TW: Mentions of sexual assault
The way he’s staring at me is unnerving.
Me, in a bookshop. Upstairs, view down onto the street. Him, on a bus. Top floor. Front corner. Best seat, windows all round. We lock eyes. The way you do with strangers sometimes. I, like a civilised person, avert my gaze. His remains fixed. I flash glances at him, one, two, three times, nerves twisting deeper each time at the intensity of his glower. Have half a mind to pull a face. Like, “What are you staring at?” Don’t trust him not to murder me, though.
I’m trying to work on my anger.
That’s what has me here. In the upper-floor cafe of a bookshop. Didn’t want to sit at the window, but the better tables were taken up by people talking. I contemplate shooing them away. Other places they can go to chat. Just shoot filthy glares at them instead. Jaw twitching. They notice. Share looks. Doesn’t stop them from dialoguing at the top of their lungs. Podcasters too poor to purchase recording equipment, instead subject a world of strangers to their tedious nattering.
My mother recommended a book. “Conquer Your Rage, Fix Your Mind.” I don’t think my mind is broken. Jaded, sure. But not broken. She does. She thinks I am too angry a woman. She says “glass half empty” is a positive outlook compared to mine; an overflowing fountain wouldn’t have enough water to satisfy me. Very clever, she feels when saying that. Smug, knowing smile. The one that mothers get when psychoanalysing the flaws in the humans they raise. Her dinner party last week was the final straw. She made a stew. I didn’t like it. Said as much. Sorry, but I don’t think you have to pretend to like a stew that tastes like Mrs Trunchball seasoned it with her blood, sweat and tears, if you don’t.
She’s nervous about my sister’s wedding next month.
Hence, the book recommendation.
It lays out steps to diffuse anger. Easy steps, according to the author, as stated in the preface, following his self-indulgent recounting of how the book came to be. Written as a woe-is-me passage that almost, almost manages to drown out how truly impressed with himself he is.
I feel it starting. The familiar sensations creep through me. Heating my ears.
It’s his glare. It really is unsettling. Feels like a threat. I try not to look at him. But feel it. You just know, don’t you? When someone is staring at you. His eyes, like lasers, nearly splinter the glass. Ravenous, he looks. A famished child eyeing up a buffet.
Step One.
Notice.
What am I feeling?
Tension building, pulsing in my jaw, stiffening shoulders. Clenching fists. Nails digging into my skin. The walls loom taller. Jagged edges, deepening corners. A German expressionist set. Pricking sensation caressing either side of my spine as the sun tilts behind a cloud, darker in here now. Haunting shadows cast across the cafe’s aged mahogany floors, loosened nails glinting, boards unfastened suggestively as if secrets lurking below battle to escape them.
My breath comes in counts of one now. In, out. No time to waste spreading through my body. Urgency about it.
Step Two.
Pause. Ask.
What just happened?
I brave a glance back out of the window. Still staring. That familiar darkness in his eyes. Unsettling lack of compassion. I’ve only ever seen it in men who let their mask slip. True nature revealed. Slight upturn of half his lip. Not quite a full snarl. His bus remains at a standstill for an unusually long time. Apparently stuck at the slowest set of traffic lights in Dublin. At a five-way intersection. All lights to red. No movement. No progress. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose. Make the traffic intentionally, infuriatingly slow. Nudging people closer to the edge of sanity.
Throat tightening. A pulse running through my lip. Pull them in tight. Mouth fills with warm spit.
Step Three.
Reflect.
Why is this affecting me?
Guffaw through gritted teeth. Lips part slightly to let out the indignant puff of air. I will admit, there does live in me a heightened sense of paranoia. I am deeply attuned to danger when it comes to men, definitely accentuated by my divorce. Recently single at 38 has been… let’s say humbling. Harrowing would be more accurate, but still too soft a word. My youth and beauty wasted on a lump of a man, forever second to Marlboro Reds and his porn addiction. If I could go back in time and kick my younger self, I would. In a heartbeat. Kick some sense into her.
I have always been angry. Not this bad. Not this bitter. But it was always there. Bubbling inside me, my body a pressure cooker, the heat turning up a notch with every passing year.
Step Four.
Name it.
I’m angry because…
…men hollered at me as I walked home in my uniform, Dad’s friend, over to watch some football, leaning out of earshot of the adults to inform me, through puffed out cheeks, that I was growing into my figure nicely, co-workers seeing no other way to manoeuvre around me other than to cup my hips, giving them a little squeeze. The teenager who shared private photos of me around school, the dawn of camera phones, already weaponised against us, photos I never wanted to send him, felt pressured to, I liked him, you see. In college, the classmate who didn’t take me blocking his last three numbers as a valid sign of disinterest, new number every week, hoping I might welcome his advances when delivered by a new arrangement of digits. Gathered over a lifetime, a trove of unwelcome trinkets, catcalls, wandering hands, comments muttered under breath.
Chest tightens, core tenses. Now on the edge of my seat, legs stiffened into planks.
Angry because that’s just the small shit. Not the real shit. Not the serious shit. My body reduced to nothing, an object for his desire, a doll of pleasure, stripped of humanity, like he owned it, like I owed it to him. Him and them. All of them.
