“All this might be an illusion but all the same I cannot question the things I have experienced. Memories belong in this category.” ~ Shohei Ooka
Living in New York City, or, I suppose, any large and densely packed metro area, laundry – as in access to washers and dryers – is a thing, a challenge, an inconvenience, a marker of how much cashola you have. Rich folks have w’s and d’s in their large, rich people flats; they send out, to specialist cleaners – his shirts, jackets, and pants, her blouses and dresses – among other items; their staff (housekeeper, cleaning women) will wash the rest, including the unmentionables. Being not rich-y-rich, not even close, I still find it quite thrilling that I can, even over two decades after leaving NYC, wash my own clothes and everything else that needs washing in my own home, whenever I want (whenever I want!!!) because I have my very own washer and dryer. In my house, at my permanent disposal. Oh joy! Oh rapture! Basic/major appliances on hand and always ready: what a gift, and I am grateful AF.
Carrying even one bag of laundry several blocks is such a specific sweaty task, even in, maybe especially in winter (sweating while also freezing and slipping around, anyone?). When I lived in the East Village, the walk was about four blocks up 2nd Avenue to a reasonably clean spot, but the laundromat closest to me in my next neighborhood on the Upper West Side was another whole story. On Columbus Avenue between 103rd and 104th streets, it was – I kid you not – scary: dark, ancient, with worn and dirty walls scarred by graffiti half-heartedly wiped away, and yellowed by age inadequate florescent lighting over-head. I went there for a couple of years, the whole process took about 3.5 hours, and you dared not leave your wash unattended, so it was time to read and people watch, if you were brave enough to look at the other patrons, because looking at someone could be taken as an insult, an intrusion, a judgement in that place, that neighborhood, during those early years of the 1980s.
The woman who ran the place, owned it too, I guess, would do your wash for a fee, but I found her so terrifying I rarely approached her for any cause. A chain smoker, she had a backroom she might’ve lived in, not sure, and she was big, foul mouthed, and very, very angry, it seemed to me, all the time. Just asking her for change to use her machines was a challenge, kind of like asking an alligator to share its dinner? Doesn’t she want me to spend my money here, so – making change would seem like part of the service? But no, for gawd knows what reason, it infuriated her. She was like the mom in fairy tales who is actually a monster with a lashing pointed tail hidden under the tent dress she wore, the kind who eats little kids, including her own. And if you’ve never had your wet wash dumped out of a dryer you’ve fed several dollars into, dumped right out onto the questionably clean floor, as I did after stepping away for five minutes, you haven’t lived.
Not as close by was another much smaller, cleaner, less worn laundromat run by a man who was short and skinny, always on the move; he was always smiling, too. That seemed a bit suspect, but still, I stopped by one day – it was an extra whole and very long block away from my apartment, so it was unlikely I’d use it – yet it seemed he truly was genuinely nice, the atmosphere was one of cheery industry, women chatting with one another primarily in Spanish or what I assumed was Mandarin, and, in this place, everyone seemed to be taking care of one another, less piranha feeding frenzy-like, more controlled chaos only there was clearly order, and kindness, if you stuck around, which I did. Eventually, because I noticed he also did people’s laundry for them, I asked how much would it cost for him to do mine? For that bag? For this bag full. Five dollars. No way. Five dollars? Five dollars. Okay! I always gave him ten.
He was really nice, and getting someone who was kind to do my laundry was really, really, really nice. Heading off to college at eighteen, I didn’t know how to do ‘the wash’, because my mother was a fucking freak who treated her washer and dryer like they were her most precious possessions, the family jewels of a weirdly specific sort. Hers. Twice in my life she physically attacked me for attempting to use her washer, and while she was happy to instruct my sisters in how to do wash, and did my brother’s laundry until the day his domestic cat of a wife took over, she absolutely refused to teach me. I don’t know all of the reasons why that was, but in general she liked to stymie me, however and whenever she could. No problem, how hard can it be? It’swash…everyone does it (well, everyone except my brother).
