*
Cast: Me—a 34 year old woman.
Cab driver: Around sixty-five or seventy years old. Paunch. Hairy forearms.
*
Cab driver: so you like to watch movies?
Me: hm. Sometimes [I smile].
Driver: what about 50 shades of gray? You like that? You look like someone who would like 50 shades of gray.
Me: ——–
Driver: we could go together! It’s a film for women. We could just have a good time.
Me:———–
Driver: I like movies. I watched another one the other day, called “Wolf Hall”. It’s about a man who picks up cute girls and then murders them.
Me:———–
Driver: I get all my movies online. For free.
*
At this point, I have fumbled around in my bag, and found the fork that I brought from home. During the rest of the drive, I clutch the fork, on high-alert, strategizing as to when might be the right time to stab this guy, if he makes some sort of gesture: of violence? of missing the turnoff? Is he, indeed, going to return me to the mechanic’s shop, as per our agreement? Why did I forget to put my wedding ring back on last night, after working in the pottery studio?
*
I am careful not to say anything—not to encourage him, or to seem interested. I also know how dangerous it would be to express the disgust and contempt that rises like a wave of vomit in my throat. I gaze out the window, with a carefully composed look of dim absent-mindedness. It shouldn’t be difficult to convince him that I’m just a little bit slow.
*
Interesting that this comes a couple of weeks after my ex-boyfriend has let me know just how “un-F*******” I am. Then again, I have noticed, of late, that being “f******” has now come to be synonymous with “being attractive”. Too bad women—young or old—are always rapeable, whether they are deemed “f******” or not.
*
Why had I decided to wear this new cardigan, and these leggings? I was feeling good about myself this morning. Stupid. Don’t ever do that. I want to cry, and I want my husband—a nice, sweet, non-rapeing, gentle everyday misogynist. I promise myself never to criticize Lee ever again. He’s perfect. I am LUCKY. Get that through your thick stupid head.
*
To be female in this culture, is to be constantly enslaved by low-level fear.
*
For me, this fear has shifted, over the years. I am much less terrified of rape than I was in my early teens. I’m pragmatic now. Less dramatic. After I experienced a few different iterations of rape and sexual assault in my teens and twenties, around the same time that I became sexually active, I discovered that rape is both devastating and, in some ways, simply part of the spectrum of the “normal” when it comes to women’s sexual experiences.
*
In the cab, I think to myself, Ok, well, let’s get this over with, if it’s going to happen. You’ll just breathe through it, Yo. Just go somewhere else while it happens, but please God don’t let him cut me or kill me. Just do whatever you need to do to make it home to the kids before suppertime.
*
But then—surprise!–the cab driver does drop me off at the mechanic’s. And I am so grateful, I almost love him. Thank you sir. Thank you for not hurting me. Thank you for only making me feel sick to my stomach, and disgusted– for only making me wish that I hadn’t woken up feeling happy,; for only regretting the choice to wear my nice new clothes today.
*
My next thought is, You’re ridiculous! Of course he wasn’t going to hurt you! Get over yourself. He was just being friendly! Just another friendly man.
*
I think they call this “cis-privilege”. See me conform to the gendered expectations that go along with being female. See the world confirm my rightness: reflecting to me the degree to which I am appropriately feminine.
*
I can’t help but think that no matter how it is that female-bodied people identify, and no matter to what extent those persons who identify as trans, or gender-non-conforming might go to negate or complicate, or masculinize the female bodies they were born with, and no matter how unfair and unjust all of this is, the truth is that any bad person with a penis can—and we know they so often do—so poignantly and painfully remind a person with a vagina that sex matters, and that biological sex is real. Rape is not a theoretical argument.
*