Two days after my cereal birthday party I jolted out of a deep sleep as if to a loud noise, but there was nothing. It was still dark, about an hour before sunrise, but I was totally awake. It happened sometimes, if I was really busy or needed to finish a project, my body taking on a kind of hyper-vigilance. My art show was in a week and a half. I forced myself to breath slowly at the thought.

I flicked on my phone to see the time, and was greeted by an endless scroll of notifications—far more than usual, even lately with United Ink going strong.

And these were…not good. It all seemed to trace back to a rant that Eddie Sparks had posted last night. It was littered with all caps, bad grammar, and a lot of emojis, and it essentially accused Etta Blake and me of being melodramatic man-haters with no sense of humor who clearly only got where we were in the business by sleeping with people, since we were talentless hacks who should probably just hide away with other women if we couldn’t take a little healthy competition.

My blood pressure rose with each garbled sentence, and I was shouting at the internet before I was even halfway done. Then I got mad all over again with each comment I read that agreed with him. Each male tattoo artist who confirmed that, yeah, he didn’t like to hire women because they were too moody and sensitive, and it made the vibe in the shop no fun because you always had to tiptoe around them. Or yeah, in his experience, men gave jobs to female tattooists because they were fucking and they didn’t want to miss out on getting laid, then the industry was stuck with them. Yup, it sucked to have to be politically correct and hire women even though they weren’t as good and got upset if you tried to correct them.

It was all shit I’d heard a thousand times before, both within the industry and without. But seeing such a concentrated stew of hatred was like sandpaper over a wound that never truly healed.

There were comments that disagreed with him too. But the shitty ones seemed to yell a hundred times louder and cut a hundred times deeper.

I fumed for a while, ranting and saying What the fuck is wrong with people? about sixty thousand times, and when none of that made me feel any better, putting on Tom Waits, who never failed to soothe, amuse, and depress me in equal measure. Then I put on a double-strength pot of coffee, sat down on the floor, and started to compose my reply as the sun rose.

Because I was done with playing nice. I was done with positive spin. I was done taking the fucking high road when the stink of shit rose to meet it. I didn’t care if it cost me public opinion, or customers, or even the money I needed to buy the shop. I had a piece to say and I wasn’t going anywhere until I’d said it.

The shop was a madhouse. We were trying to see clients, but Lindsey was giving us real-time updates from her station behind the computer at the front desk as Tara gave parallel updates from her phone.

My comments in response to Eddie Sparks had been things I’d talked about with Tara, and Daniel, and Etta, and with those who’d shared their stories through United Ink. They’d been things most women in the industry already knew, intuitively if not explicitly. That in an industry run by men, women were set up to compete with each other for a place at the table. That this culture of competition framed women artists as adversaries rather than allies, and put us in positions where we were at risk of losing our livelihoods and our communities if we challenged the status quo. That especially for young women new to the business, like the artist Eddie Sparks sexually harassed, the industry was a place where we sometimes had to choose between doing what we loved and getting to feel comfortable and safe. That unless the industry took it upon itself to change, to hold people like Eddie Sparks accountable, it was as good as condoning discrimination and sexual violence.

Okay, sure, then I called Eddie Sparks out directly for leveraging his power to keep women too intimidated to report him for his disgusting and illegal behavior. And I called him a pathetic dinosaur so afraid of actually being judged for his art that he hid behind starting drama among actual artists. Then I called him a douchebag. And a creep.

And I didn’t regret any of it.

My comments had made the rounds unbelievably fast, and I figured that Etta Blake’d had something to do with that. I’d emailed her right after I’d posted. I was anxious and angry and elated by turns, depending on the updates, and I hated the feeling that strangers on the internet had the power to change my mood so completely with one comment.

After a few hours, when I took a break to pee and grab a drink, I checked my notifications to see all the things Lindsey and Tara hadn’t updated us about. Unsurprisingly, it was all the epically filthy and aggressive things that people were saying, with comments ranging from how I probably just wanted to do tattoos so I could get fucked by a bunch of men, to how I was hideous and disgusting and I was just bitter because no one wanted to fuck me.

I powered my phone off and dumped it in the drawer of my tattoo station, determined not to look at it until I’d finished up for the night. The last thing I wanted was to be distracted while I was putting permanent art on someone’s body.

An hour later, when Lindsey and Tara were about to leave for the day, Lindsey took a phone call and was clearly agitated.

“Ginger, can you deal with this?” she called, putting the call on hold. “It’s the fu-freaking sharps pick-up again.”

I rolled my eyes, and took the phone, waving goodbye to her and Tara and sticking a folded drawing I didn’t want to lose in the front pocket of my overalls.

After about five minutes of me politely explaining things to this jackass on the phone, Christopher came in, cheeks pink from the cold, and waved when he saw I was on the phone.

“Yes, I’m aware of that,” I said into the phone, blowing Christopher a kiss. “As I told you guys last month, that rate should stay the same for the shop because I negotiated it with Darren to remain fixed. This has already been discussed with Darren, so the price increase doesn’t affect me. You just need to talk to Darren about it.”

“Well, Darren’s out of the country and he didn’t leave a note about it or anything.”

“Listen, dude, I’ve said the same thing to you four times now and you don’t seem to be hearing me. Check the actual billing software, and you’ll see that what I paid was what I owed.”

“Lady, the price went up for everyone. Is your boss there? Maybe he knows.”

“Yeah, my fucking boss is here. It’s me. How about you just check with Darren, and when he tells you that he and I have this deal, you can change it in your database or whatever so you don’t call and make me explain it for the third month in a row.”

