Inappropriation Page 4

  OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS Ziggy notices a new algorithm at work in the margins of her social media accounts. Virtual forces are conspiring to send her every imaginable herbal, pharmaceutical, and surgical remedy to restore a man’s erection. Harvard scientists and Hollywood plastic surgeons offer pills and implants to help her stay hard. The ads appear with strange specificity and omniscient timing. When Hitler Youth tell Ziggy her pelvic bone looks protuberant in her jeans, a picture of men’s Levi’s pops up minutes later in her sidebar. She tries not to be superstitious. How could Hitler Youth have permeated her internet presence? Plus, there is something slightly oblique about the messaging. It seems to think Ziggy is also balding, suffers from acne, and wants to lose ten kilograms, as if the data mined belongs to some other deeply insecure male.

  It would be easy to blame Ziggy’s gender anxiety on puberty—her body’s hard, bendy quality like a plastic action figure without the special powers. She could blame it on porn and the cyborgian pleasure of watching an anonymous penis have sex with female bodies, how her own childish shape seems an inconceivable substitute. She could call it a physical fixation with Lex and the girl’s ability to do a split between two adjacent school desks, her own inflexibility somehow confirming that Ziggy will remain always a virgin. But Hitler Youth’s presence is also, undoubtedly, the fault of Ziggy’s mother.

  Ruth’s ideology is one thing, and then there is her behavior. Despite her high spiritual aspirations, Ziggy’s mother is still attached to the objectification of her physical form. She has the poise of a ballerina in an Italian movie star’s body; her face is broad and fine-boned, and to Ziggy it seems always set in the self-conscious poses of cinematic close-ups. Her mother is beautiful and knows it: Ziggy often catches her making cat eyes in the mirror. On long car rides, when Jeff admires the landscape, Ruth seems to shrivel in the front seat, as if in a losing contest with Nature itself. Her mother is jealous of trees, and it makes Ziggy frightened of womanhood. She has heard Ruth practicing vulnerability on Jeff: explaining that she feels sexually rejected when he takes too many photos of a sunset. Her voice gets heavy with grievance and to Ziggy it sounds like she is trying to bludgeon Jeff with her pain.

  A disturbing recent development is that Ruth seems to be encouraging Jeff to objectify her in a more classically misogynistic way. Ruth’s blouses have lately gotten very booby, her tights sheerer and with added witchy lace. Ruth has inherited dozens of her own mother’s shoes—all narrow, high-heeled instruments of physical torture—which are now constantly catching on the fringing of her designer paganwear. Spying through the door crack this last summer, Ziggy watched her mother straddle Jeff then start gyrating over his crotch in her very threadbare tie-dye tights. Ruth slapped her own ass, then grabbed Jeff’s hand and slapped herself again, harder. Ziggy stood frozen on the landing like a spooked Kabuki mask. This wasn’t the kind of gentle femininity the women practiced in her swimming pool. Ruth performed the dissociated jaguar moves of a stripper; the dance bore no resemblance to the alleged sublimity of the heterosexual union. Ziggy believes her mother’s hypocrisy is driving Jeff from loving father-husband to fun-loving, emoji-mad, patriarchal triathlete. And Ruth is definitely making Ziggy feel sexist. Hitler Youth claim that the Sacred Feminine is just what voluptuous women tell each other to feel better about sagging.

