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Woman in Space

I spent a week on Maui as a solo traveler (for most of the time, anyway.  Friends were staying nearby, and I rendezvoused with them a few times.)

Traveling alone isn’t a sad thing, and doesn’t usually bother me until I encounter the fences our society erects against women who are alone.  The Puritans, suspicious of women who lived and went alone, used to mollify their fear of unaccompanied women by exiling them to the outskirts of villages, and perhaps accusing them of witchcraft, and horrifically executing them.

Today, people still deal with the “problem” of women alone in their space by hiding or ignoring them.  Restaurants aggressively try to hide you, either pointing you to the bar, or seating you in the very back by the kitchen.  If you’re lucky, they’ll ask you first if you’d like to be seated in the bar; but most of the time, they’ll just direct you there without asking.  Waitstaff from certain cultures will utterly ignore a woman seated alone, perhaps infected by the latent assumption that she’s a prostitute, or that no respectable woman could be in an eating establishment unaccompanied by a man and children.  The frosty reception is amplified when the woman is fat, older, or not conventionally attractive.  Couples and families with children are served first, even if they came in after you did.  I even found a diner in Oregon who seated families with children first, making me wait until the lobby had been emptied of these more important customers.  I asked the hostess why people who’d come in after me were seated first.  She shrugged.  “We’re a family-friendly place,” she said.  “Children get cranky when they get hungry.  We want to make sure they get fed soon.  Don’t you?”  Ah yes.  How dare I, lone woman, insist on being served before the children.  I gave her menu back and walked out.

On flights, I’ll sometimes be asked if I can change seats, because a couple or family neglected to book their own adjoining seats ahead of time, and now want to make it my problem.  “No, I need to sit here, by the window,” I’ve lied in the past.  “I’ll get nauseous if I don’t sit by the window.”  The flight attendant usually backs off when I mention nausea.  I don’t get sick.  But I do prefer a window seat, which is why I book one in advance.  Larger parties should take the trouble to do the same, instead of expecting me to yield--once again--to their sense of entitlement.  I don’t yield.  It shocks the parties who’ve demanded that I move.  People have come to expect that a lone woman yield to them; they still hold to unexamined tribal hierarchies:  the child-producing members of the tribe are entitled to have their needs met first, and the old maids are expected to help fulfill those needs.  You can watch as people almost comically fail to process it when one of the old maids simply says “No.  No, I’m not going to do that.  No, you can’t have my share.  No, I’m not going to give this up for you.”

Excursions offer their own barriers.  “We need a minimum of two people,” several private boat charters told me.  I’d have to pay for two people to charter a private snorkel boat.  I went on a large-group snorkel cruise to Molokini, where I struggled to find a seat.  Larger parties blocked off seats with their towels and bags.  I finally moved someone’s backpack to sit down, and a couple who wanted that bench glared at me the entire time.  “Why doesn’t she yield to us?  Do we have to say something?  Doesn’t she know that as a couple, we’re more important than some lone, middle-aged woman?  Look at her, thinking she deserves that seat while we stand.”  I didn’t yield.  The “camera guy,” who putters around the boat in SCUBA gear while we’re anchored at Molokini, and takes pictures of passengers to sell to them later, takes zero pictures of me.  Only families and couples are captured.

I get to my favorite beach early in the morning.  I find a perfect spot in the shade, and set up my chair.  Few other people are there; a few older folks are exercise-walking the length of the beach.  By 10:30 a.m., the beach is filling up.  A family arrives, multiple children yet the woman’s pregnant again, unfurling their blanket less than a foot from my chair.  I look like I’m part of their group, but they don’t greet me or ask, “Hey, do you mind if we sit over here?”  It’s like I’m not even there.  There’s no concept of “personal space” when you’re a woman alone.  Your personal space is considered a lending library, to be checked out and used when people with more power and privilege need it.

From the beach, I move on to lunch and shopping at an open-air mall.  I’m again directed to the bar without an inquiry into my seating preference; “No,” I say.  “A booth please.  In the main dining room.”  I browse shops.  Shop employees follow me intently and suspiciously with their eyes, but say nothing.  I’m the demographic likely to shoplift--alone, quiet, focused, unencumbered by kids.  When larger parties enter, the employees are chirpy and friendly.  The larger parties buy nothing, but I buy a small painting I like.  They’re still friendlier to the mom and grandma with kids.

