u/divinebovine1989

Someone on another subreddit was asking about why anti-white racism is largely ignored (lol.. is it really?) when she was kicked out of a POC only discord channel in a rude way.

I know everyone here recognizes why racial discrimination is wrong, but also knows why anti white discrimination and anti POC racism aren't equivalent, and that "equating" the two experiences disregards the reality of systemic racial disadvantage. (One papercut vs 1000 papercuts).

Someone who was biracial said that they were picked on for being white passing and they had no one to talk to about it because they are afraid of what it looks like to others. She was saying this in agreement with OP, that anti-white racism is an issue and that "black people can say what they want." This comment got 100+ upvotes. I sympathize with her plight, which is more complex that OP's plight, but it doesn't acknowledge that POC who aren't white passing literally have the same problem -- no safe space. The OP was literally in a POC safe space, which is why she was "attacked" out of it. I mentioned in my comment that I was racially bullied too, but the difference in my comment versus her comment is that 1) I actually answer the question by acknowledging structural racism, which ,2) I say POCs need safe spaces and they probably should have politely told her to leave instead of ganging up on her (depending on what she was saying/doing.. i don't know enough.. I'm just giving her the benefit of the doubt), 3) I started with "I'm brown..." and the biracial commenter started with, "I'm white passing."

I fought for us, lol, and got downvoted (-19). Other people mentioned systemic racism too, all downvoted. It's so defeating.

I probably shouldn't care, but my arguments defending my existence and my views are hijacking my mind.

Was hoping you guys could help me reset reality. I'm probably making way too big of a deal out of this.

Here is the thread if you'd like to see: https://www.reddit.com/r/TooAfraidToAsk/s/j1x9FsXqrP

Edit: The post I'm complaining about was eventually taken down my moderators. No reason mentioned.

Hi! I have a piece I was hoping someone would be able to look over. I don't want to give too much away, because I want to see if the themes are coming through as is, but it's basically about a "chaotic adventures at daycare," told from the perspective of a child. I'd like feedback on thematic coherence, engagement and pacing. If you'd like the link, you can DM me, and I'm happy to read your work, too! I posted an excerpt below.

[At the freakshow] a bald man with a thick mustache and an earring in one of his ears was holding a flaming sword.  

He turned to his side and swallowed the sword and its flames all the way down.  I could not believe my eyes.  

When he was done, he took a drink of water from a plastic bottle.  

I said I wanted to see him swallow the flame again.  I wanted to see if I could catch the trick.  

“I can’t, my throat is sore.”  The fire-eater said.

So he was for real…

“Did you always want to be a fireeater?”  I asked. 

“Yes,”  said the fire-eater.  “I dreamed of this when I was a young boy and now my dreams have come true.”

Candy and the fire-eater laughed together like old friends.   I wondered what was so funny  about his dreams coming true. I was inspired.  If he could defy the impossible and grow up to eat fire, I could do anything. 

Hi! I have a story called Nazar, which means "evil eye" in Hindi. I won't give too much away, because I want to see if people can pick up on the themes and whether they're coming through. But basically, it's a story about a chaotic daycare, told from a child's perspective. I'd love any feedback that you have, especially on engagement, story structure and thematic coherence. I want to see if I'm "going anywhere" with this piece. Please DM me if you'd like to read or swap! Thanks for your time.

Excerpt:

[At the freakshow] a bald man with a thick mustache and an earring in one of his ears was holding a flaming sword.  

He turned to his side and swallowed the sword and its flames all the way down.  I could not believe my eyes.  

When he was done, he took a drink of water from a plastic bottle.  

I said I wanted to see him swallow the flame again.  I wanted to see if I could catch the trick.  

“I can’t, my throat is sore.”  The fire-eater said.

So he was for real...

“Did you always want to be a fire-eater?”  I asked. 

“Yes,”  said the fire-eater.  “I dreamed of this when I was a young boy and now my dreams have come true.”

Candy and the fire-eater laughed together like old friends.   I wondered what was so funny  about his dreams coming true. I was inspired.  If he could defy the impossible and grow up to eat fire, I could do anything. 

