so her leather elbow patches poke out at each side.
Her laced-up, steel-toed boots planted wide apart.
Her legs in baggy camouflage pants, tied around each ankle.
She leans so far forward, her chin casts a shadow
down the front of her army-surplus olive-drab field jacket.
Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment:
the footage of protest signs and picket lines, the bullhorn shapes of mouths
yelling, all their way open.
All teeth and no lips.
Mouths open so far, the effort shuts their eyes, tight.
“After the judge awarded joint custody,” Comrade Snarky says, “my mother told me . . .”
In the middle of the night,
while you're fast asleep with your head on the pillow,
if your father ever tiptoes into your room:
you, come tell me.
Her mother said, “If your father ever tugs down your pajama bottoms and fingers you . . .”
You, come tell me.
If he takes a fat, heavy snake out from the zipper in the front of his pants—that hot, sticky club that smells bad—and tries to force this in your mouth . . .
You, come tell me.
“Instead of all that,” Comrade Snarky says, “my father took me to the zoo.”
He took her to the ballet. He took her to soccer practice.
He kissed her good night.
The colors of sit-down strikes, the shapes of civil disobedience still marching,
marching, marching,
across her face,
Comrade Snarky says,
“But, for the rest of my life, I was always ready.”
Speaking Bitterness
A Story by Comrade Snarky
From the minute he sat down, we tried to explain . . .
We don't allow men. This is a women-only safe space. The purpose of our group is to nurture and empower women with a sense of privacy. To allow women to speak freely without being questioned or judged. We need to exclude men because they inhibit women. Male energy intimidates and humiliates women. To men, a woman is either a virgin or a slut. A mother or a whore.
When we ask him to get out, of course he plays dumb. He says to call him “Miranda.”
We respect his choice. The effort and desire he's put into attaining the physical appearance of being female. But this space, we tell him in a gentle, sensitive way, this space is only for women born women.
He was born Miranda Joyce Williams. He says this and snaps open his little pink lizard-skin pocketbook. He takes out a driver's license. With a long, pink fingernail he slides the license across the table, tapping where there's a letter “F” under the category of sex.
The state may recognize his new gender, we tell him, but we choose not to. Many of our members suffered childhood traumas regarding men. They fear being reduced to their bodies. Being used as objects. These are issues he could never understand, being born male.
He says: I was born female.
Somebody in the group says, “Can you show us your birth certificate?”
“Miranda” says: Of course not.
Someone else says, “Are you menstruating?”
And “Miranda” says: Not this minute.
He's playing with a rainbow-colored scarf tied around his neck, twisting and pulling it. Preening in a caricature of female nervous behavior. He's playing with the sparkling, shimmery scarf draped around his shoulders, letting it fall down behind him, to hang from his elbows. He's combing his fingers through the long fringe at each end. He pulls a little more scarf to one side, then the other. He crosses his legs, one knee over the other. Then the bottom one on top. He lifts and folds the fur coat in his lap. Turning it, he pets the fur with one open hand, his fingernails together, painted pink and bright as jewelry.
His lips and shoes and handbag, his fingernails and watchband, they're all as pretty-pink as a redhead's asshole.
Someone in the group gets up, glaring. She says, “What's the goddamn point?” Cramming her knitting and bottled water into her tote bag, she says, “I look forward to this all week. Now it's ruined.”
“Miranda” just sits there, his eyes tented under long, thick lashes. His eyes floating in blue-green pools of eyeliner. He tubes red lipstick onto his lipstick. He smears blusher on top of his blusher. Mascara on his mascara. His cropped blouse rides up on his chest. The pink silk of it seems to hang off the two points of his nipples, each breast roughly the same size as his face, both ballooning off the tanned ripples of his rib cage. His stomach showing, tight and tanned, it's a male stomach. He's a total sex-doll fantasy, the kind of woman only a man would become.
For a rap group, “Miranda” says he expected a little more rap.
We just look at him.
This silly man. This “Miranda.” Here's every male fantasy brought to life in a kind of Frankenstein monster of stereotypes: The perfect big round breasts. The hard muscle of long thighs. The mouth, a perfect pout, greasy with lipstick. The pink leather skirt too short and tight for anything but sex. He speaks with the breathy voice of a little girl or a movie starlet. A huge gush of air for what little sound comes out. It's the kind of whispery voice Cosmopolitan magazine teaches girls to use, to make listening men lean closer.
We just sit here, nobody talking, nobody sharing. You just can't be honest, knowing there's a penis under the table. Even in the middle of Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe posters . . . apple-cinnamon candles . . . the bookstore's calico cat.
Okay, “Miranda” says, then I'll start.
“Miranda,” his bleached hair is piled beauty-parlor tall, stiff with spray, and wired with bobby pins.
There's this guy at work who “Miranda” fell just train-wreck in love with. The guy won't flirt back. He's just this totally cute number, a slick-haired junior sales associate who drives a Porsche. He's married, but “Miranda” knows there's sheer animal interest on the guy's side. This one time after work, “Miranda” says, the guy came over and put his hand—
And we all just stare.
The guy put his hand on “Miranda's” arm and asked about
