Féminité

Upon arriving in France I was a woman. Informed by the cattle of Wisconsin farmlands, the timbre of my being was influenced by a knowing that came long before me. 

Sanctuaire 

That first year was transitory. I learned messages from the fellow expatriates at my side in the night clubs, from the pushing of limits, from the rape of my roommate that first October. We were a sisterhood herded together through circumstance. Girls teaching each other independence, learning from the unlearned experiences - the yet to be seen. Our friendship was irresolute, as unsteady as our belief that everything would be ok. 

This transient time of kinship was brought to an abrupt end when I was hoisted from our haven, as an October of my own hit me in March. 

Échangé 

On an ordinary Thursday night, I chased a contemptible drink (jägerbomb) with a beer and began to dance. We sang aloud, our joviality splaying on the dance floor. Men watched from dark corners. My friend, Fer, pried me from my joy to the outside, fresh air gracing me, singing soft relief to the sweat trickling down my spine. “He’s looking for some fun,” she said, gesturing to a man crouched on the curb. He was at least twice my age. A jagged toothy grin, bleach blonde hair, and bright anticipating eyes examining my clothes from top to bottom. A barrier, I realized, to his goals. As I promptly turned away, Fer caught me by the arm demanding answers to my situational ineptitude. 

“Don’t be a prude” she exclaimed, I pushed off, ignoring her expletives trailing behind me. 

Not long after, I saw her passing him off to my roommate Lauren. The circle of life. 

Chambre de Bonne 

Living alone took me from girlhood to becoming a woman. I bought a vibrator, I curated a collection of adulthood costumes, I owned my own hookah. I would buy strawberries from the market down the street, and spend my last pennies on wine. When money inevitably ran low, Tinder became my Doordash, men became an avenue for hash and food, (always at my disposal). In fruitless attempts to feel my body again, I paid freely whatever I owed. A banker, a “famous” Youtuber, and an engineering student became my lovers - my resources. They taught me that womanhood meant pleasure, exchange, and exposure. 

Antoine 

A warm April breeze swept me into the 4th arrondissement one day to a green-curtained cafe near Saint-Severin. The cobbled rue pietonne led my eye to the man I met online. He was far too handsome for a woman like me. He prowled towards me, strategically, eyes latched like a panther, performing this charismatic mating dance. Smiling, looking up and around him in a playful way, then back at me as if to say “yes I am looking at you.” We met in the middle. A slow, intentional bisous was upon me - a priest giving his blessing. We sat at that cafe for a long while, using google translate and our tongues to communicate. He was a perfect gentleman, buying me a rose from a street vendor, paying for multiple beers, teaching me words I’d soon forget. 

Many months of joy ensued, apart from the few times he’d hit me. We lived together outside the city, where I learned that womanhood was quiet. 

Uniforme 

Wear the heels on the cobbled streets, better to break an ankle than lose your man. And wear the red, he’ll desire you more. He likes your hair long, dark and curly. All the better to pull you by. Speak French. Remain foreign enough to entice his friends, but not too much to tempt them to bed. French women don’t dress like that, they don’t talk back like that either. Chin up. Drink like a man but gain none of the weight. Bear his children one day, it’ll be the biggest blessing you’ll ever receive. 

Nom Oublié 

After an average dinner, we stood outside smoking and I asked him (I don’t remember his name) if it feels weird to see all his old friends again. “I think the adventure was worth it don’t you?” I asked, dangerously close to his side. “I would give everything away to do it again,” he admitted. I smiled and looked up at him, cigarette lifting to my mouth, “maybe you should.” He grinned. The moonlight showcased a merciful savior to my loneliness in that moment, and there was nothing but true kindness in those gentle eyes. Eyes that saw exactly what type of situation I was in as an American 19 year old girl enraptured by an almost 30 year old drunk. Someone who was dancing between being a good friend to Antoine and telling me to run. I saw it in his eyes as he wanted to say I should find a new adventure too. To free myself before my life would be written in paper - “a girl gone too soon.” But he just grinned and said “maybe I will.” 

By those few words I knew what he meant. 

Charade 

I knew something was off within me. The head-down instinct of the range I inhabited with Antoine felt stifling. I don’t remember exactly when I began to peek up. A therapist who saved my life in March sat across from me in an unconditioned sweltering brick building in May. “What is it that you aren’t saying?” Federico had asked. “I don’t think I’m a woman.” 

