No one is suggesting that these men don’t exist.
But that’s not who was in that hotel room with Olive.
The other kind of existing men, the brutally abled, will quieten for a time as the undebatable hateful thing temporarily silences their easy speaking. Some of their mothers will even tell them that they must shut the fuck up for now. They’ve said enough. Let Mom call the radio station for you. It’s better coming from a woman. The best shield for a bad man is a good woman after all. Some mothers will even offer up cash rewards to people who can prove an innocence. It’s a good strategy that has been effectively employed in the past. There is no financial harm in it. They’ll never have to pay out the reward because there could never be any proof positive that their sons didn’t do it cause, well, they did.
They did do that to Olive.
Everyone in this cove and that cove knows everything about everyone.
Except for when they know nothing.
Those same people who know nothing would encourage Olive to self-harm across all platforms. Directly and indirectly. If she could gather up her remaining confidence and defend herself, other women would recount tales of generosity and moments of joy to offset the sour imbalance of Olive’s experience. Post pictures of a son holding a teddy bear, a kindergarten graduation cap and gown, a tux on his wedding day.
Look! He is loved because we love him and therefore he is good and not bad.
Because the lady folk could not handle more shitty men. If the ones believed good are also shitty, then it is indeed possible that they’re all shitty. And what can they do with such a lonely hypothesis? Instead they will spout hyperbole. Good right down to his soul. Nicest man I’ve ever met. Can’t believe a bad word about him. Never hurt a fly.
And of course, the best one, the cliché trotted out the most because it’s the best/worst one of all, uttered at every girl before any training bra — ready, set, go: boys will be boys.
But really, rightly, that statement should be disputed every time it is used to dismiss the very genuine and deserved complaint from girls just trying to survive as girls in spaces where even mothers are used against them. Mothers must stop competing with their daughters. Daughters do not make men mistreat them. It is not right or fair to punish daughters further out of envy. Keeping the dangerous path dangerous will not make them better women but hurt them still in the same sad ways. The makeup on Olive’s face does not mean she is a whore. It means she feels prettier wearing makeup. It means someone has made her feel less pretty without it. Peel it back. Remember the feeling.
Do not wish it on Olive. Olive did not do this to herself. No woman ever would.
Though some still maintain the line. They will hold a possible shitty man even higher in this regard. It is not their fault. This was how women were trained before Olive pulled on her red tights. Which would be used against her. Her wearing red tights. Obviously slutty. Obviously asking for it.
Obviously. Obviously. Obviously.
If Olive told, there would be long drawn-out conversations over cigarettes on front porches about the logistics of Olive’s guilt. They would list the things Olive had done that support the argument they want to shape against her. Her going there is evidence. Drinking. Drugging. Staying. All this proves she wanted it. There need to be better processes in place to protect men from women like Olive, they will say.
They will act as if any woman in the history of the fucking world ever wanted to be treated mercilessly by a group of men, one after the other, coming inside her until she is light-headed from bleeding. As if that was a thing any woman would want.
Olive knew this, and so she didn’t make a sound during or even ever.
Olive had seen it a thousand times before. The muscles in her body remembered it well.
Though there are rare instances where this behaviour is changed. The way behaviour changes. A little at a time. Someone draws a new line.
That line is: this is not okay for half of humans living.
Not nearly good enough. True accountability is knowing those who harm Olive will be held accountable. Knowing the details would mean women on the courthouse steps yelling.
Someone has done this vulgar shit to Olive. Argued over who banged her best. Kept time for the duration. A reverse racing score. Later, all participated in the skirmish about removing her from the room. Contemplated folding her into a torn dress, blood all down the insides, so she could be moved outside while they partied on. In case she beats it up the room, they said. Concerned for the potential damage deposited. This: the numbered value of the hundred-and-fifteen-pound twenty-six-year-old passed out belly down on the dirty bed.
On top of the covers. No one got in the blankets. This wasn’t fucking lovemaking.
This was a gang bang.
Dinner
This was what Roger had wanted. Him and Calv out day drinking like real good buddies.
He has always wanted Calv to play along but Calv ain’t got the stomach for the unorthodox stuff. His porn choices always ran soft core. Girl on girl. Vaginal penetration. His Google searches never got weird. Never featured anal. Or anything handy to illegal. He won’t hardly tell anything about what Donna is like in bed even when asked directly. Sometimes he lies about it. Roger thinks this can only mean Calv wants to marry her. Maybe Calv even wants Donna to have his youngsters. And Roger knows that youngsters would mean the end of their friendship. Calv was not the kind of man that would ever lose custody of his youngsters.
No sir, Calv’s mother would have him skinned alive so fast it would be criminal.
