31
Women’s Work
Saturday, October 13th, 24 days until the midterms
“That’s not the way I heard it,” says Imogen, rooting around in the kitchen island drawer for a bottle opener.
“You think you have insight into Darryl Gniewek’s marriage?”
“Nope.” She’s working her way through the counter drawers now. “Kathy Gniewek’s marriage.”
“Kathy Gniewek?” I can feel my eyebrows approaching my hairline.
“Kathy Gniewek volunteers on the Delgado campaign.”
“Does she now?”
How’s that for plot thickening? I guess it explains Darryl being so understanding about Imogen and her support for Mrs. McCready and Sylvia Delgado.
Imogen has given up on finding an opener in our poorly provisioned rental kitchen and resorts to popping the beer cap off by lining the top up against the edge of the kitchen sink and giving it a quick hit with the heel of her hand. A woman of many skills, she gets it on the first try.
“She does indeed. She and Delgado have their kids in the same day care and have even exchanged a little babysitting. And Kathy Gniewek tells a very different story.”
Imogen comes and plops down on the couch, forcing me over. She takes a long pull at her beer and sighs with satisfaction.
“On the money/job front, Darryl is not making 80K. He’s making 70K. He’s had the same job pretty much since high school—the job is nothing if not steady.”
Imogen wriggles around until she’s in lotus position on the couch and starts rubbing her feet.
“I must have walked fifteen miles doing door-to-door canvassing today. My feet are killing me,” she says by way of explanation.
“So Darryl inflated his salary a bit, so what?”
“That’s not all. Kathy is not making 80K, she’s making 100K. The hospital keeps hiring and Kathy keeps getting promoted. Kathy says it’s not a problem for her that she makes more, but it seems to be a problem for Darryl. So Kathy suggested Darryl consider being a physician’s assistant. And guess what Darryl does?”
“Darryl’s not interested in a nursing career,” I say, trying to head her off. “It’s not a capital crime.”
“It’s not just that Darryl wasn’t interested. Darryl said some very nasty stuff about Kathy’s job, saying he wouldn’t be caught dead having to wipe old men’s asses, calling it women’s work, etc. This about the work that allowed them to buy a house and enjoy a few extras for their little girl, despite Darryl’s frozen wages and job prospects. Darryl effectively took a shit on her job and on Kathy herself.”
Imogen sets her beer on the coffee table and slides off the couch, stretches her legs out in front of her, and bends forward to touch her toes. She emits something between a grunt and a groan as she presses forward, folding herself neatly in half, her chest and face pressed into her legs, stretching out her back and the backs of her legs.
“For Kathy, it was the final provocation.” She’s talking into her legs and her voice is muffled. “Kathy and Darryl have always had their ups and downs, but they’d been fighting pretty regularly since Trump’s election. Kathy can’t get her head around the fact that not only did Darryl vote for Trump, he continues to support him. Despite the Mueller investigation, trashing Obamacare, tax cuts for the wealthy, pulling out of the Paris accord, etc., etc., Darryl’s still backing Trump. He’s not the man she thought he was.”
Imogen scrambles to her feet and grabs her beer and takes a long pull.
“So Kathy tells him to take his scrawny Trump-voting ass and get out. That she’ll consider having him back when he’s ready to be a grown-up and face his responsibilities, which include treating the mother of his child with respect. As far as I can tell, Darryl’s not so much economically insecure as emotionally insecure. Or maybe just immature.”
“She told him to move out? How long ago was this?”
Talking about ‘women’s work’ and ‘old men’s asses’ does not sound like the Darryl I know. I’m wondering how much of this is Imogen’s penchant for vivid storytelling.
“It happened at the beginning of the summer. They’re legally separated.”
Legally separated? That doesn’t sound like Imogen hyperbole. She’s a JD; she uses legal terms like a scalpel. I can’t believe Darryl didn’t mention it.
“You know this directly from Kathy?”
