"I wish. And then Dad got hurt on the job, went on disability, and got hooked on Oxy. That's when the addiction issues started. Before, he was just a regular old alcoholic. But the pills? They led to other shit. You know how it goes, I’m sure. Dad would get high and his friends would try shit. I got good at dodging them, sneaking out and staying away till they were all passed out, and then barricading my door with a chair and sleeping with a bat. It happened twice more. Once right in the kitchen, right in front of Dad, only he was so strung out on Oxy that he wasn't even on the same planet. The bastard raped me right up against the fridge and then grabbed a beer and acted like nothing had happened. The other time, I was sneaking out. I usually climbed up onto the roof and read books by flashlight. Well, he caught me climbing out the window, pulled me down to the ground, and…yeah. That was one sucked the worst. He…well, let's just say he wasn't satisfied with vaginal rape. I bled from the ass for days."
I can't speak. She squeezes my hand, smiling at me sadly. "It's all right, Saxon. I'm okay, now. Still sucks, still hurts, but…it’s old shit, now."
"Not to me."
"Yeah, I get that. Well, that's when I more or less ran away from home. Got sort of adopted by some older kids, teenagers, seventeen, eighteen. Rough kids. I was safe with them, though. Mainly because they all came from the same sorts of homes. They'd roll up to the corner and I'd jump in their car and we'd cruise, drink, smoke pot. I would stay out all weekend, crash on couches, or in someone's car. Anywhere else. I'd take care of Dad during the week. Keep the house from being roach-infested because I still lived there."
“Why? Why take care of him when he let that shit happen, to his daughter in his house?"
"I wish I fucking knew. I felt bad for him, I guess. He was just…so sad, so lost. I dunno. I tried to run away for good and never go back, but I always did. I’d clean up after him. Make sure there was food in the house. It got worse and worse as the years went on. It became obvious he wasn't…he wasn't going to be…he wasn't ever going to pull out of it."
"He doesn't deserve you."
"Fuck that word: deserve. Who deserves what? Did he deserve to be raised by a monster who beat him and sodomized him? Yeah, he would get high and talk, he’d tell me shit I wish I didn't know about him. Did my mom deserve to die of an aneurysm at thirty? Did I deserve to be raped three times by the time I was thirteen? Who deserves what? Fuck that."
I shake my head. "Yeah, can't argue with that."
"No shit." She cracks the window and lets cool night air flutter her hair. "I was goth for a long time. Big baggy black jeans, hoodies, eyeliner, crazy hair colors, spikes on my clothes, the whole nine yards. And yeah, I was the big titty goth girl. But I hid it. The big titty part, I mean. Hid my body. Hated everyone. Especially men—well, boys. I drank, smoked, went to heavy metal shows, and got into fights. Slept on the street and pretended I was immune to pain. I cut myself." She shows me her wrists, which are both crosshatched with fine white lines—some of the scars are hidden by her tattoos. "Never serious attempts at suicide. Not even cries for help, just… wanting to feel pain that was on the outside, I guess."
"What changed?"
"I met Em." She smiles. "Emily is everything I'm not. Comes from a middle-class home, Mom and Dad are married, together, and in love. Not to say they're not dysfunctional, because who isn't, but she had a stable upbringing. She was a rebel. They kept her on a super tight leash, so she went wild. We met at a concert—Cradle of Filth. She was in the pit and getting knocked around. Had no clue what she was doing. Dressed in cute jeans, a cute top, cute shoes…in the pit at Cradle of Filth." She laughs. "The balls on that one. That was my thought, so I adopted her. Taught her how to mosh, how to throw elbows. Kept her from being smashed to pieces. She, in turn, got me out of my shell. I still don’t know how. Just talked to me. Accepted me. Showed up, no matter what. She was always down for whatever crazy shit I wanted to do and was usually the one to get us out of the trouble I got us into. We boosted a cop car, once. Took a joy ride around town, parked it back where we found it, and never got caught. No idea how we got away with it."
