Chasing
The water is cold and frothing like rapids and it is tumbling down below us and we are sitting sprawled out on the rocks above—flat, smooth rocks, like gritty sea glass. And we are flecking small pieces of earth into the water; twigs and browning leaves and small green pins of pine needles, and they float in the stream until reaching the edge and then disappear somewhere under the current as they fall.
He is lying back against a fallen maple, large and ashy and dried from years of water rushing by. Broken branches like limbs, hollows, shadows, weeds grown through and a tiny spider’s web in silver strands. And his eyes are closed and he is telling me how he doesn’t belong here. How he was not meant to be born with this skin and these bones and this beating, unsatisfied heart. No, he should have been a rock, shined smooth from water rushing by.
He is telling me, “If I am ever dying, don’t call anyone, don’t stop it, don’t fix it. Just let me feel it. And when I am gone, fill my body with earth and bury me in fertile land and let fruit grow.”
And I don’t reply, I only watch the water.
And we find a steep path down to the place where the water is falling to and I hold onto branches above me and steady my feet in the dark, damp earth as I follow his large and unafraid steps. I reach the rocks down there and I jump from one to another until we find a hollow little cave and can feel the mist of the waterfall. The rocks are all blanketed in slippery mossy green and there are small still puddles of water trapped between them and growing their own tiny worlds at our feet.
And he is telling me, “I just want it to carry me. I want it to take me up and push me down into the jagged earth and I want to disappear into that water.”
And maybe he is not who he was meant to be, and maybe he is not who he meant to me. Because he talks, he talks when I am near him or trailing behind but his eyes are up against the harsh white sky and in the breath of the rustling trees. I wonder how much he has forgotten of me and I wonder how much of this life that we have built he would trade to be underwater or buried in the earth right now.
We watch the water and years go by and we’re still here and it’s never stopped moving.
We climb back up the steep path. I am scrambling up the rocks and pressing my knees and hands into the ground, grasping at the rooted trees. I reach a place that is too high for me to climb and he holds my hands to pull me up. I remember when we were younger, his hands holding mine beneath tables and under the gaze of suspicious eyes, whispered secrets in the background. His hands holding mine and every promise that the love would not stop. His hands holding mine and my hair brushing over his pleading eyes.
And I am climbing up with the mist of the water on my skin and his hands are holding mine and I steady my hips with the earth as I prepare to let go.
Kay Ryan - Chemise
What would the self
disrobed look like,
the form undraped?
There is a flimsy cloth
we can’t take off—
some last chemise
we can’t escape—
a hope more intimate
than paint
to please.
Winter weather is not my soul
But the biding for spring
I tell my love to wreck it all
Cut out all the ropes and let me fall
I never ever, ever want to put a razor to my skin again. But I know that the next time I plan to sleep with someone new, or the next time I am in a swimsuit with non-feminist friends, or the next time I see a doctor, I will. I will spend the better part of an hour in the shower, slowly removing hair from my legs, underarms and between my thighs (leaving only a neatly trimmed and unobtrusive triangle of black there). And the water will get cold and there will be a mess of short, thick curls in the drain and streaks of fragrant, pink soap will run down my legs.
And I will be so, so smooth, and it will feel like electricity under sheets for a day and I will stare at the bare patches of flesh in the mirror, unnatural and out of place. And the stubble will grow in within the week and itch and I will wish I had left it alone.
The last time I shaved was this summer. I shaved because I was wearing dresses every day in the hot sun in San Antonio and was so far removed from my feminist community of comfort and escape. I was self-conscious and didn’t want to explain myself. Shaving, or not shaving, is a political act and I wish it weren’t. I wish it wasn’t met with such horror, such disgust. It amazes me that our culture cannot fathom, cannot accept, cannot comprehend a woman with body hair. We have been shaving for hardly a century and it is as if women were born hairless. It is as if it is natural.
I was shocked when I read what people were saying about Mo’Nique, who apparently went to whatever awards show happened recently with unshaved legs and a gorgeous dress. Unhygienic, unprofessional, unladylike? And that is not even getting into the racism. I have grown so accustomed to my little community that when I see girls with shaved underarms it is almost surprising. But I forget, of course, how isolated I am. How not every girl is lucky enough to reach her bare arms up above her head in a stretch without receiving looks of embarrassment.
