CyberSexism


Midnight I suppose. There are no clocks in Vegas. Walking, not being very mindful, looking up at the huge infrastructure being built on top of all the casinos along Fremont Street, I almost miss her. Like me, she is walking along not very mindful. Las Vegas is building a huge canopy to enclose the entire downtown area. When finished, the old downtown area of Glitter Gulch will be like the largest shopping mall on Earth. It will be foot traffic only, cash traffic only. I am sure it will be really nice. How fun it is to visit once a week and see the progress of their latest tourist trap and money trap.

Her image is just barely registering on the edge of my vision. She sorta becomes aware to me from one of those feelings I get every so often. You know.. that overwhelming sensation something is wrong.

Poor girl. She has a big ol' black eye all swollen shut and puffy red. She probably couldn't stand the pain to put lipstick on her fat busted lip. Her walk has a hint of a limp. She is carrying a take out dinner wrapped with logo foil I recognized from a greasy cheap Chinese dive I go to often. I go there out of habit. A lot of us who are or once were hookers still dine there. It is a hooker hangout, a social club. A safe haven for prostitutes and even their children. My daughter has eaten there a number of times. She knows the score. So this brutalized hooker is probably heading back to her hotel room to dine alone, very alone. A hooker's life is one of the most lonely ones you can imagine. Like who would want to fall in love with a slut?

She is wearing really revealing cutoff Levi's, all butt cheeky. Her breasts are jiggling like Jell-O and just barely hanging in there, confined only by a loose knot tied in the front of her non-existent blouse. Besides the limp, most likely from being made to do something unnatural, she is walking a bit wobbly like I am in heels. She might be strung out, I don't know. Tragic and most noticeable, a frown aged with lines of hard times. She has been hooking for far too long. Her body is really nice but battered from life and time. Even with all the pain and clear physical abuse she is dressed to hook a John. Our desire, our need for money, drives us to extremes, dangerous extremes. I wish I could have taken her home with me. Prostitution is not a good life style unless you are one of those really high class call girls. Even with a Madame to look out for you there are risks. She is walking evidence.

A lot of prostitutes are raped. It is absolutely intolerable men rape a woman, on the average, every eight minutes here in America. It is even more horrible hookers rarely report a rape. They can't. What can they do? "Your honor I agreed to have sex with him and he raped me." Was it rape or was it she just didn't get paid? "Case dismissed. Bailiff take the young lady into custody for pandering."

Sexism by men is often violent, brutal and disgusting when it involves illicit sex. Prostitutes are beaten. They are forced to perform extremely painful sex acts. Men go into it with a bad attitude, "She is slut. Fuck her. I will do whatever I feel like." Men cut off breasts. They slice with knives. Bones are broken. Lives are snuffed out. Have you ever seen a snuff porno?

Most of the other students in our Urban Geography class are all busy acting like they are listening to our nerdy professor lecture on the decay of inner city areas and gentrification in the future. They don't see my sudden shudder. They don't want to see where they are, an area so poverty stricken, so noted for its violence and strangeness, it is known though out most of the world. East LA and Las Vegas taught me to pay close attention to my surroundings and especially to pay attention to people in it, no matter how far away.

Pretty blond hair, well combed. Clean though wearing thread bare clothes. White flashy teeth. Clear complexion. A little skinny. Her daughter, clean and neat, is standing outside a dumpster her mom is rummaging through for whatever valuables she can find, mostly food I suspect. A heartbreaker, a killer, makes me teary eyed to write about it. Mom and daughter, homeless and stuck in the middle of Skid Row, Los Angeles. Our professor is whining on about how this area, in years to come, will gentrify into classic beauty. So where's the dad?

From our viewpoint across I street I see what the mom standing knee deep in garbage does not. A small group of drunken local jerks are emerging from a sleazy slummy bar. When they round a corner of the building, one notices the young blond girl, "Hey, lookie there. A pretty little girl," he slurs walking over to her. "She gots some little tits too!" Taking her by the arm and jerking her close. Mom is frozen in fear. I lost it.

Running across the street, those men never see me in their blind drunkenness. He is surprised to be grabbed by an arm, spun around and violently kneed in the groin. As good measure I ram my knee into his face as he doubles up then push him backwards into the filth of the alley so befitting his nature.

Reaching into in my school fannypack I pull out a 9mm Beretta I always carry with me and spin around facing the rest of the perverts. The sound of the safety clicking off and the hammer being cocked must be deafening to them. "Who's next Motherfuckers?" There is no hesitation in running. In Skid Row nobody takes a chance. Everyone knows anybody just walking around in Skid Row is crazy and dangerous. This is especially true if they are pointing a gun at you.

Looking up at mom, she just shrugs her shoulders in a hopeless gesture so common to the homeless. How much I wish I hadn't just walked away. I wish I had taken both of them home with me. That was in eighty-six. If her girl has survived, she would be around twenty as I write this.