A long silence. " The more time I spent with Em, the more I started to just…move on, I guess. Slowly just…stopped being angry. She was the one who got me out of being goth and into fashion. We'd go to thrift stores, and at first, I just went along, but then I started to see things I liked, so I'd get them and wear them, but they didn't go with my goth outfits, so I needed other shit. But because I was short but with the body of a full-grown woman, it was hard to find stuff that fit, so I taught myself how to sew, so I could make things fit. But then it was like, well, I have this skirt all cut apart, why not add something to make it look even cooler? So I did. And that turned into making my own clothes out of thrift shop finds. And then my friend Rachel wanted a skirt I'd made, and she gave me twenty bucks for it. That was the start of my business."
"Badass."
She grins. "Making clothes is not badass."
"Sure it is. You taught yourself how to make something and you built a business out of it. That’s badass."
"Thanks, then." She smiles at me, then sobers. "I was nineteen before I found my sexuality. Emily helped. She bought me a vibrator for my birthday. Didn't say anything, just gave it to me. I was too scared to use it for like two months. And then finally I did, and it blew up my whole world. It felt good. Amazing. And I could give that to myself. It took the tension out of a hard day. Took my mind off shit. Well, eventually, I got around to asking Emily about sex, like, cooperative, consensual sex. She was active, of course, and always had a boyfriend. Never serious, and I always came first. So she talked about it, how it can feel good. She gave me details. Still does, as a matter of fact.” She laughs, smiling to herself. So I slept with a guy. One of my friends. He knew the basics of what I'd been through and sort of understood what I needed. He was super cool about it. Made sure I was for real about wanting it, super gentle, let me lead. Stopped when I got scared. Didn't make a big deal about it. Kept it between him and me. Knew I wasn't looking for a thing, and never tried to make it a thing. But that was the start. After that, I took sex back in a big way. Started dressing more provocatively. Enjoyed teasing guys. Yeah, I was a cock-tease. But I did also put out, so…yeah. I learned to enjoy sex, and then crave it."
"Crave it, huh?"
She shrugs. "Yeah. I'm not, like, a certified nympho or anything, I just like sex, crave it, think about it a lot—sometimes it feels like a need. A requirement."
"Why, do you think?" I ask.
"Ooooh, psychoanalyzation. Talk dirty to me, baby." She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. "Classic sexual assault survivor reaction to trauma, Saxon. Repression and/or hyperexpression of sexuality. In my case, I went through both. Repression first, and then the hyperexpression. I had my power stolen. I was a child. I didn't choose it, didn't want it. It was brutal, violent, and vile. And that was after my mother dying, my father abandoning me through neglect, and being forced to care for myself at an age where all I should have had to worry about was fuckin' Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer. Instead, I was fixing my own breakfast, brushing my own hair, and walking myself to school. Watching my father vomit off the side of the couch. Cleaning up said vomit. I remember watching him choke on his own puke and realizing at six that I had to turn him, a grown man, with my tiny ass six-year-old body, onto his side so he didn't fuckin' die.
"And then I was raped three times in two years. So, I turtled. I know the cliche and all that about goths—' It's not a phase Mom, it’s who I am.' Maybe for some people it really is just an enjoyment of the music and the black clothes and all that. I know for me, though, it truly was a classic psychological thing. It was armor. Anger. An expression of rage and pain. Fuck the world and fuck everyone in it. I am pain, and all that. So fucking stereotypical, right? For years, I hid myself. Not just my femininity, but any semblance of who I was. Or maybe…maybe it was that I didn't have a self. My self was survival. My goth phase was an exploration of who I was and who I wanted to be. This shit can go deep, you know? How deep do you wanna go?"
"All the way, darlin'. Deep as you're willing to go."
