New Year. Same Phone. Who Dis?

I allowed myself--for a brief stint--to regress into a predictable, boozing, money-wasting, man-hating sex fiend. As a result, I feel like I'm now more of a cliché than I have been in quite a long time.

This past year and half has seen me through a lot: change in my self, change in my marital status, rejection from an ancillary-albeit-undeserving presence in my life, transformation in the way I conduct myself professionally, the death of my father, a silencing, going underground, emerging only to rehash the basest remnants of my life's coping mechanisms.

Can I see sunlight? Will I beat my wings against these suffocating walls until my heart gives out?

I don't know if I have already relented. I was exhausted. Now I've rested and have no clue where to go.

I want to be not constantly overwhelmed. I want to hide. I want to be comforted. I want balance.

Maybe my rest is not finished.

The Only Person Who Reads These Is Me

And that is fine.

Trying to get through a bout of low-level depression.

This loneliness is a lake I'm floating in, mostly underwater.

Two Ziploc Bags of Pancake Batter

I'm trying to avoid doing work at all costs. So, here I am--writing where no one will see.

I don't know if it's because I've been teaching M. Butterfly for the past week, but the idea of relational performativity has been on my mind constantly. I keep wondering: Is everything we do a performance? Is there any act--I'll just say of mine, but I'm applying this to the world at large--in which I behave that is purely my own? Or do I always anticipate, or crave, an audience? How am I manipulating my thoughts, my memory, my words? Is my entire existence just a string of scenarios in which I am I censoring parts of me, or exaggerating others?

I guess some of it boils down to trust. Trust implies interaction with another person, and an assumption that the person possesses an essence of sincerity or authenticity. But what if they don't? What if every act is exactly that--an act? So many speech acts are ultimately futile. From the people in meetings who love to hear their own voices, but rarely achieve any meritorious labor, to the men who pantomime vulnerability in order to fulfill their get-laid-quick schemes--what is the point? 

What am I not understanding about the world and my place in it? I spent my entire life working myself numb, so that I could achieve the love, the recognition, and the comfort I so desperately wanted. I did whatever I could to make myself (what I believed would be most) lovable in the eyes of someone--anyone--I desired, and it almost killed me. Now, I have all the things that I thought would make me lovable to someone--things that would earn me a person who would want me and understand me. And now, I'm more isolated than ever. I have the job, the home, the physical beauty, the capacity to love myself and someone else. Those took me literally decades to achieve. But now, also, it's like I've stepped into my own life's camera obscura--where everything has been flipped upside-down and inverted. Having achieved the goals has only placed me in a more rarefied stratosphere, near which very few of the type of people who I want would ever venture to go. And the people who are here? They don't understand me. 

The ones who might be able to understand me now think I'm just some privileged priss who's always had it this good, so they approach me suspiciously. And the more I try to tell them that I've spent 90% of my life in the same place they are, the more I just come off as a panderer. They stop listening to me. I'm two-dimensional to everyone, but for different reasons. I'm either the strange, white trash chick who managed to roll under the closing garage door into the fancy party just seconds before being crushed to death, or I'm the chick who can afford to pay for an overpriced lunch, so I must have no clue what it means to struggle. I don't have a solid place in this world. 

To be honest, I have no clue how to navigate it. The full-time teaching job I have now pays five times what my first full-time teaching job did just six years ago. I don't know how that happened. I just kept working my ass off; one day I woke up and was financially secure. I went from scrambling for low-income housing, living out of my car, engaging in survival sex, and sleeping on piss-stained futons--to this. And the opposite of my endgame happened. Instead of finally being accepted as a result of my hard-earned achievements, I'm more outside of anyplace to call a community than ever before. Look, I know there are far worse problems to live with. I just feel lost, and pretty lonely sometimes. Oh well. Whatever. 

Thanks. I'm Trash.

Another night in which I should be doing work for my job or on myself, yet I'm just catatonically gazing at the blank television screen and forcing myself to write.

These are thoughts that have been floating in my sad brain lately. I'll probably give them greater page attention later, but I want to document them for now:

1. Dave Chappelle's most recent special confirms my suspicion that he is a sexual assault survivor who clearly feels incredibly uncomfortable with other survivors who vocalize their own struggles. From the rhetoric to the identification with the abusers, it's all there.

2. Since my father died, I've noticed I have much less rage directed at men. I no longer feel the injustice I did before--where I felt like they all should perform at my level of strenuous relationship effort, and none of them could come close. Now I just don't care. I feel guilty for seeking out people who, I knew, couldn't provide me with what I needed emotionally--only to turn around and chastise them for what they weren't capable of. I've also kind of given up on exerting any effort. I think that all this time what I really wanted was to be single and free, but I didn't know how to articulate that to myself (let alone anyone else). So, I entered into unsatisfying relationships in which I either buried essential parts of myself, or experienced the freedom at intervals of consistent breakup periods.

3. My Aunts theory has resurfaced. Men are protected from the hyper-surveillance that socially obedient women/non-men reserve for the less gender conforming among us. So yes, patriarchy is the worst; but men have conveniently found enough women to fight other women on their behalf. These men don't really have to get their hands too dirty, so to speak, because there are droves of women seeking their approval who will do the work for them. So, really, the worst perpetrators of patriarchy--the ones who maintain its omnipresence in society (and my life, more specifically)--comprise this class of largely heterosexual women. They flex their surrogate gender dominance by (as I just mentioned) interfering in the personal lives of their female foes, by flaunting their martyr-of-the-month behavior, and by finding strength in numbers. I hope this makes sense.

4. I'm so tired of being anxious and depressed. I wonder what I would willingly do never to have a depressive episode again.

That's all for now, to be returned to at a later date.

The Joker: A Eulogy for Robert Wayne King

Imagine you’re Batman, and the Joker dies—not by your hand or anything. He just dies. Maybe he gets melanoma, and you wonder, “Why hasn’t he gone on a crime spree lately?” Or maybe he has a quick and sudden aneurysm in his sleep. Either way, Alfred mentions it at breakfast one morning: Sir, your nemesis, he’s dead.

You mull it over. So many of your works—the benevolent acts for humankind you have accomplished—have been fueled by a vengeful hatred for this very person. You’ve spent so much of your life becoming his antithesis, trying to improve where he has wantonly gone astray. In a very immediate and real sense, he has been your raison d’etre. It is your desire to eradicate the world of cruel and confounding people like him that has made you who you are.

