On Sub-Sisters, Male Fragility and Generational Baggage-L.
Saturday, December 3rd, 2022:
Even when we made the plan yesterday, I never believed it would happen. It seemed too good to be true.
And I was right. In the end she didn’t come. She caught me through Marie-Eve on my Messenger drawbridge. Usually she can’t talk to me when the drawbridges are up because Messenger is the only app to the outside world on my laptop and she doesn’t have it. (Messenger is what I use to confirm Saturday plans with Naomi, because she frequently has to cancel due to headaches.)
But yesterday I remembered that Marie-Eve has my facebook info so she could potentially reach me if I decided to check my laptop.
I did check it, this morning, confirming with Lynn and Naomi. This was my busiest shabbos I’ve had in a while.
Marie-Eve caught me literally with my hand on the crank of the laptop drawbridge, about to say goodbye to the world.
Yo, sis. Mommy says she needs to reach you. She’s been exposed to disease and doesn’t want to get you sick.
Me:
Wait so…she’s not coming????
Marie-Eve:
No, sorry babe.
Me:
WAHHHH GAH GAH. Tell her I WANT her to infect me. Tell her I said please!!!!
Marie-Eve:
LOL
Well…I guess it’s finally happened. Marie-ève and I are ganging up on Mommy.
Although, that felt suspiciously like, not ganging up at all! Only delivering bad news! Outrageous. I wonder if Mommy would have come to infect me if she couldn’t have gotten ahold of me.
Marie-Eve and I still don’t really know each other. I just spent two days at her house one time without her in it. We met for like 15 minutes, tops. Then, we accidentally-on-purpose became Facebook friends, stalked each other, and then went back to ignoring each other.
I guess that’s kind of what sisters do, right?
She called me “sis.”
I realized after I’d turned off the laptop that I didn’t remember if she actually called Mommy “Mommy.” She must have though, because what else would she have said?
But I guess I spent enough time processing the fact that someone else calls Mommy “Mommy” this summer (thank the fucking lord, cuz I don’t wanna do that again) and now, all that left was a giddy sort of…
gah gah gah she called me “sis.”
WAHHHHH MOMMY’S NOT COMING!!!
She would have been WORTH getting infected!
That’s what it has to be, at the end of the day. Is whatever you’re doing worth all possible outcomes?
Are you worried about pleasing someone?
Well, would they be there for you if you needed it?
Will you skipping their party cause them irreparable pain?
Is the potential fun worth the potential risk?
I think it makes sense that I’m alone tonight.
I can’t even imagine being with a bunch of strangers right now. It feels like Jessie’s party is happening in another universe.
Anyway, he didn’t even invite me directly.
He’s not talking to me directly, I guess cuz he’s butt hurt because he accidentally triggered me last year and I called a boundary.
Last year.
He triggered me.
I should be the one off pouting, not him!
I’m so tired of men acting like little children.
If you hurt someone, even by accident, admit you were wrong, apologize, and figure out how not to do it again.
That’s it.
That’s how simple it is.
That’s all you have to do! Stop stomping around like the world’s ending and we’re bad people because we called you on your shit!
I guess it’s the opposite end of the patriarchy, right?
Oh wait.
Excuse me.
Ahem:
In Defense of Male Fragility:
Men are supposed to be strong. It’s true. (Oh my god seriously just this second the radio started playing a commercial with this crooning, sympathetic male voice murmuring, Intimacy isn’t easy. It can be really hard. Hard for men. To talk about it, that is. But the thing is, that’s what you do. Just talk to your partner about sex! Then book an appointment at sexual wellness… Canada is so woke. I love this country.)
What was I saying?
Men.
I think they think they have to know everything. Like if they don’t, they’ll look weak or something.
And the thing is, it’s so stupid. Because if you really want to know everything, you have to first admit what it is you don’t know, so that you can learn it.
But they don’t get that. Women don’t, either, often in different ways (blah blah blah try not to stereotype, also gender is a spectrum but the point is…)
Jessie’s feelings were hurt when I pulled a boundary.
Because somewhere along the way, he’s learned that me saying, “You accidentally did something wrong, please don’t do it again,” meant, “You’re a bad man shame on you.” Or something. I don’t really know, because he hasn’t told me.
I just had KAREN telling me I was “out of line” because “he and you have a history.”
