Cutting Edges
CUTTING EDGES
Or, A ^EWeb^E* of Women*
(c) 1995
by*
Ruth Nestvold
Author's Note
Once upon a time, not too long ago, in a decadent state in the Pacific Northwest, there was a short-lived revolution. But our noble country doesn't care much for losers (not to mention liberals and libbers), however much they rave about supporting the underdog. While the movement was still propelled by enthusiasm and initiative, it looked like it might take the whole country with it, but when the women gave up, gave in and just plain quit, the whole exciting affair was forgotten pretty quickly. Memories are short in this Mecca of mobility.
I have been delegated to refresh memories and create new myths*, or, in other words, to tell the story. The names have been changed to protect the guilty and to protect myself from libel suits -- the truly innocent don't need that kind of protection. Those with longer memories may vaguely recall the incidents which serve as the climax of this narrative. If their recollections diverge from my telling of the tale all I can say is, I'm in control here. The story isn't mine, but I put it together. You can read it any way you want, but the options are of my making.
Perhaps to some this will all seem like an imaginary garden which doesn't even have green toads going for it, but I hope those concerned will forgive me for coloring things up a bit.
This digital web is dedicated to all those whose jokes and adventures I've stolen and then haven't told right, especially the members of the "dirty dozen."
-- The Author
In which a brilliant lady of extraordinary proportions barges in on the scene.
Portlandia arrived in her future home by ship. Leaving the barge, she was swamped by thousands of umbrelled admirers who wanted nothing more than to touch the hand she held out with such a compassionate gesture. I wish I could have been there -- it was a reception fit for a queen. Even the sun briefly left its habitual October haven of clouds in honor of the occasion. She glowed. She gleamed. She lumbered down the street in all her shining splendor, stopping breaths and stopping traffic. As she made her way to the decorative pastel cube where she would be the crowning glory, her unrelenting gaudiness endeared her immediately to the hearts of the masses turned out for her arrival. The crowd packed along the short six blocks between the river and the fifteen-story, multi-colored jukebox officially known as the Portland Building amounted to about 20,000. She was a success.
From their vantage point on the corner of 5th and Madison, Lyssa* and her friends had an excellent view of the royal entrance. Roxana* was busy taking pictures the whole time, undeterred by the drizzle, but Lyssa remained a passive spectator, her tape recorder hanging unused on a strap over her shoulder. Hampered neither by machinery nor any official purpose, Deborah* was obviously just along to spectate.
Lyssa watched the six-ton lady approach, inspired in spite of herself. Portlandia's four-story stature couldn't compete with the skyscrapers, but her colossal copper presence, radiant and outrageous, seemed to dwarf everything in sight. Lyssa was surprised at her own enthusiasm: she thought of herself as someone with taste, and this utterly monumental figure was utterly tasteless. Although to judge by the crowds, persevering despite clouds that were more than just threatening, quite a few people were letting themselves get carried away by the statue's flamboyance. Portlandia's exaggerated enormity was endearing. Lyssa liked the idea of the oversized woman dominating one of the main downtown buildings, even dominating downtown itself; it gave her a sense of power, as if the gleaming, gold-hued figure reflected back on Lyssa herself, as if Portlandia could inspire Lyssa to become just as conspicuous.
In the middle of these uplifting meditations, Lyssa heard Roxana announce, "God, is she ugly!" as she took another picture.
Deborah laughed, but Lyssa responded with characteristic seriousness. "Objectively, yes. But there's something about her I find irresistible."
"Are you into baroque suddenly?" Roxana asked.
"Her gaudiness seems so honest somehow. She definitely isn't hampered by false shyness."
"You do have a point there," Roxana conceded with more than a hint of sarcasm. "Well, perhaps with time she'll grow on me, but at the moment I just think she's an enormous example of bad taste."
"You seem to belong to the minority," Deborah pointed out, smile wide as she watched the cheering crowds.
"I know. These crowds are incredible." Roxana focused her camera on a policeman as he reached up furtively to caress the underside of a gleaming thigh hovering above his head.
