“A portion of the sales will go to some charity,” she claimed. “And Sam Bayer is a respected, working director. Not bad to get out in front of him.”
I relented and then went to the show where the black-and-white images of sixteen women had each been blown up to twelve feet to line a giant room in the art gallery. We had been sliced into threes: our heads near the ceiling, our breasts and torsos in the center and at eye level, our vaginas.
A few years later, I saw on Instagram that my portrait had been moved to an LA nightclub. I’d get tagged in photos of both men and women posing in front of the lower part of my body, gesturing lewdly.
* * *
You like me now that I wear nicer shoes. You’re ready to call me a collaborator now that I am no longer a child, now that I have grown up and become, as you point out, a mother. （How funny that men view the life cycles of women so simply! From sex object to mother to what? Invisibility?）
The disrespect you have shown me is appalling. It is ironic that you would approach me about an NFT—something that is all about ownership and subjects being recognized and receiving their dues—when you’ve spent the last ten years doing anything but granting me ownership: of my career and of my images. By the way, I notice that on your Vimeo channel you now charge viewers $3.99 to watch the videos of my shoots.
* * *
I used to be unsure whether I should be grateful to you, for our friendship and the opportunities you gave me. But I’m no longer grateful. I do not believe I owe you anything. I will no longer blame myself for having become small and digestible for you. I have grown past shame and fear and into anger. It is ugly, but I am not scared of it. I want more for myself. I will proclaim all of my mistakes and contradictions, for all the women who cannot do so, for all the women we’ve called muses without learning their names, whose silence we mistook for consent. I stood on their shoulders to get here.
One other thing, Steve. My first post on Instagram was not a picture of you and me. My first post was on February 21, 2011, before I’d even met you. It’s a photograph of my closest female friend smiling.
Releases
IN MY DREAM I am screaming. My face is sticky with tears. A figure looms in front of me. Sometimes it’s someone I am close to; other times it’s someone I haven’t thought about in years.
There are nights when it’s no one specific, only a presence. We are always located in some place from my memories: on the street where I grew up or in an apartment I left long ago. No matter the setting, one thing is consistent: my rage. I yell. I sob. I want this person to recognize my anguish. I try and try to get their attention, but they are unresponsive and blank.
Eventually, I move to strike them, but my arms are impossibly heavy as I raise them. When a fist finally connects, there’s no impact, as if I am made of nothing. There is no satisfaction and no release.
I wake from this nightmare with my heart beating hard, panic and urgency pulsing through me. I am horrified by my anger; embarrassed by its violence. What is wrong with me? Why do I have this vicious and destructive rage? I don’t want to think about what might explain my distress. I tell myself that I don’t deserve this degree of fury. I share my dream with no one.
Once, I asked S whether he ever dreams of fighting.
“It’s awful! The worst!” I hoped he would know my frustration. “You have no impact. It’s like being a ghost. Something without a body.” He shrugged and reminded me that he doesn’t really remember his dreams.
When I wake up from the nightmare one morning a month or so after giving birth to my son, I’m unable to shake off the intensity of feelings. I go into a virtual session with my therapist and describe it to her. She listens intently and expressively—as therapists do—before she speaks.
“In life, where does your anger go? How do you release it?”
“I don’t,” I say plainly.
No one likes an angry woman. She is the worst kind of villain: a witch, obnoxious and ugly and full of spite and bitterness. Shrill. I do anything to avoid that feeling, anything to stop myself from being that woman. I try to make anything resembling anger seem spunky and charming and sexy. I fold it into something small, tuck it away. I invoke my most reliable trick—I project sadness—something vulnerable and tender, something welcoming, a thing to be tended to.
My therapist peers at me, her dark framed glasses making her appear bug-eyed on my screen.
“How about you come in and break some things?” she says.
* * *
In her office, I am horrified to see her holding a glass bowl filled with colorful water balloons.