I don't even know.

I'm shaking. I can't even bring myself to title this.

So, here's the thing: tonight, for the first time, I felt unsafe in my (relatively secure) neighborhood. This evening, I met with a new coworker in Wicker Park for pizza and a beer, then headed home. I exited the subway and crossed the street to buy shampoo and hand soap at the local 24-hour CVS. I was talking to my mom on the phone as I made my way toward the cash register. And then I heard this voice--

"Hey, sweetie. You look real good tonight. You so pretty, sweetheart." Et cetera. Et cetera. He kept walking closer up behind me.

This is nothing (too) new, although the incidence of my being whistled at in the street as I walk from my home to the local coffeehouse, of being shouted at from cars, is something that has ramped up significantly as the temperature in the city has soared. Maybe the heat does something to people's inhibition, accounting for the rise in both homicides and street harassment. I don't know. But, anonymous sir who tried to holla at me at 9:30 p.m. in the drugstore, you picked the wrong goddamn day.

"Hold on," I said to my mom. I turned around and looked him right in the eye. "Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? Really. What kind of response are you expecting from me?" This guy was my age, maybe a little younger. He looked shocked that I would actually call him out on it.

"Oh, not you, sweetie. I was talking to my friend." His slightly older male friend, who was walking behind him. No. I'm sorry. Bullshit.

"Seriously," I said, and headed for the register, ending the phone call with my mom. As I was checking out at the self-scanner, I heard him again, scanning his items two machines down. I finished first. They seemed to be finishing, too. He kept looking over at me. There was one woman working, a younger Latina girl. I walked over to her and said, as quietly as I could, "Listen, those guys--one of them was saying stuff to me, walking behind me in the store. I called him on it. I just don't feel comfortable leaving right now. Is it all right if I hang around for a couple minutes until they're gone?"

"Those guys over there?" She nodded when I indicated that, yeah, that one there. "Yeah, sure, you can go, like, look at a magazine or something."

And I stayed, for around ten minutes more, just to make sure they were gone, because, after having embarrassed that asshole in front of his friend, who is to say that he wouldn't have followed me, or waited to harass me outside? I know literally nothing about either of those men, and no amount of experience I have being in the presence of men could possibly assure me that they wouldn't take action beyond calling out at me behind my back as I walked down the tissue paper aisle talking to my mother.

I just arrived home. It was a half-mile walk, and I went the whole way with my mother on the phone again (so someone would know exactly where I was if, god forbid, anything went down), my keys clutched in one hand like a knife, my heavy bag held so I could swing it at someone if I needed to. I have never, never felt unsafe in this neighborhood before. I have always been aware of the threat--statistics say that, in the United States, 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted (and that doesn't include assaults which go unreported)--but never before have I felt personally threatened or at-risk.

Of course, there is someone out there reading this who will say to him- or herself, "You're overreacting." But with statistics like that (ONE IN FIVE), with the number of my friends who have themselves been victims of sexual assault, with the knowledge that we live in a society which, should the worst happen, would ask me, "Why were you wearing that dress?" or "What were you doing walking down that street at that time of night?," how can I not?

The pepper spray is going in my purse now, permanently, and it will, to me, feel like an added weight, a constant reminder that, yes, you are at risk, it could happen at any moment, and there is, in all likelihood, nothing you can do about it. I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to rail at a world in which I am held responsible for the prevention of my own possible rape, in which so many of my friends who have been violated in the most horrible and demeaning of ways are hesitant to speak out about it for fear of facing the humiliation associated with reporting their assault.

I am tired of being treated like an object, because when a man whistles at woman on the street, when he shouts at her out a car window, he is not expressing his appreciation of her as a person, as a complete human being, but reminding her that she is an object presented for his, and other men's, visual consumption. Because when I wear a dress, when I put on high heels and makeup and jewelry, I am not dressing myself up for the approval of men, even if I happen to be going into a situation in which I will encounter men; these are things I do for myself. In the summer, I wear skirts and dresses because it is more comfortable than squeezing myself into a pair of confining trousers. I wear makeup because I like to, and I wear heels because public transportation gives me the privilege of never having to walk farther than I want to.

