My favorite text that we read this quarter was Keene’s Counternarratives. Carmel’s story, which is presented as merely a footnote in a text about an abstracted, male-dominated history about Catholics in early America, taught me to look for silences in the text. It demonstrated that I need to pay attention to who is not speaking when reading about history, especially as it relates to women, people of color or other groups that face oppression. I thought the duality in the text between Eugenie and Carmel was also fascinating, as it showed that sometimes, people who face some sort of repression or oppression, like Eugenie, can turn around and also be oppressive and silencing to others. I think this text also taught me that binaries that we can construct – like those who silence and those are silenced – are far more nuanced. Above all, Keene’s work taught me that social change can be created when you write to fill in the gaps in history and give a voice or even simply pay attention to those who were silenced. It’s too easy to assume that if there is no extant writing or documents about someone, then it’s like he or she never existed and that he or she has no impact on our lives today. Keene shows us that that is wrong. Even though he gives a fictitious account of a woman named Carmel, he is reminding us that there are thousands of people who are not in the history books but who lived and breathed and mattered, and they too deserve to have their stories told.

Question: Is it ethical to write from a perspective other than your own when writing for social change? An example would be a man writing from a woman’s perspective or vice versa – with the exception of satire, should one only write one’s own perspective, as doing otherwise would be making assumptions/writing without the lived experience?

I was very struck by Peter Schumann’s first assertion in “The Old Art of Puppetry In The New World Order” that puppetry is a form of art and performance that can exist without speech or language – as he put it, “Puppet theater has a talent to manage without language!” To me, as someone who, in regard to creative pursuits, primarily writes, this concept about making a statement without language is interesting and somewhat foreign to me. After reading Schumann’s work, I started thinking a lot about leaving space for silence, especially while I watched the “Bread & Puppet: Grasshopper Rebellion Circus – Naked Truth Pageant – Hallelujah” video. I do think the characters in the masks were able to convey certain emotions and to connect with the audience in a different way because we are paying more attention to their gestures and body language, and not pre-occupied or biased by what’s coming out of their mouths. Thinking about this also reminded me of the moments of silence in Drnaso’s Sabrina and how they were able to convey poignancy in a new, gut-feeling way, especially in regard to moments of grief.

I also wanted to note the piece on p. 34 of “40 How To’s” called “How to Transform Unwanted Noise Into Music.” This is something I like to do somewhat unconsciously, especially when I am at home in New York City, which is always filled with unenjoyable sounds. I thought this piece did a good job at capturing the sense of making the unbearable bearable and even enjoyable while still also being somewhat annoyed about it. I also really liked this idea of “assigning the ear a brand new task,” because I feel like I rarely think of my ear as an entity that can learn anything new anymore.

Manifesto:

We address the powers that be on this planet, the shrouded men who carry the world of knowledge in their briefcases, who decide where the sun goes, who concoct the shape of alphabets, who play politics like a worn-out game of checkers, who choose which is left and which is right. We ask them to reach deep into the velvet bag of power and like Prometheus once bestowed fire upon man, we ask that they give to women a voice.

Who, exactly, are we? We are women – that is, we are any person who has ever called herself woman or been called woman. We is me, and it might be you. We are any person who fears walking alone at night, jogging from the warm beam of one streetlamp to another, desperate to stay in the light. We are any person who looks back on history and fears that it will resurge like a dusty tsunami and that she, too, will become only womb. Above all, we are any person that chooses to be “we,” that will join us in our pussy-hatted march.

Let us be clear: when we ask for a voice, we mean a voice that will be heard in the halls of power at the top of great mountains. Women already have a voice and have been shouting for quite some time now. Perhaps you’ve heard even us screaming on streets, in hospital beds, or lying on the grass. We simply ask for certain men, who may or may not be named Mitch McConnell, to drag their rotten heads out of the sand in which they’ve buried it, to clean their ears, and to listen. And we are only asking because it is the polite thing to do and we have been socialized to be polite and old habits die hard and we are trying our best.