What do you do? Sure, you could invest the one percent of your hate that’s been leftover this whole time to focus entirely on thwarting lesser villains. But really, how long would it take to end people like The Riddler, The Penguin, or Poison Ivy? An afternoon? A whole day? Then what? Batman moves to Boca? Ridiculous.

You never even got to have the full-blown, climactic crescendo of a standoff that would once and for all have slain this enemy. You don’t get to spend the rest of your life in a smug denouement of reflection on how you triumphantly defeated your most formidable foe. You don’t get to pat yourself on the back for the rest of your days, or feign humble gratitude every time a townsperson thanks you for killing the juggernaut.

You didn’t even get a fucking apology from the guy at the moment of his demise. You didn’t get to stare into his eyes and see a twinge of near-death, epiphanic clarity. He never got the chance to realize the error of his ways. He never begged your forgiveness, for giving you no choice but to pursue a life of conflicted do-gooding. You wanted to be a celebrated writer whose stories got made into movies, for Chrissakes! Not some goddamn brooding antihero trying to help people who mostly ended up just shitting all over your soul, the way he did.

As if it’s bad enough that he didn’t apologize, none of the villains do! The Penguin doesn’t send a wax-stamped correspondence expressing his condolences. Catwoman doesn’t call and say, “Dude, Batman, that’s so fucked up. I’m really sorry. And I’m sorry for all the similar shit I put you through. I’ll chill out on the crime capers for a minute. Let me know if you need anything.” They just go about their fucking business, annoying the fuck out of you with their self-absorbed disregard for literally everything. 

It’s all infuriating at first, but then you realize: he’s dead. He’s gone. You spent so much of your life plotting justice against this asshole, that you didn’t take much time to think about why you were doing it, or what you could be doing instead. That thought forces you to look inward. You realize that beneath the anger and betrayal, which have been propelling your achievements for so long, lie exhaustion, loneliness, and sadness. These are feelings you’ve yet to conquer. They’re the foes that The Joker has been a stand-in for this whole time. No amount of crimefighting or justice-seeking will take these away. So, what do you do, but devote this next life’s chapter to overcoming them? But how—and, most terrifying of all: Will you stop being Batman if you do?

Dead Dad Dad Dead

Some of the more interesting responses to my telling people that my dad died last week:

"I'm sorry. Please let me use this as an opportunity to name drop my own dead acquaintance who has been in the news all week and pivot to a discussion solely on that."

"Hm. Sucks. Can I come over, use your washer/dryer, and bone? But, like, no dead dad stuff. That's too much for me right now."

"I know I disappeared all weekend the second you mentioned your dead dad, and posted shots of me on social media hanging out with other chicks right after I said I wanted to be exclusive with you, but you didn't text me either, ya know."

"I know we were supposed to hang out and I totally flaked/freaked out on you, but you're a fucking bitch because now there is the potential for you to make me look bad in front of your cool, pro skater friend I've been trying to impress."

People are wonderful.

The Cokehead Sociopath and His Sex Worker Attaché

I've always been fascinated by charismatic con artists, silver-toothed mountebanks, and mesmerizing cult leaders. I ask, again and again, how can they do it?

Not how do they do it--that's pretty self-explanatory. They bullshit their way through enough people--who are mostly altruistic in nature--for as long of a time as they are allowed, until they have to move on.

My question is: How can they do it? How does one find the gumption to hoodwink everyday people and not feel utterly poisoned and hollow from within? Do they engage in some sort of trancelike meditation, so as to detach from their own cognizant decision-making in an attempt not to realize the abysmal depths of their own ethical perdition? Or is taking advantage of others' kindness just as perfunctory to them as driving to work?

I had a recent run-in with two such people--my titular characters. The cokehead mostly got his way through coercion and threats of violence. The attaché did so through performing the role of ever-suffering victim. I won't go into too much detail, but my brief tenure with them ended with me changing the locks on my house and getting an HIV test after the words "Fuck You" and a smiley face were written in human shit on my guest bedroom wall.

My dilemma is twofold. On the one hand, I truly would like to understand the rationale behind their raging entitlement. Why the outburst directed at someone who showed them nothing but acceptance and generosity, until their user antics got out of hand and she was forced to (heaven forbid) tell them no. On the other hand, stepping inside chaotic minds and souls like theirs is a feat of despair so repugnant to me, that I simply can't do it.

I guess I have to live with the uncertainty. I guess all I can do is hope they receive the extensive psychological care of which they are both so desperately in need, and move on. I guess, ultimately, I just hate not having the answers--even if I do have the new door locks.

Thank You, Fleabag

After recommendations from both Pam and Sean, I decided to watch Fleabag. Ten minutes in, it's already inspired me to blog my own, similar experiences from an ocean and a continent away.

I recently visited Portland for a conference on race and equity. I had a blast--not just there, but on a couple of dates I managed to squeeze in during my trip. Two different men on two different dates: A) paid for all my drinks, meals, and cover charges; and B) actually talked to me (and listened, too!) about my interests, my hobbies, and my life. I was bowled over.

Yes, you read that correctly. I was bowled over because I was taken out on two consecutive, standard dates. How horrifically depressing--my joy at being treated like a worthwhile person, and not a service provider. Maybe it's the brainwashing of Catholic female selflessness thrust upon my psyche from my earliest memories. Maybe it's having lived in Long Beach, Ground Zero for the Peter Pan Epidemic, for so long. Whatever the case, my standards and expectations for heterosexual male suitors exist, stature-wise, somewhere between subway platforms and irrigation ditches. Dating here is that grim.

That's not to say that all men who live in Southern California are like this. I've recently gone on several dates with an awesome dude who goes out of his way to treat me specially--from interesting date ideas, to researching the best local restaurants, even to offering to pay for a dog-sitting service so that I might spend the night at his place. But the context in which he and I have gotten to know one another limits us from having anything long-term, so--although he is charming, handsome, kind, and loads of fun--pursuing anything more with him is essentially out of reach at the moment. Also, it's not lost on me that he's not from this area--he's not even from this country. So that, along with his dogged effort to be a good person always, tells me that these dire cultural expectations have not been programmed into him the way in which they have with local guys.

What is it, then, about men from this area that makes them so--entitled? Lazy? Incapable? I can't quite find the right word to describe it, so here's a visual. It's like all these guys show up at my door, with a list of demands in their pockets. The date, then, becomes a game of how many of these demands they can passively foist upon me throughout the duration of the evening. Oh, you want to hang out my place that I've taken the time to clean and arrange, eat the food I've bought and prepared, watch the TV that I've worked to pay for, sleep in the bed I've cleaned and made up? Oh, you don't want to go out to a bar, restaurant, or (if we're being sleazy and honest) pay for a hotel to stay in? Oh, you want sex that you enjoy, without giving much thought to my stake in the matter (beyond being an available, wet hole)? Oh! Oh! Oh! Aaaaaand you're going to complain, or roll your eyes, or conveniently "forget" when I ask you to bring over a $15 bottle of wine for me to enjoy? Fascinating.

