When I’m really scared, I think about the time you held a gun to my head.
I still don’t know if it was loaded.
I know now that it doesn’t matter if it was.
I wasn’t afraid of dying.
I was afraid of living.
There were boys who loved the Beatles and me. They had guitars, and big dreams, and the same stars in their eyes that I had in mine.
There were coffee dates, and Showbread shows, and songwriting sessions, and after-parties.
I said, “No,” because of getting pregnant. Because of STDs. Because I was “saving myself.”
For?
(This was before I understood words like “agency” and “autonomy.”)
I was scared of being “dirty,” or “used,” or “discarded,” and then “recycled.”
Because finding a t-shirt at the thrift store?
Cool.
Finding a bride at the thrift store?
Not cool.
(This was before I understood words like “love.”)
And then you came along. No guitar, no dreams, no stars.
There was coffee, but it was never a date.
I thought we were friends. But friends don’t do what you did.
And then I was the party girl – the “sweet” and “adorable” girl. The boys still loved the Beatles and me. They still had guitars and called me from tour buses and texted me pictures of places they’d always dreamed of going.
And I still said, “No.”
The stars in my eyes were gone.
I told one of them what happened. He read my message between takes on vocals in a studio in another state.
“Now I feel like a slimeball,” he said.
And I held my arms out wide so someone could tuck a hanger in my collar for the thrift store rack.
Consent is mandatory, but it was optional to you. A grey area. I said, “No,” but you took my voice away. Stole it. I didn’t trade it for legs or anything else.
And then there was another you.
You had a bass guitar, but honestly I didn’t care enough to ask if you had dreams or to pay attention if there were stars in your eyes.
You knew how to make me laugh, but I didn’t know if you loved the Beatles (or me). And you drank too much beer.
There was a bonfire and your friend talking about one of my friends’ bands. His girlfriend sat on his knee and pretended not to know me, but we used to be best friends.
When you were on top of me, I said, “No.” I tried to scream, but you put your hand over my mouth.
I wondered if she could hear me.
I wondered if she would come help me if I called her name.
She told everyone we knew that I was “a slut.”
You followed me for a while when I got Instagram, but I never followed you back.
Not one, but two girls called me after I’d become a mannequin at the thrift store. (They’d even put me in a wedding dress.)
“How did you get away,” they said.
I told them.
But I didn’t tell them about the time you came to that Butch Walker show, walked through during a ballad, and found me.
And the ensuing commotion.
The crowd parting.
The bartenders shoving you out the door.
You saying things that stick like barbs in my mind.
And then me collapsing into a crying heap in my date’s arms.
He just kept rubbing the back of my head and telling me it would be OK. I never saw him again.
Everybody wants to watch the train wreck to have something to talk about tomorrow, but nobody wants to sift through it for the gold they can’t see.
There were other(you)s.
One had a guitar and my best friend had a crush on him (you).
There was a show. We all snuck in through the exit. There was laughter and dancing and drinking. I was happy. Not sweet, adorable, “party girl” happy. An innocent kid having fun. Genuinely happy.
And then I woke up naked in his (your) bed.
I remember brushing my teeth in the bathroom with his (your) roommate, then falling asleep on the couch, and then nothing.
“Who took my clothes off?”
“Oh, I did that,” you said.
Twice? Sure, it might happen to a girl once. But not twice.
My best friend stopped talking to me.
“I would never put myself in that position,” your girlfriend said.
She’s happily married now, to someone else. It wasn’t a thrift store wedding.
I have no idea where you are, but I know you did to her what you did to me and to those other girls, and I hope you hang yourself with the rope you’ve built for yourself.
It was a leash for me, and then a noose, and then a necklace. But I finally took it off and I’m burning it. – ©️ 2021 Portia July
Portia July 