When I was a freshman, I wanted to attend the homecoming dance.  Sarah’s mom was going to pick me up and take our friend group there.  I hadn’t told my parents about it thinking they would say “no” because of the boys. 

My dad saw me from the kitchen when I reached the bottom of the stairs.  “Where do you think you’re going?” He asked. “We are watching Zee TV.”

He was always so insistent I was as “Indian” as possible and did everything he could to extinguish the “American” out of me.  

“Dad, I don’t want to watch Indian soaps.  It’s Friday, I want to hang out with my friends,” I implored. 

“No,” he said curtly.

Through the window I saw Sarah’s mom pull up on the driveway.  

“You’re so unfair,” I protested, “You always try to control me for no reason!” 

“Hopeeeeeeeeeeee!”  His scream inflected up and trailed into the air like it does when he loses control.  He raised his hand to scare me, “Don’t talk back to the parents!” 

Adrenaline numbs my body.  On instinct, I stepped around my father to make my way toward the kitchen door and onto the driveway, determined to not let him ruin my high school experiences. 

Suddenly,  I felt the golden ring on his heavy hand slam into my shoulder bone. I crashed into the window. The sharp blinds jabbed the bones in my arm and echoed with a menacing rattle.  My dad cornered me as Sarah’s mom gently honked on the driveway to let me know she was here.  

“Randi!” He screamed.  He was so mad he could not think.  The word randi brought me back to when I was a toddler, slapped for sitting in public with my legs wide apart. He had taken me to a corner in the hall, away from guests. The sting of his hand sprouted tears from my eyes and left a cloud of confusion.

I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it was damning, the final word.   It wasn’t until later I learned it means whore. 

I ducked under his raised arms and finagled my way out of the corner, toward the kitchen door, then to the driveway.  I swiftly got into the car and shut the door. 

“Everything okay?” Sarah’s mom asked. 

“Yes, everything is okay,” I remembered to be polite. “Thank you for picking me up.”  

I don’t know why my dad didn’t follow me out onto the driveway.  My stomach sank when I thought about what would happen when I got home.  I figured I would be hit more, even though I got As, even though I behaved, even though I was polite.  

To my disappointment, nothing sexual happened at homecoming.  My group of friends danced wildly, with abandon, under flashing strobelights in the dark.  I stood by the snack table, watching them. Everyone told me to not be shy.  I had wanted this – fought for this – and I was too scared to let go and grab it. Something held me back.  

It wasn’t until I went to the bathroom afterward that I noticed a golf-sized bruise on my arm.  

In my diary that night, I sulked that I was not fun enough for my friends.  

I am looking for a beta to read my story, Randi, which means "whore" in Hindi. It's about a South Asian American girl navigating cultural constraints and racialized projections on her journey toward reclaiming her sexuality. Trigger warning: sexual assault, physical abuse, racism. Please DM if you'd like the google doc link to the story. Thanks for your time and I hope to hear from you!

When I was little, I thought I could predict the future. A good morning meant a bad afternoon, a bad morning meant a good afternoon... If I got a question wrong in class my morning would sour, but then I could count on being the fastest miler at PE later that day. Sometimes entire days were bad, but they came with the promise of an equal number of good ones, where I'd do well on tests and miles and capture the flag. But when time ran out, I'd brace myself for the bad. Quietly, I counted and equated the days, down to mornings, afternoons, hours, minutes, predicting what would happen as it unfolded. When fortune turned, the count restarted, and I’d calculate how long I’d have to be scared or excited over what would happen next.

Sometimes, as an adult, I find myself sinking back into this childhood arithmetic to help me get by. But now I know counting does not make pain's randomness go away: it merely dulls its shock on my nervous system. Like everything else in the universe, pain just is. All I could do as a kid was the math: keep acing tests, running miles, sneaking onto the other side to quietly capture the flag, without anyone noticing I was there.

I’d count to feel myself. In high school, when I’d run up hills, I’d count my steps to keep pace when my legs felt like they were going to collapse. One.. two.. the rhythm of resilience coursed through me.