Since I believe in the neo-Marxist principle that all labor possesses both an intrinsic and extrinsic value, let's put a price tag on that labor that you, in your feigned naivete that male privilege affords you, think is free. Let's say we eat that dinner, at a mid-priced restaurant, for two people, including two adult beverages. That's $100. A bar that serves decent drinks we both enjoy? Another $50. A hotel that is clean and provides all the amenities--including parking and overnight stay--that you would require? $200. Sex work for a duration of several hours? $300. Therapy and counseling services in the form of me listening to you tell me all about your life, previous dating history, and anxiety over the upcoming sports season? Hmmm. At $150 per hour, let's say two hours that I'm actually listening to you. That's another $300. These are all modest price values, by the way. This is nothing extravagant--just standard, mid-level date fare that would provide the same level of quality and service that you are expecting of me.

I'll even deduct the $15 bottle of wine you may or may not have brought. That brings the total to: $935. Just consider it my date Patreon. So, the next time you bring your list of demands, tucked neatly away in the pocket of your Levis, or Balmains, or whatever you can afford because you've skirted paying for any of this on your last hundred-or-so dates, I'll have ready my bill. Deal? Great! See you sometime between never and when you actually grow the fuck up and become a real adult.

Insomnia

Luckily, no one reads these anymore, since I'm so paranoid about my colleagues and students knowing anything about me (for fear of losing job security) that I've deleted the links off of all my social media pages. I guess, then, I can write the most self-indulgent of posts.

I can't sleep, and it's half past two in the morning. So, what's the cavalcade of thoughts poisoning my sleep schedule tonight? Let's see:

Guilt over my ability as a writing instructor --> Wanting to decolonize my approach to relationships (since I pretty much only date men of color) --> The prison-industrial complex --> Thinking about how conservatives never admit that they actually don't mind handouts, as long as they're the recipients --> Being hot (literally, not sexy hot, but sweaty hot) --> My family --> My friends (a.k.a.  chosen family) --> The severely low number of people I actually trust in this world --> One of the dogs farted again --> The ways in which I am blinded by my privilege, and what I can do to counteract that/help others --> Chernobyl --> Shit I need versus shit I can afford --> Not wanting kids --> shitty jokes --> Maybe I'll watch TV --> A never-ending rabbit hole, in which I ponder the tension between the bottomless pit of my need for emotional comfort versus the ever-growing hostility and annoyance I feel toward partners as any given relationship or hookup situation progresses.

What's a girl to do?

The Chasm

Yesterday, as part of my faculty obligations, I had to attend my college’s Commencement ceremony. It wasn’t the waking up at 6:30 AM on a Saturday, nor the fact that I had to wear a scratchy, black robe in the sun for three hours, that made me irritable. It wasn’t even the bullshit rent-a-cop—the one who took out every vestigial, adolescent frustration he’d been harboring for the past twenty years on any employee trying to park near their office, with his self-satisfied officiousness and arbitrary rules-following—who told me that I wasn’t allowed to park in the same place I’ve been parking all year, at my fucking place of employment. 

It was what I will, from here on out, refer to as “the chasm.” The chasm is that well of pain that is so deep, so relentlessly impossible to fill, so a part of me, that it may as well be a sixth finger or another gall bladder. The chasm is not only the initial shocks of trauma that I experienced in my childhood; it’s also the shitty lessons and the opposite of self-care I learned as a result of those experiences. It’s the poor decisions in my adult life that I made, because I had the equivalent of a preschooler’s amount of knowledge about how to establish healthy boundaries and hold others accountable.  It’s the thing I always, in my hubris, think I’ve overcome--only to be shoved up against its loins, like Leda struggling against Zeus, because of some triggering experience. The following particular catalyst of disappointing memories came about as I chatted with colleagues as the procession of graduates glided willfully past us to pick up their diplomas:

“My graduation was so embarrassing. My parents brought a loud horn. Instead of yelling out my name, they just squeezed it when my name was called.”

“Oh yeah? Well, my whole family came, and my brothers were so loud and obnoxious when my name was called!”

“What about you, Katie? I know you have a big family. How many people in your family came to your graduation?”

“I was the first woman in my family to get a college degree. No one came to any of my college graduations. Either I wasn’t talking to them at the time, or they didn’t care.” Cue the asshole-clenching silence, in which my friends internally roll their eyes at another Katie-and-her-shitty-dysfunctional-family-stories-and-geezus-what-a-massive-crybaby-Debbie-Downer-she-is. Or at least that’s what I’m projecting. Of course, the voice in my head adds, “They didn’t come to your wedding, either. Not one family member came to your wedding. Every major, meaningful event in your adult life has been ignored by the ones who were supposed to be your tribe.”

Commencement ends. Students are smiling, crying, yawning. Families are huddled on the football field—cheap bundles of carnations and aluminum balloons trying desperately to escape the grips of sweaty palms to scatter anywhere (The ground? The sky?). I feel claustrophobic navigating my way through the crown of navy blue and black polyester robes that have been soaking up the climate-change sunlight for so long that they are almost scalding to the touch. I get to my car, and perform immediately several moving violations—anything to get me the fuck away quickly, so I can seclude myself at home with my dogs and breathe.  That’s when it hits me. All those snide, snarky comments I launched to the colleague sitting next to me; all that complaining about having to be there to people who also had to work right along with me on a Saturday; all the obnoxious, off-color jokes—they’re all a way of dealing with the chasm and its volcanic pain bubbling in my gut. But they are also akin to a cheesecloth tarp trying to cover what's about to spew from the chasm. Despite nine consecutive years of therapy, those memories aren’t dormant. They erupt. I bawl my eyes out, in front of my dogs, on my bed. The pain is real, it is ready, and letting it out is necessary.

Sometimes I don’t know why I tell my stories. Sometimes I do feel like I’m nothing more than a pretentious trauma queen. I still have to get them out, though. I don’t know. I hope they are performing some function—beyond just what they do for me. Thanks for reading, whoever.

