this woman’s work

Unless

Oct 16, 2005 Writing

I just (as in *just*) finished reading Unless by Carol Shields. (Warning: I didn’t read the review I linked to yet because I wanted to get some thoughts down first. I have no idea if there are spoilers or if they pan it or what. Read at your own risk, dear readers.)

It’s funny how books sometimes present themselves to you at precisely the right moment in time. This one leaned itself off the library sale bookshelves when I stopped there after seeing Noah off to his science class. Madison was in the stroller saying, “Poppies! Poppies!” because she wanted to go see the puppets in the storytime room. So I grabbed this one, I grabbed another one and I tossed them in the bottom of the stroller to take in with me so I could decide at my leisure in the puppet room whether or not to buy them.

If you haven’t read it, you probably should. Especially if you’re a woman. Especially if you’re a writer. It’s about a lot of things but the central is Reta (the narrator) coming to the realization in a concrete way (because it’s a thing that women always know) that there are two kinds of books: those that speak to the universal (i.e., those that are about men’s lives) and women’s books. OK, I need to get to the things I wanted to write down so let’s not argue that point. If you don’t agree with me, please feel free to click to your next read in bloglines. If you do agree with me, you might also want to check out Andi Buchanan’s intro for the upcoming Literary Mama anthology.

Anyway, ever since I wrote my charisma entry (about two Bad Men or at least Bad to Me Bad Men) I’ve had dreams about both of them. My dreams require absolutely no effort to interpret. There is always an outside plot, some necessary setting and then there is whichever particular men in all of his stinging, self-righteous glory and I am somehow invisible. Even though it is my dream. Sometimes in my dreams I yell at them and they look right through me. Sometimes the usurp the plodding pace of my dream for a segue about themselves.

(It’s really no surprise that I have dreams like that or that I dated boys like that because my father is the same way. I never had his full attention either and he has never been nice to women.)

I was muddling through all of this while I was digging around for clean socks to wear (there are none and now my feet are cold). Brett took the kids out to breakfast because I have an earache again and needed to sit under a blanket with a hot water bottle. I’m typing now, dizzily, waiting for the Ibuprofen to kick in. That’s why this is so disjointed. And I keep wondering if I should make coffee now or wait until I’m done. I think I’ll wait in case the family comes back too soon.

When I was a teenager and dating these men who told me over and over again that whatever I was doing or feeling was less important than whatever they were doing or feeling. I know that both those men thought I was talented (and well they should, I was certainly as talented as they were) because they told me so. But they also could be so dismissive.

“You just write about relationships,” Joyboy once sneered. “That’s not Art.”

See, writing about the human condition only counts if 1) that human condition is male; or 2) that human condition was written by a male (see Madame Bovary).

It sounds so ridiculous — how can half the human race be inconsequential? — but I wondered if they were right. I only read male writers (with the exception of two — Colette and Anais Nin — because they were sexually-charged and I thought sex was the best way to a man’s heart and thus his attention) and I took their casual sexism for granted.

Sometimes I would be reading a book (Philip Roth) from my father’s collection and I would think, “Is this how men see women? Is this how my father sees women?” Sexual playthings made of parts — eyes, legs, breasts, teeth — or harridans bent on ruining the heroes day.

“Does anybody else see this?” I would think. It made me tired, all those expectations I would have to meet. Thus the Colette and Anais Nin. If I could just get them in bed with me then I would be the girlfriend and for a little while anyway, they would have to pay attention to me.

What sustained me through this time — trying to figure out whether or not I mattered and if I did then how — was my fury. I was furious all of the time. those dreams could be memories for all the times I screamed into inattentive faces.

I’ve written this before, will likely write it again but there was a time when I used to wear a gender-neutral jacket that I got in the boy’s section along with a gender neutral hat. And people would say, “Look, you’re wearing boy’s clothes.” And I’d think, “But how could they be boy’s clothes if they are on this girl’s body? By definition they must be girl’s clothes.”

In the same way I decided that I mattered because I was here. I had a right to take up space because I was taking up space. What I had to say was worth listening to because I was saying it.

I credit my mom with this conviction. A feminist herself but more that she always took my work seriously, even when I was three. She held no truck with the boys I dated — hated them in fact — and told me I was too good for them.

“They want to keep you small,” she told me. “Because you are smarter and you are better and they fear you.”

(The truth is they’re both good, really. I’m good, too. I no longer feel like we’re competition — we’re operating in totally different worlds — and also I am all about learning to keep my eyes on my own plate. But you’ve got to understand that my mom’s absolute belief in me kept me from walking in front of cars. My god, I was unhappy. I think now, truly, that my anger was the only thing that kept me alive. Deep in depression, so numb that my vision blurred, at least I had a heartbeat of fury. Even when it seemed easier to let go I still wanted my rightful place in the sun. God bless my mother, let me tell you.)

For awhile I just dropped out. After CC dumped me for the second time, I quit. I walked away from a specific black-stained life and started hanging out with feminist women in sensible shoes. When we went out dancing, we paid no attention to the men in our vicinity. (As many of you know, this is a way to piss men off. Fortunately there is safety in numbers.) I decided that I wouldn’t view squabbling as foreplay and maybe take a look at dating a nice boy for a change.

Then when I first started dating Brett (the quintessential nice boy), I stopped writing. Completely. It was terrifying. I didn’t write for years. We moved to Portland, I finished school, I worked at shelter and I thought about how I likely was not meant to be a writer. Joyboy called me one Christmas to put down my life and build up his because he was still working, still creating. Of course he was, what cataclysmic realization did he have to face? When did he ever have to stare down an entire world telling him that he was nothing?

“Portland,” he sniffed. “Always struck me as a boring midwestern town that happened to be on the coast.”
“Good,” I said calmly. “Then I don’t have to worry about running into you here.”
“Then again,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Maybe I will move there. It can’t be hard to get ahead in a town like that.”

(Do you see what he did there? Typical. Put it down and if there’s no response, threaten to take it away. During that conversation I could hear his girlfriend of the moment weeping in the background, just as I used to cry when he called other women in my presence. I knew that he had built me up to her so that I was a huge, threatening presence and that he used his fabricated memories of me to control her. Bastard.)

Meanwhile there was Brett who was nurturing me to a place of safety and trust. Brett is quiet and understated. He values my work because he sees the value in it and never feels the need to qualify it. He respects my writing, is grateful when I cook dinner and admires my mothering. He doesn’t care if someone calls him Mr. Friedman (we have different last names) and never lets me dismiss my work as I can be prone to do. (It’s hard to break old habits.)

More, he has never said, “If you take this, you may not have that.” When I cry in frustration because I want it all — to be both the main caregiver to our kids and to write my heart’s desire — he is patient. He never tells me to give one up. He never rolls his eyes and tells me I’m impossible. He never intimates that I do a poor job of one because of my focus on the other. Instead he says, “What can I do? How can I help?” This is a man who has always wanted me to have every little bit of my life. Typing this, I feel absolutely giddy, like I got away with something huge. (Perhaps I have.)

This is garbled and I’ve forgotten half of what I wanted to say but the kids are home along with my wonderful husband who is likely going to wonder why I’m smiling at him so much today.

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