I have to live in a man’s shirt. If I were a snake, I would change my shirt every spring. I would skin myself from within and give birth to a new, crispy shirt, shiny and new and a different color every spring. But I am not a snake. So I have to live in a man’s shirt.
The shirt barely covers the top of my thighs. My thighs are soft and white and thin. I look like those girls in the movies, who stayed over at a man’s house and in the morning they were given one of his shirts. But having to live in it is a whole different story. It is the permanence of the rule that makes it almost unbearable. It is the duration of the task that makes it so difficult, fit only for a woman with the heart of a slave. The shirt is for ever. That makes it unbearable, but it also makes it valuable. It cannot be changed with a million dollars.
I go about the house and I clean up and then I do the laundry. I open the fridge and I pour a glass of orange juice and drink it. I cook and I eat. I sit in the chair and I feel the hard seat on my naked bottom. My genitals are wide open under the shirt.
I look at the way other women live and I shake my head sadly. They dress for the part. They think they are prettier that way. I feel sorry for them. They know not what they are doing.
The third commandment turns me into a real woman. That is the meaning of the shirt.