Questions

Questions I have to remind myself daily:

1. Is this asshole's bullshit opinion and transparent hypocrisy worth my energy?
2. Who is my impostor syndrome serving?
3. Am I getting compensated for this labor reasonably?
4. Do I need this person in my life?
5. Is this (person's) mess my burden?
6. Is this more important than spending time with my friends or my dogs?
7. Will this concern me in 5, 10, or 15 years?
8. Am I being kind enough to myself?

Power

The quest for power and dominance is fueled by a fear of intimacy.

When we expose ourselves, and allow ourselves to be vulnerable in front of people we'd otherwise attempt to bend to our will, we avoid loneliness. We find love and kinship. We connect.

By shutting off those impulses, we surround ourselves with a giant moat of emotional impenetrability, and we are alone.

So, a byproduct of dominance is an incessant, abiding sense of alienation.

One Meets The Most Interesting People on Dating Apps

I’m happy to say that Tinder is no longer the hellscape of painful dating experiences and passive aggression that it once was for me. I’ve started to meet some kind and fascinating people.

No more strange men harassing me in pirate speak.

No more people my age telling me I’m ugly and old.

No more uncomfortable exchanges to screenshot so my friends can relish in my discomfiting singledom.

Just nice people, putting themselves out there, looking for any number of emotional, intellectual, or physical connections.

Sure there are still the dudes who put on the full-court emotional press—spitting an adorable game of how they want to girlfriend me up and treat me well--only to disappear after two weeks. But that’s their journey; I just happened to bump into them at that particular point of not-ready. I’m not bothered by it. Most are good, though.

There’s the guy who gave me the banquette seat and sat in an uncomfortable stool the whole date (that he paid for). I later found out—without him telling me--that he’s had major spinal surgery in the past. I thought that was a beautifully kind gesture.

There’s the self-described “masculine man by day exploring [their] feminine side,” who just wants female friends to hang out with--and who also directs, writes, and owns their own company. I’m excited about that one.

There’s the guy who encouraged me to talk about my real life, and who was very understanding about my struggles with depression and anxiety. I actually got to be myself on a date with someone! I didn’t have to perform the farce of a romantic job interview that most dating entails. And he was cute and funny, too.

There’s the hookup who checks in on me the way my friends do—with no expectation of further hookups, a relationship, a date, nothing. Just a kind, decent person.

My point is, I guess I needed to experience more of the real people who could be found inside of what at first seemed like a nightmare. I can’t believe it, but the site’s hyper-speed style, and its hyper-concentration of potential dates, have actually contributed to my hope and faith in the next stage of my life. There have been so many interesting people for me to meet. Oddly enough, by searching on a site that stresses the value in the immediate hookup, I found that I just needed to be patient to find worthwhile individuals. Sometimes, as I scroll through the ones I’m not immediately attracted to, I think about how they’re all just reaching out. Sure, their lives and mine will probably never intersect, but they’re trying. I hope they find the people who fit them nicely someday. Or at least I hope they meet cool people, too.

Let’s Hear It For The [Men]!

There have been several great men in my life.

The first was my junior- and senior-year English teacher, Dr. Poff. He was the one who opened my eyes to the ways in which society should be improved. He challenged me to work constantly and diligently, not only on my writing (a gift that has given me the beloved career I have today), but also my critical thinking skills. He taught me how to question and attempt to see through bullshit, always. He also acted as a parent-alternative. To say my own family was dysfunctional would be an understatement. Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse ran rampant, with women and girls serving as the victims of such injustices. My biological father was a narcissist. My stepfather was a manipulative sexual predator with massive debt and a substance abuse problem, and my mom was his willfully blind cheerleader, who chose to blame her children for his abuse. Getting away from them was a goal I sought early on in my life.

I babysat Poff’s kids while he and his wife, Stephanie (whom I also adored) would attend foreign film festivals and visit alternative lifestyle conventions. He invited me into a family that was both eccentric and welcoming, and they made sure that I knew that I was a worthwhile person in their lives. It was exactly the safe haven of weirdos I needed in such a desperate and lonely time in my teenage development. A significant reason I am the educator I am today is attributed to the kindness of the Poff-Taylor clan, and I am very grateful and indebted to them.

The second was my friend Peter. I met him a few years later, when I worked at his hair salon. He immediately became my surrogate big brother—having me over to watch bad movies when I was upset over yet another boy, teasing me and calling me Wiener Dog for my awkwardness, and just being a great friend with whom I could confide whenever I needed. He also saved my life, literally. I attempted suicide at age 21. Had Peter not found my near-lifeless body after a frantic search for my apartment in Huntington Beach, I would be dead today. I am still haunted, and I still feel vestiges of shame, for having put someone I care about so much through such deep horror. Peter, being the wonderful person he is, has forgiven me, and I will spend the rest of my life thanking him.  Luckily, he still laughs at my dumb jokes—which haven’t changed much in almost twenty years—and he still laughs at my awkwardness, which also hasn't changed.

The last one is Marc. Marc has been my friend for the better part of two decades. He and I have a deep kinship. We both share a dark sense of humor that arises from overcoming excessive trauma. We both support each other completely, no matter where we are in terms of our life’s development. Marc is the person I message when I have the dumbest shit in the world to say, or when I need to talk about the stuff I can’t talk to anyone else about. He knows my deepest secrets, and he pushes me to be the best version of myself that I can be. If everyone had a Marc in their lives, this world would be a much better place.

So, what separates these men from the emotionally stunted sad boys, who take quite personally all of my critiques on systemic, ideological gender practices? Why, as a feminist—someone who, supposedly, to people who don’t know any better, “hates men”—would three of the most important people in my life be men? It’s because of who they are as people. All three have worked very hard—not only on their own emotional development, but on being an engaged part of my life. All three actually listen to me, and have made serious efforts to understand me when it could have been so easy to write me off and dehumanize me, as so many others have done. All three, like me, are not perfect. We’ve had tough conversations, big friendship fights, all the usual things that come with caring about another person for a long time. But they have persisted. They do the difficult work, flex their sometimes paper-thin patience, and provide the immense amount of care it takes to sustain a family, which is what they are to me.

There are many other men whom I feel similarly about. I don’t hate men. I hate patriarchy. I hate privilege. I hate toxic masculinity that is taught to so many people, to their ultimate detriment. And, from what I gather, the men I choose to have in my life aren’t fond of those things, either.