I’d count years as they went by. Accumulating experiences. Data in my nervous system. I look back on life through my adult eyes, and I see there is no equation that distributes “goodness and badness” evenly, not within one's life or across the world. There are other patterns, to the way they are meted out. There are no equations to make it make sense, only to prove that it’s real, so I can brace myself against it.

It’s invisible: this cage built by people’s brains. It obscures me before I can open my mouth.

Something I wrote a bit ago about my experiences with my family. Was wondering if anyone could relate to being gaslit by both your family and community.

“It wasn’t that bad.”  Nisha’s eyes looked at me, stoic as ice.  We were at the airport.  My mom and I  were sending Nisha off after one of our rare family get-togethers, with just us three. 

Nisha turned away, her unforgiving eyes now inaccessible, sealed in conviction.  “Lots of Indian kids go through that.”  Her words, neither commanding or aggressive, hung in the air, still and permanent, matter of fact as a baseball bat slamming into my face.  My thoughts spiraled into a fog of doubt.  Words could not leave my mouth, but my emotions were screaming.   

Ever since the night before,  I sensed my mom and sister were avoiding me.  On the car ride to the airport,  I think I had been crying to them, trying to be understood for the thousandth time.  I was desperately trying to make amends, restore the glue that stuck us together:  the family’s belief that I am at fault.  I am the rotten egg, a bad child.  This collective belief kept the “peace” they spoke about.  A  peace I was not entitled to.  

In my mind, I was pleading to them, through tears, “It’s me, I’m sorry.  But try to see my point of view.  I do not mean to hurt anyone…” 

I can’t remember the words I was saying, but it was clear from their cold stares that I had only excuses.  They experienced my pleas as prevarications.   Nothing could exonerate me.  

In the car, I was tense, and these days when I am tense, I try to grasp the facts to stay grounded.  “Reality-testing” was a skill I had learned in therapy.  I meticulously examined events from the night before, like a lawyer preparing a defense for court: 

 It was dinner time. I  had been helping set up the table.  I laid out the place mats, the napkins, the silverware.   My sister filled glasses with water from the fridge and my mother stood in front of the stove heating rotis on the tawa.  I thought we were all set, so I sat down. 
 
I should have known better than to relax.  As soon as I receded into the soft cushion of the chair, my mother snapped, “What are you doing?  Your younger sister is working and you’re just sitting!”  
 
Her sharp tone cut through me, and my mind splintered into self accusations, spears backing me into a corner.  I reminded myself to breathe and harnessed my grip on reality.  I recounted the facts, from my point of view: To me, everything seemed done and taken care of.  I didn't know what else to do.  It was my first time in her new house.   I didn’t even know where everything was in the kitchen.  I was out of habit.   I mustered some compassion for myself.  I did not mean harm.  I am not evil, I soothed my anxious mind. 

I tried to explain, but it seemed like everything I said to my family was distorted by a preconceived verdict.  There was no space for a trial because I had never been innocent.  

“Just look around.  Think for once!”  She reaches her hand out to slap me.   I am thirty three years old, and here I was, being scolded, a child who does not know how to behave or what to do.   I stood there, stunned, frozen in a knot of shame and humiliation.  Tears moistened my eyes as I filled with dread over what my mistake could have been. 

She pointed to the fridge. “Take out the yogurt!  I shouldn’t have to tell you.”  

Oh, I forgot the yogurt.  How could I have forgotten?  I am hopelessly convicted.  If anyone were watching, they would see me, the stupid daughter who needs to be yelled at, who has to be taught a lesson, because she can’t …

Before I knew it, I was blindsided in the face by my own fist.  I found myself on the kitchen floor, crouched in a ball, crying.  I clobbered myself until physical pain drowned out my inner anguish. My therapist would say that I was punishing myself, but I felt like I just wanted everyone to go away and leave me alone. I was giving them what they wanted.   It’s my version of throwing a white flag into the air.  You’re right!  I am stupid!  I am giving myself what I deserve, so you can back off.  Thank you very much. 

Even when I am safe in my apartment in New Jersey, away from them, I’ll be up at four in the morning, locked in endless internal arguments, recounting events. I test reality with questions like*, how is yelling at me “teaching me” to be less absent-minded?* I think, Sure, I could have asked her if she needed anything, or she could have just nicely asked me to take out the yogurt.  I would have done so without complaint.  I dig deeper.  Or would I have?   Maybe I am unaware of my own faulty nature, my innate selfishness and  laziness.  Maybe she needs to yell at me. Because I am bad.  It is only our culture.  