Let us speak to power. Let us be power.

Please (but read that in a very angry, very nasty voice that bites like a pink asp).

While we are here, we have a list of other polite demands. We want pencil skirts to be burned, except maybe a few which we can keep in a museum along with other instruments of torture. The pencil skirt, a staple of the businesswoman’s wardrobe, binds the legs together like a twisted mermaid and only allows a wearer to move her feet four inches forward with each step. We are quite literally trying to run a race with our legs tied together, and we will not do it anymore.

We reclaim the colors pink and red and we also will be keeping blue, green, orange, purple. We will wear power suits or bikinis or potato sacks in any color we choose, and we reject the attachment of any meaning to our plumage.

We need to re-visit the Disney princess movies. We understand that they are part of our cultural heritage, but so are a lot of things that we definitely don’t teach children to emulate (we hope), like the conquistadors and Harvey Weinstein . As for the princesses, Moana, Mulan, Anna and Elsa are fine. The rest are on thin f***ing ice. The Sleeping Beauty film should come with a manual about how to teach your daughter to never, ever, ever be OK with being kissed while she is in a coma.

We thank you for your time. If you are of the male persuasion and confused, do not worry, we trust your mothers or sisters or girlfriend or girl friends will explain why this is important to you later.

Process Notes: For this piece, I really just wanted to have a little fun with it and make my points in a very weird way. In some ways like Bread and Puppets, I wanted to embrace the absurdity and found that doing so was a good writing exercise. One thing that I was thinking about while writing is that I didn’t want to make a hard binary between man and woman or to be exclusionary in any way. I would love any suggestions on how to be more successful with that.

I need to provide two disclaimers about my response to this reading. The first is that I am incredibly squeamish so there were many visceral moments in this book that overwhelmed me. I also have had three surgeries – minor ones, especially compared to what Boyer endured – but her poignant descriptions of what a throbbing IV feels when its puncturing various parts of your body was more than enough to bring me back to my own recovery room experiences.

The second is that my mom is a radiologist who specializes in treating women with breast cancer. As such, I think I was very in-tune to the role that doctors play in this work. I found her section on p.55 about the callous studying that doctors do of the patient’s body to be thought-provoking. I know that my mom went into her field to heal people but I also know she did it because the work is fascinating to her – I had always considered that a win-win situation but this scene made me consider that to a patient, it must be demoralizing to understand that your dying body is also an exciting puzzle. There were also moments on p. 191 and p. 269 that unnerved me. These were moments in which Boyer addressed the skepticism that people have about breast cancer, some even going so far as to accuse doctors of lying to them about their diagnoses. Here, I heard my mom’s voice in my head. I know that Western medicine and all the doctors trained in it are not perfect and there have been some – very rare – cases of abuse. However, it horrified me that people would sow seeds of distrust between sick people and their doctors, preying on the dying’s desperate hope that their situation is a ruse ­– and, honestly, it horrifies me a little that Boyer would entertain the thought in her work, though I appreciate that it is an act of earnestness.

Another moment that I briefly want to note is on p. 256. Boyer describes the lengths that a tired woman goes to in order to not look tired, because the hallmark of a tired woman is that she always tries. I found that there was a lot to relate to in this passage, and I especially appreciated the details about this female “trying,” the lengths we go to make it look like we haven’t gone to any lengths.

I have a deathly fear of sharks. I struggle in the ocean, in dark lakes, even in deep swimming pools in which the painted bottom shimmers below like a ghostly mirage, like the pool might really descend deep down into the crust of the earth. Floating above, I stare at my pale feet dangling, like an ambrosial afternoon snack. My family and friends know that when I am in water, I need to be distracted at all times, that they shouldn’t even let me blink too long, or I will see the gaping jaws and jagged teeth rushing at me, bubbling like a torpedo. I have a deathly fear of sharks, which is strange, because it is far more likely that melanoma will kill me.

