I mentioned in a later story that that I carry Mace. I just say that. I carry pepper spray, but "Mace" has a nice ring for those who enjoyed the "Medieval Weapons" chapter in seventh grade. How mankind has advanced. A mace was a club with a round metal head bristling with sharp spikes. You could crush your opponent's skull. With Mace, you burn out his brain, leaving the skull intact. A breakthrough.
I began carrying pepper spray as a high-school sophomore, when on vacations I came home to Manhattan from the Academy, where I boarded. Imagine my wave of understanding when I later learned that mom had exiled me to the Academy to save my virtue from my new stepfather, who had the hots for me at sweet sixteen. Shows you, though, what an adorable little piece I was, even with few identifiable female anatomical features. Mom, couldn't pop have boarded at Sing-Sing?
I didn't know anything about all this at the time of this story. I was as worldly wise as Heidi. There are rumors about her grandfather, though. Just kidding. But back in Manhattan, and home with my loved ones, I assumed that the danger to my virtue prowled the dark streets of the Lower East Side, not behind me in the shower when I bent to pick over to pick up the soap. And so, I bought pepper spray.
My virtue already was tattered. Sophomore year at the academy, I had a born-again experience in a woodland glade when Brucey Knickerbocker baptized me in cum. You know, that is a tasteless thing to say, even for me. But I never take anything back. I love the line "Call me any name that you like, I will never deny it."
My dear lord, I pray thee, let me get on with this poor simple excursus. Just TELL us, Ellen.
So one day I am sitting in a booth in the lady's room of the Museum of Modern Art on West Fifty-Third Street. I have been there about 20 minutes. Constipated? No. It is just that the experience of shitting is so much more interesting than most of the exhibits at MOMA. That is why they have such large restrooms, I think. My connection with art breaks entirely after Picasso's early period. It is too bad he kept menstruating. Careful, Ellen...drifting off topic...
Sitting in a train station, or shitting on the pot, with nothing to read, if you are a woman, you start going through your pocketbook. I mean before cellphones. If you are a guy, you sit marveling how when it dangles down into the toilet, your dick gets much bigger.
So I seize upon my pepper spray canister. Awesome power. But I never have tested it. What if in a dark alley I am attacked by a minority mugger—back then, all muggers were minority—and I whip out the spray, fire off with my thumb, and the motherfucker shoots out one drop that falls at my feet? Unless my attacker is crippled by laughter, he is going to... Helen, this is veering right into politically incorrect territory...
So, I figure, with nothing to do, I will conduct an intelligent test of my weaponry. Fire a few test rounds to zero-in, as it were.
I am not an idiot. Well, my idiocy manifests in carefully plans. I reach forward and send a modest squirt at the inside of the cubicle door. A brownish puddle appears and starts running down the door.
NOTHING. Not even an odor. Firing blanks. The gigantic minority mugger has me on a pile of garbage, lying on top of me like a fallen construction crane—sorry, insensitive—and saying, "Shit baby, I never seen such small titties." That can scar you for life.
I reach over, swipe my forefinger through the stuff, and bring it beneath my nose for an honest sniff. If this smells like maple syrup, I'm going to sue the fuckers.
Words should not be asked to describe the ineffable. Besides, philosophers know that qualia cannot be described, only experienced; the rudiments of sensory experience cannot be conveyed...Ellen, what are you doing?
The following occurred. It is authentic. It happened. but for certain qualifications see footnote 317 in my forthcoming autobiography, "Dad, Don't Call Me A 'Little Bugger.'
I dropped the canister, flung myself against the door of the cubicle, rocketed out like a launched Titan missile. My little navy blue skirt was around my ankles, my panties below my knees. I almost fell flat on my face, but just in time got one foot outside the skirt. If you are envisioning how much of my pussy was visible, or my poor pale little ass, you are cruelly ogling a girl with third-degree burns over 90 percent of her nasal passages.
I saw nothing; no bawling ever yielded this cascade of tears. I think my nose was serving like a coffee machine filling a cup. I probably was drooling. Dimly, I suppose, I discerned the sinks and lunged for them.
What sounds was I making? I have no idea. The snuffling that accompanies birth and death.
