Women and Society

To speak of the largeness of a room, I have recently learned, is also to speak of the feminism that inhabits its walls. Such discourse is seduced into silence by soft carpets, pleasant fires, and warm, spicy, after-dinner coffee. The habit of smoking cigars in such settings may be further attributed to the absence of women, who may occasionally smoke cigarettes, and blow the smoke out the kitchen window, and thus reek of the manly. The living room is brightly illuminated and, although highly exclusive, classless; here utopia and and distopia are discussed and discarded with confidence and an eye toward competition. The men feel safe in this niche because the invisible weight of society is felt most strongly here, and is thereby safeguarded for tomorrow, and progress absolutely guaranteed. Eventually they may even fall asleep, their bristled or shaved chins having sunk deep in their chests. Woman stares through the walls.

The amazon fights behind the cupboards to keep the unreality out. She is sacrifice; women are mostly useless because of the burden they somehow bear, the negative to society's positive, and the levee against the first flood. And were they to ignore this duty, come then would the nightmare of men: ourselves, or Muslims. When woman lays her hand against the wall and sees how wrinkled it has become, she is then the most unknowable to me--were I her I would desire to kill my babies and run headlong into the concrete so that I die too. But the woman is the wall, and sits against fear.