[Trigger warning: sexual assault]

Can I be mad at you for causing me to find all men disgusting and for highlighting all the slightly sexist,  misogynistic things they don’t mean seriously in the slightest?

Can I blame you entirely for my heightened awareness of and my tendency to violently respond to each and every comment that hints at something that could suggest a disrespect of women? Of Me?

Can I say you’re the cause of my need to disagree with everything even the loveliest man says to me just so I can show my words matter and I should be respected – this time?

Can I attribute my understanding of “It’s only funny until it happens to you”? entirely to your lesson?

Can I think I see your face and hear your fucked, lying words everytime he opens his mouth and tells me he cares?
Can I know it’s you who’s made it impossible for me to see any worth inside this head or in my words and instead only in my body?

Can I tell you that you’ve put me on a crusade now to right all the potential wrongs I come across because I wasn’t able to right the wrong you did to me?

Say Yes. Give me a Yes, screamed out into the wild from the rooftop or from the top of a mountain. Emphatic. Etched onto my forehead, burnt into my wrist.  Stitched into everyone’s collar. Written in the sand with a twig on a deserted beach, pebbles on the dirt spelling out the letters in the Woods. A one word email to “allstaff@domain.com”. A batman type symbol in the sky.

How’s that for consent, you piece of shit?

Close your eyes, Darling
And pretend
His arms are wrapped around you
Like you’re a gift
And pretend
This is a world where he chose you

Take deep breaths, Darling
And imagine
He’ll be there in the morning
With tea and toast
And imagine
It didn’t end and he didn’t turn away

Listen softly, Darling
And hear
The words you longed for
Instead of silence
And hear
Love and affection returned to you

Now wake up, Darling
And be here now
In real life where you matter
To more than one
And be here now
Where you lived before love and will after too

I look up at this stranger through my painted lashes. My face made up with last night’s deception.

He’s with a girl – she’s oblivious – but I am not. His mouth is set, hard, and he holds my gaze while he walks past me. We both dare each other to look away first. He does.

I think maybe I imagined the story in his eyes – the red-hot story in which our mouths are the protagonists. The one where his hand cups my chin and his lips brush mine before our tongues caress. The one where my fingers pull at the hair at the base of his neck and my moans rest on his earlobe. The one where no words are uttered and all that is known about each other is what we see and feel.

I turn back to my book, where the story is written in unquestionable black and white. A few seconds pass. I look over to where he’s standing – he looked back! The story in his eyes is black and white too. And then he’s gone.

I used to work as an usher at a Theatre in the City a few years ago. We weren’t allowed to have our phones on our person when we were working. One evening I signed on and put my bag in the staff room as usual. As I was greeting all my Theatre friends in our respective positions in the venue, my Manager, Andrea called me back into the staff room and told me there was a phone call for me. Staff never got phone calls. My just-catching-up-with-friends-smile fell from my face when my Fiance’s brother’s voice came through the earpiece.

“Mark’s been in a car accident – No, stay calm – he’s OK. He wanted me to call you and ask you to meet him there.”

Stay calm. His voice was authoritative and the call lasted only a minute. My heart rate shot up immediately upon car accident and then stabilised again following stay calm. I hated how much he knew exactly how I would react. This guy did not like me in his family at all and I cannot remember why. I could tell this phone call was for Mark, not for me in the slightest.

I immediately left work and checked my phone: 11 missed calls from Mark. Fuck. I was distraught – I wasn’t there when he needed me. His goddamn brother had to call me. Shame was hot on my face despite the lack of colour in my cheeks.

I knew what had happened already. I was so angry but I had to stay calm. He needed me. An equation appeared in my head: that new red sports car, plus that stretch of road in the middle of nowhere plus writing your car off equals hooning. I was livid that he had done this. If it were a cartoon, I am sure steam would have been piling out of my ears.

I called Mark as I fell into my car and frantically pulled out of the car park. I recognised the stupidity of calling my partner about his car accident while I was driving, but I couldn’t bear the thought of not being there for him as soon as was possible. If he hadn’t whimpered when he picked up I would have screamed and cried “How could you be so fucking selfish? How could you put yourself in such danger??”. He cried and I cried and I knew he was terrified – I knew he needed support and so I kept my screams inside.

I did not know what to expect when I arrived. The scene caused me to feel physically ill – it’s a miracle he’s alive. The entire left side of the windscreen was completely shattered as it had ploughed right into a tree on one of the many complete rolls the car had done after leaving the bitumen road. The image could only have been made more dramatic if the car had exploded and Mark had walked towards me while the rubble burned behind his silhouetted frame.

