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Show Moon -144 "Not a violent sea, I think. Something peaceful, maybe a little waterfall into a river. But why must you fool people this way?" He ignored my moralizings, as he always did, and shouted, "Great!" Then he leaned back, folded his arms and smiled. "You have wonderful eyes. I hope my wife never meets you." This sort of thing happened often. I needed my job, so I smiled, hoped it was enough. By then Td read The Feminine Mystique and Sexual Politics, read with hunger, closed the books with wordless gratitude. But I could not imagine how one got out from under. I was afraid of losing my job. My mother was trapped with James. She had no money to escape and wouldn't get out alive. I could find no one to talk to about this, not even my wire-haired consciousness-raising friends. But these books did a wonderful thing; they gave me perspective, the real kind-not what you see in art, which is a lie-but a view of the larger story which is strangely comforting, if only because it tells you that you're not crazy. I take the subway down to the Village to see my early New York neighborhood. The coffee shop on Charles Street where I met Mark is still there, but the price of coffee has gone up, and the men have short hair, so beautifully cut their heads look carved out of marble. The men in the Village have changed. Or I have changed. They don't look at me. It is strangely disturbing, makes me realize how much I depended on being noticed. |