Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Fire Hazard


Hi readers! Here's another excerpt from Second Day Reported. Thanks for reading!

I had my routines, sometimes a comfort, sometimes a noose. who knows when protection becomes a prison? In my childhood home, the windows were surrounded with long black bars . Vaguely Spanish-looking, Mother said they were both a safety measure and fire hazard.

My perfect life would be in New York City, and I would live in a penthouse apartment at the top of a large skyscraper by myself. Possessions minimal, I would come home from a day at the office and fix myself a drink, scotch over ice and sip it slowly. In my fantasies, I drank alone, the world outside where I could watch it, medicated.

But actual life did not afford such privacy. Only in nightmares would I find myself alone, running from building to building on empty streets full of menace. In daylight, I stuck to the standard rape-haunted schedule most women follow without knowing it, replete with warnings about where to go and when. My fantasies of ivy-league campuses devolved into a third-rate state university where female students, it seemed almost weekly, were cautioned not to walk alone at night.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Each time I play a song it seems more real." Robert Smith

Cocktail Hour
Drinking memoir suggestion: Visiting Life Bridget Kinsella

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!

5 comments:

Scott said...

Nice writing, Michelle. Keep those excerpts coming, please!

-p.s.-and the photos,too. :)

Charles Gramlich said...

I've often wondered how much such a fact, that women need to take more care in where they go and who with than men, influences the differences between men and women that we see.

JR's Thumbprints said...

Hey Michelle,
Another strange approach is to have the perpetrator wear a tether so the victim can trace his every move, his whereabouts. What better way to die a slow death?!

the walking man said...

ALL protection is a prison, caution less so. No perfect life necessarily includes a penthouse or a ghetto hovel. But both or either can be a component of perfect. Watching the world is a prison as well, one I know, participation never allows much time for watching.

Laura Benedict said...

"the standard rape-haunted schedule most women follow without knowing it"

I love how you remind me of things I didn't know I already knew! xo