FIFTY-THREE

Sides of Freakish

As Catherine continues her slow walk up the second aisle in the coatroom-turned-holding pen, she does not allow her eyes to rest into those of another restrained, kept in check, controlled woman pitilessly stripped of everything of herself, until an arm gently falls away from one of them, and almost reaches Tristan’s art upon her.

“Am I really a freak?” Catherine then decodes, her eyes into the non-refundable’s. “That’s what my master said, and he said that freakish gets him so hard. And I . . . Don’t I look desirable?” The artificially, overwhelmingly endowed woman asks. “I mean, my boobs are all that’s me when you look at me from the front, so if they’re not attractive, then . . . He said that my body’s not even human anymore. He said that he loves these weekends because they have good scouts finding freaks like me. But . . . men notice me and come to me, and they so want to see me undress, and that’s power, right? All those women who say that they got implants for themselves and not because of men, why don’t they have surgery on their bellybutton, or on their elbows, or on their knees, then, or something? They don’t because men don’t care about those. Every woman who has implants inside her, except for breast cancer survivors, did it for men, in this man’s world, in the hopes of getting power over them. That’s why I got mine: to get men to come to me, and to make them like me. I put in the superficial hoping to get the ‘more.’ But that’s just . . . And none of the guys I want stick around, actually, so . . .

Well, to all the girls who hate their body, who feel that they have to become shaped according to men’s harsh judgement and fabricated standards for women’s bodies -- that is, who believe that they have to become manmade like other objects men use -- I’m sorry. I’m sorry that, by doing what I did, I helped further men’s cruel and ridiculous control of girls’ and women’s minds, through this control of body-image. And men should never control our bodies, let alone our very minds.”

“Imagine if men walked around with nether-area packages spreading sideways towards and onto their thighs, and falling to their knees in the other direction, looking most unnatural and inhuman, and walking funny because of it,” Catherine recalls her writer-friend telling her. “And, whatever you feel while imagining males moving about oddly and just looking ridiculous all-around because of that alteration, remember that that’s what men like to feel about women, and that that overall ‘ridiculous’ label attached to a female prevents meaningful emotions from forming. Proof? Tell me what emotions come to you, as you imagine men that way. Do you even notice that they have a face, something more, or are you too busy with the freakish? Imagine yourself approaching that package, being near it, wondering what it looks like unclothed, and just so focusing on it, on the oddity, that when he speaks, you look up, but then the unnatural down there  moves this way and that with his hand gestures or whatever, and your attention goes right back to the oddity, to the huge bulk there. So, where’s the more that you usually feel when you look into a man’s eyes, face? You’re busy instead noticing that his thighs are no longer separated by a gap and that he no longer looks like a human male should, and your brain is busy handling all of that in different ways, but opening files of love and such is not one of those ways. And no, that hugeness wouldn’t make his pleasure greater, just like bigger boobs don’t make a woman’s physical pleasure greater. And yes, health problems and pain would arise from the bulk, just like they do from implants.

You know, of course, that there’s absolutely no logic in males being attracted by their nature to unnatural female bodies, because that’s contradictory, and, similarly, why would your own female nature make you attracted to men with those packages, when they’re not natural? A male attracted to a woman’s nether area, or even to her behind, that makes natural sense. A woman pulling herself into a man to line up their nether areas when they can still connect because he is of normal size, that makes natural sense.

And plus, the whole boob-attraction thing, we all know that it’s a male construct, since tribal African men didn’t naturally lose it when the women everywhere around them were topless, and since breasts are naturally for babies, which explains why most women reach a point in their life when they see all men as silly children and want them to grow up, to be weaned from the breast already. To deconstruct the silliness. The folly.

