Spaces with men

You're not new or unique. You're just another woman in jail.

First shared in 2024, resharing today for reasons explained at the bottom.

1

You’re an assistant manager working the graveyard shift. Every night, you organize the aisles, count the cigarettes, stock the cooler. They hired Gary to help you out, take care of customers and clean the store while you order inventory and reconcile the register—an assistant to the assistant.

Gary’s an old Harley guy who smiles when you ask him to brew the coffee but calls you a cunt as soon as you’ve turned your back. You thought he liked you, but he doesn’t, not really. He’s tolerating your high-pitched voice, your hysterical request to get the trash done in a timely manner, your bitchy fifth reminder that inventory is your job and could he please mop the floors before the morning rush—

You’ve learned that Gary is a man whose ego is easily bruised, which really means Gary is a man, so you do what all women learn to do and humor the man. He’d rather save you than take orders from you, so you are now perpetually distraught. Distraught by the mess in the bathroom? In swoops Gary. Overwhelmed by the floor-to-mop water ratio? Gary to the rescue. Frazzled and defeated by a string of customers? Gary will offer you a smoke break like he’s handing taffy to a six-year-old. You don’t know why men love a veneer of confidence with a nougaty center of helplessness, but you do know that if Gary’s thinking of you as a firecracker of a woman rather than a cunt, it’s safer, and you can get your shit done.

You’re in the middle of this delicate and humiliating dance when a neighbor calls the store to say she saw your Ex climbing through the window of your apartment. You cradle the phone with your shoulder, watching Gary’s face grow red as he takes apart the nacho cheese dispenser. Angry at doing women’s work, you suppose. His fingers leave cheese prints all over the steel counter, the nacho trays, the backroom sink. Like a little boy waging petty revenge against his mother.

You stifle a groan, thank your neighbor, and hang up. Your face is probably raging red now, too, thinking of your Ex sitting in your apartment, TV on, razzing your cat, smoking your pot. Waiting for you to find him, the fucker. If you leave now, you’re arming Gary with ammunition—he knows about your shitty Ex, you know he’s expressed concern about you to your boss—but what else can you do?

“Gary, I have to run to my apartment. There’s a situation,” you say, trying for apologetic, but your voice sounds clipped even to you. “You’re gonna have to do the rest of this yourself. Sorry.”

You drop your clipboard onto the counter, hurry through the glass doors, and make a mad dash toward your apartment across the street. The word cunt rings in your ears as the doors whoosh closed behind you.

2

How could you have fucked that guy, that asshole sitting right there on your couch. Watching your TV. Smoking your pot. Why did you ever let him move in with you? What were you thinking? Were things going too well, and so you had to throw a bomb into the mix? And he is a bomb, a dirty bomb ready to spray chunks of metal and hatred onto anyone standing in the path of his kamikaze suicide. And you—look at you. You chose to be the one standing in the blast range.

Half-eaten nachos splay on his lap. Nachos from your store, probably served up by your coworker. A greasy dribble of cheese hangs from an arrogant grin. He knows. He knows he’s pushed you too far, and he likes the feeling. He likes you down in the gutter with him. You reach for the tray on his lap; you want to spill that shit all over his weasel dick. But he’s faster than you, up and over the coffee table and shoving you against the wall before you can even begin your tirade. He’s been ready, waiting for this moment for who knows how long. Maybe forever.

You fight back at first. You push against him and bite his arm when he throws you to the carpet. He grinds your face so hard and deep into the beige shag that you can taste the pellets of cat litter stuck to your lips. You try to buck him off you, but he’s not just angry; he’s crying, wailing, waging war against demons much bigger, much older than your measly, nothing relationship.

You realize you’ve made a mistake; you’re not capable of handling a bomb. So you go as slack as you can. You wait him out. He flips you over and calls you a dyke and a bitch and a lesbo and a whore, and you stay as silent as can be. Long strings of snot and slobber fall on your face as he sobs, but you don’t move an inch. When his hands wrap around your throat, you don’t flinch, and you don’t look away. He’s holding on for dear life, repeating like a prayer I hope I gave you AIDS, I hope I gave you AIDS. And there you remain, in a frozen embrace, until the cops come banging on the door.

3

Only the drunks are put in holding cells. The rest of you are ushered into a room with the kind of plastic seats that plague DMV’s and other places where women and poor people are forced to sit and wait. A sort of purgatory where time is suspended, and you’re left with only your dark ruminations and your stupidity to keep you company. The walls are white; there are no clocks. There are no windows, and there are no friends. You wait, all of you. For your mug shots. For your fingerprints. For your cell and your onesies, the color of nacho cheese.

The cop who arrested you was apologetic. He wanted to save you, help you out of your situation, but the domestic violence laws in Colorado say you’re both culpable, he explained, miming his hands tied up by an invisible force.

When you realized he was going to arrest you even though you were the one who’d almost died on a shitty beige carpet, you hastily handed over the weed in your pocket, and he seemed to care about your predicament a little less. When you said you lived alone, paid your own rent, and that fucker over there broke in, he seemed to disapprove. When you admitted, yes, those were your teeth marks on that asshole’s arm—but you were defending yourself! —and pointed at the ring of faint bruises left like bath scum around your throat, his face grew stoic. Your tears pretty much turned him into a stone. Let’s let the system sort it out, he said, avoiding your eye, refusing to be manipulated by your apparent female helplessness.

It’s not your first time in this place. It’s not going to be your last. There’ll be many more times when you’ll undress in front of someone you’d rather not, when you’ll have to say yes, sir, rather than no. You’ll try to look tough, unaffected by your circumstances, and when they wear you down, you’ll just try to look like someone they’d rather harm than kill.

Listen: If you’re quiet and follow their direction, chances are good they won’t pick you out. Don’t bother with logic or question their motives. It’s safer to shuffle along; keep your wrists slack so the cuffs don’t bite. They’re unimpressed by your story or your history or any of the reasons that led you here. They’ve heard it all before, and honestly, they’d prefer not to hear you at all.

Chin up, honey, you’re not the first to mistake bemusement for affability or tolerance for equality, or to think it was respect when really, they were indulging you (until they weren’t). You’re not new or unique. You’re just another woman in jail.

You’re just another woman sharing spaces with men.

This flash memoir essay was shortlisted for a Memoir Magazine contest around 2020 and shared here in 2024. I’m resharing it now because I’ve been crafting it into a piece to tell onstage (short and long versions) and want to share those versions with you via Page to Stage (where my writing goes from the page to performed, messiness and fuck-ups included). Next month, I’ll show you the version I crafted specifically for Nan Tepper’s Wham! Bam! Thank You! Slam! (Have you gone? Oh, you should go! It’s here on Substack!) which is a lot shorter and rewritten in first person at Nan’s behest. So please enjoy this original version now, as I will be slicing, dicing, rewriting and upcycling every lil’ bit of it for the stage. It’s all for the stage, all of it! Muahahahaha! xoxo, Amy Bee

This is On the Page, aka true stories, some of which end up told onstage. Next month, this one does: I’ll show you what survived the cut and what didn’t. Subscribing is free, and the essays always will be.