There, the words of a thousand words spilled out of me. I knew my herd back home would be ashamed of what I’d become. My mother, the proudest of all women, loved me for precisely that. She was so worried when my period came later in life, that I hadn’t been “born with the right parts.” 

I expected Federico to flinch at my sharp words, but his lack of experience in this form of pretense allowed him the freedom to say with grace “so what?” So what that I’m not a woman? So what that I’m not made of the strawberries I eat? Of the costumes I wear? The men I’ve fucked? I asked what I should do - a rocked world crumbled beneath me. “Today, this week, as long as you need, allow yourself to not be a woman. See what changes. Don’t tell anyone. But in your mind allow yourself to not be a woman and see how it feels.” 

I was surprised and relieved to find that nothing changed. 

Fierté 

I went to my first Paris pride behind his back. Chrissy came with, she had never seen a pride parade before. (I thought I had until I saw this one). Here, no one was just a woman. Vibrant colors shone through, breaking apart the facades of the everyday masks we wore. Music, moments of silence, laughter - a cacophony of love! 

I wore black. I said it was in honor of those who died before me. 

In secret it was for me who felt dead. 

Régression 

“Je ne suis pas une femme, ni un homme” 

I told him that fall. I remember the trill of his laugh, as he mocked me. “You want a penis? You want women? As long as I can watch.” He continued to whisper those words to me long into the night. “You think you’re not a woman? Let me show you how I can change your mind.” 

He taught me that to not be a woman meant punishment. 

Renaissance 

Ava paid for the overpriced uber to move my things before he returned home. The uber, an older man, asked me why I was crying. “Leaving is hard” I remembered saying, as I blankly stared out the window. The heat of August’s attempt to dry those tears blew in. “Did he hurt you?” he asked. I was shocked at the gentleness in his eyes. I barely tilted my head in response. He passed me his pack of cigarettes with the lighter sticking out, and gave me a morose but tender smile. We spoke no more. The France 24 channel hummed in responsive static. 

When you finally leave, it is to be reborn. The world hits you as it did when leaving the womb. All the blood rushes in - it peels your existence apart. Sensorial input overwhelms your being from every angle of your life, overtaking you until it suddenly stops. Without warning, silence intrudes. You can finally hear the slight wheeze of your breath; a sound you had forgotten existed. A sense of relief that feels like a lie. 

That night that I moved into my studio apartment, when Ava had finished moving the last of my bags, when she hugged me goodbye 

and I closed the door, I found myself on the ground. on a dirty tiled floor of my newfound haven, my knees scraped up from the impact, the world coming to still. 

Leaving had never felt so close to god. 

Prêt 

By the time I left France I was no longer a woman. 

Maintenant 

I know not what I am, only that I’ve been. 

The One With Bubbles

A solitary road sat empty, safe for a few worn townhouses that convened there overlooking a sewage run-off and stream. Or at least I think they did. I remember a park nearby, a stone park as I used to call it, where I would run and play amongst the names that kept me company. My brother would always walk me there. He’d bike on ahead and I’d come trailing after him, skidding my feet and crying. I remember the color green, surrounding me through the grass and weeds, decorating the sidewalks, and guiding my way to the stones. He’d tease me incessantly that he would leave me there, though he never did. He would always turn back to keep a close eye - the ever-present guide he once promised our parents he would be. I remember not wanting to be alone. 

My whole world zoomed in on a particular townhome. It was narrow, held by those around it, with a dilapidated porch and weathered brick walls. I remember the color yellow associated here, like the summer storms that sent alarms sounding throughout the town. The main door opened to a tiny living room, a staircase on the right where I learned to paint my toenails for the first time, a small television next to it where my brother tormented me with the movie Signs. The kitchen in the back, long and thin, where I’d beg for ice cream sandwiches when the weather ran warm. I could see the red glow through the single-pane window indicating Dad’s car backing into the driveway. In the corner of that kitchen was a door to the haunted basement. Not haunted in the same way as the stone park, but haunted by much more demanding ghosts. I avoided that door, that cellar full of mementos and souvenirs from times gone by, it always taunted me. The fear emanating from it was only ever disrupted by the red glow through that single-pane window in the kitchen. Nearly every day at the same time, its rays would fill the house. Whenever I saw it, I’d scream “Red daddy!” and run outside, barefoot, leaping over the 

dandelions to find the glow placing a spotlight on him bringing in the groceries. That spotlight provided as much as he did: a warm glow of energy to the home. You could see it from the living room where my favorite purple couch caught me, where my father’s painting hung above. 

