Daydream

An excerpt from An Unremarkable Woman: A Life in Five Acts

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Daydream is an excerpt from the final chapter of An Unremarkable Woman. In this piece, I create an individual to interrogate, to reveal, to excavate the life of the protagonist. This stranger wearing a blue baseball cap pushes the protagonist to examine the hidden folds of her life, to take ownership of her decisions, her meaning making, and to aid in the naming of that which is hidden.

Chapter 6 is titled, “Woman in Relation to Self.” This final chapter explores womanhood and the possibility of reintegrating pieces lost/shed during a woman’s life, of creating a female form capacious, multitudinous.

Daydream

It is summer. The long, hot days exacerbate the closeness of home; I escape my family, wanting to drench myself in solitude.

Entering the neighborhood pub, all raw wood like stepping into the red-blonde heart of a cedar, the cool subterranean air hits my sweat-soaked shirt, momentarily freezing me in place.

My eyes adjust to bar darkness.

I make my way past vacant tables to a black-topped bar stool. Legs sticky on vinyl, I order a Manny’s Pale Ale, the condensation running up my arm as I tilt glass to mouth. I scroll through Facebook posts to pass time, time I’d rather sequester, and yet time, slick, slips through my fingers. A stranger wearing a blue baseball cap sits down next to me. They order a beer, something with an apricot essence. 

Swiveling in their seat, their eyes meeting mine, they ask, “What is a woman?” 

I slide my phone onto the bar. The weight of their gaze unsettles me.

Looking away, I respond, “I don’t know.” I move my hand toward my phone.

Undeterred, they continue, “Are you a woman?” 

I reply as if it is a trick question.

“Yes,” I say cautiously, the word stealth-like falls from my lips.

“Why are you a woman?”

They are relentless.

My cheeks burn, my jaw pressed tight, the muscles expanding like a lizard’s dewlap.  I straighten the bar stool curve of my spine to meet the stranger’s eyes.

I say, “I am a woman because I know it to be my truth, a knowing residing deep within the folds of my skin. This knowing is enough.” 

“How do you know?” the stranger asks.

Words pliable in my mouth take on a hardness as they enter the space separating us.

I say, “I know because my skin slips seamlessly over womanhood embracing its curves, skimming its surfaces.” I say, “Gender is a societal construct, nourished/propagated by a patriarchal system. An idea based on concepts subjective, confining, deforming. Woman is defined by images and words foreign to me.”

The stranger shape-shifts before me, at times wearing a pink chiffon ball gown, hair in an updo, at other times a black tuxedo, hair cropped, still other times they are a form dissolving at the margins.

I look into their eyes. There is incompleteness, hunger.

I begin to melt/disintegrate under their gaze and look away.

I say, “The world I was born into consumed me, made me its own. Others told me I was gentle, loving, nurturing, caring, sympathetic, emotional, fragile. I was told wife and mother were the twin apexes of womanhood, a definition of womanhood alien to my being. There was no I to this woman just sublimation. I am not altruistic. I am selfish.

Merriam-Webster defines a woman as an adult female person omitting the realities associated with patriarchal norms and expectations, the truth/construct of being a woman.”

The stranger does not reply, does not betray their thoughts, and yet, I sense a searching, a yearning.

I say, “As a child I understood the implicit distinction between women and men, the knife-like edge between those who observe and those who act on the world. I did not want to be segregated from my passions, I did not want to sublimate my power and authority, I did not want to diminish my voice, to be relegated to a supporting role, an observer.”

I say, “The female/male binary is normative quicksand. I’ve never been comfortable with geometric points. Either/or is too easy. I prefer lines, I prefer gliding along the continuum. The label ‘woman’ has baggage. I’ve spent years trying to jettison the assumptions and expectations society has asked me to carry.” 

“What then is a woman?” they ask.

My voice low and sharp, I say, “Why do you ask me this question?”

They do not respond.

I sink into myself.

Worn/eroded, I offer, “I just want to be me, an unfettered, untamed me, a me without masks, an unconstrained version of myself, a woman who holds multitudes, who is wild, sexy, dirty, vulgar, brilliant, savvy, piercing, inquisitive, warm, blunt, loving, nurturing, creative, a woman who lives without regret or apology, who feeds her hunger.”

I say, “A woman is satiated.”

Looking at the stranger, they appear to me as they first did, eyes hidden behind dark lenses, black hair hanging limply from their cap. There is something alluring in their demeanor, something familiar in their desperation/seeking, their desire for self-determination, self-definition.

My body/voice soften in reply.

There is nothing more to add.

With a glance I say, “Goodbye,” and return to my phone.

The stranger swallows the last of their beer and walks into the whiteness of the day.