Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER.
Once upon a time there was a Princess. She was raised to to be good and beautiful and faithful and above all obedient by her distant and unoriginal parents. Fortunately she stumbled upon a witch in the forest (she was out collecting wildflowers to raise funds for orphans) who filled in the missing pieces of her education with intersectional politics and lessons on how to check her privilege.
But because of the nature of institutionalised power dynamics embedded in social conventions she married a prince who seemed tolerable in a benign way. Of course the most inconvenient part of wedlock was the sex which she was subject to with irritating regularity.
One morning when he cast aside the silk sheet to proffer his morning erection she shoved her pillows at him in resistance and shouted,
“YOU ARE A SEX PEST!”
“Mind your tone, your highness” he retorted with affront.
“Everyday I do my duties, I attend to courtly business, I manifest fucking gratitude but there is one frog I can no longer swallow– it’s you!” she declared and fled the castle.
The Princess sought refuge in the forest cabin of the Witch and relayed her tale of silver spoon oppression and resentment. The Witch produced from one of her many cabinets a deck of images and gave her one.
“Is this my tarot?” the Princess asked.
“Sure” came the reply and the Witch went off to make tea and lay out some of her delicious rosemary biscuits.
The Princess stared at the image: a rotund ballooning gentleman in an oversized version of a toddlers sailor suit shadowing a sullen, blonde ringleted girlchild.
The Princess could hear the mind of the girlchild,
“One day I’ll be free of him and then the lot of you better watch out”.
“If ever there was a child with a kill list..” the Princess thought.
The man embodied the sound of a deflating balloon; an embarrassing and involuntary downward tone.
The two women sipped their tea in the cosy cabin while the Princess contemplated the meaning of this image. Was is a symbol? A talisman? The witch was not one to interfere in the business of others, hers was a greater power to instead help the lost find their own agency.
“The manchild looks sad” the Princess noted.
The witch acknowledged her and continued to sip.
“What a fierce little girlchild” the Princess commented again. She knew this was futile– advice would never come– but she loved to yank the Witch’s chain anyway.
In the silence she knew she probably had two choices. She could punch the sex pest in the dick, hopefully using enough force to deflate the bloated male ego in a magnificent pop! but then she’d be left with a flubbery pile of useless skin. Alternatively she could disappear– rip herself from the image– but then the torn edge would be forever present and in a strange manner connect her to him in a raw unfinished way. And because of that she knew she had to finish the story herself. She washed and dried her cup (it pays to be a considerate house guest no matter how loved you are by the host) and returned to the castle.
She pinned the image– it was a votive she decided– on the wall above the bed and marched to find her prince. Ordinarily in fairy tales the hero waits patiently to confront the other at a dramatically opportune time but she was ready to act now.
The Prince and the Princess spoke and railed and fought and cried and argued and lamented until the night fell and then began to recede to dawn so they conceded nothing good could come of further fatigued expression and they would resume the discussion after rest. This conversation continued in various forms the next day, into the week, throughout the year and across the ensuing decades. And that’s how they lived happily ever after.
