i was very well adjusted and content with the idea that men say things in the moment, and they mean it, but when they wake up the next day things have changed. selfishly i thought of this as a reverse idea of enlightenment – i can only imagine they were doing it because they were scared about how i brought them closer to their true selves. i thought of my ex, about the 29 year old drummer, about the girl i kissed right before i left chicago that still asked about me and i still thought of every time i went to a club.
protection is something i have been trying to negotiate as i enter my twenties – the want to feel protected and who i look for protection in, who i protect. i know that when i first started college, i looked at men to protect me in some way from social isolation – i went femme in a very approachable, ‘girl-next door’ kind of way that made me as non-threatening as possible, a muted femininity that wanted to be controlled as way to gain freedom. sitting on samuel’s bed waiting for his roommates that had called me fat to leave, for sex with him that was too fast and hurt. but there i always was, waiting, freshman year of college, when i had homework to do and theory to read and advil to take to stop the beginning of what would be lifelong chronic migraines.
erich fromm had this idea that sadist and masochistic personalities seek each other out because humans, for various reasons, are scared to be truly free, and this shows up in the larger cultural context as a significant reason for fascism. i think erich fromm is right, but when i first read him, i didn’t grasp the individual level because i couldn’t see how wanting to be protected in the way i was looking for didn’t change anything. men still went home and fucked their girlfriends on the weekends after trying to fuck me raw on thursday at 3am. the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and i took laxatives and ate under 1000 calories a day to try and make myself look like their skinny girlfriends. i look back at photos of myself from that time and i know that i am too harsh about my appearance, but i hate how i look. i walked around every day as disingenuous as i could, in huge sweatshirts and pants that were too large, starving, and nothing changed.
somewhere along the way i realized i could just look how i wanted to and act how i wanted, drink too much on the weekends and write shitty poetry they would never read, and men would still treat me the same. they would still fuck me in small dorm beds or large hotel rooms, secretly record me sucking their dick in an empty parking lot. they would show me off to their friends or keep me hidden, beg me to smoke weed with them, or to drop acid even though i told them about the time i accidentally smoked pcp and almost went to the hospital. they were all ‘working on themselves’.
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