September 13, 2003

• Silky, Lacy Longjohns and Angry Women

  
  

  What the fuck (you may well ask) does frilly winter underwear have to do with angry women?  Not a helluva lot, really.  For me it’s just a case of temporal correlation.  These are two separate topics, both inspired by events of recent trips to town.

  
  

  Thursday when I awoke here in the upper valley, it was frosty, crisp and cold outside and not much warmer inside.  There are two times of the year when we have the hardest time keeping a fire going in the woodstove:  spring and fall.  It’s fall now, even if the calendar says it’s still summer.  Leaves are golden, giving back the light of the midnight sun they have soaked up over the past few months. 

  
  

  It warms up enough in the daytime for us to either forget to feed more wood to the fire, or to decide it is unnecessary.  Later on, when it is truly cold, as the fire burns down the chill will remind us to stoke it.  This time of year, as the house cools at night, I snuggle down farther under the covers, the cat and dog snuggle closer to me, and the fire goes out.  I won’t have that luxury in a few months.  I’ll have to get up and feed the stove at night.  That’s why my bed is in the same room with it.  Neither of the men of the house can be relied on to awaken for that chore.

  
  

  That morning, I decided it was time to put some longies on under the blue jeans for my drive down the valley.  Also, for the first time since spring I wore gloves when I went out.  As I prepared to dress, I looked in the dresser for the right pair of long johns:  not the waffle-knit cotton–they’re bulkier than what I really need right now, and wouldn’t allow me to wear the slimmest jeans.  Certainly not the wool ones–when it’s cold enough for them, I put a pair on over either the silk or the cotton to keep the scratchy stuff away from my skin.

  
  

  The right pair was right on top:  silky white things with a lace edge on the bottom of each leg.  When I lifted from the drawer that pair that I’d found during a bag sale at the thrift shop this summer, size medium, I noticed another pair just like them underneath… well, not quite just like them.  Those are the ones I wore last winter, size XXL, double-extra large, not my size any more.  I still haven’t cleaned all the too-big clothes out of the closet and drawers.  Later for that, plenty of time after Doug and I finish painting his room, since Greyfox has decided to stay in town another month… no hurry.  I like that, not hurrying.

  
  

  Even before I put on the jeans, the silky stuff felt good against my skin.  Inside the coarser legs of the denim pants, the silk felt heavenly.  Even though it really wasn’t cold enough in town to need an extra layer of insulation, I didn’t bother to take them off.  Instead, I walked around all day getting off on the feel of the silk and the knowledge that underneath my blue denim and plaid cotton shirt were some lacy girly underthings.

  
  

  …and the angry women:

  
  

  We fought for equality for generations, and in some ways still have not achieved it.  In other ways we’re becoming more like men:  our relative longevity is lessening as we become more nearly equal to them in our use of intoxicants and the occurrence of stress disorders among us.  Other ways in which we have become more like men is in the numbers of us who commit violent crimes.  Being the oldster that I am (59 in just another week), and not quite old enough to remember the wild frontier times, I recall when it was unusual to see men fighting in public and unheard of for women to do it.  Now, at least around here, neither of those things is as rare as it once was.

  
  

  Monday night one of our new friends told us a story about, as he put it, “two bitches and road rage.”  He was a passenger in his wife’s car when she was cut off in traffic by another woman driving a large pickup truck.  It happened on the edge of town where two lanes of traffic merge down into a single lane.  It’s also where the speed limit rises from 45 to 55 and traffic usually flows by at around 60-65 MPH. 

  
  

  I got flipped a middle finger by a man in a black pickup there recently because he had to slow down behind me when I slowed a bit to let a school bus merge into our lane ahead of me.  The guy then passed me and the bus on the right, on the shoulder, and flipped me off.  My reaction was a sigh and a thought something along the lines of, “some people….”  I can’t afford to let such shit bother me.

  
  

  When our friend’s wife was cut off, she sped up and whipped around the other woman’s truck, waving a fist and/or a finger at her.  Then the other woman likewise accelerated, passed her just before the double-laned section ended, and mouthed obscenities as she went by.  The guy said that within less than a mile, the two women had gotten their vehicles up to about 80 MPH and his wife was livid and incoherent, muttering threats and insults as she hunched over the wheel, gripping it white-knuckled, chasing the truck that had passed her. 

  
  

  When they approached their turnoff and she started to slow, so did the woman ahead of them.  She slowed waaay down and started the turn, forcing his wife to brake quickly.  The man’s wife stuck her head out her window and yelled, “you cocksucker.”  The other woman stood on her brakes and his wife plowed into the back of her truck, running her car up under the rear of the truck.  The man told us that the truck’s driver piled out of her door and stomped back toward their car, screaming and cursing, until she saw his six-foot-plus frame unwind from one side and his “240-pound amazon” of a wife unload from the other.  Then she got quiet and backpedaled.

  
  

  There were no injuries apparently, but the altercation continued even after the State Troopers arrived.  The woman had gotten on her cell phone and her husband arrived on the scene about the same time as the cops.  He was insulting and threatening our friend (chivalrously, I suppose, not feeling it appropriate to pick on the wife who had been driving the car).  The trooper shut him up, interviewed witnesses, did his job and scolded everyone involved.

  
  

  Yesterday after we dropped Streak (my “legs”, my freedom and mobility, my 1987 Subaru Loyale) at the mechanic, I was riding through town with Greyfox in his red Dodge Colt, which is also his place of business when it’s parked by the roadside.  We passed a car and truck side-by-side blocking a driveway into a hardware store’s parking lot.  I could see a red-faced woman in the car, with her head out the car’s window, and one arm, shaking an upraised middle finger at the startled-looking man driving the truck.  I wondered if it was personal, or just another bit of road rage.

  
  

  The incident a few hours before that, as I pulled off the highway and past the bar at the end of the block where Greyfox has his stand, was definitely personal, but had the potential for breeding some rage a bit further down the road.  A woman exited the bar, apparently in a hurry, radiating stormy vibes and exhibiting angry body language, and jumped into her truck.  A man came out close behind her and got into a car nearby.

  
  

  She would have backed into the side of my car if I hadn’t taken evasive action.  Then she spun her wheels and tossed gravel as she exited the parking lot, and I heard the squeal of tires on pavement as someone on the road braked to avoid a collision with her.  Then the man was out of there right behind her and in only marginally better order.

  
  

  Road rage is something I’ve never felt.  I do know some anxiety occasionally, and when pushed into a corner I am capable of a cold fury that frightens me with its destructive potential.  I’m dangerous even barehanded, and I know it.  I scare my own family without even trying.  A few times in my life with a weapon in my hand, even without using it, I’ve scared some strangers shitless.  I think it’s my voice that does it, or maybe something in my eyes.

  
  

  Knowing that anger is a manifestation of fear, I suppose that rage must come from extreme fear, from feelings of personal powerlessness that drive a need to wield the power of moving steel.  I’m just glad that I’m not generally fearful enough to let little traffic crap work me into a rage, and even more grateful that I have healthy enough adrenals to react swiftly and get out of the way when other people are too worked up to see where they are going.

  
  

  Drive safely, everyone.

  
  

  

  
  

    

  • 2:23 am
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