Etiquette and Vitriol by Nicky Silver (classic fiction .txt) 📗

I was reading my paper when the waiter came over and asked if I was . . . alone. Well! It was obvious that I was alone! I was sitting there, in a booth, by myself—did he think I thought I had an imaginary friend with me?! I was alone! Did he have to rub it in? Was he trying to be funny? Did he think he was, in some way, better than me? It was in his tone. He said, “Are you alone?” But what he meant to say was, “You’re alone. Aren’t you!?”—And I can’t imagine that he’s not alone every single day of his miserable, pathetic life! He has terrible skin. And it’s not attractive. Not the way bad skin, or at least the remnants of bad skin, is attractive on some people. On some men!! It’s never attractive on women—have you noticed that? Just one more example of the injustices we are forced to suffer! If we have bad skin, we’re grotesque! Let a man have bad skin and he can be Richard Burton for God’s sake! I HATE BEING A WOMAN!!

I’ve strayed.

The point is this waiter has terrible skin, and greasy hair and his breath stinks of something dead and his face is entirely too close to mine, and he insults me with his breath and his tone of voice and asks if I’m alone. I feel my face go flush and I want to rip his head off! I’d like to pull his hair out, only I’d never be able to get a decent grip—it looks as if it hasn’t been washed in a decade! I want to pick up my butter knife and stab in his sunken, caved-in chest! But! I simply respond, (Grandly) “No, I’m married, thank you.”

(Pause) I realize, now, of course, that my answer was illogical. I realize that it was inappropriate. But, at the time, it was all I could think to say.

Well, he leans back and, really, in the most supercilious manner, he leers at me and intones, “I meant, are you eating alone.” “I KNEW WHAT YOU MEANT!” I KNEW WHAT HE MEANT! I don’t know why I said what I said, I just said it! He made me sick. I hope he dies. I shouted, “I KNEW WHAT YOU MEANT!” And I am not a person who shouts, generally. I don’t like shouting. It hurts to shout and it hurts to be shouted at. My mother shouted quite a bit and I always thought the veins in her neck looked like the roots of a tree. But I shouted. Everyone looked at me . . . because I was standing. I didn’t mean to be standing. I didn’t remember standing, but I was. I was standing. I must’ve leapt up when I shouted. So I was standing and everyone was staring at me. The place was very crowded, much more crowded than I ever recall seeing it before. And suddenly, it occurred to me, that these people, my neighbors, gawking at me in endless silence, were the very same people who had watched Ford and myself have sex that first night when we met. I was so humiliated! I thought I would die! Or be sick! I was certain I was going to be sick right there at my table, standing up, being stared at! And then everyone in the neighborhood would mutter under their breath, every time they saw me, “Oh there goes that woman. We’ve seen her have sex, and we’ve seen her vomit.”

I WOULD LIKE, AT SOME POINT IN MY LIFE, TO CLING, WITH WHATEVER ENERGY I HAVE, TO MY DIGNITY! What have we got but our dignity? Women are worthless in this world! Every aspect of our culture conspires to keep us subjugated under the oppressive thumb of the beauty myth. If you’re attractive, congratulations! Because you own it all! You run the world! But God forbid you should have bad skin, or gain a pound or lose a leg or be, in any way, a deviant from what the powerbrokers and the plutocrats and politicians and the magazines and the television and the government and the OIL COMPANIES, WHICH OWN ALL THE OTHER STUFF TO BEGIN WITH—God forbid you should deviate from what the president of Shell Oil decides is attractive and YOU ARE A DISPOSABLE HUMAN BEING! YOU ARE A DEAD BIRD ON THE HIGHWAY!—Not that I’m unattractive, mind you! I am very attractive. I know I am! But I wasn’t feeling very attractive this morning while I was being stared at by the same nasty, judgmental, narrow swine who got their rocks off watching me HAVE SEX! I just stood there in that diner, for what seemed like hours, and then, with all the composure and dignity I could muster, which was considerable, I said, “I’ve changed my mind!” And I left.

(A long pause) I was all the way on 43rd Street before I realized that I’d left my purse.

(Pause; her frenzy returns at once) There’s another example of how we are kept under the thumb of a patriarchal culture!! PURSES! Do men have purses? No! They have pockets! Why don’t we have pockets?! I’ll tell you why, because they would make our hips bulge! It might make our buttocks look lumpy! And we couldn’t have that!! No! So we have purses! And you can either get a dainty, little purse that you have to hold in your hand, in which case you live your whole life with only one hand available, giving the world a head start on beating you with, literally, one hand tied behind your back!! Or you can get one of those big old shoulder bags which hurt like hell and leave deep red welts on your skin and I’m certain it throws your spine out of alignment, so you end up in a panic about getting osteoporosis. And you spend all your time worrying and your money on calcium supplements, WHICH DO