Actually it is a nice bar, live band, big dance floor and nice decor. This really nice guy is buying me Mai Tai's and flirting. So ok.. he is a flirt but he has earned the right to flirt a bit. He is paying for my drinks. The bar's rock and roll band have really gotten my attention with one of my favorites, " ...American Woman... Stay Away From Me ... " It is my theme song in a sense. Listen to it sometime. Guess Who sings it.

My drink provider, while I am swaying and silently singing, reaches over, pinches my ass and begins running his hand up the inside of my exposed thigh. I slap him across the face. He starts cussing me out. He gets a cold Mai Tai in his lap in return for his kind words.

Suddenly I am ten feet in the air and roughly flying towards an exit. It dawns on me a bouncer has me in a bear hug around the waist and is helping me leave. He dumps my plump pride on cold concrete outside. I get up and kick him in the shin. He tells me to never come back or he will call the cops. OK..I suppose that is fair enough when you consider my rude and highly inappropriate behavior. I hate that crummy bar.

Tracilynne looks so darling. She has on her best Calvin Klines, the ones without holes in the knees from being a typical tomboy like her mom. Nice Brookeshire sandals with pretty pink painted toe nails. French cut pink on oyster finger nails. Carefully braided dreadlocks over pastel pink diamond stud earrings. She even got me to ever so lightly do a make-up job on her. Very lightly. She just turned nine, going on thirty two, as old and more mature than me.

Me? I am wearing a knee length summer dress, leather clogs, a calico print bandanna to match my dress. My bandanna is covering my leather tied ends of long black and dark brown dreadlocks draping over my shoulders. Traci is really good at braiding. She has the patience I don't have. All my best silver rings are on to highlight my passionate pink lips, fingernails and toenails. Deju vu nineteen sixties.

It is our monthly fantasy shopping spree on Rodeo (Row Day Oh) Drive in the Beverly Hills area of Southern California. It is extremely exclusive and priced about five hundred percent over reality.

This guy is standing in a boutique shop where Traci and I are drooling over some silver jewelry. He has at least a dozen designer shopping bags hanging from his arms and is holding a lady's purse, an expensive one.

"Honey.. open my purse and get out my credit card for me," his buxom blonde wife commands him. She is empty handed, standing at the sales counter with a pile of clothing pressing against the ceiling. One hand on her hip. The other is outstretched impatiently towards him. A big diamond ring sparkles in annoyance. She is done up all in red. Well a little red. She is wearing a red loin cloth and red halter that looks suspiciously like tinted dental floss. The rest of her is butt cheeks and scrumptious silicone breasts.

Traci eyeballs her. She notices her fuck-me red lipstick and nails. My little darling daughter, Miss Manners, looks up at me, puts her index finger in her mouth to signal, 'gag' and rolls her eyes. Do you think it could be she got her judgmental attitude from me? I am only her mother.

Her husband appears to be an eloquent gentleman. Conservative. Very well dressed. Nice tortoise shell horn rim glasses, straight white teeth and plenty of patience. He is a little red in the face, maybe a reflection of all the fuck-me red staring at him almost snapping her fingers. Maybe his red face is a reflection of an embarrassing moment having been made a door mat. She is wiping her feet on him. I feel like grabbing her purse from him and beating her over the head with it. Looks like she has a thousand platinum cards. I would be happy with just one. I would be happy if the bitches' tits exploded blowing her bimbo head off.

Another one I wished I had taken home with us. Traci and I would have made him the happiest man on Earth. An actual gentleman so lonely as to have a plastic fantastic lover all done in red. Sigh. He would probably be a great father too. Traci is giving me the circled fingers 'OK' sign. She loves making me blush when I look at men in that special way.

This pseudo girlfriend of mine is bitching out her husband, "He never takes me anywhere." She is talking in her high pitched pinched nose whiny voice. "All that sonfa bitch does is work." I wanna rip her vocal cords out sometimes.

Her husband says they should save up their money for the future. They bought a nice but modest home. His paycheck bought some really cute furniture, a new car and baby furniture for their new little boy. Her hubby works six days a week, gives her his entire paycheck. He doesn't drink beer or watch football. Mows the lawn every Sunday. Fixes up the house everyday after work. Does everything himself on a shoe string budget. He also lets her run roughshod over him. Never complains or says no. Just says, "Love, we really can't afford Hawaii right now."

If I had a really hard working man who gave me his paycheck with a kiss, I would screw him silly and keep my mouth shut. Toss up. I am not sure if I want a hard working yet spineless man. Maybe he is far better off not going home with me. I can be a real bitch at times.

Sexism is not gender specific. So often it is thought of as men being offensive to women. Not so. It is a two way street. Men and women are equally guilty of being sexist. Men pinch our desirable flesh. We pinch their desirable wallet. I wish the word sexism would be removed from our vocabulary. A better word would be 'selfish'. Single minded, self centered selfishness. That is what sexism really is. It is not an assault on a specific sex. It is men and women showing very little regard, very little respect for others, regardless of gender.

Oh sure there are case histories of women being treated unequally. It still occurs today and probably always will. I would concede more sexism is directed at women than men but not so much as to justify establishing a nationwide feminazi movement. Isn't that odd coming from a woman? Oh well.. don't worry I am not going to take you home with me.