Lydia was driving through the industrial district in her 2006 Toyota Camry towards the DMV, on an afternoon in June. Her makeup had moistened in some places and dried in others, she looked older than when she applied it that morning. She felt older as well, having passed through the innocence of the early hours, now edging on the cynicism of afternoon. She was trying to turn left, had taken possession of the intersection. Smooth trucks sailed by — red, blue and chrome. Confident machines piloted by men in baseball caps. She pulled at her thin hair, as if trying to release the compaction in her head. Her uterus was quaking and her mind was clicking, She had an urgent need to get out of her vehicle. She tensely waited for her chance to turn and assumed it - pulling over beside a glass repair shop. Her body was a swarm of hormones, memories, reeling thoughts... she wondered if male anatomy could hold this flavour of turbulence. On a stage in her mind, she improvised a monologue directed at the government: 

 

“I live under the thumb of Hollywood. I work hard to stay caught up. I don’t go more than a couple weeks without doing pushups, I've trained my voice so it enters smoothly, I’ve paid my money for this. I paid the bill you sent me in that demanding typeface. I don’t know how else I can convince you that I’m innocent. Tell me where I dropped the ball. My thighs are tight from my adolescent engagement in sports, and from pushing my bike up hills. Where did I drop the ball?” 

 

Rejection.     Wait, did I tell you about the time I won an exceptional prize in high-school biology?  

 

The tension inside her asked for aggression from a perpetrator that was not herself. Her interior was fringed from her own torturous attitudes, and she needed a break from being both the tyrant and the slave. She wanted to receive something overwhelming, her mind had been overwhelmed too long, and she needed to shift the burden. She felt as if she was standing before a slab of marble, knowing a sublime man lived inside - but her hands were empty and she never learned the trade. 

​

I WANT HIS VIOLENCE BECAUSE I THINK I DESERVE IT. I WANT HIS VIOLENCE TO ESCAPE MY OWN VIOLENCE. 

 

She was thinking of how her pussy would shine if she was stripped and folded. Thinking of receiving, and all the surfaces that could be caressed, her mind clicking and beating. She wanted to feel how her abdominals wrapped around the edges of her body through the grip of another. Submission, hand on the throat. He didn’t need to have a face — in fact she could not conjure a face that fit what she needed. Just shoulders and hands and behaviour that she would disagree with at the dinner table. 

​

I WANT YOU TO DO IT SO I DON'T HAVE TO. I WANT HIS VIOLENCE SO I CAN SOOTHE IT, RATHER THAN THE SIMULTANEOUS PUNISHING-AND-SUFFERING THAT INVADES ME WHEN I'M ALONE.

 

The ash on her velvet seat was pricking her skin. She noticed how chipped her manicure had become. Outside, she watched men in gloves handling panes of glass. She was anxious to step outside, fearing that they could smell her tornados. She twisted the key and felt small as she exited the vehicle.  The men seemed full of purpose, and she considered how to insert herself. One of them noticed her before she establish a plan, he was a balding man with a glad looking face. Gesturing at her fractured windshield, he said “Hi there, were you hoping to fix that?” 

 

Rejection.        Are you twisted in thorns up there in your big greased machine? Have you ever grown ill trying to prove to Yourself how horrid and good you are?

 

“Hi — yes, I was wondering if you could replace my windshield, do you do that kind of work? How long would it take — do you mind if I stick around and watch, so I can gather some data? You see, I’m studying and working to create a vaccine.” The balding, glad looking man was polite about his confusion.  “No, I’m not in medicine, I’m trying to make an emotional vaccine. I’m studying Rejection. I think it will be illuminating to hang around you boys for a bit.  I also want to learn how to fix things: how to take something broken & used and make it pure & new again.”    

 

Rejection.     Wait — someone seems to think that I don’t have much time left. Are you sure, can you empathize?

​

The men loitering by the door cut their discussions and looked to her.   

 

“Maybe I’ll get real good at it and I can work here too.” 

 

Lydia was smiling, sweating, and speaking quickly. The men wondered if she was sick.  

 

“Just fixing glass all day long, doesn’t seem so bad.  Is it?  I’ve always wanted to learn how to make things new again. To start with something shattered, and revert it to virginity.  It seems like a noble way to make a living.”

 

Rejection.    Come on, I have a whole palette of colours you could pick from.  You don’t understand the implications of this.

Lydia fainted, at 4:36pm, in-front of All West Glass in the industrial district. It all occurred with balletic grace and an absence of resistance. She was no longer in a parking lot with a group of trade-men in uniforms, she was instantly very far away. None of the men had ever witnessed such a peculiar series of events. Taking care to conceal their unease, they collectively reached for telephones to summon professionals.

​

Lydia was prone to fainting since she was small, a condition that had been described in technical vocabulary by highly-paid professionals — but she alone knew the truth of why it occurred. She knew why, and she was grateful for it: she understood it as a compassionate, intelligent adaptation of her body. She called the events her Comatose Holidays.  When things got hopelessly incomputable on the intellectual plane, her system pacified itself via unconsciousness. Indeed, the space she would land in was quite empty and pleasing.  

 

HE GOT INTO MY MIND BEFORE I HAD THE CHANCE TO GET INTO MY OWN BODY. BY THE TIME I WOKE UP HIS FLAG WAS ALREADY INSTALLED. 

 

She should’ve preempted it this time, as the events compiled: addressing a group of men; driving past those confident trucks; the quaking of her ovaries; the clicking of her head; the memories of rejection she couldn’t eradicate; all that broken glass; her efforts to be Good that weren’t leading to the promised land. Now she was on holiday.  No body odour, broken glass or thin hair. When she retrieved consciousness, there would be residue of the emptiness. While it lasted, she’d enjoy the gratification of her sedated nerves. She never forgot to give thanks to the Angel who cut the thread, and to the Angel who reconnected it.  She had come to consider both of them allies.