Basically, I used to be a slut so I can’t have boundaries now and it doesn’t count if I’m triggered?
Fuck.
And I actually did want to go to the party. I wrote him a card, and everything.
Lynn and I had challah bread french toast. We watched the conference through her computer.
We had almost driven down to the States to attend the conference in person. It would have been a fun road trip.
But considering the amount of energy it took to drag myself across wintery Montreal, I can’t even imagine having driven ten hours down and then ten back again.
It felt perfect to just sit there with our feet up, participating from afar.
I feel really self conscious when I’m with Lynn. Like I have to prove myself. A little unaccomplished.
She’s the me I thought I would be right now.
Except I’ve had a lot of detours along the way, and I’m okay with that.
She and I have the same career goals.
Like exact goals.
This winter, they’re holding another round of applications.
She’s applying.
I’m going to Panama.
Most of the time, I feel unapologetic about it. Because I like what I’ve accomplished professionally. I’ve done some significant, groundbreaking work. (Forgive me my humble brag. I’m practicing owning my worth and I promise it feels weird to talk like that.)
Anyway, I’ve just done my groundbreaking, as it were, in a different corner of the field.
And in this corner of the field, Lynn’s corner…
I’m a nobody.
I mean, not a nobody.
But I’m rather unknown.
I feel like a fly on the wall, like a white belt in karate.
Sometimes I feel like a fraud.
Clients intersect, in weird and sometimes power-reversing ways.
It’s complicated.
And Lynn’s always a step ahead of me.
But I have to remember it’s okay. She is me, in a different place, ten years ago.
I’m happy where I am, and I’m going at my own pace.
But it’s probably good that I have her, because she always reminds me, don’t settle, don’t settle, keep challenging yourself.
I think sometimes I get weird and defensive and hyper-sensitive around her though, and I have to be careful because she’s just a sweetheart, a welcoming, generous sweetheart, and I can’t take out my imaginary career-demons on her.
It was like the sun never even rose today in Montreal. It went from gray-dark to gray-dusk to gray-rain-clouds-gray gray to dark.
Outside Lynn’s house, the wind raged and howled.
Inside, we giggled and analyzed our colleagues.
Eventually, I left.
I took the metro, and when I passed Champs de Mars, I didn’t even remember that the plan had originally been for me to get out.
I just breathed a sigh of relief when I looked through the train windows and didn’t see Gavin.
That used to be our stop.
I would have gotten out there to go to Jessie’s party.
In an alternate universe, I would have baked an extra challah. I would have grabbed some more of the ginger cookies and printed out my letter, decorating it with baby girl stickers.
Then we would have gone to meet Jessie’s work colleagues and I’d have tried not to act too weird.
(Because there was definitely a polite request that we not freak out the vanilla friends, at least there was one back in the day so I suppose it still stands.)
Okay. So you don’t want me to freak out your friends…but it’s okay for you to
We were kidding around, I pretended I was gonna take him out, he stood up, so tall, grabbed me and immobilized me, then smacked my ass. Afterward I laughed but then realized it wasn’t okay and I said, “Jessie, that wasn’t okay.” And he said, “Oh my god I’m sorry” which is the CORRECT answer but then he followed it up with a trillion gazillion excuses and defensives and THAT renders the sorry MOOT!
And ever since he’s been pouting out there, not talking to me, and I guess that’s cuz when I said he hurt my feelings…
His feelings got hurt.
FUCKING MEN, MAN.
Okay no. Not all men. That is wrong and I will rephrase.
FUCKING MALE FRAGILITY, MAN.
Gah gah.
You know what else wasn’t okay, though?
Telling me I’m a jerk for calling him out, Karen.
When all you ever do is say you wish that people would have the nerve to stand up to him, that he needs to learn what it’s like to be marginalized, that he needs to understand what it’s like to be traumatized, that he needs more empathy…
I DID stand up to him.
And you failed to back me up, when I had the guts to do what you’re always saying nobody ever does!
Fuck, man.
Just, fuck.
Your party isn’t worth potential respiratory infections.
Gah gah.
I actually did miss Jessie. I haven’t invited him over to my house yet, and it caused me a lot of angst at the beginning.
But then he just pretended not to care (or maybe actually didn’t care?) so I never had to confront any of it.
