“So you consider yourself a feminist?” He was smiling.
I chuckled. “Yes.” The answer was more complicated than that, but that was all I had time to say for the moment. Then I added, “Why? Is that a dealbreaker for you?” I looked at him from beneath my lashes.
“No, not at all.” He was still leaning toward me. I was a little unnerved by it. I inhaled a deep breath and then let my chest fall as I exhaled. From the corner of my eye, I thought he may have sneaked a look at my breasts. It was difficult to tell, however.
“I can wait for you after your meeting if you want,” he said then.
I would like that. I looked at him then, with a flirtatious half-smile. I didn’t mean to be flirtatious. Well, maybe I did. I was having difficulty reconciling my feelings as of late.
“It’s not a good idea to walk around here that late by yourself,” he continued.
“OK, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
“But you have the interview tomorrow, right?”
“Not until eleven a.m.”
“OK, then.” I paused. “Thank you.”
“Ningun problema.”
“You never told me that you speak Spanish,” I said accusingly.
“Only a little. You can’t escape it living in Miami.”
I nodded. “I’m going to have to watch what I say around you.”
“Have you been talking about me behind my back?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” He would notice that I hadn’t answered his question.
Class started then. I felt a little flush.
After class Melanie and I proceeded to the meeting. Tarek said that he would wait for me downstairs in the lounge area.
Melanie and I found the room and grabbed seats in the back. Then we helped ourselves to pizza. It was already 8 p.m., and I wouldn’t be home until 9:30 or 10 at the earliest. At least there were only two more days left in the week.
We sat down with our food.
“So tell me,” Melanie began. She was always so direct. “What’s going on with you two?”
When people asked me those kind of open-ended questions, I usually played dumb to drag out the conversation. However, it was late and I was tired and Melanie was my friend.
“You mean between Tarek and me?”
“Yeah!”
“We’re just friends.”
“Well, you look like more than just friends to me.” Then, “Do you like him?”
“Yeah, I like him. I like Josh, Dinesh and Eric too.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I don’t know.” I was being honest. “I’m—attracted to him, yes. But—”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I like him too much as a friend.”
“You don’t want to ruin that.” She said it as a statement, not as a question.
“Right.” At least, I don’t want to ruin that for now.
“But I will say,” Melanie continued, eyebrows raised, with one finger in the air, “that I think that he’s interested in you.”
I wanted to tell her everything that I had told Lara and Patrick the last time I had talked to them. But we didn’t have enough time. Later, I figured.
“I—I don’t have enough recent dating experience to figure these things out,” I said then. It was a totally honest statement. I was frustrated with myself.
“Hey, you don’t need experience to know when a man is into you,” Melanie said knowingly. She was like five years younger than me, but she was wiser than me in this. All of a sudden, I felt like an eighteen-year-old.
I sighed. “I guess,” I said.
The meeting began.
The Feminist Forum was a group of, I would soon find out, ardent left-wing young women who all pretty much subscribed to the same beliefs. I had hoped that the group represented women of various ideals who came together to support female empowerment. But, as most things in this town, it was a group of women who assumed that you believed the exact same things as they did.
The meeting began and the President of the group had each of the participants give a short introduction of themselves. There were at least thirty young women there, so this would take a while.
Most of the women were first-year students. They looked so young to me. Of course, I thought, most of them are about twenty-four to twenty-five years old. Jesus Christ, I’m old.
One by one, the women (I guess they were technically women, but I actually thought of them as girls), introduced themselves. The President had asked them to say their names (state your name and serial number for the record, I chuckled to myself), and state why they went to law school.
That got me thinking to why I had gone to law school. Hmm. I had better think of something fast. The real reason that I had begun law school, because I had had too much free time and was starting to depress myself with my thoughts, was probably not appropriate.
I listened to the other women. Every single one of them gave pretty much the same reason for going to law school.
“I want to save the world.”
“I want to make a difference.”
“I want to protect human rights.”
“I want to help people.”
And variants thereof.
Melanie and I looked at each other. She raised her eyebrows.
The issue with these responses was, they were all fine and good, but how were these girls going to repay their student loans and afford malpractice insurance after they graduated, if they all were going to work as volunteers or for nonprofit agencies?
It appeared that these girls were going to forsake making a lot of money in order to “save the world.” However, the fact was, these girls may scoff at rich lawyers who worked for firms, but rich people kept the world moving, and rich people not only created employment, but they also donated vast sums of money to help others. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one example. Who did they think donated money to research new medicines for the developing world? Rich people!
Melanie was next.
“Hi, my name is Melanie. I’m in the evening program. I went to law school because I want to work in legislation, hopefully on the Hill.”
Good answer.
I was next, and I was the last one.
