Ajax Kallistrate

I wrote She Might Know as a personal challenge after hearing myself say “I can’t imagine a man finding me attractive.” It was fun and I can’t say can’t anymore. But the story is a fraud. Like many feminists, I believed I could have it both ways. I could attract a male without risk. I could move through the world as an ugly, sexless, mannish woman, incognito, invisible to men, and yet still be seen, as if via a magical inner light, by one man only, by the right man, by the only man who could survive the circular reasoning — he sees because he’s the right man, he’s the right man because he sees.

I’m seen when I wear a dress. I walked half a block to the park, sat at a picnic table. I wasn’t looking up. I rarely look up. I started reading a friend’s blog post. I wasn’t at the table for more than a minute when a man on a bicycle pulled up. He said something that may have had the word “mercy” in it. He sat down. He played an R&B song on his phone. It was comical. I got up and walked away.

Why would I not want male attention?

Ambivalence is built into the female psyche. We’re ambivalent about sex, reproduction, motherhood. Contrary to what I learned as a young feminist, women and men are not fundamentally the same. We are in fact vastly different. We’re different because our investment in offspring is dramatically unequal, and thus our reproductive strategies are dramatically different.

Male strategies are simple: find ’em, fuck ’em, and forget ’em. Straightforward, uncomplicated, easy to understand. They spread their seed like junk mail: even if only one percent provides a return, it’s a jackpot with zero effort.

Female strategies are complex. Devious, conniving, manipulative. Those who survived the rigors of the ancient world were those who made calculated decisions about how much to invest in which offspring, how best to monopolize the resources of males, and how and when to provide access to their fertility.

When it comes to reproduction, males value quantity and paternity. Females value quality and security.

Thirty years ago I was studying for finals in a college library. A young man walked up and told me I’d be prettier if I smiled. I was confused at first, processing the interruption. Ironically, I may have smiled, that primate signal of appeasement and submission. The young man walked away. I went back to my books. But my concentration had been broken. I was annoyed. What right did a stranger have to interrupt me? Because I was female I should have no expectation of being left in peace, to negotiate courtship on my own terms? This young man’s need to make his presence known — to “shoot his shot” as my best friend would put it three decades later — took precedence over my pursuit of academic excellence and a degree, what I saw then as my future security?

Or is that the issue? Males provide resources to females in exchange for reproductive opportunity. Females play along with the game, securing resources both on their own and through manipulation of males. We are primates after all, always looking to fuck or eat.

Feminism told me I could opt-out of that system, an idea that appealed to my ambivalent female brain. But feminism was wrong. It was like trying to opt out of a wasp hovering around my face. I never could escape it. The system just kept on moving around me. I was playing the game whether I recognized it or not, whether I wanted to play or not, whether I knew how to play or not.

And I didn’t.

I was raised by a timid woman who never learned how to play the game, though she excelled at being devious, conniving, and manipulative. Feminism was the only alternative. I embraced it. I thought living life on my own terms meant picking and choosing the rules that suited me and ignoring the rest. But that wasn’t living. That was suspended animation.

“Excuse me, sir.”

I hear it every day, working retail in a men’s shirt with a buzz-cut and a baseball cap. I move through the world largely invisible as a woman. The disguise allows me to focus on what I need to do to survive instead of being a target, instead of being prey. It fools the unconscious brains of the animals around me. They misinterpret what they see, the signals my body gives away about my fertility — my sex, my age, my physical condition. Maybe that’s why I’ve always wanted gray hair. Maybe that’s why I’ve never spoken much. Body shape, limbs, motion, eye contact, nuances of facial expression, breath, scent, a voice that drops when I’m confident and rises when I feel vulnerable. I can’t stop it. I can’t control it.

It scares the hell out of me.

We’re social primates. We’ll negotiate, compromise, sacrifice, manipulate, say or do almost anything to avoid being alone, outside the group, unsheltered by familial bonds, especially children, especially females. It’s never been safe. We don’t have ancestors whose skulls were pierced by the teeth of megafauna. When we grow up alone, insecure, without guidance, some of us withdraw, hide, sell out the present day for a possible future. It’s human nature. It’s the nature of woman.

