom Lehrer blared, a tub of bright laundry tumbled onto the ancient green carpeting. Miranda?s personality echoed the sensory experience of her house: bold, active, creative and smart, and invigorating, even exhausting. I am no less creative and intelligent, but I am definitely quieter, and passive; for this reason I assumed a subservient position in the Mouse Game, my contributions coming mainly as refinements or judicious editings. However, there is reason to believe that the original idea was mine, because in Templeton the Rat ? my character in the Mouse Game ? I had found my hero. Note that this Templeton was not E.B. White?s bloated, misanthropic rodent but a kinder, skinnier cousin of the same name. (As a very young child I had an obsession with rats, even nurturing a Gummi rodent in my closet for months on end.) Discussing it with Miranda, we agree that my devotion to the character of Templeton must have spawned the game. By the time we made it from the Munros? scuffed front door to their unkempt backyard, Miranda and I would adopt our roles. Miranda, as the beautiful Mouse Princess Olivia, fell in love with my character Templeton, an unfashionably ratty and impoverished (but nice!) resident of the Mouse Kingdom slums. Her father ? a role I played, for lack of a third cast member ? disapproved of the relationship. So we eloped to the fringes of civilization, to the Munros? dilapidated sideyard, to a prickly strip of bees, gravel and dessicated organic vegetables. Miranda ordered me around on our honeymoon, among the rabbit droppings and failing zucchini. I didn?t know the Fact of Life yet. How our wedding night produced two stuffed-animal children was and still is beyond my comprehension. Soon evil forces pursued us, shadowy henchmen from Olivia?s enraged father the Mouse King (me) and later from our arch-villain, the Queen of the Night from the land of Terrania. Various stories of visitors from parallel worlds evolved, and innumerable subplots of fleeing evil while still trying to make a home for our little family. We travelled to new worlds by swinging on a rope which hung from the largest of the house?s three gargantuan trees. As unsees dangers passed outside we huddled for safety in Mr. Munro?s pet project, a plywood playhouse. (Our plans to create a little mansion out of it quickly died as snails and spiders invaded.) We lived in the lower branches of another tree, and smuggled out snacks to eat up there. Somehow, and for a reason neither of us can today explain, Miranda and I kept the Mouse Game a secret. Even though we played it consistently and constantly, no one knew much more about the game than its title. The game highlighted the difference in our personalities. While I almost invariably played male roles, I also chose the passive ones. My males were usually pursued, not pursuers, and kind rather than cruel. Miranda, on the other hand, relished villainous and dramatic parts. Eventually she played the Queen of the Night more than she played Olivia. She directed our adventures, while I refined them and tempered them when they became too wild. Even when the darkest forces of Terrania howled inexplicably for our blood, I refused to climb more than six feet up into the Munro?s massive pine tree, and urged Miranda to come down when she reached twice that height. (Once, when she didn?t have me to beg her down, she climbed to the top and froze up. Only the ladder from a fire truck could reach her.) Even when goaded I could never clamber over the back yard fence as she could, and whenever Miranda suggested that we try for more children I blushed, shyly declined. Even with Miranda to egg me on, I was not brave or daring. And then, slowly but surely, the Mouse Game faded away. It went so quietly that I can?t pinpoint a minute when I can say it ended, though I do know the year. I moved across town a few months before I turned eight; without our close proximity the game couldn?t have maintained its ritualistic importance. Miranda and moved to different schools, saw each weekly instead of daily. We still played the game but its structure lapsed, the rules slackened.We performed the introductory sequence cursorily or not at all. Our secrecy slipped as our little sisters made cameo appearances. More and more we escaped to other worlds on the rope swing. We found dress-ups. I donned a dressing gown, Miranda a tutu. We stuffed socks the fronts of our shirts or pants. Eventually when I visited we skipped the game altogether. We lost it, and I can?t think of a good reason for the completeness of that loss. For a long, long time, I barely thought about the Mouse Game. Funny that I have stayed close to Miranda all these years, but forgotten about the game that was so central to our relationship. The point at which the game really came back to me as more than a bubble of memory (glistening, easily popped) was a year and a half ago, when Miranda got a boyfriend. I was shocked. My technical and secondhand knowledge of boys and sex increased in the intervening years, but my practical and personal knowledge remained fairly similar. At sixteen I had