"I've thought about it a lot over the years, obviously,” she answers. “Me and Em have talked it to fuckin' death. Goth was armor. It was protection against the world while I healed inside. Gave those open wounds caused by all the shit I went through time to scar over. And then eventually, I was healed enough inside that I could take off the armor and start figuring out who the fuck I really was." She tugs at her jacket lapels. "This? Making clothes? It was something only for me, at first. I felt like I needed to set down this concrete thing, this…fuck, how do I put it? I had to be different. It wasn't enough to stop wearing baggy black jeans and baggy black hoodies and black eyeliner and all that shit. It wasn't enough to wear quote-unquote 'normal' clothes that put my femaleness out there for the world to see…and want. I had to have something that was only mine, so I started making things that only I could have. But then the act of creating clothing that was unique and beautiful and weird became its own thing. Its own reward. And then people wanted things I made, and that was the greatest thing I could imagine."
"Like I said, badass." I mean it, too. She's a hardcore badass survivor, a warrior in her own right.
"How does this all relate to sex?" She waves a hand. "Like I said, no big mystery. After I started emerging from my shell and Emily introduced me to pleasure and to what my body could feel that wasn't pain, it became almost an addiction. Or maybe not almost. I’d felt nothing but pain for so fucking long, emotional pain that made me crave physical pain just to dull the internal agony. And then, fucking miracle upon miracle, I discovered pleasure. I could touch myself and feel good. So instead of cutting to get away from the agony of all the bullshit, I could give myself pleasure. I could touch my pussy and make myself come and feel fuckin' amazing…and that relief, that escape lasted longer than cutting. It felt…healthier, I guess. I mean, duh, right? But when you're alone in the world with only another fucked up kid as your only guide in life? What's right, what's wrong? What's healthy, what's not? How do you know?" She shrugs.
"It was a big step from masturbation to sex, though. Sex meant contact with men. Sex meant letting men see me and touch me. It was fucking terrifying. I'd hidden my body for so long, because when you experience what I did, you don't want to give anyone the slightest reason to think about you like that, like something to be wanted, because being wanted means they'll take it from you. As I experimented with clothes that didn't just hide my body but even accentuated it, I found that if I paired it with a big fuckin' attitude, I had the power. As long as I never put myself in a position where a man could overpower me again, I could let them look. Let 'em see that I was a woman, and they could want me, but motherfucker, you can't have me. Not unless I say so. So yeah, I went a little power-mad, I guess. Dressed provocatively and refused to let anyone come near me. Tease? Maybe. But I had to know I had that power. That I could control what happened to me, to my body, to my life."
"How do you get over that last step?" I ask. "How did you find the courage to choose sex despite what you went through?"
"I knew I wanted more than what I could give myself. I'd talked to Em. I'd watched her hookup with guys and heard her talk about sex like it was the greatest fuckin' thing ever. She'd tell me about guys goin' down on her. Gettin' plowed and loving every second of it. She made it sound…fun. I watched her choose her boy toys. Watched her figure out her own power. I'd play her wingman, and honestly watching her journey from sheltered rich girl—rich to me, at least—to being a wild child who did what she wanted and gave zero fucks…that was inspirational to me.
"So I…I wanted it for myself. I wanted to walk into a club, pick a guy, make him want me, take what I wanted from him, and kick him to the curb. I wanted my own power. And there is power in female sexuality—a fuckin' lot of it. And I wanted it. Bad. I wanted it more than I was afraid. I picked Ricardo. He was this walking contradiction. Huge, built, tattooed, a scary motherfucker with a rap sheet a mile long, a dude I'd seen hand out brutal beatings like it was nothin'…but only when provoked. I knew he'd killed people, too. But then, he had this sweetness, at least around me. So fuckin' sweet. Like having a wild bear that adopted you and decided you were his ward to protect. And he did. I could walk through the worst neighborhoods in Boston with Ricardo at my side and know I was absolutely safe. Because no one fucked with him. And I mean no one."
