in his eye. Then she tells us of the poor man who could not unzip his pants and was saved by Estelle from suicide by her kindness and sentimental understanding. In her third fantasy, Estelle helps a man with a bad cold who breaks into her apartment to rape her. She gives him Kleenex, Neo-Citran and scotch and they watch the Late Show together. The next fantasy involves a man in her mother’s basement with an axe, but she tells him,I hear the same angel voices and they’ve been telling me for some time that I’m going to give birth to the reincarnation of St. Anne who in turn has the Virgin Mary and right after that comes Jesus Christ and the end of the world, and he wouldn’t want to interfere with that, would he? (35).This sends him back up the coal shoot. Then she briefly fantasizes about a number of potential rape situations where she hurts or physically overpowers her assailant, but quickly returns to less threatening possibilities. Her last fantasy is, in Estelle’s words, Bloom, 3“the most touching… and kind of dignified” (pg. 35) rape fantasy where she is dying of leukemia and is grabbed by a man in the same condition. She woos him and they move into an apartment where they die together.Estelle likes power; she is not helpless in her fantasies. Her fantasies of being a Kung-Fu expert demonstrate her wish for control over her body and her safety. Estelle can outwit, confuse, and fool her fantasy rapists; in fact she hopes she is not too vicious to them. By calmly listening to her rapists or starting a conversation with them, she attempts to assert herself. She can relate to and give advice to her rapists. They can even watch the late show together. Truly, Estelle’s rapists are as unrealistically obliging and polite as her coworkers’ rapists were romantically accommodating. These fantasy men are definite failures at raping Estelle, but they are more successful at ...
