The Apology

by Eve Ensler

  I see you now at twenty-three, standing at a homemade altar in a flimsy white dress you had found in an upscale store on a sales rack for torn items, at a wedding haphazardly arranged by begging and borrowing. I had refused to pay. There were only cheap hors d’oeuvres and there was no hard liquor. Standing there surrounded by a ragtag collection of friends and struggling artists, in a service performed by a hokey minister from a religion I’d never heard of in which he never mentioned God. I see you marrying a man whose most compelling feature was that he hadn’t hit you. I hear you making some inexplicable mishmash of vows which failed to include faithfulness. (I know now that it never occurred to you to expect or demand it.) I see you standing with a teenage boy, son of your husband-to-be, whom you had committed to adopting and mothering. You were somehow giving him what you needed most.

  There is a black man dressed in African garb playing a saxophone—a sorrowful melody, more fitting for a funeral than a wedding. That music comes to me now, a woeful wail, as I begin to walk you down a makeshift aisle. You hold my arm. Maybe the first time you have touched me in years. At first, I had refused to participate in this ludicrous ritual—give you away to this idiot. But then at the last moment something in me relented. In all sincerity, it was the perfect opportunity to reinstate my ownership and authority. And as I walk you step by step through the crowd of wedding onlookers, I am horrified to say I took great satisfaction in knowing that this marriage was already doomed.

  You had chosen a man who was married when you met him. I think you were number three. And even if you appeared to share great humor (you were endlessly laughing together, which annoyed me deeply) and were able to find comfort and structure in your mutual sobriety, I knew he could not and would not be honest or loyal to you.

  But more importantly I know this wedding is entirely a sham as you are still married to me. I grip your arm harder. We made a silent covenant in the dark when you were just five. Even if you share your body with this oaf, he will never really touch you. He will never feel the triumph and sacredness of discovering ecstasy because you’ve already had it. He will never enter the room of the beloved because I occupy it. And this will eventually drive him (and all the others that come after) to anger and distraction—this sense that he can never really have you.

  At first, he will be drawn to it as a challenge. Every man loves a battle. But then, after time, it will make him feel empty, stupid, and a failure. And when he realizes you are never going to give yourself to him, even though you pretend you did, he will retaliate and do all he can to hurt you. Punch holes in walls, betray you with other women, eventually leave you for your close friend. These were the toxic thoughts I circulated in the vulnerable atmosphere of your already penurious wedding. This was the crippling energy I pressed like invisible poison into your skin as I gripped your arm. This was your father not calmly and kindly walking you down the aisle to meet your beloved, but instead your predator scheming and marching you to your inevitable slaughter.

  The saxophone, louder now, is wailing and screeching. Waves of sound crashing against these sodden walls. Oh grief, typhoon of grief. Spinning and smashing me on guilt-edged crags and rocks, tangled in endless wreckage and debris. It has me now, this grief. The waves blow back. This is the piercing. The man shell cracking. What kind of bastard have I been? What kind of destruction have I wrought? I have lied and lied to myself and you.

  I cursed your future of love. At five I took your body. You didn’t give it to me. I contaminated your sweetness. I ripped the protective golden gates from your garden. I betrayed your trust. I rearranged your sexual chemistry and the basis of your desire. Wrongness and excitement were forever fused together. I made my stain. I left my stinking mark. I infected you. By invading and overwhelming your body I killed your yearning so early. You did not and could not give me permission. There was no consent. You did not seduce me with your crinoline petticoats. You were simply being an adorable child.

  I overstimulated your five-year-old body and planted the seeds of intensity and thrill. You would push yourself too far, take heroin, jump off bridges, drive a hundred miles an hour.

  I robbed you of the ordinary. I destroyed your notion of family. I forced you to betray your mother. You lived in perpetual self-hatred and guilt. I created hierarchy, distrust and violent competition between you and your siblings. None of you would recover from this.