She Might Know was a daydream. I held onto it like I held onto so many other fantasies, something to get me through the day until the day came when nothing could get me through. I negotiated those compromises moment by moment.

I still do.

But I don’t lie to myself anymore. I don’t pretend we’re anything other than upright walking animals. Even our cynical post-utopian cyber-culture is rooted in natural selection, in whatever gave our flea-bitten ancestors a reproductive advantage over their flea-bitten neighbors. I can’t say can’t anymore. But, as with so many other great mythologies of feminism, I’ve moved on.

I’ve let it go.

Further reading: Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (1999)

grotesque

July 13, 2021

withering unwooded widowed man hidden
hood disrupted by contact poison peeled
back banana like Joanna Russ in reverse

a male woman

in heels and swayed hips and strong
cheekbones turned coyly aside stubble
waxed laser depilation in the mirror

eyes shadowed by ancestral rituals of
suffering like bulls pierced through
muscle before heart to bleed out

onto trampled sand to the roar of a
crowd slinging vicarious phalluses
eclipsed by phantom womb pain

a grotesque parody of
the first origin

a circus fixed by
a knife dangling

vocal cords disposing of
wombs as medical waste

i grew in there!

is it toxic? 

words spilling acid creased electric
knees bending into nylons until
Susan Faludi backs the lash

and hairy knuckles pepper
plums fresh across spans
of winter white

is that what half the population wants?

disembodied castrated undermined manhood
pivots violated disempowered cow corralled
womanhood 

repulsive human race!

all of us animals licking
spoiled wounds for the taste

July 13, 2021

rusty nails

July 9, 2021

rusty nails in the dirt i pluck them
out one by one to push rough heels
into soft soil and pat them dry
 
there there

upright lipstick peeps through snow
crust flat against the wind until
frost bursts open a path for

roots among the rocks and tall stems
escape unbending leathery tongues
in arcs to count brown under

the weight of the sun as earth
turns over to yield up whole palm
heavy knobs one by one in yellow

dust

in winding braid
in warm kitchen
in steel pot
in ceramic bowl
in curled fingers

i split rusty nails to push smooth
hooves into soft soil

July 9, 2021

enough

July 7, 2021

i may only be a nine out of a hundred
to the world, but i'm a nine out of
nine to me.

it may never be enough, but it's
everything i have.

i won't keep my head down anymore.
i won't do half the work of the bullies.
i get knocked down, laid low, flattened,
but

i can still look them in the eyes.
i can be afraid, but only of what's
in front of me and not of the end-
less reel in my head.

it's you, you know, who's changed me.
my buddy boy.

you're worth matching, you who walks
that clear stream where i can see
all the way to the bottom.

when i meet you where you are, i am
my best self.

that's where i want to be.
that's who i want to be.

it's never enough
for the world. but

it's enough
for me.

July 7, 2021

doesn’t

July 3, 2021

we're giving you ten percent.
that's a lot.
you should be grateful.
you need fifty to survive but,
well,
where's your family?
doesn't your mother love you?
who claims you?
you aren't our responsibility.
we're your friends,
but ten percent is all we're going to give.
the rest is up to you.
if you fall through,
well,
we'll say,
what a shame.
but we have responsibilities.
we have families.
we have mothers who love us.
you aren't our responsibility.
you aren't our family.
who do you belong to?
we can't give you more.
we can't do more.
we'll look away.
we'll say,
what a shame.
where did you go?
we care,
but we won't check in on you,
we won't call,
we won't text.
you're too much for us.
don't you have people?
don't you have a family that claims you?
doesn't your mother love you?

