Marble Reveals All

• Imogen Gaskill, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2021

I wasn’t always argumentative. Nor was I loud or disrespectful. I didn’t always have short hair, and I used to love wearing floral patterned dresses. I guess I was pretty damn innocent if you’d ask me.

No longer can you describe me as that though. I am argumentative and I’m loud and disrespectful and have short hair and only ever wear trousers. I am no longer innocent.

There are men that pass me on the street everyday. I must pass thousands by lunch. I wonder how many of those men are melted into the same mold as their father’s.

I became a lawyer not because I love to argue and not because I like wearing fancy suits, talking to fancy people, eating at fancy restaurants with fancy wallpaper and fancy waiters to match. I became a lawyer because daddy said so. Complaints to my placid mother fell on deaf ears, the only truth I’ve ever heard slide off her tongue came out that night; “Your daddy will kill you if you don’t”.

I killed a part of myself somewhere along the way by following his rule. I shouldn’t have been so scared back then.

Nowadays when I stand in a court room in my tailored trousers, the noxious alpha dominance poring off the men in the room is almost thick enough to choke me. I used to naively envy their ability to have free reign over their careers, but I soon came to the realisation that they too are only puppets being callously controlled by superiors. Superior men.

A man in manacles doesn’t fully understand the threat he poses to others, nor do the puppeteers understand just what they’ve created. Superior men breed humble men, yet superior men melt humble men into molds of toxic masculinity.

The desire to aggressively compete and dictate with those around them is not a fault made by them themselves, but rather a sin committed by those who sculpted these young boys. Sculpted them into believing that the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence are tolerated in modern day society.

I once heard of a myth where you can only see truth when looking in a reflection, appealing because of the simple and absolute idea of reducing the complexity of experience, but as I stand alone in that courtroom, and squint at the marble ceiling, I see my reflection. And whilst I may not be a man myself, I see the toxic masculinity that has come from my own skin, leaving oily marks all over the room. It seems that a myth is just that, an illusion.

I see my own self, with raw wrists due to the shackles continuously rubbing against my skin, and when I picture my own father standing there next to me, I see those shackles on his wrists too. It seems that the manacles are an heirloom, but the key is not.