Dearly Beloved

Because of reasons, I’ve been gathering my loved ones. Talking, walking, writing, communing. Right now it feels like a mistaken dystopia – someone took a wrong turn while time-traveling, and we’re all stuck with this.

And I realize to many, “this” is nothing out of the ordinary. To Black Americans, to Native Americans – and, frankly, to women who remember the 1970s when we could first get our own bank accounts. As a babygirl in the 1970s, I had a bank account where I deposited my birthday money and allowance and the $10 I found on the side of the road – and bought a 10-speed Ross Eurotour, which was freedom. I asked my dad to put racing handlebars on it, and he did. I rode it into the fucking ground as long as I was in my stupid little town.

The last time I rode it, I was home from college during my sophomore year. I was about to attend the Bennington Writing Workshop, but bookending that experience was a stint at the local hospital, working in the linen room. Where Tuesdays were the days the incinerator ran, and that’s how I came to know what burning human flesh smelled like.

I was riding home from work one day, and a muscle car – a low-rider – was crawling along beside me. A window rolled down, as I approached my house – and a man’s hand came out and smacked my ass.

I wheeled that bike up the driveway – my dad was just finishing a workout in the garage, where his home gym was. He asked me what was wrong, and I told him. “I guess that’s what I get for being a woman,” I said.

He was furious, but misdirected. He was furious at me for saying that. Not for being on the bike, not for having been smacked. As I say, it was misdirected. Because he was helpless to prevent shit like that.

Getting smacked on the ass is an affront to dignity. It’s a relatively gentle reminder that you’re to be put in your place – maybe back before the 1970s when you were powerless to manage your own money. Maybe back before the 1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement made so much progress.

They’re not reminding us now. It’s escalated well beyond light smacks on the ass. Just full-scale assault and killing.

There’s that quote, commonly attributed to Margaret Atwood (it’s more complicated than that, of course): “Men are afraid women will laugh at them; women are afraid men will kill them.”

That’s what happened in Minneapolis on January 7th. Renée Nicole Good had a smile on her face. “I’m not mad at you, dude.” She was being benevolent. She was trying to ease out of the situation. Her wife was joking, “Go get a sandwich, big boy.”

Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Ye gods, lesbians, even. Women who have no essential need for a man. Women who have managed just fine without them, and who prefer one another’s company over any man’s.

No wonder he killed her. He looked at these two women, who were regarding him lightheartedly, and saw there was no space for him. Respect had to be imposed. Power had to be imposed.

No wonder white “Karens” call the cops on Black people having a barbeque and enjoying themselves. They weren’t invited. Respect has to be imposed. Power has to be imposed.

A person who is not a white Christian male enjoying some freedom – whether on a bike, in a car turning away from a raid to go home to peace and quiet, or having a cookout – is like waving a red banner in front of an irate bull. It can’t be allowed. Freedom leads to joy, and joy leads to “we don’t need you anymore, we’ve got our own.”

And I get the helplessness when it’s smacked down. We rage at abuser and victim alike. The abuser for the abuse, the victim for…well, being “weak” and taking it.

I will tell you right now, no victim is willingly taking it. That shit builds up. And as victim gets with victim and begins to understand things, abusers are fucking lucky their houses don’t get burned down. But that’s the thing about victims – they don’t want revenge. They just want to be left alone, to be free. To ride their bikes and open their bank accounts and have barbeques, and to have the rights and responsibilities the U.S. Constitution guarantees us all.