Lilly was the last to join the Redstockings and the first to leave. We met her at a Bed-Stuy rave and she moved in the next day. Turns out the rebel life was just another of her performative eras, a character she was cosplaying.
I’m worried Jenni might follow in Lilly’s footsteps, and maybe even Tara and Hal too. There’s no way I can let that happen.
“I think we should formalize our rejection of convention,” I tell the Redstockings now. “So we hold ourselves accountable to independence and never ditch each other for a spouse.”
“What do you mean, formalize it?” Jenni asks, sounding wary, as if I’ve ever proposed a bad idea.
“We’ll make a pact,” I say, the idea hitting me hard in the head and soft in the heart, like all great things do. “To never get married.”
My words soar through the air and somersault a few times just to show off how unshackled they are.
“You want to go full-on 4B movement like my cousins in Korea?” Jenni asks. “My parents would officially disown me.”
“I’m already there with decentering men and only dating women,” Hal chimes in. “Wouldn’t be hard.”
“Not full-on 4B,” I say. “We’re not banning men or sex, just marriage and confinement.”
“You’re deadass?” Hal asks, as Tara and Jenni exchange a look.
I’m kind of annoyed at how slow they’re all being to support an objectively brilliant proposition. I don’t say that last part aloud, or maybe I do. The lines between my speech and my thoughts are blurry, and I like it like that, the constant state of flow.
“But no pressure to join if you see yourself settling down with one of your admirers,” I shoot back at Hal.
Hal has one of those magnetic auras where she has a hard time picking up coffee without someone picking her up—or at least trying to. The other person nearly always fails. It’s good fun to watch.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hal says. “You know I can’t stay interested in someone for more than a few weeks, forget about a lifetime. Just the thought makes me claustrophobic.” She shudders, as if trying to worm her way out of a hive of hornets before they attack.
“But what about kids?” Jenni pipes up.
I say, “Well, what about them? I thought we’d agreed that they’re dream-sucking monsters with egregiously big carbon footprints clogging up an overpopulated world.” I try not to sound too impatient. Jenni still needs some help as she adjusts to this loose way of life. “Loose” is a positive quality around here. It means free. We don’t let men try to convince us that being loose is a bad thing, a soiled thing. We’re too smart for that.
Jenni says she supposes I’m right, but she hasn’t ruled out adopting a child, maybe one that was found in a dumpster or something equally grim. “There’s a nice social impact angle there, don’t you think?” she says.
We pause to consider it, or at least I pause to pretend to consider it, and Tara says maybe it could be alright if we raise one kidamong the four of us. “We could trade shifts; it wouldn’t be that much work.”
It still doesn’t appeal to me, but I’m not going to lose all the good momentum over that one sticking point. I say we’ll revisit that particular clause at a later time.
Then I ask everyone who’s in on the Anti-Marriage Pact to please raise their right fist or their left one, who cares, just raise a fist nice and high.
The Redstockings look at me, then at each other.
Hal is first to raise her fist. Tara quickly follows.
Tara was shuffled through the foster system as a kid, and she still has abandonment issues. I can tell that this appeals to her, a formalized commitment to stand by each other forever.
“It’s genius,” she says now.
“Genius,” Jenni repeats, fist in the air too, wavering ever so slightly.
“Of course it is,” I say. “The patriarchy stops with us.” I’m pleased with my persuasive ability. Maybe I should be a director instead of a writer, not that the gatekeepers would let in a visionary like me. They’d be too threatened. “Rejecting marriage is the least we can do to build on the work of the women who came before us. Now, time to take our vows.”
The lights flicker overhead. Our upstairs neighbor must’ve gotten in the shower, which somehow always has the effect of dimming our electricity. It’s kind of spooky, and I feel more confident than ever that Bonnie Beaumont’s ghost has come to warn us away from her fate.
I kick things off. “We, the Redstockings, vow to enter into an Anti-Marriage Pact.”
Hal and I make eye contact, and she takes over. “The four of us take each other to have and raise hell with from this day forward,” Hal says, and our eyes dance at how she changed the words from the boring version we’ve heard at way too many weddings. “For better or worse, sober or... let’s face it, mostly high.”
“To have and to hold... each other accountable,” Tara adds earnestly.