"I don't know why you should detest her so," Deborah said, mischief in her eye. "You make quite a splash with your appearance too."
"Yes, but I do it with taste," Roxana replied with a withering look.
Lyssa looked from Deb to Roxy and back uneasily; she had difficulty at times distinguishing which jokes were joke-jokes and which were get-your-goat jokes.
"She won't be this gaudy* forever, you know, if that's any comfort," Deborah pointed out. "A few years at most and she'll lose that glow."
"What a shame," Lyssa said.
"A few more years and she'll probably turn green," Roxana predicted. "Can you imagine how she'll look then with that building as backdrop?" she asked, shuddering.
By the time Portlandia arrived at her future pedestal the drizzle had let up. Slowly thousands of umbrellas were closed one after another in waves through the crowd like dominoes falling, one of the most pleasant communal experiences Oregon has to offer. The patience of the spectators rewarded, they uttered a muffled cheer, whether for the change in the weather or the arrival of their new monumental mascot was unclear.
Deborah for one seemed to think it was for the statue. "I can't believe the enthusiasm," she said, shaking her head, her eyes bright with enjoyment.
"And all for a work of art!" Lyssa exclaimed.
"You call that art?" Roxana asked.
"It's a graven image," Deborah said, trying to keep a straight face. "There are no goddesses in the protestant hierarchy, so the repressed urge to worship the feminine has to come out somewhere."
Roxana laughed. "It's no wonder the critics don't always take you seriously, Deb, when you can't do it yourself!"
"I know," Deborah admitted. "It's a congenital weakness. But just look at her, Roxana..."
"I'm looking, unfortunately."
"She may be four stories now," Deborah continued, steadfastly ignoring Roxana's interruption, "but how big do you think she would be if she stood up? She inspires to worship."
"I'm an atheist."
Deborah was right: Portlandia had the dimensions of a goddess. As she crouched in the streets of the city, huge and bright and female, it was hard to imagine what her connection with commerce was supposed to be. She looked like she would be more appropriate on a pagan temple.
"Hey, there are Myrine, Lily and Mercy with the boys," Lyssa said, pointing and waving.
"Ah, the poet," Deborah said.
"Because Lyssa's publishing her poems," Roxana threw in.
Deborah shrugged and smiled. "We all have to start somewhere."
"And Cutting Edges is the bottom rung." Roxana was only half-kidding; it was certainly the bottom rung for her. Roxana was an artist. She took bleak black and white photographs of bare breasts and door frames and organized exhibitions of her work that too few visited. She had to work at Lyssa's magazine to keep rings on her fingers and pasta on the table.
Deborah could make a living from her creative efforts, Roxana couldn't. Deborah's novels regularly negotiated the thin line between the serious and the trivial, but there was one thing to be said for them--they sold.
"You two are impossible," Lyssa said, laughing hesitantly and waving in Mercy's direction again. Lyssa had a soft, noncommittal laugh which she usually didn't make use of unless someone else laughed first.
"You're not going to attract their attention in this crowd," Roxana predicted, "and besides, I'm sure Mercy wouldn't be able to get the boys away from their front row position anyway." She aimed her camera at their friend, whose copper curls seemed to reflect the glow of the statue, and took a series of shots just as Mercy was lifting her youngest son up to touch a massive finger. "That's going to be good," she added.
"So at least you admit that Portlandia's photogenic," Lyssa said.
"Oh, I think Mercy's much more photogenic than the statue. I've certainly never seen Mercy with such a vacuous expression on her face."
"Well, you're right about the expression," agreed Lyssa, mustering Portlandia's face critically. Even at a distance, it seemed to be bearing down on them. "But, you know, not even that can diminish my growing affection for her. She grabs the imagination, Roxy!"
"Not mine. But I think I'm going a little farther back to get some shots of her being hoisted to her new home now that the triumphal procession is almost over. She's too huge to get all in one piece from here."