Walking down the street, larger parties walk three or four abreast, blocking the entire sidewalk.  I used to yield to this when I was young; I used to walk around them, even if I had to enter the street or walk in the gutter.  In London once, I had an unpleasant time dragging my suitcase into a rainy gutter, where it tipped over, because three women who were walking abreast wouldn’t make way.  That was many years ago; I wasn’t 30 yet.  Now, I bust right through parties who don’t yield enough sidewalk to me.  I knocked a shopping bag out of a young Asian woman’s hand one time on Pine St., after she and her friends walked in a solid wall formation and wouldn’t yield a path for me on the sidewalk.  I plowed right through them like they weren’t even there, and I didn’t turn around or apologize.  I don’t walk in the gutter for people anymore.  I’ll walk right through any party who acts like a lone woman isn’t enough to move for.  In the airport, I plowed through a party who was blocking the entire walkway to the restrooms.  I yanked my rolling laptop case right through them, running over some feet.  Two women with giant mega-strollers were blocking the front door at Trader Joe’s, talking, oblivious to anyone trying to get in.  I kicked the wheel of the stroller so it would move over, and put my arm out to push aside one of the women.  I didn’t even look at them.  There was gasping.  Too bad.  Next time, get out of my way.  I no longer give people generous advances in respect.  There’s no credit available here.  You’ll get the same respect that you show me, and not a bit more.  I’m not interested in your approval.  If you show me no respect, you’ll get no respect in return.

Last summer, I visited a famous waterfall that’s usually mobbed by tourists.  I got there around 7:30 a.m., though, and was the first one there. I find that early mornings of tourism are much more rewarding and pleasant for a lone woman traveler.  I sat and enjoyed the fountain’s roar and rainbow-shot mist in the fountain’s green, cool alcove for some time before a young couple arrived.  “Could you take our picture?” they asked, extending their phone to me.  “No,” I said, returning my gaze to the waterfall, treating them with the same indifference they’d show me if they didn’t want something out of me.  They hovered there a few seconds in disbelief.  The woman gaped.  “You can’t just take our picture?” she sputtered.  I shook my head, and waved them away with my hand without looking at them. The man with her steered her away before she could scold me for not doing her bidding, mumbling, “We’re sorry to bother you.”  I’m not here for you.  I’m here for myself.  If I were with a partner and kids, you would never presume to bother me; you would think I was too busy, too important to accost.  Guess what:  I am too busy, and too important to accost.  Solo women are not free labor for you.  We are not here to make your trip more special.

I’m on a flight to Dallas, for a business trip.  The woman across the aisle from me wants to go to the lavatory, but has a toddler with her.  She reaches out and pokes my shoulder while I’m reading.  “Hey, would you mind watching my kid while I go to the bathroom?”  She didn’t ask the man sitting on the other side of the toddler; she looked around for the nearest woman.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a complete stranger as long as you have tits, apparently.  “Take the toddler with you,” I responded coldly.  “I’m not here to babysit for you.”  “OK whatever!” she spat, with bitter laughter.  “Obviously you don’t have kids!”  No, I don’t.  I didn’t want them, and chose not to burden myself and the rest of the planet with them.  I am not designated drop-in childcare for you just because I’m a woman.  Just because I’m a woman alone doesn’t mean I’m waiting here for some stranger to assign me unpaid labor.

I went to church for some ten years, when I still believed in that bullshit.  There were two developmentally disabled parishioners there, and I noticed something over the years:  married parishioners speak to older single women and the disabled parishioners the same way:  with condescension, with commingled pity and revulsion, with stiffly forced tolerance, with icy smiles.  There’s the same pained smile, the same wearied, impatient disappointment if their targets answer the question, “how are you?” with anything but the word, “fine”.  The disabled parishioners were valued for their free labor, and nothing else; the same with the church’s ineligible “old maids.”  Childcare, coffee service, kitchen cleanup, Altar Guild, photocopying...that is the realm of the spinster at church.  She is never a thought leader of any kind; she is never assisted.  She carries 10-gallon buckets of baptismal font water to the sink to empty by herself, while the important marrieds glad-hand and chit-chat in the narthex, ignoring her.  She stays until midnight cleaning up after Maundy Thursday service, because the more important families “have school the next morning, you understand.”  She’s invited to events where she can work and donate, but her labor and money are all that interest church leadership.