Maggots

Killer Mike posted an Instagram story about how he wrote this poem on the back of his mother's (his "hero's") obituary--which is another reason why I like Killer Mike:


When I Die
when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries 
and a million maggots that had made up their brains
crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh
that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person
that i probably tried
to love

and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out

-Nikki Giovanni

The King of Pop

When I hear people talk about Leaving Neverland as proof that Michael Jackson was some sort of cultural anomaly, I find it a bit naïve. For Michael Jackson truly is the King of Pop—that is, the king of popular culture. I say this because, what is popular culture’s function, if not to: 1) treat women to be inherently evil and disposable, as he repeatedly does in Leaving Neverland 2) forge an indelible obsession with whiteness, as he did throughout his life, and 3) sexualized youthful innocence, as he did repeatedly, in private, and (I argue) with everyone’s consent?

We want to believe that he is aberrant, as if his fame and wealth allowed him to exist in a cultural vacuum. It was precisely his attaining society’s highest capitalistic achievements in his lifetime, however, that eventually afforded him the power to prey on children to the extent that he did. Wealth—the greatest measure of cultural capital in our society, that thing we are all programmed to kill ourselves trying to attain—facilitated his becoming a monster; he did not become a monster in spite of it. 

I’m clearly not justifying his behavior, or giving him sympathy whatsoever. I’m just saying that he took many of our ingrained cultural practices—misogyny, ageism, racism, wealth ambition, etc.—and played them out to their extreme, horrific conclusions. It was our adulation of him (as a black man exalting whiteness, as a symbol for some pervasive Horatio Alger myth-remnant, and yet still as a caricatured other that we could comfort ourselves in mocking) that inspired us to buy his albums and line his pockets. It was our lack of concern for sexual assault survivors, coupled with our tendency to serve as a voyeuristic public jury, that saw his trial—his being brought to accountability—as nothing more than spectacle and farce. It was our fixation and paranoia surrounding the attainment of wealth that led us initially to dismiss his victims as money-grubbing fame whores. We can, likewise, easily write him off as a grotesque oddity—and many of us have; but I think, instead, we should try “starting with the man in the mirror,” so to speak, and question the ways in which we perpetuate such common, toxic cultural practices every day.

Try Smiling

(I know I’m coming in hot with a revelation here: depression blows.)

Try having a mind that constantly seeks to get the rest of your body to destroy itself. 

Try doing everything you can to be happy, only to have every attempt fail—and I mean every attempt: going out and spending time with friends, opting not to go out and instead stay at home alone, dancing, lying on the couch, working, trying to rest, drinking, staying sober, eating so much you gain seventy pounds, eating so little you lose forty pounds, taking medication, upping your therapy sessions, reaching out repeatedly to your support network, giving your support network a break from you, trusting people, trusting no one, talking it out objectively, letting your rage flow unbridled, cleaning, leaving a mess, watching TV, reading a book, listening to music, listening to a podcast, meditating, exercising, staying single, trying to date, writing, not writing for fear of being judged, engaging with social media, deactivating social media, creating boundaries with toxic people, allowing yourself to interact superficially with assholes, forgiving, holding a grudge. It all leads to the same debilitating sense of alienation that you felt, anyway, and it changes nothing. You feel like you could perform any activity on the planet, then its polar opposite, then any other activity within that spectrum—and yet, you still end up at the same place: Hell. It is inescapable. 

You do these things and more because your well-meaning friends (some of whom have experienced depression themselves) have offered you their advice. It seems to have worked so well for them. You want so badly to feel the happiness you can vaguely remember experiencing. So, you try out their advice, and it doesn’t work for you. Ever. How could it? What the fuck does anyone even mean when they say, “You’ve got to learn to love yourself?” It just sounds like utter horse shit. All your brain has ever done is try to hurt you. Now you’ve got to love yourself with that same brain? Okay. Sounds great. You’ll get right on that. Bullshit. You know, truly, that your happiness is broken—possibly beyond repair.

So, you try turning yourself off. That’s what we do when something doesn’t work—turn it off. You no longer perform. You no longer give anyone any part of yourself. You just barely exist. The outspoken you vanishes. The person who vowed to be always, unapologetically, transparently vocal silences herself. Even though you‘ve sworn never to return to that emotional atmosphere you’ve known since you were a child, where silencing and burying your voice only served to protect the most abusive people in your life, you relent. You know it’s too late. You’ve been loud too long. People have already labeled you and shelved you alongside the rest of the crazy, undesirable women. They’ve already stopped listening for a long time. All the meager energy you have left, you invest in robotically performing your base-level, day-to-day functions.

Maybe a few people notice that the white noise existence of you has stopped. Maybe they realize how deafeningly quiet you are, and they reach out. They tell you to stick around because they care; but you know that they really mean: they’ve just gotten used to the white noise. There will be a lack—a noticeably empty, small space—if you cease to exist as you already do, as an almost insignificant part of the background music in their lives. They like things exactly as things are, so you can’t do that to them. You’ve got to keep suffering through your hell for what feels like an eternity, lest they have to live with the inconvenience of hearing a record scratch.

That’s really what depression is: existing in hell forever so that the people you care about won’t be sad for a couple of weeks. Feeling like your soul has been soaked in poison every waking minute of your life, but doing your best to keep it under wraps so that other people aren’t inconvenienced by you. And you do it, because you have a lot of love in your heart for your friends. You do it because you have hope for future happiness. Unfortunately, just like in the myth of Pandora, you’re never sure if that hope is the thing that is saving you, or if it’s the thing that’s been destroying you all along. Either way, you live.

Bohemian Crapsody

I watched the Queen film last night, and I have to say: not a fan. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huuuuge fan of Freddie Mercury, and a medium-sized fan of Brian May; I just don’t see the reason for all the hype. It’s almost as if awful, ham-fisted, or half-baked art about beloved legends like Mercury is made on purpose. The director knows full well that no one dares besmirch the name of a rock god. So, attaching said rock god’s story to a shit film is a keen way of garnering undeserved authorial praise.

Rami Malek’s performance is no great feat, either. Based on all of his pin-pupilled acceptance speeches and his jittery aloofness throughout the film itself, it’s clear that the guy is not hiding his Adderall/coke problem very well. Yes, the film implies that Mercury experienced similar issues with addiction—thought, for a movie set mostly in the mid-to-late seventies, there’s nary a white line in diagetic sight; but Malek performs that way even before the rock star-cum-addict stage in Freddie’s life. The actor is obviously gakked out from Scene One, making loading luggage onto an airplane seem more akin to an exercise in eye-bulging. Also, the costume prosthetics make his facial features seem exaggerated and caricatured, and not as traits oozing with sensual imperfection that Mercury so adeptly and coyly manipulated to work as part of his Byronic persona.

