Metamorphosis

By Vincent Gray

How could a feminine conscious self-awareness arise from the material constituents out of which the Universe was composed? Feminization was to become fabulous, to be feminine was to be ‘fantastical’. To be fantastical was to be whimsical, fanciful, sublime and above all, magnificent in a freshly metamorphosed body.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vincent Gray
• Release date: Oct 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370936502

Vincent Gray

As a son of a miner, I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg. I matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, I was conscripted into the South African Defence Force for compulsory national military service when I was 17 years old. After my military service, I went to the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree I worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. As an obligatory member of the South African Citizen Miltary Force, I was called up to do 3-month camps on the 'Border' which was the theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War'. In between postgraduate university studies I also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales rep. In my career as an academic, I was a molecular biologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I lectured courses in microbiology, molecular biology, biotechnology and evolutionary biology. On the research side, I was involved in genomics, and plant and microbial biotechnology. I also conducted research into the genomics of strange and weird animals known as entomopathogenic nematodes. I retired in 2019, however, I am currently an honorary professor at the University of the Witwaterand and I also work as a research writing consultant for the University of Johannesburg.

Book preview

Metamorphosis

A book from the Segomotso and the Dressmaker Omnibus

By Vincent Gray

Copyright © 2017 Vincent Gray

Smashwords Edition

This book is a work of fiction. All the characters developed in this novel are fictional creations of the writer’s imagination and are not modelled on any real persons. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 9781370936502

Author Biography

As a son of a miner the author was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg during the 1960s and matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school he was conscripted into the South African Defence Force (SADF) for compulsory national military service at the age of seventeen. On completion of his military service he studied courses in Zoology, Botany and Microbiology at the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree he worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. Following the initial conscription into military service in the SADF, like all other white South African males of his generation, he was then drafted into one of the many South African Citizen Military Regiments. During the 1970s he was called up as a citizen-soldier to do three-month military camps on the 'Border' which was the operational theatre of the so-called counter insurgency 'Bush War' during the Apartheid years. Before and in between university studies he also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales representative. The author is now a retired professor whose career as an academic in the Biological Sciences has spanned a period of thirty-three years mainly at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Before retirement he lectured and carried out research in the field of molecular biology with a special interest in the molecular basis of evolution. He continues to pursue his interest in evolutionary biology. Other interests which the author pursues includes radical theology, philosophy and literature.

eBooks by Vincent Gray also available on Smashwords as Free Downloads

The Girl from Reiger Park -The Barracuda Night Club Trilogy. Book No.1

Who was Oreithyia? -The Barracuda Night Club Trilogy. Book No.2

The Barracuda Night Club Mystery - The Barracuda Night Club Trilogy. Book No. 3

The Girl from Germiston

The Tale of the Sakabula Bird

Rebekah of Lake Sibaya

Segomotso and the Dressmaker

Devorah’s Prayer

Farewell to Innocence: The full uncensored saga of Hannah Zeeman

Send Him My Love (Short Story)

Three Days in Phoenix (Short Story)

The Soccer Player (Short Story)

Waterlandsridge (Novella)

The Man with no Needs

Hotazel: Journal Writings of a Lipstick Lesbian

The Wind Blows and the River Flows (Novella)

Metamorphosis (Novella)

The Black Maid from Ikageng: An African Novella

The Transaction

The Legacy of Jomogee’s Obsession

Between Nostalgia and Dystopia

A Posh White Woman

Jo’burg: Sex, Love, and Marx

Love at the End of Time

This book is dedicated to:

Melodie my wife and Ruth my daughter

Foreword

While browsing in a bookshop next to the main road that ran through the central business district of Potchefstroom, he stumbled by chance, on a book entitled Shakespeare’s Ovid. Paging through the book, he discovered that it was a translation of Ovid’s original Metamorphoses from Latin by Arthur Golding into sixteenth century English. It had been translated in 1567. It was an edition that had been first published in 1961 and according to the owner of the bookshop, it had been gathering dust on the shop’s bookshelf for more than a decade.

The old English into which the Ovid’s epic poem had been translated intrigued Joab immensely. The 321-paged volume consisted of fifteen books of narrative poetry containing about 250 myths populated with dramatic accounts in poetic form of the lives of many Graeco-Roman gods.

