#TimesUp Means We Get to Claim All the Spaces

            Last Friday night, I went to Goth Night with a favorite friend and some of his favorite friends. Though I’ve been going to Goth Nights for about 25 years and my friend could NOT have been more welcoming, I was brightly-clad fish out of water. The people around us were all young and fit in their perfect black clothes, impeccably made up.  (Including these teeny tiny star decals—how did they know how to do that?!) But my perceived disconnect with my fellow dancers could not have mattered less—my pal and I were the smiliest goths in all of history and I could NOT contain my glee at getting to dance to Nine Inch Nails just like I did when I was 19.

            At one point, a bro-y guy sort of got in our space and maybe without even meaning to, my pal and his beautiful variously-queer squad formed a dancing wall between the bro and ourselves until he faded off away—a gift and a miracle.

            As I flailed around awkwardly and joyously, I compared this evening to the dance nights of my twenties and felt a PROFOUND difference—I’m all the way here on the planet more than I’ve ever been. My dorky fake converses felt grounded to the earth, solid in a way it’s taken me so long to achieve. I’m not just reacting to the currents of life anymore, I’m planted. Even when I’m not in my perfect blue bubble of an apartment, I’m home.

            I wanted to hug my twenty- and thirty- and forty-year-old selves, tell them how proud I am of how far we’ve come, how strong I am now, but instead I settled for leaping about like a demented cheerleader to the supposedly bleak music. I was so, so happy that I’d put on an outfit and gone.

            Earlier last week, I had a far less joyful but just as grounding experience, writing this bummer of a letter to my neighborhood gym:

“Dear --------------,

I am writing today to tell you a story that may be triggering. I do not currently feel safe attending (gym name) and I hope that you can help me. I am planning to pause my membership for three months to give the issue time to resolve.

On Saturday, January 28 at about 12:20 PM, I was sitting in the hot tub when a man came and sat down on the hot tub steps, directly across from me, blocking any comfortable exit. He was white, medium-height, bald, and had a mustache. As he settled into the water, he started contentedly rubbing his crotch, as if there were no one else in the room. He did this for several minutes, alternating with splashing water on himself. I felt very uncomfortable and violated. It didn’t seem like he was directing the behavior at me, more like my presence and the presence of other gym patrons didn’t matter at all.

When I asked him why his hands were in his crotch, he denied it, got very flustered and angry and stormed off. Although he had left the room, I did not feel safe and was forced to leave my workout early and go home.

I called and reported it on Monday morning, January 29^th, at around 7 AM. The woman at the desk was very kind and receptive, but the situation still feels unresolved. I often enjoy attending the pool at night, and I don’t want to risk being alone in the pool area with this man. I absolutely do not feel that this is something I should have to worry about at the gym (or anywhere!)

Female customers should feel just as safe and entitled to their space at the gym as men do. We are paying the same amount and we deserve the same access to services without fear of violation.

Here are the fixes that I am asking for:

1.      This man should have his gym membership revoked.

2.      The gym needs a clear sexual harassment policy, sent to members, visible on the website, and posted clearly in all gym areas.

3.      A female staff member should be posted in the pool area at all times.

4.      Staff should be trained in sexual harassment prevention and trauma sensitivity so that patrons can feel comfortable coming to them with any concerns.

I would be happy to meet with you and discuss this. I have otherwise enjoyed my time at (gym name) and I hope that we can find a just solution for me and for your female patrons.

Best,

Jane”

            I’m so annoyed that I had to spend my time on this, and that I’ll probably have to go to a meeting about it and/or find a way out of my membership contract, but this is the widest margin I’ve ever given myself for recovering from this kind of thing. I didn’t want to write the letter, but I asked my body what it wanted and this was the only answer that I got.

            This vexingly commonplace incident reminded me of an earlier one, from when I was sixteen or seventeen. I used to like to take the bus from the suburbs into what seemed at the time like the “big city” of Syracuse, NY. On this particular day, I had spent the day at the big library, picking out an art-themed and vaguely beatnik-y book of poetry.

            I was dressed as I dressed for most of high school-- a polyester thrift store find, a short, red floral print dress and probably lug-soled mary janes—I love the Nineties SO MUCH. It was spring, just warm enough to go to the park and read. I sprawled beside a tree with my poems and almost instantly, a man sat down next to me. He had curly hair and a shiny grey mustache and was wearing several mismatched hippie prints—and there was clearly something just…wrong with him. No one had taught me that you can tell someone to go away, so I just tried to ignore him and concentrate on my poems.

