Reading Room DC | by Esmée Streachailt

The Trump-Epstein Reading Room took the wind out of me. The installation itself reminded me of a Quaker meeting house, really, a space completely given over to its purpose and to contemplation. The volumes and volumes are archival, generic, bound in white, differing only in their ever increasing numerical designation, lining the walls. They are both massive and weirdly background, visible and then fading back, like the story of these crimes has been over the years, like consciousness of these crimes for most people. And like these crimes, dense, heavy, and surrounding, both background and foreground of women’s lives. I think this wavering sensation had to do with the space, it was much larger than the one in NYC from my viewing of some video. That space seemed to press in on visitors. I don’t know if the DC space was deliberately chosen to give more actual air or not, but I welcomed the effect.

Between the files on the first floor and the candle-shrine on the second floor are artworks by Maria Farmer, a survivor, a tarot deck of externalized trauma. (More, and disturbing images at the bottom of this post). The ugliness of these people manifest; their bodies radiating their lurid, sadist drives; the deadness in their eyes faced down by the artist as she rendered them on paper. These images are screaming. They are rough and bright and ugly. 

The Hermit Card

Apparently, Zoro Ranch had themed rooms that replicated famous spaces from around the world and one of them was a reproduction of the Lascaux Caves. You and I know what that space is, what it means, and my breath stopped when I saw the scene. A girl hiding in the room, trying to find some time where she was not on display and at others mercy, in a reproduction of a space we know belongs to an ancient culture that did privilege men’s lust over life and lifegiving.

I’m sure Epstein and his clients didn’t know. Just old images, just an assertion that what happened to these girls happened forever since the dawn of time, forever patriarchy. Pieties aside, fellas, this is our birthright. That frisson felt in the presence of desecration ran up my spine.

Then the identification hit. She sought places to get away from everyone, to be in her own mind, unmolested, away from judgement. I was a girl who hid, too. Not for these same reasons. I have never been forcibly confined. Still the connection was suddenly a familiarity. I’m 58 now, and I know what it feels like to be hunted. Stalked, followed down the street, chased one time down the highway by men in another car, what it feels like to be fucked without care. Not systematically raped, no, but put in that fear by men’s violence. Her little hand print added to the wall of those magnificent horses, “Maria was here (hiding).” 

Every woman’s point of connection to another will be unique, but all are beacons.

Behind a curtain that just sets off the space, a space for writing and creating art to leave your record, process your responses. I was not ready for what I would feel. I came around the curtain and this massive wall of note cards, a bright and physical warmth drew my joy back up to the surface. 

Here were thousands of notes from women and men who will not leave the victims isolated, who will not pretend everything is okay, this is normal. These people testify that this is normal and it is NOT okay, normal is not okay. Which, in a way, is where we begin, and re-begin, and re-begin our struggles. 

A tiny crochet sweater. A call to arms. Ambition toward matriarchy. (Down the hill as I write this a fox is calling in the daytime, I am on alert.) We all know something has got to give way, and none of us know when or how it might break loose. I am of two minds, as you know, dear cousins & sisters, about what it might take to survive this era. Velvet Revolutions fare better than violent ones, but I am not sure that we can get out without militancy. So many men are wedded to something other than life.

The whole administration of this violent, farcical, brutal regime was in on the cover-up. The Sit Room given over to reputational damage control, the covering of crimes itself a crime. I am of one mind on this: Lock Them All Up. 

Justice is not only a matter for victims of crimes. Justice is how we reaffirm who we are as a people. For most of our history, we have affirmed only our misogyny, our racism, and our disregard for human dignity. Can that dam break?

I spend so much energy now just trying to put down my rage and get on with a day.

The Men in the Reading Room

The director, David Garret, was sitting in a back corner working on his laptop. He’s there every day running operations, setting up the next city, and keeping vigil. What a contrast to the crude glitz of a national humiliation ritual building up on the White House Lawn just one mile away. These two men couldn’t be more different. One literally bearing witness to the damage the other did, and the other strutting in his domination of a whole nation much as he did the girls exposed by his FBI in one more act of violation. The Institute for Primary Facts has my gratitude.

Much of the staff in DC were people of color, and the security we’re all black men who exuded both alertness and gentleness. I thanked the man watching over Farmer’s artwork for being there, and he said, “I support this project with my whole heart. I would be nowhere else.” Not only are these men who want justice for women, but they’re also men who clearly had good training in gentle attending. I point to their race because these are the men our national mythos tells us to fear, the men scapegoated by white supremacists for their own violence for centuries, the men this Epstein Class continue to scapegoat. Standing vigil for white women harmed by the kind of men who harm them too. Out of identity and into common struggle. They showed without saying it that they knew many women coming here to witness would be having intense reactions, and I felt everyone was both out of the way so that people could experience what they needed and also right there in case that experience became overwhelming. Clearly these men were hired because they came with a supportive spirit.

And, you know, if that were more men, this room would not exist. But it does, so the organization supporting this, I have to call it, shrine shares contact info for anti-trafficking and SA support services. They’ve taken a 3D approach to the project all the way through. It's a testament to the horror in the souls of patriarchal men, a shrine to the girls-women they consume, and demonstration of what nurturing and regenerative masculinity can be. In DC, the guest emails all contained this footer:

It’s not justice, it's not even due process, but it is honor, a community holding the victims in their humanity with care, and accusation that must be answered.

(ノ-_-)ノ~ ┻━┻ (ノ-_-)ノ~ ┻━┻ (ノ- _-)ノ~ ┻━┻

Esmée Streachailt is the founder/editor of Medusa Rising.

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