My father was a painter, a musician, a ceramicist, a filmmaker, and provider. 

Raised in a town of 3000, in many ways, his life was ordinary. He got average grades, was beaten to a pulp in the high school football team, and volunteered for his family’s church (though the nuns scared him). The strangest part about his childhood was his loving, science-driven, Jesus-loving parents who nurtured his oddity through the arts. He was a talented drummer, raised amongst the glamour of the 70’s rock scene. His father taught him to paint, like his father before him, and his brother fueled his need to film. His happiest memories rendered him and his brother in the back of their childhood home. Dad would be on the ground, pointing an old film camera up to the roof of their house where Uncle Mike would be, standing in all his glory. In a town of 3000, I always imagined that this was the strongest they felt. They owned the world in those cameras, performing their own stunts, and composing worlds they could escape into. Their parents, calling them in for dinner, would review their film and tell them how creative they are. Dad and Mike would surely spend the rest of the night plotting what would play out next. I know now that when Dad watches a film, he thinks of Mike. He was never quite the same after he died. 

I remember very few details of that painting that hung above our couch. He had painted it in his senior year of college, (I think). Freshly made a father and brought upon the dreaded decision to pursue security for the sake of his family. It was all that remained of that past life, its presence alluding to those brief dreams inevitably washed away with turpentine. Those fleeting thoughts that he’d leave that small town for something more. Large in scale, you could feel its 

gaze upon you from any angle of the room. A band was in full swing, music and harmonies dancing across the canvas as if you could hear them too. In the center, a man passionately played the trombone, with bubbles floating in and out, reflecting the dim lights of the club they commanded. Some days. I could see them floating right off the canvas, floating around my favorite purple couch, encircling me in that small townhouse living room. The image always ticked me. It emphasized the whimsy of my father and his never-ending visions of what the world could be. 

When we lived there, I spent most nights listening. I would hear the occasional car meander by, the whizzing of phone wires and street lights outside, the crashing sounds of my brother’s video games muffled through his door upstairs, and my parents’ consistant yelling in their bedroom. I remember how vivid their arguments would sound. They reminded me of the stage plays mom would choreograph at the local theater, or the sword fights my brother would perform at the Renaissance faire. It was as if Shakespeare himself had directed them to use the evening as a rehearsal. When the post-glow happiness would wear off, the blue of the night would bring about anger. I liked to imagine them in costumes when I heard them, I think it made the blue of the night more bearable to endure. Puff-sleeved and crying. 

I would take up playing in the living room when that happened. A rented Pokemon VHS would be musing on the tiny television, my three favorite baby blankets spread meticulously on the floor, and my stuffies lined neatly in a row. They were preparing for a play too, only this one I could control. Sometimes, pausing between make-believe daydreams of my own, called to its vibrant purples and blues, to the glistening thick texture of the paint, I would immerse myself into the scene looming above me. Maybe Mom and Dad’s arguments weren’t a Shakespearean play, maybe they were a song. Just as the purples and blues sang of a melancholic night that no 

longer existed, so did their arguments about what might have once been love. The painting was almost a comfort show to me. I knew it the same way it knew me. 

When mom would inevitably storm out, loudly proclaiming that she needed to walk it off, Dad would saunter down the stairs in defeat. There was no winning with Mom. The red glow would always be gone from his eyes. I always wondered, in moments like that, if he ever looked at the one with the bubbles and thought of those dreams he had given up. If he ever looked at me and thought the same. He wouldn’t say much about their production, he would instead sit on that purple couch that comforted me, and ask about my stuffies lined neatly in a row, about the rented Pokemon VHS, or if I wanted an ice cream sandwich. The image would stay with me much into adulthood: An artist and provider held by his surroundings, backdropped with his whimsical visions of the world, with music surrounding him. While most of the home was dictated by my mother, he had at least one part of him shown. It represented him well: that despite his selflessness in everything he did, his creativity would persist through it all. He wasn’t a man who gave up his dreams of being an artist so we could survive - he was a man who thrived because he saw bubbles coming from trombones. 

If I had to describe that time I could say that it was a glowing red. But whenever I look back all I see is purple.