“What the hell is wrong with you?” my husband asked on the night I told him my plan.
It was less of a plan and more of an idea. I was telling him and our pre-teen daughter about what I wanted to try if someone broke into our house with a gun demanding I give them my phone, my money, or whatever it is that people demand when they wave a gun around. It doesn’t matter where it would happen, actually; I’m just saying if someone wanted to kill me or rape me. Like if I’m running on the trail surrounded by trees and birdsong and some dude grabs my ponytail.
I’m a pacifist, see, and I don’t want a gun in the home. I don’t want to carry one when I’m running. I’m already running from you, isn’t that enough? I’m also perimenopausal probably, and I shouldn’t have a gun in the home. So, I wouldn’t reach for my gun or one of your grandfather’s old stolen swords from WWII.
Instead, what I would do is, I would say to this non-pacifist and non-perimenopausal gun-waving dude, “Hear me out, have you ever thought about how much you hate yourself? About what a piece of shit you are?” Like a reverse hostage negotiator. And I would talk to this guy, talk him into hating himself so much that he wanted to kill himself. Move him to act. This would give me a sense of accomplishment, more so than a physical act of self-defense would. Except, with some guys, I don’t think it would take long to convince them. The sense of accomplishment may not be as strong. I’d probably have to first convince some that I had been waiting for a big, strong man. I’d be all like “thank you for finding me here on this trail, I’ve been needing someone just like you.” If I were on the trail, I would stop my watch so it didn’t add to my mile time.
Actually, if I’m being honest, the threat doesn’t even need to be immediate or even present. It’s something I want to try, but only on someone I already don’t like or maybe someone who already knows they’re awful or at least has an inkling. With some guys, don’t they already have an inkling? I know some who have to know. Some who hate themselves so much already that they cannot love another. The exact words I would say, I can’t share with you. Partly, it’s the element of surprise that could do someone in, the inventiveness. It’s also a case-by-case approach. The other part is, we can’t have a bunch of us walking around making our loved ones and strangers accidentally hate themselves a little more each day with the right words.
“Hammer,” my husband says (this is what he calls me, especially when I say shit like this), “is this what you’re doing to me?”
“Baby, no,” I say. “I don’t want you to kill yourself.” Another guy I know says this is what I already do to men. Another guy said I would destroy him, but it would be so good up until then. Lots of men already have a pre-existing bend toward destruction though.
He laughs, says, “But you want me to hate myself.”
“Hey,” I say, hands up, already practicing. “It’s hard to stop a moving train.” And then I add, “No really, of course not.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asks again.
He thinks it makes me sound inhuman or like a mass murderer who gets off on torture. What about the other guy, I want to ask. That guy seems pretty bad, too. The one trying to kill me.
Emily Dressler lives in Northeast Ohio. She is a proofreader at a global ad agency, which is not as soul sucking as it sounds. Her poetry is forthcoming in Okay Donkey. Her favorite historical feud is that fight between Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan.
