My boyfriend is puttering around the apartment. Unencumbered by the signifiers of clothing, he could be anyone. He has an impressive black eye, and it makes him a dangerous stranger. Bruises do not tell stories, they only hint at them. Maybe it was a bar fight. Maybe it was a car crash. Maybe I got mad and decked him. I can see my fist clearly, arcing through the air. He could be anyone. Anything could have happened.
We are drinking coffee, hot and strong. I am remembering a bone I used to have. It was a chicken bone, a discarded drumstick that I found at the beach. My bone was polished by the waves and sand until the surface was creamy and glistening, I carried it in my pocket, running my fingers over its curves for comfort. One day, I lost it. Every time I go to the beach, I look for it, but it is never there.
I look at him, this dangerous stranger. Bristly dark hair, muddy green eyes, worry lines creasing his forehead. It is a face I know well, transformed by a wide swath of purple, like that applied by a myopic drag queen. He has transformed my life, this stranger.
When we are together, life is charmed. His apartment is comfortable, complete with adoring cat. The neighborhood is gentrified to an almost unbearable cuteness. We take our meals out. Life is quietly splendid, and sheltered like a terrarium in its glass bubble. I am loved, cared for, catered to.
Then he leaves. I lurch, click back into place. My real life. A squalid room, books and food wrappers littering the floor. I watch my food stamp balance carefully. I sleep too much, dreaming of bones growing from blooming flowers. I have just lost my job, and bills are due. I am alone. Bruises bloom on my arms, wide swaths of purple, from selling my plasma.
Money is not the only gulf that divides us, this beloved stranger and me. He went to famous schools. I flunked out of junior college. He has a job I barely understand. I just got fired from a job putting makeup on eight year olds. I live on the margins of society, and he is The Man.
What I’m trying to get at here is the idea of safety. It’s a concept I have a hard time with, being a naturally anxious person. My first memory is of my father putting me in the bathtub with my socks still on. Most babies, I have to think, would be delighted by their world gone topsy-turvy. Instead, I was afraid.
Even as I attempt to write about safety, anecdote tells of its absence in my life. How can I write about what I barely know?
For a long time, the only safety I knew, I found in smoking weed. The heat in my belly, lightness in my chest and swimmyness in my head chased away the chattering monkeys of self-doubt away. A big, fat bowl has long been my first recourse in times of stress. I’ve tried alcohol, but the hangovers are too awful. Binge eating, I still resort to now and then. Purging, never. I haven’t got the knack.
Again, I wander. Safety—this is what I know of it:
Weed. Lovely, but expensive and inconvenient.
My boyfriend. Excellent so far, but really haven’t known him that long. Also, goes out of town all the time.
Stuff. Things do not hurt you. Things sooth you, calm you, with smooth surfaces, textures and curves.
I long to be smooth and white, bleached and pared like a bone. I am pale, so much so that it is hard to find makeup. Too self-conscious to leave the house without it, for years I paid a premium price for custom blended foundation. The makeup artist held out a bottle of palest beige for my approval. “Isn’t that a reassuring color?” she said. It was.
The black eye has faded now. He is once more an unremarkable, mild-mannered, middle-aged man.
I have not historically been much concerned with my personal safety. I have waited for the bus in Oldtown at two in the morning, drunk off my ass in fishnets and heels. I have bought crack from strangers. I have gone home with many, many strangers. I regularly walk home in the middle of the night with my headphones on. I get tired of feeling that I need to be afraid because I am a woman. There isn’t much I fear.
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