Geek Love

The story jumps to the present day, when Oly is 38 years old and living in Portland, Oregon. Oly no longer goes by the name Binewski, calling herself Olympia “Hopalong” McGurk. She lives in the same apartment building as her mother, Crystal Lil, who is blind, somewhat deaf, and insane, and does not know who Oly is. Oly has also surreptitiously arranged for her daughter, Miranda, to live in the building, though Miranda has no idea that Oly is her mother and has spent her whole life thinking she’s an orphan. Oly watches both women covertly, saying, “So I stalk and tend them both secretly, like a midnight gardener” (13). 

Oly follows Lil when she goes out, with Lil making her way by grabbing onto inanimate objects and passersby. Lil is ostensibly the manager of the apartment building, though Oly is the one who performs the managerial tasks. Lil spends her time screaming nonsense and watching TV with a magnifying glass. Oly tries to watch Miranda as well, though she avoids speaking to her. Miranda is an art student (her tuition paid by the trust Oly set up for her when she was a baby) with an interest in deformity. Miranda wishes to draw Oly, but Oly refuses. Oly discovers that Miranda also works at a strip club called the Glass House Club, which specializes in exotic acts. Miranda is a popular performer there because she has a curly tail. Oly, after following Miranda to the club, is pressed into stripping herself during a tacky “audition” act. 

Oly is working at her job as a radio personality, using her “molasses voice that has earned her a living for decades” (23), when she sees Miranda in the engineer’s booth. Noting how much Miranda’s eyes look like Arty’s, Oly is afraid that Miranda has discovered her true identity. 

Miranda explains that she knew to find Oly at the station because she listens to her radio program. Miranda is determined to have Oly model nude for her art project and Oly is overcome with emotion, though she tries to hide her feelings. For years, Oly has avoided speaking to Miranda because Oly had “figured [Miranda] for silly, for toad-brained, because she is so near normal” (25), but now Oly realizes how intelligent and thoughtful her daughter is. Miranda tells Oly that she was born with a tail and invites her up to her apartment. Oly helplessly accepts. 

As Miranda prepares tea and lunch and sets out her drawing materials, Oly feels overwhelmed, overtaken by Miranda’s energy and this unexpected encounter. Miranda brings her into the bathroom to change so that they can begin the drawing session. Oly suddenly becomes angry because Miranda is in control of the situation, rather than Oly: “I am the watcher, the mover, the maker. She is just like her father, casually, carelessly enslaving me with my love” (29). Oly sees a framed picture on the wall of the bathroom: a drawing of a chicken with its head being bitten off, entitled “Geek Love,” drawn by Miranda. Her anger dissolving, Oly takes off her clothes and wig and changes into the top Miranda has given her to wear. 

Miranda draws Oly nude and they talk. Miranda tells Oly about a woman that she met at the Glass House Club. This wealthy woman, named Mary Lick, pays for the “specialty” dancers to have surgeries that “change” them, disfiguring them in ways that make their physical appearance no longer the focus of their lives. Miss Lick wants to pay for Miranda to have her tail removed and will give her $10,000 to have it done. 

Miranda confesses that she always hated her tail as a child; Oly remembers when Miranda was born and how Arty forced her to send Miranda away to live in the convent. Miranda then says that once she started dancing at the Glass House Club, her feelings changed about her tail. She seeks Oly’s advice about whether she should have it removed, because “You understand living with a specialty...You must have wished a million times to be normal” (34). Oly responds that she had not, that she wished she’d been even more deformed, but when Miranda tries to ask her why, she rushes from the room. 

Oly remembers when she brought Miranda to the convent; the nuns wanted to have the baby’s tail removed, but Oly had refused. Oly identifies where Miss Lick lives and discovers that she is the heiress of a food corporation.  

The next day, Oly looks through the trunk she hides in her room containing all of her memorabilia of her family and of Miranda’s life: “[Miranda] is unaware that she is part of, and the product of, forces assembled before she was born” (40).