storied situations

elizabeth gurley flynn tried to save poor sacco & vanzetti that day right around 1920 or so by recommending a lawyer to them because she was visiting her anarchist boyfriend at the time but they weren’t really dating the anarchist and elizabeth gurley flynn not in the sense of like being monogamous or in love or wanting to spend even really a decent amount of time together to get to know each other because they both had like a lot going on a lot more than just their like for each other which might’ve been more than a like but who knows about these things when you’re busy fighting the system and distributing leaflets and making speeches and building bombs to explode under capitalistic pigs and so she one day gave this anarchist guy an ultimatum because he was starting to make too many demands on her time all the time and jesus christ she just needed some time to herself she was very protective of her time and people taking up too much of it no matter how much she liked them it just didn’t fit into her conception of herself and took away from who it was she really was all rabid and wild and free and all the likes and she just couldn’t be tied down to any one thing even if that one thing was love in some amorphous shape or blurry form or whatever it was she felt late at night when she let herself do some pining and thought about the soft touch of skin sweeping over her and the way two bodies could mold and shape their way together more than shadows even and never close enough and always too much too and it was always that way for her like she could never get close enough or far enough away and she was elizabeth gurley flynn for christ’s sake and she was buddies with big bill haywood and she was somebody and that was something she had to keep no matter what she didn’t want to lose herself in somebody else even if that somebody else was a great anarchist leader who made her heart do back flips every time she saw him who made her stomach quake and spasm at every touch and whose presence lassoed her in a swoon like almost fainting whose smile melted the hardened grout from between the tile walls inside of her and at whose dingy stark one-room apartment a pair of her pajamas was waiting in the bottom of a dresser drawer for her to slip back into one happy night filled with rain and smoke but she had other more pertinent matters to attend to like saving people’s lives and maybe she’d sail around the world or sew herself some trousers made of felt and old curtains or mistake guns for gladiolas or maybe even let herself fall in love too that too yes maybe even that while the government kept an eye on her every move just like he used to do just like he used to just like him just like nothing made any sense and even though she’d told him only two days a week that’s it that’s all he was going to get from her and he said sure that’s okay that’s fine that’s what I want too really but she had her doubts about that and so she kept her eye on him she watched out for him getting too close to her of following her and she got scared like somebody was trailing her like somebody was on her heels all the time and she kept looking over her shoulder and she got panicky and couldn’t sleep nights and poor sacco & vanzetti were electrocuted and there was nothing miss elizabeth gurley flynn could do about it except wish she were still in love like that again but it was too late now that anarchist had fled the country and the last she heard was shacked up with some dame in paris walking the sewers of paris with her late at night holding hands carrying candles that might just not ever go out until the moon waxes and shines the stars in a big old ink-stained bowl and she was elizabeth gurley flynn and she’d never felt so alone and so miserable and nothing was okay nothing was alright and she cut her own hair and she made her own clothes and she chained herself to lampposts and she was the east side joan of arc and she’d been a wobbly and fought for women’s rights and fell in love once yes she did that too once but that was long ago and she just couldn’t give herself away like that no not anymore she was elizabeth gurley flynn and she was free and she was alone and she was happy enough and she was and she was and she was…