His brother had beat me there. Again an overwhelming sense of shame and failure washed over me. Mark ran to me and hugged me tightly. I think I hugged him back. Then he kissed me – full on the lips. To this day, this kiss has been the most shocking, memorable moment of my life. Why would he kiss me? This question makes perfect sense to me, to be asked. At the same time, why shouldn’t he kiss me in this moment? I saw in front of me the man I planned to marry and raise children with juxtapositioned with a scene of complete carnage that was entirely his own doing. On the periphery of this vision was his brother whom I was completely jealous and distrustful of. I felt so alone.

Following the kiss, I wanted so badly to pound on his chest and scream and point at this goddamn nightmare in front of me, but I didn’t. Instead of “How can you kiss me – how can you possibly love me enough to kiss me – when you can do this to me? How??” I simply took off my jacket and placed it around his shaking shoulders. It was my job now to help him stay calm.

Later I would learn that Mark was speed testing his car despite his assurances to me that he simply did not see the bend in the road. His brother knew the truth and they both agreed to keep it from me. To me, this was the ultimate betrayal in a long list of betrayals including infidelity. This was no longer a time for me to stay calm. 

The next night we spent together in our shared bed, I penned a letter to Mark while he slept peacefully next to me. I began with the words “This is why I’m leaving you”. If he had died that night, it would have felt exactly the same as this did.

Apparently the Banana is the most Romeo-Don-Juan-Cassanova of all the fruits. Maybe just Cupid in disguise. It’s 3am or something – I’m pretty buzzed, but not too buzzed that I’m imagining the Bananaman picking up on the other side of the dancefloor. It’s Halloween so it’s probably not a hallucination.

A non-fruit woman writes something on his arm – I can only assume it’s her number. It could be a recipe for banana bread for all I care. These characters are the parentheses around the sentence I am focused on: one beautiful girl standing between them who I am enjoying that coy, sexual tension filled eye contact with. I gesture at the scene in front of her – as if to share in the absurdity of a fruit getting lucky.

I don’t expect the beautiful girl to take this as an invitation to so confidently cross the dance floor, to meet me at the other side of this disgusting nightclub and strike up a conversation. I don’t feel so confident when she stops in front of me, gorgeous smile beaming, doe-like eyes staring into mine. Fuck, she is stunning. What do I do now? She’s said something. Jesus Christ, I think to myself, her mouth makes the most beautiful movements when she talks. I hope I didn’t just say that shit out loud. I tell myself to stop staring at her stained lips. 

I find it easy to flirt and play with men but women scare the shit out of me. I don’t know why this is. I don’t think she notices how nervous I am during our conversation. I feel like a duck on the water – calm up top, but churning that lake down below. It’s probably the rum talking, but I feel like I’m hitting home runs. She’s funny. We laugh. She touches my arm. She cocks her head. Our body language is mirrored. A young man joins us sometime later and I discover this is the beauty’s boyfriend. I am disappointed but more than a little relieved that tonight isn’t going to get real after all. Or is it? 

“Is this your boyfriend?”. She nods. Those eyelids flutter. She isn’t embarassed and doesn’t hide that she’s taken. Maybe she wasn’t flirting with me at all.

“That’s a shame. I would have loved to take you home tonight”. I’m so goddamn cocky when I’m drinking. I’m puffed up with bravado. I think I’m so clever.

She doesn’t skip a beat. “You could come home with us…if you wanted”. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. The air rushes out of me and I’m speechless, probably with a slack jaw, wide eyes. Unsure. Did a threesome just get put on the table?

I’m not attracted to the man in the least, but this doesn’t matter to me. Does it not matter to me because I don’t have to be attracted to men to sleep with them? That’s a fucked up thought to think further about another time. 

I manage to gather control of my face and mouth: “Yeah, I’d love to”. Am I smiling or grimacing? Oh God, I hope the former. The words come out just as the excitement of having a threesome overtakes the fear of having my kidneys removed and waking up in an ice bath the following morning. 

I think the beauty can see through my facade so adds something about not feeling obliged to come home with them: “Only if you feel comfortable!”. She’s sweet as hell in addition to being smoking hot. Like some sort of chocolate vindaloo. 

She gives me several opportunities to back out before we’re in a maxi-taxi, taking a 45 minute awkward drive to Fremantle where they live. Two of their friends are in the car with us – it’s weird. I know that they know that in less than an hour, the three of us are going to be writhing around naked together in the same house they’ll be passing out in. The two other people and I don’t speak much – I don’t think we even exchange names. I want to pretend they don’t exist right now.

I feel like a toy that’s just been purchased: I’m a package, eagerly anticipated but unable to be opened until we get home. Batteries not included. This idea excites and disgusts me at the same time. I’m halfway to Fremantle and I want to back out. I’m halfway to Fremantle and I wish I was there already. A couple searches for a girl to share tonight and they’ve found one. As easy as pie – just a question asked and an affirmative reply. Is it this easy for others? Is this how threesomes generally happen?

