Middlesex: Book 4: Hermaphroditus Summary & Analysis

In the early 1970s, “everyone want[s] to be unisex.” People are coming around to the idea that gender is socially constructed, and the rigidity of gender roles is falling away. However, then things take another turn with the rise in popularity of evolutionary biology. This school of thought analyzes all human behavior as a series of adaptations for evolutionary purposes. Under this influence of this thinking, Dr. Luce’s ideas face fierce opposition in the 1990s. When Cal disappears, Luce is initially crushed. However, he then begins to hope that Cal remains gone forever so that he can publish anything he wants about Cal’s life.

The truth is that Cal’s story doesn’t totally cohere with the evolutionary biologist’s view of gender or with Luce’s. He did not feel “out of place” as a girl and now doesn’t feel entirely comfortable around men. Cal perceives the 20th-century obsession with genetics as a renewed interest in the Ancient Greek idea of fate.

A performer sits on the lap of Mr. Go, who smells like chlorine. Mr. Go is a patron of a theater with different rooms. He has been coming here for some time, and has noticed that the upstairs level—which requires a separate admission fee of $5—is becoming increasingly popular, however he hasn’t been there himself yet. After receiving his lap dance, Mr. Go stares at the sign advertising the show on the second floor. It is called “Octopussy’s Garden,” and features a mermaid, an eel, and “the god Hermaphroditus! Half woman, half man!” Overwhelmed by curiosity, Mr. Go buys a bunch of tokens and goes upstairs. 

After Mr. Go enters his token in the slot, a screen is removed to reveal a body of water. A narrator describes the ancient Greek myth of Hermaphroditus, a “beautiful boy” who one day went swimming in the pool of Salmacis, a water nymph. At this moment, Hermaphroditus emerges, and Mr. Go is astonished. He has never seen someone like this before, and immediately puts another token in the slot to keep watching.

The theater is a club owned by Bob Presto called Sixty-Niners. It is in North Beach, on a strip filled with establishments featuring erotic shows. Sixty-Niners is open from  nine p.m. to three a.m., and is Cal’s new place of work. Having been subject to such intense and invasive scrutiny at Dr. Luce’s clinic, Cal doesn’t mind performing. He works with two other women, “so called,” named Carmen and Zora. After Cal called Bob from the park, Bob immediately picked him up and took him home, where Bob’s girlfriend, Wilhelmina, tended to Cal’s wounds. Wilhelmina expressed fear that Cal wasn’t actually 18 and implored Bob to call Cal’s parents, but Bob pointed out that Cal made the decision to flee his home.

In Octopussy’s Garden, Cal submerges his body in water while his head remains afloat and out of sight of the audience, allowing him to talk to Zora and Carmen while he works. Sometimes Zora gives Cal tokes of a joint to smoke while he works. Zora performs as a mermaid, “half woman, half fish.” Although Sixty-Niners is a “smut pavilion,” the atmosphere in Octopussy’s garden is more gentle and “exotic” than overtly pornographic. Among the audience are straight men, gay men, and lesbians, all of whom are entranced by the androgyny of the performers.

Carmen, who performs as an “electrifying eel,” is a trans woman with a small, slender body. Unlike Cal, Carmen always felt like “she had been born into the wrong body.” She is saving up money to have bottom surgery. Zora, meanwhile, is intersex, with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. She is more physically feminine than Cal ever was, with enormous, “milkmaid” breasts. However, she doesn’t identify as a woman, but as a hermaphrodite. Zora uses the word “intersexual,” which is still uncommon in 1974. She is a “pioneer” who looks after “strays” like Cal. Cal moves in with Zora before he starts working at the club.

Zora tells Cal that intersex people have always existed, and that Plato said the first human was intersex. Moreover, in cultures such as that of the Navajo, intersex people are treated as special and believed to be “artists” and “healers.” Cal is thrilled to feel less alone through his friendship with Zora. She is writing a book called The Sacred Hermaphrodite, which combines writing on genetics, cellular biology, and various Eastern religions. She tells Cal that she wants people to know she’s intersex because “We’re what’s next.” When Cal gets into the pool at the club, he pretends that he is in the bathtub at the old house on Middlesex. Losing himself in this daydream is made easier by being stoned.

Cal mostly spends his days at home with Zora while she works on her book. Men adore Zora, but she only dates lesbians. She has a “dark side” which includes heavy drinking and outbursts of anger. Milton and Tessie remain on edge, waiting for news of Callie. Their shared fear brings them closer, and they start having more sex than they’ve had in years. One day, Tessie realizes with a start that her connection to Callie has been "cut." She is convinced that something awful has happened to her. It is January 1975; Callie, now 15, has been missing for four months. One Sunday, while Tessie is at church, the phone rings and an anonymous voice tells Milton that he bets he wishes he had his daughter back, then hangs up.

Cal, meanwhile, opens his eyes for the first time while he is performing in the tank. He finds it strangely cathartic to see the eyes of the audience staring back at him in awe. In Cal’s final weeks in San Francisco, he reads as much as he can of Zora’s texts about hermaphroditism. He meditates and attempts to get his soul to leave his body, but is not able to do so, and concludes he has no “special powers.” On Friday night, while Cal is at work, the club is raided by the police, and Cal is arrested. From jail, he calls Chapter Eleven and begs him not to tell Tessie and Milton. Chapter Eleven replies that he can’t tell Milton, because Milton is dead.