Wherever she went, and whatever she did, it seemed her gender had to get involved. Had to “bog her down” in some way, despite it ostensibly being an “issue” solely for the opposite sex: motherfucking men. It was already bad enough that the weekend commenced with Nicola (who went by Nic whenever possible in all written correspondence so as to dupe people into assuming she was a man, because that’s what garnered more respect) being effectively groped, but it only worsened the following morning, when she was chewed out by her boyfriend for nothing. Or what Nicola presumed any ordinary person would write off as nothing. 

Let us commence, first, on the Friday afternoon, just before Nicola went to start her part-time job where the cleaning staff consisting of four men regularly harassed her every time she had to pass them in the halls. She often went to the same café to read for about thirty minutes prior to stepping into the purgatory of her role as the afternoon receptionist at a private elementary school. Because the hours she worked were at a time when the school was largely empty save for the errant teachers who stayed behind to overwork themselves, it wasn’t, she came to realize, what could be deemed a “safe space.” Not when you were trapped inside with a bevy of lecherous men. Though there’s really no need to use the adjective “lecherous” in front of “men,” for that’s what they all are. Nicola was reminded of that as she got up from her chair at the café and started to put her coat on. While a man might be able to do so without thinking he would need to worry about letting his defenses down long enough for someone to offer up an unwanted touch, Nicola came to find that’s what she should have been thinking about all along while donning her coat. She should have done it more quickly, or at a moment when she didn’t happen to notice the waiter was passing by. A stout, fat Pakistani man who always made eyes at her and said, “Hello madame” with more than just a hint of carnality. 

While bringing her coffee to her the second she sat down without asking might be a sign of attentiveness to some, to her, it didn’t sit right. And now, as she put her coat on and her arms were not entirely free to punch the shit out of him as he pressed against her and touched the small of her back, as though there was no space for him to move elsewhere, she knew that feeling had been correct. That most women’s instinctual bristling about men is not, in fact, a result of being “all in their head.” There is a very clear reason why that instinct remains, and this man’s disgusting behavior was just one of many cases in point. As usual, however, that disgusting behavior tends to make a girl freeze in her tracks. Because she can’t actually believe something so violating is happening. After a few moments of that frozenness, Nicola inched away, pretending nothing foul had just transpired as the waiter called out after her, “Have a good day madame!” But she wouldn’t. The day had already been ruined the instant he decided to make unsolicited physical contact with her. Like it was just assumed she should let it happen. The way so many men assume access to a woman’s body is their right. Not to mention controlling what she does or doesn’t do with it (yes, an abortion reference). Nonetheless, she did what most women force themselves to do in order to continue going about their day: she brushed it aside. Had almost blocked it out entirely about an hour and a half into her shift. Sitting at the desk doing her best to cover up the fact that she was still reading. At which point, one of the odious cleaning staff members passed by the desk and commented, “So serious. Why don’t you smile?” That last question being the ultimate triggering phrase for women. 

A phrase that could only be met with a reply like, “Why don’t you shove it up your asshole?” Naturally, Nicola wasn’t going to say that (for one thing, it might arouse rather than offend). She was going to keep “sitting pretty.” A piece of underpaid eye candy that could even answer the door, too! God, how sick she was of being treated like a goddamn ninny. Like some kind of “entity” with little better than two brain cells. The last person she wanted to get that kind of treatment from, of course, was her boyfriend, her “full-time somebody”—whatever it was being called these days. But that (also of course) was the first person who would “bequeath” her with such treatment. So it was that after the start of the weekend spent enmeshed in the type of casual misogyny that all women were expected to grin and bear, Nicola was made to endure it first thing Saturday morning. Though she didn’t have the additional salt in wound factor of being able to say she was waylaid (in lieu of getting laid) “in her own home.” For that’s not where it occurred. Instead, Nicola and Devin had spent the night at a friend of the latter’s after a midnight showing of Night of the Living Dead. Devin had been the one to suggest it despite knowing he had to work an early shift at the clothing store he managed. Another one of the many sartorial juggernauts currently piling up their rags in impromptu landfills throughout Africa and South America. A place he rightly despised, but that paid his rent and then some. Middle management being more lucrative than most people thought…after all, it was the only thing more made up and inane than being a sales associate. 

