2022

It's Friday night and your chest glows warm with the tingle of alcohol and tenderness of friendship. It’s Friday night and the campus pulsates with life: hallways sing with laughter, sidewalks vibrate with bass. It's Friday night and you’re going out – borrowed corset top, thrifted baggy jeans, gold hoops that slightly burden your earlobes, Doc Martens that pinch and chafe your feet. 

The air of the frat house is thick with the stench of vodka and testosterone. Garish multicolored lights and a constellation of red solo cups barrage your eyes. You are subsumed by the tidal wave of bodies, dragged and driven by the current.

A piece of flotsam collides into you. He asks if you wanna dance. You say okay, believing still in the earnestness of words.

Immediately he grabs you and imposes his mouth upon yours. It’s slimy, alien, shocking. You almost gag.

But you don’t want to be rude. You don’t want to start conflict. You don’t want to rock the boat. You feel like you owe him something in return for the gift of his heterosexual male attention. So you say nothing.

His hands grasp at places you don’t want to be grasped. His friends in the corner cheer him on. But you say nothing.

The air of his room is thick with the stench of vodka and testosterone. And you say nothing.

The clothes come off and your body is bare but your soul is more so. You say nothing.

Your insides hurt. Your outsides hurt. But patience is a virtue they say. So you bear it. It's just a game of endurance, a test of willpower. It’s waiting for the next episode to load while the wifi buffers. It’s watching your frozen dinner rotate through the dimly-lit microwave window. It's counting sheep while you twist restlessly beneath sweat-laced blankets. 

Your body screams pain but your clenched jaw stifles it. It’s just a game, just a test. A crucible of metamorphosis. Caterpillar into butterfly. Bud into rose. Subject into object.

Stars and nebulae cloud the galaxy of your vision and the moment of transcendence arrives. You leave behind the mere mortal vessel that confines the boundless spirit. The vessel is manhandled, choked, prodded, jerked like a marionette, tossed like a rag doll. But you levitate above, swaddled by a cocoon of pink-tinted clouds, serenaded by lilting birdsong, bathed by warm whispers of sun.

And then you fall back down to earth.

You stagger home alone in the dark, arms crossed to self-protect, back hunched to self-diminish. The bitter chill of night sinks its fangs into your skin. 

You stumble to the bathroom and wisps of blood dance in the toilet bowl like food dye in vinegar. A celebration of festivities – of death and resurrection. It reminds you of suminagashi, the Japanese swirling ink paintings you learned to make in first grade art class. It's kinda pretty. You laugh about it.

You arise from bed the next morning, head pounding from thwarted sleep, and you laugh about it.

You go hiking with a friend, chest heaving as you trek uphill. You recount last night's events with the sarcastic levity of a stand-up set, and together you laugh about it.

You laugh eating dinner, you laugh doing homework, you laugh folding laundry, you laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh until you run out of breath and the water invades your lungs. Sinking down, down, into the infinite dark, you are finally forced to be still. Finally forced to reckon.

You never said no.

But he never asked.

But you never said no.

But he…

But you…

But