I go to the dermatologist four times a year for a full-body skin screen. That’s once a year for every family member that has had skin cancer: once for my mother, once for my father, for my maternal grandmother, and for my paternal grandmother. They are all, as you may suspect, ungodly pale. And they have all survived; their cancer battle was no more than a short, out-patient procedure and the sacrifice of a freckle or two. My mother even had melanoma while she was pregnant with me, a secret growing in the shadow of her nose while she was distracted by growing a human a few feet below. She had it removed shortly after I was born. The story ­– which is part of the legend of little me, a collection of tales that make my parents’ eyes grow misty – is that while she was changing my diaper, I kicked her in the face. The force of my tiny, fat foot dislodged the scab that had formed over the extraction site, removing the traces of the cancer and putting the whole ordeal to rest.

There are a lot of reasons why I am not afraid of melanoma. It hasn’t killed anyone I know. I feel like I could get rid of it if I kick hard enough. And, most compellingly, a mole just simply isn’t as sexy a villain as a shark. But there are far more reasons why I should be very afraid of melanoma, which my dermatologist reminds me of each year in quadruplicate.

The screening is much the same each time. I am handed a gorgeous, waffle-weave robe by a beautiful – but not intimidatingly so – blonde receptionist. I change into it and sit on the paper-wrapped chair, which crinkles in a way that makes me feel self-conscious, like other women’s thighs don’t make it crinkle so much. And then, I wait and enjoy the gelatinous feeling of my rib cage relaxing after it is released from my bra.

After fifteen minutes, there is a knock. My doctor pokes her immaculate head in. “Heeeey! You look great. You know, I have some students here. Do you mind if they watch?” I do not mind because my mom is also a doctor who teaches students, and when your mom is a doctor who teaches students, you are not supposed to mind that students all want to see your naked body because you know it is about the learning. I nod politely.

My doctor and her ducklings file in. I slip off my robe, quick and confident; I want them to know that I know that this is impersonal. I need them to know that this is impersonal because if this were personal, my stomach would cringe to the size of a golf ball, thus displacing all my other organs, and I would perish.

I roll onto my stomach and my doctors leans over me. Her exhales mark each place she searches for a small, strange, brown bomb embedded in my skin. “Oh, you guys!” This always happens. “Oh you guys, come look at this.”

I have learned to stop being afraid when she calls her baby dermatologists over. I have learned that’s not how she would tell me that I have some malignant, malicious cells growing on me like barnacles. I have learned that it happens because I am a fascinating study. My doctor has explained it x times and I have forgotten x + 1 times, so I cannot actually tell you why I am such a good specimen. It has something to do with the proximity and visibility of my blood vessels. Something to do with the fact that I have so little color, I rarely recover from any scar. Something to do with the time I got sunburned while having class in the shade on the quad for 50 min on a 70 degree day. Something to do with cancer.

The fledglings gather around. I hear them considering my physicality – they look at the minutia of my body, and I imagine the thoughts in their brains. I feel one light touch; I wonder which of them felt compelled to do that. And then they’re gone. “You’re good!” My dermatologists says as she shuts the door behind her.

I pull on my pants and re-cage my ribs. I move back into my body. I re-attach my skin to my soul. I walk out of the room and schedule another appointment.

Process Notes: I think this was a very cathartic and generative writing exercise. I didn’t even realize how much I had to say until I started writing. One subject that I didn’t really get a chance to bring into this piece –  but would like to – is the phenomenon that doctors, even women doctors, don’t take their female patients seriously. Studies show that women’s complaints are routinely ignored or assumed to be exaggerated. I think that has definitely conditioned me as a patient to act differently to all my doctors, including my dermatologist which, I think you can hear a little in the piece. I would love to bring that in more.

