A Dyke A Broad #22
The International Women's Day edition. With recipes, make-up tips, and how to achieve that runway walk.
Hello from Paris!
Welp. I had big things planned for you for International Women’s Day, but was so distracted with my shopping list heading out to buy groceries on Thursday, that I tripped over my own feet, fell on my face, and sprained my ankle.
No, this has not been the year of elegance or grace. I’m pretty sure an anvil from the sky will be next.
Though yesterday I suddenly found myself giggling with relief, because after all, there was no need for the public shame of ambulances and gawking neighbors, or a Covidy ER, and my ankle was rapidly getting better, thanks to a ton of ice which I miraculously had because I’d just bought a box of those weird plastic bags that have a tiny opening at the top that you drizzle water into, and gradually little disks of water form, and the whole thing seals itself magically and you stick it in the freezer, later peeling it apart to pop out ice lozenges.
The whole thing felt like a good sign. Like having a bird shit on your head before a job interview. Perverse, I know. But that’s already been established…
All I have to do to heal is hang around the house and keep my foot up, and since I was hardly leaving anyway, that’s no big deal. Also, now that I know the ice cube thing works, I can add some pastis or gin to my next grocery order, wait for the late afternoon sun to come into the apartment, make a drink, and project myself into June when it will be pleasantly warm and I will surely be vaccinated. Please God let me be vaccinated by then.
I spend a lot of time lately imagining things, or at least altering reality enough to give The Girl and me a break from the time and place we’re living in. Which is not a city or country, but just this apartment with its two rooms, three if you count the entry where I’ve installed a tiny desk and pretend to work.
What I do sometimes is figure out some different thing to make for dinner (no pasta, no eggs), move our small table to the wall on the other side of the room, change the placemats and put on music. Once I pretended we were at a Paris café because we hadn’t been to one in months (and still can’t—a year later!—since they’re closed.) I layered some homemade bechamel sauce, slices of ham, and tons of gruyere between two rounds of store-bought puff pastry, gave it an egg wash, and baked. Voilà we’ve got feuilleté jambon gruyère. Which I served with some Leffe, a typical café beer.
It’s a good reminder we can do such things—imagine. A fossilized version of now gets in the way of what could be, or can, or even what is. Surely there is another way to see me, this dyke tapping on her computer at this table next to the stove.
Every now and then, to bust free, I watch that 1975 Martha Rosler video, Semiotics of the Kitchen. It always shocks me. How all those kitchen implements are transformed without her changing a thing. Really. An ice pick remains an ice pick. All she has done is abandon literal-mindedness. And tried to see what was often beyond. Rage. Which allowed the video to be less a representation than revelation of the woman in the kitchen. (Be patient. Breathe deeply. It has a slow start for those of us with 2021 eyes.)
Things like that save me. Sometimes I feel like an accountant. I put on my activist hat and all you get are numbers, which are admittedly important. For women—so many raped, so many dead, underemployed, underpaid. But then it becomes tempting to make other lists, add or subtract things (like Dr. Seuss books), go far beyond basic values. Do not rape. Do not kill, impoverish, mutilate, enslave. And say instead, do not read this or think that. As if by reducing us to seeing the same things, we’ll see them in the same way.
Good luck with that. History tells us we’ll end up neither more equal (the power is in the hands of the censor) nor more free. And freedom is what I aspire to. Maybe even a little joy.
To that end, I leave you with one of the most joyful, unfettered videos I’ve ever seen, Janelle Monáe's PYNK, directed by the lovely Emma Westenberg (this link is a great interview with her).
Oddly joyfully yours,
Kelli “Pussy Power” McPinkswell
& a quick reminder. If you wanna help keep me in Leffe, you can always change your subscription to paid.
And one bonus photo of a giant clit installed in front of the Eiffel Tower!!!! HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY!!!!