"This Kind of Woman" is a real book and very good. The quotation I used was the inspiration for this one-shot. I do imagine Jessica as being a feminist, in her own way. I also consider myself a feminist. Please leave me a quick review! It means a lot :)
"Women's literature is sad shit." Jessica Jones said, tapping the paperback her friend had sitting on the coffeetable. She leaned back over the sofa and held up her empty glass. "More, please."
"Why don't you just drink out of the bottle?"
Trish Walker stood at the sink of her expensively outfitted kitchen, washing spinach for another one of her trademark dinner salads. It was probably going to be something with fruit and obscure little nuts. Patricia expensive but good taste. She liked health food, exercise, and self-improvement of nearly every kind. She was a talk-show host and actually read the books of authors who appeared on her show and spoke several languages. She was the type of person who set personal goals and met them. Jessica wasn't into any of that. She was a wreck as a rule.
"Alright, bring it to me then."
Her friend tutted but brought it over anyway. Wild Turkey. Name brand, because Trish had bought it for her. It was Christmas, and she knew what Jessica liked. Jessica reached for it but Trish tossed it onto the couch cushions instead, where it bounced and rolled onto the hardwood, sloshing. She picked it up.
"The service here sucks."
Trish shrugged and went back to her salad. "You don't like womens literature and you're disrespectful to the waitress. How feminist are you?"
"I am so feminist." Jessica took a long swallow from the bottle. "The waitress is just a bitch…And reads bad shit."
"Ha! Bad shit. Jessica, what do you read?"
"Better shit."
"You don't read anything."
"I read police blotters."
"A woman of culture and refinement." Jessica could tell her friend was actually irritated. She picked up the book and looked at the cover. It was black, titled This Kind of Woman: Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers. She tried to flip through it but the pages were too stiff and brittle from age and moisture. A hank of yellowed pages fell onto her lap. She picked it up and squinted to read:
"…Takashi had a mirror that reflected a perfect image of himself. This mirror hadn't clouded once, and I kept helping him polish it..."
She put it back in the book. It disturbed her how easily she could relate to that pathetic narrator. But didn't every woman have a story like that? She certainly did. She put the bottle to her lips, remembering.
Kilgrave had had a perfect image of himself as well. And he had needed her reassurance, demanded it, in direct contradiction of his grotesque actions. She didn't know how it worked in his twisted mind, how he could command her to deliver the lines and then be so affected by them.
"Tell me you love me." He would command.
"I love you." She would answer helplessly, squinting into his bright, hungry eyes.
That would seem to thrill him, make him childishly happy sometimes. He would command her to say it again and again. He never got tired of it, although she never said it to him once of her own will.
Their specific scenario was extremely unusual, of course, but how many relationships were similar? The man with the mirror, the subservient woman with the rag, polishing, polishing, for his ego.
"The world is full of delusional men." She muttered to herself.
"Maybe you should read that book, then." Trish came in with napkins and forks, set them on the coffee table and then saw her holding it. "Ah, you are!"
"I don't need to. I could write a crybaby story about men, if I cared too."
"Yeah?" Trish clacked across the room in her heels and returned with two large clay bowls of salad. She held out one to Jessica, who wrinkled her nose. Trish shrugged and put it on the coffee table. She sat in the chair across from her. "I'd read it."
"If I wrote a story, it wouldn't be about men. Why does it feel like all womens literature is about men? And all the crappy things they do?"
"I don't think it's all about men."
"It seems like it. Women write sad stories about the things men do and the way men make them feel and their life being crappy because of men, wah wah wah, even women's lit is about men."
"I think you're over-generalizing. Have you even read any real women's lit?"
"I read a paragraph from that book. "
Trish snorted.
"Okay, I've read some. I've read some Sylvia Plath. And some other stuff, you know. In highschool. It sucked. Women suck."
"Do they?" Trish ate a strawberry, giving Jessica that quizzical talk-show host look. "Or…maybe it's victimhood that sucks?"
"All women are potential victims. They suck."
"The men who victimize them suck. People like…you know, that guy. You don't suck, you're strong. Really strong. And I don't want to get personal here but you know you could be defined as a victim, because of what he did."
"He was a fucking insane prick. Thanks for bringing that up, Trish. Assholes like him are why being a woman sucks. That proves my point."
"So women suck because they get hurt and women's literature sucks because they write about having been hurt."