Granted, Bohemian Rhapsody is mythos and not documentary, but the film takes quite arrogant liberties with facts and reality. Mercury was not diagnosed with AIDS until two years after Live Aid. He didn’t meet Jim on the morning of the historical music festival; and he didn’t grow up working class. He was posh, as were his bandmates, who had the capital to attend school for careers in physics, electrical engineering, and dentistry. These (and many more exaggerations) provide a misleading portrait of a man who was brilliant, anyway. So, why bullshit?

Perhaps the most egregious reimagining, in my opinion, is the depiction of Mary. I don’t know if this is a thing in Hollywood at the moment, but what is with all these movies about gay men using selfless, long-suffering straight women as a means to find themselves sexually or emotionally (and then, to varying degrees, discard these women after such epiphanies take place)? Call Me By Your Name achieves something similar to this, and it bothers me. It’s a trope that doesn’t need to be nurtured for a variety of reasons—least of all because it’s already the overarching trope in films with heterosexual male leads. Why is the woman-as-emotional-wet-nurse phenomenon accepted as doctrine? Portraying such a relationship with the male lead as gay does not diminish the fact that a woman onscreen—yet again—only exists as a helpmate, a walking wastebasket into which the male protagonist can dump his feelings and saunter away unscathed. And don’t give me that, “At least he bought her a house!” bullshit. Yeah, he also made her stay up all night blinking the goddamn lights for him in said manse, like a prisoner in a fucking lighthouse. WTF?

If you want to watch Bohemian Rhapsody, listen to Queen’s Greatest Hits, and simultaneously play literally any romantic drama from the past fifty years on mute. Oh, and throw in a way-too-long reenactment of Live Aid for the final twenty minutes of it. That’s it. You’re welcome.

Frenchy. Oui Oui.

I ran into a colleague today. I hadn’t felt the kindest toward her in the past—and there is legitimately no good reason for my behavior. Well, I know the reason. She’s younger, prettier, nicer, and has better hair than me—and I think the guy who broke my heart likes her. So, in the past, every time I’d run into her in the hallway, I’d roll me eyes as if she were a colossal waste of my time. I even had a secret, cruel nickname reserved specifically for her. I was really, really threatened—to say the least.

Today, I saw her in a meeting, and I felt the same pang of jealousy I’ve always felt toward her. I could feel my heart start to beat more rapidly when she said hello to me. I performed my most badass self, just to prove (To her? To me? Who knows!) that I was the alpha bitch in the room. I effortlessly rattled off expert knowledge on matters with which she’s had little to no experience. I challenged the ideas of my senior colleagues with my best blasé-blasé tone. I showed the fuck off, and I made that shit fashion. 

Then, something strange happened. I realized that she purposefully would not look at me—and it wasn’t because of apathy or lack of feeling impressed by what I brought to the meeting. I realized: she was intimidated by me. I could feel it; heck, maybe I could even smell the fear pheromones she was giving off (Is that a thing? Let’s just say it is). I have the kind of job she wants, and is working her ass off to get. I get to act smug because I’m safely settled into a tenure-track position. She has to be cloyingly deferential, even to an asshole like me, because her future job security might depend on it. I’m past the point of worrying about getting people to like me. She has to make sure not to piss off the wrong people, or it could mean no rent next semester. Sure, I’m a fucking weirdo, but even that is a byproduct of a freedom and an independence that she doesn’t have as an adjunct.

I began to see her differently in that moment. Before, she was Sandra Dee, and I was Betty Rizzo. She was an annoyingly attractive and novel thing, and I was the beat-to-the-street bit of yesterday’s news—and that pissed me off to no end. In that meeting, I could see that we’re both Frenchy, just chicks trying our best to exist in a world where we’re constantly made to feel uncertain and insecure. I felt a kinship with her that my insecurity had quickly eroded away, originally. 

So, after the meeting, I approached her. I began with a joke to ease the tension. I asked her about how the full-time application process was going, and we commiserated about what a bullshit nightmare the job hunt can be. I made her laugh—something that makes me really happy when I’m successful at it. She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. Her eyes changed from large and skeptical to calm and welcoming; she even looked in my eyes when we spoke. I no longer felt like I was secretly engaging in an artificial, social competition with her—one that never has winners, anyway. It felt really good, and I want to feel good more often in my life.

There have been countless women recently who have shown me endless goodness with no expectation of payback. I want to be like them. I want to be a better woman than I’ve been. I hope I can keep this up. I know I can. I will.

Men Who Want Love From The Women They Hate

Looking back on my heterosexual romantic life, I can’t remember the last time I entered into a relationship in which someone willingly and freely proposed to treat me with respect, and as an equal. Recently, I’ve noticed that packed into even the most seemingly innocuous of flirtations are deeply ingrained ideological practices, which seek to undervalue and devalue women in the name of love. Accordingly, the working title for this series is “Men Who Want Love From The Women They Hate.”

Yesterday, a man who thought he was a potential suitor asked me if I’d like to hang out sometime. He was particularly interested in debating the ideas I share on platforms such as this, because clearly, my feeble woman brain—what with the four degrees my intellectual labor has earned, a decade-and-a-half of higher education, and eleven years of professional experience on the subject matter which I write—is totally wrong about all of it. He intimated how exciting such a prospect would be. I told him that I wasn’t interested; but—since I am a woman—clearly my opinion on the matter was irrelevant, because he relentlessly repeated how a debate was what he wanted, so of course we had to meet up for this to become actualized. He also hit on me after I made clear that I’m fresh out of a relationship and too depressed for that sort of stuff, but again, no matter to him! Ah, yes, ignoring the person you wish to debate—a clear sign of advanced rhetorical skills. How did I not see that I was putty in his hands? 

I reiterated what I had already said, and all I asked was that he please listen to me. That’s it. I even said “thanks,” too. I wasn’t nasty. I didn’t go for low blows, and I easily could have. I gave him the respect and direct honesty that I would ask in return, nothing more or less. His response was predictable, so it didn’t hurt: “I understand now why your marriage broke up.” Then he blocked me. What a nice guy.

And he’s exactly right. That is why my marriage broke up. When I look back at my wedding vows, I cringe—and not because I hate my ex-husband. He’s a decent guy, a kind friend, and a phenomenal chef. I don’t regret being married to a person like that. I cringe because of what I said about myself. My wedding vows carried statements like, “I’m too crazy for anyone to love me,” and “Thank you for putting up with me.” I entered my marriage believing that I wasn’t worth much, that I was a burden. So, yes, in a way, setting boundaries, asking to be heard, and loving myself enough to set high relationship expectations are preciselythe reasons why my marriage didn’t work out (even though, obviously, the asshole on social media wasn’t implying as much). They’re also the reason why I have no time for guys like that delusional suitor now.