But I’m kind of tired of us fake-talking through Karen. Either we’re friends, or we’re not.
Cuz the thing is, he was there for me, with all the Gavin shit. Despite having to juggle his role as being both our friends, he was there for me.
I think he thinks that somehow I discounted him by getting triggered.
If he would just admit he doesn’t understand triggers, and then learn about them, he would be so much happier.
He’d be better with his relationship with Karen.
He’d feel safer in a friendship with me.
I could invite him into my Happiness Palace without breaking the “No misogynist allowed” rule.
Literally half an hour before the butt-smacking episode last year, I called him my “favorite pet misogynist” as a joke to Karen. “I mean, I see how he is,” I said, “but it’s never been directed to me, and he’s such a sweetie pie.”
I guess the universe thought that needed to be corrected.
So, I wrote him a letter. It’s a let’s talk about this like grown-ups and move on, letter. And I think I’ll still give it to him. Print it out, with stickers and all.
But I can do it another day, when there aren’t a bunch of people I don’t know around.
Am I really this scared of strangers?
…No…I think I’m just realizing how much energy it takes when I can’t be myself.
I somehow got on “neurodivergent” tik-tok and I keep relating to all the symptoms.
Well, not all of them. But definitely masking. For SURE that one. I know exactly how uncomfortable it is to not just be yourself.
And I mean, seriously. The whole thing with fabric comfort? That’s a thing for me, but I just assumed it was for everyone. Doesn’t everyone else hate the way most textures of cloth and fabric feel??
Also the one about getting your sweater sleeves wet…that’s awful for everyone, right?
What else…Oh, the foods! Ending a meal with a certain taste in your mouth, proportioning out the amounts…
I keep asking Mommy if I qualify as neurodivergent, but she keeps not answering!
Maybe Jessie thinks that by not talking to me, or by passively saying things non-chalantly through Karen, he’s respecting my boundaries.
Jesus.
You’re still allowed to talk to me.
Just please don’t spank me. Ever.
Yes, I know I used to be a slut, and guess what? Hopefully I will be again.
Once I’ve gotten over the sexual-objectification trauma.
You can help with that, by not spanking me.
Men and their spanking.
Spanking was actually the final trigger.
New Years, 2020–2021. That was the last time I spent the night with Gavin. By then I was living with Gale and we were in our “working-on-it” phase, where he was supposedly acknowledging the abuse and trying to do better.
It was December 31st and January 1st.
He started on his best behavior. He’d cooked an entire British Christmas dinner, turkey and all.
(Come to think of it though, already that wasn’t really adorable, because the whole reason was that he wanted a redo; he’d been appalled at Gale and Richard’s choice of fish at their house on Christmas day. Fish?? FISH?)
My relationship to Christmas is…well, damn. It’s complicated.
I grew up feeling snubbed by Christmas. Snubbed and forgotten. Not even because I felt it, so much as that my mom did.
She used to get so angry that the world would stop for some people, but not for others.
It was a legitimate argument. I felt her pain. It’s frustrating, to have everyone making room for a holiday that at its heart is meant for a people other than you.
People are always so proud they know about Chanukah, specifically because if they give a nod to it they can go back to celebrating Christmas and feel cultured. But Yom Kippur, the highest of the holy days?
Never heard of it.
Pesach, maybe, but only because of its proximity to Easter.
And when the world stops, it’s easy to get together with family and prioritize the family.
It’s a lot harder on a random day in April or September.
So I get my mother’s frustration.
I’ve learned though, over the course of my adulthood, that I don’t have to take it out on the holiday itself.
Secular Christmas exists for a reason.
Also known as,
Everyone else runs around like crazy people getting into debt for a gift list that’s 200 people long…While I get to enjoy my time off.
This year, I’ve accepted Marisol and Andrés’s invitation to go to a chalet.
They had me at hot tub.
They also promised that I’d get the comfortable bed and that I don’t have to share a room with a stranger (because them being them, the chalet they’ve rented is meant for 4 adults and we will be six. “I’ll sleep on the floor, or wherever. I’m easy,” said Andrés. “Ooooh la la, and I get to sleep in bed with your girlfriend?? Everyone understands that we need the most comfortable bed because Marisol is blind, right??”) I felt very high-maintenance, but I have cumulative ancestral back pain and it hurts!