It seems like everyone around me affirms this deal:  I get strict Indian parents. I get my material needs met.  I am given an upper hand in the success I experience in everyone’s eyes but my own and my mother’s. A success I had been “handed” and not rightfully “earned.” 

According to others, I should be grateful for this “cultural privilege.” 

Only I am brazen and flawed enough to not be:  This privilege implicates me.  It is  a wide brush that erases my pain from society's eyes and paints blame squarely onto me.  All in one swift, damning stroke.  The accusation: I had been given everything and still couldn’t be good.  I’m irreparably defective.  And bearing the punches without protest was what I had to pay for it.  All I could do to prove to myself and everyone else I was good was to be still and silent as she denigrated me.  

Still and silent.  That’s all it took.  And I couldn’t even be that. 

Back in the kitchen, Nisha silently continued to fill the water.  She was always the “innocent one.”  Nisha is good, Divya is bad, as my dad used to say. He is passed now, but the words were a familiar refrain, still lingering.  Nisha’s indifference is just  familiar to me as my crying and self harm had most likely grown to her over the years, white noise in the background of an emotional memory we all have buried deep inside of us, a memory we all refer to as “home.”  

When they say “home,” I think they are referring to a  happier time, sullied by me.  But to me, “home” is a nightmarish fog.  When I think of “home,”I can’t see clearly or hear my own thoughts because everyone is backing me into a corner, shouting at me.  

When I peer back into my early clashes with my parents, Nisha is either absent, standing off to the side or up in her room,  doing her own thing, as if nothing was happening around her.  My therapist’s best guess is Nisha most likely complied and blocked out the violence for her own survival.  Nisha fawned, and I fought, she said. 

Maybe it was random chance, a matter of our temperaments, that splintered our shared reality into two entirely different lived experiences.  When we were kids, Nisha used to play with dolls, quiet and untroublesome, in contrast to me, who’d escape my play pen and pull wires out from behind the TV.   Maybe it was just a matter of luck, why I was targeted and she wasn’t. 

Nisha never outright attacked me, but her enduring silence always made it difficult to believe other things my therapist said: That my parents physically and emotionally abused me.  That I was the family’s scapegoat.  That I am not wrong; I was wronged.  Nisha was the sole witness, the only person in my life who could have validated me.   But, like everyone else,  even she didn’t choose to see my abuse.  She passively lived her life alongside my dehumanization, without a flicker of emotion or compassion, as if violence toward me were normal and right.  
  
When I asked her why she never reaches out these days, she says the same thing my dad used to always say, that I’m “negative and combative.”  

Even though I am “the scary one,” Nisha's silence is an affront to me.  

Even though we grew up in the same environment, with similar expectations, I cannot empathize with her.  She was not the target.  She doesn’t know what it actually felt like.  

Yet there she was, at the airport, telling me how to feel about it. 

Today, when I think of her dismissiveness,  a hot angry loop stirs in my head, a broken record glitching, the same screeching noise on repeat, only it’s her downcast eyes and cold indifference.   

I can’t remember how I responded to her.  I can never remember how I actually respond in these recurring moments, when my world flips, when my hazy internal fear suddenly comes face to face with me on the outside, a crisp, clear reality: they didn’t care.  They didn’t care about my bipolar disorder, my diagnosis of C-PTSD, the racially hostile environment I experienced in high school, that I couldn’t handle being yelled at and beaten, that I was broken from it.  They never did: It becomes the only fact about the past I’m certain is true. 

When I sit in my New Jersey apartment, locked in internal arguments , the mental frames of the loop play in my mind: her blank eyes, shiny and impenetrable as obsidian,  the thud on my nervous system, and then… amnesia.  

It’s not how uncharitable or chilly her eyes were that injure me the most. It’s more  in how they recede from me.  How she recedes from me.  I am in need and  her shoulders hunch away from me, as she turns to head toward the gate.  I want to reach out, but she cowers like an innocent victim braced for assault. 

