How to Show and Receive Love Having Just Snapped an Attacker's Spine: The Art of the Woman-Read Body

The past seventy two hours were exactly what I needed. So, so, so, so deeply and arriving so, so, so so unexpectedly.

Home contacted me late last week saying that he would be in town until Saturday.  I hadn't seen him in years, and immediately made plans with him. We then hang out for the next three days.

Let me tell you something: It is healing and beautiful to be around people who want nothing from you other than for you to be who you are, and to just be there. To witness: To tell stories and to listen to them.

It felt good to stay in a hotel room with a person who isn't trying to fuck me: To stay up, in separate beds, watching movies and talking and laughing and being shocked at what flickers across the screen and across our tongues. To fall asleep in the dark and quiet that only upscale hotels can achieve.  To sink into the perfect hard/soft of a mattress that these hotels have perfected. To wake up and wander the city I live in like a tourist: Eyes filled with new perspective and potential.

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One of the complex things about living life read as a woman is that the most beautiful things can be happening, while the regular world threads its stitches into you.

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I was in a beautiful mood today.

Sometimes, I am convinced that the demons of the world can track this. Chase it. 

Sitting on the bus, alone, I could hear a man a few seats back from me speaking angrily.  I was one of two other people on the bus- three counting the bus driver.  I was the only woman.

"I'll slap those glasses right off of your fucking face, BITCH."

It didn't take long for me to realize that he was talking to me. I turned my head to the side, to look out the window and admire the world outside and around me.  It only seemed to escalate him. "What the fuck do you think you're looking at? What the fuck do you think you're smiling at looking around, you fucking bitch."

The next stop was mine. His. As well as that of the other man on the bus.

The bus stops.  The first man gets up.  I get up.  I can hear the man yelling at me coming up the aisle behind me. "I'll slap those glasses right off of your fucking face, bitch."  I step into a seat to let him pass. He pushes past me. Shoves me.

It's the last straw. I'm so fucking tired, again, of not being able to ride the bus without some fuck trying to jerk off to me, to threaten violence towards me, or both.

I take a quick glance around, walk right up behind him, and kick/stomp down as hard as I fucking can on his leg. He spins around. "What the FUCK bitch? You fucking kicked me!" He gets in my face, and I smile wide in his face and say "What?", open my eyes all anime and feign fear, but I keep my eyes looking into his like Fuck you, you mother fucking piece of shit.  No one is going to believe that some skinny ass bespectacled girl kicked you, so eat fuck. You don't get to get away with threatening me and you aren't going to make me shrink back....."bitch". 

He continues to scream in my face. I blink a few times and move back like a "good, fragile girl" should.

Sorry, motherfucker.  I've never been afforded the luxury of delicacy, but I've been read as a girl long enough to know how to fake its thin mask when I need to.

The bus driver pulls him away from me, because his nose is less than an inch from mine and he is screaming.  I keep calm, but make it a point to look "confused and scared" even though I know exactly what the fuck is going on.

When I get off the bus, the other man asks if I am okay.  I say yes. In my head I think you're an asshole, too. You heard this man threatening me the entire time and didn't do shit. He takes this opportunity to expound on his ideas of masculinity: "I hate it when men pick on women.  It doesn't make you more of a man!"  I tune him out. Nod.  Say to him "Thank you for asking me if I'm okay, and for hanging back for a second.  It made me feel supported.  Have a good day, okay?"  I meant what I said.  He says, "You, too.  And honestly, if you see that guy again, just *kick* him.  Don't even say anything. Just kick that guy. He deserves it."

"He sure does", I say, and I walk away knowing that I have retroactively received a blessing from a latent knight in shining armor to kick the shit out of the man threatening me and wonder what the fuck it's even good for.

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If you're curious what it is like to live in this body and gender, go back to the beginning of this entry and try, sincerely, to connect with the beauty of that first story after having just read this second one.

That's what it can feel like.

That's what attempts to estimate a day.

(pause)



be well; be loved; find and experience joy even while the world stitches into you. You deserve it.

k.

As a post script:  I'm shocked at people's shock about what women-read people experience every day.

(photo: Hermann Nitsch (Austrian, b. 1938), Schüttbild (16. Malaktion), 1983. Dispersion on jute, 200 × 300 cm)