FIFTY-NINE

Older Writer, Younger Writer

Catherine returns her attention to Soft Curls, even though the creaking has not stopped, and the structure before her that is restraining the women therefore continues to threaten collapse.

“I was writing a novel,” the young woman is heard to say, once Catherine looks into her eyes once more, shutting out the others.

The only unrestrained woman in the room is surprised, on the one hand, that the young woman before her possesses another artistic outlet, since she previously exclusively expressed passion about her videos, but is not shocked on the other that the non-refundable would attempt such a demanding project, even though young, since she appears to have her material quite together. The likeness of the other streetwalker-writer Catherine knew comes and goes in her mind, allowing a comparison to be made of the romantic before her to the older and wiser woman she knew a year ago.

No wonder I was drawn to her. And even now, she remains calmer than those around her, Catherine adds to herself, after an additional creaking sound catches her attention.

“I was writing what I know, of course, and so, the men in my book were like the men that I see all around me, which means that they demanded all that men demand of women, in the real world. For pleasure,” Soft Curls adds. “One night, I didn’t set out to work because I was feverish and throwing up, and I saw, on TV, a scene where a man demanded that his girlfriend play with a play thing that he’d just bought and brought into their bedroom. And she did.

And that’s when I realized that my novel -- especially in its unfinished, incomplete state -- might actually be helping men, that I might actually be doing their dirty work for them, through it, by including in it what girls and women see all around them and have to deal with, and so, by being real. What a vicious circle.

It was quite the shock to me, the realization that, even though I was pointing out all along what men do that’s just not nice, I was probably helping men overall with the grooming of girls. And I really didn’t want to be helping men. But if girls and young women were reading the titillating scenes in my work without realizing that my written world shouldn’t become their reality, that men had no right to ask that it did, then what?

But I just . . . I just felt that, in order to realistically show love growing, I had to show it somehow starting out of and poking out of ground where growth seemed impossible, where nutrients for it appeared completely lacking, where it seemed that it could not only never begin, but also never continue to grow stronger either. Love out of nothing, out of emptiness. But the real life side-effects of doing that . . .

 I began to worry about the young females who were just learning about the male-female world, and how my novel might actually be their textbook, but in the male way. I didn’t want them to fall. I soon so missed my characters, however, and I so wanted them back touching and interacting, that . . .

Well, when it was all off my chest, I knew that, despite it all, I still wanted to write a tale about a man who regains his humanity, or at least part of it. Or, who finds it or that mere part of it, for the first time. And a story about a woman who struggles in his world, in a version created from the real world. So, I realized that I really did just want to write a love story of sorts, even with its strange elements. In the real world, after all, a girl and a boy, or a man and a woman, meet and get to know each other, and then form whatever relationship they can, against this very backdrop in our society that I depict to the extreme in my work. It’s just how it is.

I wondered how a woman could even write life in any other way, really, when men have groomed her audience into expecting certain things to happen because it’s what men want and demand. Is it, then, that only through a complete fabrication remains the only way to write a true romance, in this day and age? And, moreover, is a little ignorance something due to every girl, for her sake, before she learns? But isn’t knowledge power, and the sooner the better? Plus, that fabrication of true romance would bring on many ‘yeah right, like he wouldn’t cheat in the real world, given that chance,’ or something along those lines, seeing a wonderful, but unreal male hero. And yet, I would so, so want him not to cheat, and tears would stream down my cheeks if he didn’t, and so, I also realized that writing was more complicated than I first thought.

Well, good thing that I still had my videos. In them, I line up all the good scenes, so that nothing bad, nothing else exists, during those three minute songs I put them to. Perfect worlds.

I know that my ‘romantic’ lead has issues, since he constantly places his mate in situations that . . . But since a relationship in real life is about the bedroom, now, rather than . . . Since men now feel so entitled to . . . It’s how it’s all so empty, now. I’m so empty, really, trying to feel niceness in some way, trying to create nice feelings for myself because nothing from the real world offers them to me, gives them to me.

And, well, my female lead is captive to my male, and . . . Do you know what I should do?

I bet that you do, Catherine. You, of all people . . .”

Catherine frowns at the words, feeling even more light-headed.

You were on your way out, healer reminds her. You were paying attention to all that creaking.       

“The women who had something to say, who wouldn’t shut up . . . ” Soft Curls continues, after pausing. “Men took us away from the women who aren’t complaining, or, at least, who aren’t doing it out loud because they want the reward, which is actually just pay, this weekend. Not . . . Well, we had to be taken away from the supply of women who do as told, in order that we wouldn’t infect it, taint it. Whether in here, or out there in the world, that happens.  It’s the same. I know. I’m young, but I know.

And . . . falling in love with one’s kidnapper, that’s documented. Women do that, when they ignore so much. But, then again, they don’t, as proven in recent cases where women were kidnapped young, forced to be with a man for a decade, and didn’t grow to love him. Escaped him. Maybe we’re just smarter, now. Maybe girls do learn more, now.

I . . . I had to get myself out of that ballroom because . . . because maybe I like him, or maybe it’s whatever else there is for me to like, since it’s the first relationship-like experience, really, that I’ve ever had. Yep. This pathetic two day thing that . . .

I’ll go back in there, and I’ll do what I have to do, if they let me go back. But what about the women who aren’t able to do that? Who’ve been very vocal? But I’ll be able to, as long as there’s not four hours straight of thinking of what it all really means. Everything.”

Catherine, get out, Healer repeats.

