Wednesday, April 07, 2004
I've been told that I sound like I'm gloating in my last post... gloating because my cleaning lady is confined to dreaming about my husband rather than actually being able to live out her fantasies in a more corporal fashion.
Wow. I thought I was being rather generous myself. I mean how many wives give free dreaming reign to another woman's pinings for her husband? If I sound anything I'd rather say that I sound snobbish: I grant the cleaning lady her fantasies knowing full well that hubby wouldn't give her the time of day. She would physically repulse him. Would I be as generous to the beautiful MIT graduate working for hubby if I knew for a fact that she too lusted after my husband? Probably not. Or maybe I would. I don't know. The world has become such an un-fun place to live these days; why should I not do my part to concede a few moments of sensual daydreaming if it alleviates a harried day?
The fact of the matter is that my cleaning lady's life has SCREWED written all over it and nothing short of a jackpot win is likely to change it. I have no answers to the humongous divide that separates my reality from hers. A conservative might say that her fate is in her own hands. If she works hard, gets training, blah, blah, blah, she has just as much of a chance to make it as the next person. This is pure crock of course. She has no health care, no money, no prospects, no support from family. No I am not gloating when I imagine myself the lucky one on Sanibel Island in search of alligators while she dreams of my husband in her dismal basement apartment. I am completely saddened by her fate. There is no reason, really, that her reality might not have been mine had l, for instance, eloped with the Harley Davidson, pony-tailed, Allman-Brothers-loving lout I fell madly in love with when I was seventeen... Although you can be quite sure that even in the darkest dank of a trailer park, I would never have bleached my hair. Never.
Wow. I thought I was being rather generous myself. I mean how many wives give free dreaming reign to another woman's pinings for her husband? If I sound anything I'd rather say that I sound snobbish: I grant the cleaning lady her fantasies knowing full well that hubby wouldn't give her the time of day. She would physically repulse him. Would I be as generous to the beautiful MIT graduate working for hubby if I knew for a fact that she too lusted after my husband? Probably not. Or maybe I would. I don't know. The world has become such an un-fun place to live these days; why should I not do my part to concede a few moments of sensual daydreaming if it alleviates a harried day?
The fact of the matter is that my cleaning lady's life has SCREWED written all over it and nothing short of a jackpot win is likely to change it. I have no answers to the humongous divide that separates my reality from hers. A conservative might say that her fate is in her own hands. If she works hard, gets training, blah, blah, blah, she has just as much of a chance to make it as the next person. This is pure crock of course. She has no health care, no money, no prospects, no support from family. No I am not gloating when I imagine myself the lucky one on Sanibel Island in search of alligators while she dreams of my husband in her dismal basement apartment. I am completely saddened by her fate. There is no reason, really, that her reality might not have been mine had l, for instance, eloped with the Harley Davidson, pony-tailed, Allman-Brothers-loving lout I fell madly in love with when I was seventeen... Although you can be quite sure that even in the darkest dank of a trailer park, I would never have bleached my hair. Never.
Comments:
Post a Comment