But at the end of the day, it’s not the boobs: it’s always the stripping away, by men, of everything from women, and the placing of females in vulnerable positions where they can no longer have anything of themselves, where they can no longer hold anything over men, that’s the thing. And to men, withholding nudity is that great big something that women hold over them, and, therefore, to men, women being without clothing is the position of vulnerability and complete surrender that cancels out all of women’s power. And so, seeing women nude turns men on because of that surrender. It’s a power thing, of course. And a woman who has herself surgically altered for men, that makes men feel even more pleasure and power due to her surrender in more ways than one. Don’t surrender, Catherine.”

“I . . . I was violated, when I was fifteen,” the non-refundable before Tristan’s female continues.  “And I remember him laughing. And he told me that he was recording what he was doing to me, and what he was making me do, so his father and his brothers could watch. He said that . . . Doing ‘it’ was so much better than just watching online. His dad got custody of him when he was very young, so it wasn’t surprising that girls and women were nothings to him, and his sister was taught to think so little of herself that she defended her brother and what he did, and blamed me. She was one of the school whores, and there was a rumour that her brothers all did her, at home, that dad didn’t stop it. No mom, so no voice of empathy. To the extreme, in this case.

And I . . . I remember wondering, when I looked into his eyes, what precious, positive things fathers could possibly be teaching their sons, now, and I guessed that his father had taught him things like where the best strip club was, the best whore, the best adult entertainment sites; how to lie to and how to treat women as objects; how to manipulate women into screwing and doing everything that men want in bed; how to hate women, to bulldoze, and especially how to take, to violate. Because of course his dad was absolutely obsessed with seeing breasts, and getting laid, and tricks, and live personal shows just for him, and being served and serviced, and watching adult entertainment, just like most men are. And not obsessed with a thing more. Just with the satisfaction of that one part of his body.

I guessed all that because I told myself that, if it weren’t all about those things, if most men were good like they claim that they are, and if the good were indeed the majority, then our society would be different and not all about those things, and men would change the world. And that’s always the fact to return to: that if most men were good like they claim to be, then they would march, protest, think of their little girls and get so, so angry at the world. But, nope. Most men just think of their favourite child, between their legs. So, the world around them is just fine the way that it is. And so, I was violated, and that was the consistent next step for him back then, wasn’t it? Because objects can’t say no. A toaster, a car, a can opener, a toilet, a woman . . . me. People have to understand the meaning of the word ‘objectified,’ and the consequences.

Anyway, that’s where men are concerned, but an even bigger kick in the gut is when some females defend violators, and I think that that happens because so many females are now such huge male-compelled whores that one more dick is nothing, even when forced. And it’s also just another disease to their collection, since they just give themselves away anyway, like men want, being male on the surface, without yet recognizing the reality of their female depth. So, they side with it being okay that all girls and women lose all power and control and are used in that way whenever men want, on a street, on a bus, or wherever, and how insane is that?  

Okay, so, if it’s not that those females are promiscuous that explains why they don’t side with victims, I think that it’s that those young women imagine that that kind of attack is just about being overtaken, overpowered by a young male that they’re at least not repulsed by, and without physical harm coming from it. Without hatred and coldness on his part. Without being degraded. And, therefore, without the darkness that such a violation is really about.

I think that those young women also don’t think of being forced to do things, or of having things done to them that hurt and/or demean them, and that maybe they don’t think of that because nature, when survival of our species mattered, would indeed have great young males enter by the natural way, overpower but not hurt the female much, and then leave. But in the now, it’s not like that, and in the real world, neither is such a violation ever like a young woman’s fantasy: it’s someone whom she wouldn’t want to touch her, and injury always happens. Plus, diseases, and a death sentence are always a possibility. HIV is spreading quickest among women now . . .

And maybe . . . maybe those women think of it like . . . Like having a vampire at their neck. Heart pounding, passion, danger, doing nothing, and, therefore, so free to just enjoy the moment, as well as what they believe is his tremendous desire for them, as he has complete control.