As she winced, she was looking at me. 
 
That part of my memory is crystal clear.

Hi guys! Just a little something I wrote that people here could probably relate to. It's still unfinished, but I was hoping to see what people thought of it so far. Trying to put some words to feelings. I want to see myself more clearly. Rand means "whore" in Hindi.

Rand

A juicy, thick bit of bacon glistens on the yellow table top as George and I ate breakfast under sunshine outside the cafe.  It had fallen off his avocado toast when he sawed through the tough, crisp slice with a dull breakfast knife,  jerking it around.  The bacon bit is the focal point of my gaze.  I mustered willpower to not pick it up with my finger tips and pop its greasy succulence into my mouth.  

But I can’t.  Everyone, including George, thinks I don’t eat beef or pork.  It’s not because of Hinduism, like people assume.  I tell people it’s because I care about animal rights.  But I know what I hide:  every so often I’ll get some bacon or beef mini tacos from 7/11 and eat it in the secrecy of my car.   I don’t give myself the good stuff, like the thick bacon from the cafe.   I feel too much shame to allow it for myself.  

Wanting the bacon makes me feel dirty and polluted.  Cruel. Gluttonous.  Undeserving.  A feeling that seems intrinsic to me.  I can’t imagine life without it. 

It’s the same reason I pay for George's meal even though he is trying to date me, supposedly, and I live paycheck to paycheck while he does not.  He drove over an hour here to see me, I rationalized, and I appreciate the company.  He helps the weekends pass by, despite his  vampire-like kisses that leave my lips reeling with pain.  I shrink at his touch, so much so that I don’t know why he still sees me.   I don’t like the way he pokes my ribs when he grabs me, or the way he pinches my sides and my behind when he wants physical attention.   Yet, I tell myself the company is enough. I am otherwise alone on the weekends.  George keeps me out of my mind.  At least he is nice.    He listens.  I just need to tolerate a few jabs and hold a few secrets, that’s all. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

I am thirty six years old, and the heat doesn’t work in my apartment.  Cold creeps deep into my bones and rankles me.  I see it only now:  tolerating it as a mindset.  It’s about where you focus your attention.  Like how George used to walk barefoot in the snow when he was weak from kidney disease.  It’s how he developed mental strength and became a master of his body.  “Discipline, ” he touts.  He is trying to help me “get back together,” but the word “discipline” tastes like cold metal in my mouth.  All I want to do is crumble into comfort.  

It brings me back to when my ex-boyfriend Jared and I would go for winter walks.  He’d say, while prying my shoulders back so hard I could feel his thumbs dig into me, “Relax.  When you tense up you make the cold worse.”  

But I couldn’t help it.  When I was cold my body stiffened.   How many times we’d fight about it.  I’d tell him, “Stop! I don’t like it. Let me just be!” But he insisted he was teaching me “discipline.”  

During sex, he’d say, “With you, there’s a fine line between pain and pleasure,” as he held me in a position that made my muscles burn to the point of discomfort.  “Too much force and you’re in pain, but just enough and you make those noises that tell me you like it.” 

He heard the noises, but he didn’t hear what came out of my mouth. 

For a while,  I blamed myself.  I thought maybe I was unclear.  After all, I did not know why, but my body went along with his commands.  I reasoned that a mixed message – with my body giving in and my words protesting –  could have been confusing, ambiguous.  

I spent four years with him, saying no, yet going through the motions.  The last time he was over he pushed me into having sex again. I had to do some work so I kept resisting.   He nagged, goaded and coaxed me until I finally gave in. When it was over, he reached out with his hand to hold me, but my body reacted.  I caught myself off guard and recoiled.

I realized I didn’t like it when he touched me.

He stomped off to grab his shoes in the other room, clearly insulted.  “I should have just called a whore.  At least she would have sucked my dick and been nice to me.” He shouted loudly enough for me to hear as he walked out the door.  

