My Year Without Love officially ended on New Year’s Eve.
I hardly noticed.
Starting the night of November 8th, I lost track of almost everything except trying to stay alive, trying to figure out how I’m going to keep my daughters safe and alive. The election of that monstrous man is an existential threat to my family, to my country, to the world.
According to family lore, I was conceived after my grandmother’s funeral meal, in a guest bed in my grandparents’ basement. When someone we love dies, we feel the need to eat, to touch, to…not to fuck, not even to make love, but to be love, to be life, to stay on this side of the void by doing the most life-filled thing possible, to blur the boundaries around ourselves by being one with another person, to make space for a new soul to fill the emptiness. I owe my life to that impulse.
And on election night, I felt my country die, I felt my assumptions about my future die, I felt the promises I’ve made to my daughters die, the ones about their futures, their safety, their worth. I freaked the fuck out. And even while I couldn’t catch my breath, I longed for someone to take me to bed, to fill me up, to make me feel safe and beloved and worthy and alive, at least for a minute. I wanted to offer all of that to someone else, almost anyone else. That week, that longest week, after election day, that was the closest I’ve ever come to crazed promiscuity. If a man, almost any man, had shown up on my doorstep unbidden, I would have whisked him straight to my bed. Not even that far. I was ready to wrap my legs around someone right there by my front door, to be pounded against the wall, the edges of the frames around my kids’ art digging into my back.
It is likely a very good thing that no men, strange or known, showed up on my doorstep.
Even in the midst of my longing to connect, to be reminded that I had a body and breath and something concrete and joyful to offer, my brain skittered right into fight or flight thinking and came up with a number of crazy ideas that felt like truth.
First Idea: It was too late. I mean really, really too late. What I need for my safety in this new world is a man who can speak for me. To be coldly practical, I need a white Christian man whose privilege will protect me and my children. But this is exactly the kind of man I cannot trust now. I need a known partner, a relationship of mutual desire and need, of equal power. That sort of relationship takes too long to build, and things are too dangerous now to go building intimate trust in strangers. I’ve been likening it to what I hear about becoming famous: You only trust the friends you had before your fame came upon you, because they’re the only people whose motives you can trust all the way through. From now on, white Christian men are the ones who might be able to save me, to save my girls, but they’re the ones I can’t see being involved with, not even the “good” ones. And of course they are pretty much the only single men around here. Scary days are coming, and I can’t afford to jeopardize my kids’ safety or my own by trusting anyone whose privilege blinds them to reality, or whose new privileges seduce them slowly into complicity. Before the election, I re-read The Handmaid’s Tale, and these lines have haunted me since. This is Offred’s memory of the day she lost control of her bank account, her job, her autonomy:
“Luke knelt beside me and put his arms around me. I heard, he said, on the car radio, driving home. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s temporary.
Did they say why, I said.
He didn’t answer that. We’ll get through it, he said, hugging me.
You don’t know what it’s like, I said. I feel as if somebody cut off my feet. I wasn’t crying. Also, I couldn’t put my arms around him.
It’s only a job, he said, trying to soothe me.
I guess you get all my money, I said. And I’m not even dead. I was trying for a joke, but it came out sounding macabre.
Hush, he said. He was still kneeling on the floor. You know I’ll always take care of you.
I thought, Already he’s starting to patronize me. Then I thought, Already you’re starting to get paranoid.”
Second Idea: I need to find someone to marry. I’d happily marry a woman, but that’s not a strategic move. I have no solid privilege to offer another woman, so I should probably only marry to protect my children and myself. I need to find a man in another country. Which country? Australia, New Zealand? Wouldn’t they be safe during a world war? Scotland, with its dedication to the EU and inclusivity, and its whiskey and walks? Israel, so my daughters and I can die as part of our people, not alone? A man right here, so I don’t have to quit my poverty-level nonprofit job that’s about to be taxed more highly because I’m a single parent? But how could I do that? I’d make the worst sort of wife in this new climate, I have nothing to offer that would induce a man to choose me – Now we have the Pussy Grabber in Chief in office, and I have only my middle-aged body to offer; the content of my mind and spirit matter to me, but they’re not marital currency in the patriarchy. I certainly don’t offer obedience or acquiescence. I’m ready for an equal partner, nothing less. And the poison this administration is peddling will infect everyone, it will ruin equal relationships between men and women. For example, look at what I’m thinking right now. This is not what I believe, these thoughts of mine don’t reflect my values. This is desperation, this is wartime thinking. There’s no war yet, but it’s coming in one form or another.
Third Idea: Scratch that. Scratch all of that. All of it would be the “obeying in advance” that Professor Timothy Snyder warns us against. The most revolutionary thing I can do is to remain open, to love with a trusting heart, to build bridges with my heart and my body. It would be great to find someone to walk through these terrifying days with, someone to love and be loved by because what else matters in the end, really.
So here I am, not at all sure what the future holds. Still alone and likely to stay this way, but who knows? The Resistance will take many forms, and I miss love. I’d count myself lucky to resist by showing it’s possible to love and be loved without either person being subservient or less than equal. I can live without love, I’ve done that for 8 years now and I’m still kicking, but I’d like all the sweetness I can get and give. I’d love to fight this hatred with love, messy real love. If it never comes my way, there’s plenty of other work to be done. I have a feeling this administration will shorten my life, so I’m not taking any of my days or nights for granted. Love seems like both an indulgence and a necessity, and I will make it as long as I can either way, because my daughters need me, because I love what this country is supposed to be, because I don’t want hate to win even if love never finds me personally.
The Witch of Gazzam Pond 