Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk (best time to read books txt) 📕

“Miranda's” arms are thin, tanned muscle with no jiggle to them. Smooth as tan plastic. He giggles. “Miranda” actually giggles. He rolls his eyes at the ceiling.

“Miranda” says how the sales associate from work drove the two of them to this very dark bar, the kind where you'd go to not be noticed by—

This is so like a male, all this me, me, me stuff, all night.

We come here to get away from men, from husbands who won't pick up dirty socks. Husbands who slap us around, then cheat on us. Fathers disappointed that we're not boys. Stepfathers who diddle us. Brothers who bully us. Bosses. Priests. Traffic cops. Doctors.

Most time, we don't allow cross talk, but somebody in the group says, “Miranda?”

And “Miranda” stops yakking.

We tell him that consciousness raising is rooted in complaint. What so many people call a bitch session. In communist China, in the years after Mao's revolution, an important part of building a new culture was allowing people to complain about their past. At first, the more they complained, the worse the past would seem. But by venting, people could start to resolve the past. By bitching and bitching and bitching, they could exhaust the drama of their own horror stories. Grow bored. Only then could they accept a new story for their lives. Move forward.

This is why we come here every Wednesday night, to this bookstore backroom without windows, to sit in folding metal chairs around a big square table.

The revolution called this “Speaking Bitterness.”

“Miranda” shrugs his shoulders. His eyebrows raised, he shakes his head and says he doesn't have any horror stories. He sighs and smiles and bats his eyes.

And someone in the groups says, “Then we don't want you here.”

The whole idea of men creating perfect robot women for their own pleasure, it happens every day. The most “beautiful” women you see in public, none of them are for real. They're just men perpetuating their perverted stereotype of women. Just the oldest story in the world. There's a penis on every page of Cosmopolitan magazine if you know where to look.

“Miranda” says how we're not very welcoming.

And somebody says, “You're not a woman.”

We meet in the women-only safe gathering space behind the Wymyn's Book Cooperative. No way do we want our space polluted by oppressive phallic yang energy.

Being a woman is special. It's sacred. This isn't just some club you can join. You don't just get a shot of estrogen and show up here.

“Miranda” says: You just need a little makeover. To pretty yourself up.

Men, they just don't get it. Being a woman is more than just wearing makeup and high heels. This kind of sex mimicry, this gender parroting, is the worst insult. A man thinks, all he has to do is put on lipstick and cut off his dick and that makes him a sister.

Someone gets up from her chair. Someone else gets up, and they both start around the table.

“Miranda” asks: What are they planning?

And a third woman, standing, says, “A major makeover.”

“Miranda's” pink fingernails go to her pocketbook. He takes out a canister of hot-pepper spray and says he's not afraid to use it. He puts a silver rape whistle between his pink lips.

Someone else goes around the table to stand too close to him, his hand clutched white around the pepper spray. Then somebody in the group says, “Let's see your tits . . .”

In our group, we don't have a leader. The rules of consciousness raising don't allow cross talk. No one can challenge the experience of another member. Everyone gets a turn to talk.

“Miranda,” the silver rape whistle drops out of his mouth. His Paris lips blown up with collagen. The pout of a fashion model saying, “Thursday.”

“Miranda” says we have to be joking.

It's so typical, men want all the perks of being female, but none of the bullshit.

Somebody else says, “No, really. Show us . . .”

We're all female, here. It's not like we haven't seen tits before. Somebody standing close, she reaches toward the top button on “Miranda's” pink blouse. The blouse is pink silk, tented over his breasts. It's cropped to show his smooth, flat stomach, and hangs in folds above his belted skirt. His pink lizard-skin belt is no bigger than a dog collar.

One of his pink hands slaps the woman away. When no one else makes a move, then “Miranda” lets out a little sigh. With all of us watching, he undoes the top button, himself. His pink fingernails open the next button down. Then the next. He's looking back at us, looking from woman to woman, until all the buttons are done and the blouse gaps open. Inside is a pink satin bra embroidered with roses and trimmed with lace. His skin is airbrush-pink, centerfold-clear, without the moles or hairs or red bug-bites you see on real skin. Around his neck, a pearl necklace points straight down into his big ass-crack cleavage.

The bra is the kind that hooks open in the front, and “Miranda” waits a beat, holding the clasp and looking from woman to woman.

And somebody in the group says, “How much estrogen do you have to shoot up to keep a rack on you that big?” Somebody else whistles. The rest of the group whispers together. The breasts are too perfect. Both the same size and not too far apart. They look engineered.

The pink fingernails twist, and the bra falls open. The bra falls open, but the breasts stay up, firm and round, with nipples pointed at the ceiling. The exact set of breasts a man would choose.

Someone standing close, she reaches out a hand and makes a grab. Her hand squeezes flesh. Thumbing the nipple, she says, “Everybody. You've got to feel this—God, it's so gross.” Her hand squishes, then lets go. Squishing again, she says, “It's like . . . I don't know . . . bread dough?”

“Miranda” twists to get away, his body pulling back against his chair.

But the hand