The summer before I turned thirteen, I spent copious amounts of time perched on the edge of a ***** wooden chair in the corner of my friend's kitchen. Sometimes we'd sit together watching her mother make us dinner, the way her hands moved gracefully chopping up onions, and with a flick of the wrist, tossing them into the cast iron pan.
Other times we'd sit with her sisters and fill the table with large stacks of books, reading our favorite lines out loud to each other. Laughter bubbling up to our ears, a quiet contentment settling over the room.
This time was different. It was just us girls, the oldest of us was playing with my hair as I leaned back against the thick wooden frame of my chair, humming quietly to myself. The ******* the other side of me slid open her phone, them immediately turned to me. When I looked at her, she squirmed in her seat as though she had committed a crime and the kitchen had somehow transformed into an interrogation room.
Finally, she broke the silence, saying, "So, uh, I told my friend, the boy you met the other night, about your whole...thing." Instantly, I knew that this "thing" she was talking about was my crush on the girl down the street. She was still uncomfortable with the subject so I gave her points for trying and swallowed my pride. I asked his response and she glanced back to her phone while I waited for a cry of disgust that never came.
Instead I got a reaction I never knew I should fear. Her phone screen displayed a simple text message with only two words. "That's hot."
As if I should care. As if even though I didn't want men, they were still allowed to want me. Still allowed to think that they owned me.
The way men think that my life is a game and at the end of the day what I really want is a big strong man to take care of me.
All women fear ****** assault, but there's a special kind of torture that seemed made only for me. Corrective **** is what they call it when a man thinks that the best cure for a lesbian is to get a taste of a man.
As if men cannot fathom the idea that women were not made to please them. As if they can't comprehend the idea that there are women who don't want to have *** with them.
The way straight men complain about how uncomfortable gay men make them feel, as if men are allowed to say no and women are not.
And at nearly thirteen years old, I didn't know any of this and I bore his words as though they were a compliment, because even if I didn't want him I'd been raised to think that pleasing men was to be my only goal in life.
I told myself I shouldn't be angry. I begged my skin to stop crawling, my insides to stop revolting against me. What was wrong with me? Why did a compliment feel like an assault?
But a part of me recognized, even at twelve, that those words were not a compliment, but rather a threat. This boy knew I didn't want him, couldn't want him, but that didn't seem to matter to him, because he wanted me. I have been taught that men always get what they want, so why shouldn't he get to have me?
With two words, I felt like I'd been sold into slavery. I opened my mouth to speak but no words came out, silenced by the waves of shame crashing over my mind.
I was a girl, nearly thirteen, sitting in her friend's kitchen, and realizing that I'd never be free.