Letter:

Dear Ms. P,

I feel that I should apologize to you. You really were an excellent teacher who put a lot of work into her craft. You cared about us a whole lot more that your co-lecturer, a famous poet and man who received endless accolades for his teaching despite the fact that he generally disliked children and/or women. We, who were both students and women, loved him for his blatant apathy. We cheered when he ignored our presentations in class to write emails and then gave us C’s. That man really was proof of how much society f-ed up girls: they’ll love a bad boy, even when he’s their sixty-year-old, balding, goateed English teacher who is married to a man. That must have frustrated you.

See, the problem with you is that none of us ever lost the memory of the first day we met you. The problem was that you, petit and blonde, came teetering into the classroom like a baby giraffe. We looked at you. You should have known that we would know that walk. The walk of when you’ve suddenly added four extra inches to your legs, so your glutes look tight, but your quads burn with a thousand fires. You hobbled over to the desk like a runway model. You put down your folders. We could practically hear your toes cracking, contorted and smushed in that patent leather tomb. Could you smell the danger in the air? You were the antelope with the broken leg, still looking cute as death prowled, and we were the starved lion. We hadn’t had juicy, fresh, dripping gossip in weeks.

But the horror wasn’t over yet. Julia, over in the corner, gasped and nudged her neighbor. She pointed down at your feet. Slowly, with wide eyes, we subtly torqued, bending our torsos over our desks to look down. To you, it must have looked like we were bowing. And that’s when we saw it: that flash of blood red. Louboutin’s. You weren’t wearing heels, you were Louboutin’s.

My god, we judged you for that. We talked about your rich daddy that must have bought them for you. We wondered how many pairs you had. We called you tacky and trashy and tasteless. You didn’t deserve that, especially not from us, prep-school girls on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. But, for this indiscretion, we withheld our respect for you indefinitely, you who were only a few years older than us, a professional young woman who was making her way in the world. I really hope Madeleine Albright never reads this.

You must wonder why I am apologizing to you now. It is certainly many years overdue. And I noticed that you stopped wearing those shoes. Our viciousness must have struck bone. But I understand now. I understand why you woke up that morning and made that decision. It wasn’t to please men or be a docile servant of the patriarchy. Well, maybe it still was but that wasn’t what you were thinking when you pulled those shoes on. When I’m nervous, all I want to be is taller and more imposing and more attractive and to fill up more space. When I’m nervous, I wish I were the sort of woman who can look men square in the eye and who can turn heads and who can be unapologetically loud. And there is a way to buy that ability: heels. And if you really need the confidence: red-bottomed heels.

Last year, I was asked to introduce a senior diplomat to a room full of 200 distinguished guests. That morning, when I woke up, I was Jell-O. But that’s not very feminist, so I had to pull it together. I put on some heels. When I walked up on that stage, I was 5’10”. My every step was accompanied by click, click, click like a ceremonial drum, safe and steady. I felt graceful and beautiful and calm. And I thought of you and how we robbed you of this moment on your first day of teaching. And, for that, I am very sorry.

Lecture:

The first recorded use of a woman wearing a high heel was Catherine de Medici in the 16^th century. She wore heels to her wedding because she was only about five feet tall, which wasn’t sufficient to her. This fact makes me laugh because it is so transcendent of time. I see a lady named Catherine, maybe an Instagram influencer or a pastry chef, who is getting married to Chad, an investment banker, next May in a little chapel in Tuscany, and she’s concerned that her wedding stilettos will get caught between the stones when she walks down the aisle.

After Catherine, men caught on to the notion that one need not be limited by biology when it comes to height. In fact, heels were almost exclusively worn by men for centuries and were seen as tools to make themselves more masculine and assertive. It wasn’t until the 20^th century – and the invention of a small piece of metal that allowed for a new breed of heel: the stiletto – that heels became gendered as women’s shoes.