I’m so nervous when we get to our destination. They ask me if I want a drink. I’m not a big drinker and all they have is XXX gold. No. I can’t think of anything worse. I am visibly uncomfortable standing there in their kitchen under the unflattering, bright lights: less flawless makeup at a club and more insecure stranger, all shuffled feet, waiting for the relative safety of the darkness in their bedroom. Isn’t that bizarre? I feel more comfortable with the idea of being naked, in the dark with a couple of strangers than I do standing in their kitchen, having a conversation with them.

The idea of a sexual experience with two people instead of one, being romantic, seems odd to me. But that is how it goes. It is a loving, intensely erotic night between a solid couple and a random girl they’ve met that evening. I’ve always wondered how I would deal with the dynamics of being the third – the invited – the outsider. I do not feel unwanted at all. I feel welcomed, completely. We have little sleep and spend more of the night laughing than anything else. It surprises me that it takes only a minute of being naked in their collective presence for me to be completely, unreservedly comfortable with the situation I find myself in. 

A few hours of sleep and here they are, driving me home – all the way to Leederville. A peck on the cheek for the beauty and a friendly hug for the beauty’s boyfriend and with a click of a few buttons, we’re all facebook friends. Does that mean there’s the expectation or chance of round two?

Modern dating has come so far. I wouldn’t even need a Bananaman the next time. 

Baby, I’m sorry I hurt you. I’d say you played some part in the end of this relationship, but I wouldn’t say it convincingly. I’ve been cheated on before and I’d punch that guy in the dick if he suggested I’d caused his infidelity in any way. I know it was my choice entirely, just like it was his.

I know it won’t make you feel any better but I’m hurting. Much more than when something like this happened to me. That pain went away after a while but this guilt lingers. This guilt stains. This guilt is like a swarm of blowflies on a sweaty t-shirt in the summer heat. I know you’d say I was trying too hard with that analogy and I’d tell you to shut the fuck up… I miss that shit.

I don’t tell you about my pain to belittle yours in anyway. One of our friends told me you’d put yourself into hospital after I told you. It made me sick to know that I’d done this to you. It made me even more sick to know that I was halfway across the world and couldn’t be there for you, whether you wanted me or not.

I don’t know whether you’ll read this or whether it matters at all but I’m trying to explain why it happened. If that’d help at all. Maybe this is just for me. Maybe like every bad thing I’ve done, I’m trying to convince myself that I’m still a good person regardless.

You left me all alone over here. I felt you’d abandoned me when I needed your support the most. I was lost. This was the first time I had questioned your love. I feel there’s a sense of painful irony in that I’m aching to come to your side across the Ocean right now, but you flew away from mine.

I got high and I got drunk. He was there and he was nice and I was lonely and I was sad. I’ve done some stupid, bad, bad shit in my life, Baby. I’ve done drugs and I’ve stolen but even then I’ve considered myself a good person. When I woke up, naked, hazy, in that bed with a man beside me who wasn’t you, well, I don’t know what I considered myself anymore.

Am I a good person? I was once, to you. I was once, to me. It’s been a long time and I haven’t tried to convince myself I’m good since.

That everyone was scared
Like little lost children in their grown up clothes and poses
So we ended up alone here
Floating through long wasted days
Or great tribulations
While everything felt wrong

____________________

I’ve been soothing a broken heart for a while now. Oh boy, this one is pretty tender. In a lot of ways I feel the getting-over-of-someone would be simpler if those who can’t love me the way I want them to love me were just complete trash. It would feel a little more easy to reason with your brain and heart that someone isn’t worth being sad over, if they hadn’t treated you very well. Life isn’t black and white like this though, so there’s quite a long, painful period of reasoning in my head to be done: “They don’t want you, therefore they aren’t the one for YOU”. That’s kind of the only argument; and it’s a shitty one. I don’t want to listen to that argument. I want to rebel against that, I want to stamp my feet. Why don’t they want me?

I do sometimes feel exactly like a little lost child, parading around in my grown up clothes, pretending to be an adult, keeping it together, presenting a veneer of knowing-what-I’m-doing-ness. Yes, I can handle this mature relationship – I can handle my pain when faced with someone else’s needs and wants that don’t match mine. Yes, I can move on and not be petty that this particular someone doesn’t want me as a partner. Yes, I can cast away the urge to convince and beg because I’ve got more self-respect than that. Yes, I’m adult enough to realise it doesn’t work like that. I am, right?

Today, I considered a new reason for my inappropriateness as his partner that I’d never before contemplated, despite the description literally coming out of his mouth many times. This one hurt more than anything I had ever regarded as a reason not to have a relationship with me. He told me many times that we would not raise children in the same way. I don’t think I took in the gravity of those words until now: I cannot be the Mother of his children.

