Unicorns and Monsters
- Sep 8, 2015
- 5 min read
Blink
I’m seven and deeply in love with unicorns. My mother, a practical and conservative sort, is doing her best to make my room a Victorian wonderland. The floor is a lush dusty pink carpet. To make decorating a family project, she hand stencils the border of the room with flowers I drew. The pictures on the wall are reprints of impressionist paintings that feature sweet little girls in their long white dresses, often with silk bows flapping in the imaginary wind. They peek out of their canvas at me, and all I feel is apathy toward them. I like the attention that a “good sweet girl” affords me, but I’m drawn to the gaudy glitter of a rainbow unicorn. There’s something about the over-the-top tackiness that screams “SPECIAL” to me. I oblige my mother for a time, but eventually convince her what the room needs is some unicorn posters.
Blink
I am nine and have read every unicorn adventure book I can find. It’s not enough and so I begin to study the symbology of the unicorn as a more academic pursuit. The library has a child/parent reader’s theatre group. At my suggestion they decide to do a piece on unicorns, and I beg my mother to sign us up. Knowing my love of theatre and passion for the topic she does not resist. We rehearse at the small stage for a week and then perform our piece for family and friends. The performance begins with a stained-glass kaleidoscope shadow puppet history of unicorns. It’s every bit as glitzy as we can make it. Then we move onto the main scene where parents narrate while children perform. In the story I am the virgin princess lost in the woods looking for her unicorn. When we meet it is a special bond, but doomed to end as a tragedy. The princess grows up, she gets married, and is forever lost to her precious unicorn. With the first flush of puberty, I feel this tragedy so personally and deeply that I cry thinking about my lost unicorn. However this despair is paired with the delight of having an audience's’ eyes on me to revel in my sorrow. My mother worries at my reaction but loves our time together.
Blink
I am twelve and puberty hits me smack in the womb, with pain and blood and uncontrolled emotions let off their leash to roam free and attack innocent bystanders. My sadness at the thought of losing the unicorn because I’m no longer innocent turns to rage that I should be made to feel guilty of sex. I’ve learned about sex by now, and have already gotten my first taste of guilt at having any knowledge of the reproductive patterns of the human animal. I realize that like the Victorian bedroom, unicorns are another gilded cage for girls. Overnight I banish them; if they do not want me once I grow up, I do not want them either. I still desire the fantastic, in all of its gaudy splendor, and I retained my love for an audience, so I started to build one. I find magazine pages of wolves and mountain lions staring at the camera, their eyes glowing from the flash. The claws and fangs of dragons and ogres replace the spiral horn and glowing white mane. Slowly the dusty pink is covered by a pack of predatory eyes. My mother can’t stand to be in my room for more than five minutes at a time. Her eyes dart nervously at the walls, and she quickly skitters back out again. Never a fan of direct confrontation, she says things like, “I don’t understand. You never liked coloring with the black crayon.”
Blink
I am fourteen and my wall of watchers is complete. My room is a sanctuary where I give many a soliloquy to my captive audience. I talk to them about my day, my latest crushes, the injustice of teachers. Their hungry feral attention prepares me for other kinds of attention. In the first week of high school, a senior boy sees me as a conquest. He walks over to my locker and plants his hands on either side of my inexperienced body. His arms create a cage, and I look up at his perfect hair and gleaming white teeth. A smug smile tells me he is convinced I will be impressed and desirous, and then he asks, “Where have you been all my life?” Thinking of how perfect he would be among the monsters on my wall and the ridiculousness of the question, I burst out laughing. The eyes glaze over with confusion, and the tooth-full smile becomes unsure. He backs away and never speaks to me again. I am a monster-tamer.
Blink
I am seventeen and have long abandoned the unicorn. I have tried many of the vices offered to me at this point. Always careful, always a planner I can go out for a night of hedonistic fun, without getting caught. I can see in the sadness of my mother’s eyes that she suspects. She really does hate confrontation though, so I come home and hide from her sad unicorn eyes and stay with the eyes of my monsters. When I disappoint myself, their accusing eyes lay my defenses bare. I can lie to my mother about going out to the movies when really I was at a party, but those eyes won’t let me lie to myself.
Blink
I am thirty three. As I age, and fill with the hazy elixir of nostalgia, there is a part of me that understands my mother’s desires to keep me a little girl. We pull up the winding driveway after a summer day at the pool. I lift my sleeping niece from the car knowing, deep in my bones, it’s the last time I will get to hold her like this. She’s far too big as it is. I cradle her on the lawn. In the summer heat she is hot and sweaty, my ass is covered in dirt, and we should get ready to pick her brother up from day-care. Instead I sit there fearing she will wake, but she snuggles in breathing softly and I endure the warmth for a half an hour before bringing her inside.
Blink
I am ageless and hold onto these precious moments like the jewels in the corner of a twinkling unicorn’s eye. Over and over I watch as I laugh at the boy, talk to the walls, and triumphantly perform forever. As for my niece I was right; it was the last time. I watch her grow and become the woman she is meant to be. But a part of me will forever sit on that lawn holding her. There was probably a unicorn nearby hiding in the woods. It couldn’t get too near, because even if I’ve forgiven it, I still prefer the monsters.
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