Were her lips moving at all, just now? She, however, considers, frowning, and instantly facing an increase of nerves. Files of her acquaintances and friends from the streets are allowed to open, and, with that, so many words rush to her, so much  “composing.”

She sees her writer-friend’s lips move, as words that are so very familiar to her fall from the woman’s lips. She then focuses in on other faces from her memories, on other lips, but before she can reach a conclusion, all the images suddenly disperse, as if burst by a pin.

How did this all start?!

I know how it ends. Get out. Leave your mind . . . the room, healer replies.

I approached this room from the hallway, and saw some women restrained to a long bar usually used to hang up jackets, and there was noise. Noises, from them. And as I neared, I didn’t hear words. Just noises. Quiet voices, all softly making those noises, but becoming louder, as a whole, as I neared, but no words. Just noises due to the effect of the drug that these women were given to keep them out of it for now, while out of the ballroom world, while the masters don’t need them, while they need something else that these women weren’t willing to allow the men to have: sleep. Restoration. Refuelling. And then . . .

You were leaving, so leave. You were going to the bathroom, or to get a bite to eat, so, do so.

And . . . I started studying this collection. The women’s hair, the male designs on their body, and . . . 

You have nothing to gain from any of this. They’re all words that you already heard before, from women who also knew men so very well.

Non-refundables and their composition . . .

Catherine . . . Women already have a vast array of feelings and emotions, so it’s easy for them to compose. Their very lives are a piece of art, since what most of them have to endure creates such emotion that rising and falling action ensue. Crisis. Climax. All of it.  So, when a university professor gives a writing class that’s for men only, it’s because men need it and women don’t, so women shouldn’t get upset.

But those men then privately discuss the silliness of emotions, but how they’re necessary in order to make money, to sell novels and screenplays and TV shows, because women expect to see emotions. Men don’t need a class on how to add boobs in movies and shows, however, to know how to please a male audience. It’s just so, so simple to please a male audience: just violence, boobs, and sex. And so, men’s composing, that is, men’s “art” around me, losing their minds and control, and . . .

Catherine’s ears pick up more creaking sounds, as the noise overtakes the women’s combined noises.

Catherine, leave the room. Give them peace, be nice to them, and leave the room.

She, however, returns her eyes to Soft Curls’ instead.

“Female victims are left naked, for them to be found like that, because it’s one last way of humiliating them, after they were tortured, violated, and were the victims of other hateful things at a man’s hands. Profilers say that,” the young non-refundable is then understood to say. “So, what does that say about men, that they want to see female nudity everywhere? What does that say about what men really think, when women are nude before them and for them, stripped of everything, as so-called entertainment? There’s nothing gentlemanly, of course, about gentlemen’s clubs -- what a stupid name for them -- and to know that female victims are left nude in order to humiliate them one last time, it’s clear what that says about all men who want female nudity everywhere. Humiliation certainly cuts someone down to size, puts them in their place, and allows the one doing the humiliating to feel better, bigger, more powerful. No matter how ‘beautiful’ a woman is, she’s stripped of all.”

“Remorse is defined by profilers as an attacker who covers up a nude victim,” Catherine speaks out loud, the sound of her voice creating more frenzied noises all around her. She struggles to continue to concentrate on Soft Curls.

“How many men are against strip clubs and online adult entertainment, and are therefore for women remaining covered up, not humiliated, as a gender? Right. So, how many good guys are there, then, really? Because it’s impossible that it’s a humiliation in one case, and not in the other, for a woman to be seen by all, nude. It pleases the male attacker to think of her found that way, as a nothing, just like it pleases men to see any woman nude and just there, as a thing for their masterly entertainment. And that’s a darkness that can only lead to dark hearts, dark minds, dark souls.

People are often surprised, when they hear women like me putting down strip clubs and adult entertainment and all of it. They think it inconsistent. They think that since I do what I do, then I believe that it’s all fine. But I don’t do what I do because I want to. I’d much rather be a romantic lead. And it shouldn’t be odd at all to anyone that the pain resurfaces, that a drugged state slips, that denial does, and that what made a woman end up like me breaks through the surface again, that very pain from before the hooking, that very pain that lead to it, whether blatantly or not. That something men-experience.” Pause. “I’m done.”

Catherine takes a deep breath to counter a nauseating sensation that travels through her body. Malika and others she knew were all killed by a serial killer, after all, one who, without remorse, dumped their bodies here and there, nude and mutilated. She herself was captured by him and inexplicably dumped alive, unlike the others. Nude, but alive.

 As she pushes out of her mind the images of Malika’s body in that drawer in the morgue, healer once again instructs her to leave the room.

 Was she in my mind? Did she read a part of my mind to know that . . .  No, wait. Did her lips move? Catherine repeats to herself, looking at Soft Curls’ mouth.

You’re not talking to yourself, Catherine. If that makes you feel better.

What the hell am I doing, then? What is this? What . . .

She shakes her head and begins to quickly walk down the fourth aisle, and back towards the door, without hesitation this time, without doubt. She looks at no woman, no art, and definitely not anywhere near where eyes reside.

So, Soft Curls sees her master’s strong hand and power as romantic, she attempts to regulate with. I wonder if Mole is here too, and the woman who attacked me during the guessing game, when our breasts were disembodied and the other true submissive defended this lifestyle and blamed non-refundables for . . . My neighbours from the line racing . . . But I won’t look for them. Just a passing thought. I don’t think that any of the other women in this room other than Soft Curls feels a thing for her master, has a thing for him . . . I  . . . I wonder if she ever used one of Tristan’s songs, for one of her perfect videos  . . .