When I ran out of clean clothes my first semester at Syracuse U., I took that same future five dollars’ worth canvas bag, my bottles of detergent and bleach (that’s what you use, right?) to the laundry room on the first floor, where I was thrilled to be able to fit all the clothes in a single machine (because why not,right?). Hooray! I added detergent and bleach (that’s what you do, right?), and – turning my back on the machine to read a history assignment – discovered thirty minutes later that I had a washing machine full of Pesto Bismol pink clothing, except my jeans and corduroys, which were chock full of pink and white spots and streaks. What. The. Hell. I figured out that a red cotton skirt I owned, which was no longer entirely red, had ‘shared’ its color because…bleach, I guessed? Shared. Oops. Straight from the washer into the garbage can, except for the salvageable bits I could still possibly wear. Thank goodness most of my clothes came from the thrift shop, although I did mourn a few I had bought new with my own money. Better luck next time? There was another, older student in the laundry room that day, while I waited for her to leave the room (no way was I going to take the puke-pink wash out in front of her), and for my machine to finish its cycle, I watched her separate her whites from her colored clothing, and put bleach in with the whites, and the whites only. Oops.
One day, less than a decade later, and after several years of using the laundromat with the always moving and smiling man, I came back from a midtown audition appointment, dressed in a billowing pale green skirt, white striped silk-ish blouse I still miss, and heels. It must’ve been for a soap, the audition, and as it was a hot summer day, I exited the 103rd street subway at the farthest north end to reduce my outside walk by a block. The steps at the 104th street exit are very steep, and I joined a wall-to-wall crowd slowly making its way upstairs like little sardines in a pack. As we began to gain sunlight, I was hit on the back of the head with rocks, twice, and found that I was bleeding; several of others in the group were hit also, and, looking up, I saw a group of young boys’ heads around the metal barrier above the stairs. Hurt and angry, when I got to the street level, I gave those little shits hell, and then proceeded to walk to the Post Office on 104th street to get some stamps. I was shaken, and still angry, and the heat that day was oppressive – but the bleeding was minimal and I would soon be home, after all. The boys, however, had decided to follow me, and as I made my way down the block a few catcalls followed me as well, nothing new in that, but what was new were pieces of street garbage zinging past my head, or not, hitting my back and legs. Ridiculous. Thankfully, respite was close, so, hastening my steps, it was done and over, and I was safely inside the P.O. While standing on line to get my stamps, a young girl approached me – warning me – that I shouldn’t go out there, because now there was a bunch of boys who were waiting for me, and I was going to get hurt, really hurt. I was stunned, disbelieving – what?! Is this my own special Lord of the Flies moment, or what? She had to be kidding?!
She was not.
As I finished at the window, I noticed a gaggle of small boys had entered the Post Office; they were whispering together, and were clearly keeping me in their sights. Fun stuff. Why, of all days, today, when I was in heels, FFS? Heels, and a billowing skirt. Why of all days had I decided to be a snarky cow, correcting children not my own, with whom I didn’t have a relationship, most of whom were kids of color, when I looked like the epitome of an entitled white lady, which I was, and am, but argh. For whatever reason (denial?) I didn’t reach out to anyone else in the Post Office; it couldn’t be that bad, right? So out I went, walking as fast as possible down the street while again, cans and bottles, rocks and whatever came to hand, began raining down on me from behind, several landing, mostly on my legs, back, and shoulders. I started running as best I could in my cursed heels, making it to the laundromat about a city block away where I threw myself on the mercy of my – acquaintance, the guy who did my laundry, a man who was not much bigger than the kids who were harassing me, if that.
Out he went without hesitation, returning a few minutes later – the boys having been scattered by – whatever he did; I was much too freaked out to watch, or witness. I was merely, hugely grateful. Was it five minutes, or ten, when he came back? I don’t know, but he told me it was okay, he’d dealt with it, and that I was free to take as much time as I needed before heading home. He knew these kinds of things, and how they can happen, but assured me they wouldn’t bother me again. He said he wasn’t afraid of bullies, and the only way to deal with them was to show no fear, ever. They were cowards, and easily – although I know he didn’t use this word – cowed. He then showed me what I had noticed before, but had never dared ask about: the tattoo on his arm, a series of numbers, telling me it was a souvenir of the concentration camp he’d lived in, and survived, as a child in Poland. I had seen it, of course, and thought that’s what it was, from the Holocaust, but who could I ask if I was too shy to ask him, which I was, same with my wondering where he was originally from, his accent having given his foreign birth away. He laughed, flexing his muscle on that same arm, laughing at – at himself? At life? At triumphing over the gang of kids? At surviving? He explained that this, this time in the camps in Poland, was why he was so short, he was starving there for years, before the liberation, but he had lived. And this was why he came to New York, to America, to be free, and safe, where he could work hard and make a life for himself after seeing the very worst of human behavior. He was forever grateful, and now, nothing scared him, certainly not a bunch of little kid bullies from around the block.