"I guess." Jessica angrily drank from the bottle, a long, gulping drink while her thoughts flitted back to those nights, the hotel, the lingerie, the gift. His arrogant eyes and the beginning of a double chin. His teeth were crooked. They had left crooked marks in her skin. She winced and then choked. She tried to focus on that mindfulness exercise the therapist had taught her. She pictured the street she had grown up on. The green street sign with white letters. It only dulled the memory his voice in her ear.
"Are you okay? I'm sorry for bringing it up."
"It's fine. I'm fine. He's a fucking asshole." She sputtered. The burn was comforting against those memories. Birch Street, she thought. Higgins Drive.
Trish looked worried.
"I didn't mean to trigger you."
"Oh my God, that phrasing…"
"Yeah, well, it's literally what I did, and I'm sorry-"
"Listen. I don't like women's literature. Because it makes me sad. Okay? It makes me sad that the one thing that we can all relate to is being violated. I mean, what the fuck. And we read about it, and we write about it, and nothing changes. It' just something that happens and nobody stops it."
Her friend didn't say anything. Jessica continued.
"I don't want to accept that as part of being a woman. That womanhood is like some kind of fucking cross to bear, you're a woman so you read that shit and say, 'oh my god, that's me, that's him, oh how awful' and feel like shit. Do men do that?"
"I honestly don't know."
"Men read crap like Treasure Island."
"So do women, not to puncture your argument…but like, yeah. I think even you read that."
"Whatever, I don't read women's lit."
"Okay."
"And I'm a fucking feminist."
"Okay."
They were both silent. Trish continued to eat her salad. Jessica drank some more.
"How do they do it?" She said eventually. "How does anyone do something like that?"
"Things like what Kilgrave did? Well, from what you've told me, he has mind control powers and he can just command anyone to do whatever he wants."
"He didn't see anything wrong with telling me, forcing me to do horrible shit. Of course I didn't want to do it. And he didn't care."
"Once again, I am so sorry that happened to you." Jessica shrugged it off. "But, I don't think he saw himself as a rapist. I don't think any of them do."
"He took things from unwilling people. It's stealing, and it's rape."
"Yes it is."
"And he's going to keep doing it, and the other people will keep doing it, and the world just continues to go 'round-"
Without meaning to, she'd slipped up and used the present tense. Why hadn't the death certificate comforted her? She still couldn't relax, ever. The feeling he was still out there, waiting to get her again...The tension wouldn't leave her body unless she was drunk.
"…He's dead, Jessica." Trish's forehead scrunched and she spoke very softly. "You saw the bus hit him."
And yet I'm afraid that somehow he's still alive.
Jessica put down the bottle and picked up the salad. Wild Turkey was not going to help tonight, not after this pleasant conversation.
"What is this."
"It's a salad."
Trish laughed at her nonplussed expression.
"Okay, it's spinach, flax seeds, almonds-"
"Salad, okay, got it." She poked it with her fork. "Thanks."
"You're welcome. Maybe you can do something for me in return."
"Uh. Like what?"
Trish leaned forwards and clasped her small hands together like a business executive.
"Remember before, when we used to talk about you being a superhero?"
"No."
"Please think about it."
"No."
"You're so strong, Jess! You can be an avenging angel-"
"Fucking NO."
She yelled the last word. Trish went on despite that.
"What's changed? Is it because of what happened?"
"Yes." She spat out an almond. "That was a wake-up call. I'm just a woman."
"A super strong woman who can lift cars."
"Small ones. And Kilgrave showed me I'm just as weak as the writers in your book. Anyway, I have other things to do, like take pictures of cheaters in alleys with their pants down."
"Don't be nasty."
"I'm not being nasty, Trish. That's how I make my rent."
"You could be a hero."
"I'm not a hero. I'm just another victim. Maybe I'll write a sad little story someday. Meanwhile, I think I'll just continue enduring womanhood and drinking myself to death."
She stood and zipped up her jacket.
"Thanks for dinner. I'll see you around."
Trish sighed and slowly stood, brushing the wrinkles out of her slacks. She looked just like her mother.
"You'll call me if you need to talk?"
"I don't need to talk." Jessica wound her scarf around her neck, pulled on her gloves, then paused. "But yeah, I'll call."
She snatched up the bottle of Wild Turkey on her way out.
Jessica didn't call, though.
Not until six months later, when Kilgrave came back.