Now that I’m single, when it comes to sex, I hesitate. People see me tense with apprehension and box me into an image:  inexperienced, sheltered, naive.  Easy to control.  The stereotype I ran from my whole life, since eighth grade, when I’d hide behind glasses, unknowing.  Their imposition of naivete is louder in my head than the truth I know and feel in my body:  the pain.  My memories – his bending my body into the curved shape he liked, his hands pulling my hair back, my eyes watering, scalp burning– suddenly disappeared as though they never happened.  If experiences make you, I was forgotten.  A blank slate: a canvas for projection.  

I tell myself, people see others only one frame at a time, from one angle.  No one ever wholly sees anyone.  

But I realize some people don’t see I’m there at all.   They see only what they want to.  

__________________________________________________________________________________

When I was thirteen, we left the diverse area I grew up in, where I was one of many brown kids, for a homogeneous one, where, in most of my classes, I was the only brown kid.  My new friends burned me mixed CDs with rap songs that gripped me with their strong beats and piqued my curiosity about a world I did not know.  I wore thick black liner over my eyelids and tight-fitting sleeveless shirts, alone at home, hours in front of my bedroom mirror, sucking in my stomach,  jutting out my hips, arms akimbo. I’d speak to my reflection, going on about anything and everything, opinions about colors and coffee and math, examining my facial expressions and noting flattering angles I could replicate at school to catch someone’s eye.  

My behavioral change angered my mother, who thought that, as usual, I was concentrating on all the wrong things.  Once, at an Indian party, when I kept staring at a cute boy, she pulled me aside and backed me into the wall by the staircase. She swiftly zipped up my sweatshirt to cover my chest underneath.  The metal of the zipper pinched the skin of my breasts with a sharp bite.  She seethed,  “Ooo-hooo ah-haaa… Who are you trying to look like?”  She eyed me up and down, “You will bring us nothing but shame.  Don’t be a slut!”  

I didn’t know that my mom knew the word “slut.”  I thought it was uniquely American.  I had learned what it meant in my seventh grade language arts class back in California, when we read A Scarlet Letter.  My teacher explained a slut is “someone who sweeps dirt under a rug.”  But later, when I moved in eighth grade, I learned a different meaning.  Here, sluts were girls who were sexually active.   

No one had been sexually active at my old school.  We were all children of strict immigrant parents, in a hypercompetitive academic environment.  My good grades made me feel like a star.   In my new town, I was visible only as the “smart brown girl,” which was, by itself, the punchline of a joke to my white classmates.  With my new priorities, I was jealous that these “sluts” from eighth grade were at least considered attractive, even if they weren’t always respected.  I didn’t know what respect was.  All I could see was that they held power.  They were desired. Sex was the proof.  People seemed to care about their favorite colors and sympathized when they didn’t like math.  I, on the other hand, was a ”slut” whom no one would touch, no one would hear, no matter how much I refined my opinions.

My mom saw things differently.  The day before ninth grade she sat next to me on my bed and admonished me. 

“No white boys,” she said, referring to the only types of boys around, as if they couldn’t get enough of me.  “They only want one thing,” she explained.   

She paused for a moment to sharpen her voice. “Sexxxxxx!”

The sibilance slithered through the air and struck me in the gut. Heat rushed to my face.  I was embarrassed that my mom said the word sex.   But mostly, I felt ashamed for her noticing I could want it. 

She continued, “ If you get pregnant, we will kick you out.  There will be no one there for you.   You will be hungry and die on the street.” 

Starving on the street couldn’t be that bad, I thought.  At least I’d have freedom.  Here, the only place I can be free is my mind.  So I bravely held onto my quiet, complicated crushes and elevated my devotion to a magnitude no teenage boy deserved.  My R-rated fantasies were sneaking out at night to meet them in my neighborhood under the stars, by a picturesque white pavilion.  I envisioned deep philosophical conversations about life and passion.  I never initiated, but I’m pretty sure there were no boys who wanted to meet me.  

There was one boy –Dan – whom I'd talk to for hours on AIM.  In the summer we messaged late at night, through early dusk until the sun lit the sky bright blue. He told me about a dream where he was running along a railroad track that split off into a fork. There was a girl at either end.  On one side of the track was Erin, a pretty, bubbly girl perpetually surrounded by admirers.  As a shy guy, he didn't think he had a chance with her.  I reminded him he was smart and handsome, a total catch.  He never told me who the other girl was.  