After that, we were friends, not sharing lunch and gossip friends, but friends, even though we never knew one another’s names. I stopped by to say hello whenever I was over that way, and bought him a gift for the holidays, grateful he was there, grateful, period. After that, he was my hero, for many reasons, and I loved him for his always smiling, always moving self. Those boys never glommed together again, that I knew, but I continued to look up every time I used that subway exit, just in case, and I stopped wearing heels to and from auditions, carrying them in my bag while sporting sneakers, ready, always, to run if I had to.
My friend the laundry man died of a heart attack on the job, about eighteen months later. I don’t know how old he was, but he could not have been much more than fifty, and it was terrible, a tragedy. I found out when I brought a bag of laundry for washing; there were women weeping in the narrow space, hugging one another, mourning him in Spanish, and Mandarin, English, too – enough for me to find out what had happened. No one there that day knew of his family, or who to contact; his body had been taken away by ambulance that morning; no one was in charge, everyone was in charge. I felt ashamed I never asked his name, or if he had family living. It seemed too personal, possibly too painful. But, I should’ve asked. Not long after that, I moved to mid-town. He had lived nearly thirty years in the U.S., spending his days in a long, narrow room filled with women and children and the noise of the washers and dryers, and he was always smiling.
If everyone – every U.S. citizen, I mean – waited on tables for six months, minimum, I think the people in this country would be in a better place, be more grateful, for example. If everyone spent six months or a year working in a nursing home, in a pre-school or grade school, maybe, just maybe, we’d see people change their opinions and choices around life, death, and everything in-between, including exercise, diet, smoking, hospice care and euthanasia, as well as contraception and abortion. Maybe. It could happen, and regardless it wouldn’t hurt. If everyone in the U.S. chambermaid-ed (a word that is gendered, and therefore suspect right out of the gate) for two summers during a good old-fashioned tourist season in a hot or even just slightly warm spot (the spot I did it in was tepid, at best), I believe the world would also be improved. It suddenly occurs to me that in both seasons of White Lotus, we don’t see that segment of the help, the invisible chambermaids who clean up the messes in bathroom and bedroom, make the beds, change the sheets and towels weekly or daily, empty the trash cans, and pick up room service trays – all for minimum wage, and tips! And for tips, if they’re lucky. Hm. Those invisible, essential workers, invariably women.
Yes. Yes, I did. I waited tables on and off for almost a decade, and chambermaid-ed for two whole summers and a part of another, before and between my years of college, and yes, both of these jobs were also an education. Did it make me a better human per my opening statement? I think so. I like to think so, anyway, but then I would, wouldn’t I? Substitute teaching is another job everyone would benefit from doing – especially those who criticize teachers and like to talk about those ‘long summers off’. As far as I could tell during my seven years filling various positions at the local K-12, those long ‘free as a bird’ summers are only long if you’re a parent waiting impatiently for school to start again. I did that too, I substitute taught, and my respect for teachers took a lovely leap upward, although they were already high, with a few individual exceptions. Just as in every profession, I encountered a handful of people in the education business who had zero business being there. Ah, humanity. So sublime, and so horrid. And, everything in-between.
I stopped having waitressing nightmares only a handful of years ago after thirty-plus years of having quit that biz, the anxiety of too many tables, endless demand, not enough servers and customers who were demanding and selfish bubbling up in my consciousness. Caffé Pertutti. Hanratty’s. West Side Story. Arno’s. Big Nick’s. Shakespeare’s Tavern and Playhouse. When I finally decided never again, never, ever again would I do that, wait tables for a living, I stuck to it. I was twenty-eight, and never will I ever not be grateful for the women and even a few men I met and befriended during those days, but never will I ever cease wondering at the vagaries of people (the customers) and their food. Good lord. What a lesson in humanity, and everyone would benefit from that, eh? Whatever happened to Segundo, I wonder, my favorite ever busboy, a real gentleman, such a hard worker, and so sweet. Never did he ever hit on me or make crude gestures as we passed, never did he ever show resentment toward me for being both a lot taller than he was, and speaking English better. Hell, he spoke English and Spanish, so of the two of us, he was the more linguistically gifted. What a mensch. Segundo for the second of his mother’s sons. Working with people whose backgrounds are very different from ours is a very good thing, and the restaurant industry is chock full of that mind and heart-broadening opportunity.