At worst, heterosexual men hate women. At best, they both consciously and unwittingly devalue us on a regular basis—and these behaviors are taught, are learned. Unfortunately, however, they’re not just learned by men. I can’t count high enough the number of women who’ve told me that I’m bold, or strong, or otherwise aberrant for asking for simple things like mutual respect. The reason is, we’re taught since childhood that: you don’t tell a man “no” when he thinks having a desire for something trumps your lack of desire for the same thing; you smile and act lobotomized when you hear ridiculousness and straight-up untruth come out of a man’s mouth; and you definitely do not expect to be listened to, because that shit? That ain’t happening. Or, if you’re really tough, you ignore him. That’s the solution. Make yourself invisible; that’ll really teach him a lesson. Unfortunately, it’s the same lesson he’s already learned—that women might as well not even exist, especially when it’s time to hold men accountable.

We carry these ingrained ideological practices into our adult lives—and when we challenge them, we are punished. I think about the last guy I dated. The same night I let him in on my secret heart, so to speak, he said I was fat to a room full of people. And I still pursued him! When he continued to treat me with that same level of negligence and disrespect throughout our relationship, I was initially confused. Then, I snapped out of it. I ultimately resolved to treat his feelings as indifferently as he had, for months, treated mine. And guess how long it took him to utterly vanish, only after expecting me to grovel for my insouciance? Less than a week, folks. Something similar happened when I left my marriage. The subtext at the end of both relationships was: how dare I treat these men in kind when conflict arose?

That’s why I think, when I now calmly, respectfully, and patiently articulate that I deserve respect—from people whose behavior hasn’t even earned it—they are flabbergasted. They can’t believe that this woman, who should be eating dirt out of gratitude for having even been acknowledged as slightly human, would demand such a thing as equal treatment. What a massive cunt I must be. But at least I’ll be a massive cunt alone, spending time cultivating the one relationship I should have all along—the one with myself.

Tera

“This is Sean.”

Tera introduced me to the owner (or renter?) of the house we were visiting in the Balboa Peninsula. Sean looked bloated in his black t-shirt and jeans. He had dyed-black hair, with a peaking bald spot that looked like a flesh yarmulke. Sean claimed to write award-winning rap songs, the reason for such fancy digs. He talked with an Irish brogue. Later, after the seizure, he would find me on the roof of this house, and he’d show me—unsolicited—thirty or so Polaroids, all of different women bending over to prominently display their assholes, each with her face hidden. Sean was 41. He was fucking Tera, who was 19.

“Here.” He handed me a pipe filled with cocaine and weed. I smoked it. I was relieved I didn’t have to snort it, since doing so lately had caused my nose to bleed incessantly. I sat down, and grabbed my cocktail.

“Dude, it was so fucked.” Tera laughed as she spoke, the way a 19-year-old would laugh about a gag sequence from a comedic horror movie she’d recently seen. “So I’m on top of him, right? And then out of nowhere, I guess I started shaking and my eyes roll back and my mouth starts foaming. So Sean pushes me off him, and just pours cold water on my face, and then I come to. Then we just went back at it. Haha.” She was a more traditionally attractive and less fashionable version of me—with her textured red hair, glassy eyes, better nose, and horrid boots. She didn’t have a baseball-sized bruise on her calf like I did, even though she was just as malnourished from a diet of a half-a-bag-of-chips-and-a-soda-water-per-day as I was. I loved her and, being two years older, I functioned as a sort of surrogate matriarch to guide this Tempe-raised naïve little girl through my Orange County scammer life. 

I wasn’t sure if Sean was one of those poseur trust fund babies who come from foreign countries (or worse, the Midwest) and settle in Southern California to try and live out some boring Michael Bay fantasy, or if he was actually an industry guy. Maybe a combination of both. I still thought he looked like a dad who hadn’t paid child support in a long time, and I tried to steer clear of him.

Tera and Sean prattled on. I explored the house, eventually finding my way to the roof where I could be alone with my thoughts. Unfortunately, he still ended up finding me, and presented me the Polaroids as proudly as he would a new watch. I just nodded my head, and hoped he would soon leave. Fortunately, eventually, he did.

We sat on the curb, waiting for Tera’s mom to arrive. Tera looked like a drowned albino raccoon. Her makeup was about three days worn, and she smelled like she’d gotten fucked in about just as long without showering after. Her skin was translucent. She wouldn’t stop crying, and I kept making jokes to try and lighten the mood. 

“Well, maybe Tempe has a clinic with some sexy dude nurses who don’t mind bending the rules a little. You can always come back to the salon when you clean up. Shit, maybe I’ll clean up out here and we can go back together.” I knew I wouldn’t see her again, but a lie seemed more soothing in the moment.

“Haha. That’s why you’re not coming with me. I don’t want you banging all my rehab stable, you fat skank.” This was her way of telling me she loved me, and that she’d miss me.

Her mom’s car pulled up, and I felt an overwhelming rush of nothing envelop me. As she crouched into the back of the sedan, she looked up at me, and in between tears, she laughed.

“Yeah, it’s pretty fucked. And Tempe is going to be so fucking boring. But at least my life isn’t as shit as yours, Katie.” I hugged her goodbye, and laughed, and told her she was right. 

Today's question: What are the thoughts I'm trying to drown out in this moment? This week? This life?  It's time to listen to (what I can of) them.

Also, here's some Yeats:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Pantheon

January 17, 2019

The tiniest snowfall began as I was walking back to the place I’m staying on Marcy Avenue, and Mary Oliver died tonight. My first thought was, “I’ll try and find her best poem to pretend-share with him,” which really meant I was sharing it with myself. But why try to fit someone else’s thoughts to my own feelings? It’s like wearing someone’s used shoes.

So the snow goaded me to write. It was too lovely to say no. It’s all been lovely—the snow, the skyscrapers, Asilia, the cafes, the wine, the conversations. Even the subway, which smells like cotton candy and urine all the time. It’s all, very, lovely. 

But this nagging. This shadow. This human-sized, invisible space that has sat in my brain the whole time, too big, like when I was eleven and didn’t fit into my cardboard-box forts anymore, and I realized that the fantasy world I’d played in was gone, just like that. Time for reality.

You should have been here with me, but I wonder: would you have fit? Would we? You’ve been taking up so much space inside me, constant, not on my lips but right behind my eyes. Lodged down my throat, maybe.

