I think, and sometimes I don’t want to. A man stares blankly from across the street, longer than is polite, and I stare back into that oblivion. I let a path form between the two of us, like an artery, which could—if I entertain it or not—extricate me.
What if I like to be looked at? No, it’s more than looking. The eyes in the distance are a weapon, and some days I flirt with the scythe. Could he tear me apart and compartmentalize me for pleasure? Will I mingle with the dirt and degrade? My dearest executioner heralds my sublimation, or perhaps my obliteration, today. Some days, I welcome either.
Men have subdued us, dominated us, and the justification is no secret to me. We all know the reason. Yes, it is fear. As a woman, I know this justification more intimately, and I am also fearful. I am fearful of myself. My capacity, my complexity frightens me. I have inner recesses that burrow infinitely. I have an incorporeal mass that grows larger each day within a vessel that cannot sustain it. Thoughts come and grow infected, and what better way to lobotomize me than to objectify me?
There are days I want the men to look, to capture me with their lens, and in a flash, all deeper cognition is vaporized. I parade around in my heels, with my blonde hair, with this body, which can only mean one thing to a stranger. Oh, it’s anything other than infinity. My mind stays busy with the obliqueness. Sometimes, I want to be distracted, to be reduced, to be at peace, to rest.
How do I rest when there is a palace within my mind, so cavernous, and I haven’t toured all the rooms yet? It is my home, and yet I am a stranger within its vastness. I keep walking, keep exploring the empty rooms because I feel that maybe one of them contains something I did not permit entry to. I am searching. I am searching endlessly.
The man who watches me does not enter this palace. And why should he? Could such a rich interior be known, accessed, or contemplated? Why subject yourself to the secret—the one women are destined to house? I beg you not to enter for fear of another loss to the labyrinth. And he doesn’t. A man knows his place is outside the threshold of the unknown. He does not enter because he knows—not because I tell him so.
I sit here, insanely drawing further into myself, but I still have my body. Yes, this sexual membrane. My body. This delight, this house of pleasure signals my salvation. What if I want to be an object? To be used like one? Picked up and put down again and again? What if I want someone to think for me, to relieve me of the immensity of my burgeoning thoughts?
On days such as this, I ask you to collect this body and save me from myself.
When I am alone, I think about being looked at. The physical presence of all men on Earth is so strong it transmutes into an idea, veiled over my mind. Yes, it is control. And if not, what would I do with myself?
The man is now many men. The desire of man proliferates into an audience. To many women, to be seen is the one and only fixation. Seduction is the great theater, an ever-vitalizing performance. A woman exists infinitely in every direction, the way a queen moves in chess. And such movement has no meaning without the board.
I need a cage, a container for the thing contained. And oh, you should see me on the stage. I walk with purpose.
Can a man complete me? To be wanted and even wedded, as the ultimate pacifier for chaos? What more would I need to worry about? Can my unknown be held at bay indefinitely with compromise—that promise which kills part of you to suture separate things?
Will any attempt, now that I know, ever keep this secret at bay?
If you leave me alone in the dark for a while, I can feel it consume me—the tangle and hole of my thoughts. I need the human touch. I need the flesh of a man to be all matter. The hand of humanity rushing me to the surface.
Who is to say this is the end of womankind? Who is to say you fade away into indifference, and another woman is lost to men? Some days, I wonder if it could be my absolution.
I feel the celestial weight of my mind hovering grossly within my skull. The man—any man I choose—could crack this calcium firmament and sublimate me. Release me from my burden.
Within my female brain is something like a tumor that grew within the nothingness.
When the man sitting across the room from me looks at me—at my legs, at my neck—I feel the flourishing thoughts form a single, concise desire. An impulse. And the greater world recedes. The palace dissolves.
Our mutual desire promises the oblivion of self-annihilation.
Silenus laughs at King Midas. Laughs monstrously.
Let me be pretty and ignorant and simple.
Make this turn within me—this body as sacrifice—and dissolve me.
Another star blackened in the sky, if it even is a sky.
Words were created by men to cope.
And as a woman, I find no relief in them.
And I’ve said what I could with them.