Roger shivers when he thinks of Susie. He is sure they would have strung her up in the olden days for witchcraft or disobedience or whatever laws they had to make women like that shut up talking. My god, her and Amanda hates him. But Donna might hate him the most of them all. Him and Donna screwed when Calv was offshore that one time he gave her a ride home. They had too much to drink. It was a mistake. Roger regretted it sure didn’t he. He told Donna he was sorry. Jesus, what more did she want from him?
Wants him gone from the earth is what she wants.
Or at least from her and Calv’s earth. Roger thought if he could get Calv out on the tear a little there before Christmas, then he might forget that Donna was after forbidding they hang out. Maybe he’d meet a new woman. Give up beating around with some little piece from up Northern Pen way. Lord reeving, women gets right over Calv. He is right susceptible. It’s cause he got a silly mother and soft father no doubt.
But Calv had left before the party even got started. And now Roger had to deal with peeving from the b’ys. All up in a snarl. The youngest of them going around all Christmas asking people if they thought you could rape a hooker. Said rape! My good god, that stunned fucker would have them all locked up. They should have never brought him along. He had too many questions about it right from the start. You knows you can’t discuss that kind of shit in advance, that got to unfold naturally or it starts to feel weird and sinister.
They never raped that girl. It was a bit rough sure, but sex can be rough sometimes, loads of women wanted to be slapped and bitten, the works of it. Sure, they loves them books. Some of them even liked a little bit of friendly strangulation or being called bad names. You never knew what you were going to get by. Could be great fun or pissy as a sick cat the morning after hooking up. You never knew. Could never know.
And he’s trying to explain it to Calv that what’s-her-chops is fine. It’s the boys that’s not fine.
They’re convinced Calv is after turning on them cause he never returns texts and nobody has seen hi
m since that night. Calv rhymes off a number of reasons why he hasn’t been out much. Him and Donna made up and now she’s after cinching up his leash tight around her hand. And he don’t really enjoy bars anymore so it don’t hardly seem worth getting into the biggest kind of racket with Donna to go out drinking. Which he can’t afford on employment insurance cause he’s flat broke now, ain’t he? Nare cent. Besides, who wants to go out in the jesus winter? It’s cold enough to freeze the cock off ya. Calv motions to the picture window he has spent most of the afternoon looking out, longing for escape.
Just look at it out now sure, shouldn’t even be out in it, not fit.
And it wasn’t fit. Nothing was fit. They were all unfit.
If fit were a choice, they would all choose it.
Iris, Olive, John, George, Calv, Damian, Ben, even Major David would choose to be fit over unfit. But there is no such option. Like defining normal: a definition applied by fools with a penchant for oversimplified points of view. People can no more be normal than winter can be unified and made the same every year.
The couples have already started to trickle in. The young women pulling off their parkas to reveal their carefully chosen clothes. Frocks fingered because tonight might be the night. A few ladies in their thirties pull concealed pumps from their purses. These fine Newfoundland women are prepared for happiness. They got everything you’d need hove in a bag they wear across their body. Not even over their shoulder, over their bodies so both hands are free in case they need to haul happiness up over the side of a cliff. It is the most reliable conversation topic. They do not applaud each other’s accomplishments with the same degree of intensity as one would celebrate a nice man.
Knowing Calv’s luck his sister would show up for sure.
He don’t have a clue how long they been here. Too long, he thinks as he pulls out his phone to discover not one but four texts from Donna. Four is not a great number. Two would have been sensible since last time he checked but four is escalating. Four means that the escalator has already carried Donna up to the hairy floor housing all her favourite angry stores. She is thrashing about up there now, running up a tab and jesus only knows what it will cost Calv to buy his way out of this. Around-the-world trips in a pair of new Lululemon pants every day for the rest of her life while she drinks unlimited non-fat smoothies made of fairy dust and Calv’s own tears sucked directly from his long-abandoned cock by this goddamn waiter he can’t stop looking at.
Who the fuck is that guy?
Damian knows buddy can’t place him.
He looks like a puppy waking from a nap to find all of the furniture moved. But Damian will never forget his pitiful mug. He will likely be forever haunted by the sight of Olive leaving that lobby many hours later. Well after the party had moved on to the street.
Damian had been watching British panel shows on his iPhone when she emerged.
Secretly, he supposed, he had been waiting for her to come out of the room. Needing her to come out of the room after having clocked not entirely ugly guy leaving without her much much earlier. And then the rest, rowdy and gross, yelling and shoving each other as they hurried away to harass other suspecting and unsuspecting women. No one stopped at the desk to check in or out with him. And the girl he met weeks later called Olive was not with them. Damian had been watching. Raising his head each time the sliding door buzzer sounded in either direction. First glancing toward the sound before glancing hopefully toward the elevator. Toward the stairwell.