"Well, don't let your disgust ruin the pictures you take," Lyssa admonished her. "I'm counting on you!"
"If it's huge and gaudy you're into these days, then I'm sure they'll be just right," Roxana said, turning to put a greater distance between herself and the detested figure. The pomp and circumstance were beginning to get to her, and she was more than happy to have a professional excuse to escape Lyssa's unusual display of enthusiasm.
"I see a colleague of mine over there you should try to get a hold of if you get the chance," said Deborah, pointing to a man in a white suit half a block away who came into view as they made their way through the crowds. "I wonder what he's doing out here in the boondocks?"
"Maybe he's gracing our occasion?" Lyssa hazarded.
"Then we really have an event on our hands."
An event was certainly what they had, but it was nothing compared with what was still to unfold beneath Portlandia's impassive gaze.
* * * * *
Mercy* Kennedy Flunk, 31-year-old professor and housewife, had a harried expression on her plump face as she tried to keep Bruce and Bennie from getting trampled. Lilith and Myrine*, somewhat younger than Mercy, were assisting with humor, but then neither of them had children yet. The typical sarcastic seriousness of Myrine's freckled face was lightened by a smile inspired by the kids' antics, while Lily*, less sedate than her tall friend, couldn't stop laughing at the stunts Bruce and Bennie were pulling. Even with all the friendship in the world, Mercy wished she wouldn't give Bruce and Bennie such an appreciative audience.
"Oh, Lily, you kook," Mercy said, "if you don't calm down, you know the kids never will!"
"Hi!" Lyssa said, squeezing through the crowd to them, Deborah in tow.
Mercy's face lit up. Fame hadn't taken the friendliness out of Deborah Dobell. Her eyes in the middle of all the laugh lines were the jolliest blue Mercy had ever seen. All the other successful authors Mercy had met seemed overly full of themselves--even the home-grown ones. Deborah looked like she was laughing constantly at the comedy going on around her, and was quite capable of laughing at herself as well.
"Hi, Deborah. Hi, Lyssa," Mercy said. "Looks like you're here on business."
"Actually, I haven't gotten started on the business yet," Lyssa said, patting her tape recorder. "It's all been fun until now. Deborah and I have been debating the merits of a goddess in our midst--and irritating Roxana."
Mercy laughed. "I can imagine that."
"Where's Diana?" Lyssa asked.
"She's up in Seattle," Lily replied.
"And what about Matt? Didn't he feel like coming to Portland for the event?"
"Oh, he's up in the trees," Myrine said casually, as if that were a perfectly normal place to be.
"Poor Matt!" Lily said. "The way it's been raining on Portlandia's parade, it's probably been raining on Matt too!"
"Up in the trees?" Lyssa repeated. "If you'd said up in the clouds, I would hardly have been surprised. But up in the trees?"
"You mean you're not informed, Lyssa?" Lily asked with her characteristic laugh, a sudden explosion fizzling out in a trail of giggles. "He's tree-sitting!"
"Is that anything like babysitting?" Deborah asked.
"Seeing as it's a form of social and environmental protest, the parallels are probably few," Myrine replied.
"But tree-sitting isn't allowed by Utopia Now," Lyssa protested. "It's illegal."
"I guess Matt got fed up with the legal actions," Myrine said. "He's gone over to SOFT."
"And you? You in SOFT now too?" Lyssa asked in a tone of vague concern. Myrine smiled and shook her head.
"Save Our Forests Today," Mercy explained to Deborah, who was looking puzzled but amused.
"I must admit, I feel rather ignorant. I don't keep up on these movements as I sometimes think I should," Deborah said ruefully.
"Lyssa does more than enough for all of us," Lily said, the admiration obvious in her voice.
"It's hard to keep up with her," Mercy added.
"You must be busy enough as it is, though, teaching, raising kids, and writing poetry on the side," Deborah replied.
Mercy was a bit taken aback that the Famous Person remembered so much about her. "Oh, I don't do that often," she protested.