  THAT SATURDAY, when her mother’s annual menarche workshop commences in their living room, Ziggy is thrilled to have other plans. Ruth runs this particular piece of work for teenage girls and their mums. In a circle, both generations take turns telling the stories of their first period. The sagas mostly go like this: the mothers saw blood on their underwear and thought they were dying; the daughters saw the same, asked the internet, and understood they’d gotten their periods. In previous years, Ziggy has watched these sessions from behind a small citadel of goatskin jembes at the back of her living room, finding the teenage participants particularly insane. The way they declared their female pride, hugged their mothers, and made meaningful eye contact with total strangers. After the sharing session, everyone was instructed to draw their periods in crayons on large sheets of art paper. Ziggy had watched the scrolls fill up with thick reams of crimson and female faces contorted into Munch-like screams. Then Ruth talked about estrogen and progesterone and how women should monitor their cycles, making sure to wear long skirts and play with puppies at certain times of the month. This, she claimed, was vital to maintaining a healthy balance with the Masculine (who should play contact sports and kill spiders). Ruth told the women about the sacred geometry of their anatomies—how the womb is an inverse vestibular organ that makes you susceptible to interior decoration and baking, but is also the deep hearth of your feminine power. Ziggy recently learned the correct pejorative for her mother: Ruth is a biological essentialist.

  But today Ziggy does not have to hear any of it. Lex has invited her and Tessa over to listen to her new songs. Ziggy knows that Lex was adopted from Bangladesh by two elderly white people who love and spoil her but also call her native country a “heartless place.” Lex has made the most of their well-meaning ignorance by abusing her curfew, their liquor cabinet, and a border collie named Conrad, whom she walks every afternoon to a boat shed where the two of them Dutch-oven until sundown. Tessa says Mr. Cameron wears a hearing aid so Ziggy is looking forward to saying the eff word in front of someone else’s parent.

  When the intergenerational menstruaters return from morning tea, Ziggy flees to the front door. On her way out, she glances over the railing and sees a large woman just joining their group, apologizing as she tiptoes around the circle. The woman wears a pale pink smock and a pair of cherry-red hair clips set inches apart at the top of her head, dividing the jet-black hair into two slick sheets. This too-close placement of hair accessory makes most grown-ups look insane, but the woman’s formidable brow, sensitive sunken eyeballs, and serious mouth lend the style a surprising gravitas and sense of dignity. Ziggy didn’t know transgender women could get their periods. In fact, this and a lifetime of accumulated catcalling trauma, is her whole understanding of trans-exclusionary radical feminism. She decides to stay and watch for a minute.

  Ruth begins the next session by asking the latecomer, Rowena, to share her menstruation origin story. The transgender woman explains that since starting her hormone treatment, she has experienced period-like symptoms. “Everything but the blood.”

  Ziggy watches the other women with interest. Their faces express a challenged but respectful listening; a few nod in obvious discomfort. When Rowena finishes, a very rotund woman with diverting tribal jewelry raises her hand. She wears a designer silk sack and a single feathered earring, giving her that Native American elder look.

  “Pardon my ignorance,” the spherical woman says. “But how can you get period-like symptoms without ovaries?”

  Rowena is magnanimous. “Beats me,” she says. “But I get nausea, headaches, mood swings, cramping, and explosive diarrhea.”

  The circle tsk-tsks and hums like a giant microwave oven. Rowena appears to have suffered to their liking. Now the day can continue with more vagina-sketching and estrogen-building and conclude unceremoniously with the eating of bland pasta salads in the kitchen. Ziggy doesn’t understand why her mother has allowed a transgender woman to participate in Period Day, but she is sure that Ruth is faking it. Ziggy slips out the door, feeling abnormally angry with her mother.

  When she gets to Lex’s house, Ziggy takes the stair lift up the steeply landscaped garden to the Camerons’ front door. Lex greets her, instructing Ziggy to turn back around and admire the view.

  “Wow,” says Ziggy.

  “It’s not the ocean,” Lex says meanly. She points to the tawny wriggle on the horizon. “It’s America.”

  Ziggy laughs but Lex stays entranced. A trick of refracted light, the Fata Morgana, is the cause of this mirage. But Ziggy doesn’t tell her friend. Lex gazes at the hazy strip, intoning the word America with such mystical power, it seems possible that they
really can see it.

