hard pass

If I were born in a different time, I'd probably be dead. Enjoying the elegance of Victorian society face-down on the blood soaked cobblestone, the intrigue of ancient Egypt from the bottom rung of a corrupt caste system, or the vibrant spirit of the Roaring Twenties from a single room occupied by 10 other starving people. Not much has changed.

I wouldn't be admitted one tattered toe into in the Cotton Club, though I hope I'd still be the type back then to know why I wouldn't want to. Based on the availability and credibility of Western education, in our own time, let alone one where cocaine was the second best toothache remedy, I can't honestly say that I trust I would be. That scares me.

History has been kind to very few folks of a very specific demographic, into which I do not fit. I would have been a witch or heretic; A leper, or a fool. My clothes would be rough and marred as my skin, and my hair would be grimier than both. The thought of it makes my scalp itch, the way it did when I brought lice home from school. I had to wear mayonnaise in my hair for a week. We haven't progressed too far in that area, either. Or like later, when I would sneak into the home of that lady I cat-sat, who never changed her key code. I'd wait 'til she left for work so I could wash my armpits in her sink. That would've cost me a finger or two, depending on the era; Though perhaps I wouldn't have needed to risk a hygene-motivated B&E, as my colleagues would probably also be homeless and my boss would have cared considerably less about the state of our outsides than that of the what resided betwixt our newly nubile thighs.

My virginity would have been long gone, long before I was ready to lose it, by no willingness of my own. However, God willing (he wouldn't), the consequences of such acts, which would be entirely my fault (seductress), would do only the kind of physical damage that was within the reasonable warranty for normal wear and tear; Not until I finally reached puberty, years and years and years later would it be anyone else's problem. Anyone else being any other woman who'd been to hell and back and lived, and wanted to lend an un-sanitized helping hand. My first abortion would likely be my last, despite the fact that my mother is both a practicing herbalist and licensed doula. Regrettably, she would be burned at the stake, flogged to death, flayed, or left poked full of holes to float face down in an ergot-infested pond somewhere for her devilish deeds.

So much for her professional opinion.

If the pennyroyal didn't take, or take me, and I did end up carrying the now-horribly-maimed unfortunate to term, there'd still be a good chance the midwives (or one man, with positively no gynaecological experience, if you could afford him) would have no idea that they had to also remove the placenta after-birth (literally what it's called), and neither the preventative onion on the windowsill nor the chicken grease slathered ceremoniously on my shins would be any help in slowing the resulting infection. One they wouldn't even know I was suffering from, let alone how to treat, as I'd have been hidden away in isolation in order to protect the weak constitutions and moral susceptibility of more decent folk until I had regained my purity. History repeats.

By no means do we live in the best of times, but they aren't the worst, in statistical terms. I don't want to live in the past any more or less than I do the present, for all the same reasons. I'm as sure of that as I am the dangers of romanticizing any memory, collective or otherwise: That High society was just the 1% without the illusion of consequence, and "Ciao, Bella!" is still Italian for "Hey, baby. You party?"

I don't want to live in the past. I want to learn from it. I want to harvest the good left from it before mulching it into the dirt to join the carbon it had no right to disturb. I want to remember the past the way we remember a loved one whose passing was as much a relief as it was sheer torment. I want the past to be remembered as it was, honestly, and in horror. Not digitally remastered and brought to you now in 1080p by the magic of Disney, but in an unadulterated, R-rated, student Art House flop that should be observed and respected for educational purposes alone; Made to be endured more than enjoyed which, if enjoyed at all, is done guiltily and in secret. The way women lived it.