i don’t actually remember anything. only the fluorescent lights of the ice rink, a harsh, insect-like buzz that still finds itself in my kitchen, my doctor’s office, my dreams, even now. my fingers were numb inside borrowed gloves, the wool damp from artificial snow and scratchy against my nose when i’d wipe away snot. everything inside reeked of greasy hockey players and old sweat and the loud clang of the lockers where we’d stashed our street shoes but, beyond the noise and the lights overhead, he waited for me by the rental counter, one hip cocked against the peeling laminate surface. he took me behind the rentals and mini-melts vending machines, into the industrial bathroom with its flickering overhead light and damp carpet. the toilet in the far left stall dripped erratically, something sticky had dried along the baseboard (vomit or blood or something worse) and i found myself staring at it, tracing its michigan-like shape while his hands fumbled with my sweater. and then he zipped down his pants, and kissed my forehead, and he’d tell me that i was pretty. he would breathlessly whisper it while i stared at the ceiling, my vision blurry, and tried to separate my mind from my body, my body from his hands, gripping and pulling and maiming. he whispered it as if what he was doing was reverent, as if he was worshipping me.

there’s a gap in my memory from after he zipped his pants back up; i only remember walking in the parking lot when it was done, the streets suddenly too wide and too quiet, the insects buzzing around my knees, the pavement smoking the day’s warmth through the thinness of my yellow sandals; i felt cracked open entirely, like an egg tapped on the edge of a bowl with everything vital and vibrant spilling out of me, the crooked line everything else had to fit against and my pounding headache, the way i flinch, even now, at sudden movements, especially thick hands reaching near my face even just for a salt shaker across the dinner table.

he changed the way in which i viewed the world, the way i expected cruelty like you expect rain in november and mosquitoes in florida. my life felt like it had nothing to do with me, like i was trapped and suspended midair, kicking my feet helplessly as my ghost spends useless afternoons lingering too long in sticky movie theaters, or standing on drafty train platforms watching the 5:15 pull away without her, breath puffing white in the air as its departure echoes even after it vanished around the bend, leaving behind just the empty tracks gleaming dully under the weak platform lights. i will not forgive him. i will not be told to.

in fact i hate him. i hate him with mornings. i hate him with nights. i hate him with every little compentence i have managed to muster, with the checkmarks in my notes app, with the muscles in my forearm i have earned from carrying my life like a bucket of water without spilling. i hate that he exists somewhere: a body that eats and defecates and laughs at jokes, a mouth that kisses someone, likely on the forehead. i hate the unremarkable fact of his existence. i hate how he forever changed my perception of other men. how i’ll, for entire hours, be laughing alongside a boy of any variety, regardless of character or transparency, and will suddenly be struck with a terrible suspicion that a good man is just a man who hasn’t been alone with you yet.

but i don’t say this. instead, i scald myself in the shower, but the water’s never hot enough, so i think of snow. thick, american snow, the kind that hushes whole cities. but my room smells of dog piss and microwave noodles, and my sheets stick to my legs, and my dad blares boxing matches until dawn, the crowd’s roar rising and falling, matching the exact cadence of his laugh. sometimes i would awake with my jaw clenched so tight i half expect to spit enamel into my cupped palms. i would sit at the edge of the bed and feel the old familiar cold turn its key in my spine, and i’d push myself to my knees and make bargains with the universe i don’t even believe in: i wish that he’d walk into the grocery store and feel the yogurt staring, the neat ranks of apples like glassy eyeballs, and understand that the world is not, and has never been, neutral. i want his stomach to drop in elevators, to clench in parking garages, to turn anarchic at the sound of a zipper half a room away. i want his parents to warn him to scream fire instead of help, to tremble while reading rape articles, to look over his shoulder in dark parking lots. i want him to stay up, fingers clenching his trembling chest, physically sick to his stomach—the same way that i do. i want him to know what it is like to have a public event for a body.

i know people love a tidy story, a narrative arc they can fold and put in their purse—they want my story to be a montage: a season pauses; a haircut; a run by the river in brandless shoes; i cry once, artfully, in the produce aisle and hold a grapefruit with both hands and, at the end of it, a voiceover tells them i am stronger now. and, who knows. maybe i am stronger now—but i am still bitter, and why should this be mutually exclusive?

