“Don’t leave,” Sana said. “I know this room is crazy and sick, but it’s also necessary. It’s Marlowe’s creation.”
With the mention of Marlowe’s name, the room instantly made sense. “I should have known,” I said, feeling foolish for not seeing the connection sooner.
“She wrote Fuckability Theory in this room and she spends time down here working on the companion volume now. She says that if you’re going to write a book about the sexual objectification of women, you need to face it. She says too many women look away. They close their eyes, like you did.”
My eyes were open now. On the screens, Stella Cross was replaced by another woman. A man shoved his enormous penis so far down her throat that her face turned red. She gagged and choked. He went through a string of women this way. They lined up like baby birds with their mouths open, accepting whatever was shoved in.
“Does wanting to make yourself fuckable mean turning yourself into that?” I pointed to the open mouth on the screen. Not a face, not a body, just a mouth belonging to an anonymous woman.
“You’re thinking about it too literally,” Sana said. “Think of this room as the curtain pulled back.”
I would have preferred that the curtain remain closed. I moved away from Sana and took refuge under the archway.
“You’re lucky to experience this,” she said. I glanced at her skeptically. “Women come to this room from all over the world. Two Egyptian activists left the day before you arrived. They’d been down here for two weeks, living in this room practically day and night. They’ll never be the same again.”
“I don’t doubt that.”
“No, it’s a good thing,” said Sana. “They’re going to change the world. That’s the power of this room. You do have to be careful, though.” Sana explained that a young Ph.D. student from Toronto stayed in the room for a week. One night, everyone in Calliope House was awakened by her screams. They found her in the middle of Thirteenth Street, ripping out chunks of her hair. An ambulance transported her to Bellevue. “The mother called Marlowe a few days later to say that her daughter had completely cracked up,” Sana said. “Of course Marlowe paid for her hospital bills. The point is, it’s important to experience this room, but don’t overdo it.”
There was little danger of that. After only minutes in the room, I was feeling dizzy. Even without looking directly at the screens, I saw the pornography in my peripheral vision—the blur of rhythmic movements, pelvic thrusts, and forced entries. The repetition gave the sensation of rocking back and forth, as if I were on a ship, floating at sea. I leaned against the archway for support.
Stella Cross appeared on the screens again. “Why is Marlowe playing so much Stella?” I asked, breathing deeply in an attempt to quell my nausea.
“Marlowe doesn’t control what plays. Everything on the screens is streaming from Porn Hub U.S.A. Right now there are countless men and boys around the world with their pants around their ankles, masturbating to a dead woman,” Sana said. “In a different age, a great poet would have written a ballad about that.”
Standing in the middle of the room, Sana, with her brown skin and burned face, was incongruous among the cookie-cutter white body parts surrounding her. Her presence had filled the apartment with a different kind of energy. She was chatty and friendly and seemed too vibrant for this dim, underground place. I would have preferred to have met her aboveground.
“Do you come down here often?” I asked.
“When I need to. All the Calliope House women spend time down here.”
The sight of Stella Cross on the screens again made me think of “Jennifer,” which made me think of Leeta, who was never far from my mind. Had Leeta ever been in Marlowe’s room?
“No,” Sana said when I asked. “Access to this room is strictly controlled. Marlowe never met Leeta and she doesn’t allow anyone down here unless she assesses them first and feels confident they can handle it. She made a mistake once, but I think she was right about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“She said that you’re strong. She described you as a survivor.”
It was difficult to understand how those words could apply to me. “I don’t see it that way,” I said.
“It’s not easy to live in that body, is it? Not in this culture, with so many shitty, hateful people everywhere. You haven’t had an easy time of it. Anyone who can survive that is strong.”
I turned from Sana and the screens and stared for a moment in the opposite direction, down the dark corridor, into the comforting black. I had always thought of myself as merely existing, but Marlowe thought I was strong. Leeta, Verena, Marlowe—since I’d met them, the eyes with which I interpreted the world around me were new.