They think I'm like, really hot. They've said so several times, and I'm just. At a loss I think, for lack of any understanding.
I'm aware other people have found me attractive, wanted to kiss me, etc. But I've never felt it before. Never let myself near it because attraction lives very frequently in the body and my body was not something that belonged to me. It has belonged to so many other people, but never to me.
I think about catching sight of myself in a night darkened window and bursting into tears over how ugly I was. How John was at a loss as to what to do with my self-loathing.
I think about Sara, crawling into my lap on a hotel bed, pushing me down and kissing me in front of her friends as I stroked her back and told her I loved her. Because I did, but I wouldn't let myself believe I could have her, for so many reasons.
I think about all of the times I have decided for other people that they deserve better than me, because what do I have to offer anyway? I can be charming sure, but the shine always wears off.
I think about how I've never once believed someone when they told me I was hot, but somehow I believe this them? Not just that I believe they think I'm hot for some strange reason, but that I can feel it growing warm inside of me. They think I'm hot, and I believe I can be.
I know that a lot of that is ten years of becoming and of therapy and of inching ever closer to myself very slowly, as if I'm a horse I don't want to startle.
I think about the time I told a professor I thought the Chase Twichell poem Horse was about internal vs external perception and he told me I was wrong.
I think about Horse, by Chase Twichell:
I’ve never seen a soul detached from its gender,
but I’d like to. I’d like to see my own that way,
free of its female tethers. Maybe it would be like
riding a horse. The rider’s the human one,
but everyone looks at the horse.
When we were loitering in the Harvard Book Store this past weekend I picked up a used copy of a book of Chase Twichell's poems. Horse wasn't in it, but it felt a bit full circle anyway.
There are so many ways I wasn't prepared for this, even as I invited it into my life. There are so many ways I want to be right for it, want it to work out, don't want to drag it down with all of the heavy pieces of me that have capsized my relationships from before.
But they think I'm like, really hot, and I believe them, and for some reason that makes everything just a little bit lighter.
