Shirtless & Fancy-free
“Liberation, to me, would be fully appreciating the present moment—and it resulting in a greater sense of contentment, ease, and freedom.” - @RachelKrantz
“Nude on the Sofa” by Suzanne Valadon (1920)
I’m running in North Hollywood Park, like I do, and the lone man kicking a soccer ball is here, too. Our schedules often sync up. He’s wearing his uniform: Adidas track pants, eye-burning neon orange sneakers – kick, sprint… kick, sprint… - and as usual, he’s shirtless. I shall never be as free as that shirtless old man kicking the ball alone, I think. With his pointy nipples bouncing in the breeze. I allow myself to hate him for a moment, it quickens my pace. I feel I am due this. It costs him nothing.
He has a shaved head and a hairy back and of course, the aforementioned nipples, erect with privilege. The privilege of not having to care what anyone thinks, not worrying whether he’ll be arrested or otherwise attacked. “If you want to take your shirt off in public, go ahead! Just be strong enough to face the consequences!” shriek the shrill voices in my head, the ones that migrated there from the internet. That’s something the shirtless man doesn’t have to consider, whether he’s strong enough to defend himself for doing as he pleases. Or whether someone might say, “you’re hideous. Put a shirt on.” And if they did, whether he’s strong enough not to give a shit. There is no consequence for him.
I look at his slack, crepe-y arms, skin draped over bones, ruched at the elbows, and think, I’m stronger than you, I could beat you up. I don’t want to, but I could. I don’t even mind wearing a shirt. Today it’s a Metallica muscle tee that I quite like. I only know three Metallica songs and like them okay, especially the one about crib death.
The sun is bright at the park, it’s nearly noon. I’ve been doing this for the past two years, 3-4X/week, calisthenics I hate broken up by laps of running I used to hate but now feel fun compared to the calisthenics. Does anyone call them “calisthenics” anymore? Sounds like something the gym teacher in a Judy Blume novel would say. Or Paul Zindel. Who is our young people’s Paul Zindel? I hope it’s a woman.
Am I a mess, or am I okay? I observe my emotions as though they are zoo creatures. There they are, over there: within enclosures groomed to emulate natural habitat. They are fenced in yet felt, and I can move along to the next exhibit whenever I want. They pass.
What’s more important, ambition or wit? I wish it were wit. Who are my dream dinner party guests? Andre Leon Talley, for sure. I used to think Fran Lebowitz but she is less a conversationalist and more a monologist. Plus I don’t cotton to people who always know they’re right. They stanch the social flow. The remaining guests are my dead friends.
During Covid, I have revisited old griefs. Dead friends pop up and I don’t whack-a-mole them. Write for your dead friends. I can’t remember who said that. David Rakoff? Joy Williams? Natalia Ginzburg? I don’t know for sure and I shan’t google it because that would make me of those people who need to be correct all the time. Join me, won’t you, in this haze of uncertainty.
I miss Swann’s Oyster Depot in San Francisco. Chowder and a beer at 8 a.m. is acceptable there. I hate breakfast food. I want mashed potatoes and gravy at dawn, I want a gravy spigot in my kitchen and a Brita full of chilled pickle juice. Nachos and fried chicken when I rise. The counterman at Swann’s – there are only 8 or 10 stools – he will inspect your plate as he whisks it away, and you’d have better cleaned your cracked crab to his liking. If not, he returns the plate and points out every last knuckle of meat you missed. “Such a waste,” he says, shaking his head. He wants you to get the most bang for your buck. He demands you excavate every corner of this crustacean, quit your nonsense, how dare you give up. You could suck every last flake of flesh from that shell – and I’m a Louisiana girl, I gnaw and suck with abandon – still, he’d never be satisfied. His disapproval is a comfort.
I embarked on this pandemic thinking, OK! Time alone to focus and CREATE. I wrote eight short stories in 6 months, then some posts here, then drifted into the haze. I can’t seem to find my way back. I forgot to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. I ate them all.