July 2, 2021

live wire

July 3, 2021

i
thought it was a mechanical problem. i
thought it was my dialog. i was ob-
sessed with beats for a while. it
never felt right. it never had
the right rhythm. maybe i
was looking for poetry
where there was no
poetry, poetry
where there
was only
prose.

bad prose.

because a life without stories
makes for stories without life.

i
wrote them to keep me company, one
dimensional backfill for a four
dimensional emptiness. rain
on dry soil makes only
mud. handprints
bake into ridges.
i can't read.
fossiliz-
ed youth
under-
go-
ing
geo-
logical
surveillance.
layers melting
one into another.

i remember this.
the sad thing is,

i
couldn't have done any better. i
could trace a line from New
York to Pennsylvania but
it wouldn't mean any-
thing. mud pies from
Pennsylvania to
North Carolina
to New Jersey.

two women
screech-
ing out-
side

an
apartment
door.

cops shining
flashlights into
a basement window. and
i traded his sentiment for
my excuse, but you can't opt out.

because

it all comes around in the end. he sang

in the shower. he said love isn't
enough, and you know, he was right.

i
had a sister once. i don't think i ever
had a brother. there was one more, but
she told me i was a burden to live
with. i had reached
the end.

i
thought about doing it in the woods, but
i couldn't give away my cat. i still
have the bookmarks on my old
phone, accidentally filed
under 'things
to do.'

i
could draw a line from New York to Oregon,
but there's no line back. i was pulled
like a thread through a needle, like
water curling down a drain. i re-
cognize none of it now.

pictures of emptiness.

there's a terrain of being unwanted. it
carves out the back of your skull. my
skull. there's meat clinging to the
bone, thin shell of bone. you walk,
i walked with that rounded spine,
carrying with me vertebra dis-
articulated. recombined into
the low belly snake sliding
under doors, leaving the
family undisturbed.
milk. white.
tooth.

less.

silent.

'you're a burden to live with' she said. but
that was someone else.

i
held onto the tightrope with both hands. i
thought my phone was broken. my first
week. she didn't call. some thing broke
in me. broke open. broke loose. live
wire.  i held onto it with both
hands. it didn't matter any-
more. it didn't matter
that i was unstable.
i got on the bus.
i went to work.
i paid my bills.

no one cared. no one needed to care.

i
fell free. snake skin. emptied out pickup
truck. industrious camouflage. people
make assumptions because they don't
care, because they don't have to
care. and i slid on by. i could
sit on the curb and cry be-
cause it didn't matter.

the illusion was good enough.

it was the confirmation i couldn't face
all those years ago, the confirmation
that i didn't matter to anyone. i
faced it. i don't know how i
kept going but i did. and
somewhere beyond
that, in a landscape
with color and
light, i felt
eyes on
me that
didn't
let
me

go, that didn't let me fade into the
monochrome.

i
was okay because they were okay. they,
all but one, had a background they
were woven into but they still
saw me. my loose threads
didn't matter

to them.
i belonged.

and that
one,

well.

we followed each other's threads, i think.
so even when other friendships unravel-
ed, faded, cut short, we kept each
other. the tranquil reflection
became the deep and
tranquil pool.
that's why

none of the rest of it matters.

i swapped bad prose for bad poetry.
but so what? i'm whole. i laid
down all that weight. i rest

here. i thought it was a
mechanical problem. i
thought it was my
dialog.

i was wrong.

it was the difference between having
no strength and having no one
believe in your strength.

my strength.

but i'm starting to believe. i can
look them in the eyes

now.

July 2, 2021

blind fish

June 24, 2021

blind fish
rooting
for
a
billion
dollar food chain
telescoped into high-
waters and tennis shoes

a blind fish
rooting

snuffle snuff
snuff

dripping
drop

drop

spider cold
meat hands hunched
over electric dimes

a blind fish
gaping

serrated
lips mooing
mouse nosing
soft soil compost-
ing bubble breath
trailing

off
rising
up

a blind fish
rooting

for a million
mouths

hooking a

blind fish
rooting

raw

June 24, 2021

be free

June 18, 2021

love them because of who they are,   
   not despite who they are;

love them for reminding you that
   you're vulnerable too;

hold them close, make space;

let go;

open your arms;

trust them;
   treasure them;

as much as you can, and when you can't,
   forgive yourself; try again;
   because

it's not about perfection;

it's never been about perfection;

it's about commitment; it's about
   compassion;

it's about love.

so

Love,
   and be free.