Albino Alligators, Testosterone and Black Cats
And so it goes. Another day passes in which I wake to the alarm, stumble to the kitchen to make tea, blow the circuit breaker, fight my way through the undergrowth to reset it, discover termites invading my house, jump in the shower, pet the cats, throw some clothes on, and rush to work. Not necessarily in that order, but almost.
I get through the day and for some reason feel compelled to rush home, put on my running clothes, and spend my entire run listening to the presidential debate. I am heading down my dusk gray street when the abortion question is raised.
Donald Trump spews absurdities. Though I can’t see his face, I imagine it bloated, bulging, and red as he speaks in outrageous horror of babies being ripped from the womb at nine months. He repeats it over and over, emphasizing how they are torn from the womb and disposed of one or two days before they are due to be born. Nine months he says. Torn from the womb he spits.
The absurdity of his stupidity confounds me. Doesn’t everyone on the planet know that a nine month old baby has reached term and will be delivered alive either via C-section or induced labor, and both mother and child will live? That in the 21st century, even a 4.5 month old fetus has a likely chance for survival? In other words, what kind of shit is Trump talking about? He wouldn’t know because he knows nothing about female bodies or the reproductive system except for when it benefits his Viagra fueled dick. Excuse me for the barf quotient.
For some reason, while he is spewing this inflated untruth nonsense, I keep seeing women giving birth to albino alligators. The women’s heads crack open like giant eggs, and big white alligators slime out of the cracks. Perhaps this is because during the one moment when I do witness the two candidates at the debate, I am stunned and nearly blinded by Hillary Clinton’s white suit. Not that both candidates aren’t the embodiment of whiteness. But Hillary in that white suit is like a reptilian cyborg.
I run over seven miles while I listen to the debate, and during my entire run, I do not see one single presidential sign in a yard or on a street corner. It’s like everyone is for no one. We’ve been backed against a wall and have forfeited our choices or at least our sense in solidarity or freedom to speak of choice.
As a woman, I loathe everything Donald Trump stands for on such a visceral level that I can’t even describe it for fear of imploding or causing the entire world to explode. That man represents every entitled rich asshole who used and disposed of my body and so many young girls’ bodies. Even though I do not like Hillary, and I am horribly dismayed that our first woman president is going to be her, I nevertheless find myself shaking with fury and am appalled to hear the undercurrent of misogyny in Trump’s voice as he addresses her. It’s the tiny things, the small utterances of dismisal, the dehumanizing effect. I notice it because I have been subjected to it my whole life.
Sure, they are both liars, but he is a cruel, hateful man. And his presence in everyday media has thrown a dark cast over my life that I try to fight off. Because he is the embodiment of so much ugliness that I personally have survived and lived with and has infiltrated my very being. His ugly bulging face is like an abortion. He should abort himself.
I started a class about writing from memory last night. We started by reading Claudia Rankine’s CITIZEN. The entire class of eleven people was white except for one Mexican woman and the teacher who is of latin origin. I am white, but somehow I forfeited much of my whiteness through my life on the streets. I had read Rankine’s book five times before it was assigned because I relate to it so much. I understand that she wrote it as an indictment of racism and to put the reader in the uncomfortable position of being complicit in the racist system which infiltrates daily life, but I never once felt complicit when reading the book. I identified with Rankine and still do. So when everyone in the class said the book made them feel uncomfortable and guilty, I chimed in and said, “Not me. I identified with her. I get it. The book is about racism, but it also transcends race and speaks to anyone who has been unfairly persecuted and violated out of hatred and dehumanization.” That would be me.
After the debate, I go to the gym with kiddo. I’m still haunted by images of bulging white alligators being aborted at nine months. The woman at the front desk says people are in a rage over the debate. She is very young and has seen my daughter at the university. She says that she doesn’t know what to do, that she feels she has no choice. I tell her I will vote this year, but I won’t be wearing my “I Voted Sticker” with pride. Or at all.
We talk about the lack of political signs in Tucson. During the last election, the town was carpeted with both Obama and McCain signs. This election there’s nothing. And because there are no streetlights here, at night there is just the blanket of darkness.
I go downstairs to the weight room to do my weights and abs. Some testosterone addled steroid muscle head is dropping weights with a shattering clang that splinters through my body. I lose it. “Do you have to drop the weights?” I yell at him. I usually don’t do that because I don’t want to cause a scene, and because steroids and testosterone are a bad mix. But tonight I have no patience. He mumbles something about not being able to hear. I tell him, “Well all of us can hear,” sweeping my arm around, “And we don’t like it.” A number of people nod at me in solidarity. I continue lifting my weights expecting my head to be smashed in at any moment. It doesn’t happen.
My daughter needs to google real images of human intestines for an art project she is doing in college, but she’s afraid she’ll come across photographs that are too gruesome and horrific, so I volunteer to google for her. I spend my last few minutes at the gym on the exercycle googling intestines.
I go home and need to wash the bile from my brain. Lately, many times, I think I just want to disengage entirely. I think everyone is feeling that way. I decide to spend some time with Marlowe because that cat never doesn’t purr and always looks ridiculous and always brings me down to the basics of primal happiness. I could just pet my cats for the rest of my life. Better than watching albino alligators get aborted by drones over Syria and Russia.