When the whole of your body wants only to become an earthquake, let yourself
Rattle the apartment door, rattle the bedframe, rattle the desk. Do not hold back your scream the way your grandmother taught you to be a silent offering of cunt. Demand relief. Be a natural disaster. Don’t feel guilty.
Do not care about the middle-aged man in the cheap shiny suit checked into the hotel room next to yours. Let the headboard bang against your shared wall. Let the beautiful young man you’re with call out your name like a sin. Let him beg you to beg him to fuck you. Do it. Beg.
DON’T BE
The five-year-old girl you once were has no idea what sex is. She doesn’t know what the body does to the body when it loves or does not love, but she knows better than you the shiver of difference between yes and no, what consent does or does not feel like in the soft place of gospel where we are none of us yet grown, so listen to her.
when on another day some attempted bloom of a different man is licking your pussy and she begins to kick you from the inside out, when your shoulder begins to ache like a left hook and your jaw jams itself into its own hard, shallow joint,
SHE IS TELLING YOU TO TELL HIM
TELL HIM TO STOP. TELL HIM YOU DON’T LOVE HIM.
TELL HIM THE VICTIM YOU ONCE WERE WILL NOT SUFFER THROUGH ANYTHING LESS THAN SACRED SEX
Or, just pull his head up from between your legs and say, “Dude, really? No thanks.” He will probably leave.
Let him leave. Don’t apologize.
After he goes, take a bath.
FINISH WITH YOUR OWN HANDS. Scream. Moan. Scream any name you wish to scream.
“OH GOD!” “OH JESUS!” “OH MARY!”
Scream your own name if you want to.
And then, when you’re finished, roll your body around in the bubble of warm water and be so glad you can feel again. Remember the days, weeks, months you couldn’t be touched. Couldn’t hug. Couldn’t smile. Be so glad the five-year-old girl you once were is talking to you again. Pat her on the head and tell her she’s doing a really good job.
Say thank you. Trust her.
Trust her to make decisions about the men you will and will not fuck, which ones you will let turn your body into an earthquake, after all she was the first among you, the first among you to know the difference between truly good and voiceless.
D’Antuono, Raimon. Kiss. 2013. Gordon, Kara. Window. 2011. Gordon, M. Irene. First Communion series. 2000. Harvey, Caroline. “Caroline Harvey - Consent.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 5 June 2013. Web. 23 October 2013. Schulman, Jacob. Dancing in the rain. 2013.