God, she’s gonna kill him, I thought.
My plan of staying outside ended. I couldn’t allow her to get into trouble because of him.
When I loosened her hold, he was barely able to stand. He wobbled around, feeling for a bar stool to sit on. As if nothing was happening, his compadres continued their drinking. The woman tending bar, on the other hand, came out yelling, “I called the police!” I told her what had inspired the incident, but she didn’t care. “Out. Now.” She pointed to the door.
The pause gave Mike enough time to catch his breath and regain his boozy bravado. He started making threats. He had nearly been killed, and yet he still acted as if he had won.
Without thinking, I walked over and stuck my forefinger in under his sternum. “Your days of tormenting my sister and her children are over. I’m going to cut your f***ing heart out.”
The way his face froze, he must have thought my finger was my knife. Maybe the bartender did, too. She kept yelling, “The police are on their way! The police are on their way!”
And they were; we heard the faint wail of sirens. “Time to go,” I said. We exited the bar and ran to our car. As we pulled out, the police pulled in—parking in the same spot we had vacated. They must have seen us leaving and not given it a second thought: Two women. Nothing important. Gotta hurry and stop the bullies beating up the guy inside.
Later that night, while we were reviewing the bar scene with my sister, Mike called.
“Come pack up your crap and vacate the apartment,” I told him. He did.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of Mike. He made another appearance six months later, insisting on moving back in. Sis simply had to pick up the phone, and Sue and I arrived within minutes. Once again, we escorted him and his belongings outside. As I stood in the open doorway to make sure he left, he swaggered to his truck, pulled a.12-gauge shotgun out of the gun rack, and laid it on the seat. Was it meant for my sister, or for me? It didn’t matter. I stood my ground, figuring if necessary I’d fall backward into the apartment before he could get a shot off. Luckily for all of us, Mike just left and never came back. He finally understood: The Dyke Disposal Unit (DDU) need only hear the plea of a woman in trouble before they’d be there on the double.
judith k. witherow ([email protected]) is a Native American lesbian-feminist writer and storyteller, and winner of the 1994 Audre Lorde Memorial Prose contest. She is also cofounder/president of DDU, which has chapters in all states nationwide. Join today!
Charmed, I’m Sure
udrey schaefer
I was at a restaurant bar with two girlfriends when a man approached us. It took only three seconds before he started acting like a jerk. When he then asked if he could buy me a drink, I said, “No, but could I have the money instead?”
That did the trick; he fled quickly.
audrey schaefer ([email protected]) continues to finetune her tactfulness in Maryland. This story took place when she was in college, and she now runs her own business—a public relations agency.
Closing the Nasty Girl
elizabeth o’neill
Women lazed across multicolored blankets dotting the grass, passing jugs of Kool-Aid and listening to the band play “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” I had expected frightened, upset people, but this looked like a summer camp sleepover.
I glanced sideways at my boyfriend, Kevin (who was discreetly checking out other women), before spotting Stella under the Mad-at-Dad banner. “Seen anyone from group?” I asked her. The night before we’d tried to talk members of our incest survivors’ support group into coming to this Father’s Day rally.
“No, just us.”
A middle-aged woman took the podium. She began reading the names of women and girls killed by husbands, boyfriends, and fathers. Mary Jane Doe: Ex-husband stalked her for six months before shooting her outside the Laundromat. Lucy Jane Doe: Boyfriend beat her to death after burning his mouth on the dinner she’d served him. Baby Jane Doe: Father slammed her head against the rails of her crib, dead before she even had a name. Nancy Jane Doe. Sally Jane Doe. The list went on.
“I have to go meet Judy,” Kevin announced suddenly. Judy was Kevin’s old girlfriend. He was seeing more of her lately.
“Okay then,” I said, too quickly. “See you later.”
“Do you suppose he’s screwing her?” Stella asked after he was out of earshot.
I hesitated, ran my hand over the grass. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
Women lined up at the gazebo. One by one, they walked to the microphone to broadcast the names of men who had violated them, sometimes saying what the men did. As Stella and I took our places in line, a large brick lay heavy in my stomach.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Stella whispered. “They did.”
I went first, reciting the names. My father—molested me. My brother— molested me. My therapist—molested me. I was sick of protecting them and not myself. Then it was Stella’s turn. She reached for my hand. My brother—molested me. My teacher—molested me.
My legs wobbled as we walked from the podium. The line of incest survivors stretched around the gazebo, twice. After we sat back down, two women moved from blanket to blanket spreading the word. “Stick around after the rally,” they whispered. “We’re planning an action.”
Fifteen minutes later, a small crowd gathered behind the gazebo. “Okay, listen up,” said a short, muscular woman, with curly blond hair. She looked like a high-school basketball coach, without the whistle. “We’re marching to the Red Light District to occupy one of the porn shops.”
I felt my face turn red. My father had brought me to the District when I was fifteen. I hadn’t been back since.
“Wait. Why?” someone asked.
“Because we’re sick and tired of being victims.”
“What do you want to accomplish?”
“Personally,” the woman said, “I want to see what they have to say to a hundred angry women.”
