Sydney Pollack Gave Me a Boner

I was in love with every part of
Tootsie. The fake breasts, tautly held underneath that sequined dress,
were an artificial marvel (discreet predecessors of the silicone proto-implants
that would become de rigeur in the following decades). The wide plastic-rimmed
glasses — straight out of a school teacher soft-porn fantasy. The
perfectly coordinated outfits — worthy of a conservative Barbie doll.
And those short silk scarves tied around her neck — portable auto-erotic
asphyxiation tools.

I sat in my shitty apartment and
marveled at what Pollack and Hoffman had created. Tootsie, like Flavor
of Love’s "New York," was the sexiest, ugliest woman imaginable.
It was an illusion worthy of David Copperfield. As if Pinnochio’s fairy
godmother had visited her in the middle of the movie, Tootsie stopped
being a man in drag and became a full-blooded woman. And I, being
a full-blooded male, decided there was only one reliable test that could
certify the transformation.

I tried using the movie as a launching
pad, but it was impossible. Every time Charles Durning would show
up on scene, my fragile visualizations would unravel.

I muted the TV, took off my pants,
got comfortable, and with a single-ply paper towel in one hand, and,
well, the rest of me on the other… I put my shoulder to the wheel.

I closed my eyes and visualized a
scenario with Tootsie. It was an uphill battle, a Penthouse letter read
through the ViewMaster in my head.

Tootsie worked the counter in a convenience
store, and I walked in as a client, looking to buy… what else? Condoms.

She was her usual coy, bumbling self.
Her back erect. Her hushed whisper of a voice, always constrained, always
waiting to break out. The condoms in my fantasy were of a generic brand,
with options like Rough Rider, Night Seduction, and Red Bliss.

It was an auspicious beginning for
a trite sexual fantasy, and soon I had turned the scene into a Bachannalian
festival of two in the back room of the store. Tootsie’s glasses were
hanging on the side of her face, and one shoe was falling off her thick-stockinged
foot. But the whole time, while I was trying desperately trying to create an
image that would whip me into a frenzy, Tootsie kept jerking her head
around as if looking for a happy place in her head to escape to.

WTF? Was I getting sexual indifference
from Tootsie?!

In a panic, I conjured up extreme
images of Tootsie in the throes of passion, her sequined dress hiked
up to her waist, her lips pouting like the women in those romance novel
covers starring Fabio. But it was useless. Caught between two genders,
Tootsie’s sexuality cancels itself out. In the film, she rejects every
man that comes on to her. Even when she starts to reveal her affections
for Jessica Lange, there is so much real emotion present, and so much
sexuality missing, that it feels like you’re watching two women in the
throes of menopause deciding they’re going to raise a dog together.

I gave it up. My self-esteem was
fragile, and a rejection from Tootsie would have pushed me over the
edge. And in an oft-heard act of post-coital consolation, I told myself
that just because I didn’t come, it didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it.

My night with Tootsie was unconventional,
strange, and disturbing. True. But it was also special. And it
wouldn’t have been possible without Sydney Pollack.

So what is there to apologize for?