Taking The Red Pen To My Abusive Relationship
There’s the version I’m saving for the book. Back before the lies unraveled us, my attraction to him was relentless and bright. After he left my apartment to go study, I could smell him across my skin. I had never wanted someone that much in my life and it scared me in the best way as I held the sheets up to my nose and breathed in his cologne.
I’ve been leaving that part out when I write about abuse. It’s acceptable to write about how sweet he looked wearing my period-stained pajama bottoms with the polar bears on them, because it demonstrates how easy it is to love a dangerous man, even when you know better. And I can write about charm, about how he always knew the right thing to say in the most inventive arrangement of words. I can write about the promises he made that targeted the insecurities I offered up to him because I trusted him too much too soon. It’s socially acceptable to admit that I was naïve and he was clever, and I was hurting and he was kind enough. That part of the story is allowed and relatively easy.
But writing about the sex is, well… It seems distasteful to talk about how much I wanted to lose myself in how his lips curled up, how his teeth flashed when he was close. I would say it feels irresponsible to write the full story without context; I don’t want to make abusive men erotic or feed into all that ego by recounting what it was like in the beginning, and even at the end. The real reason has more to do with guilt. It’s too messy for a blog post.
If I’m being honest, it was like nothing else. He had this way of looking at me so hard, as if he was entitled to know every inch of me. It wasn’t watching, it was examining — under him I felt like a butterfly with its wings pinned to a notecard and I fucking loved it. I don’t remember how he kissed but I remember how his eyes seared. And I remember how he raked his nails across my skin, and how he hissed at the heat of me, and I would think how did I get this lucky and is this burning too bright. My palms pressing against his desk, cheek mashed against the pages of an open notebook, his hands tight at my hips. His taunts are carved deep into my skin but some of them still make my blood rush in a way they’re not supposed to — not anymore. I don’t write about how I begged him to fuck me as ink from his history notes smeared across my face.
There’s something unseemly about it, wanting an abusive man that much, wanting him to fuck you that much, still wanting him to fuck you that much. I never for a second thought about going back, but I think about him now for all of the reasons no one talks about. It’s a complicated, guilty thing to be attracted to your abuser even if he terrifies you. I never told anyone I wanted one last time, even after I figured it all out (cheating, lies, more lies, all the other lies). He slouched on the loveseat and I sat on the coffee table in front of him, leaning forward. When he noticed the lingerie peeking out from behind my tank top, he scoffed at me. It wasn’t dignified, angling to seduce the man you just told it was over. There was a filthy power-grab to it that still doesn’t make sense to me.
“I’m not going to have sex with you after you dumped me,” he said. I glared at him, and he sulked, added, “Then again, it’s the only thing I’m good at.”
There is a novel inside of me and I wonder if it’ll have his smile.