“Some from Kathy, some through Delgado.”
“Well, then it’s just hearsay.”
“Jesus, Iz. This is a rental apartment in MO DES TOE, not a fucking grand jury.”
She shuffles off to the bathroom with a second beer to soak in the tub.
My first reaction to Imogen’s bombshell is a twinge: I’d have thought we were close enough that Darryl would have told me that he was separated. Even as I think this, I recognize it’s total bullshit. There are plenty of things about myself I haven’t shared with Darryl, like that I’m actually a Democrat. Marriage is a private business, and Darryl has a right to his privacy.
I don’t know quite what to make of the discrepancies between things Darryl has said and the game of telephone between Kathy Gniewek, Sylvia Delgado, Imogen, and me. But I realize I have a teeny piece of evidence that suggests Darryl might not currently live at the same address as Kathy. When I first met him, he described picking up his daughter, Riley, for their birthday date. If he lived with Kathy and Riley, would he use the words ‘pick her up’? And the photo in front of the house, wouldn’t he have taken it in the living room, in front of the fireplace, perhaps?
It’s not clear that any of this bears on Darryl’s decision to vote for Donald Trump. That a man’s job has been long-term and he’s not in imminent danger of losing the job doesn’t rule out having economic anxiety. Also, there doesn’t have to have been a single driver of his vote. Jobs and the economy could have been part of a mix, including stuff like his worries about his dad’s disability.
But why wasn’t Kathy Gniewek worried about jobs? About entitlement programs? She didn’t support Trump, and now, not only is she not supporting Reed, she’s volunteering for Delgado. Why was Kathy Gniewek’s view of her family’s economic interests so different from Darryl’s?
What would it mean if the primary driver of Darryl’s vote was racism, as Imogen keeps suggesting? What if racism was the primary driver for all Trump’s 63 million voters?
I just can’t get my head around that. It would mean that Darryl Gniewek is not the person I like to think he is. It would mean this is not the country I’ve believed in for the last thirty-three years.
I really just can’t see that.
32
Endangered Species 3
Saturday, October 13th, 24 days until the midterms
The billboard has been updated again. Now it’s an image of a chalk outline of a body, like from a crime scene. The text reads, “Over 18,000 white men shot and killed each year.* Will you Save the White Man?” The text of the footnote is as large as the main text and reads, “*roughly 16,000, or 86% of the deaths were suicides.”31, 32
WTF?
I’ve heard that white supremacist groups, like the Council of Conservative Citizens, claim that whites are under siege, that there’s an epidemic of black on white murders that have been covered up. But this is white guys shooting themselves. What is the point of this? Who is the target audience?
Maybe more importantly, could this impact the Reed/Delgado election? I’d say there’s no way a single billboard impacts the election in a district that’s something like forty miles deep and a hundred miles wide. Still, choosing a spot on Route 99 in Modesto was smart. Everybody in Modesto drives Route 99. And most everybody who buys groceries takes this exit. So that’s about 200,000 people. Given that the total population of the district is a little over 700,000, that’s pretty good coverage for a single billboard.
33
Flying Solo
Saturday, October 13th, 24 days until the midterms
“Darryl running late?
” Charlene asks, as she slides a coaster in front of me.
Without asking, she pulls a pint glass from the fridge and slides it under the Stella tap.
“Umm, no. Darryl can’t make it tonight. Child care, I think.”
“So you’re on your own, for once,” she says. “Flying solo.”
A small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth as she places the Stella on the coaster in front of me. She has the cat-eye liner on—heavy black, which emphasizes the doe shape of her eyes and pallor of her skin. She’s wearing a black spaghetti strap top, almost a camisole, so the straps of her cobalt blue bra are visible, as is a smooth strip of skin between the tank and the top of her low-riding jeans.
“You know I’m just visiting. That I’m not staying in Modesto, right?”
Her smile widens and she gives a little shrug. “I might not be staying in Modesto either.”