I so get the vampire thing. A male as powerful, by nature, and the female as weaker, in need of his protection. Well, vampires are like men used to be: the hero vampire is nice and caring towards the human woman he loves, and he treats her with kid gloves, mostly, considering what a power he is, and he keeps her safe, and he always talks about her humanity compared to his lacking it, about her goodness compared to his lacking that too, at least at first, until she helps him to become better, more human, nicer, but he’s always a real male with other vampires, and he’s always dangerous. It’s always in him. And that’s how men used to be. But nowadays, men don’t even know how to fight each other, physically, so how can a woman ever feel safe and protected by a man?

I think that it’s the men of today who are the real Neanderthals, not the men of yesterdays when women had fewer rights, but were appreciated, and when women’s full nature was allowed and treasured. Women weren’t expected to be what they’re not, that is, to be whores, which is like being men. Which is not being women.”

“The women went to the kitchen to talk . . .” Catherine whispers, as images of Tristan’s work station during the combo hour when the two other true submissives were within it come to mind. She frowns, however, as she sees herself and the two other women dressed, within the small area.

“Are violators diseased?” The non-refundable continues, since Catherine’s eyes remain within hers, even if she was momentarily preoccupied by that image in her mind. “Is that part of their thrill? When they first take, it’s the basic, un-evolved male nature at play: control and inseminate. But then, after they catch that disease by taking, it’s the cold male violent side of them that comes out. And when will the law catch up to that kind of murder? The right to screw can’t come before the right of people not to be harmed, not to be killed. And only men can believe that it does.

I heard the most ridiculous thing from a man: ‘well, my virus load is low, so I shouldn’t have to tell a partner that I have HIV.’ So, if there’s a little poison in something that may or may not kill, it should be legal to sell it anyway, in stores, to feed unsuspecting people?

My attacker . . . I’ve thought about it all so much. I’ve had years. My attacker, how could a teen boy hate so much, so fast? Because they’re now taught to. Because that beast inside that most boys and men feed freely from a young age now because of online adult entertainment and because of an absence of more, it grows and gets out of control, and it eats them up inside, until there’s nothing there. And I see it, in their eyes, when they come to me.  Just like I saw it in his. And they actually love the beast, but that’s only because it’s eaten up everything inside them that could make them see the truth, so they can’t know how empty they’ve become. And when most men are allowed to become nothing more than beasts, nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing’s stable. Safe. Lasting. True. Because beasts tear into everyone and everything because they’re miserable, but they’ll never admit that they are, because they want to keep believing that doing beastly things should make beasts happy.   

So, no more fathers out in the yard, or at the park, teaching their kids to hit a ball or to catch a football because everything’s either not-kid-friendly videogame, or adult entertainment online. And that’s what they share.

And men everywhere, including newsmen on TV, on CNN, they freely talk to each other about watching adult entertainment, even when women are listening, as if those words aren’t a great insult to women, to have men bring up that full servitude of females to man and dick, to have men bring up an industry that, every day and in every way, makes all women into nothing more than toy-bodies and bags of tricks used by men to get exactly what they want without giving a thing in return, without a care, without a hint of humanity, which in turn stops them from entering and maintaining relationships, and from having and maintaining families, since they prefer instead to just work in order to make more money, and then watch some more. And some families break up because husbands can’t be satisfied with real relationship intimacy with a woman not paid to provide, because they instead desire the servitude-slave kind that they’ve now seen online since they were boys. It’s just . . . How can men not know what a great insult it is that they want females who are nothings and who do anything and everything? How can they not know what a great insult it is that they don’t want women who are more, and that they don’t appreciate women who are more? Uh, no empathy, that’s how.

And would those men bring up plantations to African-Americans? Would they lightly comment about their tremendous enjoyment of them, of what happened there, and of watching it all recreated online, every day and in every way, by a huge industry that therefore demeans and objectifies and makes nothings out of all African-Americans, oh, and while it makes tons of money? No?! So, hey, host on TV joking around with a private investigator who replies that he watches his adult entertainment on someone else’s computer so that they get in trouble and not him, neither one of you is funny! It’s no laughing matter, all the awful consequences that women have to live with and endure because of that industry.

