Free 2000 Deciduous Trees : Memories of a Zine (9781937316051) by Nath Jones

been reading poetry again? Or
did your sister send you another one of those tapes? This is
ridiculous. Women are the same as guys.
    Her: Just listen. Women are very similar,
it’s true. So similar in fact that virtually no one sees the
implications of the nuances and so they account their pain to
inferiority, insecurity, or whatever. But don’t you see? A woman is
made from her mom fucking her father’s mom. It’s sick. It’s an
impossibility. It’s based in decay.
    Him: This is fucking crazy.
    Her: Two more minutes. If the man has X and
Y but suppresses X all those years and lives in Y then when a girl
is conceived that X is only his mother lying on her back however
many years before. That X is what the father mounted. That X was
last thought of when those grandparents fucked that father into
being. That X is another rejection, because the father goes on
being a man. If a boy is conceived that is the love and passion a
man has for a woman.
    Him: Can you be a little more abstract?
    Her: But if a girl is conceived that is the
hatred between the mother and the mother-in-law. That is the
tension of like forces in proximity. Like magnets. That’s her. And
those Xs have been passed down for however many hundred years in
that disjunct fashion. All Xs eventually having that poison about
them. Not like the Ys, which hold that solid background.
    So women grow up with this at the core of
their being. So it comes to nights like this between you and me. It
comes down to these fights. It comes down to house payments and
colors for cars and children's schools and names for the dog. It
comes into every decision. That blackness of all those Xs. And the
man—each with his Y from God—always wins.
    So he is able to be silent and proud,
unforgiving, focused, and feels no understanding for the chaotic
world. Woman is different. She stands shadowed by her mundane life.
Hoping her children are good enough for the fucked-up world. Hoping
to catch some sun on her face from a deep damned canyon wedged
between two monstrous obsidian cliffs. But never really believing
in herself and her beliefs. Never content and constantly
questioning her limits. Not expanding them but assuring herself as
to where they are because they are constants. They are her means of
support.
    She’s tired and frail and she knows better
than to divest herself of the limits the way a submarine knows not
to crack its walls. So here I am tonight with you asking me to
marry you. And all I can think of is your mother.
    All I can think is that you should be happy
and that the world should go on as it has always gone on. What
right have I to go off alone? I have no right. My duty is to you
and your love for me. My duty is to that diamond—right?—and to the
three-year-old in a grocery cart that comes with it. Why is that my
duty? Not because of you. Not even because of society. Because you
don’t care. And they don’t care. No matter what I do—whether I hold
up a feminist label or wave a rainbow flag—they’ll see the diamond
ring and the grocery cart. So that’s not it.
    But I have this duty to my mother.
    I’m supposed to endure what she endured to
show I’m not too good for her. To show that I appreciate all she’s
done for me and believe that all her pain, which she has stuck down
in that dark cavern, was not for no reason. That’s why she calls
and asks if I have a boyfriend. That’s why she’s always pressuring
me to get married. That’s why she’ll think I’ve failed no matter
what else I do, if I don’t have kids. And even if I was with you,
Babe. Even with you. I love you. I know it would work. I know I
would love our kids. I know I could spend the rest of my life with
your voice and your arms and your eyes. I know that. But why? Why?
Because no matter how liberal or equal or nontraditional a
relationship we create, I will still disappear. I will still become
that thing that is caught between my duty to my mother and my love
for you.
    That’s what