Rather, it involves dancing in a slightly more reserved way, and occasionally meeting the gaze of different people, and staying glued to the one spot because, when it comes down to it, everyone would rather that I not be here. They’re merely tolerating my presence, and I mustn’t test the boundaries of that. I’m an outsider, and I must act like I know it.
That said, I do get tired of having to “earn my keep” everywhere I go. Sometimes I just want to be with other people. I can’t ever recall moving my body exactly the way I wanted to, or looking exactly where I was drawn to, or saying exactly what I felt compelled to, or crying exactly when I needed to, in a social situation.
Dad always encouraged me to adapt and to do what others expected, and to say please and thank you and hello and good-bye, and to prioritize others’ feelings and preferences over my own. Telling this to a child who was equipped to develop a fixed identity, or persona, might have been helpful. I can see how a child naturally drawn to putting themselves first might have benefited from a father who was telling them to care more about other people. It just so happens that I have no idea who I am, and I read somewhere that women have no fixed identity at all, which is why it’s always being fought over and debated.
I’m constantly in a philosophical dialectic with Dad in my head about this. He based his identity on what he “should” or “should not” be doing. He was raised a Catholic, and he justified his and other people’s behavior based on whether or not it was something that “should” or “should not” be done, like one of the Ten Commandments. He exercised daily because he “should,” and he called his sister back because he “should,” and he paid his bills on time because he “should,” and he lived, worked, and breathed because he “should.”
Considering who he was, or what he truly wanted, wasn’t really something that he “should” be doing. So he would lecture Mum and me on “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” over the dinner table each night until she would quietly down some diazepam and go to bed, and I wouldn’t eat until midday the next day.
The sheer force of his “shoulds” spun our reality, and our feelings didn’t really have a place in it.
Whenever I questioned what he said, or I chose to remain silent, or I tried to argue, or I cried, he’d tell me that I “shouldn’t” be arguing, or that I “should” be saying something, or that I “shouldn’t” be crying, or that I “should” apologize, and then he’d say that he was sorry, and that he loved me. Probably because he “should.”
29.
Right near one of the speakers there’s a woman wearing perfectly fitted, high-waisted cream linen trousers, and a stringy cream-colored bikini top, and spongy cream sneakers, and everyone seems to be very aware of her. When she’s not looking at them, they’re looking at her, and when she’s looking at them, they’re looking at her. There’s no escape. She’s a very glossy and very creamy individual. There are dimples on either side of her smile. Her hair is long and wavy. It’s dripping down her back like caramel.
She isn’t actively doing anything to warrant so much attention. She isn’t being rowdy, or dancing especially enthusiastically. She’s just swaying, and being seen. Swaying, and being seen. She’s just existing, and people are doing the rest of the work for themselves. Because those who are seen to be physically perfect, symmetrical, handsome, and beautiful by society’s standards are here to show us how to feel compassion for ourselves, while those who have physical difficulties are here to show us how to feel compassion for others.
She just whispered in the ear of the guy beside her, and then laughed, and her laughter shot around the room like an electrical circuit. The recipient of the “joke” didn’t do so well. His simulated laugh was below par. He did this very insecure and un-ironic sideways movement with his eyes so as to gauge everyone else’s reaction to what had just happened, probably because his way of measuring the validity, or morality, of any given situation is to assess the nature of everyone else’s responses to it. He doesn’t know how anything truly makes him feel, or how a woman like her makes him feel, because he’s never stopped to think about it. His feelings don’t matter to him. What everyone else thinks matters to him. Which is probably why he’s talking to her. She’s everything that he “should” be talking to. Culturally, she fits the bill. Which is perfect, because now he can use her to compete for status among his mates.
He’s wearing camos and combat boots, and dark tendrils of hair are being pushed out of his eyes by a thin black headband. His outfit is probably supposed to exude some sort of militant authoritarian vibe, and yet he doesn’t seem militant or authoritarian at all. He seems lost, and out of control. He’s tall, and fumbly, and every time he goes to say something, his chest caves in and his posture crumbles. He must have been a massive kid with sticky fingers and a red face who got teased by everybody and then went through a crazy growth spurt, and now, even as a grown man, he doesn’t know what to do with all of his limbs.
She keeps calling his eyes to different parts of her body through playing with her hair, and fiddling with her bikini straps, and tilting her head one way and then the other, and putting her hands on her hips. The tan lines across her back are glowing in the dark. The volume of the music is supporting whatever it is that she wants to create with him, too, because they keep having to lean in closer to hear each other.
Ah! She just showed him her tattoo. Classic. Drawing attention to this required that she twist her torso, slightly, and invite his gaze into her side-boob, and ribs, and stomach, in a very direct way, because the tattoo was situated along her side. It’s a crescent moon, I think. Perfect. His gaze was then forced deeper into her physical person and down into all of the places that she can sense he has forbidden for himself.
People are obsessed with what they don’t allow themselves to have, and then they become controlled by it. Forbidden fruit is everyone’s main meal. I allow myself to have everything, so I cannot be controlled. Dad found the boundlessness of my curiosity to be a living, breathing attack on his person. It splintered every idea that he had about himself, and the world.
