Thinking about my neighbor as a kind of specific predator,
a molester, made the idea of molestation seem real.
Through all the counseling sessions and honest divulgences
to boyfriends and at speak outs into my own writing,
I never really understood why my mom made such a big deal.
Having had sex, having had been molested,
what words I used in the high sensitivity '90s
to describe why I was who I am now or how far I've come
or how I'm like every victim of man and men.
I told the story, and I told it like I tell a story,
and it become a metaphor with such obvious associations
that even though it gained me some attention,
I started being sick of even talking about it,
defining myself by it, thinking it had anything to do with me.
I staved off victimhood by telling other stories,
by writing in the third person, by making
poetic and empty gestures to the wind about the power of wolves.
But my own daughter, that somehow made it hit home.
Maybe the wolves should stay in Yellowstone.
I don't have the stomach to fight for them.
Not that I have any illusion that I
make any impact on the case.
Hopelessness is a time.
Erik and I went to the regional advisory council meeting
to try to convince them not to raise the number of cougar
permits from 520 to 730.
Do 730 cougars still live in Utah?
The high school is hot.
We were in Springville, Utah.
They won't have these meetings in the relatively liberal Salt
Lake City, for fear the animal rights nuts will come
out and state their blind case.
Erik and I drove for miles to attend.
I was the only woman there.
Everyone else, sportsmen and ranchers.
One guy stood up to speak about his dogs.
He advertised their special cougar tracking abilities.
If you want to hunt with them dial, 1-800-TREE-A-CAT.
One man spoke about the imminent cougar threat to his children
as they played innocently in their backyard.
Someone else spoke about the one sheep he lost in 1997.
He couldn't be sure it was a cougar.
Could have been a coyote, but still.
His sheep, his land, his birthright since 1865.
No one bothered to mention to him that the cougar's ancestors
predated his.
Most everyone there was to decry the paucity of great game deer.
The drought had wiped the deer population out.
And who the hell were these cougars
to infringe on their trophy hunt?
Erik and I stumbled up to the podium.
I said something particularly lame,
like how can you issue so many permits when
no one has done a feasible study on how many cougars
are actually out there?
There was no booing, just rowdy talk over my voice.
This wasn't a meeting to determine
the number of permits.
No, it was more like a poetry reading by a friend
that everyone goes to and says they love because it's
the nice thing to do.
In addition to confirming what they all believed,
that cougars in any number are that number too many,
preaching to their own choir, the way they sing,
as an added bonus, each took home a handy number,
1-800-TREE-A-CAT, in magnet form for their fridge.
I don't usually conceive rape fantasies,
but I do think of innocence corrupted ones.
Ones like teacher seducing student,
bishops seducing parishioner, doctor seducing patient.
During the six months of pregnancy,
before I contribute to the wilding,
weirding of her sexuality by contaminating her
with my non-missionary style fantasies via the placenta,
I decided to stop thinking these thoughts.
Not entirely convinced these fantasies are bad.
They make up my sexual identity.
What if I don't have any sexuality after I delete these
from my database of turn-ons.
What if I feel like I sometimes feel at parties
without a glass of wine in my hand,
like I may have no reserves to go to
in order to rise to the occasion and be sociable?
But as any drinker who binges before they dry out,
I invent one more fantasy.
I, but the I is not really me.
The female in the fantasy is usually blank-faced.
So is the man, for that matter.
I'm in a church parking lot.
I stayed late helping to teach Sunday school.
I'm 16, say.
I arrived and left early.
As I stand around fretting, the newest member
of the priesthood--
it's always more subversive to make these fantasies
about Mormons--
comes out to get into his car.
His is the only car, an old Honda, left in the parking lot.
It's summer and the asphalt is hot.
He sees her-- see how quickly I changed to the third person--
and asks if she needs a ride.
She says sure.
No reason to worry about someone moving up
the ladder toward all salvation.
They had known each other a little in elementary school,
but now he's graduated, and his family is planning his mission.
At 18 and as a male, he has all the authority
of the church behind him.
So when he suggests taking a back route to her home,
she doesn't question him.
So the cliches begin.
He runs over a snake, stops the car,
turns it off, gets out to look at the snake.
The snake slithers away, he gets back in the car,
but the car won't start.
Things can take many turns.
One is that the guy has a beer.
She takes a sip, a slippery slope.
Once she has a taste of liquor, against the church's words
of wisdom, what recourse does she
have to refuse him from there?
The other is that he asked her to follow him,
to chase the deer or snake or rabbit
or whatever he saw out of the corner of his eye.
Since it's too hot to wait in the car,
he suggest they take a blanket and sit down
in the shade of the copse of scrub oak.
She sits down as gracefully as she
can in her white, white dress.
He asks her what she likes best about the Bible.
She says she likes the story of the Garden of Eden.
He says, does she know that the garden is the most important
part of the story?
That before Eve ate then offered the bite of the apple,
Adam and Eve had sex all the time?
She says she thought that the sex was
the punishment, that the shame of their nakedness
had to do with them finally coming
to know each other as opposite, with opposite parts,
and that's where the attraction and [? pay ?] lie,
in difference.
He touches the neckline of her dress.
No, he clarifies for her, it's not
difference that makes for sexual attraction.
It's power.