  Ziggy follows Lex inside to where Tessa is waiting in a nest of pillows on the bed. Lex leaps onto the mattress with a feline agility that makes Ziggy anxious to be comparing her friend to a wildcat. Ziggy clambers up awkwardly after her. Lex places the laptop on her chest and starts to play the song. Ziggy watches her friend’s breasts rise and fall like the bass is booming from her curves. Hitler Youth observe that Ziggy’s male mind is mired in racist, misogynist tropes about tribal beats and fertility figures. Not only is Ziggy being classically racist, they say, she is obviously attracted to her girlfriend. But Lex’s lyrics draw Ziggy quickly back into the room. They all riff on something called “eye-rape.” How men eye-rape Lex in the street; on public transport; escalators at the mall; and how she is going to ass-rape them back with stiletto Louboutins then whip their balls into waffles with the chain straps of Chanel handbags.

  Lex mouths the words with ferocious puff and Tessa bobs her head fiercely. Ziggy assumes you are only allowed to laugh on the inside. That anything else might detract from the menace, that Lex’s threats are not a joke.

  When it finishes, Tessa stares up blissfully at the ceiling. “So. Fucking. Good.”

  Ziggy nods.

  “Do you get it?” says Lex, eyeing Ziggy suspiciously.

  “It’s about catcalling.”

  Lex’s look darkens. “Does that even happen to you?”

  Ziggy shrugs casually, while her whole body burns up. Under the blankets her little scraggly legs are a sudden aberration.

  “Catcalling is like cavemen psychically clubbing women then dragging them into the bushes,” explains Tessa.

  “Totally,” says Ziggy. “I get it.” And she does. She has seen the grabby look in their eyes as road workers enjoy a passing woman. Walking with her mother, she often feels the whistles sail out like nets.

  “My songs are all about white patriarchy,” Lex clarifies.

  “And how it’s turning black people gay,” adds Tessa.

  Now Ziggy is lost. “Black people are turning gay?”

  “In America.” Lex speaks with authority. “The prison-industrial complex is making it nearly impossible for black people to stay straight.”

  “They put black men in jail so their wives are forced to be lesbians, while all the men inside turn gay.” Tessa gives Lex a look of manic sympathy. “It’s black genocide.”

  Ziggy has heard about black male genocide and mass incarceration, but the gay part is new. With marriage equality and all the medical options for same-sex conception, she isn’t sure how being gay has any bearing on the survival of the black race. Still, she keeps quiet, thinking she must be missing something.

  “Notice how many trans people of color there are?” says Tessa. “That’s because the patriarchy failed black men. It’s actually easier to be a straight woman.”

  “And now rich white men have started retiring as women,” says Lex, fanning her fingers in mock coquetry. “But the kind who get manicures so they don’t have to lift anything.”

  Tessa shakes her head. “So. Fucking. Fucked.”

  It all sounds terrible. Especially that last part about old white men vying for a piece of the action, trying to get out of building shelves and opening lids. Ziggy thinks she understands what her friends are talking about. “So transgender people have just internalized the patriarchy?”

  Tessa draws back with theatrical exasperation. “Of course not!” she says. “Transgender people are a disenfranchised minority, so they can’t be patriarchal. They’re women of color.”

  Ziggy sees Lex shift restlessly between her pillows. “At least, transgender people would never eye-rape a woman,” she says. “Because they know how it feels.”

  Ziggy nods along, the dread of complicity squeezing her skull. She has spent years honing her understanding of how the Holocaust felt, making a comprehensive punishment of her extracurricular life. But porn or popular culture or her mother’s confounding therapies have deprived her of a clear sexual orientation, making Ziggy less accustomed to being eye-raped than to eye-raping. She sometimes stares too long at a spectacular specimen of passing cleavage and has lost entire afternoons to the Victoria’s Secret Instagram.