After a track meet one night, our bus broke down. We were stranded outside at 1 am, in the middle of winter.  Boys and girls snuggled together in blankets to keep warm. Couples kissed in the snowfall.  When the replacement bus finally came, Dan sat next to me on the same seat.  The moonlight struck his face, creating a soft, blue glow.  I watched him speak to me as he gently rubbed my thigh.  I use the word “watch” because I wasn’t exactly listening.   I was observing the soft, gentle way his lips moved as he made dumb comments, even though he was the best at math in our grade.  

Suddenly, he leaned closer and reached out with his fingers to brush my bangs behind my ear.  I froze and looked down, uneasy.  His index finger ran down my forehead, down the bridge of my nose, to my top lip, then the bottom.  

“Dan!” The assistant coach interrupted out of nowhere.  She was right above us, “Stay away from her!  She’s innocent.”   

Innocent?  I was, even though I didn’t want to be.  I wanted to have power. I wanted to be desired.  

“You touched my pimple,” I scrunched my face at him.  He shook his finger off and scrunched his face back. 

For the rest of the ride, he talked to the girl in the seat behind me.  

I didn’t know why I said what I did.  Years later, I’d replay the moment on the bus and remember that soft, blue glow, wanting, wishing it had happened. 

____________________________________________________________________________________

Veronica - one of the track varsity girls – had called me the “ringleader of the losers.” Somehow she took me under her wing.  One day after practice we sunk into a soft couch  in her family’s basement, lights off, watching a movie, under two separate blankets on either end of the couch.  When I noticed the blankets were tangled together, I started to feel like maybe I had a friend. 

The TV flashed, bathing the contours of the room electric blue.  In the soft light, I could make out her face closer to mine.  Her dry lips opened.  I waited for her to say something in the silence, but instead, she brushed her torso up against mine.  Her body’s weight sunk into my wrists, the blanket thin between us. 

 

I bristled and looked away, avoiding the intrusion of her eyes.  I couldn’t read her, and I didn’t want to assume.  But it occurred to me that she might be trying to kiss me.  

 

Not knowing what to say or do, I stayed quiet, unresponsive.   

Her eyes furrowed.  “You’re a repressed homosexual!”  She hissed. The heat of anger emanated from her breath.  It was unexpected – foreign; it didn’t belong to me.   It felt – weighty.  

I’m not sure how I responded.  I can remember only how I felt, trapped behind a familiar barrier:  I wanted to wrap myself up in my separate blanket and go back to watching the movie.  I wanted to pretend nothing happened. 

I managed to keep it out of my mind until a few days later when she called me and asked, “You know how some people like vanilla?  And some people like chocolate?” Then, a pause. “Well, I like both.” 

I imagined the lilt of a smile in her voice, as she waited for my response.  Could what she said have carried a double meaning? I knew she had kissed boys back in eighth grade.  Maybe she was bisexual.  But it also did not escape me that she was white like vanilla and I was brown like chocolate.  It almost felt like she was trying to say she liked – me.  Not just as a platonic friend.  But her tone was not romantic either. 

I buried it in my mind.  I didn’t want things to change between us.  I feared becoming friendless again if I confronted her.   But mostly I couldn’t see myself as likeable that way to others. This new town had pushed me to the outskirts.  Here  I hung onto the world, my acceptance dangling at the end of a string, more than it hung onto me.  

For two years after, Veronica was the only one who hung on.  Tightly.  She walked with me in the halls, dropped me off to each class, drove me to school and home from practice. She called me incessantly.  Once she called 26 times in a row.  I ignored her, even though I had my phone on me.  Every time it buzzed I felt my body tense.  After many calls,  I got a text from my friend Shannon and responded to her.  Seconds later, I hear back from Veronica, “Pick up the phone, dick, I know you’re there.”  

I didn’t realize until years later that I was hiding from her.  What I felt was fear – of my “best friend.” 

