Vernita Nemec: Private Places (0:37)
An excerpt from an installation for The Second Coming, a show by Carnival Knowledge at Franklin Furnace.
Listen to track 3:
(https://www.ubu.com/sound/tellus_2.html) -- Hudson
[AN: Transcript for the hard of hearing - a soft woman's voice says "I wanna talk to you about something. (pause) I found something in your drawer, and I'm very upset by it. (pause) I don't know quite what to think. (pause) But... um... I think you should destroy them. I don't want to have to tell your father. I don't want to have to show your father. (pause) I won't ask you where you got the ideas for them." On a more personal note, this particular half of a conversation sounds like it came directly from an authoritarian household with overtones of sexism in the mix.]
That tore it. She had to get out of this house. Her mother had found her secret accessories. Not by accident, either. Dale had hid them in a shoebox in the very back of the only drawer that had a lock in her entire room. She didn't just find them, she went looking.
Dale came to the sinking realisation that her parents had set up this one secret place to discover what she might want to hide from them.
She took a deep breath and said, "Okay. I'll get rid of them today." Quick improvisation made her add, "I'll find somewhere far away so nobody finds them in our trash." That gave her plenty of excuses to be away from the house for a while. If she believed in whatever her parents worshipped, she'd thank God that she always kept the locker key on her person and out of sight.
A train station locker wasn't the best security, but it was the only security she had. Mom had lost Dale's trust. And if Dad got even stricter with her time and energy, she'd know Mom lied and Dad came up with the idea. All so Dale could fit into their Perfect Son mold.
She was never going to fit, and they were going to crush her in trying.
She took the shoebox in her pack, with a few other things Mom hadn't found, yet, and whatever change Dale had been able to squirrel away. Dad didn't give a shit about anything less than a dime, so her collection was all pennies and nickels. She'd perfected the art of "getting caught up in traffic" whenever Mom or Dad sent her out on errands, giving her the time to exchange her change for notes.
She might not have money enough to escape, but she had to escape.
She wasn't going to live long if she didn't.
The locker now contained her escape money, copies of her important documents, a new backpack, some cheap clothes, and now... her tucking kit and bra implants.
Tomorrow, she was expected at school. Tomorrow, she would buy a bus ticket in cash and vanish. After she threw her old backpack and phone into a river.
Let them think their son was dead. She was escaping as a daughter of the gender revolution.
[Photo by Jed Owen on Unsplash]
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Sadly, in the United States, more and more teens are having to do this because the USA has gone from a Democracy to an Authoritarian Dictatorship.
I am very well aware. I can only hope that they make it through the Dictator Times intact.
It's a very thin hope.
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