Carly

my name is BABY and you lean out of your car and spit at my feet it lands in a puddle in front of me and i am thirteen and in a suburban neighborhood on the way home from school and i gag and run with my backpack banging like the echo of your words against my back like you are chasing me all the way home

my name is SWEETIE and i am fifteen in the city with my friends for the first time and we get a little lost and you follow us for a full block you name my friends HONEY and DARLING and WHY THE FUCK WON’T YOU TALK TO ME

my name is NICE ASS and it’s two in the afternoon and i still feel my heart slam against my ribs because i am under a hundred and fifty pounds and i have weak lungs and weaker fists and while you saunter down the steps, swinging the beer bottle in your fist, my father who is walking behind me shouts, “she’s seventeen, you dipshit” and maybe i’m near my family but i don’t feel safe until we’re home again

my name is JAILBAIT and my friend is laughing and we just graduated high school and we feel like we are on the brink of something beautiful and terrifying and she is in heels and about to throw up and you name her DRUNK ENOUGH and i have to physically drag you off and when we go home she cries for four hours because a night that should have been just teenage fun almost resulted in the end of her trust of humans

my name is LOOK AT THOSE TITS and we are on a college campus and the boy i am with holds onto my waist just a little tighter while you drive up next to me. you name him THUG and throw a bottle at his forehead. i can’t stop shaking until long after it’s over. he says “it happens,” and i say, “it shouldn’t.”

my name is DAMN GIRL and we are walking down the street. there are ten of you and two of us and you snap a picture when you think we’re not looking. you tell us to either come inside or you’ll fuck us on the street. you all laugh like this is funny. this is compliment. this is just something boys do to get ladies.

my name is LITTLE LADY, my name is FINE MISS, my name is FUCK YOU AND FUCK YOUR FRIENDS, my name is LOOK ME IN THE FACE, my name is STOP FROWNING, my name is SMILE, my name is WHY DID YOU EVEN GLANCE AT HIM YOU WERE ASKING FOR IT, my name is THIS IS A COMPLIMENT so i looked it up according to Oxford that’s “a polite expression of praise or admiration” i think you’ve got the definitions mixed up

my name is PRETTY THING, my name takes nice words and make them into bullet wounds my name is NICE BODY and no girl i know has dated a man who catcalled her, my name is GREAT RACK and it turns out that if you shout things at a stranger, they sound like knives more than flowers, my name is WOMEN LIKE YOU NEVER KNOW THEIR PLACE and every single “nice” thing you say to a woman is something you’d never utter to another man because you know that it’s derogatory, my name is PRINCESS and A REASON TO GET PUT IN PRISON and if another man spoke to your mother sister girlfriend like that, you’d kill him

my name is SEXY and every time i hear someone raising their voice i am thirteen again and i don’t know who you are and i’m running home with a weight on my shoulders and your words like a slap to my spine and your laughter like a hanging, i am scared and alone and suddenly so small,

and compliments are supposed to make me feel good not afraid for my life, compliments are a way of saying “i care and i appreciate you and i thought you should know it,” and if you really meant it as a compliment, you’d care about how i would take it - but you don’t mean it like that, you mean it to show off, you mean it to make us object, you mean it to shove our names into your back pocket so you can tell your friends “i saw the HOTTEST LITTLE THING yesterday” and they can be groan about how we just walked away because you don’t see us go home with keys in our fists and all the lights on and we keep 911 dialed just in case and we triple-check our locks and we don’t fall asleep at all because your compliment knocked us over and took who we are

if we are all saying “it doesn’t sound like a compliment, it sounds like a threat,” if you really wanted to make us feel good - wouldn’t you stop doing it?

At our graduation party, he turns to me, still wearing his grad cap, and winks. I like the way you dance, he says. I have something to show you. Come to my car. I hesitate. I’m not sure, I tell him. All of my friends are here. Come on, he insists. Live a little.

OK now he was close, tried to domesticate you.

I walk four steps behind him to the driveway. I can hear the sounds of the party in the distance. Everybody I know is on the other side of the wall, but here, with his teeth gleaming, they seem so far away.

But you’re an animal, baby, it’s in your nature

He pops his trunk and pulls out a six-pack. Want one? he asks. I shake my head. He hands me one anyway. This is a party, he says. Have some fun.

Just let me liberate you

I pick up the bottle and gingerly take a sip. He downs his in one gulp. Then he leans forward and reaches out to where I am standing. He laces his arm around my hips and pulls me so I am leaning beside him on his car. Why are you so far away? he asks.