And I was always afraid.  So I hadn’t even noticed. _____________________________________________________________________________________

“Have you ever been kissed?” Joey asked. His hand drew closer to me in the darkness of his basement, brushing a stray tendril behind my ear.   I was taken aback at his touch.   Silvery moonlight streamed in through the small windows, highlighting lean, sharp angles in his face.  I noticed his chocolate brown hair, smooth, olive skin, eyes —clear like light greenish-blue pools of water.     

“No,” I took a deep breath, confirming his suspicions.  

I was eighteen years old, deprived and aching for the high school experiences everyone else seemed to have.  Four years had gone by, wanting and waiting, and everyone knew all along: the secret I hid in baggy gym clothes and messy, uncombed hair,  clearly written on my face for all to see.

My stark reality hung in the air, and he smiled in the silence.  He leaned toward me and his thick lips planted onto mine, suctioning them like an industrial vacuum.  

“There,” he smiled charitably. 

Finally, I thought.  My first kiss happened, the collision of our lips, of my desperation with what seemed like his pity.  

Somehow I had convinced myself it was romantic.  Our relationship lasted six months – far too long, in my opinion.   We fizzled out, the way the curls of smoke from his joints dissolved and vanished into the air.  He never let me smoke, even though I had wanted to badly.  He said I was too innocent. 

What I remember most from our time together is that I hated the way he saw me. 

_____________________________________________________________________________________

“You’ve got a banging body but an average face,” Raj held out his hands to hold mine, a smile across his lips.  I reached back  and let him rub my palms.  I began to cry. 

Raj looked around, clearly angry at me for embarrassing him.  

All I could say back to him was, “You said I had an average face.” 

“Do you want me to be one of those guys who tells you you’re the prettiest girl in the world?”  He shot back in defense. 

I picked up my things and made my way out of the cafeteria, sad about what his comment revealed to me.  I needed to tell my roommate Megan.  

He followed me while I tried to understand why I was so upset.  I don’t think I was sad about my average face.  I could bear that.  I had lived so long in the shadows.  Now I had a boyfriend.  What I couldn’t bear was his gaze that held the swift power to devalue me.  To make me cry in an instant.  

When I complained to everyone, he tried to console me, “I didn’t mean it like that.  I just wanted to be honest with you.  To me, not even models are 10/10.  A 10 is so very rare.. No imperfections.  Basically, not human.”  

“I hate to be human,” I said, wanting nothing more than for him to see the human inside of me, “I want to be perfect.”  

I meant that I needed to be.  I needed to be, because I was dark.  If I wasn’t perfect, I wouldn’t have a chance, I thought. 

Once we were walking down George Street and stopped by some steps in front of someone’s house. 

“I love you because you’re so innocent,” he smiled, opening his arms for a hug.  I winced inside.  Even if I was, I experienced the description as friction against my nerves.  It wasn’t true to me.  I didn’t know everything, but I always knew more than people expected me to.  

I smiled back, wrapping my arms around him, dejected. He must think I’m safe.  Accessible.  

I wanted to be pretty, like the other girls.  Desired in a light above.

I only felt like that when he couldn’t keep his hands off me.  Didn’t that mean he thought I was pretty? 

One night, Raj went to a party.   I stayed back at my apartment to rest up for a track meet the next day.  I slept in the bed, only to have the strangest dream, where Raj came back drunk.  He laid down and sank like deadweight on me as I slept.  In my dream, we were suddenly having sex in the thin blue haze of midnight. Only I couldn’t say anything.  I felt the shock of bare skin inside me and my joints locking, the coldness of the air against my legs.  I couldn’t move.  I was still in the dream.  Right?   My mind tossed and turned. 

Megan made chocolates for my birthday. I ate them every morning before I ran. Soon I noticed I did not want the chocolates anymore. They were making me... sick.

Then, I began to spot.  I went to the doctor and tested positive on a pregnancy test.  

He was supportive.  He paid for the abortion and held my hand during it.  

After I left him, I heard he was heartbroken for years.  My last memory with him is sitting together on the bench at Port Authority along the Hudson.  He told me about a dream he had once of us married, with a little girl who had my almond eyes.  Of chasing after her when she pranced around in her diaper. 

Occasionally, I wonder if he loved me.  Not because I loved him back.  But because I wanted proof I was pretty.

Thanks so much for reading.