I’ve hated every man I have ever slept with. A deep rage bubbling from within me. Rage at what they took from me, and how little it must have meant to them.
The light in my room is dim; it's going to rain again, and neither of my windows sit in the right spot to catch the source of the light. I’ve tried my best to illuminate the space, but it somehow always manages to feel like a cave of sorts. Like a lair. It's my lair.
No man has taken this room from me.
My room at home is lighter. It's my tower. My treehouse. The windows are placed perfectly. The sunset comes in in the evenings, and in the very early mornings, some of the sunrise too. In the summer, cool wind blows through—sea breezes coming from the bay, and the smell of salt.
No man has taken that room from me.
However, I spent so many years praying for just that. Through the eighteen years I inhabited that room, I was tormented by a yearning for some kind of skin-to-skin release.
For a certain period, one whose length has never been quite clear, my daydreams and nighttime fantasies were filled with snippets and images of one face. These fantasies lit something up in me, like a spark or a shock. Even now, at my evolved age, I keep him locked away, deep down, in a sparkly little box.
The first time I met Danny was in science class at the beginning of ninth grade. I know that is when it started. It has always been concrete in my mind. Everything to follow was rather murky. We were randomly assigned to be lab partners on one of the first days of school. Classic. Perfect. Teenage fairytale early 2000s soap opera pilot.
I begrudgingly introduced myself, expecting an annoying teenage boy, and instead was met with some kind of magic, a warm familiarity. There was no escaping him after that.
So we were always friends. Friends who knew they were more than friends, but nothing ever happened. At least not before years were spent exchanging looks, touches we both ignored, and text messages with underlying yearning.
I look at him, sitting next to me with a cigarette between his lips. The red light and smoke make me think of the devil. Of hell. Oh, this is anything but hell. He looks over at me and grins. This little nervous grin with a smirk hidden underneath. I reach over and touch his hand, taking the cigarette for myself. He stares at me and doesn’t say anything. Just stares. His eyes are very calm. And when he finally does speak, his voice is calm and raspy. Like a blanket that only lets droplets of joy touch you.
*
March is a cold month in Maine. The title of spring that it receives does not align with the dumpings of snow throughout the month, or the raw cold rain that pours down. Long stretches of days pass where we don't see the sun. Grey. Grey. Grey.
*
Danny texted me one night asking to see me. I was sixteen and elated to escape the monotonous winter boredom. I told my parents I was seeing my friends, and when he pulled up in front of my house, I sped to the car and jumped in, breathless. He drove an old Mercedes. Extra cool because he fixed it up himself.
A few hours later, my face was cold from riding around the frozen town with the window open, and we were back outside my house. I checked the upstairs windows and saw no lights on. Telling him to park down the street, we crept into the house and up the stairs. His hand was in mine. Finally.
I pulled him into my room, silently closing the door behind us and turning to look at him. For a few seconds, we didn't move, we simply stared into each other's eyes. He had beautiful brown eyes with so much depth. He could speak a thousand words in just his stare. There was nothing I ever wanted more than for him to stare at me. It made my heart pound and my breath speed up. It gave my body tingles that threatened to lift me off the ground.
When we finally kissed, I pulled him into my bed, ripping off clothes until he was all over me, and tried my best to imprint his smell on my skin.
*
This fantasy got me through the long months of winter. The cold March night that he really texted me, my stomach was in knots immediately, and I diverted the conversation away from anything that would end with us hanging out.
When he really kissed me, I was seventeen. We stood against a brick wall. He kissed me softly with passion and bit my lip and told me I was a good kisser, and I wanted more until I didn’t. He let me go with grace, even walking me home. He didn't take anything from me, and I hated him anyway.
*
The first man that I had sex with wouldn’t kiss me and didn’t want to wear a condom. I was on my period and threw my underwear, complete with a pad, underneath his hotel bed. The bed he was sharing with his friend, who happened to be in the bathroom, occupied by my friend Mari at that very moment.
His name was Parker. He wore a backwards baseball cap and a plain white T-shirt and gave off the vibe that he lived in the woods somewhere and rode four-wheelers as a hobby. He probably had a girlfriend.
There is no way to make this story a romantic one. It was the most soulless sex I have ever had, and it was how I came to learn that men don’t actually care about your body as long as you let them fuck you. I remember feeling like a Barbie doll that night. A plastic body for this man who wouldn’t kiss me, to do whatever he wanted with. I felt a weird pride at finally being the desirable woman I had always wanted to be, but held onto an underlying discomfort deep down. Besides, I was set on having this experience, no amount of doubt would have stopped me from following through.
When the other two emerged from the bathroom, interrupting us, I was met with an accidental elbow to the face as Parker ripped his dick from my mouth. It hurt. I got dressed, fishing my underwear from under the bed and sending a prayer of thanks that they had not gotten lost. Then we left, Mari and I, running through the hotel lobby hand in hand.