A laugh rose in my throat. These women weren’t afraid of anything.
“I’m going,” Stella whispered. “Are you?”
The group set off, chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho—pornography has got to go!” We sounded like a pack of demented cheerleaders, and it felt good. We numbered about fifty but it seemed as if we were thousands stomping down Washington Street. We stopped in front of the Nasty Girl Bookstore. A husky, middleaged man grinned at us through the plate-glass window. Our chant was angry: “Pornography has got to go!”
“F*** off,” he mouthed to us.
Across the street, in front of the Pussy Cat Theatre, a woman in a halter-top and spandex skirt watched. She was smoking a cigarette and smiling. XXX, the marquee behind her read. LIVE SEX ACTS. “You go, girls,” she shouted. “You just go.”
Just then something clicked in my head—and I was ready. I was finally ready. The front door to the Nasty Girl Bookstore swung open. Fifty women piled in and crammed themselves between four narrow aisles. As I was propelled forward by the crush of the crowd, I thought in slow motion: The Nasty Girl Magazine Shop for Perverts and Pigs.
That’s when a shelf of magazines came crashing to the floor. There was a whoop of joy as the unspoken message traveled through the shop: We’re going to close the Nasty Girl. Another shelf was shoved over and two women jumped up and down on it. Magazines were ripped from their plastic sleeves and pieces of paper flew through the air. Bits of women’s bodies—breasts, crotches, backsides—were torn, thrown, and trampled on. I F***ed My Cousin, one magazine was called. Horny Coeds was another. I surveyed the shelves and fixed my gaze on Daddy’s Little Girl. On the front was a blond child, her hair in pigtails, an oversized lollipop resting on her lips. She was fully made up and no more than five years old.
I clenched my teeth, tore the magazine in half, and tossed it into the air with the others.
I began to laugh, nervously. I had never done anything illegal before. Now, for sure, I was breaking the law and would have to pay. Perhaps my father was
right—maybe I would go to jail for telling other people about what we did in secret.
There was a loud crash in the front of the store. I looked up to see the coach wielding a chair. She lifted it over her head and brought it down on top of a display case filled with handcuffs, hoods, and pacifiers shaped like little penises. For an instant, I felt pride.
“Look at this crap,” she shouted, holding a fistful of pacifiers over her head.
Behind her, the shop owner, face twisted in anger, reached for a whip tacked to the wall.
“Watch out,” I shouted, hearing my own voice echo in my chest.
The coach turned quickly and grabbed the whip. The two struggled, but she won. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a pocketknife, cut the whip in pieces and let it fall to the ground. The floor was already littered with penis pacifiers, and the crowd crushed them under their shoes. The handcuffs were then taken outside and dropped in the sewer. There. We were done at the Nasty Girl. Not a single magazine was salvageable. It had taken only five minutes.
Above the din, I heard sirens. “Split up,” the coach yelled. “Go in different directions.”
Stella and I began to run. “Wait a minute,” she shouted as we turned the corner. “Stop or they’ll know it was us.” We stood together catching our breath, fighting the urge to bolt. My knees shook and my face was frozen in a grin.
“You liked that, didn’t you?” Stella teased.
The next day Kevin turned up for breakfast. I felt exhilarated, and gestured wildly as I told about the coach, the chair, the racks of magazines. He listened quietly, then said: “I read the morning paper. It said you did thousands of dollars worth of damage.”
I felt my jaw drop. “Yeah. To pornography. We did thousands of dollars of damage to pornography.”
He wasn’t impressed. “What do you think you accomplished by doing that?”
“I feel empowered,” I said. “Like I’m not a victim anymore.” My voice sounded high and tinny. I felt my eyes fill up. Don’t, I told myself.
“Yeah, but you victimized someone else.”
“No. I fought back.”
“The paper’s headline says Feminism Breeds Violence. Was that your goal?”
This time I met his stare. He seemed flat, colorless, and a vein was bulging on his forehead.
“You destroyed property, broke the law, and violated the First Amendment. Are you proud of that?”
The word violate rang in my ear. He was using it incorrectly. Screw it, I thought. Judy can have him. “I think you better go,” I said.
That night I called Stella to see if she had seen the papers. She hadn’t.
“It says there were a hundred of us,” I told her.
She laughed. “The shop owner had to say that. He’s probably embarrassed he couldn’t handle fifty women.”
“How do you feel now?” I asked. I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line. It sounded slow and steady. I wanted to be that calm. “Do you feel okay with what we did? Do you think we made a difference?”
“Well,” she began, “it depends on what kind of difference you mean. If you mean, did we put a pornography shop out of business?— then no. They’ll file an insurance claim and reopen in a week. But if you’re talking personally—did that action make a personal difference to me?—then yes. It changed my world.”
I sighed loudly. I felt relieved, as if a thick root had been pulled from my spine.
“It’s not about destroying them,” she continued. “It’s about not letting them destroy you.”
That night, images of my father bled into my dreams. The rage, the beatings. The way he stuttered, red-faced, as he whipped his belt from his pants. The choice was always the same—his belt or his dick. Either way, I usually got both.