I brought my cell phone with me when I left the house this morning, but I never turned it on. I had it just in case.
But everything went fine, device-free.
I saw Naomi, gave her ginger cookies, challah, and a quick shoulder rub, then blissed out for an hour and a half while she made my muscles sparkle.
I felt like heaven by the time she was done.
Without a cell phone, I only knew what time it was when I got into the metro. 14:06.
14…what?? Military time still sometimes catches me off-guard. It just takes me a fraction of a second longer to process it.
Kind of like when you’re juggling two different languages.
I had told Lynn 2:15, so I figured I wouldn’t be too far off.
She signed us into the conference on her computer, so I wouldn’t have to touch electronics. I felt like an orthodox Jew.
I actually told the organization early on that I wouldn’t be able to participate in a lot of their events since they’re always held on Saturdays.
They were super sweet and apologetic about it, even sending out a survey to members about potentially changing the day.
But I guess everyone agreed Saturday was the best, or the majority did anyway. That’s the thing about being a minority: You’re in the minority.
It’s funny though, because I felt almost fraudulent when I told her that, that I try not to do things on Shabbos…
Because I’m not really orthodox.
I turn lights off and on, on Shabbos. I rip my toilet paper (I’ve never understood how that was a thing. This is what happens when we let men make the rules of the religion). I ride the metro and I even handle money.
I can’t really even read Hebrew properly.
Plus, I enjoy the hell out of bacon.
Gale lives in a really Chassidic neighborhood, one of the biggest outside Jeruselum I believe.
Felix is always cute when he sees them, saying in a cringy-too-loud-but-I-guess-it’s-okay-cuz-it’s-compliments-voice, “Those people always have such nice, fancy clothes!!!”
They certainly do.
On the day of our expotition, we passed a big group.
“Shabbat shalom,” I said with a smile.
Not a single person even tried to catch my eye.
Felix looked at me, confused.
“I know,” I said. “I don’t get it either. I’m just wishing them a good shabbos. They could at least smile.”
I tried at least four more times (it’s a very chassidic neighborhood).
Not one time did anybody even meet my gaze, much less return my greeting. They acted like I was invisible.
I know the men are forbidden to look at women, or talk to them I guess, but the girls? They’re not allowed to say “shabbat shalom” to a stranger? What do they think I’m going to do?!
I felt like a nobody.
I also felt like a free little girl with a secret.
I’m Jewish too…my way is just more fun.
I’m probably going to get in trouble if I publish this one. Judaism is the one thing we’ve managed to make taboo. Either you’re anti-semitic or you’re pro-Jew, and pro-Jew means not criticizing Jew. Ever.
Ummm…
This is like the problem with Jessie!
If you want to BE the best, you have to ADMIT WHAT YOU DON’T DO WELL, SO THAT YOU CAN BE THE BEST.
Seriously, this is the problem with the world! If I am pro-you, I am necessarily pro-criticizing.
Now, criticizing doesn’t mean demeaning, or stereotyping, or abusing, or demonizing.
Criticizing, in the positive-feedback-type-of-the word, means offering objective perspective so that a person or entity can learn or grow.
Duh, we all need that.
Zoom out. We’re all nations, at a macro-scale. Zoom out, and you can see it more easily. We’re nations, huge organisms teeming with life, and death, and wealth, and poverty, generational trauma, structural racism.
We’re families, centuries old.
We’re collections of our old old ancestors.
We carry it with us.
All of it. We carry the weight of our ancestors.
I grew up learning about my ancestors. Leah. Rebecca. Rachel.
Even watered down in the bible those women were cool.
Oh, the bible. Have you ever tried to read it?
I have.
It’s a book that was frozen in time.
It’s a fascinating book.
But it’s a book.
A book that captured ONE snapshot of how things were at ONE time: The culture, the mythology, the spirituality, the ritual.
All of which, mind you, was evolving.
Because that’s what nature does, naturally. It evolves. Which is amazing. It gives us airplanes and central A/C! What a cool trick, evolution and progress!
But the bible froze religion in time.
The religion would have changed, if stories-handed-word-to-mouth hadn’t suddenly been cemented into print. It would have had to. Have you noticed that everyone has the attention span of mice? People can’t accurately relay a message from one person to another over the space of five minutes, let alone thousands of years!
