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this is what a feminist looks like
by Alex
We got on the bus at 4 in the morning--the last moments of the night as I walked across campus seemed darker than usual, and those inevitable it's-late-it's-dark-i-live-on-the-lowrent-side-of-Yonkers butterflies, familliar to every girl I ever met there, weren't the only ones in my stomach.
It was a long bus ride and, like many bus rides, included a bunch of highways and ended up in a giant parking lot (also worth noting: someone RAN INTO our bus. I think I just remembered that--isn't it funny how that can happen?). I was selfconcious in my cute outfit and them remembered we were protesting, not promenading. And being angry at myelf for not remembering earlier.
They tell you not to write "a million" this or that, in english class, because it's unprecise: ("you don't really mean a million people dear, now do you?") buit I can say it: a million people later I found my best friend and we, fellow survivors, trooped around waving Texas flags because we'd come from school in Massachusetts and New York, because in Washington we weren't afraid of Houston politics, because nobody's high school mother was watching and whispering.
We wanted to hang on to each other the way we always had when nobody else seemed to want us for anything
.
As is always the case, we found we couldn't, quite--we got lost in the crowd when I went to find someone I hadn't seen in years, but resembled, as I recalled, Audrey Hepburn in rather an intimidating manner. Lilit, whose name used to be Rae, found me finally, and we marched together, all the way around with a break in the middle with some happy stoner-hippies we didn't know and a few we did.
I couldn't look away and she put her arms around me and yelled at the girls in the "I regret my abortion" t-shirts and all the people who seemed the be waving signs of bloody babies just for me. We ate kosher dogs ("Hot Dogs for Choice!") and creamsicles, decided we wanted "I *heart* pro-choice boys" shirts, and I clutched my lunch's diet coke can and Rae's hand.
At the end we made a date I thought she'd be too cool to keep but keep it she did.
When I got home I cried for two hours and slept for nine for the first time since high school.
The best friends are the friends made on moments.
LILIT: This day held a lot of meaning for me as well. Alex is eloquent and mature, which I take total credit for, because she actually used to be my student when I taught creative writing classes. However, I was so young when I taught that most of my students were my peers. I watched them go off to better colleges than I had and be infinitely wiser at their ages than I was at mine, but I suppose that's part of successfully teaching.
Not only did I bond with Alex that day, but I bonded with my parents. They both attended Gallaudet University, which is in DC, and by going to the march I was able to connect with the city they had always cherished but that I had never fully understood. When I told my dad about my plans to attend the March for Women's Lives, his response was "so what do the feminists want now?" Because of my involvement in the march, my parents decided to watch the TV coverage, and they were amazed to see the million (I'm with Alex on this one) people who went to Washington that day to express their beliefs. My mom learned who Ani DiFranco was. My dad couldn't get over the (all-male) Veterans for Choice group. I ran into friends from college who were marching under every banner from Don't Mess With Texas Women to Orthodox Jews for Choice. One of the Orthodox Jews, who lived in Philadelphia, asked me why on earth I, as a Jew, would choose to live in a "Red State. I told her, "sometimes you stay and fight the battles where you are."
"The best friends are the friends made on moments."
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