Vignette 8
She has a theory about why men’s and women’s clothes button on the opposite sides. She heard it at a poetry slam. She says “It’s so that they can face each other when they’re getting dressed.
“That’s silly,” I tell her. “We get dressed facing eachother.”
“Yeah,” she says. “It’s just another example of how oppressively heterosexual the western world is.”
Stuff like this, it drives me nuts. I’ve never felt oppressed by the straight people I know. I’ve never felt like I’m unable to be myself. Amy, though, she’s on a mission. Anything can be turned into a battle, even getting dressed. At first, I loved that about her, the passion she put into all of her projects.
Four and a half years in, it’s gotten old. I th
ought that she’d mellow with time, and I was wrong. I ignore it for the most part. But there are times, when she’s really uppity about something silly, that I just wish I could claw her eyes out.
She’s turning this into one of those times. She moves around me, pushing into the small space between the sink and the shower. The bathroom is a cramped and small with one person in it. I decide to ignore her and focus instead on putting my makeup on. She starts putting clothes on me, and what would normally be a sweet gesture becomes a nearly unbearable statement.
“I don’t want to be preached to today,” I tell her.
Amy finishes clipping my bra and slides a shirt over my head. “Me either,” she says. She finishes dressing me in silence.
Stole the picture from Eat Ur Hearts Out. I disapprove of the spelling of “your,” but otherwise the blog is very nice. The thing about men and women’s clothes buttoning up on opposite sides is a poet called Rives. He makes me happy to be human.
I’m not a lesbian, but that doesn’t stop me from trying…
