Dangermond.org

What? Irresponsible?

The rheumy eyes were tell-tale. I told her about J trying to kiss me. The long pause. “You know why the gardener is no longer here? … Oh, what is the word? I can’t think of it. It was D’s wedding and I had fractured both of my ankles and had taken a pain pill. He was in here working and I was lying down in there. I can remember what I was wearing – a nightgown and a robe – he came in and said ‘let me rub your back’ and I thought what a compassionate man and then he turned me over and – pause – he was in and out. Just like that [snap of the fingers]. He said, what do you think about that? And I said it is my worst nightmare. Then his wife came over here the next day screaming obscenities. And to think I almost had him drive me to the wedding – pause – I remember you took care of me.”

This is my cue to respond sympathetically, instead I am Lady MacBeth.

Coming home last night, the electricity was off at the Can and I met up with H&T and we decided to take wine, cards and candles down to the pool rather than sit in the stuffy apartments. H was talking about his father, how he often does not say the right thing at the right time – and T said, when we were rescued here by the Black Hawk helicopters, we called him, in tears, shaking, and he said, “That must of have been something.”

The news said we will have black outs. L said we are hanging by a thread here. Pishaw, I say. Then the morning Times Picayune affirms the precariousness – in New Orleans, people are fighting stress, fighting hopelessness, fighting period.

I grappled with my un-feeling and insensitive non-response – don’t blame the victim I admonish – what remains is an abhorrence of weakness I have never mastered – disgust over not protecting herself. (Or me.)

“You’re now one I need to protect” – and N wondered why this resonated.

Scientists at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have linked risk-taking behavior in mice to a gene. Those without it prance unprotected along steel beams instead of huddling in safety like the other mice.

Aversion to victimhood – why I model the men not the women in my family – “you’re an enigma,” J said to me in Purchase, “you’re tough, but you look girly,” – if there is a predisposition to being a victim I will fight the good fight to my grave – this gal will not be doomed by her own DNA.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 3rd, 2006 at 11:43 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.