I smile back.
…
Charlene’s hair makes a silky, golden puddle on the pillow. Curled up on her side facing the edge of the bed, she presents an unobstructed view of pale, smooth skin, tapering from shoulders to waist, swelling again to the full peach of her ass, disappearing under the covers. It makes complete sense to me that this view of women has been immortalized in marble. I lay my hand in the dell of her waist and she stirs.
“Gotta pee,” she says, grabbing my dress shirt for cover as she heads out to the bathroom.
I roll onto my back to wait, noting, as I do, that I’m a little hungover.
“Iz. Iz! There’s a black woman in the living room.”
“What?” I must have fallen back asleep.
“There’s a black woman in the living room. A light-skinned black woman.”
This doesn’t compute. And then it does. I don’t think of Imogen as an African American woman, knowing the full ethno-racial recipe it took to make her, which let me tell you is pretty damned complicated and contains only a small fraction of African American DNA. But I guess if you look like you’re carved from alabaster, Imogen looks pretty dark.
“That’s just Imogen.”
“Who’s Imogen?” she asks, her voice flat.
“Imogen’s my . . . my roommate.”
Charlene is staring at me. Like she’s waiting for more, but I can’t think of anything to add.
Charlene goes from stillness to frenetic activity. She rips off my dress shirt and throws on her own clothes, her outer clothes, that is. Jeans, tank top, hoodie. Not bothering with her underwear, which she stuffs in her bag.
“What are you doing? What’s the matter? Okay, wait.”
I throw on boxers, go to the bedroom door and throw it open and lean into the hallway to the living room.
“Imogen?”
“Yeah?” Her voice carries from the living room, but it’s clear I don’t have her full attention.
“Imogen!”
“What?! I’m in the middle of something here, Iz.”
“My friend Charlene wants to know what I am to you?”
“What you are to me? What are you talking about?”
“What is the nature of our relationship?”
“‘The nature of our relationship’? Right this moment I’d say it’s kinda crap. You leave your dirty dishes in the sink, and you’re interrupting my work. Basically, I’d say you’re a shit roommate and I’m considering kicking you out.”
I turn back to Charlene, standing just inside the bedroom with her bag over her shoulder and arms crossed across her chest.
“It’s just a cereal bowl and coffee cup. Imogen won’t kick me out over that: she can’t afford the rent on her own.”
Charlene processes this for a bit. Then she shrugs and unzips her hoodie.
So I head into the bathroom to brush my teeth. When Charlene follows me, I make space for her at the sink and hand off my toothbrush to her. Then we head back to bed until hunger forces us out in search of food around 2 p.m. By that time Imogen has headed off to wherever Imogen heads off.
34
Be a Man
Sunday, October 14th, 23 days until the midterms
“I said I would and I will. Jesus.”
From the comfort of my office, I listen to Corey’s end of a cell phone conversation and try to fill in the gaps, figure out who he’s talking to. I’d put money on the fact that the person on the other end of the phone is female. If I had to guess, I’d guess girlfriend. But I can’t for the life of me imagine what female person would date Corey.
“I said I would.”
“Goddammit, Cheryl. I’ve been busy!”
“Oh, no, baby, no. Seriously, I’m gonna take care of it. You don’t need to worry.”
Corey’s voice drops and a truck rumbles by outside. I can’t make out the words anymore. Is he groveling? Maybe they’re making up, maybe he’s whispering sweet nothings. Okay, that’s gross.
Before I can get up and shut out the murmur of Corey’s endearments, Corey stands in my office door. Not good.
“What does it mean to be a man?”
There was just a hint of sibilance on the s in ‘does.’ An early tell that Corey is lit, en route to drunk. I consider telling him to get out of my office. But I know he would take that as proof that he had won, that he had gotten under my skin.
“In evolutionary terms?” I ask. “As opposed to an animal? An ape?”
“Don’t be a pussy, Iz.”
