There’s nothing like a lizard in my apartment to make me feel less of the self-possessed feminist I, on most days, like to believe I am. This is not, by the way, an assertion I’m proud of. It is simply a statement of truths.

So I get home from the NGC Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad on Monday and there’s a lizard in my living room. How the creature got there I don’t know, because for the few days I’m gone the place has been hermetically sealed. A couple of days before I left for Trinidad, I’d discovered another one same place in the living room and was proud of the fact that I’d wrestled with it to get it out of the space. And I witnessed it flee out the front door with my own two eyes. But somehow, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that there may have been another one lurking, as well. When I went to the hairdresser the following day and shared my experience I was convinced my sixth sense was right when everybody there told me that lizards often appear in twos. Perhaps this lizard was the phantom doppelganger I’d been warned about?

I am one of those Jamaican women who have a debilitating and highly irrational fear of lizards. I may have mentioned in this space before that as a child I was once tortured by two neighbour brothers who threw a live lizard on me that landed squarely on my chest, and that, out of sheer panic I suppose, remained rooted to the spot, staring up at me with those disgusting reptilian eyes, even though I had begun to scream like a banshee, screaming so much in fact, that at the end of the whole nightmarish ordeal, I was left voiceless and hysterical and had to be revived with a glass of sugar and water that the boys’ older sister had to make for me.

I’m no psychiatrist, but I suspect that this affair is the genesis of my ridiculous phobia.

And, just so that we’re clear: I acknowledge it’s a ridiculous phobia. Yes, is jus’ a likkle lizard. But that’s of cold comfort to me, you must understand. We live in Jamaica, land of wood, water and croakin’ lizards. As a very hapless and recklessly insensitive lady at one of the pest control places I called the following day informed me, they’ll never, ever truly go away. Barricading myself in my bedroom and initiating a (forced) hunger strike because I’m too terrified to step foot into the kitchen can’t really be a viable and long-term option.

And I’m tired of (and embarrassed about) asking men to come over and kill them. When I was a little girl, I’d ask my father, and that was fine. That’s what fathers do. When I got older the recruits grew to become a motley crew that has included ex-boyfriends and current boyfriends (depending on availability), a taxi man who seemed excited at the prospect of having his status changed to ‘friend’, a ne’er do well who always tried to negotiate sexual favours in exchange, a friend’s brother who was driving in from MoBay, a guy who didn’t tell me he was in the middle of helping with Sunday dinner and whose girlfriend traced my number to scream at me because it was obvious he and I were involved, because “why else would he drop everything for you, and listen, you can have him if you want him” (I didn’t, for the record; I merely wanted him to kill a freaking lizard and he just wanted to escape her clutches for a few minutes), the apartment complex maintenance man, the neighbour guy who tried to help but shrieked like a girl when the lizard leaped off the wall at him — just about anyone who didn’t possess ovaries.

But here’s the thing. This kind of behaviour has always struck me as a bit hypocritical. No self-respecting feminist should feel the need to be rescued by a man. I mean, should she? In almost every other area of my life I’m content to pull my weight, to prove that I’m every bit as capable as a man and so should be treated no differently. Although, I will admit that even though I can open my own door, if there’s a man around I kind of resent him if he doesn’t open it for me, or at least offer to. If we’re walking on the side of a road, I’ll think he was born in a barn if he doesn’t make sure I walk on the inside. And if I go out with a nice guy and we’re out late, but we’ve driven separate cars, I’m afraid I dispense brownie points if he drives behind me and sees that I get home safely. Am I being a hypocrite for feeling this way, am I in some way letting down the sorority of independent women I see myself as a

part of?

This is the existential vortex of self-doubt and recrimination this lizard threw me in.

One of the events at the festival was a pub lyme the Friday night, dubbed ’50 Not Out: A literary celebration of 50 years of Independence’, which Jamaica of course shares with Trinidad, in which contemporary writers were asked to read from classics from great West Indian literary figures. I was asked to read a passage of my choice from Roger Mais’s 1954 classic, Brother Man. The only criterion, Nicholas Laughlin, one of the festival organisers, told me, was that the passage had to make a comment, good or bad, about how far we’ve come, or not, in 50 years.

Naturally, I chose the section where Mais chronicles in great detail a sort of violent foreplay between Girlie and Papacita, an act that, without sugar-coating, is not simply a tango of domestic violence, but possibly consensual rape, if that term makes any sense. At the end of the struggle, Girlie surrenders, but not before biting down savagely on Papacita’s lips, and says the immortal lines: “Hurt me like that — hurt me — Love me and hurt me! Hurt me hard!” Making one wonder, just who had subjugated whom?

I chose that bit because it reminded me of how little things have changed in the sexual politics in Jamaican society — and may I say, not only in the inner city, where the story is set — some 50-odd years later.

But that’s another column. What interested me on a personal level, however, was the sort of moral ambiguity that lay at the heart of that extract. Some of the women writers in the shuttle back to the hotel, later that night, admitted to getting a little hot and bothered during the reading. “You can’t really call it rape if it’s what Girlie wanted,” one said. On deeper scrutiny I realised it was true: Girlie was no snivelling victim. She was a woman who very much knew that passion and exquisite pain were two sides of the same coin. If pain was the requirement for an intense sexual experience for her, who are we to question it?

So I’m terrified of lizards. Yes, I feel ridiculous — mortified, even — when, hyperventilating, I’m forced to call a man to come to my house and get the menacing little creepy crawler that has me contemplating my life choices. (Married women don’t have these lizard-oriented mini nervous breakdowns, do they?) Having a weak moment does not devalue my strength as a woman. So why feel ashamed, though, like I’m letting down a side? Do I feel guilty about not being able to stand up and pee like a man? No! The truth is, I can’t do everything a man can. In some instances, there are some things a man will simply do better than I can.

And I’m completely fine with that.