And that moment of gendering is where the real problem starts. I illustrated the history of the high heel because it is important to know that heels were, first and foremost, meant to be a way to enhance your appearance, specifically in a way that makes you seem more powerful. Of course, there is an element of toxic vanity inherent in their conception – why couldn’t people just shift their perspective so that height didn’t matter when it came to authority? But height is tricky because it has a primal, biological function. The small, footed fish that first waddled onto land that exists in each and every one of us – it knows to be intimidated of something that is big. It also knows to feel safe when it is protected by the big thing. So, height is something we will always struggle to be non-judgmental about. Maybe, one day, we will escape that vanity. Until then, we have heels, which, I argue, are inherently an empowering and equitable tool.

Heels have been corrupted, however. Now, they are meant to be worn with black pencil skirts so that the sinews of one’s entire leg, tense and tight, can be seen by all who walk behind them. Now, they are a social expectation for a professional, working woman to wear every day to every meeting, despite the pinching and aching and blood-taut blisters. Now, they are the adorable ball-and-chains that keep a woman from dancing at a party and make her nervous that, god forbid, should she find herself needing to run away, she wouldn’t make it more than a few steps. We have taken something good, gendered it, and made it toxic.

But I am here on a mission to redeem heels. Firstly, we need to de-attach heels from gender. This is a movement that has already begun, and we should move full-steam ahead. Wouldn’t it be great if Michael Bloomberg could stop carrying a step-stool around the campaign trail and just buy a pair of Louboutin’s? I also believe that opening the world of heels to men would have a double benefit: there is no way men would allow themselves to be so uncomfortable regularly. I have to believe that money would flow into endeavors to find the world’s most cushy heel.

Secondly, we have to stop making heel-wearing an expectation. This is an argument you may have heard in regard to make-up – it’s only toxic if you make it so that people can’t choose not to wear it.

You may be asking: why undertake this project? Aren’t there other things that should be redeemed before we turn our focus to this? So, I invite you to pick up some heels – maybe start with kitten if you are a beginner – and find a long, smooth hallway. Just put them on and walk. Notice the sound, the echo, the way the world looks from a height that isn’t your own. Very rarely on this Earth do we get to change our physical perspective like that. Very rarely is there such an easy way to make us feel better about ourselves. Heels still have potential for human empowerment but, if, and only if, we choose to redeem them.

Working Notes:

I really tried to shift my tone when writing these pieces. I think I enjoyed the open letter a little more, because I felt it gave me a little more space to wax poetic and to do different things with tense and technique. It just felt like more of a creative endeavor to me. For the lecture, I tried to write it with the intention of it being spoken. I think that limited what I could do with technique but also meant I had to be more clear about the thoughts I was expressing. In sum, I wrote the open letter for me, if that makes sense, although I had an awareness that others would read it. For the lecture, I was very focused on what would be going on in other people’s heads when they heard or read it.

Response to Ruskin:

The open letter seems, to me, to be a vehicle to show personality while also expressing viewpoints, in a way that one couldn’t in an essay or lecture. That was certainly my impression of Ruskin’s letters, because in addition to his social critique, he included so many visual descriptions of what he was seeing, which cemented his identity as an art critic. There was something strange to me about Ruskin’s letters, however: I feel that open letters often provide an opportunity for the writer to seem a little less preachy because he or she is talking to friends and can be a little more casual. Ruskin, however, seemed much more preachy to me. The scene on p. 326 where he criticized a Venetian worker for thinking about costs, and not about other people, seemed ridiculous when Ruskin himself was a foreigner and not a manual laborer and therefore, could hardly understand this man’s situation. It did remind me a little of Agee, in that Ruskin was imposing himself on a situation he couldn’t really understand but still felt entitled to make commentary about.

