Freewrite (I Apologize In Advance)
I found myself stranded in a coffee shop today. Early on, I sweltered, the simple saturation of the air enough to fog my glasses every time I left a building. It was in the coffee shop that the sky finally burst, unable to hold its moisture any longer, expelling its contents in the sort of spontaneous summer dump that never lasts very long. I resolved to stay until it had outpoured itself. Time past, forty minutes, then an hour, and I fondled the thought that it might never stop, that all of meteorology might be wrong and this celestial catharsis might continue hemorrhaging its gouts of water indefinitely, until nothing land-bound was more than a bloated corpse floating around the surface of a spherical ocean.
I moved to a seat by the window and watched the grey scene play out like a film. Something about the weight and monotony of it caused vague images to insinuate themselves, like watermarks, to my brain. I felt my solitude, focusing on it as one might contemplate the temperature of a bath, trying to discern whether it has yet become uncomfortably cold, or whether one can linger in its faint heat longer. I felt for change in it, but it was still.
I heard the sounds of coffee being made, but smelled nothing in my olfactory fatigue. I heard the barista taking orders. I hated him, so dumb and ugly. Not really ugly, since by conventional standards he was quite handsome, but hideous to me. He had large eyes and lips on a dark, angular face, set atop an equally angular body. Why did I find him so revolting? Something about his masculinity and the brutality of his idiocy made my skin sear. I dreaded communicating with him. He swung his broken English around like a club through his thick Eastern European accent. I said as little as possible, as if by refusing to speak, I might barricade myself from his loathsome simplicity.
I have a basic distaste for men, I think. One that is not often overcome. And yet, a few do filter past it, sometimes to my dismay, for there is something about a man that makes him both more satisfying and more terrifying than a woman. Women are, in general, benign and useless. Laying a woman is an empty pleasure, for while I enjoy the physical act a great deal, little pierces me beyond that. Rarely do I meet a woman I respect, and almost never do I meet a woman to whom I can relate.
Perhaps it is the relative familiarity of some men that intensifies my fascination and distaste. It is that I understand or see parts of myself in men more often than in women. Their (and I’m fully aware of my generalizations here) relative aloofness, detachment, and independence make more sense to me than the empathetic kindness of most women. My interest in men is much akin to my inability to break gaze with a mirror. I stare into it with all my focus, hoping that I might better understand (s)he who is reflected back. It’s my narcissism, self-centeredness, and introversion that attunes me to the male psyche, if that could make any sense. I delve into that reflection, devouring any insight into its strengths and, even more intensely, into its flaws.
Women are, to me, another race. I have little understanding of a great deal of them, and sense a wide rift between myself and most. Perhaps this is why laying a woman is so easy and thoughtless for me. It’s soft and safe and distant.
A man, though, is danger. He is a threat. For him I play the woman, the worthless one. He threatens to care as little for me as I would, were I he. He threatens to understand as little about me as I do, and worse, to entirely lack curiosity for this strange wretch.
Is that why I dislike men? Because I must, by contrast, be a woman? A thing so unworthy of respect? Ugly, ugly men and their brutality. I do not want them, for they would make me into nothing, sea-glass found upon the shore and deposited in a jar with the others like and not like me. I know this well, for I have such a jar. You pluck her from her spot, half-buried and abandoned in the sand. She does not resist, happy to be tucked away in your pocket, taken home, stored, and forgotten. She will not leave unless you throw her back out, a momentary plop in the tide, then gone as before you’d seen her novel glint in the endless, formless land.
The storm clouds have brought a premature evening, cool and relieving. The rain has momentarily stopped, so I made my way home before the torrents returned.