Helping out in my dad’s store, as a kid, was also an education; I learned that rubbers were not only rainy-day foot wear, for example. I knew we had Dr. Scholl’s sandals, which of course I loved (red leather straps, always), but rubbers? ‘I don’t think so. You could maybe try the department store across the street. Hold on,’ I shouted, ‘Dad! Do we have rubbers?!’ My dad, helping someone else, rolled his eyes, laughing, and came right over. We did, it turns out, have rubbers, stowed behind the door of the back room, where many odd, mysterious and even dangerous things were kept. My dad took the blushing twenty-something man in his capable and compassionate hands, leading him to where he was able to discreetly make his choice of a product very much not in the footwear line. Oops.
Observing people, many people, people I knew in our small town, beg, plead, cajole and even vaguely threaten my dad to refill their prescriptions days or weeks or months ahead of schedule, was an education of a whole other kind. It made me certain I would never, ever do drugs, ever – and would do my damnedest to avoid ever taking prescription drugs. Okay, well, I did do recreational drugs, in college mainly, and might’ve done more, but as a pharmacist’s daughter, there was something I objected to in having to pay for it. Pay for it? Hell no. And while it was clear that there were others ways I could have access to drugs as a comely young thing, that wasn’t ever gonna happen either. Hell no. It was fun while it lasted, I’m glad I had those experiences, and thankful I had zero addictive inclinations, but no.
Oby Atkin (Obediah, I guess?), who owned an antique store in town, came in every other Saturday or Sunday when I was a teenager and bought a hundred or two-hundred dollars’ worth of porn magazines. I always felt embarrassed and awkward when I ran into his wife in town, but she didn’t seem to get out much. Doc Ferraro, the dentist, wrote script after script for his much younger wife, tried to charm me, and my dad, distracting us with banter while scratching his Rx pad. And he was charming, but everyone in town knew something was off, especially after his wife drove into a friend’s house one night. I don’t mean drove into their driveway, I mean she drove into the actual front of the house, crash, bang, boom, so they had to get a new porch and front door. You see a lot, know a lot, living in a small town, serving John and Jane Q. Public over the years. And, no matter what, my dad was discreet; he might hear the gossip, be told people’s secrets in that same backroom, but he didn’t share, ever, even about those calls, the ones that came in late at night because someone he’d known his whole life had swallowed a bottle of pills, drunk a fifth of scotch, and reached out to him because they’d changed their minds, and knew Dick wouldn’t judge, would only help, which he did.
My last waitressing job was at a schmancy steak house on the lower west side. I can never remember the name of the place, which is indicative of how much I hated it there. The customers were Gordon Gecko wanna-bes who treated the wait staff horribly or with a niceness that stunk of noblesse oblige, all of it depending on how the markets had been that day or week, bullish to bearish. The brothers who owned the place were very different, as in one was mostly absent and nice when present, and the other was ever present and presented as what he was: a short, fat hateful pig. He liked to humiliate the old guy waiters, especially in front of younger female employees like me. It clearly got him off, screaming at sixty and seventy-year old men, immigrants who need the work, and who as union members were within several months or years of being able to retire after decades on their feet, having built new lives in America. He’d shoot me sidelong glances as he strutted his stuff in the kitchen, having said his worst to these men, men who were always kind to me, the new kid on the block. What a schmuck. At that job, if you weren’t busy, you were required to stand with your back up against the wall, hands behind your back. This little shit of a human being, who was several inches shorter than I was, liked to push his belly and pelvis up against me as I stood there motionless, and – if not helpless – stuck for the moment, peering over his head. Oh, how I would love to rip the smirk off his face for all the young women I’m sure he did that to, over the years. Maybe I could send a copy of this to him? I do remember his name, if not the name of the restaurant. Yick.