I remember a few years ago when I was slightly more invested in media images than I am now, back when I shaved everything below my neck just to get a pap smear because I thought of my hair as obscene. I would see girls occasionally raise their arms up and would be stunned to see hair there and I would wonder how on earth they could do that. How was it possible? Hair isn’t supposed to exist in certain places— we learn that when we are young, when we are girls. We buy our first razors at the first sign of peach fuzz on our legs and we withstand razor burn and tiny cuts that don’t stop bleeding for hours— just to be normal. Just to be valid. Just to exist.
Last June when I was in Hawai’i with Tim I passed up the “swimdress” or whatever they are trying to get fat girls to wear these days and bought a scandalous little black string bikini. And I was terrified to wear it, but I peeled out of my shirt and skirt, oiled down my limbs with sunscreen and laid there all day— flesh and skin and coarse dark hair and stretch marks like roots creeping up my stomach. I think that it was the most unashamed, the most unapologetic I have ever been about my body and it felt amazing.
I bought a new camera, replacing the battered blue Nikon Coolpix 2500 that I have had since age fifteen, whose charge lasts about ten minutes these days. My 2.0 (yes, two) megapixel little camera captured eight years of my life in bright-lit, blurry frames, but I am excited to be moving on. Pictures keep memory in the absence of my words and I want to remember everything.
I am excited, also, to photograph the imminent spring that has been creeping (ever so slowly) into these winter months. The streets will begin smelling like flowers soon. There will be color in every step.
Another favorite photosubject of mine is, of course, myself. Digital photography and exposure adjustments can make anyone gorgeous, which is the primary appeal. There are so few moments in which I actually look at myself in positive ways, but every imperfection fades out in high contrast black and white.
And I wonder if this is a good thing. Is it empowering to photograph myself in ways that make me feel good about myself, or am I simply buying into societal standards? How is it empowering that the only photos that I choose to save are the ones that make me look just a little bit thinner, a little bit prettier? The closer one can match her face, her body, to the high fashion models in magazines, the better, and does this mean power, does this mean beauty, or does this mean oppression? I cannot deny my desire to be beautiful, to be looked at, to be acknowledged, but what does it mean when the opportunity to be beautiful comes in such rigid standards, and what would it mean if I ever actually attained it?
I wonder where it is that I should draw the line. As a woman, as a feminist, am I responsible for my own objectification? Am I a victim of this culture’s misogyny? Do I have a responsibility to reject what I know is wrong and superficial, or do I have a right to self-preservation? If I have been given a body— a sexualized body— by my oppressors, as my only tool for success and empowerment, is it wrong to use it?
I want to love myself, entirely, truly, honestly— who doesn’t? But how can we even begin to pretend that that is possible in this culture? Really, I don’t even want to “love myself,” or “accept myself” at all— I don’t even want that to be an issue. The whole “love your body” movement only exists because self-hatred and misogyny are so deeply ingrained in our culture. I don’t even want it to be a thought. I just want to exist and feel and listen to my body without ever once feeling that pull of right or wrong, let alone have that insecurity drive my entire being.
Gail Dines said at the conference last week that women and girls in this culture grow up with two options— to be fuckable or to be invisible. And who wants to be invisible? I wish that I could ignore my desires to fit in and be pretty, but even subversive, alternative and feminist communities have their own beauty standards, their own fashion, their own list of acceptable and unacceptable traits.
Several months ago I began to realize that I was continuously and consistently the only person in my circles of friends who wasn’t fashionable. More specifically, time after time after time, I would look around and realize that I was the only, only person in the room who was not wearing skinny-jeans or leggings. And I got so self-conscious, painting myself in my mind as this socially awkward weirdo, until finally I went out and bought a pair.
And dressing up cute gives me confidence that I so severely lack, but at what cost and compromise? And if every other woman I know is doing it, what does that say about the feminist movement? I guess it says the obvious— that it is hard to separate ourselves from what our culture has done to us, and none of us want to be invisible.
