CHAPTER 5
By midafternoon, their small group of shouting women had grown, with more woman spilling from the flux of the streets in their direction; finding some reason to part from their lovers or their obligation, taking off their shirts and shouting along with their brethren for change; unyielding the quieted little girl within them that had been educated with weakness and danger and fright since birth.
The women marched adamant and forceful in their circles, stepping right up to the line of the curb, yelling at passing cars that drove by honking their horns and whistling their mouths.
Above them; on a nearby building, looking down with vehement villain, a group of construction workers filmed the women’s protest; their cameras focused only on their breasts while the voice of the women’s sedition went deafened by the men’s lecherous commentary of all the degradation they would most certainly do; the backslapping, horsewhipping degradation of what they would imagine upon someone else’s daughter, someone else’s sister and someone else’s mother but never their own; for as women had no rights with men, they had even less with their domesticators; their lovers, their brothers, their husbands, their fathers.
The women shouted and cursed and waved and branded their clenching fists as Christine had led them to do and they were all coursing on an adrenaline fuelled venom in their veins; high on fight.
“Consideration is a farce, I am more than tits and arse” they chanted in the air, throwing their arms like swinging axes as the words on their chests swung with them, painted on their swinging breasts.
Still, nobody could see them; nobody that mattered; not the monster they wanted to face.
As the women screamed, a van pulled up beside the red door; mounting the curb and almost knocking over the entire group. The women screamed in obvious objection and Christine stormed over to the windshield, beating her clenching fist and spitting wildly against the glass, but the driver had a certain look in his eye; as if she weren’t there, as if he could see the outline and detail on the small vase that was blocked from his view, behind her.
The man behind the wheel saw straight through her and saw straight through all of them as if they did not exist; as if they were not there.
The van door opened and a television crew burst outwards as if they were rushing out of a compound and into enemy fire, assuming their chain of command and acting out their every order.
First came the man with a heavy camera on his shoulder, jumping out of the van and pushing through the women; knocking the older woman over as he crouched before the entry to the red door.
Behind him; and second, came the sound man, flicking switches on a box tied to his belt whilst thrusting a large boom into the air and taking his stance behind the first man; out of shot.
Then came the reporter; a woman, styled, assertive, masculine; ignoring the plight of the women and standing in front of the red door in the light of the camera.
The women; thinking their plight had been heard, jumped to their feet and crowded by the red door, waving their placards, shaking their clenched fists and chanting out their songs but the woman reporter spoke as if they were not there, as if the words coming from their hearts were but mere irritation, a background hiss, a backfiring car, a road being broken or a dispute being settled; unwanted, mutable noise.
Christine stepped in front of the reporter and held her fist in the air, canting what now sounded more like brazen obscenity than anything else. But behind her, the reporter kept reporting, seemingly unfazed, unthreatened and unbuggered by the apparent distraction; seemingly unknown to the apparent protest; apparent, being apparently only to them.
Still, Christine shouted of her plight and the plight of any woman being abused by social condition and as her voice crackled and croaked; still, nobody noticed her.
They were not angered, defensive, pestered or amused.
They just did not see her and they did not hear her.
Except of course for the salaciousness from the building above; whistling and growling and cooing and howling; seeing only the sex which was all that they could imagine.
The silver panel slid open and then shut again before the red door opened and from inside the cavern of dim light came a procession of men of apparent importance; importance enough to warrant the reporter to turn her attention away from the camera and solicit a segment’s worth of responses.
Christine shouted some more, stepping first between the camera and the reporter, then between the reporter and the important men, but it didn’t matter; she didn’t exist, she wasn’t there.
The reporter kept reporting. She didn’t augment her speech or raise her voice to be heard. She spoke in the same untethered delivery while the important men responded accordingly, without any contest. They brushed past Christine, leaving her still and stupid with her clenched fist clenching firmer so that her knuckles widened and the muscles in her arms hardened and her blood seemed to thicken.
