My eleven-year-old self was very much like my six-year-old self: innocent and sentient enough to know I was being hurt way too much.  My family constantly gave me the message by directly stating, “Luz, you are sadistic, thoughtless, and lucky”—as if luck were a disdainful characteristic.

Leo gave a disdainful snort before telling me, “I know you’re going to find the perfect guy who’ll do everything for you, and you’re going to be a complete bitch to him.”

I shouldn’t have been hurt by that, yet I was: so much so that I recall it seven years or so later.

♦

Sam was talking to me about my writing today, when it occurred to me, I’m desperately trying to reclaim through my writing the sexuality I once so often and so sensually expressed.  Since I can remember, my experiences have beaten me into the gilded husk I am now.  So I’m trying to reclaim the essence of my budding sexuality, before it was so thoroughly, literally assaulted.

I’m not talking about showing skin to get attention; I’m talking about being sexy.  I was getting ready this morning to go to the DMV (now the MVS whatever) for my license, and I found myself actually spending time defining and shaping my hair curls.  Fifteen minutes later, my hair looked great.  I threw a tight tank top on, pulled on some light blue jeans and black boots, slipped into my cargo-style fall jacket, and I was out the door looking better than I had in months.  I was getting looks, and I felt them, and I was energized by that attention.

The DMV was muggy.  Instead of zipping up my jacket, as I normally do, I took the jacket off.  I called attention to my collar and breasts by swirling my fingers absent-mindedly across my collar.  A Supervisor joked about taking me out for dinner.  I giggled shyly, grabbed my papers, and walked away—the best way to reject a man.

Perhaps I’m sadistic, after all.  In those moments, I enjoy my control over a man’s sexuality.  I enjoy making him undress me, imagine himself with me.  Mostly, I enjoy being able to walk away from their desire.

At once, my feminists principles shudder with disgust.  Why am I using my body instead of my mind to gain my advantages?  Those feminist principles don’t understand: my body was taken from me.  Looking hot and being flattered reassures me I’m not the dirty creature I feel I am, nor is every man in the room a rapist: I don’t need to hide.  Men and I can be adults about our desires.  I don’t need to insult them with my fears.

Funny, isn’t?  Strange, I mean, how infrequently the conversation about rape considers male non-rapists?

Perhaps mine is a sexuality that shouldn’t be recalled.  I fear that what made me feel good today, that sexual display I put on, is just me recalling the habits that led men to think of me in sexual terms.

But that logic is the logic of a victim.  I didn’t “lead” men to rape and abuse me.  Moreover, why shouldn’t I be thought of in sexual terms by the same person who respects my intellectuality?  I read Chomsky, I like to homemake, and I enjoy sex.  Why can’t I be taken seriously for all three of those expressions of my personality at once?

I’m angry at myself, and I’m angry at the system that makes me feel so frustrated about myself.  I’m desperately, continually attempting my escape, but the ways it’s imprisoned me aren’t always as conceivable as bars or locks.  This site is a record of that.

In a way, that comforts me.  It means I’ll never stop writing.