“Hi, I’m Isabel. I went to law school because—um, I’m too anal retentive and not social enough for business school.” That was totally true. “And because I’m highly analytical, and law school was a good fit for me.” There, that was a truthful but relatively innocuous answer.
The President went on to talk about their upcoming events.
“We’re having a rally in support of reproductive rights.”
Wait, I thought. So in order to be a feminist, I have to be pro-choice? I didn’t really consider myself pro-choice. I mean, I didn’t know whether I was pro-choice. But why couldn’t I be a feminist if I wasn’t pro-choice? I thought that feminism was about women doing and believing whatever they wanted to.
“And then,” the President continued, “in the spring we have our big event where we have a bake sale. We charge women 72 cents for each item and men $1 for each item, since women only earn 72 cents for every $1 that men earn.”
I had a lot to say about that as well, but now was not the time. Besides, I was tired.
I really didn’t get it. Feminism was about women making their own choices, right? I guess for this club, it meant that women could make their own choices as long as they made the correct choices, right? Correct according to this group.
At that moment, I felt that I couldn’t say anything. If I said what I really thought, everyone here would dismiss it, like I was some freak. That’s what this city did to you.
I was suddenly reminded of something that my mother had told me a while ago.
My mother, like me, also considered herself a feminist, and she had said something to me once that made sense.
“The truth is,” she had said, “Back in the 60s, when feminism first starte
d to be popular, women were sold a bill of goods.”
“What do you mean?” I had asked her, intrigued.
“Women were told that they could do everything. They could work, have fulfilling careers, have and raise children, do volunteer work, travel, take care of the house, etc.”
“OK, so you’re saying that ‘having it all,’ as they say, isn’t possible?”
“Right. My point,” she had said, eyes intense and wagging her finger at me, Argentine-style, “is simply that women cannot possibly do all those things and do them well. By that I mean, they can’t do them all the way they would like to.”
Instead of dismissing my mother’s comments, as I often did, I had actually listened to her that time, because what she said was logical. Also, she would know, I figured, since she had worked and raised three kids by herself after my father died.
“If you work,” she had said, “you put your kids in daycare, so maybe you won’t raise them how you would like them to be raised.”
“I get that,” I had said, thinking back to when I had taken care of my cousin’s newborn in Barcelona when I was about twenty-two years old.
“So now women are expected to do all of that,” my mother had continued, “and to do it all perfectly. There are a lot of expectations. Not only that—” she was looking more and more bothered, “after more women started working, since families had two incomes, prices for everything went up, from airfare to food to clothes. Everything!”
That made economic sense too. If people are willing to pay more for stuff because they now have two incomes, prices rise.
“So you think women shouldn’t work?” I had asked her, surprised. The thought of staying at home without exercising my intellect was anathema to me.
“No, I’m not saying that,” she had responded adamantly. “I mean, I work and I’m glad to be working. I’m saying that what I’ve described are the logical consequences of what happened.”
I sighed, thinking of that past conversation. I was disappointed at the club meeting. However, I was glad that I had gone. It only reinforced my opinion that people in general were lame and illogical and didn’t think for themselves anymore. Instead, they were told, “If you’re a feminist, this is what you think.” They wanted to be feminists, so they adopted the ideas that these “feminists” told them. But in doing so, they really weren’t being feminists because they weren’t thinking for themselves.
Ah well. I’m only one person. I wasn’t going to convince anyone anyway.
Then I smiled. The other good thing was that I would get to go home on the metro with Tarek, just the two of us.
Then my heart froze. The scary thing was that I was going on the metro with him, alone! Jesus, what had I been thinking? Also, the later at night it got, the lower my inhibitions always became. It was like I was drunk with sleep.
Well, it was too late to go back now.
When the meeting was over, Melanie and I left together. As we walked down the stairs to the lounge area, she said, “I thought there would be more substantial food. Sorry about that.”
“That’s OK. I’m glad I went.”
“Really?” She seemed surprised.
“Yes, I know it’s not a club for me.”
Melanie sighed. “I know, they all think one way.”
That was why Melanie and I were friends. We were on different sides of the political spectrum, but we respected each other’s beliefs. She wanted to work on Capitol Hill. It would be good for someone like her to be in politics.
“I mean,” she continued, “you can still be a feminist and be pro-life.”
“Right,” I said. We walked downstairs. “But not according to the people in that meeting.”
“That’s because for them, ‘feminist,’ with a capital ‘F,’ is equated with a certain set of beliefs.”
“You got it,” I responded.
“See,” Melanie wagged her finger for emphasis, “That’s why people like you and me should join groups like that, to educate them.”
“Hmmm,” I pondered, not sure what good that would do. “Are you taking the metro?” I asked her.