A member of the Vestry who typically ignored me approached me once after services.  She is going to ask me to volunteer to do work, I said to myself.  Sure enough, she said, her eyes glittering with artificial warmth, “A little bird told me you’d be interested in volunteering in the daycare!”  “Your little bird was misinformed!” I chirped, borrowing the same insincere gleam, and walking away from her.  It was like that for years:  marrieds don’t acknowledge you unless they need some work done.  I volunteered to cook and serve at The Lord’s Supper, a weekly dinner for the poor of the community.  At the end of each evening, after all the diners had left, and all the cleanup was finished, the two married couples who volunteered with me would go to a nearby pub for drinks and snacks.  I was never invited.  All social events were for families and couples. 

As it turns out, Jesus didn’t give a shit about me giving up my Saturdays to clean communion wine stains out of tablecloths or count out wafers or scrape candle wax off floors.  Jesus did not bring me a husband or even so much as a friend with benefits; he didn’t give a rat’s ass about my prayers.  2.2 billion fools all over the world pray to Jesus, but just like his followers really only seem to hear your voice if you’re male, married, or have kids, he really only hears the voices of a couple million or so whom he happens to know well already.  He just keeps on doing the usual:  blessing the same people over and over again, the white, able-bodied, attractive, and rich.  I left his house and his people. I don’t do free labor for anyone but my closest friends and family anymore.

Wow, what a bitch, some of you are thinking.  You could just be a little nicer to people.  You could just try to be less adversarial, and not assume that people are intentionally ignoring you or relegating you to a lower class.  Oh, but I did that, and yes, they are.  For more than 20 years, I did that.  Volunteering to be the candlelighter at weddings, and decorate the reception hall, and serve nuts and coffee at receptions, because that was the highest post I’d ever be allowed:  never asked to be a bridesmaid, and destined never to be the bride.  Volunteering to arrange flowers and hem veils and bridesmaid’s dresses.  Volunteering as a babysitter for friends as they started to have kids.  Volunteering at church.  Buying literally thousands of dollars worth of wedding and baby and child birthday gifts; even flying to other states to attend the birthday parties of one-year-olds.  Making cake toppers for the weddings of smug couples who would later tell me it seemed like I was “spinning my wheels” and “still in a holding pattern” because I wasn’t married and child-burdened myself.

And then I noticed something.  No matter what I did, no matter how much care or trouble or elegance or expense or patience or brilliance I put into whatever I offered, it just wasn’t good enough.  For ten years or so, I’d get a new invitation at least once a month to a child’s birthday party...from people who couldn’t ever be bothered to remember when my own birthday was.  I was laid off from work for several months about 15 years ago, and when I told people at church about this, and asked if I could send them my resume for open jobs in their companies, no one would even let me email them my resume.  The wife of one who declined to look at my resume for an open position at his company (for which I was well-qualified, actually) ran into me while I was working the church copy machine.  She casually mentioned to me that it was too bad I wasn’t having much luck finding a job, but said that was probably because people in my profession were “a dime a dozen.”  So I hustled on my own, and got hired at another company within four months of being laid off.  So much for the welcoming arms of the church community; when you’re a single woman over 30, “community” is something you pay into for others, not something you’re allowed to draw from.  For the coupled-up, it’s natural to accept the labor and works of a solo woman, but it’s somehow too awkward, expensive, and troublesome to return those efforts in kind.

That time I served nuts and coffee at a friend’s wedding reception, I remember one moment about it vividly.  A college classmate of my friend’s and mine chatted when she came over to the coffee table.  Seeing that I was slacking off at my volunteer duty by chatting with an acquaintance, the groom’s aunt surged up to the table.  She jerked back the lid of a silver coffee pot and shoved the pot at my nose, nearly splashing my face with coffee.  “This coffee pot is almost empty.  Perhaps you could do as you were asked, and make sure there’s enough coffee and nuts?”  She slammed the pot back onto the table and stalked off, relaxing the muscles in her face from the contemptuous rage reserved for undefended, unknown young women to the festive felicity she saved for her nephew’s friends and family.  My acquaintance slunk away, embarrassed by the incident.  I felt guilty.  I’d been letting my friends down!  I walked back to the kitchen and started a new pot of coffee immediately.

Today, I’d have a different and far less obsequious response.  Well, today, I wouldn’t volunteer for such duty at all.  “Thanks, but I’m busy.  I think you can hire people to do this,” I would respond, knowing now what I didn’t know then:  solo women who do favors for marrieds and families are not rewarded, with respect, with equal labor in kind, or with greater intimacy with the friends they serve.  Today, I do favors for myself, and I reward myself.