And that’s why I’m gon’ take a good girl

He begins panting in my ear and telling me how good I look in my dress. The dress my mother bought me for the occasion. I squirm. I try to break his hold. I tell him my friends are probably wondering where I am. I say, I want to go back inside.

I know you want it

He laughs. He puts his lips to my ear and tells me to have some fun. I feel his tongue slip into my mouth and go numb. My fingers begin to shake. I try to move away and he puts his hand on my stomach until it bruises and pushes me against the car, hard.

I know you want it

He puts his hand around my neck and begins kissing me. My tongue hangs there. I try to scream and end up only tasting him.

I know you want it

My legs go dead as his hand creeps up my thigh. I kick his shin and he smiles, then bites my lip before slipping his fingers behind my underwear. I squeeze my eyes shut. I dig my nails deep into my hand. My toes curl helplessly.

You’re a good girl

I feel him unbuttoning his jeans one-handed and using the other to completely restrain me. I think about how easy this is for him to do. I begin beating my head against the car, harder and harder. The thumping sound does not even slow him.

Can’t let it get past me

He is pulling himself out of me with a smile. There is no condom in sight. My underwear are ripped and at my feet. I look at my legs and notice I am bleeding.

I hate these blurred lines

With his arm still tied around my waist he asks, This wasn’t your first time, was it? My eyes are still shut. I do not say anything.

The way you grab me

The way you moved in that dress and your smile. Damn, I saw you from across the room. And the way you laughed at other guys’ jokes. If I didn’t get on that one of them would.

Must wanna get nasty

He grins. I knew I was going to get lucky tonight, but not as lucky as you made me.

Do it like it hurt, like it hurt

He lets go of me and I am hit with a sudden burst of air. I fall to the ground, heaving, as I listen to him open his trunk and crack open another beer.

What you don’t like work?

I’m going back to the party, he says. I lie still on the ground, feigning death. Are you coming? He reaches down to touch me and I begin to shake. Fine. Suit yourself. You should clean yourself up anyway.

I know you want it

I listen to his footsteps echo away. I try to sit up and collapse onto my knees. My limbs refuse to work. For the first time, I hear the sound of someone crying and choking on their breath. It takes me to realize it is me.

I know you want it

I roll myself to the front of the driveway and lie, with my head against the concrete, crying. On my legs there is still dried blood and cum. I open my mouth and nothing comes out.

I know you want it

I lie on the ground for the rest of the night, convulsing. I hear him
come out hours later with his friends, look at me, and laugh. I listen to him tell them I must be another “shit-faced bitch.” I stay still. I dig my nails deep into my hand. I try to scream and end up only tasting him.

Dear GPP,
I feel I should leave some things in written before we get married, even if we talked about them before.

I have to reiterate my doubts about matrimony, my feeling of renouncing opportunities in a job that means so much to me. I have a feeling that marrying is one of the worst decisions I’ve ever made. I know there will be compensations, but I cannot conceal my doubts.

For our life together I want you to understand that you will be submitted to no code of faithfulness nor do I feel completely tied down to you. If we are honest, we can avoid the difficulties that may arise should I or you fall in love with someone else.

Please, let’s not interfere in each other’s work, let’s not allow the rest of the world to contemplate our joys or disagreements. In this sense, I will have to maintain a place where I can be profoundly myself. I cannot withstand the enclosure, no matter how attractive the cage may be.

I must demand from you a cruel promise: that you will let me walk away in a year if we have been unable to find happiness together.

I am going to make sure that I do my best and offer you this part of me you know and love so much.

A.E.

He was beautiful as he traced my lips with his sharp nails. He bit them either out of nervousness or habit. “You remind me of somebody I knew,” he said, half smiling, mostly not. “We had a nickname for her.” I didn’t like being compared to other girls in his life, as if maybe he was only holding me in his arms because I felt like a lover before my time.

“Destroyer of weak men,” his tongue painted the words against my mouth. I carried that label with me the second I stepped out of his bed the next morning, right onto his heart, shattering it.

What a careless place to leave an essential organ, I thought, as I wiped the soles of my feet clean and kept going on my way. I gathered bits and pieces of the men I broke like an animal about to hibernate, tucking each jagged part close to me to keep me warm through the coldest of nights.

They would return occasionally, begging on their hands and knees for their ventricles back, crying about how they couldn’t breathe since I left and took it with me. Even if I had wanted to, I wouldn’t have given anything to anybody. I collected them like old pennies and stamps, trophies of people who at one point would have died for me as I ripped out their throats with me teeth.