Response to Baldwin:

Unlike Ruskin, I think Baldwin’s letter is so intimate that it does not come across as preachy at all. It is always strange for a child to hear about their parents as children and given the gravity of the experiences that Baldwin describes his brother experiencing, I imagine reading this letter would have been a very intense experience for his nephew – which also makes it even more poignant for other readers. I also found Baldwin’s lecture so compelling because he included specific lived experiences, like being told to use back doors or realizing his Park Ave is not like the Park Ave downtown. I think that using the example for the Third Reich in the 1960’s would really resonate with the teachers that he was addressing as it frames the seriousness of this issue in a way that any person at that time could understand.

Long Soldier’s “Five” section of “He Sápa” was one I had to read over and over. I really enjoy the concept of “Born in us, two of everything.” This idea of duality, even within our own selves, is one that I find resonant, especially in the context of having a voice inside your head that both is and isn’t you. I think Long Solder’s exploration of the internal as a space that has both internal and external parts was very poignant, especially when she addresses the idea of dragging the other “you” up to the surface. I also think her evocative imagery of the scalp and the head made this exploration very visceral in the physical sense. It made me think about so many things, like child inside that we bring out at times – voluntarily and involuntarily– as well as the person whom we aspire to be, which we often picture to be trapped somewhere inside ourselves, waiting to be set free. This poem really made me think about the duality of myself and made me pause to listen to my inner voice with new ears.

Another poem section that I really enjoyed was the fifth section of “Vaporative” which starts with “example:” This poem was incredibly eloquent in summing up an experience that I have often: when a word, because of the way it sounds or feels or looks, feels like it should have a different, sometimes opposite meaning. Long Soldier struggles with “opaque.” I have a similar issue where “chaos” feels like a peaceful word to me when it’s meaning is the opposite. I also really enjoyed how Long Solider expanded the poem to illustrate that people who have different instincts and emotions and understandings should still be able to connect and communicate with each other.

I also wanted to briefly note section two of “Dilate.” I thought the use of words to create the shape of a pregnant stomach was fascinating. The language and phrasing choices also really gave me the impression of stretching, just like the body stretches to fit a child.

Excerpt from Christine Blasey Ford’s Opening Statement and Notes:

I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified.

She is terrified. She has been terrified. She will be terrified. After 40 years, she will speak, and the terror will only grow. Terror is a white-hot fire that burns like ice; it heats the soul until it crystalizes like shattered glass. The sharp edges rub against her throat. If she had a daughter, she would flinch a little, like a shiver, every time her little girl walked out the door.  

I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school. I have described the events publicly before. I summarized them in my letter to Ranking Member Feinstein, and again in my letter to Chairman Grassley.

The people in the tall-backed chairs, one woman and one man. They look at her like stones who blink and breath. Are they moved? Are they worthy? Do they believe?

  I understand and appreciate the importance of your hearing from me directly about what happened to me and the impact it has had on my life and on my family.

Her reputation is in their hands. A woman’s reputation is her life. Her life is in their hands.

I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. I attended the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1980 to 1984. Holton-Arms is an all-girls school that opened in 1901. During my time at the school, girls at Holton-Arms frequently met and became friendly with boys from all-boys schools in the area, including Landon School, Georgetown Prep, Gonzaga High School, country clubs, and other places where kids and their families socialized.

Teenage girls in skirts and knee-socks, desperate for the male gaze. Starved. Giggling. They practically ask for it.

This is how I met Brett Kavanaugh, the boy who sexually assaulted me.

Enter the villain. Begin the end.

In my freshman and sophomore school years, when I was 14 and 15 years old, my group of friends intersected with Brett and his friends for a short period of time. I had been friendly with a classmate of Brett’s for a short time during my freshman year, and it was through that connection that I attended a number of parties that Brett also attended.

There it is: she parties. She drinks. She deserves.

We did not know each other well, but I knew him, and he knew me. In the summer of 1982, like most summers, I spent almost every day at the Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Maryland swimming and practicing diving. One evening that summer, after a day of swimming at the club, I attended a small gathering at a house in the Chevy Chase/Bethesda area. There were four boys I remember being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, P.J. Smyth, and one other boy whose name I cannot recall. I remember my friend Leland Ingham attending. I do not remember all of the details of how that gathering came together, but like many that summer, it was almost surely a spur of the moment gathering. I truly wish I could provide detailed answers to all of the questions that have been and will be asked about how I got to the party, where it took place, and so forth. I don’t have all the answers, and I don’t remember as much as I would like to.

