Jessica Winter - Break in Case of Emergency

MURFLE

MMMMPPHHHAH

MRRRGING

MTEETNNNGN

“Oh!” Jen blurted, the vowel bouncing against the stall walls and smacking her in the face as she stood up and scrabbled for the top of the door, clinging hard until the vertigo dissipated. She’d forgotten a mandatory all-hands meeting that had started a half-hour ago, a presentation based on LIFt-funded surveys demonstrating the negative psychological impacts of “emotional labor” on women. Jen pushed the stall door open, drank in the havoc in the mirror — the pink lab-rat eyes, the tetracycline-gray teeth, the tubercular pallor-and-flush — offered herself a queasy little salute, and pushed out the door onto an office floor denuded of people. The lack of their ebb and flow upped the volume on the whhooooossshhhhh and heightened the treble frequencies on Jen’s general sense of irreality, but it was only when she reached the conference room that she knew she was hallucinating.

There, gesticulating before a fully staffed and stocked conference table in a sharply tailored three-piece suit, clean-shaven and bright-eyed, holding not a machete but a PowerPoint laser wand, was Baz Angler.

“What these surveys are telling us is that organic honesty is the only answer,” Baz was saying as Jen slipped through the door, the downward momentum of the closing statement in his voice. “It’s a universal answer — everyone has access to organic honesty, no matter what stage of life. That’s what’s so empowering about it: There’s no price tag or barrier to entry, no group you have to join. Everyone can benefit. I know I can. But nobody can benefit more from the organic-honesty concept than working moms!”

Baz Angler began tossing his pointer from palm to palm. Jen expected him at any moment to reveal its retractable blade.

“Let’s be real for a moment. And don’t think even a regular guy like me hasn’t noticed. Society expects working moms to be happy, upbeat, positive, and uncritical at all times, in the workplace and at home and at all points in between,” Baz Angler was saying. “And if the inside matches the outside, more power to you. But women are carrying a burden heavier than the child in their belly or on their hip, heavier than the paperwork and baby bottles spilling out of their handbags, and that burden is the burden of the lie. ”

A comic stock image appeared onscreen of a business-attired woman at a computer, looking down in dismay at her mouse mat to see her hand gripping not her mouse but a supine sippy cup.

“When you smile and don’t mean it, that’s a lie. When you swallow your frustration or your disappointment, that’s a lie. And when the lie becomes the habit, that’s the boulder on your back and the chip on your shoulder. The lie can bend your spine and pull your muscles and corrode your insides. The lie wants to infect you!”

He paused, licked his lips, breathed in and breathed out. Just for a second, Jen could espy the blade-wielding-homesteader Baz beneath the smooth corporate friend-of-a-good-cause Baz.

“We have to fight back,” Baz continued. “So let’s stop lying to ourselves. Let’s stop lying to each other. My God, let’s stop lying to our children, above all. This is where you women have the edge on us men, because there’s nothing like motherhood to make you honest. I’m no expert, but I’ve got a hunch that nobody ever told a lie in the throes of childbirth.”

“Ho, ho,” Karina said, as a discreetly pixelated image of a woman in active labor appeared onscreen.

“Motherhood — fatherhood, too, in its way, but especially motherhood — strips you down to your instincts and builds you back up again, and you’re powerless to front and feint in the face of that love and that pain and that ultimate test of your endurance. That primal instinct — it can see right through you. Motherhood is labor enough, so stop taking on all this extra emotional labor. For women’s sake, for men’s sake, for children’s sake. Let’s stop trying to keep track of all these lies we’ve told. Let’s set ourselves free.”

Baz Angler held the laser pointer in a benedictory spirit toward Leora. “Leora, what have I missed?” Baz shrugged and grinned in a confident performance of diffidence as he took his seat.

“Now,” Leora said from her seat, “this isn’t opinion. This is all based on our own research, not to mention our own lived experience. We have the empathy gene. We have the nurturing gene. We have the gene of emotional openness. That’s what makes us mothers, each and every one of us. Those are the essences of femininity, the roots and wellsprings of womanhood. Organic honesty helps us feel those roots and helps us draw from that wellspring. Organic honesty is an organic kindness that will break those chains that make us front and feint. Organic honesty will shatter that happy façade that becomes a prison. When you push down your true feelings, they rot and fester inside you, which can negatively impact not only your emotional health but your physical health, too.”

“Don’t invite that kind of negative energy into your life!” Baz added. “Don’t seal yourself up and sicken yourself inside a prison of lies. Organic honesty. It’s up to us to live a real life. ”

“Just let it all hang out !” Sunny said, widening out her eyes and wagging her head approvingly. “Ayy-men, brother. Finally, it’s like”—Sunny exhaled hard—“such a load off!”

“These ideas and thoughts should shape everything the foundation does going forward,” Leora said. “They are the rock beneath our theory of change.”

“So thought-provoking, Baz, really,” Karina said. “We’re so fortunate to have your perspective on this. And nice to hear these kinds of affirmations from a man for once, am I right, ladies?” Karina added, casting the rest of the room a roguish sidelong glance. The rest of the room tittered and cooed in abashed affirmation.

“My dear friend Baz and I have been talking about this concept of organic honesty for as long as we have known each other,” Leora said. “But one of the many reasons I called upon him now is that we were starting to feel a bit — a bit sequestered. ”

“Haha, boys don’t have cooties!” Sunny giggled. Baz was staring at his phone.

“It’s such an interesting perspective,” Karina added. “I mean, we’re out here living these truths every day, and—”

Leora was staring at her phone.

“We should open the floor for discussion,” Karina said. “What’s on everyone’s mind, gang?”

Whhooooossshhhhh

“Wonderful, Baz, just wonderful,” Leora said to her phone.

“Baz, looks like you got the first word, the middle word, ay- and the last word,” Sunny said, shaking her head in amazement.

“But aren’t you — we — basically talking about overthrowing the social order?”

Jen, subsiding against the wall, was as surprised as anyone in the room to find herself speaking. She leveraged her shoulder blades to push herself off the wall and inadvertently flipped off all the overhead lights.

“There’s a difference between honesty and disclosure,” Jen continued, one hand flapping behind her to switch the lights back on. “Just because I don’t tell you everything I’m thinking at every second doesn’t mean I’m lying to you. Privacy doesn’t make you sick. I mean, Baz—”

“I remember you!” Baz exclaimed, fluorescent lights flickering on and off his face. “Julie!”

“Yes, it’s me, Julie!” Jen said to the wall as she swatted at the light switches.

“Now this, ” Baz said to the rest of the room, his eyes wide with secret-disclosing excitement, his arm fully extended to waggle two proprietary fingers toward Jen’s back, “this is a woman who tells it to you straight. Julie here is a role model for the kind of organic honesty that we’re proposing.”