He pins me up against a thin dormitory wall. Slurring, drunk on his own ego. Panting, breathless from his own execution of masculinity.
“Tell me how you like to be touched.”
18 years in this body and it has never felt less like mine. I’ve had ample time to prepare an answer that resembles enthusiastic consent and some modicum of truth wrapped in the neat package of femininity, wish fulfillment, and pornographic performance art.
My mind throws only abstract shapes and colors. “Gently, slowly, carefully” flee in place of a timid, “I’m not sure.”
I return home with unsought bruises blooming along my pelvis. I ice them with a low sodium Lean Cuisine.
The walls of my childhood home once answered my cry for help with a resounding pacifier.
“Run your mouth to anyone about this and you won’t live here anymore.”
I licked my wounds and reserved my lexicon for worthier matters before the age of 10.
iPad in hand, I race through the digital intake survey at a therapist’s office. If there was an award for fastest completion of the yes/no page, I'd be a shoo-in. The receptionist has never seen someone so well adjusted. I exude stability.
“Please describe one characteristic of yourself that you like.”
My smug fingers waste no time.
“Heightened language facility.”
I stop winning soon after. I spend 20 minutes of my first session in floods of tears struggling to phrase a coherent answer to my therapist’s question. My mind is padlocked box, full to bursting with lush descriptors for lives that are not mine. I haven’t seen the key for many years.
(The question was, “How are you?”)
Trauma looks sexiest cloaked in a Mamet monologue, riddled with Fuck Yous and validated with the high praise of a passing grade.
Grief seeks a spotlight, and she loves the kaleidoscope lens of palatability, clap-on-clap-off tears, and job offers.
I am the an arbiter of a million and one internal disputes. I am the clarity revisionist of old private diary entries intended for an audience of none. I am the seeker of solutions. I am the shunner of imprecision. I am the keeper of words that betray me when I am in most need.