And just like the shoes and the forts and New York, nothing ever fits. I tried to put you on too soon. I tried to force you on, the needling and the bargaining. I flew into a rage and ripped you.

I still can’t tell if I was too much, or not enough. Or maybe I was just right. Either way, I never let you slide around comfortably into me, and now you’re gone and everything is too big, feels so heavy.

You once asked me whom I had loved most in my past; I told you, and the story made you sad. Well, time and my heart-clobbering have shifted you into that position. You are it. You are it it it it it. You finally fit somewhere. You are the centerpiece—a vibrant, gilded portrait in my pantheon of regrets.

Men Comparing Women

I went on a Tinder date the other day. It was nothing earth-shattering, just an anodyne lunch meetup. The following day, my date texted me; he immediately informed me that he’d gone on a similar date with another woman, but reassured me that I was “much cooler.”

Roxane Gay has said that a feminist is just a woman who is tired of being treated like shit. I thought about this sentiment as I mulled over such otherwise irrelevant—even inappropriate—information to tell a recent first date. While this guy’s comment could be interpreted as the harmless data-sharing of his life’s minutiae, it’s also a possibility that he was pulling the all-too-common trick of trying to build me up by breaking down another woman. It got me to thinking about a flood of memories, in which the men I have considered as (actual or potential) mates pitted me against other women for emotional or psychological gain. This also led me to reconsider how these actions made me feel, and how the feelings that were teased out of me served these men’s specific aims.

Now, before a bevy of fragile, cishet dudes and their obedient, cishet, Stockholm Syndrome-suffering female supporters start flooding my inbox with, “HASHTAG NOT ALL MEN!” or “You’re just bitter and need to get over it,” I’d like to make some things clear. This is my experience in romantic relationships. It may not be the same for others. I understand that my family upbringing and cultural conditioning have provided messages—both subtly, and in crashingly overt ways—that hurting, even torturing, women is an acceptable commonplace, and that women should simply put up with it (or risk a variety of social, psychological, and economic punishments if they do not). Finally, I tend to write with the hope that sharing my stories will help someone who needs help. When writing, I tend to care less about how I can protect and appease the sensibilities of abusers, and their supporters who are generally unwilling to listen to me.

Coming back to my memories, a flood of examples of insecure men pitting women against one another emerge. There were the countless two-timers, who for months in our relationships—even years—would seek out other women, and forge halfhearted attempts to conceal their philandering. I can’t feign total innocence here. I’ve cheated, too, but my infidelities always grew out of revenge responses to my partners’ indiscretions, or as a means of leaving people who had all but made me an invisible servant in our relationships. I usually kept my cheating under wraps; never did I stray so as to send the message that greener pastures lay elsewhere. It was typically a covert way of fulfilling some deep-seated longing in me that the relationships did not. My partners, on the other hand, always found ways to remind me that I was inadequate. The women they chose were more traditionally physically attractive, more sexually forthcoming, more maternal, more complacent, quiet and obedient, less scathingly humorous, less intelligent. In other words, they found women who possessed all of the socially desirable feminine traits that I lacked, and boy, did they make me aware of the contrast. As I mentioned, at best, they were halfhearted in their methods of hiding such conquests. At worst, they cavalierly flaunted their affairs. Either way, they made quite clear that: 1) I was to compete with these women for their affections, 2) whatever I was, was undesirable, and 3) that, if only I could be more like my counterparts, I could be successful in the relationship. How do I know this? Well, when these men would eventually circle back (and they always did), they would ultimately profess all the ways in whichthese women were lacking, traits that I conveniently possessed in spades. When they came back, I was funnier, I was sexier, I understood the men better than these contenders ever could. How could my partners—or I—have ever thought otherwise?

Of course, the cheating done on me is too obvious a transgression to sit on its own. There was my ex-husband, who never strayed during the relationship, but (during the divorce) moved straight from our home into an apartment with a woman for whom the kindest words he reserved throughout our six-year marriage ran along the lines of, “She is a trashy, alcoholic wannabe.” There was what I liked to call the “Living, Breathing, Walking, Cliché of a Relationship”: the guy who was first “going through a divorce,” which became “in the process of leaving his wife,” which became “We’re still living together for the kids,” which became him psychologically abusing—and regularly fucking—both of us, which became (of course) him going back to her. That one, thankfully, inspired me to get back into therapy. There was the coworker I dated, who ghosted me after a year and a half of friendship-then-dating, and who after two weeks showed up to the next work meeting slobbering all over a woman who was thinner, nicer, and traditionally more his physical type than I could ever be, all in my field of vision. There was the boyfriend who wished I could be more like his quiet, nonconfrontational ex, and less like his “crazy” one who held him accountable for his fuckboyery. There was the guy with the texts he shouldn’t have gotten, who handed me his phone to use while said texts were incoming. There was the guy who hung out with a woman thirteen years his junior (with whom he was having an emotional affair) and lied about it, all while I was going through the painful decision to end our unexpected pregnancy. There were the exes who said, “We should hang out sometime,” and never mentioned their long-term girlfriends. There were the countless acquaintances, with their “totally harmless flirting” comments like, “I wish my girlfriend were as [insert arbitrary personality trait here] as you.” There were the coworkers who would offer me a terse “hello” because I was much more outspoken than the female coworkers they were quick to praise, the ones who listened to all their blowhardery and blew endless smoke rings up their asses. 

Oh, am I being “too extra,” fragile cishet bros for whom this is all hitting a bit too close to home? My apologies. History has simply taught me that I must provide a Bible’s length of examples, lest you otherwise accuse me of overexaggerating isolated incidents (as so many of you are wont to do). 

My point is threefold. One, these incidents have made me feel awful, inadequate, insecure, strange, crazy, lacking, unwomanly, and so many other terrible feelings. Two, they’ve taught me that, in order to navigate the world in a way that ensures survival—let alone success!—women have to cater to heterosexual men’s insecurities by complying with a game in which we are pitted against other women in a variety of ways. Yes, these men are deeply flawed, but they possess cultural cachet and cultural capital that allow them the privilege to get away with such behavior. Finally, it makes me realize the great extent to which women have to disentangle ourselves from these ingrained, toxic, cultural practices. We need to stop agreeing to compete with one another, and instead critique the ways in which cishet men perpetuate and are served by these practices. I’ll start: To all the women with whom I have desperately competed for men’s approval over my lifetime—I am sorry. Even though I was locked in a toxic paradigm in which I couldn’t see my behavior for what it was, you did not deserve that. I hope we may heal. You and I, sister, deserve better. Let’s work together to get it.