There’s a photograph of the two of us when I was four or five, which Mum took when we were staying at a Victorian-era hotel by the beach in Queenscliff. We’d just had a buffet breakfast in the courtyard, and we went to look at different rooms of the building, and I remember Dad insisting that I not touch any of the furniture, or get it dirty. I’m not sure how I would’ve gotten it dirty. It’s not like I’d gone out and rolled around in the sand dunes between taking sips of pulpy fresh OJ, and shoveling mouthfuls of flaky croissant in my gob. I mean, I was wearing my favorite red-and-white polka-dot dress, and my Mary Janes, and my frilly ankle socks, because I was in a special place, having a special time with my mum and dad.
So, naturally, for the purposes of the photo, I lay back on a pink-and-gold chaise lounge and defiantly thrust my strong little legs in the air, miles away from the seat, and shook them about, as my father sat in the background, legs tightly crossed, whitened knuckles wrapped around the arms of his chair, as if he were steering a ship that was veering wildly and frighteningly off course.
For his birthday one year I turned that photo into a bookmark, and he never used it. I put sparkles on it and not even glitter could make that particular dynamic between us safe or humorous for him.
My mother was far better skilled at giving Dad the impression that our family was a benign dictatorship, and that he was at the head of it. He saw her as a saint, and she accomplished saintly status through numbing out, and staying relatively silent, and manifesting migraines, which would force her to take a cocktail of drugs, and spend days sleeping in darkened rooms with heavy curtains.
Living with Mum was like living with a vault that got a kick out of the sound of itself sealing shut. She preferred it when others miraculously managed to guess her wants and needs. That way, she didn’t have to go through the arduous process of having to articulate or fight for th
em herself.
I’d have dreams about what I was supposed to do or not do for her, which primed me for living in a constant state of tension around most people. Especially women. Because whatever the fuck seems to be happening isn’t happening, and whatever’s actually happening isn’t either, according to them.
You can be speaking with a woman about a seemingly innocuous subject, be it politics, movies, friends, work, relationships, food, tattoos, weather, astrology, pets, rent, crystals, tarot, or whatever, and the whole thing can become very highly charged, very quickly, because the subtext is actually something other than what’s being said. What’s actually being said is about seduction, competition, secrecy, power, security, inclusion, exclusion, sex, weakness, strength, or addiction.
It’s difficult for women to be honest and direct because for centuries we were burned at the stake, or persecuted, or exiled, or rejected, or excommunicated, or divorced, or shamed, or socially excluded, for saying what we truly thought and felt. Now, we know how to act like we’re being direct and forthright, when we’re not, and we know how to seem uninhibited and free, when we’re not, and we know how to appear helpless and damaged, when we’re not. Deception is more ingrained in us than honesty.
Mum got on famously with women who manipulated outcomes through playing the role of the victim. Her closest friends were always unwell, and suffering from all manner of diseases, and court cases, and low self-esteem issues, and substance abuse problems, and jobs that didn’t fulfill them, and employers and family members taking them for granted.
They’d say that they were amenable and adaptable, when they weren’t. Not really. And Mum adored this. She’d be like, “Oh, so-and-so would never ask, because she’s a sweetie, however, it’d really nice if you did X, Y, or Z for her.”
She’d describe her friends as being “gorgeous” and “lovely” and “such darlings” because it was always: oh, no, you go first. Oh, no, I can change my plans. Oh, no, it’s all yours. Oh, no, don’t worry about it! In the hopes that, actually, you would let them go first, and you would change your plans, and it would be all theirs, and you would worry about it, because when you went first, and when you didn’t change your plans, and when it was all yours, and when you didn’t worry about them, they hated you. They hated you with a resentment so intense that it had the capacity to become malignant and cancerous for us all.
Mum was ashamed of my honesty and directness. She never saw it as gorgeous, or as sweet, or as just darling. She found it “confusing” and “confounding.” She would sit back and sip her drink and commend me for my “ambitiousness” and “drive.” I wasn’t ambitious or driven. I just knew what I wanted, and I wasn’t afraid to ask for it.
Although, there have been times in my life when I’ve known exactly what I would need to do, or say, in order to maneuver someone in such a way so as to get exactly what I thought I wanted out of them, without having to state anything directly. It’s like a sixth sense.
I once had to stop dating a guy because I realized that he only spent time with me when I behaved in needy and overly attentive ways toward him. The largely unfulfilling relationship that we had could have continued if I were lonely enough, and desperate enough, to force it to do so. I mean, this method was working for a whole bunch of other women. His ex-girlfriend was constantly calling him, and rocking up at his house unannounced, and he was heading overseas with an older woman who had bought him a ticket, and no, she knew nothing about me, or his ex, and nor was she his current girlfriend, who visited him at work each day with a thermos full of pumpkin soup.
He refused to take responsibility for his life, so others happily did.
30.