i thought it was extremely unfair that the world expected to me to keep living after what he did to me. everyone says that life goes on and it does; i moved from place to place with a brittle courtesy, a bogey with her hair combed, paying for coffee and movie theater tickets and bringing cake on my birthday and behaving as if my world was not cracked into before and after. i bought milk at the local grocery store with my sister (opening the cap to make sure it hadn’t been unpeeled, grabbing the one at the far back just in case), i folded my laundry and left my jeans piled up in the corner of my room, i gave my spare gloves, the gray wool ones with the broken thumb, to a shivering grandfather at the rink, the day after it happened. i journal often, late at night hunched over notebooks, drooling over sentences that feel melodramatic and cheesy come 6 am; i hate almost everything i write, but i still write, scratching out the bad parts and doing it again. i flinch at sudden movements but i still trust the stranger’s smile. people often warn me that resentment will eat me up from the inside out, that it will not heal you—as if healing were absolute. as if i wanted to be led into the bright velvet theater of white woman therapy and lie down on the stage and be lit from above in gentle blues and told: you have graduated. but there is no certificate to be had. healing is not absolute; in fact healing never ends. it’s okay.

the church says forgive. they say it with candle smoke meandering up into the rafters, faces turned upward like flowers that somehow forgot the sun is indifferent. could not care less. but forgive, they insist. forgive because it makes you holy, because it frees you. forgive, as if forgiveness is a small white pill i can swallow without water and feel it dissolve; instantly clean, instantly meek, instantly good, all while the church sends casseroles to the grieving and money to the machine, declaring (pointer finger trembling, spittle flying) that suffering is a test sent from god, that the cross is a door. i’m supposed to be a door, then—swing on command, let the wind pass through, smile at the foyer ladies while they pass out bulletins and talk about the pastor’s 40th trip to tel aviv. nod at the pastor’s wife in her kate spade cardigan as she promises there’s a plan.

one time, the pastor’s son declared that forgiveness is setting a prisoner free and discovering the prisoner was you all along. i didn’t argue at the time, instead i imagined the door unlatched. i saw myself step out into a courtyard where the sun lay down like a lion, and i wanted it; i might still want it deep down but i’ve come to understand that the prisoner isn’t me. it couldn’t be anything, except perhaps the story i have been prescribed, the one where i let him go and do the noble thing, the one that grants them a happy ending that can be placed on a mantel, patted like a sleeping dog, but i am not a moral for their daughters.

so. if there is a god, and if it’s true that He likes to be invited to dinner, He can come sit at the far end of the table and watch me eat. He can taste the salt and the burnt parts and the sweetness that persisted in spite. He can watch me refuse to feed my enemy from my own plate and, He can learn, if He didn’t already know, that some mercies are only mercies when they are withheld.

one of the most memorable things about him was what he always said when he got backed into a corner. his past, his mom who calls him an embarrassment and his dad who beats him with a hockey boot. these were the things done to him. these were the reasons he had to do what he did. i’d only see him really smile for the Big Men with Big Deals and polished heads, the ones with the madison avenue smile and perfectly generic faces sculpted solely for the purpose of being plastered on billboards or car insurance ads. he lapped at the saltwater puddles left by the boot imprints. he lapped until his tongue was raw and his belly cramped, but the salt only made him thirstier and weaker, and more desperate for the next one.

but i’ve climbed mount fuji and saved my vegetables for last, i’ve filled in the cracks of myself slowly, plucked out the swan feathers, drained out the rotten strawberries i once inhaled and the diesel exhaust i once exhaled, and replaced it with the grass that now brushes against my calves, the insects that nap in between my fingernails, the coffee rings on my writing table, revlon lip liner and my blanket twisted around my leg like kudzu. i’ve come to realize that i am everything that he is not—and yet, i am everything that he ever will be.

3:45 am, and i was watching social media with one eye. the right one. the left was pressed into the pillow, buried in fabric. i wondered if that could make me go cross-eyed, if, months from now, i’d catch my reflection in a car window and notice a permanent drift. some small and irreversible consequence of this moment. but i didn’t move. my free eye blinked slowly. dryness scratched the covered one, the lashes stuck together. i imagined muscles atrophying, the pupil drifting sideways like a marble in oil.  

five blinds were broken and left gaps in the window coverage. shadows gathered in tight, secluded corners. the table in the corner, the one my sister uses to sew her prom dress, was scratched at the corners where chairs had scraped against it. a ring of water damage marked where she had left a glass overnight.

the room smelled of unwashed sheets and coppery tang of my phone heating up, and the stench of the meryenda i had left in my backpack overnight. my thumb scrolled. another tiktok video loaded, a girl laughing, sharp features, bun tied tight enough to pull her eyelids back, almost as if she had taped it, talking about the 5 signs your friend is fake. i scrolled. the next video was lagging, before a high pitched voice sliced through: decentering men also means not hating them.

i exhaled through my nose. i let the words sit in my skull for a second, then scrolled.

because what else do i even talk about? either:

1. him.

