Miranda July - The First Bad Man

You’re so brave, you have such faith.

This is nothing. We’ve seen fire and we’ve seen rain , I’d reply, quoting the song.

Of course, it was more of a preaffair, since we weren’t together yet, at least not in the traditional sense, not in this lifetime. And the fire and rain, that was still to come. Also: no close friends to speak in confidence to. But I held my head up when I saw the postman and I waved at my neighbor — I initiated the wave. I even struck up a conversation with Rick, who was walking around in special shoes that punctured the grass.

“I’d like to pay you,” I announced, “for all your hard work.” It was lavish, but why not.

“No, no. Your garden is my payment. I need a place for my green thumb.” He held up his thumb and looked at it fondly, then his expression clouded, as if he’d remembered something awful. He took a deep breath. “I brought your trash cans out last week.”

“Thank you,” I laughed. “That’s a big help.” It was a big help, I wasn’t even lying. “If you don’t mind, you could do that every week.”

“I would,” he said quietly, “but I don’t usually work on Tuesdays.” He looked at me with nervous eyes. “Wednesday is trash day. I usually come on Thursdays. If you are in danger, please tell me. I will protect you.”

Something bad was happening, or had already happened. I picked a blade of grass.

“Why were you here on a Tuesday?”

“I asked you if it was okay, if instead of the third Thursday of this month I came on a Tuesday. Do you remember?” He was looking down now, with a red face.

“Yes.”

“I had to use the bathroom. I did knock on the back door before I came in but no one heard me. Never mind, it’s your private business.”

Tuesday. What did we do on Tuesday? Maybe nothing. Maybe he didn’t see anything.

“Snails,” Rick said.

Tuesday was the morning she cornered me on the floor. I resisted in a defensive huddle position, my wide butt high in the air.

“I need snails.” He was trying to switch topics. “For the garden. The African kind — they aerate.”

If we hadn’t heard him, it could have only been because Clee was yelling verbal harassments.

“I’m in no danger, Rick. It’s the opposite of what you’re thinking,” I said.

“Yes, I see that now. She’s your… it’s your private business.”

“No, it’s not private, no, no—”

He began to trip away, stabbing the grass with his special shoes.

“It’s a game!” I pleaded, following. “I do it for my health! I see a counselor.” He was scanning the yard, pretending not to hear me.

“Four or five will be plenty,” he called back.

“I’ll get seven. Or a dozen. A baker’s dozen — how’s that?” He was shuffling along the side of the house to the sidewalk. “One hundred snails!” I called out. But he was gone.

SUDDENLY I WAS CLUMSY. WHENClee covered my mouth and grabbed my neck in the hallway, I couldn’t fight back because I didn’t want to touch her. Before every raw impulse there was a pause — I saw us through the homeless gardener’s eyes and felt obscene. Being outside society, he didn’t know about adult games; he was like me before I met Ruth-Anne, thinking everything that happened in life was real. The next morning I left the house early, but avoiding her caused other problems. A migraine-level headache blossomed; my throat pulsed threateningly. By noon I was frantically trying to concoct a more clinical way to fight, something organized and respectable, less feverish. Boxing gloves? No, but that gave me another idea.

I staggered down the block to the warehouse; Kristof helped me dig through our old stock.

“Do you want VHS?”

“When did we stop doing scenarios? Was that 2000?”

“Scenarios?”

“Like a woman sitting on a park bench and all that. Before self-defense as fitness.”

“Those are all pre-2002. Are you putting something together for the twentieth anniversary?”

“Yes?”

“Here’s a bunch from ’96, ’97—is that good?”

COMBAT WITH NO BAT (1996)started with an attack simulation called “A Day at the Park.” A woman in espadrilles sits down on a park bench, rubs suntan lotion on her arms, takes a pair of sunglasses out of her purse, and unfolds a newspaper.

I pushed aside Clee’s purple sleeping bag and perched on the couch, my purse beside me. I pulled out my suntan lotion. Clee watched from the kitchen.

“What are you doing?”

I slowly finished rubbing in the lotion and pulled out my sunglasses.

“You attack right after I take the newspaper out,” I whispered. I opened the newspaper and yawned the way the woman had yawned on the tape, a little theatrically. Her name was Dana something, she used to teach on weekends. She didn’t have the abs or the charisma of her successor, Shamira Tye; I doubt we even paid her. Clee hesitated, then sat down beside me. She put her arm around my shoulder sooner than the attacker on the DVD had, but like him she breast-grabbed, so like Dana I elbow-jabbed, yelling, “No!”

She tried to pull me to the floor, which wasn’t in this simulation but it was in the next one, so I skipped ahead.

“No! No! No!” I screamed, pretending to knee her in the groin. I jumped to my feet and ran away. Because there wasn’t far to run I ran in place for a few seconds, facing the wall. And then jogged a little longer to avoid turning around. The whole performance was quite ridiculous. I pulled off the sunglasses and peeked back at her. She handed me the newspaper.

“Again.”

We did that one two more times and then I tried to walk us through “Lesson 2: Domestic Traps,” which takes place in a kitchen. I felt silly throwing fake punches but Clee didn’t seem to care that we weren’t really fighting; she sneered and harassed me with a new thuggy swagger. On the DVD Dana’s attacker wore a backward baseball cap and said things like Hey, baby doll , or C’mere, sweetcakes . In “Lesson 3: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Front Door,” he purred, Yum, yum, yum from the shadows. Of course Clee didn’t say any of these things but I could sort of guide her toward his basic blocking with Dana’s flinches and looks of horror, and on a cellular level Clee knew exactly what to do — she’d seen hundreds of demonstrations like this before the age of five.

After an hour we were exhausted but unbruised. She squeeze-squeezed my hand and gave me a long, strange look before we went our separate ways. I shut the bedroom door and rolled my head. The migraine was gone; my throat was soft. I didn’t feel euphoric, but I knew this could work. If only Rick had seen “Domestic Traps” instead of whatever it was we were doing before. This wasn’t anything, just a re-creation of a simulation of the kind of thing that might happen to a woman if she didn’t keep her wits about her.

While Clee was at work I learned the rest of Combat with No Bat . “Lesson 4: Fighting from Inside Cars” utilized a couch and set of car keys. “Gang Defense” was too complicated — I skipped it. “Woman Asking Directions” was a quickie; my only line was “Do you know where the nearest drugstore is?” For the wrap-up Dana asked me to call my own answering machine, perform ten maximum-loud nos, and listen back to it: NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.

“Yikes!” she said. “Who’s that terrifying woman screaming on your message machine?! That’s you .” I rehearsed not only the kicks and grabs but all the dialogue and staging. Dana really threw herself into the skits; shock, fear, anger — she demonstrated not just what to do but how to feel. My favorite moments were right before the assault — lounging on the park bench, walking casually to the front door. My hair felt long and heavy on my back; I swung my hips a little, knowing I was being watched, hunted even. It was interesting to be this kind of person, so unself-conscious and exposed, so feminine. Dana could have had a career making videos like this for all occasions — waking up, answering the phone, leaving the house; a woman could follow along and learn what to do when she’s not being attacked, how to feel the rest of the time.