When the group finally appeared he was relieved. He wanted them all to be gone and his shift to end before their return. They would be someone else’s problem then. But his relief had been premature he realized as he watched them slurring and swearing at each other like rival sports teams from neighbouring high schools. There could have been a hundred of them, the volume impossibly misleading. The roar that came from their departure was tremendous because of the space it left in their stead. Through the sniffing and snorting back, Damian had heard one guy gallantly remark that she’d be fine after she slept it off.
So the girl was sleeping something off.
Finally the elevator made to move up again.
She did not step from the elevator the first time the doors opened.
They closed but the elevator stopped steady. The second time the doors opened, Damian was sure he heard a small whimper and a woolly whoosh from inside. And before the doors slid shut, there clearly came the sound of a woman muttering low comforts to herself as she smacked the open-door button weakly. Then she emerged. Olive emerged. And it was an emergence, too.
So troubled looking, so plainly not right. Her peacoat not even done up correctly. It was a no-hearted attempt at closing the wrong-looking coat. Just the one toggle looped at the centre looking to be under too much pressure, having been given too much responsibility. The lonely toggle rebelling against having to hold a whole woman in with just the one frayed loop. All that suffering buried in a coat she hadn’t bought for herself. Because it didn’t look like a coat that she would buy or wouldn’t buy, merely a coat belonging elsewhere to a different person. Someone who had the time and wherewithal to deliberately toggle each flimsy loop. The kind of person who had no need for zipped-up escapes.
It was something to aspire to, but Olive was nowhere near that fastening point.
She had held her arms over her chest while holding her collar together in her hands. She tucked her chin tightly into the perfectly pointed basin where her knuckles met. She kept her eyes concentrated on the floor in a manner that suggested she believed an invisible string of sight buoyed her upright. Not her body. Or gravity. But her eyes intensely trained on the path was what attached her to this world and not some other. She was a young thing folding in on herself in an improperly secured peacoat. She looked drained even of despair with her carefully applied makeup now wiped clear. She had all the facial markings of a woman who had recently tried to steady herself by cold washing her face with tap water and a cheap white cloth.
No kind of place you could find comfort in was the ever increasing irony of Olive’s life.
And the bathroom cleaning products had not left her feeling more clean but less so. The tiny bottles with their travel-sized tops were impossible for her shaking paws to manage. She had wanted to wash up. But she just could not manage to remember the steps. And she thought of the cold at home. And her grandmother boasting of never having to wash her hair.
Smell it, go on smell it, fresh like the country.
And try as she might, which she did, try, she sent those slippery little soaps flying into the waiting sink as the thick tears quietly fell onto the synthetic solid surface like vegetable oil onto a hot pan. And Olive thought, as she had thought before, that nothing around her was made real anymore. Not this bathroom. Or this hotel. Not the people who brought her here. Everything was counterfeit and therefore fit no counter. She could not even get the shampoos to work because of their manufactured size. And in the desperate state of waking with your dress hauled over your bra which is hauled down to your waist, the whole everything seemed unreal and unnatural. Like looking into one’s own house from the street after having left the lights on accidentally. The effect of which is mighty out-of-body making and Olive was left to wonder if her body was something just on loan to her. She felt this all the more acutely staring at her borrowed face in a mirror holding the wall precariously with four screws busy impersonating seashells.
Olive found herself to be a squatter inside skin owned by some other.
This is the only explanation going when someone barges in like Olive has been bar
ged in on. She had mistakenly taken up residence in this long ago abandoned life thinking it was her own. The previous owner in charge of upkeep had not even been her mother. Her mom could not hold title over any life because she had no grasp on her self-own property.
They were all squatting to some degree, though that degree was rather further far afield for the foundations of maternity.
If you searched the interior of Olive you would find one hundred years of lady kin worrying desperately over eviction. Always wear pants to bed and get a boyfriend or they’ll have at her.
But Olive had not been mindful of herself. She had not worn pants or got a boyfriend.
They had at her.
That night it was confirmed that the rightful owners of Olive’s body could return whenever they required refuge and so took refuge in her no matter the boobytraps left to warn them off. Bobbles to distract. Even ugly-smelling things to turn their guts inside out.
Olive had tried many different strategies tried by many different girls.
She sheared herself when the utmost scared. That hair of hers sometimes got real short short. She wore mean-looking shirts. Always with the hood high up. She spat and swore and stole time which was her way of proclaiming herself a boy. Because boys seemed safer. Not safe. There was no such seeming thing. But safer.
So Olive would present herself as a boy. She would grow muscles, become strong, fast and ready to sprint at first notice of invasion. Like a warrior prepping for battle. She would be appropriately groomed.
But it never took because she was not hard and cruel and singular. She was not a boy. She was a girl. And as she pulled the cloth across her face, Olive promised to lock her girlhood down, it was not serving her well. She would seal herself against it, airtight, there would be no entry. She would make herself impassable.
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club Page 25