“Why don’t they listen? They’re just ignoring us. I’d rather be ignored with my clothes on” said The Old Woman, taking her bra and shirt from the floor and putting them back over her naked upper body.
“What are you doing? We’re just getting started” said Christine.
“We are ghosts. We don’t matter. You see them?” The Old Woman said, pointing to the workmen leering from above. “They can see us. That’s all. And look at us; look at you, exposing yourself like that. For who? For them,” she said pointing back at the men in disgust.
“They don’t know any different. You put back on your shirt, they still see through it. The same way these people don’t see us now. Men, they only see our sex, nothing more. You can put your shirt on for all you like, but those dirty bastards will still see your tits because that is how they always saw you. How they see me now is no different to how they will see you with your shirt on. They strip you in their minds, but they can’t strip the insult from my breasts. That will stay with them. If they won’t listen to my words, then let them lick them off my insulting tits” said Christine.
“You’re crazy,” said The Old Woman. “I’m waiting for crackers. This was fun at first, but you’re taking this too seriously. This is just getting weird now.”
Christine’s eyes flared.
She looked at The Old Woman; long into the abyss of her eyes and the abyss, it looked back and there; once again, she saw her own reflection and found the effect of man, drawn upon The Old Woman’s skin.
“Fuck off,” Christine said. “You’re weak and you make every woman around you weak. Go, get the hell away from here” she screamed, pushing The Old Woman on the path and kicking her in the behind like a stubborn mule to force her on her way down the street.
The other women looked on in shock.
“They don’t see us because it’s not enough to think like a man or to speak like a man. If we want to fight men, we have to act like a man” shouted Christine.
The other women looked at each other confused, apprehensive and a little frightened.
“If a man can piss standing on his feet then a woman can piss standing on her feet” shouted Christine.
She threw down her placard and stormed back to the red door and banged three times with her clenched fist. The silver panel slid open and a woman’s eyes look down in dismay as Christine took off her pants and her underwear, lifted her leg so that her left foot pressed against the door and started to urinate, resting her hand against the top of the door like a man would, the wall above the urinal or the branch of a tree.
She swung her hips in circular fashion as a man would, playing with the rim of the bowl and as she urinated like a man, the other women behind her covered their naked breasts, feeling horribly estranged by what they were witnessing. They clothed themselves ravenously and like frightened sheep, they huddled together and backed away from Christine.
“Oh god, are you ok?” screamed one of the women.
“Her breasts!” screamed another.
Christine looked down and her breasts had fallen to
the floor.
She continued to stare through the panel and deep into the abyss of the woman’s eyes looking back and there she found; once more, a reflection of herself.
Her anger swelled and soared and she saw in her mind the image of Devin laughing at her and in her mind, she tore off his skin, piece by piece until she could see that face beneath it was her own looking back.
Christine looked down again and shook the last drops of urine from her penis before backing away from the door, picking up her pants from the ground and casually dressing herself, buttoning her blouse all of the way so that her shirt pulled tight against her neck and she took from the backseat of the limousine beside her, a grey neck tie and she pulled it firm against the collar of her shirt.
Christine knocked three times on the door and the silver panel slid open and then shut.
A lock turned and the woman in a corset greeted her with a menu and a kiss on her cheek.
“Table for one?” asked The Woman in the Corset.
“I’ll be joining the other party.”
“And your name?”
“Chris,” she said as she walked into the dim light with the other men and behind her, the red door closed shut.
husband, father, son, brother, philosopher, story teller, recluse
Also by C. Sean McGee:
A Rising Fall (CITY b00k 001)
Utopian Circus (CITY b00k 011)
Heaven is Full of Arseholes
Coffee and Sugar
Christine
Rock Book Volume I: The Boy from the County Hell
Rock Book Volume II: Dark Side of the Moon
Alex and The Gruff (a tale of horror)
The Terror{blist}
StalkerWindows:
BedroomWindow
BathroomWindow
LoungeWindow
LibraryWindow
The Free Art Collection ©2013
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