Two full seasons of chambermaiding at the Mathes Hotel in Fleischmanns, New York, May – September rounded out my time making up beds and cleaning up after strangers. It was an early twentieth century hotel that had been updated in ‘50s and neglected ever since. My days there were in the late seventies. The Mathes was closed all winter, spring and fall, had minimal maintenance on a daily or annual basis, with entire facilities and wings shut down because the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Mathes, didn’t have or didn’t want to spend the money to get them up on running, or to make needed repairs. It was a strange place, faded and hollow, filled with returning long-time customers who were, like the Hotel itself, on their last legs. Both my younger sister and I had residents die on us that first summer, as in we were the ones who discovered their bodies in their rooms when we went in to clean. Then, after reporting the unsettling news, Mrs. Mathes shooed us away, bustling in to go through the individual’s personal effects. The woman whose cabin-ette I cleaned, the one who I discovered dead in her bed, was shipped back to New York City or New Jersey with all arrangements made by Mrs. Mathes. No one in her family bothered to make the trip, which seem hard, and tragic. She had always tipped me well, and was palpably, painfully lonely. I had made conversation with her, but I was on the clock and Mrs. M didn’t like us to dawdle, ever.
Twice that summer Mr. Mathes cornered me, or tried to, in the upstairs hallway, attempting to cop a feel. He had to have been in his sixties or seventies. I was eighteen. I told Mrs. Mathes after his second attempt, and she looked at me for a long moment, silently, finally telling me to get back to work. He was easy to outrun, so I let it go, and he never tried it again so maybe she said something to him? Mrs. Mathes was short and stout and efficient. They accepted cash only, and it was clear she was the one in charge of the money and reservations, the business side. It appeared to me that she and the Mister were fading away in concert with friends, albeit paying friends, all together in that place where, twenty and thirty years prior, they’d had experienced real enjoyment after the war. Many of them lost family in the Holocaust, but Mrs. Mathes didn’t talk about the past, none of the guests did either, at least not to me.
Cleaning is simply not that much fun, in my opinion, except the part where you’re done and it looks great and feels like an accomplishment. And, chambermaiding was – not too awful, just not a job you want, long-term. Nice to be done by 11a.m. most days, not nice to find dead people, nice to get decent tips occasionally and not nice to clean up other people’s messes. The Mathes Hotel had a cook who firmly believed in a daily dose of stewed prunes with breakfast, and that created problems for us, the cleaner-uppers, more than once. I remember standing on the front lawn as I crossed from the laundry back toward the hotel proper, watching almost as if in slow motion as a poor man tried his best to get down the long front porch and inside to the bathroom before crapping in his pants, and on the floor. He got about half-way. I begged and pleaded with my sister to clean it up, and in exchange I did the room on the 2nd floor, the one with the woman who had regular problems of a related kind, but I’m pretty sure my sister got the short end of the stick. I was just happy we made it through that summer without any more deaths.
Maybe the real lesson of all the different jobs I had, waiting table, clerking for my dad, chambermaiding, was to see humanity at its best and worst and everywhere in-between, to prepare me for life out in the world, outside my fan-dam-ly. I was also able to see who and what I didn’t want to be, or how I didn’t want to be. I already knew I never wanted to make people feel like shit, although life has taught me that is almost inevitable, because there are those who already feel like it, are constantly look for confirmation, and are impossible to avoid. I knew I didn’t want my dad’s business, or job (neither did he, as it happened), or my mom’s, as a teacher. I didn’t want to wait tables or open a restaurant, own a hotel or manage one. I also didn’t want to manage a disco or move up through the ranks at any of the many places I worked as a teen and twenty-something, including a stint at the MTA as an information operator, one of those people attached to a phone headset who gave out train information, now, I believe, all automated. What a dead-end that was, for me. For me. Not for others, who had and have different needs and ambitions.
If you have talent or talents, and intelligence, drive and desire, and are interested in many things the possibilities are – potentially – endless. I once loved a very handsome man who told me his life was largely defined by all the women, and men, he’d said ‘no’ to, and it’s like that, in a way (he really was so, so gorgeous). But – it’s getting to yes that matters, getting to yes and a place of purpose and meaning – if you’re lucky, that is, and don’t have to make a living right now to feed kids or whatever meter is ticking regardless of ‘purpose’, or doing something that is deemed a contribution to society. All work is a contribution of some kind or another, even if it’s solely about putting food on a plate, yours or the plate of someone you love.