2. how much i hate men.

a new video loaded, something about donna tartt. but the words still remained in my skull. my teeth pressed into the inside of my cheek. earlier, in the dining hall, i told riley about the boy in my 4th and 5th period. how he wears those loose shirts and saggy denim shorts, (the kind that the male love interest’s sidekicks always wore in early 90s and 2000s movies. you know the one). the way his head tilts up when he walks, or the way his shirts fit, or the way his hands fidget with his curls, as if by instinct.

my left eye twitched. i didn’t move.

i need to decenter men, i thought. and i did. i worked on my novel. i only shaved twice a week instead of thrice.

wednesday night, 3:12: my computer screen left a bleary rectangle burned into my vision. i fell asleep at my desk again, keyboard imprinted on my cheek, mascara flaking into my mug. the substack essay draft glowed on the laptop: how to escape the male gaze. my cheek pressed against the keys. the title: how to escape the male gaze;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;; i deleted the title when i woke up. my tongue tasted like stale tortilla chips; a crumpled bag rustled under my elbow.  

at the library, i pluck out philosophy books from shelves. nietzsche, schopenhauer, de beauvoir. in the margins, students have scribbled notes. YES!!! beside a passage on nihilism. in simone’s chapter on reciprocity, someone’s drawn a dick. i tried underlining their words in red pen, but the sentences squirmed like eels. morality from men who probably pissed on the rim of chamber pots.  

but the novel i wrote was different. i loved it. i loved disappearing in it. my notebook dedicated to outlining my novel lived under my bed in a shoebox, pages damp, edges white like sea foam. women who dug graves with their hands, girls who kept wasps in jars, who could trap moonlight in styrofoam cups. the men in my novel hardly warranted a mention, unless they were faceless and incidental and merely convenient, like weather. i wrote in my house’s custom theatre, sometimes i wrote in the school library. i drank coffee every day, despite my family’s genetic tendency to catch diabetes. and, when it was gloomy, or rainy out, i watched the car lights through the large windows out front, its glow the color of nicotine stains. my friend’s boyfriend left his sweater draped over a chair, reeking of axe body spray. i nearly threw it over the railing.

in the morning, my coffee boiled over. the stove hissed. i wiped the burnt syrup with a dishrag, thinking of my protagonist. outside, snow fell incrementally, a rare sight in texas. but i imagined them in fistfuls. burying the boots, the books, the ashtrays. the typewriter keys clattered like teeth. my 2 hour alarm rang. i stalked his reposts until my face sagged. i watched an hour-long video essay on the hunger games and fell asleep with mascara smudged under my eyes, waking up to a screen gone dark.

i have meditated, gone on long walks alone, walked through grocery stores without headphones, past the oranges and the rows of blue-labeled milk jugs, pretending i was nothing but a body, a neutral and untouched thing, just another organism moving in its quiet way through the world. i have read those essays, the ones that say you can leave them behind, walk away, reframe your own existence like a painting tilted slightly askew. that if you are strong enough, smart enough, if you eat well and sleep well and find joy in the small things, sunlight on the linoleum, the dull green of a glass bottle in a windowsill, you can live in a world where they do not matter anymore.

and yet.

my first introduction to rape culture: my father, cracking a peanut between his teeth: don’t wear those shorts. you’ll get raped.

i was eight.

so when i was raped, ice rink, 13 (or maybe 12, time slips, blurs, the brain is merciful like that). i knew better than to be surprised.

it happens like this: i am walking home, the streetlights pale and insect-buzzing, the pavement cracked and full of sticks thrown by small hands, and i am thinking about nothing in particular, dinner, maybe, or the book i left open on my nightstand. and then, a man. a real one or just the memory of one, it hardly matters.

what i remember:

1. the cold pressed against my throat when i inhaled.

2. my skate laces cutting into my fingers as i tightened them, over and over, until my circulation cut off.

3. looking in the mirror afterward and thinking: this is what i look like now.

what i don’t remember:

1. what i said.

