The Timid and the Tortured Soul

THE TIMID AND THE TORTURED SOUL

Spencer Garfield

Shall the great Eye of Hathor view our distortions and revisions of the Feminine Divine? Will the broken dreams of an actress be sized up to her potential, as one sizes her breasts through cups? Not to fill each sticky theater seat but rather to please her slimy director. The shy parts of me are seen when I sit in the back of a classroom, as if I were a bird who clipped her own wings. (She did that to herself, you know.) To be a Jacqueline or a Marilyn, the timid or the tortured soul? A supplicant to her hand which clutches at her neck—breathing and ascending is a privilege, not a right.

To be the timid, whose greatest nightmare became her life’s work— appeasing the droves of those who sneer at her behind closed doors. They reject the dazzling charm she ensnares them with, for they cannot remember a First Lady who stirred the loins so effectively, so gracefully… She bewitched them. Though she yearned for the quiet in the countryside, it was the hand which brought her forth to the crowds, who itched for a glimpse of her glimmer.

To be the tortured soul who could never outrun her demons, despite a career with legs of its own. She was the bombshell who shattered the earth, yet held captive by the dank and dark corners of her mind. The same ones whose hands are wet point their finger at her, conflating the “changing times” of sexual media to her and her alone—casting stones which have been used to build our castles. And oh, how tall your castles are! The same hand whose grip called the neck of the glamorous and timid silenced the beautiful, magnificent, tortured soul. And oh, how wobbly his castle is.

I weep for the Jacquelines and Marilyns, whose ravage beauty could not be looked past, whose fierce arousal burned the earth, whose influence brought forth the treacherous hypocrisy of our kind—Hathor has judged us mercilessly, and thus the timid and tortured soul lays to rest. Her evil eye can see our unchanged ways, and shall reap destruction upon us that has since gathered.