He was surprised when he discovered that his English was good enough to comprehend quite a bit of the writing.

He began to read some of the poems. As he continued flipping through the pages, he stopped when the name Hermaphroditus caught his attention.

He began to read Ovid’s poem based on the myth of Hermaphroditus:

She hides hir in a bushie queach, where kneeling on hir knee

She alwayes hath hir eye on him. He as a childe and free,

And thinking not that any wight had watched what he did

Romes up and downe the pleasant Mede: and by and by amid

The flattring waves he dippes his feete, no more but first the sole

And to the ancles afterward both feete he plungeth whole.

And for to make the matter short, he tooke so great delight

In coolenesse of the pleasant spring, that streight he stripped quight

His garments from his tender skin. When Salmacis behilde

His naked beautie, such strong pangs so ardently hir hilde,

That utterly she was astraught. And even as Phebus beames

Against a myrrour pure and clere rebound with broken gleames:

Even so hir eys did sparcle fire. Scarce could she tarience make:

Scarce could she any time delay hir pleasure for to take:

She wolde have run, and in hir armes embraced him streight way:

She was so far beside hir selfe, that scarsly could she stay.

He clapping with his hollow hands against his naked sides,

Into the water lithe and baine with armes displayed glydes.

And rowing with his hands and legges swimmes in the water cleare:

Through which his bodie faire and white doth glistringly appeare,

As if a man an Ivorie Image or a Lillie white

Should overlay or close with glasse that were most pure and bright.

The prize is won (cride Salmacis aloud) he is mine owne.

And therewithall in all post hast she having lightly throwne

Hir garments off, flew to the Poole and cast hir thereinto

And caught him fast between hir armes, for ought that he could doe:

Yea maugre all his wrestling and his struggling to and fro,

She held him still, and kissed him a hundred times and mo.

And willde he nillde he with hir handes she toucht his naked brest:

And now on this side now on that (for all he did resist

And strive to wrest him from hir gripes) she clung unto him fast:

And wound about him like a Snake which snatched up in hast

And being by the Prince of Birdes borne lightly up aloft,

Doth writhe hir selfe about his necke and griping talants oft:

And cast hir taile about his wings displayed in the winde:

Or like as Ivie runnes on trees about the utter rinde:

Or as the Crabfish having caught his enmy in the Seas,

Doth claspe him in on every side with all his crooked cleas.

But Atlas Nephew still persistes, and utterly denies

The Nymph to have hir hoped sport: she urges him likewise.

And pressing him with all hir weight, fast cleaving to him still,

Strive, struggle, wrest and writhe (she said) thou froward boy thy fill:

Doe what thou canst thou shalt not scape. Ye Goddes of Heaven agree

That this same wilfull boy and I may never parted bee.

The Gods were pliant to hir boone. The bodies of them twaine

Were mixt and joyned both in one. To both them did remaine

One countnance: like as if a man should in one barke beholde

Two twigges both growing into one and still togither holde.

Even so when through hir hugging and hir grasping of the tother

The members of them mingled were and fastned both togither,

They were not any lenger two: but (as it were) a toy

Of double shape. Ye could not say it was a perfect boy

Nor perfect wench: it seemed both and none of both to beene.

Now when Hermaphroditus saw how in the water sheene

To which he entred in a man, his limmes were weakened so

That out fro thence but halfe a man he was compelde to go,

He lifteth up his hands and said (but not with manly reere):

O noble father Mercurie, and Venus mother deere,

This one petition graunt your son which both your names doth beare,

That whoso commes within this Well may so be weakened there,

That of a man but halfe a man he may fro thence retire.

Both Parentes moved with the chaunce did stablish this desire

The which their doubleshaped sonne had made: and thereupon

Infected with an unknowne strength the sacred spring anon.

After reading the poem, he decided to purchase the book. His curiosity regarding the significance of the myth of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus had been stirred. His own lived experiences of gender bisexuality resonated strongly with the myth of Hermaphroditus. He had always been drawn to beautiful men, but sometimes he felt like a lesbian. His attraction to women was unmasculine, unpenetrative, and it had