What Do You Call It?
When at fourteen a man asks for your number and he's twenty five you are supposed to be too flattered to refuse and later you try to explain you can't go out with him and he says int he child's offended voice, "Whatever, I just figured I could take you out and show you how to treat a man."
You would think you might learn to stick up for yourself.
Especially whent htat same year a man of twenty seven hits on you and your mom and friend assure you he's, "being friendly, it's cute" and then he corners you and, while his hand weaves in the chain on your not yet breasts, asks you for drinks so you tell him how old you are and he says, "So you don't drink beer?"
At this point your voice should burst out of you.
But you've gone mute to the point that on your sixteenth birthday you get to make out with (Omigod) Billy Sutherland who spends the whole night tryin to wrestle into your pants and then storms out and you laugh nervous embarrassment trying to shake his words out of you head, "You aren't very responsive."
Oh, you want to be angry.
You would be if only you weren't consued with such shame that later that year your boyfriend, the man of your dreams, raped you and you couldn't even call it that, sure this was different from all that media hype - after all, he was _the one_, and you could still hear his voice echo in soft cadences of "I love you."
You didn't think you could get hit again. Bang.
You are the perfect target and your next boyfriend, the real soulmate of your life, who you are positive is different drives you to college, kissees your cheek and actually admits that he was so threatened by your leaving he thought about "getting you pregnant, so you would have to stay and marry me."
Which is so insane, it's surely time to protest.
But you don't cause waves not even when some post pubescent crawls all over you with what he considers poetic seduction and fumlbes around causeless not paying the slightest bit of attentio to your reactions or lack thereof, comes in spasms and rolls over to ask, "Did I do you up or shall I continue?"
The word no is in your vocabulary - use it.
But it's always easier to say yes and when a man you barely know asks you to go for a drive you don't want to be mean so you climb in his car and things go as things go and he sucks your breast as you detach yourself from it and give it over for the simple price of a smile and "I'll call you"
I am positive you could attempt being rude.
But there aren't words in our programming. There is only some nameless passivity of discontentment we find clawing at our sternums, company to the doubt that we will stop it next time and the paralysis of knowing hat there will be a next time. But mostly there is the fear of wondering if the next time will follow, "I do."
my favorite thing about this poem is that one of the stanzas was about a guy in the poetry class and i got to read it to the class with him sitting there. what can i say - what i think is funny . . . actually little side story my favorite poem i ever wrote for that class was a collection of all the bizarre shit that people in the class had said. but i have dIgressed; back to my point.
so after the first time i performed it - or maybe it was the last. or maybe it was both come to think of it. anyhoo - a whole crapload of women came up to tell me how they could relate and i gave voice to their experience yadda yadda yadda. i'm sorry - i don't mean to yadda yadda but it was soooo heavy on the victimization and the what has been done to. i agree there was definitely that element to it but what really annoyed me is that the BIGGEST message was personal responsibility. the idea of what we allow. i get that the other stuff was there and all but no one seemed to click on for even a minute that i was criticizing the "you" that i was addressing. very annoying.
that's it. that was my whole point. just didn't feel like talking about politics or gideon or my . . . well, i always want to talk about my kid.
goodnight and good luck
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