“No, I drove.” Melanie lived in Maryland. She leaned toward me and lowered her voice. “So you two can be alone.” She smiled.
“Oh my God,” I felt my face getting hot. I took a deep breath.
We said goodbye and I walked to the lounge area. When I saw Tarek, my heart leaped.
That’s only because I think he’s attractive, I told myself. He and I both know I think he’s attractive; that’s no secret.
He had his laptop open and his earbuds in.
I approached slowly and waved. He saw me and smiled.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi, Isabel. Ready?”
“Yeah.”
He was chuckling as he packed up his stuff.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, curious.
“I was chatting with my sister. She has a new boyfriend.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but, she’ll probably break up with him by the time I’m home for Christmas.”
“She’s a heartbreaker?” I asked, amused.
“Not really, at least I don’t think so. They’re never very serious for her.”
“Well, she’s young, right?”
“She’s twenty-five.”
“Yeah, so that’s probably understandable.”
“She dates mostly Latin men.”
“Well, then she and I have something in common.”
“Really? You only date Latin men?” He asked curiously.
We walked out of the building and down the stairs.
“Not consciously. That’s just how it’s turned out.” I paused. “It’s not like a rule or anything.”
“So they’re your type?”
You’re my type. Then I organized my thoughts.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I have a ‘type,’ ” using my air quotes.
I decided to turn the tables on him.
“Tell me, what’s your type?”
He looked at me and smiled. “I don’t discriminate.”
“So, basically, she has to be breathing?”
He laughed. “Basically,” he mimicked my word choice, and I wasn’t sure if he had done it consciously or not, “I like women who are self-confident. That’s about it.”
I nodded. “Makes sense.”
I felt a tension between us then, not a bad tension, like an electricity. We were both walking pretty fast. He always matched my pace, and at first I had thought that he was walking fast because I did, but then I had remembered that even before we started to hang out, I had seen him walking fast.
It was starting to get cool outside and I didn’t have a jacket. The wind had also picked up. I shivered, but I wasn’t sure whether it was because of the wind or because of him.
“So how did the meeting go?” he asked.
“OK, I mean, it was kind of a bust from my point of view. It’s not a group I’m interested in.”
“Really. Why not?”
We were entering the metro station. I stood on the right side of the escalator, so that we could talk. The right side was for people who stood as opposed to the people who walked down on the left.
“If I tell you, it involves me—unloading a little bit. Do you mind?”
“No, of course not.” I could tell by his smile that he really didn’t mind. In fact, I got the impression that he was glad for some reason.
I told him my impressions of the group, and how it was obvious that they considered that everyone who called themselves ‘feminists’ had to have certain conformist beliefs.
“It’s disappointing,” I concluded.
We were at the platform. Our train would arrive in about ten minutes.
“So you’re not pro-choice?” he asked me.
I hated when people asked me this question, because they usually asked me in order to argue with me, not that I necessarily thought that was Tarek’s reason for asking it. The oth
er reason I didn’t like the question was because I really didn’t know the answer.
“OK, so—” I began, trying to organize my thoughts, difficult at this late hour and after the hectic day I had had, “the short answer to your question is not really, I mean, I am pro-choice but—” I looked around. “Let’s walk further down the platform.” We turned and walked and I lowered my voice. “I mean, I think an argument can be made that at the time the country was founded, the Founders considered that abortion was permissible during the first trimester, around the time when the baby’s first movements could be felt. So if you look at the question only from that viewpoint, maybe you can make an argument for it during the first trimester.”
“But not for after the first trimester.”
“Right. But,” I continued, looking around again, “my issue with abortion is what is the right protected? If the right is the right not to be a mother, then you can give the baby up for adoption when it’s born and you don’t have to be a mother. And if the issue is the right not to be pregnant, or the right to do whatever they want with their bodies, then women can either abstain or use birth control. That’s their choice.” I stopped and then clarified. “And I’m not talking about rape because, obviously, that’s not the woman’s choice.”
We had stopped and were looking at each other.
“So,” Tarek said, “the choice is whether to have sex or not.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Right, that’s what I think.” I was a little unnerved when he had said ‘sex,’ but I continued nonetheless. “This is not the nineteenth century. Women don’t have to give men sex whenever men want. The choice is thus when a woman chooses to have sex, protected or not.” I was switching to my in-class tone, using ‘thus.’ “Women can’t control when they ovulate, but they can control when they have sex and whether they use protection or not.”
“I agree.”
“So, I guess technically I am pro-choice but, like you said, the choice is whether to have sex or not, specifically, whether to have unprotected sex or not. I mean—” I was even more unnerved talking about contraception with him. “If you use it right, protection is almost always effective.” I paused. “So if we all have to take sides, I guess I’m pro-life, but I can’t tell anyone that.”
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