At our last bar for the night we met a group of people, I talked to the woman next to me as isak sat with the two men. She was so pretty I remember thinking, so so pretty. Warm brown eyes and a lovely face, the clearest skin I’ve ever seen. Her hair was in a bun and curled around her temples. I could feel her heat as we sat huddled together on the snug couch. We faced the bar and I noticed a new bartender, I never see the same bartender twice here I realised.
The guy with the hat ordered me a beer and I kept my eye on it, just to make sure he didn’t put anything in it. Because I think I knew right as I saw him, something in his glance, a mannerisms of selfishness and authority. Something uncertain. Something that made me even eerier than with most men.
He quickly proved me right and got sexual, asking me to follow him to the bathroom, telling me how pretty i was, but his eyes were somewhere else. Lower than my face and eyes. I had barely touched the beer but he must’ve known how drunk I already was.
“How much would you pay?” I asked, tired of being dirt poor and depressed, genuinely considering it. He had a look of fake surprise on his face, confused as to why I wouldn’t do it for free.
I, of course, know that he viewed the drink itself as transactional, I am not stupid. But I felt like I might just give in this time, because it’s always the same, they are always the same. I could just let stuff happen I thought, let things happen and go on with my life, at least a couple bucks richer. Not having to worry about money for a week or two sounded like heaven.
I think about how these men always are the one thinking of themselves as the nice guys. They are the ones loving women so much they have to fuck a drunk one, ten years younger than them, in a dirty toilet at a bar. Because that’s their needs and they’re so sure it’s my needs as well, they are so sure of themselves, so sure they’re a good one, even paying for the trouble, so generous.
I looked at him, stared him straight in the eye, and I know I analysed his rough face and patchy beard. I really find most men repulsive. No beauty , no softness. It’s not until I know them I can see the genuine love in their eyes, understand their intentions and feel like a person. A being good for more than sex. I can’t however for the life of me remember any other details of his face. He wasn’t drinking anything, still alert and calculated.
I recall looking at his hands resting on the sticky table. Thinking of what violence they are capable of, what acts they must have committed.
How many women he must’ve payed to rape. Because he asked me, after his eyes had widened in that fake surprise how much I wanted, how much he had to pay to assault me. The aggressiveness I saw in his eyes came so naturally, so compulsively.
Stupid man, stupid stupid man. But i didn’t know, didn’t know how much I was worth, what was a reasonable sum for my body? How much could I dare asking for?
I think Isak intervened somewhere around here and I forgot all about what the man with the hat wanted. I smiled at him and thought about how much I loved him.
I then fell back into the bliss of the woman next to me. She was a mother she told me, she had a little girl at home.
It was nice hearing about her daughter, so wholesome and precious, after the violation of the man with the hat.
I always love hearing about people’s children, the proudness in their voices as they tell me about the little being they brought into the world.
It fills me with an inexplicable happiness, it makes me so emotional. I wanted to know more, know her mind and feel her skin. I wanted to hug her, and I wanted her to hug me back. I wanted to smell her perfume, and skin. Feel the innocence I know im capable of. Because I know I can love gently, and be touched with love. No violence, no expectation for more. I had floated away, consumed by my drunk mind, blurry and weirdly wandering. She looked at me like she wanted to know everything about me. I could feel my cheeks flush and looked down. The corners of my mouth hurt from all the smiling.
I came back to reality and remembered the soiled man across the table and my heart sank, wowwowwow his eyes burned into my soul, inspecting my chest again. I felt exposed and filthy. Whore. Because I knew, didn’t I? That this would happen, it always does. I could see it in his eyes, what cruelty he imagined doing to me. How he would fuck me relentlessly. How he wanted to use me.
God I hate myself. I hate my mind, I hate that I know what sex is, and I hate that I crave it.
I wish I didn’t know what it was, didn’t yearn as I do, didn’t put myself in dirty situations out of morbid curiosity. Because I do it to myself, I play into their fantasies and fake compliments.
One time, there with this man, this American. With nice brown eyes and a flushed face, a family man. I was so surprised he looked at me with gentleness in his eyes, So respectful and nice, clearly just happy to be there, as happy as me to talk to a stranger. Learning about someone new, sharing their mind and experiences and stories. I wanted to order him a beer I remember, because I felt I had to reward him, for being a good one. For not being like them. For not wanting more. For seeing me as a person with feelings and goals and academic desires. He listened to me talking about my poetry and books, and telling me about his family.
Everything sounded better than going home and so an after party was music to my ears. All roads leading somewhere else, anywhere else than back to dads was what I wanted. We went with him and at the first opportunity he got he shoved me against the closest wall and forced his cold tongue inside my mouth. It was a stone building, beige and dirty. Right under a tunnel, hidden away.
Isak had walked away for a moment to buy some cigarettes. i can’t blame him for leaving me, im sometimes rude to my close ones when I’m drunk. I don’t want to, but I just can’t stop myself.
Pushing people away to see if they will stay.
I did not say no, i didn’t utter a word, I just pushed him of me and looked away, wiping my mouth on the sleeve of my coat.
Often in these moments I find myself freezing, my soul and ability to say ‘stop’ leaving my body. He must’ve missed the disgust I had on my face, or maybe he ignored it, maybe he even liked it, and pressed me against the marble wall again even harder. His body bigger and stronger than mine. This time his rough hand reached under my grey coat, and grabbed my crotch so hard it hurt.
Dominance is what they all seem to crave. To humiliate, to hurt. In disguise as rough love.
Everything is blurry now, but im sure he was much more sober than me, calculated and assertive, cold and mean.
He smirked at me as he stepped away. I suppose I must have given him the wrong idea, in a way leading him on all night just to get some booze. What did I really expect?
I later heard he works as a bouncer in town, always around and I dread seeing him, but know I will.
I don’t feel it important to explain much of what happened as I stumbled away in isaks direction, other than that I ended up following him home. Home to his mother and sister. Home to hos dog and cat. His warm room and comfortable bed. His bedroom with the single light in the corner and deer-scull on the floor next to his heavy dark brown desk. The smell of his mother’s apartment always calms me, so familiar, so safe.