  I robbed you of agency over your body. You didn’t make any decisions. You didn’t say yes. That was my projection in order to satisfy my needs. You were five years old. I was fifty-two. You had no sovereignty. I exploited and abused you. I took your body. It was no longer yours. I rendered you passive. You compulsively gave it to whoever wanted it because I taught you you should. I forced you out of your body, and because you were dislocated and numb, you were unable to protect yourself. I compromised your safety and ability to defend yourself. I made it so that rape became what turned you on. I eviscerated your necessary boundaries so you never knew what was yours and when to say no or how to say stop. I tore the delicate walls of your vagina and made it vulnerable to disease and infection.

  Your body didn’t and couldn’t say yes. This was a convenient lie I told myself. You didn’t know it was sex. I took what I needed by convincing myself you needed it too. I exploited your adoration. I forced you into secrecy, to lie to your mother, to develop a dual life. This split you in two. I made you feel like a whore. I made you feel you were never worthy of legitimate love. I made intimacy claustrophobic. I left my poison in you.

  I destroyed your memory by making you want to forget everything. This impacted your intelligence and ability to contain facts and take tests. I stole your innocence. I dimmed your life force and made you feel your sexuality was the cause of bad things. I used your being and body to serve myself.

  I did all this. Oh saxophone, take me out. Take me out.

  Slowly, painfully, I crawl like a weatherbeaten crab out of the now quiet and retreating sea. I collapse on warm sand. I lie there exhausted and broken. I am there for days or months or years. I am formed again. I feel myself. My clothes are gone. So is my sex. I have little breasts and shorter legs and smaller feet. My stomach is supple. There are two moles above my left eye. This is your face, Eve. This is your body. I am inside it. I notice blood.

  My nose is bleeding. My neck is sore. There are bruises from being choked. My rear end stings from the paddle. There are welts on my thighs. Scars and wounds surfacing like leprous lumps all over me. I am the wound and the wound maker. I am burning.

  I roll on the sand, hurl myself into the sea. The salty water irritates and aggravates the cuts and injuries. My vagina is on fire, I hold it and rock and scream and cry out and it is your agonized little-girl voice that comes out of my mouth. “Make it stop. Make it stop.”

  The beach is empty and vast, not a bird, not a sound. Does anyone know I am here? Does anyone care? A voice pounding in my head: “No one is coming. No one is coming.” And a trap door opens, and I fall in. I fall and fall into the void, the absence, into the limbo of the dispossessed.

  I am nothing. I have no family. I have no place. I have no father. I have no mother. I am badness. I am shame. I am disgraced.

  Oh God, Eve, I now see, I have been spinning for thirty-one years in the torturous limbo I made inside you, in the terrible cavern of loneliness that nothing or no one could fill, in the desperate abyss of your waiting.

  Oh, what is happening now? What slivers of light are breaking through this dark? What glimmering demarcations? Stars. Stars. Millions of them. I am so grateful for the stars.

  Each one is a shining little face, leaning out to be noticed or cherished or seen. Expectant eyes and ready cheeks. Each one performing sparkling tricks hoping to be adopted or redeemed. Each star is a luminous child who got missed.

  Eve,

  Let me say these words:

  I am sorry. I am sorry. Let me sit here at the final hour. Let me get it right this time. Let me be staggered by your
tenderness. Let me risk fragility. Let me be rendered vulnerable. Let me be lost. Let me be still. Let me not occupy or oppress. Let me not conquer or destroy. Let me bathe in the rapture. Let me be the father.

  Let me be the father who mirrors your kindheartedness back to you. Let me lay no claims. Let me bear witness and not invade.

  Eve,

  I free you from the covenant. I revoke the lie. I lift the curse.

  Old man, be gone.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I could not have written this book without beloved friend Michael Klein, my husky-voiced midwife who saw what I was doing when I could not and had faith when I was too anxious to breathe. Thank you for the depth of your listening and invaluable insights and just being there, being there.

  Thank you, Johann Hari, for your time, your precious insights, and for staying with me through the tricky passage. Thank you, Sue Grand, for giving me a way to name and frame the terror and dread, for so many years of insights that freed me from hell.

