how did it come to this?
"women's lives are the dark continent. you can peer at our bodies, legs splayed open whenever you like. our bodies present a deceptively simple script, but our desires, so often unuttered, are fluid, protean, inconstant. we cannot be measured; we cannot be assesed. our inner lives are the hidden spaces. sometimes all within is a murky coiling void, a black carnival of inchoate shapes and values. but sometimes there is a clear line of purpose, sharp and gleaming like a railway, jutting out into infinity. no one knows what shapes our inner lives. that is our own business. women never tell the truth. they are too canny and too firmly bent on survival. do you hear her saying, oh yes, i love my husband? oh yes, i like my job, and would do more hours if i could? oh yes, i'm very lucky? yes, yes, yes. or does she confront you with a lengthy catalogue of self-hatred and doomed fortunes?
i do not love my own flaws. but let me praise a woman's cunning. she is a master of draws. 'here is a defensible space. and i will ward off all comers, with my giant structures of deceit.'"
