MUSCLE MEMORY
It’s 4am and I’m standing in the frosty air of winter in Manhattan. I have been standing here for two hours. The cold has soaked through my layers of clothes and into my bones. It starts to rain. I am here because I am covering the Ghislaine Maxwell trial – the criminal trial in which Maxwell, the former girlfriend and right-hand woman of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was found guilty of five out of six charges, including sex trafficking of minor girls.
I am here because for some reason that is entirely beyond me, they only allow four reporters in the actual courtroom each day for the Maxwell trial, and the only way to get one of those four spots is to get in line at 2am. There is no shelter from the rain and no respite from the cold until they let us in the courtroom at around 8am.
This cold, this standing up for six hours straight – it’s a marathon to me, as someone with two chronic illnesses. I have