In fact, the friend of Devin’s whose apartment they were staying at was his underling. Maybe that’s why she was so willing to let him and his girlfriend shack up for the night in her decidedly cramped abode. And because it was cramped, one would think Devin might not be so cavalier about airing his petty grievances knowing full well that 1) Angeline was still asleep and 2) she could hear every single derisive invective Devin hurled at her that morning. And over what? Nothing. Fuck-all, as it were. The “premature” turning off of the lamp on the bedside table that he woke her up with at seven a.m. Devin had left the room after promising to turn it off and, already endlessly irritated that she had to be, as usual, at the mercy of his schedule, his needs, Nicola jolted out of bed in a fit of anger to shut the door and flip the switch to invoke the sweet darkness again. No sooner had she done so than Devin burst into the room, cursing her existence at a decibel that was far too loud for one’s own apartment, let alone the apartment of someone else who was presently sleeping (or trying to). 

This wasn’t the first time (and certainly wouldn’t be the last) that Devin had been unabashed about berating her in front of his friends. A tendency he had that, as she expressed on more than one occasion, made Nicola’s blood boil at the same time as it made her hot with embarrassment. There was nothing more humiliating, as far as she was concerned, than being belittled in front of other people. For not only was there nothing you could do to stop it, but it seemed, to boot, utterly pointless to attempt engaging in some kind of defense. Because that would only fan the flames of the absurd public vituperation. The kind of flying-off-the-handle-over-nothing reaction one would expect of Sean Penn while married to Madonna in the 80s (accordingly resulting in divorce). And it was over literally nothing. Something so minute and harmless. Yet, for whatever reason, Devin absolutely lost his shit over Nicola “defying orders.” The fact that she would dare to turn the light out before he was ready for it to be turned out. He had a thing about saying she “lacked patience” when, in reality, he simply wanted to be the one to control everything. And having control meant making Nicola be on his time table, adhering to his “agenda.” However insipid. As insipid as, say, telling her when she could turn a fucking light off after he had already left the room minutes ago. A plain-as-day sign of someone having no intention of returning. But it was her so-called presumptuousness and impatience that set him off. That, in his mind, warranted screaming at her, so that Angeline could hear how a “real man” treated his girlfriend, “You fucking terrible woman, you horror!” 

Out of everything he shouted at her that morning, those were the words that stood out the most. Lingered and reverberated in her mind long after he had left for work. She honestly couldn’t believe that he would say something so needlessly cruel and vitriolic and deem it a reasonable response to what she had “done.” Nor could she believe he was constantly so comfortable with admonishing her like a dog. She felt like Max to the Grinch, for fuck’s sake. What had she really done that was so wrong? Apart from being a woman, obviously. And for Devin, her gender patently was a source of annoyance. Why else would he choose to incorporate her double X chromosomes into his hurling of insults? It was almost like he was using it against her as her utmost Achilles’ heel. Knowing full well it was something that, short of an expensive operation, she couldn’t change about herself. Her most glaringly irreversible shortcoming. 

Hours later, after she finally gathered the will to get out of bed, having waited out Angeline’s eventual departure for work as well (not wanting to face her after being castigated for what might be called her amusement), she boiled a pot of water to make coffee in the French press. Staring out the window while she waited, she tried not to let her own low-simmering rage boil to the surface the same way the water was about to. Every day, she tried to tell herself—to remind herself—that things had genuinely changed since, say, the fifties. Or at least since the 1900s. That women really had come “so far” from the times of Alice Paul being force-fed during her hunger strike while imprisoned for advocating for women’s suffrage. But every day, she was met with some aggression, whether micro or macro, that proved nothing had fundamentally changed at all. Women were still viewed as, to be frank, shit. Less than that. Being branded as a “fucking terrible woman” and a “horror” (he might as well have added “whore” while he was at it) for something as innocuous as turning a light out was a strong enough reason to be reminded of that.