He muttered into the phone, and though it was faint, the key words were un-fucking-mistakable. Every scrap of irritation that had been floating around all day was suddenly magnetized to the misogynist dickbrain on the phone suggesting that I was fucking Darren to get a grandfathered price. I wanted to cut his fucking head off.

“Excuse me? No, I am not Darren’s girlfriend, and I don’t appreciate the implication! Listen, fuck you, you fucking dick. Don’t call me again, and don’t have anyone else call me again until you talk to Darren. Eat shit!”

I slammed the phone down and smashed my fist into the desk, pens and papers skittering off onto the floor. The warning tingles of a migraine were radiating from my temple down the back of my neck.

“Fuck!”

“Um,” Christopher said. “Bad day?”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath through my nose, and said, “I want. To kill. Everything.”

“Yeah, that sounded kinda bad. What’d he do to incur the wrath of Ginger?”

His tone was light, but the way he said it niggled at me—as if my wrath was a trap, lying in wait for some hapless fool to stumble into. “He tried to fucking gaslight me that I didn’t know what my rate of service was, even though I have a deal with his boss. It wasn’t my wrath, it was me being clear that I wasn’t gonna let him up the price on me when we already had a deal.”

Christopher held his hands up in a gesture of peace, but it just touched a match to the flame. As if he now had to defend himself against my wrath.

“Well that’s what you do in business, right? It’s what you do, I know that.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, warily. “But you also don’t want to totally alienate the people you get service from.”

“I wasn’t— I didn’t alienate— I—”

The anger and unfairness of the whole day had already used up every last scrap of patience, and my temples were pounding.

“It’s easier for you, Christopher,” I bit off. “You don’t get it because when you tell the bagel guy that your order was wrong he actually listens to you. He doesn’t try and convince you that you placed the order incorrectly. He doesn’t try and get you to pay for his mistake. He doesn’t suggest that maybe the reason why you have the current standing price for bagels is because you are letting the owner of the bakery fuck you.”

Christopher’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth, but I couldn’t even countenance hearing his surprised outrage on my behalf. Because sometimes the outrage that can only be born of not knowing how much your own privilege shaped your world was as infuriating as the thing being outraged about.

“I own a business too,” I went on. “And I have to raise my voice, and I have to show people the proof that I’m right, and I have to be strict and not let people have an inch because if I let them, they try to walk all over me. You can get away with being chill and laid-back and asking nicely, and then you get to feel like the good guy, and that’s fucking great for you. But don’t think it’s because you’re just such a nice guy that people just want to do your bidding. You get to be that way because people grant you authority naturally. I have to fight to convince people I even own this place. So don’t tell me how to run my business, and don’t tell me how to talk to people who try to fuck with it.”

“Hey,” he said, “I work hard too, Ginger. I care about my business too. And I can’t help it that people treat me the way they do.”

“I know that! I’m not blaming you. I’m saying, don’t come in here like you know what it’s like to be me, and tell me how to act.”

He took a deep breath, and pinched the top of his nose. “Did something else happen?”

“Why, because I couldn’t possibly actually be mad at you, so it must be about something else?”

“Damn, Ginger, did I say that?”

My hands were shaking and there was a pit in my stomach. The depth of the unfairness was oceanic and everything it touched just got pulled back under the waves. I was barreling down an avenue I couldn’t see the end of. I dug my fingertips into my temple where the headache threatened.

I was always the mean one; the one who had to be rude to get things done. The bitch. Then I had to be okay with being the bitch because it was what was necessary, and I resented everyone who came out smelling like roses.

“No, no, I get it. You’re always the good guy, and you smile and people are like, ‘Sure, Christopher, we’ll get right on that order for you,’ and everything’s fine. And your customers love you and you know what everyone wants and you just give it to them, and you can charm anyone. Right?”

Christopher crossed his arms like he was about to deny it and suddenly I was furious at him. Furious about all of it, even though I knew it wasn’t his fault. Just radiating with bitterness and exhaustion that had been building all day.

“No, really, that must be so great.” My voice shook and I swallowed bitter spit. “I guess it’s how you have all this energy left over to put up with my shit, huh? And to take care of Jude. I mean, shit, imagine if you didn’t immediately have the respect of random people in the world and had to fight for it—I might have eaten nothing but Chinese takeout for months. And maybe Jude would actually have killed himself.”

I slammed my hand over my mouth as if I could keep the words inside, but it was too late. I shook my head in slow-motion horror.

Christopher rocked backward, as if my words had slammed into him like bullets. His jaw was clenched so tight the tendons in his neck stood out and his expression was one I’d never seen before. Pain and anger and shame, and maybe betrayal. Like I had revealed that I wasn’t who he thought I was.

“Christopher, I’m sorry— I— Fuck, I didn’t mean—”

He held up a hand like he couldn’t bear to hear one more word from me. He opened his mouth but nothing came out and I took a step forward because there had to be something I could say to take it back.

But he just said, “Stop,” his voice choked and rough. And then he turned and walked out the door, spine straight and head dropped low, and there wasn’t a fucking thing I could do to stop him.

I stood, cemented to the floor, for a few horrible breaths. I felt like a tornado had ripped through the shop, tearing up everything inside me and leaving the rest untouched. Then I ran upstairs so I could freak out in private.

Because this time I had climbed up to the tallest platform, I had stood on the edge, I had held the rope in my hand, and instead of jumping I’d set the rope on fire.