            I heard a terrible slish and looked up to see him tugging on his flaccid, worm-white penis and staring at me intently. In a wave of revulsion I stood up quickly to go and he said incredulously “You’re leaving?”

            What happened next is so cliché that I don’t even want to type it—the police station was like RIGHT THERE next to the park, they totally could have nabbed the guy. The policeman, though, like a villain out of some perverse after school special, said “What are you doing alone in the city, and what are you wearing that dress for?”

            I quoted the cop in a bad poem at open mic night that night (I tried for decades to get his line into a good poem, it’s just too stupid!) but I’d gotten the message from both the regular creep and the cop-creep: This city, this space, is ours, and anything that happens to you in it will be your own fault.

            The thing is, though, that park was just as much mine as anybody’s. Despite the policeman’s assertion, nobody had planted the trees and flowers so that guys in mismatched hippie clothes could take full advantage of whatever glimpse of teenage leg he happened to get. That park was mine to read in, just like the gym’s hot tub is mine to soak in. This is my world too, and I am sick and tired of feeling intimidated out of it.

            Women and other people with marginalized bodies (i.e. everyone who isn’t a straight, white cisgender man) should always get to feel as welcomed, grounded, and safe as I felt on that dance floor Friday night. I’m angry at the amount of emotional labor it is taking to move us all forward, but I’m so, so glad to help us claim our rightful place, which is everywhere.

Song of the Week: We Used to Wait

“It seems strange
How we used to wait for letters to arrive
But what's stranger still
Is how something so small can keep you alive.”

SPOILER ALERT! BEFORE YOU READ ANY FURTHER, go here: http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

I’ll wait…

More accurately, it’s a song of last week. I spent, like MOST of last week messing around with this thing, typing in different addresses, but nothing compares to the feeling when you realize where those birds are flying over, what you are about to see.

The first time the little runner slowed down and looked around near the first place I lived, I really did feel like that little person. It opened up some writing floodgates.

A friend of mine said that on his film, it clearly showed that his treehouse had been dismantled. Such a perfect example of the rich loss and wistfulness.

Back to Thinking About Space: I think that I might have a little different slant on The Suburbs than others might. Whereas on this album and in other works of art (The Virgin Suicides, Weeds, Douglas Coupland novels) the suburbs always represent a sort of decadent desolation, they seemed like the opposite to me. I grew up in a very rural area, like I said yesterday, so moving to the suburbs was, to borrow a phrase from a semi-shy friend, socially overwhelming. It was liberating in that I could walk to the library, but scary because there were so many people around. (It’s similar, I guess to my still-current feeling of moving from a small city to a big one.)

Every Arcade Fire album is a different way of looking at the end of the world. This particular apocalypse is my favorite because it’s the most lyrical. And because it’s causing me to write a mountain.

Thinking About Space

The therapist lady’s assignment before the Labor Day break was “Find creative ways to think about space.”

That’s because sometimes when I feel stressed or threatened, I also feel trapped, like I can’t get away, like I have to snarl and fight like a cornered squirrel. I haven’t thought of a way to convince myself during those times that I have any control over the situation, that I can, in fact, walk away. (not storm away or fade into the woodwork.)

But here’s what I have so far about space:

1. For my whole adult life, I’ve thought of myself as someone who leaves the past behind as a survival mechanism, but it is not behind. There’s rooms I’m trapped in unable to move, exposed and looking for my clothes or safe for the moment with nowhere left to go. I’ve been dreaming those rooms and trying to write them as they come. I’m hoping if I write it honestly enough, the trapped feeling will fade.

2. Lynda Barry says that when a loss is too painful (the example she gives is the death of a pet) we sometimes put that image away so we can’t find it.

Allowing myself to write about lost things feels like a lot of little reunions.

The United States of Tara and The Nobodies Album by Carolyn Parkhurst both have lots of interesting things to say about those little retrievals.

3. I grew up in a farmhouse on 10 acres of land. The nearest town was 5 miles away. To a kid in trouble that might as well be the moon.

To a kid exploring, it was magic. There was no limit to the number of imaginary things that could happen. My brother and sister and I picked wild strawberries, walked aimlessly through the woods, had our own eensy little pond to slip around on in the winter. If two cars drove by our house, my Grandpa would say “Rush hour!” and my sister and I would say “Rush minute!” and laugh hysterically.

4. There was a time years after that, in a suburban apartment complex, when I should have fought. Should have hissed and snarled. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t move. I wish I’d told the cops the whole story. I wish that my adult self had been there to protect my teen self. It’s hard to forgive myself even still.