We’ve been talking about women. Taking a chance. Loose promiscuous women. All of their sadnesses, our sadnesses, captured in that conversation. I said thank you for the music. He said women were demonic beings. It was stupid and naïve thinking. Especially coming from Caliban. At some point he took the stage, the pulpit, called us all a bunch of wrinkly rodents. Why did it have to be me, I said, knowing me, knowing you? He said you could be frosty sometimes, an unusually diplomatic recollection of the atmosphere in those days.
I stood up. I said, let me be nothing if within the compass of myself I do not find ephemeral magic. (That digital recording cut out all the hiss.) I sat down. We all admitted we’d become tired. We were worse than any other woman, helping the corporates destroy the fruits of wombs. We cried to dream again.
Next up was the real gold on the visitors. The hunt for visitors was a turning point in women’s lives. Torture and terror were used to force us, the conversationalists, to deliver other names. Did we deliver? We did. How could we resist? Dum Dum Diddle. Be not afraid, we said to those we landed in the fray. It was a strange and strangely irresistible conversation about totalitarianism. Any man could now destroy a woman by declaring she was a conversationalist. And so he did. They do. Dobbed us in to the Met. Who let the man in? Who’ll let the women out?
When you go, when they slam the door, be not afraid, the isle is full of sounds and sweet airs that give delight. They promise it won’t hurt.
SANDERLINGS 