Of course she doesn’t remember. OF COURSE SHE DOESN’T REMEMBER. The worst moments of our lives are the ones we must forget. Her brain tried to protect her. It knew that she needed to get up and to brush her teeth and to put on her shoes and to walk out the door and to smile. Every day. And it knew she couldn’t do that if she remembered the beating of her heart, the adrenaline, the eyes dilating in fear, the unthinkable, the pain. So she forgot. And forty years later, in a room full of strangers and him, she begs forgiveness for being human.

But the details about that night that bring me here today are ones I will never forget. They have been seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult.

When something happens, it lives in your bones. In your tissues, your sinew, your DNA. Memory lives in the body. She knows exactly what happened.

Process notes:

I think my main challenge in writing this piece was changing the tone I took in my notes. Sometimes, I wanted to be sarcastic and voice what detractors said about Ford, and at other moments, I wanted to be completely earnest. I’m still not sure if I executed this in a way that made sense but I did enjoy working on it. Another fear I had was that I could not presume to know what was going on in Dr. Ford’s head at this time and I wanted to make sure I took creative license in a way that was appropriate. I think that is a general concern I have when writing about intense moments that have happened to people.

To Be in the Best Time to Be A Woman

To get out of bed with a new, red blemish on my chin. To go to the mirror. To be frustrated. To open my make-up bag. To hold up my concealer. To decide it’s better for my skin to let it breathe. To put on eye liner because I still want to distract from the pimple a little bit. To put on jeans and a sweater. To put on flat-bottomed shoes. To lock the door tight. To walk and only look over my shoulder once. To go to a café. To smile at the barista. To receive a smile and nothing else in return. To order a decaf, oat-milk latte. To find a comfy chair. To pull out my laptop and do work for my boss. To hear a shout: Does anyone have a tampon? To turn my body to the inquiring woman and smile knowingly. To glance around and see other women also smile. To glance around and not see any men get angry. To let out the tiniest exhale. To say: Sure, here you go.

To walk into the ivy-covered building. To get lost. To take the elevator to a floor I should have walked to. To get lost again. To knock on the door. To worry about smudging the prestigious glass window that apparently is the door. To walk in. To sit down. To pull out my laptop. To say: Oh sorry, should I get the door? To see his brow furrow. To hear: Close it to your comfort level. To be very, very confused. To have no time to figure out this riddle. To stand up unsteadily. To close the door halfway because the truth is always somewhere in the middle. To look back for affirmation. To receive no eye contact. To sit down and pull out my laptop again.

To put on my favorite red lipstick. To put on my favorite red top. To have a glass of my favorite red wine. To laugh with my friends. To feel lightheaded, bubbly, tipsy. To explain my friend John that this is a girls night. To bounce into an Uber or Lyft or taxi. To see the lights blaze by. To feel liberated. To tune into the driver’s voice because she’s asking: Where are you ladies off to tonight? To giggle and not worry about the sound. To stand in line at the club. To get the front. To fish out my ID. To be enveloped in the side embrace of an arm that I do not know. To smell cologne. To hear: Let’s get these girls inside, they’re barely wearing any clothes. To hear: You don’t need to pay a thing, honey. To put my money away. To take my friend’s hand. To walk away into the pulsating lights.  To not look back.

Process Notes:

I really liked this assignment because I think it forced me to pay more attention to the little details of ordinary life. I think that when I write, I tend to focus on the big dramatic moments, and it was really helpful to challenge myself to think about the little moments that happen each day that are equally valuable. It also made me think about how to use those little moments to be more poignant in my social commentary.