Pressure cooker boiling on Her behalf. All the Hers. 62 million men a month, husbands sharing tips, tricks, insights on how to drug their wives, cutesy little messages, “Start with a low dose”, “She didn’t wake up, worked great”, photos, videos, their wives, supposed to be safe with them, sixty two million, six zeros, one month, the Island, the untouchables touching those who shouldn’t be touched, the red pills stained with women’s blood, brainwashing boys, dangling carrots of success, plastic food, in front of them, training them as soldiers, armed against the defenceless, to uphold a system. The price? Humanity. Safety. Decency. No way out.
Hardened jaw. Shoulders numbing. Knots forming. Fuck. Trembling through my body. This isn’t helping. It’s getting worse. Hands tighten around the table. Want to knock it over. Throw it through the window. Glass shattered, shards cutting the air. Destroy something. Destroy everything.
Lights turn green. The bus jolts.
He is gone.
I see it in my peripheral vision, but don’t watch. The heat of his scrutiny remains long after, searing my cheeks, dampening my palms till clammy fingerprints dirty the pages still in my hands.
Step Five.
Challenge.
Am I telling a story? Am I assuming intent?
Deep breath. Slight unclenching.
I perceive every look as a threat. Seize every comment, run it through an internal system, scanning it for danger. Safety mechanism. It keeps me protected. I need that. Don’t I?
As if to prove me wrong, I meet the gaze of a young gentleman. Hipster look about him, a burgundy parka, impressive moustache, colourful socks covering his ankles, revealed by his jeans pulled up, creased as he crosses his legs. He smiles. An exceedingly kind smile. Warmth emanates from it. I feel it toast my toes. Maybe it’s not all bad. Maybe I need to fucking chill. Not everyone is out to get me. In fact, most people don’t even notice me go by. Can’t even be sure he was staring at me from the bus. Could have been a seagull on the roof above. A fly dawdling along the window, its route lining the man’s eyes up with me. He could have just been zoning out, dead-eyed, unfocused. Probably just commuting home from work, contemplating what to have for dinner. Mouth pre-watering at the frozen pizza awaiting him. Or, a home-cooked meal. Or, whatever his delicacy of choice is.
Step Six.
Reflect.
What do I need?
Air.
I need to leave. I fold my book over, pages kissing, feeling that I’ve made more than enough progress for one day. I return the book to my bag, unread ink glowing off the pages. Smile at parka man as I pass, thanking him for the new pathways forming in my mind, twisting around the long-set, rotten one.
The stairs creak as I lumber down them, exhausted by the weight of my heavy footsteps. Maybe my mother is right. My wrath will sentence me to eternal loneliness, my fear dressing me in undesirability. I would love to find someone. Someone to soften my jagged edges. Happiness may be on the other side of a loosened grip. A trust in that it’s not all bad. It’s not all hopeless. It’s not all men.
If my mother could see me now. She’d be so proud.
After thanking no one in particular, I lean against the heavy door, eventually shouldering it open. Cool evening air. Welcoming, wafting away the sticky cobwebs spun in my mind. My shoulders make their departure from my ears, back into their rightful place. Instant ease. Maybe it was the bookshop. The words living between those walls, infiltrating my brain. The stories held in covers of varying thickness, entering my stream of consciousness through osmosis. Narratives forming. Complex tales, twisted and fantastical.
Step Eight.
Release.
Exhale so forceful it splutters my lips. That’s better.
The clouds are prettied, pink, the sky slowly darkening from a pale to a deeper, more royal blue. The setting sun breathes sense into the red-bricked houses. The steel gates paint delicate shadows over the steps leading up to them. I feel calm. Fucking finally. Hands unclench, stress drips from my elbows. My jaw, nearly marbled at this point from being constantly clenched, softens slowly.
There is still beauty in the world. I just don’t allow myself to see it. Viewing everything through blinders, every interaction through a thick fog of suspicion.
My thoughts, free from paranoid ruminations, wander to fantasies about my dinner. Girls’ dinner. I love a girl’s dinner. It makes me feel like I have my life together. Even though it heavily suggests the opposite. But that’s not for me to judge.
A tap on my shoulder. Removing my earphones, I turn. Expect to see a pal from an old life, someone I don’t want to catch up with. Or, a tourist, lost down a side street, seeking directions, who will certainly be getting the wrong ones from me.
No such luck.
Stomach expands, then shrinks quickly. Drops through the soles of my feet, taking all my wind with it.
His snarl is more of a leer now.
An attempt at warmth, perhaps, but not a hint of kindness to be detected in his eyes, so blackened that the pupils are indistinguishable from the iris surrounding them.
“There you are,” his voice oozes out of his mouth, a spitty, smacking sound, “I’ve been waiting for you.”
My blood, now ice cold, shudders my body as it courses through me. Frozen in place.
Okay. I was right. Disappointed but not surprised.
Sixty-two million.
Another twist on the hob. Pressure cooker heating up, about to explode.
Where else to turn but back to anger? She welcomes me. Takes me in her arms. The only arms I need around me. Wrapping me in her warm embrace. Protecting me.
I’m throwing that book in the bin.
Inspired by - CNN Report