And . . . teen boys and young men can’t even think themselves in love anymore, because everyone calls it what it is now: just lust. In the past, at least boys wondered if what they felt was love; they considered it. They maybe even believed it. But not anymore. That word doesn’t even come to their mind, unless it’s to mock it. Because they’ve seen it all online, what women are to men, according to the male collective. And that’s not love.

Years ago . . . someone told me that I wanted it, what happened to me, when I was fifteen, and that was absurd. Absolutely not. But when I was older and I found myself fantasizing something like it -- but not with him, of course -- I panicked. I was told that I just wanted off the hook of having to do all the tricks,  and that, in my fantasy, my attacker was of course of my choice, and he of course did what I wanted, and I wasn’t hurt. Still, after I was attacked years ago, so much about me changed, and with the pain of it still coming to the surface sometimes, especially when my self-medicating fails, to accept that my fantasy was truly about my control, in the end, and not his . . .

A week ago, I heard of a female judge giving an admitted violator forty-five days in jail, pretty much because he admitted to being guilty as soon as he was arrested. Wow. So, the message is: hey men, if you really, really want to violate someone, whether woman or fourteen year old girl, as in this case, you’ll get just forty-five days if you just confess to it right away. So, it might be worth it, uh, to destroy that bitch who’s not giving you the time of day, or the one you want to get back at, for whatever reason? Wow, just do it on the bus, like in India. Make a party of it. Or maybe at that frat house, or at any house party. And then, just confess as soon as you’re arrested, and that’ll make it all better! That judge should be disbarred, and she should be the one serving community service at a violated women’s crisis center, because she’s just clueless. Wow, could she have her nose any further up the male collective’s rear?! He ADMITTED to not stopping when the girl kept telling him to. And the judge used the fourteen year old’s past history to come up with that sentence, as if, just because a teen girl accepted to have relations at other times, she can never be violated afterwards! No one can start picking and choosing when violated is violated. The simple truth always has to remain that no means no. End of story. Oh, and that not being able to consent because one is passed out or out of it in some way, that’s a big no as well. Wow, guess the first thing that that ignorant backstabber behind the bench needed was a plain old dictionary to define the word ‘r-a-p-e!’

Cases like that really get to me, of course. My family didn’t allow me to go to the cops, after I was violated. So, he just got away with it. And when I saw him again, he told me that his dad loved watching what he did to me, and that he was proud of him. And I wondered how ashamed my family was of me, to not allow me to go to the police.

Boys were once taught not to harm women. But now, the college boys who chant about forcing underage girls, and the teen boys and the young men who actually do what they chant about, they come from somewhere, and they were shaped by someone and some things, to become who they are, because they don’t exist in a vacuum, in a void, where nothing affects who they become, and so, we have to list what’s different now, in how they’re raised, and what’s different in society and all around them, and then, then it all has to become unacceptable, what’s happening. So, women and men have to do something, because the beasts won’t.        

My life has just been so . . . Girls used to dream of a prince charming. Teen girls used to start looking for one. And young women used to be able to find one. But not anymore. This is life now.

Because the young men who come to me . . . Some fathers even arrive with their son. And I do with them, to them, what women hate men for fantasizing about, that is, all the stuff that they put in their online adult entertainment. And where does that leave me? Alone. Certainly not in control, even with my huge boobs. Just alone. Men come and go. But . . . But they’re the bigger freaks, really, all the ones who aren’t human anymore on the inside. Not me. I’m still human.”

Catherine releases the non-refundable’s eyes, and momentarily considers those last words, the especially powerful emotion behind them filling her still. After another sigh, she then resumes her travel.

