smell of singed hair and burnt flesh filled my house quickly. I knew he had gotten
into something, but it was too dark to know what for sure. Instead, I got him
quickly into a bath and remained stumped that he continued to smell like a
human incinerator, no matter how much puppy shampoo I lathered into his fur.
For two days, I left the carcass in the yard, a small lump of black and white
fur barely visible from the window. I took the dog out on a leash and brought him
back in as soon as he had done his business. I felt bad that the little critter had
never had a chance. I also felt disgusted by the smell and that I had to clean it up.
Finally, I sealed the body in a Ziploc bag, two shopping bags, and a heavy-
duty trash bag before tossing it in the bin the day before trash collection. Then I
took the hose and soaked the grass where the animal had died. I had no way of
knowing for sure that it would make any difference. All I knew was a dead baby
squirrel stunk of burning flesh, and the only way I knew to combat the smell of
fire was with water.
Perhaps the most epic story of fighting fire with water is in Lysistrata, an
ancient Greek play. The men and women of Athens are at odds with each other
as a war against Sparta wages in the background. The women want peace and
their men to come home, the men insist that war is the only way to live. They lock
down Acropolis and withhold sex until the war ends. Enraged, the men attempt
to reclaim Acropolis with fire; the women respond by extinguishing the fire with
water. The women have no political power, but they do have their sexuality and
objects of domesticity—pitchers of water, lamps, spindles, and other items of
the home—and they weaponize both in the name of peace.
When the two sides of sexual warfare are both women, the weapons
less obvious. At a gay bar in Phoenix—the very city named for a mythical bird
that was reborn from ash—we gathered in the VIP section for Patti’s birthday.
The area was blocked off with a red velvet rope, the booths adorned in the same
fabric. Against the flashing lights from the dance floor, our party room looked
like it was on fire. Women danced on the bar across the room in their underwear,
their loose butts and flabby stomachs jiggling cellulite in time with the music.
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