I used to write
What happens when you cut and run instead of pulling the anchor back into the boat.
I used to write. I wrote freely and without concern, because there was no one I was worried might come after me for what I had to say. As I remember it, the writing was actively concerned with truth and the truths in question were largely innocuous. I observed the world and I observed myself and I dreamed up ways I might spend life witnessing the glory of humanity. The writing was easy. I wasn’t worried then about anyone coming for me and he hadn’t come for me yet.
I wasn’t worried then about anyone more individuated, anyway, than the faceless, nameless horde of males that manage to achieve critical mass even without any official affiliation. That whistle at me when I leave the gym and hang their bodies out of moving garbage trucks to gawk and shout at me to use my fucking brain because I’m not sure if they’re going left or right when we pass on the sidewalk and I linger a little too long trying to share space well.
Their threats are not new. Maybe they bother me more now than they used to.
I don’t know if the adult male on a child’s bicycle was trying to cop a feel when he went for the phone in my hand or if he was just an unskilled thief. While he pedaled away, after I realized all the yelling was neither helping me nor hurting him, I caught myself giving him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he missed, I thought. Maybe it was an accident. I reflexively acquitted this total stranger of culpability for no reason other than who I, the recipient of the violation, was socialized to be in the world. I extend myself no such courtesy. I do not excuse myself. Our socialization does not include that kindness.
On the day he tries to swipe my phone, it’s raining. Cataclysmic storms have rolled down to the city from the north, where the horses won’t run on the wet grass and not every creature was made to race on rocks. I buy myself a bright blue and yellow ice cream cone and decide not to mind that the topping will be raindrops. I carry it cold and low in my belly, typing into my phone with my thumbs, turning down another empty street. I am alone before his attempt; after, I am alone and I am holding on imperceptibly tighter.
The rain moves my cursor each time it splashes onto the screen so that I start one sentence down here and finish it way up there. I tried to leave things out of order for you, for a laugh, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I have to clean up, put things where they belong, make something of the mess. I can’t help myself. It’s true that the words don’t make as much sense when they’re not in order but it’s really about control. Making order is my compulsion; I need it to be right.
You can’t tell because this paragraph appears immediately after the last, but it’s now been many days since I started this thing. Many of those days saw rain. I am still writing. I am back in the city where Wanderthief was born, cauterizing a decade-long cycle. I am still concerned with truth and metabolizing fear. Things are different now, but a few people still call me Wanderthief. A few people know who I am, and they’re still here. Maybe I am too. Still here. Still in there, somewhere.