Tired of Talking

I have stopped writing. I have nearly stopped talking. There is too much to say and no one I care to say it to anymore. The ones who already know feel the same, and the ones who don’t have stopped listening – to me, to the news, to the violence fired upon warm and loving bodies. They have not heard or pretend not to know of the boys in big old houses, boys with proximity to power and futures that no one wants disturbed, futures which steal money from our pockets and dreams from our daughters. Do not disrupt these young men and their run to the Senate and Supreme Court. Do not stop them from leading the largest military in the world, from mocking the rest of us and demanding more and more testosterone so they can fight and fuck. Do not slap their wrists or make them tell the truth. Do not block their path to the White House where they will cover everything in that same sweaty, sticky darkness.

And while the darkness has slowed my writing, I have not stopped listening. I listen to the news and interviews of people who have not resigned themselves to what has always been. I listen to my friends and friends of friends who are just as angry and hopeful as me. And I listen to the small talk and catch the breeze from the shoulder shrugs of all those people I want to tell my stories to but know it will not make a difference. The people who said I shouldn’t have gone to college. The people who told me I should have known better than to be alone with a boy.

I listen to the ladies sitting next to me at the coffee shop. They talk about making tea towels infused with lavender. They speak about crafting cutting boards and painting through the afternoon, of art swaps and connection and community. They do not mention defiling bodies or free pussy or grabbing men by the crotch. They do not destroy. They take cushions off their grown children’s couches just to wash them, then put them back better than they found them. These women, these wholly formed humans who make every place they touch just a bit better, through art and words and love and care.

These women hold other stories. I know they do. Few women make it this far without stories, stories that happened in big old houses or back seats or their own beds at the hands of men who swore they loved them, men whose futures are paved with the discarded bodies of those girls they were told belonged to them.

And yes, some men are good men, but oh, they are so quiet, so very quiet as we scream out our pain. Why haven’t they rallied around our cries? Why haven’t they cut through the text chains and legislation and lines of protestors blocking our way to the clinic? Can’t we just get a pap smear in peace? Can’t we please remove their sinful seeds we never asked to bear? Can’t we just create life on our own with a turkey baster and semen sample, the mindless bit of sperm that exists just as silently as the man lying down at night beside us, floating peacefully, always so peacefully off to sleep. That man is not planning his escape to Central America or the rocky shores of our northern neighbor. That man knows his place here is protected and thinks his umbrella will protect us all. His body has never been under attack. His body has not been watched and grabbed, prodded and legislated and examined, pulled apart bit by bit, every inch of skin, every ounce of fat and flesh and fury. “Why are you so angry?” he wants to know. “What is there to be so angry about here under this umbrella?”

That umbrella blocks out everything, the rain and the sun. It keeps us always scrambling to find another umbrella, but sometimes that umbrella folds in around us, clamps down like a straitjacket. How are we to know which ones will shield us and which ones will suffocate when our protectors are the perpetrators? The man who runs the military. The man who runs the government. The men who run the courts. The men who sit at the top of the churches and the schools and our county offices and police departments. Our protectors are our predators. How is that not clear after all these years? The ones who claim to keep us safe look the same as the ones who hunt us. How are we to know who’s who?

But sometimes we know. Sometimes their intentions are obvious. Sometimes they don’t try to hide their violence at all. We knew ten years ago when we watched a predator descend down a golden escalator. We knew when he appointed a sniveling pig to the highest court in America, and we knew when a greasy grifter took control of the largest military in the world. Sometimes we can smell it on them and sometimes they just tell us who they are. But only some of us were listening. Only some of us knew that what was already out of control was about to get worse.

Some of us were surprised when we heard the news of seven men who found pleasure in using an incapacitated woman as a lifeless doll. Some of us were shocked when we learned fifty other men sat around in that same big old house and let it happen. This happens every single day to women across this country and around the world. It is no surprise that a house full of men found excitement in an unconscious woman. It is no surprise that they poured their entitlement and shame and violence all over her. It is no surprise that attorneys and campus police and administration preferred to preserve the future of those shameful, vile men while that woman was forgotten.

A lot of us weren’t surprised at all. A lot of us told you this would happen, that this has happened over and over again, to our classmates, to our friends, to us. We warned you and cried out into the telephone and across the dinner table when we learned that you voted for this. The first time. The second time. The third. Some of us weren’t surprised at all by what has followed. It is what has followed us around our entire lives, across backstreets and busy hallways, into bathrooms in crowded houses where no one can hear, and inside bedrooms where everyone can hear so they get a turn, too. Whether we are silent or we scream, nothing changes. I know those women have stories, those women who create art and connection despite what has been taken, those women who make tea towels instead of terror. They have told their stories before, just as I have told mine, and we are all growing tired of talking.

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Rage