Small Violence

Abstract

Small Violence Rebecca Bernard (bio) and Morgan Smith (bio) I leave my house to get coffee. I live close to the shop, so it's a short walk, and when I exit my front door and make my way to the sidewalk, there is a man in khakis and a white shirt not too far ahead of me on the path. He's a boy, really, more than a man. Fat cheeked and round-bodied with wire rim glasses. Dirty, blonde hair. As I walk, I begin to overtake him on the path. Just before the street, the sidewalk gets narrow. Weeds choke the fence to our left and a tree's shadow hangs over the thin path. I am less than two feet behind him when the fantasy sets in. I imagine taking out a knife and stabbing him in the neck. I tear through the flesh of his sides, and my mouth waters, my heartbeat begins to heighten, and I feel the exhilaration of being the source of fear. See how easily I could cause you pain. See how with one smack of my umbrella you would not have otherwise known I was there. What would it feel like to murder someone? It's something I must never know. ___ I'm on my way back to my apartment. In the home stretch, there's a woman in a hoodie and jeans just ahead of me. She's looking down at her phone as she walks. I'm coming up on her quickly. So quickly that I'm worried it's too quickly, that she hears my approaching footsteps and is running through what she's been told to do when a man attacks, that she's thinking how best to reach into her purse for a bottle of mace. So I slow down. But now I'm worried it's too slow, that she thinks I'm lurking and gazing, that she's worried I've seen her reach for a means of defending herself. I usually walk quickly. I don't see the point of drawing it out. It gets my heart going. I can't explain this to her, I can't call out, can't apologize for making her feel afraid. What's a speed that says, I'm not trying to hurt you? I'm dying to know. ___ I am a tall woman. I have often used this fact as a means to account for my lack of fear. I am not small or vulnerable, (though of course, to some, I am). I am not little or soft, I am a lanky piece of bone and flesh moving forward, with direction, with fierceness, I imagine, although usually, I want to appear indifferent, lost in thought. I also tend to walk quickly, but this is the result of long legs, more than likely. On the occasions where I fantasize about being attacked, rather than attacking, I always imagine myself preventing the violence by a slew of angry words. I say them to myself in my mind, feel the rage possess me, the way my shoulders [End Page 69] tighten, my throat pulses, fingers stiffen into warped fists. What the fuck, do you think you're doing? How dare you disrupt my right to exist without consequence? I'll knife your heart. I'll eat your fucking face. In high school, I would force my boyfriend to fight me. To pretend to attack me, drag me down, grab my arms, and then I would need to free myself. No matter how hard I fought, I always wound up pinned to the bed, exhausted, suppressing tears of rage about my weakness, his strength. Fuck you, I would think. But it was my game. My desire. My defeat. Why is violence so compelling to me? Why do I imagine myself striking strangers, seeing their confused or startled faces, feeling my humanity larger, fatter, grosser than theirs. I run my tongue along my teeth as I daydream the pain of others. I feel my canines, their sharpness, the point of the tooth causing my mouth to salivate. I press down with the tip of my tongue along...