Essay: Woman on the sidewalk, shouting

On always watching your step

It’s 2 am on a Sunday morning and I’m standing on the sidewalk shouting at a man I barely know. Brad is exactly the kind of man you'd want someone to shout at—he’s arrogant and anti-therapy and says he’s too muscular to be a feminist. He buys me a drink and then makes a roofie joke. Later I will describe him to my therapist as a pothole I fell into. She will ask me why I entertained him so long. Why I didn’t just leave but instead spent the night debating feminism on the corner of Yamhill and 2nd. Splintering into the night like an imploding star. 

To answer that question, you’d have to know me not as I am now, a thirty something woman who never stays out after midnight, rarely parties, and is on the brink of publishing her first book. Instead, you’d have to have known me in my twenties—when I was still listening to the Cranberries and wearing winged eyeliner and drinking Smirnoff and very much hoping I was pretty enough for someone to love. 

You’d also have to understand the bizarre territory that is the sidewalk. A liminal and often terrifying place. Especially and perhaps exclusively if you’re a woman. How men can leer at you from the safety of pickup trucks. Or follow you home late at night whistling. Or swivel on the pavement and mutter: nice ass. And because there is no high school class that teaches you what to do when threatened, you probably say nothing. 

You would also have to understand the anxiety of a van slowing down at midnight. Know what it's like to carry your keys sharp side up. Or cross the street late at night if a stranger approaches. Sidewalks are public and on them, somehow, a woman’s body is made to also feel public. Consumable. 

It was the sidewalk that first taught me that my ass was fabulous but vulgar. A liability—like a wine stain or cheap lingerie or a screaming parrot. The way, at age 14 and without permission, my body peached into an embarrassing display of womanhood. How men always felt entitled to comment on it and sometimes violate it.

I'll spare you those stories. Mostly because you’ve probably lived some version of them yourself—the ones where someone made you feel so small, you slipped your own skin. The way you learned to magician into two separate places at the same time. 

My 10-year-old niece recently told me she dreams about punching a man in the face. It’s funny because it’s sad. I understand how her rage will soon become necessary. How it will begin to bud in her like antlers. 

I’ve had a similar fantasy. Born the first time I was catcalled on my way to school or groped at the bus stop. When, late one night in my twenties, I was followed by a group of men in my neighborhood who turned out to be my former high school students. The moment they recognized me, they metamorphosed from shadows back into boys. How a man on a corner once saw me flinch and said: Baby, I don’t want your purse. I want your meat.

So now it’s 2am and I’m out on the sidewalk again. In my twenties, I would have tried to make men like Brad love me. In my thirties, I’d rather yell at them.

It feels wrong and delicious to stand on the sidewalk and shout. Like being naked in church. Getting a little high on the word no. To give Brad nothing—not even the satisfaction of getting my number feels like some tiny opportunity to set a long record straight. To flip off the pavement gods. To stick it to the men who walk all over sidewalks and everyone else.

Does Brad deserve all of my rage? No. Yes. I don’t know. Before he leaves, he tells me some really fucked up stuff that happened to him as a kid. An explanation maybe. A glimmer of self-awareness or a bid for pity. I hate how much compassion I feel. He calls an Uber and, despite my fury, asks if he can still take me to dinner. You’ve got a big mouth and a great ass, he says. I’m so tired I feel as if I might dissolve into the pavement like an oil spill. I'm tempted to tell him to go to hell, but, instead, I tell him to go to therapy. 

***

Have you felt this way on the sidewalk? I’d love to know in the comments.

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Instructions for Traveling West

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Elise Loehnen

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“What a thrilling voice! Joy Sullivan’s poetry is vast and yet familiar—and more remarkably, full of images and recollections that might have been mine, or yours. This book is a wonderful comfort.”—Elise Loehnen New York Times bestselling author of On Our Best Behavior

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