The message would have evolved.
But when it all got written down…
It got stuck.
Richard is using anti-semitism to fuck with Gale.
He’s one part Jewish, and as far as I can tell, has never for a moment tried to relate to the culture or the ritual, except insofar as to justify his personal victimhood. While in all actuality, he enjoys so much white male privilege that it renders any claim to jewish victimhood irrelevant, in my personal highly-informed opinion!
Don’t get me wrong. Jews as a nation have suffered tremendously. We make it our jobs to remember the holocaust for a reason. We’ve been discriminated against and exterminated. There are only fifteen million of us left. As a nation, we have been victims, terribly and awfully.
But Richard is a spoiled white boy who doesn’t know how to learn his lessons and he should NOT be allowed to use the suffering of our ancestors as justification for his goddamned narcissism.
Anyway, poor Gale. She’s like, “I’m from Manitoba and my parents sent me to Sunday School. I’m not allowed to have an opinion!”
She is, though. She’s so well-trained in privilege and oppression. She understands systemic racism and can spot things that other people can’t, because they’re too emotionally attached.
She could be a mediator from all these different angles of trauma and miscommunications.
But she’s shunned from the discussion.
I wanted to show her the discussion was a little bit nuanced, and maybe that’s why I dove in valiantly one day last year. We were having dinner with the neighbors, and Gale was the only non-jew at the table.
Which meant that everybody else at the table thought it was irrelevant how people are suffering on the Gaza Strip.
That’s it. You’re either pro-Israel or anti-Jew, and you’re not allowed to mention the people suffering on the Gaza Strip.
But the problem is. The thing is. No matter how you cut it…people are suffering in the Gaza Strip.
Tremendously.
Yes, the nation also has the tendency of producing violent-minded dogmatic freedom fighters armed with missiles and prayers.
But also, they’re dirt fucking poor and you keep diverting their water sources and encroaching on their land and they are HUNGRY and ANGRY because they don’t even remember a time when it wasn’t like this.
And over there, on the other side, in Tel Aviv they’re partying.
It’s precarious in Tel Aviv, though, it’s precarious there, too. There’s a reason I’ve never visited the land of my ancestors. They’re all growing up in a war zone.
The Israelis have inherited the pros and cons of Israeli life from their grandparents, and so have the Palestinians.
And there are baddies on both sides, yes, but a crazy imbalance of power.
And the world is teeter-tottering, because although Israel may be a bit of a bully to the Palestinians, it is also an ally to us.
Our only ally, or close to it.
Our only ally on a continent where women are currently being murdered for uncovering their hair.
Their HAIR!
In Iran, it was recently made illegal for women to go into parks.
Can you imagine??
The Middle East is a difficult place, and at least Israel can help us in a fight, if push comes to shove.
So we send Israel billions of dollars a year, we pose for photo ops with their politicians. Anti-Israel means Anti-Us, we say, all the while pretending we can’t see the Palestinians, starving and gasping for air.
FYI this is not the Jewish party line and I know it. I’ve known it since I was 16, and I said to Tal that I felt bad for the Palestinians. She replied by calling me a bitch and said that those turban-heads weren’t even worth living, she’d just as soon shoot one on sight. Pow pow.
I’m not making this up.
I wonder what Tal is up to, now. I wonder if she still thinks that all turban-heads should die.
On Christmas Day, 2020, we had fish at Richard and Gale’s. I felt like a little girl who had a chance to show Daddy Scrooge the magic of Christmas.
We were literally allowed one non-bubble guest. Gavin was it, and that was only because he was living alone.
It was full-on pandemic time. So we made Christmas a Thing with a capital T. I bought presents like I never had before.
The kids got a trillion gifts.
I bought Felix the complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes. He has read the entire set three times.
I’d told Gavin what to buy the kids: A crystal-growing kit for Riley, a rock-crystal-smashing kit for Felix.
He bought Baby Girl everything on her list, even a dragon that breathed real fire, and a beautiful set of China that I still use for tea. Tons and tons of chocolate.
The magic was lost on him, though. Now that the fog had lifted, I could see him not seeing.
For the reading hour, I bought him a copy of Harry Potter.
He read the first page, then took out his phone.
Outrageous!