2. what he said.

his features were entirely unremarkable in their handsomeness. it was the sort of face that only belonged on campaign posters or bank advertisements, in all his strong jaws and madison avenue polish and very trust-me eyes.

his gloves were an immaculate kid leather, except for the slight crack at the knuckles. he laughed when i wobbled on my unsharpened skates. his breath smelled of mint gum, the kind my dad chewed to hide cognac. you’re cold? he said, and pulled me into the locker room. the door clicked shut.  

he was lucky that he met me during that particular, deliberately vulnerable era of mine. an unremarkable student, though still tucked away in a dusty library with the luxury of abstraction, studying systems i wasn't forced to inhabit, incessantly scratching at the doors of english, history, mathematics, teachers.

he met me before i demanded full belly fat, fingernails with little bugs nestled inside. before my feet were heavy enough to shake the earth.

he made me feel small, back when i wanted to be small. i thought stupidly of christmas lights reflected in puddles, of lightning splitting night skies, of my mother’s jewelry box at eight, i would sneak it open during her afternoon naps. and i stood there, with him , every time, feeling small and insignificant. but in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant, the smallness you feel beneath stars or beside oceans, where your insignificance becomes almost comforting. my hand would reach out, even if, sometimes, he felt yards away. some stupid part of me thought i might touch him through sheer wanting, the way i once believed i could pull down the moon if i just stretched my hands high enough from my bedroom window.

and then he raped me. he made me become a subject. pressed into shapes dictated by the theories i could have merely studied in another life.

so i buy unscented soap. i tear the tags off my clothes. i switch to podcasts hosted by women. i plan on moving into a walk-up with a chain lock thicker than my wrist. i tried girlbossing, seaglassing, witchtok-ing, christiantok-ing. bought a crystal the size of a kidney. smudged my room with sage that stank of dorm fire alarms. but, no matter what i do, the men still slip in. he still slips in. through screen doors, slack messages, the shudder of the honda civic car. and i can’t help but think that decentering men is impossible when you’ve had your center cracked by one.  

i look back on the infographics about “unlearning the male gaze,” but my male gaze is a stalker. he follows me into the 7-eleven, into the church parking lot, into the counselors office. he’s in the backseat of my father’s BMW, he’s in the CVS toothpaste aisle, he’s in the youtube ads for boner pills.  

because the body doesn’t care about theory or my political viewpoints. a man’s cough in the elevator, wet and phlegmatic, still sounds like his cough, the one that rattled in the dark before he found me. a stranger’s cologne (axe, drakkar noir, something citrine and cheap) slicks my palms with sweat. i try to explain it online, the under-graduates posting infographics about killing the patriarchy in your heart. but my patriarchy isn’t metaphorical. it’s the cashier’s chapped fingers grazing mine as he hands back change. it’s the mechanic smirking when my mom asks what exactly the labor costs cover.

i am friends with a boy. he’s tender, feeds me gummy bears from the vending machine, probably cried during barbie. but when he grips my wrist casually, my lungs flood like a gutter in a storm. he apologizes, says he’ll do better, and i hate him for making my trauma his redemption arc. decentering men would require a world where their apologies aren’t the climax of my story.  

i don’t tell anyone this, of course. they’ll say i’m projecting.

winter in texas is a kind of archaeology. dig through the frost-stitched topsoil and you’ll find november’s beer cans, october’s cigarette butts, september’s condom wrappers glinting like crushed chandeliers. i know this because i’ve been digging. my hands are raw as butcher’s meat, nails black with dirt, looking for the girl i was before the skating rink, the one who thought rape was a word that happened to other people in other towns, a headline smudged by subway grease.

and they’ll tell you to focus on yourself! but my self flinches when the janitor clanks his mop bucket, because it sounds like his belt buckle. my self knows i’ll never wear converse again, because he was wearing converse, navy, with grass stains, my self knows i can’t wear ponytails anymore because he yanked mine so hard my scalp bled. my self knows that the way he sighed, after, like he finished a peloton ride.  

the body does not forget. the body does not forgive. the body remembers things that the mind does not, which is why sometimes i will be fine, whole hours passing in which i am nothing but a person in a place, drinking coffee, reading a book, watching steam curl off the pavement after rain, when suddenly it will hit me, just like that, the weight of a hand, the heat of breath at the wrong angle, and my stomach clenches as though i have been struck.

i have not been struck.

but my body does not know this, and perhaps it never will.