Miss Sloviak

Miss Antonia appears early in the novel and manages to capture my attention. When she (I will refer to Sloviak as “she” when dressed as a woman and as “he” when dressed as a man). When Tripp first sees Miss Antonia Sloviak with Crabtree in the beginning of the novel he refers to her as an attractive “person” and notes that he does not think that the she is a woman. I like how her scarf and the fact that it might be tied around her Adam’s apple is the give-away for her being a transvestite without it being said so explicitly. But when she goes into the ladies room it keeps the reading wondering about her gender but also keeps the interest. She is a transvestite or just an Amazon?

At the party, Miss Sloviak seems to be the one that is always asking simple and to the point question like “So is she pretty?” (referring to Sara) and “Why doesn’t he like you?” (referring to Doctor Dee’s barking at Tripp) that the reader is curious about. For me, it was like I did not realize that I wanted to know the answer to those questions until after they were asked. It’s not very elaborate technique and I do not even know if the author knew the great effect that it had on the reader but I think that it worked very well.

When Miss Sloviak came downstairs with Crabtree after they had just been fooling, I really felt bad for her. Tripp describes her as wobbling in her high heels and he just feels sorry for her stating that it must be hard being a drunken transvestite, which is something that I will tend to agree with (but not from personal experience).
The changing of Miss Sloviak from a woman back into her male self was done almost in a sensual manner. The author carefully describes the progresses, starting from him using the cold cream to wipe off the make-up to removing his brassiere and putting on male clothing to finally putting his supplies into his bag. He changes quickly and it’s done with the precision of something that happens repeatedly. Tony must have come from a religious family because there was a Virgin Mary statue in the front lawn of his house. This is probably a main reason why Tony feels that he need to “hide” his sexuality from his family and he finds it necessary to change out of his outfit before he returns home. Even though I can not identify with his struggles to hide a vital part of himself from his loved ones, I can definitely sympathize with him. It seems that he is not comfortable enough yet to reveal himself to his family or for that matter other people in the novel (other than Crabtree). And what good is Crabtree if after they two of them get “frisky” upstairs at the party, he abandons her to pursue Leer? No one wants to be regarded at a novelty and especially not someone who is not fully comfortable in the part that he/she is playing