Nothing terrible happened, but being around him was exhausting. I realized that I was always in a heightened state of anxiety, fearful for when I might do or say something he didn’t approve of.
On January 1st that finally happened.
I did or said something that he couldn’t handle, so he freaked.
I mean, technically he’s the one that did something, but to hear him say it, I out of nowhere started an argument in order to ruin the day.
It was New Year’s Day. I’d spent the week between Christmas and New Years recovering my energy from the holiday. On New Year’s Eve we had our turkey dinner, and on New Year’s Day we drank and Gavin tried to show me what a changed man he was.
Late in the afternoon, I was standing in the hallway and he absentmindedly smacked my butt.
My stomach immediately broke out in butterflies and then my heart sunk. Something told me that he wasn’t going to enjoy hearing what I said, but I had to say it, because that was the whole point, wasn’t it? I was supposed to feel safe enough with him to tell him my boundaries.
“Umm…Gavin? I need to tell you something. Because of the way we used to be together, it’s kind of a trigger to be spanked, now. It just brings up bad memories of difficult times, you know?”
He didn’t know. He couldn’t comprehend it, so in his mind, I was just wrong.
He turned cold. He turned angry.
(By therapy the next week he had calmed down. Instead of being nasty, he was just bewildered. “But it’s just a normal thing you do with your partner!” he said over and over again, looking to our therapist to agree.
Well…it can be a normal thing. If you’re not trying to recover from abuse, to change the patterns of a relationship that has suffered from a rotten power imbalance since the beginning.
And anyway, the whole premise of consent is that when you take it away…
It’s no longer okay to do that thing.
Even if you are the person’s husband.)
In the moment, it got nasty, a cycle of abuse come full circle once again, recapturing, tension building, acute explosion.
That’s why I was always in a heightened state of anxiety. I never knew when the explosion might happen. It could be today, or it could be next year. But I would unconsciously try to stop it, all day long, until the inside of my being had fractured.
This had been our pattern. I would tell him a feeling, he wouldn’t like the feeling, and he would attack.
He’d been on his best behavior, and even then it wasn’t going too great, but on New Years Day 2021 he just snapped. Off he went, little zingers, quiet, cruel, subtle enough that you had to lean in close and then they’d sting you in the ears, in your belly, in your heart.
I lay there listening to him spiral and I said to myself, The last time. This is the last time.
Because the thing is, you can’t really recover from abuse while you are with your abuser. It just doesn’t work. I had known that, he’d tried to claim differently, but this was the final straw.
After that day I didn’t go back to see him. I refused another visit even when his texts came in fast and furious, playing at manipulating any part of me that still felt loyal, still felt indebted, like I owed him something. Like being a good wife meant giving him second chances until the end of time.
Like being a good wife meant overlooking the names he’d called me and the ways he hurt me. Overlooking the boundaries he’d broken, over and over again.
I breathed deep breaths, reminded myself I didn’t owe him anything and clung to our therapy appointment like it was a lifeline. I clung to it because it was the only place I felt even close to safe to tell Gavin what I needed to tell him.
Our therapy appointment came and I told him.
“I’m scared of you right now. I spend my time either worrying about seeing you, seeing you, or recovering from seeing you. But I need to heal right now. I need a break, a real break, from you.”
I could see him open his mouth, all set to argue, cunningly, cutely, with humor. Recapture me. Convince me this was all a mistake.
“Okay, so when would you like this break to begin?” asked the therapist, and I could see Gavin deflate.
The therapist had given my request validity. She had allowed it to take form.
We hashed out the details, the check-in point, the guidelines. We said our piece, and Gavin promised not to contact me again.
After the therapist appointment, he immediately contacted me.
“Please just let me see you one more time.”
I consented to a walk. He brought my passport and a couple other documents that had been living at our old apartment. It was snowy-white up in the neighborhood where we walked, the millionaires of Montreal.
There’s a forest there, and beautiful homes.
It’s where Leonard Cohen is buried.
I don’t remember much about the walk except how free and unencumbered I felt. Nothing mattered, anymore. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. I had all my power back, and he knew it.
He walked me back to the house, and I paused on the steps when he called my name from the ground below.
“Lorelai. I love you.”
That was the last thing he ever said to me. It’s been two years, and I haven’t allowed him to speak to me again.
Spanking remains something of a trigger.
Love,
L.
