This is going to be hard. Our partnership, our relationship, is over. Your actions two weeks ago Saturday night were beyond contempt. But as my therapist said, things end in all kinds of ways. It’s a fair assumption that you agree. So, let’s get something down on paper. Afterall we are professionals.
We got off to a good start, with the Iowa City Arts Share funding, on the road to coach Diane and her cats, then Bob with his koi pond, breaking at the Greek restaurant in the East Village, sharing stuffed grape leaves and gyro meat. Let’s not forget Linda the artist who stuttered, who designed our business cards, “you are entering your life,” and her downtown Des Moines loft near that coffee shop we like. That was a good summer.
Let’s not forget that fall, our prairie readings at Ada Hayden, posting flyers across town, how we almost booked a radio gig. Teaching Persepolis and Aung San Suu Kyi in our global issues in graphic novel course. And thanks for the suggestion of the book I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, so suitable for our immigrant narratives course. I’m proud of us for reaching diverse students, Russian and Jewish and Puerto Rican and Vietnamese.
We really hit our stride in Gender Justice class when the Women’s Studies department asked me to teach and I invited you to join, thinking a co-ed experience would best serve our students. I appreciated how you spent hours scouring the internet for suitable pieces about Georgia O’Keeffe or Anita Hill or Judy Chicago. I thought it was cool you read Ms. Magazine. That you were up for discussing scenes from For Colored Girls and playing the song “It’s Alright to Cry” from Free to Be You and Me.
And you were amazing editing my thesis my final semester while I prepared for the 2nd World Conference on Women’s Shelters. I really thought you were one of the good guys.
And that’s why this part is so hard.
You were nothing but a con man. Two left feet in ugly boots.
You know how in the film Love Affair with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening they say to each other, “I like the way you move?” I never liked the way you move. You’re awkward and nerdy. Still your temperament or so I thought was steady. And your Cavalier? I hate those bucket seats. And the way you drive. But I had a buddy to bounce ideas off of. And your MFA cred. Still eating Panda Express during class grated on my nerves.
I was a fool to invite you to Thanksgiving dinner with my Women’s Studies supervisor. She warned me our fling might end nowhere. But I was determined for both of us and for our students and as a woman entrepreneur to keep us afloat. And I did. For five years. I was a rebel who threw caution to the wind (like our romps in the cornfields) giving you half of what I made. As what? A consultant fee? That was my talent each time a grant came in, which meant we could pay the rent.
But this rebel is older and wiser. So, let’s be frank. I know what you did. I heard you in the bedroom ask your lover to turn her face towards the desk, bend over, grab her ankles, whip her, ask if it hurt, repeatedly threaten, “This is what you get for cheating on your man.” Let’s be clear. You took it upon yourself to cheat online and invite another woman into our apartment. Even after I cleaned it earlier that day. Like the fantasy in your novel The Role of the Gentleman.
As the cops said, you deserve the boot.
When did you shift from good feminist to bad feminist? Or were you always one of the scheisty dudes, disguised in decency? Was I in your mind only an underling, busting my ass to brainstorm ideas and book gigs?
He’s lashing out my therapist said. At what? Weren’t we partners in decoding codes of gender? Wasn’t that you who played Smack My Bitch Up in our women’s studies class, the uncensored version, critiquing rape jokes and the Madonna-Whore syndrome? I thought you were one of the woke men. I thought we built our enterprise on trust and respect. But it really is my baby, isn’t it, just like Freya really is my dog.
It’s at revelatory times like this I wonder what Gloria Steinem might say or Eve Ensler otherwise known as “V” (didn’t we go to Vagina Monologues together?) What you’re doing is an affront not only to me and our students and our department but to all men in the movement. You along for the ride as long as you could ride my coattails. Until you got your lectureship and went for the one up.
I want you to know I don’t want those road trips back, don’t want your ugly boots or awkward stance, don’t want our talks at the café or your horror movies, don’t want your wiry facial hair or your gangly legs wrapped around me, underneath the afghan your aunts made, so warm and durable as you said you would be, tattered now from our road life. Not much left to salvage or salve.
So, I’m waving the white flag of surrender. Admitting what was between us should have stayed a one-night stander. I can no longer let a sleeping dog lie.
Things end in all kinds of ways my therapist says, and you chose this. For the sake of whoever you partner with next, wherever you set those ugly boots, go to therapy. Enroll in a rehab class to understand the difference between good feminist/bad feminist. Stop being such a Debag. You’re a shapeshifter all smolder and smug. Smoke in mirrors. You sir are no gentleman.
As for me I won’t step on the same rake twice. I’m not your workhorse, not your mule or your fool. You can’t smack this bitch up.
I write these lines in the bowels of this law office where I managed to secure part-time hours in the dead of winter. I take the bus every day since as you know my car is no longer working. But at least it’s not your Cavalier. I hereby request you relinquish all ties or claims to my writing enterprise and release us both from any further contact or communications. For the sake of good feminists everywhere. Your Former Co-Facilitator. No Longer Your Rainbow Girl.