I am angry. I am so, so, so angry. I am angry for the one in five American women who will be assaulted in their lifetime. I am angry for my friends. I am angry for Savannah Dietrich, the young woman who had the courage to call out her rapists, then to defy the court-issued gag order which prevented her from making their names public. I am angry because this isn't just me, isn't an isolated incident where a man tried to chat me up in a drugstore without knowing what he had just stepped in. This is something that I--and so many other young women--deal with every. single. day.

A few thoughts

It's much too late for me to even be awake, given that I've got a full day of work tomorrow followed by rehearsal followed by more work, but I just wanted to get one or two things down before I sleep so I don't forget them by the morning.

First: I purchased a copy of Dave Eggers' new book, A Hologram for the King, at least a week ago and have not yet cracked the cover. I see it every day, because it is sitting on top of the fabric-cabinet which doubles as the table on which my laptop sits. So why, instead of reading this book, whose release I so highly anticipated, am I rereading Pride and Prejudice for the thousandth time? I had a theory the other day, which I shared with my barista who, it is entirely possible, thinks I am a crazy person: I am hesitant to start reading this book because I am afraid of finishing it.

Let me explain: there is something very special about the first time you read a book. There are several first-time reading experiences that stand out to me immediately: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Gone with the Wind, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, The Woman in White . . . before you have read a book until its pages are dog-eared, before you know every line of dialogue, every description of a sunset or a bridge, before that book becomes an old friend, every page is an adventure. And, with some very special books, some remnant of that sense of excitement remains, and there are still things to discover long after the pages are yellowed and torn where you have folded them over to mark your place (shamefully, I admit to mistreating my books in this way on occasion). There will, however, never be anything like the experience of reading the first part of Heartbreaking Work for the very first time, where, at seventeen, I learned for the first time what it felt like to laugh and cry simultaneously. After years of resisting delving into what I had pre-judged to be an overly-wordy romance about awful people doing horrible things to each other, I was amazed to discover that Gone with the Wind dealt with a young woman coming to terms with the fact that the world in which she has been brought up to thrive no longer exists, and trying to carve out a new existence despite the resistance of those around her who cling to the old world--particularly relevant today, when a generation which has been brought up to believe that education is the key to success and financial stability finds itself crushed under a mountain of student loan debt, often having to put off the supposed hallmarks of adulthood (marriage, children, home ownership, a steady job) while struggling to pay the bills. But I digress, going off yet again on a topic that could fill its own overly-long blog post.

. . .

. . .

. . .

Days later


Well. I say "days." It could well be a week, for all my ability to mark time by sense alone. Between work, rehearsal, learning new music, sewing, preparing for auditions, &c., &c., &c., I barely remember what day it is without looking at my Google Calendar, in whose half-hour increments I measure my life.

A centipede just crawled across the wall below the windowsill where I keep my Jane Austen novels and the baseball Jim Leyland signed for me on my 25th birthday. This is not an uncommon occurrence--the centipedes, that is. It is a basement apartment, after all, and I don't mind them as long as they continue to prey on any smaller insects who wander in and stay out of my immediate vicinity.

I haven't got much to say, but I thought that I ought to finally post this, as it's been sitting around for ages. In the meantime, until life calms down (will it ever? we can only hope), I will leave you with a video of the first flashmob ever to make me cry:

My life goes on in endless song; or, BS takes a moment to breathe

Tonight, on the way back from rehearsal, I stopped by CVS to pick up a soda for my roommate, who is exhausted by unpacking and was craving. I grabbed one for myself, and only noticed when I took a sip a half hour later that it was Diet Wild Cherry Pepsi. 

Then, I went to make a salad (my one meal today was consumed at the family-owned Italian restaurant down the street as I sat with the staff, watching the Euro 2012 Final and exclaiming rude things in Italian at the screen). As I cut into the avocado I had bought earlier today, I noticed that its flesh had gone brown.

The fact that these are the two biggest disappointments  I faced today may be a sign that, for the moment, my mood is in an upswing. 

