Generational Nausea

I am hungry, and I am counting on my fingers the girls I know who haven’t been raped.

Something sick and ancient. I am 22 now, old enough to be comfortable, to be better. But still I look every man in the eye and feel nauseous. Disgusted. I say nothing, though, of course; I know what they could do. Something sick and ancient.

My boss wants to fuck me. A slimy hand curling around my waist, around my lungs. Squeeze. He laughed as he told me to bend over. I thought of all the times it wasn’t funny. I was told to report it, but I didn’t for a long time. ‘Jokes’ don’t get very far through a system created by men, and I liked to close my eyes and pretend the feeling isn’t so ancient. He wants to fire me now because I wouldn’t let him touch me, talks shit about me to co-workers who don’t find me interesting (not that I blame them, not that I don’t feel the same). I wrote an email last night though, finally, to a Lady in HR, sat in the corner of my bar, for £13.50 an hour. It wasn’t for me. I hadn’t been angry enough, or perhaps I was too angry and he enjoyed it. He grabbed another girl’s ass amid a busy shift, slimy hand sloping down her spine. Something sick and ancient. It’s easier to fight when it’s for other people. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened to her, if I had had a little more of my own spine. Something sick and ancient.

I woke at 6:30AM today. Golden light through the leaves, through the cracks in the curtains riddled with mould that I no longer feel when I breathe in. Squeeze. An outside so beautiful and a glass pane in the way. I haven’t seen the clock at this time for months; I work nights. Lack of sleep leaves me dizzy when I pull myself up from the mattress. I read, I write lists, I breathe (squeeze). Something sick and ancient. My boyfriend murmurs in his sleep next to me, eyelids flickering in REM. I am ungraceful when I move. He stirs. He wants to punch my boss, maybe wrap a hand around his neck, squeeze; something sick and ancient. I tell him it won’t help. I don’t feel nauseous when I look at my boyfriend: tall, strong, muscle. Mostly peaceful. My protector, maybe, something sick and ancient, because I won’t pretend I don’t need one. I am only safe to go outside when he is with me (something sick and ancient), and even then I watch him stare daggers into men as he reads their minds. I wish I couldn’t. I go outside and I feel nauseous. Fear response. Deer in a wood full of hunters (how unfeminist to call yourself a deer, how embarrassing to feel so weak - girls run the world now, haven’t you heard?). My legs are heavy, my eyelids are too. I never said I was strong enough to fight any of it. So he carries me, the last good man on earth. Maybe I can’t read their minds. Maybe I never could. He sleeps next to me every night. Sometimes I worry what he dreams about. Maybe I can’t read their minds. I wish I couldn’t.

I think I am a little broken, writes a 22 year old girl in her bed. Something sick and ancient. It’s 8:40AM now. I am hungry, and I am counting on my fingers the girls I know who haven’t been raped. Or haven’t said so. Nobody talks about it anymore, something sick and ancient. My left hand stays by my side. It mostly goes in two different ways when you’re assaulted; hypersexual, or complete shut down. Don’t touch me. Nausea. Both a bid for control. I tell my friends I wish I had their case, waiting for it all day, so at least my boyfriend could be fed, at least I could spare myself the embarrassment of freezing up every time. It doesn’t matter if I want it; my body remembers something I don’t. Something sick and ancient. A deer in front of a hunter (gunless and gentle). Disconnect. The most pathetic bid for control a body could muster, ridiculous. It’s unfeminist too, to say that I feel useless now. Though maybe I wasn’t feminist enough in the first place, too quiet and too tired to write an email until it happened to someone else. I don’t know how to be enough now, with a body too stiff with old fear to give enough to the only man I’ve ever loved. I make him dinner instead, bake him shortbread and apple crumble, warm like his hands. I do what I can, know it can’t be enough. It shouldn’t matter, I know it shouldn’t. It does. It breeds a new fear, too, that I’d be feeding his desire to fire me too.
We’re letting you go, so sorry. You just aren’t working up to our standards.

He loves me, though, and it’s mostly unconditional. Be kind, be loyal. My protector, maybe, something sick and ancient, and I won’t pretend I don’t need him, the last good man. Golden light through the leaves. I’d give up if it weren’t for him. I’d give up, too, were he ever to go. No good men left then. We could never have sex again, he says, it would be fine, he wouldn’t mind. But I feel it: the hunger, the ache. Something sick and ancient. There’s nothing like being wanted. You can’t supplement it. But sometimes, a body can’t outwardly exhibit it either. So a little bit, I am useless. Unfeminist.

These feelings translate so smoothly into the stomach. The connection between your mind and your gut; it holds secrets, I think. If I am so useless, what can I do but take up less space? The less I am, the less there is to take, maybe the more I can choose to give. I can breathe shorter breaths. Something sick and ancient. I don’t feel the mould in my lungs, and I don’t feel the rot in my stomach. I weighed myself today, though I’m not really allowed. I do it anyway, because I am too old to be afraid of fat, ridiculous, unfeminist. 45.5kg. BMI indicates that anyone under 18.4 on the scale is underweight. I’m 18.5. But the BMI scale isn’t real anymore, it’s been proven to be wrong, and I want to be at least 43kg. 42. 40. Something sick and ancient. I keep a baggy shirt on, sweat through the hottest days of the year. I can feel the weight on me as I move, and I feel nauseous again. I am not fat; I am sick. This changes nothing. I want to be bone, to have less to see. A hip so sharp it cuts the next slimy hand to try and reach me when my boyfriend isn’t there. And on the other end of the scale, heavy and painful: I want to be beautiful. Someone who is allowed to want. To feel less repulsive, to earn the right to express a desire. The last good man on earth is deserving of someone less offensive. But I am not fat, I am sick. And so I know that I may never be less repulsive, even at 40, at 35. Something sick and ancient. Maybe that insatiability does make me useless, but disappearing a little doesn’t scare me. I do not fear the mould in my lungs, and I do not fear the rot in my stomach. I only fear the control I’ll never touch.

So I am trapped, a little. Gifted the last good man on earth, with a body too full of flesh and fear to give him what he deserves. So repulsed by the eyes and the teeth and the minds of every other man with their sick and ancient impulses. So repulsed by my own gall to take up as much space as I do, or any at all, existing with, apparently, all too much to take. I wonder if the Lady in HR will reply to my email. I wonder what they’ll say. They ask me what I was wearing, something sick and ancient. I look at the ground in shame: My skin; sorry.