Ayaayyy! That woman just touched that guy on the arm and it sent another wave of shock around the room. He can’t hold his ground at all. He isn’t accustomed to being the center of attention. He fears it, and he craves it. She understands this, and knows very well that she must occasionally say “no” to him, and scold him, in order to give him the impression that a “chase” is occurring for the sake of his ego.
She keeps rolling her eyes, and poking him, and dismissing the things that he says via shrugging her shoulders, and waving him away with her hand, and raising her eyebrows in disbelief, like, “What? You can’t be serious, dude.”
She’s criticizing him, and making him feel small every now and then, so that he believes that he has to work hard for her approval. Then he can fool himself into thinking that he’s “conquering” her, and she can receive a perverse satisfaction out of undermining his capabilities and his manhood, because it gives her a false sense of certainty about her own womanhood.
And, no, I don’t think she’s about to go home, and honor her feelings, and have a cry, and reflect on her communication style, and its ramifications. Crying and reflecting is most likely a problem for her. It’s an admission of feeling something, and maybe having made a mistake, and she can’t afford to feel feelings or to make mistakes. They’re obstacles in the way of her getting what she thinks she wants.
I wonder how long it’s been since some warm, relieving tears ran down her cherubim cheeks. Maybe the last time she cried was a performance for a man. Geez. That’s always a nasty one. See! Look what you did to me! Another fucking guy who can’t fucking be trusted! Fuck you! I’m fucking crazy and it’s all your fucking fault! See! I’m crying now! Isn’t that crazy! Aren’t I a psycho!? Blah!
His body language is beginning to take on a slightly reserved demeanor. His arms have crossed over his heart, and his legs are taking up a wider stance, and he’s making less eye contact with her in an attempt to regain territory in a communication where he clearly has none.
Occasionally, he displays a smile so self-deprecating and desperate that I feel a bit violated myself. He’s completely deconstructing under the weight of her attention. Others are vying for it, too. People are so attracted to what harms them. Being infatuated, and obsessed, and jealous, and tormented, and competitive, and longing for things, and wanting to possess people, and dying and killing for love, is deemed to be romantic, and sensual, and liberated. Yuck.
Hell is on earth. We create it. It isn’t some faraway place that we get sent to once life is over, and we’re being punished for all of our crimes, and indiscretions. Our crimes and indiscretions are the punishment. Anything that makes us feel shitty, and comes from a shitty place, and inevitably leads to the expansion of shitty-ness, is hell. Just as anything that gives us meaning, and comes from a meaningful place, and inevitably leads to the expansion of meaningfulness, is heaven.
Nevertheless, when I wouldn’t participate in psychological and emotional warfare with one boyfriend, he thought that I was a bit naïve and a bit inexperienced. It was endearing for him at first, and then he got impatient, and chose to get his need for co-dependency and toxicity met elsewhere. And I watched.
One night we went to the theater with his woman friends and saw this very non-verbal and very physical performance piece by Adena Jacobs, which explored women’s bodies, and their relationships to them. It left me speechless. I couldn’t keep up with the demands of the largely unfulfilling intellectual debate that the women were participating in afterward, seemingly for the benefit of the man present.
I felt embarrassed on his behalf. I don’t want to believe that women change their behavior for men, or that men change their behavior for women. Yet, unfortunately, a desire for something not to be true doesn’t change the fact that it might be true, and I know in my heart that, if he hadn’t been there, the nature of the disc
ussion would’ve been very, very different.
These women seemed to want it both ways: to be respected and seen as thinkers and to also be deemed fragile and incapable because, surely, a man wants all of that, and more, and what he wants matters more than anything.
So I sat there, quietly sipping my martini, unable to stop thinking about all of the things that he had told me he was busy “helping” each of them with: destructive drug habits, issues with their weight, and with their mothers, and with their ex-boyfriends, and with their colleagues, and with their older lovers, and with their siblings.
One of the women was an embittered thirty-something-year-old actress who wore a tiny fitted blazer, and drank more than everyone else, and gazed at my partner through thick eyeliner as she readjusted her low neckline with the carefully manicured fingers of her left hand, and moved her long, sleek, black, shiny hair out of her eyes with the carefully manicured fingers of her right hand.
Later that night, when we were walking home, he told me that if we weren’t together, he’d definitely be fucking her. Like, definitely.
We went out to brunch the next day because of course we did, and I told him that I knew very well he believed me to be less intelligent than his woman friends. He clasped his hands together in his signature deeply-and-meaningfully-listening-counselor-daddy-brother-guru-lover-killer position, looked at me over his quinoa porridge, and said, “They’ve got IQ. You’ve got EQ.”
Whatever that means.
31.
I feel lightheaded. My kimono is sticking to the skin at my lower back and around my waist. There are hairs wet with sweat clinging to the base of my neck, and my thighs are dripping inside the spandex. In my mind’s eye, I’m wearing golden armor, adorned with roses, and I’m riding a winged horse, and I can feel the wind on my face, and I can smell seawater in the air, and I’m wielding an enormous electric-blue sword, which is cutting through all of the delusions, and lies, and I’m galloping, and galloping, and slicing, and slicing.