From: Kassi
Subject: [STORY] "The Raliff Conspiracy Theory"
Date: Monday, March 27, 2000 3:08 AM
This was inspired by a conversation I was having with a fellow MiSTie about Stephen Ratliff -- who he is, where he comes from, why he writes like he does. I mean no disrespect to Mr. Ratliff or his writing -- it's all in good fun.
This story is rated PG for adult themes -- nothing vulgar.
"The Ratliff Conspiracy Theory"
by Kassi Pittman
[SOL Bridge. Mike and Crow are playing gin, absorbed in their game. They take little notice of Tom as he enters, wearing half-moon spectacles and a smoking jacket.]
TOM: Guys, I've got something important that I want to talk about.
[They ignore him. Crow lays down a card and Mike snatches it up, frowning at Crow.]
TOM: It's been kinda on my mind since we saw that last Marrissa stinker, 'M and M'...
[Mike lays down a card; Crow draws one. Mike smirks. Crow hesitates. His eyes shift from side to side.]
TOM: Rather disturbing idea, I'm afraid, and I'm not sure how to bring it up here...
[Crow hesitantly lays down a card. Mike snaps it up, practically breaking off Crow's hand, and chuckles to himself as he shuffles it in with his hand.]
TOM: But I think it needs saying, for with this much evidence I don't see how one can dispute it...
[Mike slaps down a card with cocky confidence. Crow eyes first him, then the card, then him, then the card. Tentatively, he picks up the card.]
TOM: Though I really hope you two can put forth a good argument, because if this turns out to be true I may never eat again...
[Crow and Mike stare at each other, eyes hard. Slowly, Crow lays down his hand.]
CROW: [nervously] Gin?
[Mike purses his lips and throws down his cards. Crow glances at them.]
CROW: Hey! You were nowhere near gin! What was with all that smirking, huh, Nelson?
TOM: ...But I think Stephen Ratliff is a woman.
[Silence. Crow and Mike turn to stare at Tom. Tom fidgets.]
TOM: [muttered] ...say something, you guys...
MIKE & CROW: [simultaneously babbling] What?... You can't be serious... what's been going on in that twisted dome of yours that we don't know about?... What do you think about rubber paneling for your room, honey? Just for a trial period?... Have you been getting into the pickled dates again?...
TOM: GUYS! Hear me out, okay?
CROW: No way, pezbot. You're gonna try to mess with our heads again. Don't think I've forgotten what happened before! Now I'll never be able to watch 'The Wizard of Oz' again.
MIKE: Okay, Tom, what exactly possessed you to come to this conclusion? [to Crow] Just so I can know if we're going to be making any emergency calls to Harold Ramis and his wacky unlicensed nuclear accelerator anytime soon.
CROW: [grumbles]
TOM: Okay. Stephen Ratliff is a writer, correct?
CROW: In the loosest form of the word.
TOM: He writes stories with a female protaganist, right?
CROW: In the *loosest* form of the word... heh heh...
MIKE: But...
TOM: Just stating the facts, Mike. Stay with me. Now Marguerite Radclyffe-Hall was born in Hampshire, August 12th, 1880. Anyone care to dispute that?
CROW: Er...
TOM: Well?
CROW: No...
TOM: All right. She then died in Dolphin Square, London on the 7th of October, 1943. Yes?
MIKE: I guess so.
TOM: As a youth, she was known as Peter, but she later called herself John. This was most likely after her great-grandfather, whom she closely resembled.
CROW: Do we care?
MIKE: Tom, could you just hit the highlights here?
TOM: In 1928, under the name of Radclyffe Hall, she wrote the largely autobiographical novel 'The Well of Loneliness.' The main character of the novel, based on herself as a child, was named Stephen by parents who had wanted a boy. They went on to raise her as a boy, and she grew up with male tendencies and affection for women instead of men. Stephen... Radclyffe. Are you with me so far?
CROW: [whimpering] Mike, he's doing it again...
MIKE: Shh, honey.
TOM: The novel caused a lot of controversy and was banned in England. A bookseller was brought to trial for trying to sell copies; the work was defended by such intellectuals as E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf. Stephen Ratliff lives in Virginia.
CROW: It hurts, Mike...
TOM: Stephen also went to Radford University. Radford... Ratliff... Radclyffe.
CROW: Make it stoppppp!
TOM: It has been said that Radclyffe cultivated the stereotype of the masculine lesbian...
MIKE: Tom, Tom, look -- Marrissa is Stephen Ratliff's fantasy. He's obviously a he, or...
