gator gushin’

Abigayle Cheney

His eyes are murky above the water. 

I look straight into them and know what I have to do.

I roll my sleeves up, take a deep breath, then rush into that pond. 

In a heartbeat-and-a-half my arm is wrapped around his neck, and I am wrestling a real life Alligator. 

I’m dodging bites, grabbing what I can.

This gators got guts, but so do I. 

I got him in a fireman’s hold; I’m about to KO this gator but then he says,

“You know, hon, us girls, we got to stick together.” 

And she’s right. 

I put her down. I apologize. I ask her if she wants to grab a bite. 

We put on our red lipstick and find our way to the nearest restaurant. 

She orders us a bottle of wine to share and we talk. 

I ask her about why she eats only meat and she asks me why I don’t.

Politics lightly come up, and she may be a libertarian, but I can see why

We argue a little bit about salt water versus fresh water (I prefer my water salty), but we both agree brackish water sucks.

We talk about Santa Clause, the Sex in the City reboot, and Cher.

But we both know why we’re there. 

The lights are getting low, the night is getting dark. 

I put down my glass, reach my hand out to her claw, grab it and whisper: 

“How do you do it?”

We talk about the real stuff. 

The men we’ve destroyed. The men who have destroyed us. 

How a woman can’t be powerful without being a monster.

The struggles of being a worker, and a mother, and a lover.  

She talks about her home of nature being destroyed by man, and I talk about my home of man being destroyed by nature. 

I ask her if she ever hates always being seen as a monster. 

She asks me the same and our answers differ.

We reflect on grief and the seasons of life we’re going through.

I saw her, and she saw me.

We just talked, and we learned, and we listened. 

Because sometimes when you wrestle an Alligator, you have to stop in the name of feminism and ask her all your burning questions.