“I think that the disciplining-intimacy surge all around us speaks to just how many boys and girls are now interfered with, intimately, because kids who start out with inappropriate intimate adult contact, which is of course of pain and of power over them in every way, have that become a part of their identity, and so, when they’re older, to get off, they want that pain. It’s directly tied to the mind, and there has to be an old road map there for that link to even be there, one created from what was around them and who was around them when they were young,” another woman begins, when Catherine finds her eyes.  “All the men who come to me for me to hurt them, they know that it says something about them. They see someone from their past that they hate for having abused them, but that their mind somehow brings up again for climax, along with what that person did, which of course infuriates them, among other emotions, emotions that they feel at all times, except when they’re in the midst of chasing that paradoxical, incongruous bliss.

I think that it’s in men’s nature to be the punishers, since so many of them lack empathy, or true empathy, and that’s why they love violent entertainment and violent live action in rings, but when they want to get hurt, it’s because they’ve been hurt, since it’s not in their nature at all to want to be inferior to a woman. Maybe a father enjoyed showing adult entertainment to a son when he was still too young, and so, the boy perceived what was happening on that computer screen in a very different way than developed males do. Typical play-toy faces were therefore seen as ones of pain. The friction, as pain. The exaggerated moaning and groaning, as pain. All of it. And pain, then, became forever linked to intimacy, within the boy’s permanent identity.

Well, with so many reasons to be angry with men and their collective, making them pathetic weaklings at their very own request has its appeal . . . ”

Catherine releases the woman and places one foot before the other once more.

“I was brought up around a very sexual male who was so very inappropriate. So, I learned to see myself all wrong, my body, my place in the world. I learned that I should just give myself away, but that made me feel awful, when I did, and then I was just a mess. And from the time that I was little, I learned through him that all that men care about is adult-body pleasure and boobs, since, when any hint of either came on TV, or wherever, he’d always comment, his eyes so alive then. And he’d look at me, and even comment directly at me, about what females are to men.   

But a girl seeing the single man’s physical intimacy life through her father or a father-figure sees cold behaviour, since it’s all about him and finding his next screw, and all about his immature attention to female body parts, and all about a variety of women just coming and going, after being used. What a girl is supposed to see, however, is the human in this male figure, as brought to the surface by her mother and through a relationship with her. What a girl is supposed to see is the committed, loving male who is different, then. And if a girl can’t see that, if it’s impossible, I think that she’s better off without altogether, because, since she never sees her mother in a vulnerable position to a man, or as a play toy that he manhandles, she therefore can’t learn, nor then copy, female objectified behaviour.

Well, when I was older, I realized that I first saw all men as shallow and empty and superficial because of him. I realized that, from the time that I was a girl, whenever I saw men behaving like him, I just added them to the file, until I had enough proof there to generalize, to judge, and then, to hate what and who men are, what they believe in, what they do, and what they don’t care about at all, as I saw it, from that big fat file. There was no other. 

So, it was hard, later in life, to accept that there are males who aren’t that way. But I  repeat it to myself often, that I have to accept it, because it’s not fair to men nor to myself, the way that I generalize, but I just never quite believe it, because I have access to so many more examples in society of empty, selfish men, and because I see so many more of them on the news than I do nice ones. I just . . . I just personally see so few nice guys in my life, so for me to accept that they’re out there, when I just never come across any of them in my relationships . . . Because I don’t mean just a nice bus driver, or cashier, or whatever, because that’s just superficial nice.  And . . . it’s hard because I keep coming back to this: at what other time are a man’s eyes as alive as they are when anything sensual or violent comes his way, uh? And what does that say about them? And how can men enjoy seeing people beaten up, hurt, in movies, in the ring? How can they cheer that on, enjoy someone being in pain and reduced to nothing? It’s pretty much the same way that they cheer on their adult entertainment and seeing women reduced to nothing there as well, and how they cheer when boobs come out even in mainstream movies and in cable shows, and reduce women then as well. Oh, but men and women are interchangeable . . . 

But I’m really trying. I remind myself, when I watch old news stories, that the men back then . . . I remind myself to care about them, about all those soldiers who died in wars, about the men who put women and children first, in the lifeboats off Titanic. How ironic that the men who could’ve been good single fathers because they had good character, weren’t, and that so many of the men who now are . . .   