Maybe none of these jobs made me a better person, a better citizen, after all, but they did allow me time and experiences I would not have had otherwise, time to grow up and find out what I wanted to do, which ultimately was rather simple and, wonder of wonders, right back where I started as a child. Why is it the simplest answers so often elude us? Not that I didn’t know what I wanted, I just wasn’t sure how to get back there, get back there through the maze of expectation and projection, safe, sound and solvent, never having once again to wait tables or do any job that was a test of endurance and generosity of spirit. And what I wanted, all along? To read, write, talk to and be with friends, grow shit, watch good content, and absorb all the political news I can stomach. That’s it. And speaking of stomachs, I also wanted to eat good food cooked by myself, and, on occasion, by others (bless them), served by others (ohmigawd, thank you, and may your waitressing nightmares be few), paid for by me without a scintilla of financial agita, including a nice fat tip. Simple pimple.
*Lloyd Dobler, from the great flick, Say Anything, written by Cameron Crowe
There was a time when the only good female victim was the bleeding one. The high-water mark for salacious crime reporting—the yellow journalism purveyed in the late 19th century—made sure that every crime story came with an innocent, young, white victim, hopefully in a nightgown stained red. Justice for women inevitably took the form of white male vengeance attacking whomever had sullied the lady.
This vibe has prevailed in recent decades, even when it was lightly subverted; in 1973 Ms. Magazine infamously published a photo of Gerri Santoro bleeding out after a botched illegal abortion, under the headline “Never Again.” Time and again, the stories of lily-white women generously bleeding out for justice take center stage. To be a good crime victim demands youth, innocence, tears, and a life in tatters. It pulls a woman out of one airless box—property/wife/daughter—and pops her into another: ruined angel.
It would be nice if we could transcend this ancient narrative. And lately, finally,the “good victim trope really seems to be faltering, and I am absolutely here for it. Whether it’s Stormy Daniels chortling at the former president’s penis, E. Jean Carroll refusing to designate herself a rape victim (while still suing the former president for rape), or Amanda Zurawski testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week about how her inability to access health care nearly killed her, these women are not broken, defiled, ruined, or asking men to rescue them. They are, rather, pissed off, living their lives, and defying the public imperative to open a vein in public as a testament to their loss and brokenness. They are nobody’s property and nobody’s responsibility, and it is about freaking time we took them extremely seriously.
Zurawski’s testimony is particularly compelling after months spent watching the post-Dobbs reporting on all the women who must brush right up against death in childbirth before anyone can help them. It is a chilling reminder of how very much we love stories of dying women and the men who save them. But Zurawski’s testimony—that despite the fact that her pregnancy was not viable, her Texas doctors “didn’t feel safe enough to intervene as long as her heart was beating or until I was sick enough for the ethics board at the hospital to consider my life at risk”—reworked that story. Rather than center herself as a victim, she centered the men who hurt her (including Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, who didn’t show up for her testimony) and the ways in which she and her husband saved herself. It may not be a story you read in the mainstream press, but it is why abortion won the midterms and the Wisconsin Supreme Court race and will likely keep winning elections for anyone looking to preserve reproductive rights. Nobody is going back to Justice Alito’s halcyon days of witch burnings and Madonna/whore morality tales. Abortion advocates are, again, saving themselves.
Olivia Nuzzi’s recent barnstorming profile of Stormy Daniels in New York Magazine is, similarly, one for the books, not least because of the tarot card reading that opens the piece, and the open roasting of the politics-to-reality-show pipeline that constitutes public life today. But the most arresting part of the story is the grouping of several Trump “victims”—Stormy Daniels, Kathy Griffin, Mary Trump, and E. Jean Carroll—into a category Mary Trump handily describes as having “no fucks to give.” (Disclosure: As a journalist, I’ve met all of these women in recent years.) Griffin, in a quote, goes one better, describing Daniels as “like a porno Dorothy Parker,” and then goes on to describe the fantasy as “me, Mary, E. Jean, and Daniels and probably her husband and a fluffer.” I love the descriptor, and not just because each of these women is funny, complicated, and comfortable in her skin, as well as generally quirky AF, but also because it signals that perhaps the era of the wan, ruined, long-suffering victim may be well and truly behind us.