TOM: And you don't think she might have had similar fantasies? Really, it's ingenious, taking her name so blatantly from one of the classic groundbreaking lesbian novels of the early twentieth century, citing her home as 'Virginia' in a reference to another strong female writer tied to Radclyffe...
MIKE: I think he really lives there, Tom.
TOM: All the more ingenious she!
CROW: Waitaminute, Stephen 'Sobnia' Ratliff? Stephen 'Throwaway' Ratliff? Stephen '*Time Speeder*' Raltiff? *Ingenious*? [nervous laughter]
TOM: Perhaps Stephen is a genius. It would take a genius to create such studiously, consistently bad writing. Think of all the different spellings of 'Maquis.' Sometimes three in the same posting. Perhaps it was deliberate, to make us believe we were reading the work of a simpleton. Perhaps it was a scheme to draw us out, make us display our own disdain for bad writing and laugh over our gloating forms, knowing that she could outdo us in a heartbeat.
CROW: No. Uh-uh. I refuse to go there, you dewinched pile of barely-verbose scrap plastic!
MIKE: It is kind of a stretch, Tom.
TOM: No more so than Andy Kaufman's comedy sketches.
[Crow and Mike exchange glances.]
CROW: You're not saying Andy Kaufman's ingenious, are you?
TOM: I'm saying that, my friends, we have been fooled by less.
MIKE: But why, Tom? Why would anyone spend years writing these stories... only these stories, and such bad ones? What kind of a gloat is that?
TOM: Who am I to say what her motives might be? Perhaps she has a successful writing career under another name -- perhaps also male.
CROW: [scornful] Like who? John Grisham?
MIKE: [semi-scornful] Yeah, or Tom Clancy?
CROW: Uh...
[They exchange glances again. Mike's eyes are round.]
TOM: Who can say?
MIKE: No. No, Tom. Stephen Ratliff is not a woman, and he's not secretly Tom Clancy either. This whole thing is just a delusion brought on by too much 'Victor/Victoria.'
CROW: Or 'Twelfth Night.'
MIKE: Or 'Orlando.'
CROW: Or 'Boys Don't Cry.'
MIKE: Or 'Shakespeare in Love.'
CROW: Or pickled dates.
TOM: That brings up a more esoteric and I might add chilling possibility.
MIKE: Dare I ask what?
CROW: Don't, Mike!
TOM: Stephen Ratliff is the reincarnation of Radclyffe Hall, in the body of a man -- as a fulfillment of her own needs as well as the wishes of her parents. Struggling to express herself in writing through the vessel of a man, her character is a female struggling against adults that symbolize the authority figures who oppressed her in her last life and exacting vicarious revenge on them through Marrissa.
[Crow starts sobbing, bent over and shaking.]
MIKE: Er... if that's true, wouldn't Marrissa be characterized as a lesbian? And why on earth would Stephen have written 'A Different Path'?
TOM: I think it poignantly portrays the anguish of Radclyffe-Ratliff's struggle between masculinity and femininity, carried through both lives and both writing careers. Perhaps Stephen isn't certain whether to be attracted to men or to women because of the homosexuality in his previous life. Perhaps he's not sure if Marrissa is his ideal woman or himself.
[By now Crow is banging his head on the desk, wailing, his eyes gone and net askew at a vicious angle.]
TOM: And 'M and M'? The Alternate Marrissa, born a boy? Need I reiterate how eerily parallel this is to Stephen's own plight? That he is, in fact, both Marrissa and Marcus?
MIKE: Tom? Did you stop to think that maybe you're a little bit wrong? Or a lot?
TOM: Is that all the argument you can offer? [emotional] I came to you guys because I felt shaken to the core by these revelations, in the hopes your sound, intelligent reasoning would prove me wrong. I wanted to be able to affirm that Stephen is neither a woman nor a woman trapped in a man's body. And what do you offer me? The authoritative, substantiated rhetoric of 'is not.'
[Now Tom begins weeping, banging his head on the table. It falls off quickly but he keeps at it, the sounds of his tortured soul in disharmony with the arhythmic pounding of his stumpy neck against the desk. Mike looks uneasy, trying to comfort the 'bots with little pats on their oblivious, pain-wracked forms.]
MIKE: Can't you see that when you do this, you're only hurting yourselves?
CROW: Why? [thump] Why? [thump] Why? [thump] Why? [thump] Why? [thump]
Why? [thump] Why? [thump] Why? [thump] Why?
MIKE: [deep sigh] There, there. This too shall pass.
--Fin--