And sometimes I find myself apologizing, in my head, to the male exceptions of our times, but . . . 

A darkness has grabbed a hold of me that I just can’t shake off. Natural light within is very hard to light up again, once it’s been put out. The best cure is prevention, but all around me, I don’t see it.

When mothers get mad at men, they tell their daughters to find a good guy while they’re still young, because the best guys are snapped up fast and they’re not returned to the market, not divorced, because what’s done in bed is in its proper limited place, to good guys. But when fathers get mad at women, they tell their sons to use them, maybe even violate them, and that the only good woman is a whore. No heart, no emotions. So how can a woman ever trust a man? And a man’s world?” 

“Trust issues about men run deep in many women, but especially in us,” Catherine remembers her writer friend telling her, as she releases the woman’s eyes and resumes her walk. “And that’s because, by the time girls are women, most of them have been hurt by having loved as teen girls or as young women, and teen boys and young men especially do a lot of deep hurting of females, emotionally for sure, if not worse. They themselves, however, don’t often get hurt, although many of them do arrogantly consider that having their controlling, powerful, abusive, trick-and-show demanding and/or possessive sides not accepted, and that not being allowed to get away with lying and cheating, equals having been hurt by a girl, by a young woman, when she refused to take it, and broke up with them. Plus, a girl who’s nice to a boy as a friend, but then refuses his advances as more has him calling her a bitch, for supposedly leading him on, which is absurd, but which shows just how males see females in one way only, and how that way has to do with their body only, and not with friendship and more, ever. So, a girl wishes to make friends, but a boy thinks that if a girl talks to him it’s because she wants him. For so many reasons, so many men therefore come to hate women because they transfer the wickedness of their own bad behaviour onto women, when it’s in fact all about themselves.”       

I don’t trust easily. But I trusted Malika because I had to, after a while, since she just never let me down. Pause. All along these aisles, trust lost, destroyed in every way. So much. Too much.

Your master isn’t two-faced, healer cuts in. Tristan doesn’t pretend that his laws are for anyone else but himself and what he wants. And he knows exactly who he is, what he is. His best interests aren’t hidden. You can trust in that. I think that you should leave the room now.

These women have been drugged. This isn’t on me.

You’re supposed to be going to the bathroom.

I want a bite to eat. And “life-affirming come” and my being covered in it to supposedly make me see my worth, or something, those words aren’t like a law made by men and for the good of men, while insisting that it’s for the good of women or children? And it doesn’t matter how pretty my packaging happens to be, at Tristan’s doing . . . That’s irrelevant, she adds.

Catherine, move along.

Why? At least I’m awake, here. I haven’t even yawned.

They just keep saying the same thing, over and over again. They always do. And you’ve heard it all before.

Because it is what it is: real. Because it’s all repetitive, in every day life. Because it keeps happening. Because real life isn’t a novel where a subject is touched upon just once, all nice and edited that way. It recurs. And all the women here, they all hope that, somehow, men will hear and finally understand how much they hurt women, and then, stop doing it. But the thing is: how can un-empathetic beings even first come to feel, to then do something that is empathetic? Such a vicious circle. But I don’t think that a woman ever loses the small hope that men will stop, no matter how hardened she becomes through her black and white convictions and generalizations about the darkness of most men and of man’s world, and most definitely of the male collective, as an entity, because there’s no denying that it never, ever does anything good for women. Hurting women gives it a sense of power and winning.

Catherine, move along.

No. I’m not some stupid teen girl or young woman to run away and side with men, to ignore these women just as all men want me to do, because men want to use me, and then, later, leave me as broken as the women here are, and so, they can’t have any of these women standing in the way.

Catherine, let it go.

This composing can’t be on me. How could they all have been affected by my bad luck? They haven’t been close enough to me, let alone long enough.

Maybe it’s your possible composing that could become an issue here . . .