waiting at the window
My new neighbor is a friendly, pretty-boy-abercrombi-and-fitch man. He has confidence and kindness in a way that makes you trust him. He lives with his girlfriend from Peru. Her name is Olga though she looks nothing like an Olga - she looks more like a name that exudes exoticism in an American-appropriated sort of way. She speaks not a word of English and when I see her she shyly says hello and slinks back into the apartment.
My neighbor relays to me that his girlfriend stays at home during the day while he goes to work and school and I wonder about how it must be, waiting inside, trying to learn a language, feeling so captive in a foreign land. I'm sure he goes out with her for the thump-thump of clubbing weekend nights. I'm sure they run errands together.
I just imagine her waiting, designated to the interior of the domestic, while he sates his manly call of productivity and bread-winner in the public sphere. I feel transported back to the time of Alberti:
"And certainly, to my mind, any place reserved for women ought to be treated as though dedicated to religion and chastity; also I would have the young girls and maidens allocated comfortable apartments, to relieve their delicate minds from the tedium of confinement."
I baked pumpkin bread and left some for them at their doorway. He wrote a note thanking me and saying that as soon as the gas line is hooked up, Olga will cook something for me. I felt so strange reading that, as if she was an indentured servant.
I'm fairly sure their relationship isn't as eerily sub/dom as I'm envisioning it - just gives me the heebie geebies.
My neighbor relays to me that his girlfriend stays at home during the day while he goes to work and school and I wonder about how it must be, waiting inside, trying to learn a language, feeling so captive in a foreign land. I'm sure he goes out with her for the thump-thump of clubbing weekend nights. I'm sure they run errands together.
I just imagine her waiting, designated to the interior of the domestic, while he sates his manly call of productivity and bread-winner in the public sphere. I feel transported back to the time of Alberti:
"And certainly, to my mind, any place reserved for women ought to be treated as though dedicated to religion and chastity; also I would have the young girls and maidens allocated comfortable apartments, to relieve their delicate minds from the tedium of confinement."
I baked pumpkin bread and left some for them at their doorway. He wrote a note thanking me and saying that as soon as the gas line is hooked up, Olga will cook something for me. I felt so strange reading that, as if she was an indentured servant.
I'm fairly sure their relationship isn't as eerily sub/dom as I'm envisioning it - just gives me the heebie geebies.