I ghosted a man who texted me a misogynist New Yorker cartoon. It’s no longer my job to educate, inform, enlighten, enrage, or reassure a man. Give them a moment of your time and they can say one thing that sticks in your brain for years. Sometimes I forget it’s there, until it pops up front and center. Like that guy who had a roofing nail in his skull for years and didn’t know it until he had to get a cranial x-ray for something else. Or the woman who shoved a Tiddlywink up her nose as a child. She had headaches for years before anyone thought to give her a CAT scan. “Dang, Judy – there’s a gamepiece lodged up in there. It’s calcified and it’s practically part of your skeleton.” Now’s a good time to dislodge the roofing nails and tiddlywinks, throw them on a pile and walk away. But Judy did it to herself, you say. She shoved it up there herself. That was before she knew any better.
The short stories I wrote during Early Covid are about dreadful people. Now I wonder whether I should be nicer on the page. I don’t want to. I want to drag these dreadful people out and pick them over like cracked crab.
Decades ago I was on a transcontinental flight. TWA, during their short-lived reboot, when first class seats were so cheap I could afford one. The man next to me was already glassy-eyed before take-off. He drank steadily the entire flight – it was free, and he wanted to get the most bang for his buck - arraying his miniature empties into a bowling pin formation. He kept trying to engage me in conversation while I read a book, the latest Jeanette Winterson. If he were more well-read, he’d have perceived this author as the firewall I intended. At first I murmured non-committal replies, then, emboldened by Jeanette, I ignored him. Back then, I used to read so fast. I finished the book and rose to get another from the overhead compartment.
“Look at you, you move like a cat,” he slurred.
I went to the galley and asked the flight attendant to stop serving him.
“I know his type,” she said, shaking her head no. “They get worse when you stop serving them.”
Shut up and take it, or you’ll make him mad.
Now where had I heard that before?
I think of that man every time I fly. I dread him. Ironically, I now also dress like Catwoman every time I fly: black leggings, black shirt, tall boots - for stomping, if needed.
I heard a story on NPR about the Metaverse and was very glad not to live in a smart home. My home is very dumb, full of colors and dust and tchotchkes and books and art, some good and some bad. Every Saturday for the first 8 months of “all this” I cleaned my home meticulously, from top to bottom, literally dusting and sweeping the dirt downward for collection at day’s end. I polished the furniture with Old English and relived each piece’s acquisition – the when, where, and why of the dressers, end tables, the sideboard, the dining set. All obtained in concert with my partner of 27 years, whom I divorced right before the pandemic. I thought of him in his new place full of shiny new things, unimbued with meaning, and sometimes I envied him. He wasn’t trapped indoors with hulking, memory-laden things. I still have the first rug we purchased for our first apartment. It’s even in my bedroom. I thought about moving it somewhere else, but I like it. Vacuum something enough, and it’s yours. Only you know its nap, that spot that whorls in the opposite direction like a cowlick. Intimate, like bathing a child. I cleaned and polished so much, I stripped away the veneer of our marriage. Now everything is mine. I am the keeper. Now it’s the way I like it.
“It’s a crime against humanity that there is no male menopause,” I text my group chat. Imagine men enduring their midlife crises with grace and dignity, polished to gleaming. Imagine their faces when all that comes out when they cum is a CHOOF! of dusty air. It would be fun. It would be funny. This is why we have group chats.
I notice the shirtless man in the park, but he doesn’t notice me. Women have to notice lone quiet men, shirtless or no. We also have to notice loud packs of men. “What a nice park, no one bothers me here,” I think. I know it’s because I’m no longer considered worth bothering, and I wonder if this bothers me, and realize that it doesn’t. It fills me with glee and wonder and a sense of freedom, a recklessness. Finally, I think. At last. I am the woman who doesn’t give a shit. And yet, I am still kind because I like being kind. (A secret for the lazy: it’s easier than being mean.)
What a relief.
Shirtless & Fancy-free
So much freedom came when I wasn't worth bothering--I don't miss that at all. I'm more beautiful now than I've ever been, I just wear an invisibility cloak. And I love it!