Kate Bachus

*pokepoke GROPE*

“Ow!”

*grope grope*

“Ow! No, god ow, I’m bruised there too.”

*grope, poke*

“Ow, god, no, to the left, everything else is scraped…”

*grope*

“Ow, fuck!”

“WELL GOD DAMMIT INDY WHERE DOESN’T IT HURT??”

*

“Will you make me a protein shake?”

“Yes.”

“With marshmallows?”

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John Scalzi has written a really good post, An Incomplete Guide to Not Creeping
…which I had a fairly hard time staying out of because I have a vested interest in this conversation and its outcomes. Which really any woman does. But I feel especially strongly about.

*

Something I’ve observed in the comments of both that post and his post following it, about his own experiences being potentially creepy – but avoiding it – is that men really, really want there to be divisions and polarity between “malicious” creepy behavior and “innocent” creepy behavior.

The more I read, the more I saw it, and despite John’s attempt to close that gap with his second post which amounts to “no, potentially I am also that creepy guy,” men really, really needed to say “well. Some of us are potential rapists. But most of us are clueless.”

I’m sorry. No. Bullshit.

I wanted to post, over and over again – and it would be futile so I didn’t – no.

No, and no and no.

*

Guys. This is the same behavior and it has the same effect and more importantly it has the same source whether you get to the point of rape or not.

Creepy behavior is about objectification.

It is where I cease to be a person.

It’s where you see me as a means to an end.

That is hideous, quite frankly, from the start.

It is also the place from which rape happens.

*

I know you think it’s not creepy. I know you think it’s innocent. But there is nothing at all innocent about the selfishness of an impulse that drives you to speak to a woman solely because of your needs – predominantly physical – and what you think she can do for them.

I have just disappeared at that point. I’m no longer a person I’m a potential vagina for you to sate the needs of your dick on, or I’m a object of comfort for your loneliness, or I am an imagined lover and companion you desperately want but do not actually know me to be, and the stripping away of my person, my self

who I actually am standing there and what I need and want and hope in my own heart

is a violent act to begin with.

*

The power of what John is urging men to do is not as much in the practical, physical safety it provides women.

It’s that it forces a paradigm shift.

You stop thinking about the woman in terms of your needs and desires and your rights.

And you approach her specifically thinking about hers.

*

I am an imperfect creature. I objectify all the time, I project imagined things on men, other women all the time, I do. I think very impure things about Josh Duhamel and Manu Bennett. I do.

But I do not walk up to Josh or Manu with those desires paramount in my mind. With my need for my fantasy of them to be real. Or my need for them to respond to me, or validate my attractiveness (!), or have them be part of the fantasy I’ve made up in my head about who they are.

In fact, I don’t walk up to Josh or Manu at all.

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The NE Spartan Sprint is this upcoming weekend. I am fairly unprepared, apart from being, as they say, swole as fuck from all the lifting. But I haven’t been playing much hockey and I think I’ve run all of twice this summer.  And, you know, in theory it’s a footrace among other things.

I’m told it’s not that difficult. I’ve also read accounts online that contradict that.

I had to stop reading the Spartan facebook pages because I compared myself to every person posting and felt like I came up lacking.

The weight of failure of all those firefighter agilities has stayed with me, some twenty years later.  What doesn’t matter is the ones I passed, what doesn’t matter are my successes in fire, what doesn’t matter is that I gutted it out in Feburary in the fucking Staislaus for two straight days in the water in a goddamn wetsuit when everyone else was in drysuits, going down class four rapids on my back. The Swiftwater Tech 2 doesn’t matter. When I finally sucked it up enough to do the burnover evolution and sat in a piece of tinfoil with wildfire raging over and around me heating the dirt I was breathing… none of that matters.

Just the failures.

*

I fail to see the progress, I look at my body in the mirror as I do squats and hate my shape instead of reveling in the power of how much I’m lifting.

I know better. It doesn’t matter. I do it anyway.

*

I watch the Spartan video.  Over and over.  The one that made me decide to do it. This one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt0Fb72XDzU&feature=related

I watch it and cry, and cry. At the gap between what I am and the hero I imagined for myself, for my life.

And also for the gap between what I feel, and the hero I actually am.

*

I am afraid.

A lot, often. I’m afraid of cancer recurring. I’m afraid of my shape. I’m afraid of not doing what I need to do before I die. I’m afraid I’m wasting my time here, on this planet. I’m afraid of being a shitty parent. I’m afraid of doing less… then my potential. I’m afraid of not writing with the kind of honesty I should.

I’m afraid of not finishing.

I’m afraid of being alone in this.

*

There’s a key difference between myself 20 years ago and myself now, though. I’ve gone through a failure process at the gym every night, on the ice, over and over again. I’ve failed lifts and dumped plates, I’ve shown up and lifted 40 pounds less than I did last week for no apparent reason, I’ve fallen, I’ve missed the net, I’ve played for shit and I’ve played well.

I’ve beaten all my previous personal records.

In a few months I’ll be able to bench my bodyweight.

I have, these days, despite everything, a fair idea of what some of my actual limits are, but not just the lower ones. Also how much I can do, physically.

Two nights ago I got 145# up unspotted, halfway, on the bench. 145 pounds. I was almost there.

*

What’s changed, in 20 years is that I can put my head down and move, past the background noise. I can move my feet, my body, put my skates out on the ice again or grab the bar and dig deep, I can keep my feet moving and call it willing sacrifice.

I’ve realized that sometimes it’s enough just to keep moving, to not stop, to go the the gym over and over even though sometimes it stops making sense and you have no idea why you’re doing it anymore.

I have that, now.

Sometimes, there is no reason. Sometimes you just block out everything including your fear and your doubt, but also all your hopes and dreams and aspirations

and just without anything other than will do to do it… no matter what. Just move, and do.

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