I've stripped the internal rooms down. Cut out all the secrets and hung them up to dry like meats in a butcher shop. I've challenged the shadows and the ghosts are not pleased with me. The terror has eased some but is still present like my heart beat. There is something about the night that makes it harder to breathe around even when my lungs don't hurt. Even when I'm well. It's lonely here in my chair. I just walked outside (which I've been doing all my life, walking outside in the middle of the night) in a neighborhood that doesn't welcome such wanderings. I've always insisted on it. I've always demanded my right to be outside in the middle of the night in any neighborhood. When I was young and finally off the street, I lived on Market Street in a terrible little hotel, full of rats and roaches and gun shots, I used to be so afraid to use the filthy communal bathroom I'd pee in my little sink in the room. But then there were the nights like this when I would put on my jeans and get a jacket and walk anyway up to the Castro. Daring the world. Taking my space in it. I lived in worse neighborhoods and walked them too.
Lots of close calls on those nights. Because we know don't we, we women ? We know better than to walk around in the middle of the night alone in any neighborhood. Doesn't that mean we want whatever comes? Doesn't that mean we are asking for it? Won't everyone, ourselves included, just shake their heads and say what was she thinking?
Does it matter that these are the places that we need to take for ourselves? It doesn't. It doesn't matter how many take back the nights we have- no one will ever think it wise or sensible for a woman to walk the street between the hours of two and four. But we get to. I get to. Sometimes I still need to prove it to myself. That I'm free. That I can shake off the night battle that is raging in my brain, old fingers pawing through my belly, looking for scraps, old hands stroking my soul, looking for anything not locked down to steal. There's something about bare feet on the night time sidewalk that is so kind to me.
There was a time when I just stopped being afraid or maybe just caring. A time when I insisted on taking my world for me. And I had a lot of close calls. I found a lot of trouble. Once, when I was 19, in this same town, I had a bunch of young men chasing me down Shattuck at three in the morning, shouting rape her, rape her. I got away. I always managed to get away. At least from the strangers. I had partners who raped me but that was different. I chose those beds to sleep in. When I was little I never chose that crib, that bed and I never managed to get away. There was no getting away.
***
I was curious about what today's masturbation practice would feel like. Because I have rage at the center of me. Anger is lose in my body and it feels like a dangerous place to be. I wondered how I would touch myself and where I would land. I had this vision of myself pacing all the corners of the spaces I live in, inside and out, on patrol. A shotgun in my hand, waiting for them to get here. The ghosts. Because they aren't happy with me. I can feel reproach and muttered threats from where they lie tossing in their restless sleep. I like to think it's because it's hot there. Oh not a traditional hell perhaps but someplace that makes sense for these child eaters, flesh traders, sex takers, soul stealers to land when they die. I don't know what that would look like but most days I like to think it's unpleasant. I am not the forgiving type. I don't think anger keeps me from healing. I think anger keeps me sane. Reminds me that it wasn't my fault even though I often want to think that. I didn't walk the night when I was little but I wanted to. I couldn't grow up fast enough to fight. Just as well. It would have been the end of me.
I pictured myself standing sentry over me. Keeping watch. Firing the warning shots. I imagined myself coming with bullets between my teeth and a knife next to me, ready. I imagined myself coming hard in my own red hot angry fingers, tearing out the orgasm that belongs to me. It felt violent. It felt like it had to be. It felt heated through with sex starved hungry ghosting rage that was my own. It felt like the wailing of all the children and the howling of wolves. It felt like angry need. And underneath, perhaps, fear.
***
So it's four in the morning. I don't know if I will sleep again tonight. I am aware of my body that feels heavy and tired and exhilarated by the night walk. I want to go back out in my bare feet and legs and skirt and taste the night with my mouth, and my cunt, and know that I can. I might yet. I tell you I'd come for you if I could. I'd come for me. I'd come for all of us, brazen and open and eating up the night because it belongs to us even when they take it away. It belongs to us no matter how many times we are beaten, raped and told it doesn't. Told we should have stayed home. Told we should have worn pants. Had shorter hair, longer hair, had no facial hair. Worn a bra. Not worn lacy panties.Not dressed like a boy. No matter how many times we are told we deserve it because were are girls, children, adolescents or women or queer, or trans, or any other kind of easy looking meal to the ones who do that messy, wet night work, the sidewalk is ours too.
I'd like to come for you but I won't tonight. I might pee on the grass or gutter and mark my territory. Why not? I might find a place to sit outside with a notebook and a cup of tea and wait for dawn. I'll sit on the cool sidewalk tucked away from the street, cross legged and write. I'll rest under the open sky because my ceiling feels too close to me. I'll be waiting there for the sky to light up. Right now the sky is smoggy looking, thick and orange gray. But the air tastes sweet.
I hope this coming day is good to you.