I’ve all but given up on the pollsters and pundits who will never understand the seismic change Dobbs brought about in politics. They don’t seem to actually know any women like E. Jean Carroll or Stormy Daniels, and they clearly don’t have any idea about how to pick up the phone and reach one. If you live your whole entire life in 19th-century tabloids or 21st-century Hallmark movies, you can truly fail to understand that for most women, most of the time, sexual harassment, sexual assault, internet death threats, pay discrimination, the absence of a meaningful child and health care network, pregnancy, pregnancy loss, and pregnancy complications are daily facts of life. All those things truly complicate and confound our daily lives, and still we manage to go to our jobs, and buy our yogurt, and call our moms. We’re actually, very few of us, huddled on a velvet couch palely waiting for some legislator to rescue us, or for some ethics board to deem us sufficiently wan and pale to warrant emergency lifesaving medical care. As Zurawski testified Wednesday, she never expected the senators who favored the abortion rules that nearly killed her to show up at a hearing to hear her story. They are as wholly invisible to her as she was to them. She just wants the rest of us porno Dorothy Parkers to be forewarned.
So, too, Carroll sat before a jury that already understands why women don’t report sexual assault the day it occurs, and told Donald Trump’s lawyer, “You can’t beat up on me for not screaming. One of the reasons [some women] don’t come forward is they are asked why they didn’t scream. Some women scream; some women don’t. It keeps women silent.” Indeed, she said, she now fully understands why women don’t report sexual abuse—because they won’t be believed (which is, paradoxically, what Trump’s lawyer kept saying: that she wasn’t believable). But this jury got to hear from a three-dimensional Carroll,who happily went into a changing room at Bergdorf’s with a guy because she was a journalist and he was a story. Her testimony was deeply hilarious and complicated and highbrow and ambitious and not at all designed for anyone’s fainting couch. “I was ashamed. I thought it was my fault,” she testified. “It was high comedy, it was funny, and then to have it turn …”
Welcome to the life of a woman.
It is worth noting here that Donald Trump’s defense in every case involving a female accuser is one-dimensional: She wanted his fame, she wanted his money, she wanted revenge. Women exist solely to steal his light, to cash in on his importance. In this Victorian telling, women are nothing until they can gouge a man.
But so many of the women presently in the world don’t actually believe that Trump is the source of their future greatness. With the exception of his wife and his daughters and some hapless attorneys, most women are smart enough to stay far away from him. To wit: What Stormy Daniels reports wanting from Donald Trump was principally to be left alone. When E. Jean Carroll’s friend Carol Martin advised her not to tell the police she’d been raped, it was because she wanted to spare her from being doubly injured by him. As Carroll put it on cross-examination: “I was afraid Donald Trump would retaliate, which is exactly what he did. He has two tables full of lawyers here today.”
Victims of persistent narcissistic misogyny, whether it emanates from Trump or Tucker Carlson or Harvey Weinstein or someone much less famous, always end up having to be “good” victims. In order to get anything like justice, they have to perfectly embody the trauma of what happened to them as the main plotline of their own life. The narratives always put their attacker, his wants and needs and actions, at the center of the story. Even when the attackers become incidental, or ancillary, or just tiresome, we have to keep behaving as though they are the beginning and the ending of the story.
But these new porno Dorothy Parkers keep making the choice to center themselves, their friendships, and their intricate lives. As Carroll testified Wednesday, “I’ve regretted this 100 times, but in the end, being able to get my day in court finally is everything to me. So I’m happy!” Like so many Trump accusers, she just wants to unstick her life from the sprawling miasma that is Donald Trump. She wants her voice back and her career back and her reputation back. Like Daniels, she just wants him to go away.
The notion that men own the law and women own their pain is so deeply ingrained in our legal system that nothing—not Anita Hill or #MeToo or decades of true crime and decades of obsessing over true crime—has fully shaken it loose. But in this post-Dobbs moment, we may finally have the potential to understand the cost of treating women as mere bodies, vessels, and victims, either perfect or ruined. Because unlike the women who bled out in random hotel rooms or died of infection, these women are surviving their mistreatment, and organizing around it. And they are finding a new way to talk about it—they are making these stories about them.
It is fitting that Trump most likely isn’t going to show up at E. Jean Carroll’s trial. It’s her story, after all. He’s just a bully she met along the way.