The women from the rally were there, off to the side, reading my name over and over. My father was above me, hand raised in the air, belt wrapped tightly around his fist. Blood and fury gathered in his face. “You said my name,” he roared.
I watched the arc of the leather strap as it cut through the air. But I was not afraid. I clenched my teeth and raised my arm to meet the belt. We struggled, but I took the belt from him. With a knife, I cut the belt in pieces and let it fall to the floor.
“You don’t own me anymore,” I told my father, my face pressed up against his. “You can’t destroy me now.”
He disappeared, evaporated into his own rage. And in my dream, I joined the women in the park.
elizabeth o’neill is a novelist and short-story writer who lives in the Northeast and now spends every Father’s Day with her hubby and baby daughter, a very small but powerful feminist.
No Screwing Around
vashti
I confronted him in the street yesterday, with neighbors looking on: “You’ve been screwing her since the week you got back, you insensitive bastard! You have no respect for me.”
True, meeting him for part of his tour through Europe had been a disaster, ending with us traveling in different directions and seemingly split. But I had written off the hellacious encounter as simply some weird travel dynamic. After all, he was one of my best friends. It was a friendship that had evolved so beautifully into a romantic relationship just a few months before our trip.
Now he started bumbling around for an excuse, so I continued, “You’ve been treating me like crap for weeks!”
“The thing with Sarah,” he said, “just happened.”
I slapped him across the face. “Another one of your pathetic excuses.”
He jumped back. “That was uncalled for.”
I walked right up to him. He looked nervous, even afraid. “You’ve been slapping me in the face over and over,” I shouted. “You’ve been spitting in my face. You’ve been treating me like dirt, and you want to be my friend?” I spit on the ground. “Forget it!”
He got on his bike and started to leave. “I’m not going to sit around and—”
I interrupted and hollered, “I curse the memory of you in my life!”
Girl, I was yelling. Finally. It felt so good. I was just totally feeling, in my body, letting out everything that was all pent up, letting him hold and absorb the pain of two months of crying myself to sleep, transferring it from me to him, where it belonged.
I felt amazing afterward: so light, so free. I started laughing and dancing. When I turned around, I saw the three little girls from next door staring at me in wide-eyed wonder. I leaned over toward them, and said, “He deserved that.” They got these huge grins on their faces and started giggling.
The next time they saw me, two minutes later, they were all excited and beaming up at me, cheering, “He deserved that!” That made me happy.
vashti is a writer who don’t take no guff. She is quite pleased to be a role model for little girls everywhere.
Biker Babe
hilken mancini
I like to ride my bike because I can go anywhere at any time. This is important in Boston, where the public transit trains shut down at 12:30 A.M., or something ridiculous like that. Once, I found it was important in Boston for another reason, too.
Late one summer night, after some dumb loft party, I was heading home. I was twenty-two and living in a tiny apartment in the North End, Boston’s historic Italian neighborhood. To get home, I often took a shortcut through Haymarket. By day it was packed with vendors and shoppers, and carts and tents filled with fruits, vegetables, and all kinds of smelly fish. At night the tents were empty. Only scraps of whatever wasn’t sold that day would be left—tomatoes, cabbages, and onions strewn about the street. Traveling over the discarded tomatoes and old cobblestone roads, I could access an underpass—a little tunnel big enough for pedestrians and bikers, but not cars. Once through, I’d come out facing the North End, my neighborhood.
On that particular night, when I was almost at Haymarket, I slowed down to cut across traffic. There were only a few cars in the area at that hour and I kept pedaling, sure they knew to pass. Suddenly I got this cre
epy feeling that something was behind me: You know, when you can’t tell if you’re getting freaked out over nothing, or if something actually is about to happen, and then when it does, you feel dumb that you hadn’t looked to see if your instinct had been right in the first place. Well, before I could turn around to check, I felt this hand—yes, a hand!— reach out and squeeze my ass.
Someone had grabbed my butt.
Before I knew it, I fell off my bike and onto the street. Oww. I looked up to see the offending car pick up speed and drive ahead. Some jerk had knocked me off my bike to feel my ass, was all I could think as I jumped back up. I couldn’t let someone do that and get away with it. I pedaled to catch up. I didn’t want to lose sight of the car. I was so angry I was shaking with rage. What if there had been more cars behind me when I’d fallen? I could easily have been hit.
I looked around as I pedaled and realized there was a traffic light ahead. I pedaled faster, thinking, Turn red, turn red. I gained speed and was now almost to the car. As I approached, I saw the scumbag guy in the passenger seat. Then I saw something that both freaked me out and bummed me out at the same time: There was a girl in the driver’s seat. Why would a girl do that to another girl? The fact that she had slowed down just so some guy could pinch my ass was pathetic. My anger grew into a hateful disgust toward those two losers. Screw them, I growled as the traffic light changed from yellow to red. Their car slowed, then stopped. My heart was beating hard. I got closer, and from between my legs I pulled my kryptonite lock out of its holder. I lifted it as high as I could and brought it down hard before jerking my hand back. One fell swoop. The glass of their rear window sprayed into the backseat.
That Takes Ovaries! Page 20