“Ah”—the light dawns—“as opposed to a woman, you mean.”
Corey is an utter reptile, with his prehistoric face and his slow, sinister, cold-blooded delivery.
“‘The man of the house.’ You’ve heard that before. What do you think it means?”
“It sounds kind of anachronistic. The sort of thing my parents would say.”
Or my adoptive parents, anyway. Imogen’s and my mother had little patience for that kind of gender role, even back in the 1990s. But the Whitmans, my foster and subsequently adoptive parents, were what Imogen calls Super Christians. And the Whitmans did celebrate traditional gender roles. Of course, I have no intention of sharing any of that with Corey.
“What do your parents mean when they say it?”
“Did. They’re gone. Well, they were Christian. They meant it in the Christian sense: as God is to his Church, so the Man is to his Family. He’s the head of the family—he guides the family, but he also has responsibility, to care for and provide for the family. As I said, it’s pretty anachronistic.”
I check my watch, not surreptitiously, and discover it’s 7:20.
“Is it? Is it really anachronistic? When people say ‘be a man,’ what are they saying? Aren’t they saying it’s time to show leadership, time to take responsibility, do the necessary, do the difficult thing?”
“I’d say that ‘be a man’ is pretty anachronistic too.”
“Yeah, how about ‘man up’?” asks Corey.
“That I do hear,” I allow.
“How about ‘nut up’ or ‘sack up’? Still in usage. And still meaning the same thing: resilience in the face of adversity. Or more to the point: testicular fortitude.”
“‘Testicular fortitude’?”
“Exactly. So you need to recognize that it is still, today, in early twenty-first-century America, a very meaningful concept—testicular fortitude, or being a man.”
Corey pauses here and glares at me, waiting for me to push back. I don’t. In part to disappoint his expectation, but also because I’ve used the expression ‘nut up’—sort of as a joke, but I’ve used it. I’ve even heard Imogen use it, not recently and certainly tongue-in-cheek, but still. Recently, she has started saying, ‘Grow some tits!’
“Alright”—Corey continues when it’s clear I’m not going to contradict him—“here’s the point. If it is going to mean something, to be a man, then it has to mean something to not be a man. If all humans are men, then there’s no need for the word ‘man.’ Are you with me?”
“Yes, Corey, I’m with you.”
But I’m not along for the ride w
ith whatever web of half-truths Corey is spinning today. I get my messenger bag out from under the desk.
“Just checking. Okay. For there to be Man, there needs to be Woman. This, this is where we see the genius of Donald J. Trump. Do you remember the exact words on the Access Hollywood tape?”
“Something about ‘grabbing women by the pussy’?”
“Close. What he said was, ‘You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy.’ In nine words, he laid out a Testicular Fortitude Manifesto. A complete repudiation of that equal opportunity, Title IX shit. Just Man, Woman, and the relationship between them.”
I pause in throwing stuff into the messenger bag to stare at him, at the self-satisfaction on his repulsive, reptile face. Self-satisfaction at the steaming pile of sophistry he just laid on my desk.
“And you think that helped him? You think ‘pussy grabbing’ helped Trump win the presidency?”
“Hell, yes! You know what I think?”
“No, Corey, what do you think?”
“I think Trump leaked the Access Hollywood tape himself. Fucking genius.”
Corey is the living caricature of Imogen’s view of Republicans. His very existence makes it difficult to push back on many of her ugliest, her most hyperbolic ideas about Republicans. How can you push back on her contention that Republican elites exploit, manipulate, and have contempt for their base, when here is Corey, doing exactly that? It’s like Corey is on Imogen’s side, except that she hates him and thinks he should die.
Increasingly, I think she might be right.
35
White Profiling
Tuesday, October 16th, 21 days until the midterms
Latest poll: Reed (R) 48%, Delgado (D) 37%, Undecided 15%
Field poll, conducted October 13–14, 2018
Rules of Resistance Page 13