2001-02-02 - 17:58:35

There have been 4 attacks on women near my work recently, probably the same dude. At first he kept getting scared off by the women's resistance, but he's more aggressive now. Before I left work the other night, I had a short conversation about it with a woman co-worker. Both of us implored each other to be careful, how women always do. A normal part of saying goodbye to your girlfriends, especially at night.

Later the same evening, I was sitting on my couch stoned, thinking about what I could do to be safer. Definitely start carrying my pepper spray again - when & why did I stop? It used to be in my hand every time I walked down the street. What changed? That pepper spray, or another weapon, needs to be in my hand when I'm walking around at night, until the day I die.

So I was stoned, & you know how that can give you a really good access to your imagination, or let you visualize something & know how it'd feel MUCH more than if you'd thought it up not stoned (I apologize that I have to write this out & can't just do my interpretive dance for you titled "Doors of Perception, Blast 'Em Off the Hinges")? Anyway, I was thinking about how men ruin my life in a lot of ways, like how walking a block to the 7-11 is something I have to be careful about, and how all women's lives are like Buffy's, because there are these things that attack at night, and you can either pretend it doesn't happen or you can arm yourself with knowledge & weaponry & have a fighting chance.

So, it was weird to think of how all our lives really are like Buffy's, since Buffy's seems so make believe. And then I imagined her world without vampires, & then I had a flash of how it'd feel if my world wasn't how it is. To just walk outside at night in any part of the city for miles & miles worrying about nothing but my feet hurting, or the cold. Not having to whip my head around at shadows & voices like women are fucking hunted animals. I just got a little glimpse of how different my life & therefore my mind could be, with these drastically different material conditions. But then it went away, & I can still think about it, but I can't feel how it felt.

Ugh. The more I try to chase down the right words, the faster they escape me. Men are sick fucking monsters who cram our potentially huge lives into tiny murderous boxes? Are those the right words? I can't remember now.

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