I’d never thought about anyone considering me as a potential Mother to their children and I’d certainly never thought about them deciding I wasn’t fit for that role in their life. Somehow “I don’t want you as my girlfriend” just wasn’t hurtful at all compared to “I don’t want to raise children with you”.

This revelation was as devastating as it was a release. Despite it being crushing, there’s no changing something as fundamental as not being seen as someone you can raise children with.

Hope in this may be futile, however now I have only one option: Move on. There is nothing to reason with.

____________________

Brothers and Sisters
Hope still waits in the wings
Like a bitter spinster
Impatient
Lonely
And shivering
Waiting to build her glorious fires.

I’m sitting at a goddamn cafe, by myself like some melancholy hipster-wanker. I bought this pad and pen on my way home from work. Actually, I bought them on the way back from the road that leads to the beach where I planned to sit in my car and cry for an extended period of time. Half way to the beach I decided that it was much more cliche and therefore appropriate to sit in a crowded place and remind myself of how surrounded I am by people, but yet how alone I feel.

I know that most people feel exactly this way at some time in their lives. I know that most people feel as lost as I do, often. I know that not knowing which direction to head in is not something that I am discovering for myself on behalf of the rest of the human race. I know that if I posed my problems in the form of a question to the online community via google, there would most likely be a yahoo answer with some stupid responses and probably some poignant, helpful suggestions, advice and anecdotes from strangers’ lives. Still I feel as if I’m walking around on this Earth with no meaningful connection to anyone or anything other than the rhythmic, routine relationship between my feet and the floor.

Loneliness is common. It’s dependable. It’s ever-present – for everyone? Surely, in the billions of people on this planet, there is someone out there who fits, just so, perfectly within my heart. Surely, there’s this someone who is kind, who is thoughtful and respectful and who thinks I’m just exceptional, as I do them. Surely there’s someone who I’d feel proud to stand next to and to bring home to friends and family and claim them as my own, my one and only. Surely there’s someone out there who I’d be so completely sure is the person I can trust to love so immensely and who I can trust so completely to love me just the same back.

When I think about this person in my mind, when I try to quantify them, they are faceless. Does that mean I have no idea what I want in a partner? Does that mean I don’t care what they look like? Does it mean that I’m doubtful such a person exists and I just simply cannot believe there’d be a real person to apply these qualities to, that I shan’t even bother trying?

Return my gaze, faceless stranger. Just look this way once. Let me know you. Let me know you exist so I don’t give up. No amount of words out-do this lack of action and this lack of presence. I want to believe you’re just over there at that table in front of me. I can see the back of your head – please just turn around and see me. Let’s talk.

There she is; polishing those glasses, smiling at those customers, clearing those plates. How is it that she can make the most mundane of tasks appear in slow motion and somehow be the most sensual act I could imagine?

She’s concentrating hard, eyes darting from saucer to cup, from cup to spoon. A tendril of that beautiful – and I assume duckling soft – golden hair hangs across her forehead. She swats it away so swiftly, but so gently. I imagine that’s it’s my finger pushing that hair behind her ear. I imagine this happening in the warm morning light, all snuggly and content, bodies pressed against each other. The fingers of my other hand tracing the dappled light on her bare back. I’m excited because I know at any moment her eyes will open dopily and stare right into mine – this is my climax.

“What can I get for you today?” The waitress asks my boyfriend.

I didn’t realise just how much I utilised symbolism in how I relate to and write about my feelings and experiences until now. Water is a recurrent theme in my thoughts and writing. It is clearly a symbol of my emotions – deep or shallow, capable of swallowing me up or carrying me to great heights or far away places. It can be gentle or unrelenting and fierce. It is something that is separate to me, something I have no control over, something that happens to me. It’s a force not to be trifled with. I can jump in feet first, or try to swim and fight. Either way, I am at it’s whim.

I’ve been crushed by it’s weight. I’ve been the one that’s allowed it to crush me more than it may have if I’d fought when I could. I’ve been the one that’s kept one foot out when it was warm and soft and when I could have jumped in safely.

I’ve decided that if my emotions are like water, then it never really affects me in a lasting way. A wave might crash against my back, again and again and it may move me from where I stood once before, but I will be dry again at some point. The waves will become droplets, and the water I’m standing in, may just become a puddle. If not ever dry again, at least no struggle against it’s movements.

I’m buoyant now, in the ocean that I find myself in currently. It caresses, it’s immersive, it’s warm and loving. I don’t know yet whether I’m with someone in this, (four feet in!), but I know I can swim. I’ve been moved by waves before and I will be again. That’s clear.