  Thank you, James Lecesne, for being the best friend ever and believing so deeply, and Monique Wilson for your constancy, kindness, and deep love. Paula Allen for listening and knowing, my mama angel Carole Black for your mentorship and guidance, and Jennifer Buffett for journeying with me and through our travels making this book possible.

  Thank you to Christine Schuler Deschryver, my brave and beautiful friend, and all my sisters in Bukavu who teach me daily how to turn pain into power.

  Thank you to the circle of astounding friends and colleagues whose love and brilliance is both protection and inspiration: Rada Borić, Pat Mitchell, Diana de Vegh, Arundhati Roy, Jane Fonda. Naomi Klein, Thandie Newton, Laura Flanders, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Alixa Garcia, Nicoletta Billi. Zillah Eisenstein, Elizabeth Lesser, David Stone, Diane Paulus, Diane Borger, Ryan McKittrick, George Lane, Nancy Rose, Frank Selvaggi, Harriet Clark, Zoya, Adisa Krupalija, Peter Buffett, Mark Matousek, Rosa Clemente, Tony Porter, Ted Bunch, and Farah Tanis.

  My astonishing V-Day team: Susan Swan, Purva Panday Cullman, Carl Cheng, Leila Radan, Anju Kasturiraj, Kristina Shea, (Mo and Mama C). Thank you for rocking this global movement and teaching me every day what solidarity and collaboration looks like.

  Thank you my precious son, Dylan McDermott, daughter, Maggie Q, and my astounding bubbe girls, Coco McDermott and Charlotte McDermott. You are my heart.

  Tony Montenieri for everything you do that allows me to write and for the kindness enfolded in every act.

  I am so deeply grateful to my brilliant editor Nancy Miller for her radiant belief in this book, her superb and careful editing, and for pushing me to go deeper.

  Bless the wonderful team at Bloomsbury and Emi Battaglia.

  Thank you, Steven Barclay and Eliza Fischer and all the wonderful ones at the Barclay Agency.

  I am particularly grateful to Charlotte Sheedy, my agent extraordinaire of forty-two years. I bow in gratitude to your constancy, your belief in my work, your loyalty, and your fierce fighting ways. I love you.

  I want to acknowledge my brother, Curtis, for the immensity of his heart, for surviving what we survived, for sharing a history and memories that begged an apology.

  For all the thousands of women I have met over these last twenty-plus years in refugee camps, hospitals, war zones, prisons, plays, centers, colleges, high schools, safe houses, places of worship who generously shared your stories and inspire me every day to keep fighting until our daughters are equal, free, and safe.

  For all the men who have hurt women, may this book inspire you to do your own deep and thorough accounting, reckoning, apologizing so that we can finally transform and end this violence.

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  Eve Ensler is a Tony Award–winning playwright, author, performer, and activist. She wrote the international bestselling phenomenon The Vagina Monologues, which won an Obie, has been published in 48 languages, and has been performed in more than 140 countries. She is the author of many plays and books, including the New York Times bestseller I Am an Emotional Creature. She recently adapted her highly praised memoir In the Body of the World into a play, which ran to critical acclaim at the American Repertory Theater and Manhattan Theatre Club. Her play The Vagina Monologues gave birth to V-Day, a global activist movement to end gender-based violence. Through benefit productions of her artistic works, the V-Day movement has raised more than $100 million and funded more than 13,000 community-based antiviolence programs and safe houses throughout the world. She is also the founder of One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action campaign to combat violence against women and girls. Ensler is a co-founder, along with Christine Schuler Deschryver and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Denis Mukwege, of the City of Joy, a revolutionary center for women survivors of violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She was named one of Newsweek’s 150 Women Who Changed the World and one of the Guardian’s 100 Most Influential Women. She lives in New York.

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  Excerpt from “The Naming of Cats” from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot. Copyright © 1939 by T.S. Eliot and renewed 1967 by Esmé Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

  Excerpt from “The Naming of Cats” from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

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  ISBN: HB: 978-1-63557-438-8; eBook: 978-1-63557-439-5

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