That's not to say that life is not completely overwhelming. Having finally found a roommate to share the (relatively inexpensive, but still inconvenient when paid out of one's minimal income) rent and bills, I cleaned the apartment to allow her some space to move her things in. Moving is always messy, and one always seems to have so many more belongings than one needs until they are removed from their cardboard boxes and put away. Movers are also very messy--the amount of dirt tracked in as they unloaded box after box after box actually rendered one floor-runner basically unusable (bought at Goodwill and easily replaceable but still, gentlemen, wipe your damn feet) and left me itching to vacuum the floor. My knee-jerk reaction was panic. However, after 24 hours or so had elapsed, it became clear to me that my new roommate is potentially the most organized person I have ever met, in addition to having more energy for unpacking and sorting than I had ever imagined possible, and is getting on admirably in a situation that would have reduced me to a useless puddle of anxious tears within half an hour. I expect that my previously-spartan little apartment will look considerably more lived-in (in a good way, a way that says "people actually live here and have real-people lives" rather than messy) by week's end. Even in my room I have managed to set up a small workspace that doubles as a sewing table and home office. 

And, oh, am I sewing. A shop in my hometown, owned by a high school friend, has agreed to sell some of the purses I make, so I have very suddenly found myself needing to treat sewing as a Real (very-part-time) Job. As things are still being unpacked however, there is no place at present to set up an ironing board. Tomorrow I ship out my first two bags, with plans to make as many more as possible during our five-day break from Don Giovanni rehearsals and send them home with Mom when she visits.

Don Giovanni is also taking up significant brain-space at the moment. I blame the combination of Mozart writing obnoxiously catchy melodies and having to repeat those melodies so frequently in rehearsal. I've always had an affinity for this opera over all of the others Mozart wrote, mostly because it gives me so many Feelings--I've got a whole other blog entry locked away in my brain concerning the characters and how the trap with Giovanni is to fall back on convention when it comes to characterization rather than letting the characters sort of develop themselves--and, to be honest, I would say that characters like Leporello or Elvira or Zerlina or even Giovanni do a fair job of asserting their own personalities, desires, motivations, quirks, &c., and the best thing to do when portraying one of those roles is not to try and impose your own limitations on them. There are so many angles from which to consider Don Giovanni, and even twelve years after the first time I watched it, I am still fascinated by the intricate ways in which the characters interact (but mostly Elvira and Leporello, who put up with more of Giovanni's shit than anyone else in the show), and I still start shuddering when the statue begins speaking. Every. Single. Time. Because a damn statue comes to life. And that statue is vindictive as hell (uh, literally). And that is terrifying.

"So why then, Bee," you may be asking, "when your life is hectic and full of crazy, did you take an interview for a part-time barista position?" 

The answer: masochism. Obviously.

But--and this is the strangest thing--I know that I am busy. Intellectually, I am able to look at my GoogleCalendar (the fact that I rely on GoogleCalendar to remind me that I must, twice a day, eat something, Bee, you are not capable of photosynthesis, is probably a good indication of just how busy I am) and say to myself, "Damn, there's not a lot of free time there." But, as I experience everyday life, it is the busiest days and weeks when I feel the most free and easygoing. I suppose this can be chalked up to momentum, to the fact that when I have so much to do my thought process speeds up and it is as if the events of my day go by in slow-motion. With that in mind, knowing that I feel the most centered and comfortable when I have a set of goals to achieve in a specified amount of time, why the hell not try to find a second job, one that can keep me from having too much time to think (which inevitably leads to overanalyzing, which often leads to panicking about Who am I and what am I going to do with my life?!) after this show wraps?

And, of course, all this positive thinking could go to hell tomorrow. This is another thing I know intellectually. But right now my cat is ridiculous (especially when she tries to intimidate my roommate's cat by hissing, which is more adorable than menacing), there is someone to talk to, my monthly financial burden has just been slashed in half, Dave Eggers just released a new book, and it is thunderstorm season in Chicago. Yes, life could definitely be worse.