The sex had been surprisingly good in the context of the situation, and the glee I shared with Mari over having ‘conned’ the two men into sleeping with us gave me a feeling of great power. But during the Uber ride home, it was difficult not to dwell on the memory of Parker repeatedly slapping my ass in the line for the club for his friend’s entertainment. I kind of liked it and kind of hated it. I kind of liked it because I hated it and that made me hate myself. I had let him play with me and he took that as a right. So I hated him more.
*
A year later, in the final days of December, Mari and I returned to the scene of the crime, two different men on our arms. This time, I had sex in the bathroom, on the counter, and it hurt my back. His name was Steven. We took a shower together, and he let me investigate all of his tattoos and told me he did construction and liked my favorite band, and I didn't hate him at all.
He asked for my number as we were leaving his hotel, and he kissed me, hard. In the spring of that year, I got a text from Steven. He was in my city and wanted to see me. He took me out for drinks at a dimly lit, frankly claustrophobic speakeasy. An hour later, we were both thoroughly drunk and decided to go dancing.
In the dark, loud, sweaty haze of a club downtown, he spun me back and forth, just as he had when we had first made eye contact months before. He was tall and I could feel his breath on my neck as he held me against him. I told him that I was insecure about my height. He smiled, told me not to be, and told me it especially didn’t matter because he was so much taller. It made me smile.
We went back to his hotel and had sex in a real bed. With him, the Barbie doll had feelings and thoughts of her own. He made me feel like a girl. The next day he left.
*
Now here I am, fantasizing again. Steven never asked me for my number when I left his hotel that December night. He never kissed me goodbye either. I had been the one to kiss him, hard. He had seemed uninterested, now that what I had come to do was over. His once warm brown eyes were now glazed over as if he were already somewhere else, and his movements were stiff. He no longer clung to me like I was a rare jewel he had mined himself. His sudden coldness embarrassed me, and I hated that, regardless of my embarrassment, he didn’t leave my mind for months.
*
It took a handful more of these encounters for me to begin putting the pieces together.
While he was the first man, Parker was not the first person I ever had sex with. When I came to college, the label of bisexual was one I had long since become comfortable with. Almost immediately after arriving on campus, I became tangled up with a woman who was four years my senior. Losing my virginity turned into nine complicated months of confusion, and yearning, and anger that eventually became something that needed to be forgotten. However, within all of that, there was never any hate. Never any rage. Never any disgust. I think the newness of the experience clouded my vision and inhibited any of the reflection I would later return to. I never found myself pursuing any other women.
For the next two years, I would bumble through life, craving validation, fantasizing about any man that piqued my interest, and wondering why my fantasies were so rich when in reality, lying naked with men made my skin crawl. Sex was becoming more unbearable as time went on, and I supposed I simply hadn’t found the right person.
*
Now I am a lesbian, but I guess I always was. Writing this story has made that clear. This piece of me was always under the surface, waiting for me to go through the backbreaking manual labor of digging it out.
The pieces fell into place when I met my Jay. Her texts never turned my stomach into knots, and the first time I touched her skin, I knew I never wanted to stop. The first time we slept together, my mind didn’t wander or dissociate. Instead, she made my body buzz. I felt alive in that moment in a way I had never experienced. I finally felt like I was living one of my fantasies. One where my only desire is to be closer and where I feel satisfaction. Where nothing else matters except for my hands on her hips and the feeling of her mouth on my collarbone. And so finally, the pieces fell into place. I welcomed them, feeling a familiarity with my conclusions, and confidence in being able to hold her as tangible evidence in my arms.
In our most intimate moments, no part of me has ever wanted to hide, or freeze, or run away. In these moments, it is always and completely her. On my skin, in my hair, and gracing my taste buds with her sweetness. The tight grip of her hand on my wrist or my throat or my thigh has never scared me. Her soft touch has never made me want to crawl out of my skin. And never, in her presence, have I become the plastic doll I once envisioned myself as.
She has brought light into my lair and become the salty breeze that blows through the windows of my tower.
She has not taken these rooms from me.
She has adorned them with soft sighs and murmurs of my name. And now they are far more beautiful than before.
-Virginia Susan
Virginia Susan is a recent college graduate. She studied Communications and political science and has been writing creatively her whole life. Virginia is passionate about telling stories from new perspectives and uncovering experiences outside of mainstream media. She also loves to write poetryShe plays ultimate frisbee and is a currently backpacking around Europe. Virginia hopes to be an author of fiction novels one day.
I’ve hated every man I have ever slept with. A deep rage bubbling from within me. Rage at what they took from me, and how little it must have meant to them.
The light in my room is dim; it's going to rain again, and neither of my windows sit in the right spot to catch the source of the light. I’ve tried my best to illuminate the space, but it somehow always manages to feel like a cave of sorts. Like a lair. It's my lair.
No man has taken this room from me.