a very similar attitude towards males as I had at six: I had the occasional crush on one, but I also liked to pretend that I was one. My opinions were only just starting to change. For years I had broadcast my disdain for what my peers were dubbing ?relationships?; these were superficial, based in animal attraction, and usually ended in a sordid breakup. As far as I had known, Miranda believed as I did. Well into adolescence we still both swore chastity, not so much because no one would pursue us (though this was a fact) but because the concept of boys as ?more than friends? was distasteful and frightening. So when Miranda started gushing over Dan I felt almost betrayed, as if the boy had stolen my role as Templeton and I was once again shunted into acting the jealous parent. At the time I was struggling to rebuff a strangely persistent suitor, but failing to do so to my satisfaction. I found dark emotions steeping inside me, evoking feelings akin to those of a normal teenage girl: maybe I wouldn?t mind if this boy were to hold my hand. I actually liked him a little, but couldn?t admit it to myself. I both envied Miranda for her ability to mesh into normal teenage behavioral patterns and felt disappointment in her for ?giving in.? I saw myself in her. I saw her ?giving in? as a prophecy of my own future, and I wasn?t sure whether I wanted to go. As often happens, my frustration drove me to a blank page and I wrote a lengthy poem. ?To Miranda? (01/02) Now you hang like a bracelet on his arm, and I am a broken chain. Now you have your brave new world, Miranda, while I don't have a clue. When I was little, when we played, I was always the man. I was the father and you were the mother; in the Mouse Game I was a boy. I was Templeton the rat and I fell in love with you, Olivia the Mouse Princess, but when we tried for children I got embarassed, couldn't perform... [note: ?...? indicates a cut] And like you, for the longest time, I had no interest in men.... ...I was nothing to them. At worst, their little sister; at best, androgynous... And sometimes, and sometimes more and more these days, I wish I could be you, happy with a man but not compromised-- not ripped to shreds while shifting worlds... But it's been years since I was your husband and more since I was a rat... and I don't know how to tell him that rather than date him (i'd rather be him.) Never before had I associated my attitude towards men or my own mild gender dysphoria with the Mouse Game. But there must be some connection. After so many years of not thinking of the Mouse Game, why else should it come out in this poem but that it held some sway over me? Indeed, it even came out subconsciously: it is only in writing this essay that I realize the connection between the line ?ripped to shreds while shifting worlds? and a Mouse Game topos in which the Queen of the Night threatened our ability to reach new worlds via the rope swing. It seems that the game nurtured my opposition to traditional gender roles. As Templeton, I was cautious, submissive, quiet, and male; as Olivia and the Queen of the Night, Miranda was daring, domineering, outspoken, and female. This was how boys and girls ought to act. Growing older, it troubled me that the world ? and Miranda ? labored under a differenct set of misconceptions. Somewhere between meeting Princess Olivia and losing her to a flesh-and-blood human boy I had developed an unconventional view of the sexes that my friend did not totally share. While Miranda applied Early Decision to the same Wisconsine university as her boyfriend, I tossed half my college applications to women?s colleges: Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Scripps. Perhaps I could leave men behind entirely. But my recent life is imitating the Mouse Game, in which I followed Miranda?s every lead. After half a year I was able to admit to a friend that I had feelings for my constant suitor. Six more months and one student exchange program later, I finally admitted this to him. We have been dating for ten months. My first attempt at a straight, old-fashioned relationship, while painfully slow and bumpy, hasn?t become the Chernobyl of relationships which I had imagined. In fact, I am thoroughly enjoying my time with the most persistent, loveable boy I?ve ever known. Certainly I can attribute some of this to his inherent understanding of me, for he too experiences some gender confusion. He owned eyeliner before I did. Sometimes I feel guilty for caving in to society?s insistence that girls act as girls and boys act boys? roles. Sometimes I feel the old pull of Templeton for Olivia. Sometimes I wear a tie and a slouch and become a therapist?s Disneyworld, but not often. I think I could still swing into that world if I wanted to, and not be ripped apart. But I don?t think I will. I am happy exploring my blossoming role as a fairly ordinary, though still very unique, teenage girl. Miranda?s example has led me once again to try something new, and to recognize ?how many goodly creatures are there here, how beauteous mankind is.? It?s new to me.
Copyright © 2003 Caitlin Conaway |