Two days after moving into my new apartment within the Detroit city limits, I went with Steph to a movie theater to escape the godsawful murderous heat and celebrate the arrival of the first female superhero protagonist to the big screen. Having heard of the film's largely positive reception, and enjoying a nerdy superhero movie as much as the next person (though not a comic book reader, I love a good story of conflict-ridden heroism, particularly when sprinkled with Marvel's satisfying grasp of the comedic, although for Wonder Woman I'll venture back into DC land, which I haven't done in awhile), and pleased that a woman finally gets to command the limelight, I bought my ticket and my popcorn with enthusiasm.
Taking advantage of the sparse attendance of a weekday matinee, we selected our favorite kind of seat (or maybe it's just mine), two-thirds of the way up and center, and just as the previews started to roll, I nipped down to the restroom for a pre-movie pee: an innocent decision with rather disastrous consequences.
The pee part went smoothly enough. So did the handwashing. It was the architectural design of the restroom in combination with my habitual assessment of my appearance in the mirror on my way out the door that proved problematic. See, the restroom had one of those narrow cement-and-tile barrier walls immediately opposite the door, dividing the entryway from the stalls in the back, presumably to screen users from the view of the hall. The wall was perhaps six inches wide. It abruptly stopped a few feet past the entryway and opened into the center of the restroom. Along the same wall as the doorway stood the mirrors and sinks. Writing about three-dimensional spaces is not my strongest suit, so please enjoy the below crude diagram:
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| An unexpectedly murderous layout. |
I have a slight attention problem when it comes to my immediate surroundings to begin with; it is not uncommon for me, lost in thought, to misgauge the location of a desk or a doorway, bounce off a solid surface, and sport the evidence of my ongoing struggle with physics and geometry in huge bruises on my legs and upper arms. And my stride is, without any shadow of a doubt, a STRIDE -- powerful, decisive, commanding, confident, with shoulders thrown back, head held high, and a long-legged, ground-eating swiftness born of a lifetime of running late.
And so, dominant left eye focused on the wall-length mirror to my left as I prepared to make my way back to the theater, I was sizing up my reflection and its disheartening revelations regarding the effect of two years without exercise on my physique as I strode powerfully, decisively, commandingly, and confidently headfirst into the barrier wall.
I want to write about this like it was hilarious, because thanks to our primate nature nothing is funnier than someone walking into something, but holy shit it hurt. The tile slammed into my right eye; a shattering crack told me my glasses had snapped in half; I fell to my knees and with my only cogent thought -- my glasses oh my god this is my only pair -- managed to pull my glasses off my face, though my hands were too stunned to hold onto them and they clattered to the floor in front of me where they lay badly bent but not broken. Confused about what had made the cracking sound (I realized later it was my skull), I became aware of a horrible pain in my brow bone and, holding back tears, pressed the heels of my hands gingerly to my forehead. A warm liquid squishing led me to pull my hands away from my face to find them awash in blood.
Forgetting my glasses, I leaped to my feet and staggered to the mirror, where I saw blood sliding down my face from two gouges above my right eye, one glaring darkly red from its deep trench in my eyebrow. As I reached for paper towels to staunch the flow, bright blotches splashed onto the marble-white counter like the opener in Dexter; holding the paper towel to the cuts with one hand, I mopped up the counter with the other. After retrieving my glasses I returned to the mirror in a glaze of pain to stare dumbly at the damage as I pulled the paper towel away. My head felt thick and muddled, but I knew to stay put to stem the bleeding, and I knew to be vaguely grateful that no one was in the bathroom to witness my absurd mishap. I wanted to laugh at myself -- cutting my head open in the women's restroom just before seeing Wonder Woman, honestly -- but it hurt too much and mostly I just felt furious.
"Where were you?" Steph whispered as I slid into my seat five minutes into the movie, holding the paper towel pressed to my eyebrow, and holding my glasses onto my face at the same time. "I thought you got lost."
"I ran into a wall and sliced open my face," I whispered back.
"You--what? You're bleeding?"
"Profusely."
"Jesus."
"Yeah. So what'd I miss?"
She caught me up on the exposition, and I managed to enjoy the film immensely, though I couldn't help wishing I had stopped a mugger or lifted a vending machine off a child or any number of heroic things I could have done to earn a lacerated, swollen and rapidly blackening eye before seeing goddamn Wonder Woman save the world onscreen, instead of knocking myself out in a highly dramatic homage to a deeply socially instilled concern for public appearance that constitutes one hallmark of the experience of womanhood.
I did feel a bit grimly badass for watching a gloriously badass woman singlehandedly end a god and a world war while wounded in my own (admittedly much smaller and stupider) battle with the patriarchy, at least.
And I also felt a bit grimly badass sporting my first shiner two days after moving into actual Detroit, and then I felt all full of subterfuge when I bought a palette of pink and purple eyeshadow and managed to match my eyes on both sides so the bruising didn't even show when I returned to work two days later (and then I felt angry thinking how many women have mastered that precise skill because of human harm rather than ridiculous run-ins with bathroom walls).
And now I have two new scars above my right eye, physical markers of the first female superhero movie on the American cinema in the 21st century. Woman's experience, carved right into my skin. So that's something too, I guess.
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