I, Mary MacLane/Chapter 9
MY Two Dresses tell me the scope of my present Mary-Mac-Lane-ness.
Every day they tell me things about myself.
They tell me I'm living in a prison of self, invisible and ascetic and somberly just.
They tell me I'm living an outer life narrow and broodingly companionless and that if I were not self-reliant by long habit a leprous morbidness would rot me in body and spirit.
They tell me because of outer solitude an inner fever of emotion and egotism and a fervid analytic light are on all my phases of self: mental, physical, psychical and sexual.
They tell me my way of thought is at once meditative and cave-womanish.
They tell me I'm all ways the Unmarried Woman and profoundly loverless.
They tell me I'm like a child and like a sequestered savage.
They tell me I am having no restful unrealities of social life with chattering women and no monotonous casually bloodthirsty flirtations with men.
They tell me I walk daily to the edges of myself and stare into horrible-sweet egotistic abysses.
They tell me I'm grave-eyed and coldly melancholy.
They tell me there's a bereftness in the curves of my breasts and an unfulfillment in my loose-girt loins.
They tell me I am barren of sensation and fertile in feeling.
They tell me God has taken away the beer and also the skittles and left me only pieces of bread and drinks of water.