  Luckily, her friends now abandon the patriarchy lesson to critique their peers’ social media. Cate’s formal fashion Tumblr is a favorite pastime. Today she touts Kenyan beading paired with furry Eskimo boots and midriff-baring cholis. The look is completed with a white denim miniskirt or cheek-riding khaki shorts, securing the girl within her colonialist demographic. Tessa explains that the Cates’ sartorial ambitions are best understood as cultural appropriation. They pose as mystical voluptuaries, slipping on an exotic aura over their white Anglo-Saxon privilege. Ziggy notices how Tessa places the word exotic inside quotation marks as if it were a pseudo-word, bereft of meaning outside the racist imagination. Ziggy makes a mental note to erase it from her vocabulary. She scans Cate’s Tumblr for further incriminations. A still life of two Bacardi Breezers beside a bowl of licorice allsorts seems promising. Something about the candy’s pastel colors hemmed in black makes her think of golliwogs and minstrel shows. “That’s kind of racist,” she says timidly, pointing out the offending lollies.

  “How is it racist?” Lex’s voice is spiky.

  “Just, like, the colors.”

  “Black?”

  Ziggy nods ruefully.

  “Licorice is black, Ziggy.”

  “I know, but with the Breezers?”

  “What are you saying?”

  Ziggy has no idea. Something about Caribbean rum and blackface. She has gone too far. “What about gender?” she says, trying to divert them. “Can you appropriate genders?”

  “Of course,” says Tessa. “Gender is a construction.”

  At last, Ziggy feels she understands what her friends are talking about. She points to a photo of Cate sucking on an Icy Pole. “There! She’s deliberately acting like a slut.”

  “Feminists don’t call girls sluts,” admonishes Lex.

  Tessa clicks her tongue disparagingly then ducks away under the bed. She rummages inside her schoolbag and pops up a moment later, grinning and clutching a grubby DVD case. She raises it ceremoniously aloft. Ziggy misses the title but catches the ancient Blockbuster sticker fraying across the front: Foreign. Rated R.

  “You need to see this.” Tessa extends the case to Ziggy. Irréversible.

  Ziggy has heard the girls talk before about the French movie with the infamous eleven-minute rape scene. This is the kind of film Tessa aspires to be in. Something grisly and instructional. Something to make women want to rise up and kill.

  “My sister studied international relations in the early 2000s,” says Tessa. “She wrote an essay about female objectification and secular dress codes in contemporary France.”

  Ziggy takes the DVD carefully into her hands. The case is scratched and indented, a beloved relic. Lex eyes her testily.

  “Lisa’s so right-wing,” says Tessa, “she thinks all women should wear burkas.”

  Ziggy’s heart plummets. “So why do you want me to watch the movie?”

  “To see how it feels,” says Tessa.

  “How what feels?”

  “Female objectification.”

  Ziggy nods stoically through her humiliation.

  Tessa’s voice is kind but firm. “If you’re going to be attracted to women, you need to watch the rape scene and see how it feels to be on the receiving end.”

  Tessa’s presumption is a shock but also, almost, a compliment. Harboring a secret as epic as sexuality makes Ziggy feel both prized and inept, like benign aristocracy. Ziggy isn’t sure she is gay, but she isn’t against the idea. Already, she wears the weight of Jewishness like her grandmother’s ancient mink—a heavy mix of chutzpah and crippling self-consciousness. So it feels natural to slide on the mantle of queerness. Tessa is differently abled, Lex is an actual woman of color, and now, perhaps, Ziggy has her thing too.

  SHE WOULD LIKE TO GO straigh
t home and watch the DVD, do some online research, and finally Google the word cisgender. But on the bus heading home, Ziggy gets a call from her dad.

  “Have the menstruaters vacated our house?”

  “I’m still out.”

  “Oh yeah? The game’s finished so I’m just killing time near the stadium . . .” Ziggy hears a request in her father’s voice that she wants to deny.

  “Why don’t you go swimming in the ocean?”

  There is a pause. “Right. Well. Tell your mum I’ll just get dinner with these guys then?”

  “Why don’t you tell her yourself?”

  A richer silence. “All right, I’ll text her.”

  “Send her some emojis.”

  “Okay, Ziggy.”