delineating my desensitization

i couldn't write for a long time

or i'd have been betraying floyd, i thought. now i know

better, graceful, that i wouldn't have been crushed so crushed so crushed so much so fast so many

that i'd have soared and landed on solid feet. all my feats, not the defeat--

--but so much, so many bad, so many horrible, nasty guys--

and then, wouldn't you know it, with 80 pounds shed, and the makeup i was shyly trying on, floyd laughing at me some days, mascara--my first times applying it at the sephora a block north--

--floyd gone, me having dated someone who very nearly killed me, whose jiujitsu blows blew me away, who was raping me so that i was going to need an ambulance, his little dick unlike his four broad feet of shoulders and strong unlike his wispy tonsure, about to rupture me somewhere and i knew it was going to bleed fast and bad, gush my sphincter--

when i screamed, it was just past valentine's day, and it was only still us dating because when i was at perlis' looking at his facebook and saw just how deep his lies were cutting, that despite never checking facebook until that day, he had me blocked--and that's when i knew he wasn't just dangerous, he was probably deadly, all the violence adding up, all the sick--

--bianca came over and lay into me. i said i was breaking things off with darryl, that i knew he was bad, i didn't explain all the other things, how he was violent and had admitted to jail sentences, how he had almost beaten the shit out of me on our second date for calling him a republican--just sat there with his fists clenching and his eyes wide and cruel, blue as the sky but glittering knives--he was brilliant, painfully intelligent, and had said that no way was my IQ 140, it was more like 160, i just wasn't using it--like all the hearing guys i've dated, he was a genius and sure that i was just as sharp, if not sharper--

unlike what i read the other week

--he was trembling, trembling, his teeth clenching his lip in place, all pink, so pink, like the delirium tremens-stamped glasses our delirium was trembling in, all the tiny pink elephants delicately tramping around and around and around the belgian glass bulge--looking just like dad when he wanted to hit us, had to hit us, for laughing, for talking, for not sitting still--ready to reach over the table and punch me in the face, but having to calm down--

"did you just...call...me...a republican!?"

and he was. he was a birther, anti-obama, and i was sure we wouldn't last, i just wanted to figure out dating...

i didn't tell perlis or bianca that, or about his trip to my apartment for our third date. he said that my bedroom, into which he was not allowed, must have dead men hanging from the ceiling--that i must kill all the men i say want to rape me the way my father killed himself, noosed...and the way he forced himself onto me in my living room, forced me into a blowjob, the way i tried to say it was wonderful, that it had healed me...

...i could not handle blowjobs, i was sick at the thought, the way clint forced them onto me, the hot searing globs of semen shooting into my mouth, acrid, sour, gooey

--and i was just sobbing, shaking, pleading: "stop!" and bianca was just screaming, laying into me: "you're so stupid! so stupid! you're so stupid! 'ohhhhh, i'm a viiiiiiirgin!' quit it already! stop it! stop! stop with the 'oh, i'm a viiiiiiirgin,' you've been raped, oh, fucking well! deal with it! deal with it! you've fucked enough guys since then, 'oh, i'm 15, i'm 15, i'm a virgin, i'm still 15,' stop it! if you don't stop it, i'm not going to be your friend anymore! you're going to lose your best friends, me and jenny, we're not going to be your friends anymore!"

going on and on like that for 15 solid minutes, me screaming and shaking and begging her to stop. instead of doing what was in my heart: walking out of there and not looking back.

i thought i needed friends. we all think we can't live without someone we suddenly do.

my therapist, after darryl almost killed me, raped me so badly i almost died, had to scream and scream on the toilet during every shit for two weeks, could not walk right for another week...after grandma said, "well, no, you can't come visit the family. you thought you loved mosi but he raped you, so why should we believe anything you say?"...she said:

"well, just because he says he's dated a lot, that doesn't mean he's good at it. that doesn't mean he's a nice guy. that doesn't mean he's had any real relationships. that doesn't mean that any of the women he's been with haven't been raped."

she said:

"you should have walked away from bianca. she's not a friend. she's not good to you."

and then

for a long time

i made noises all the time walking down every avenue and across each street

keening

screaming

for months...just to keep my head from flying off and all the bits flying away

into the wind

but after what i read the other week

who really needs those bits, who needs me to keep my head?

and then

vincent

and then ben, and then the other ben, and then ben again, and then...the other ben again...

and david, oh, david i loved

but david was just