"Maybe you should do it more," Deborah said with a grin and a nod of her silver-grey head. "So, are you enjoying the apparent worship of a female image too?" she asked conversationally.
"Oh, definitely. But so are these guys, and I doubt if worship has anything to do with their enjoyment," Mercy replied, running her hands through their hair.
"Aw, Mom, cut it out," the oldest said, jerking his head away.
"Worship?" Myrine said. "More like slavish adoration." Lily laughed. Lily always laughed. She was manic even in her depressions.
"Worship, adoration, same difference. But why is she female? Why isn't she an old fart on a horse?" Deborah surprised everyone into joining Lily in her laughter. Fame wasn't supposed to talk that way.
"I hope you're not going to hold your speech again," Lyssa protested mildly.
"Don't you have work to do?" Deborah asked, a teasing smile lurking in her eyes and at the corner of her mouth.
Lyssa gave her soft laugh. "That I do, and I guess I'd better get started. I have to get my interviews before the crowd disperses."
"I'm sure that will be a while," Deborah said.
"I don't want to miss the celebrity either, remember?" Lyssa said as she moved away. "Stay right there--I'll be back. And don't torture them too much with lectures. They can always come to the official one if they want to hear you."
"You're giving a lecture*?" Mercy asked Deborah. "What's it about?"
"I'm not quite sure yet. I'm starting backward, with the moral of the story."
"And that is?"
Deborah gave her a brilliant grin. "If we want to change our lives, we have to change the myths."
* * * * *
Lyssa meanwhile, microphone in hand, was attracting her own crowd in the midst of the masses. The publicity hungry animal was drawn irresistibly to her small black instrument, but the attraction was complicated by the fact that the animal was reluctant to show its attraction. Lyssa, however, had no trouble finding guinea pigs. "How do you like the new symbol of our city?" she asked, sticking her microphone at one hovering, attentive face.
The face beamed. "She's colossal!"
"Do you think the statue is an appropriate decoration for the building?"
Another face answered, and Lyssa turned her mike in that direction. "I don't know if she's appropriate, exactly, but she might make the eyesore less painful."
Lyssa smiled and several people in the crowd laughed. "She was commissioned to represent the Lady of Commerce," Lyssa continued. "Do you think she symbolizes commerce?"
"She doesn't look like she has anything to do with it."
"What does she symbolize to you?" Lyssa asked the crowd at large.
"The spirit of the city."
"And what is that precisely?"
"Oh, I don't know. Generosity?"
"No government agency is generous," a long-haired youth protested, and the crowd chuckled in agreement.
Lyssa joined diffidently in the laughter. "Then what do you think she symbolizes?" she asked.
"Portland's pompous pretensions."
"But the figure itself?" Lyssa insisted.
The youth glanced back up at the statue. "Actually, she reminds me of an ex-girlfriend of mine. That woman could do anything."
"And what does she mean to you?" Lyssa asked repeatedly, pointing her mike at one and then another eager face.
"Forgiveness."
"Reconciliation."
"Mercy."
"Peace."
"Hope."
"She makes me feel more daring," one woman said.
"In what way?" Lyssa asked.
"It's as if she could lend me some of her size, as if just having her around could make me bigger too."
"That's interesting," Lyssa commented, wondering just how many women shared the same revelation.
"I mean, she's certainly not about to be ignored. She calls attention to herself in a big way. It's as if she knows she can dictate the terms."
"Of what?"
"Oh, I don't know. Whatever."
* * * * *
By the time Lyssa returned to her friends, the technical aspects of the statue's ascension had finally been worked out. Through it all, Portlandia continued to look bored. That would never change. Even when a few brave souls initiated a daring action to alleviate female bitterness and male dominance; not even that could change the bored expression on Portlandia's face.
And so, amid cheers and yelling and enthusiastic applause, Portlandia was hoisted to her pedestal, an indifferent image of the power of some kind of feminine principle which no one could agree on.
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. Feb. 2000; Oct. 2001