Week 9

Dear Diary, 

What does it all mean? I write to you today dismayed, disillusioned, and frankly a bit confused. 

I came to this country searching for, for something! Searching for myself, the transcendent meaning of the land and the people, searching for the Truth that I've been hearing and reading about for months and...this is what I've found? 

I did everything like the books said. I read every travel guide, made maps of maps and planned routes (but not too closely, because after all, there has to be some degree of spontaneity) and even built in bathroom breaks and places to take iconic photos to share with family and friends back home. I was following the ideals of the road trip perfectly, right? 

I was sorely mistaken in thinking so. For on my journeys today I encountered a woman, no more than thirty, though probably younger, riding a motorbike. She was caked in mud and scrapes, and her contraption was scratched and leaking a trail of gas behind her as if she were a dare-devil Hansel and Gretel. It's always raining this time of year in Oklahoma, and as I glanced over at her on this short little two lane road, I could see she was yelling something. I demanded the driver roll down my window at once, and the woman bared these yellowed teeth that were smattered with bugs and just kept singing this horrible song. I gestured to her that her tank was leaking, but she couldn't understand what I was saying over the hum of the engine, and she certainly couldn't take her eyes off of the road long enough to comprehend my pantomiming. She was having a hard enough time driving without temporary blindness complicating things. 

So naturally, we pull over, and I tell her that she is leaking gas or oil or something real bad and she ought to let us fix her up a tea and some biscuits in the back of our camper van, let her take a shower and warm up because for a woman to be out in the cold and rain like this is dangerous. Men pray on women in times like these. Vulnerability is sought after. 

But what that woman said to me will stick with me for the rest of my life. She shook her matted, dirty hair out of its pressed-down, helmetted state and spat on the ground with disgust. She said, "Me? Why I've been riding since New Jersey, and I certainly haven't needed any help so far. Tea gives me gas and I don't need your bloomers. To be quite frank -- and I've slept with a lot of men by that name, so I'd consider myself an expert -- I'm not even wearing pantyhose, and the prospect of having to makes me sick." 

Perhaps it was my widening eyes or slack jaw, but the look of contempt that came into her eyes made me question everything I knew to be good and true about humanity. In France, if you offered someone help who was clearly in distress, they'd reject at first until you offered again and then thank you profusely and accept whatever you had to offer. Especially women! But this woman just kept going on and on about how she "felt alive and alone in the best way" and didn't need anyone else because she was unplanned and that felt right to her. She continued this diatribe about teabags and the human consciousness while the rain poured down and I peered down at her proud little body perched atop that motorbike and I couldn't help but wonder, is this feminism? So contrary to what Simone had told me and written about herself, this "empowerment" seemed demoralizing. Was this America? Was this the "independence" that foregrounded the American continent? I cannot imagine a more unstable foundation. 

I listened to her for a few moments more before the woman pulled from the back straps of her bike a large pink, plastic phallus and began wildly gesticulating, and I just instructed the driver to continue driving and to not look back until that vile woman was out of the rear-view mirror. 

Sadly, 

Margaret de Beauvoir