do i or what i

do i 

what i want

is to think

he won't mind

that he'll understand

the mind is a big place

full of closets

full of lockets

full of laughter and tears

and that life is bigger

but that i want to make my life bigger

by making this a lesser epidemic

and that

people enjoy triggering me

and that

i'm really still me, because that's all people see

when we hang out, me, not this

that knitting is a new expression of my art

but that i really need to fix what came raveled

(ravel means to do up and to undo, whichever is your tangle)

and that's why i'm here, to make sure

it's all gone--

when i was younger i didn't know that hiding the deepest shames

would later hinder everything that was healed, that he

would come back

and try

or do i just

not try for a little romance?

(love is too strong a word; we've only just begun chatting, and love is a goal

but love isn't on the table just yet

he's agreeable, and i find that when he's rushed his grammar becomes clipped

and it's adorable

but so is he)

gallaudet is not the world

gallaudet cannot eat my life

maybe this is. maybe it isn't.

but for now

we are golden

he's a baby, just 25

but he likes my pictures just fine

he's brilliant, brillianter than moizies

much more brilliant

and i told him yesterday, i told him

i've got an anti-rape persona online, and it's not gonna be apologized for or changed

and he was all, you know, i just have to turn off my phone when things get hectic at work

i'm curious to meet him, i really am dying to meet him--just because--it's curiosity!

but i'm glad he hasn't sent pictures...

if he's not quite cute, i won't notice in a month or two! he'll look like moritz bleibtreau

marlon brando

brian floyd!

he'll be too sexy for me to handle even if he's chris farley's nephew doubly sized!

i love them sexy, i love them cute, but i love them fun and smart so much more

and

he knows i was interviewed about gallaudet's rape epidemic

he's actually

cool

with it

**
joe would have killed me over it

i hate to admit it; i love him and i want him to be free

to stop his abusers and end the abuse

to love himself

but the truth does not stop for fear

**
i may have seen this guy around washington heights when he was 17, 18

imagine

gallaudet's facebook page

has my love bites all over it.

oh, baby.

i think he found this

he hasn't written since he got off work

and we were really hitting it off.

that's all right. it makes me sad to think about everything

that he's one of maybe six guys who haven't already gotten creepy

he's said one thing i think is a little off, but that's really not an "off" comment

it's just that more than half the guys who say that they're real feminists

are not

but the rest really are--

and the ones who aren't can be sly:

it's the internet, motherfucker

**
i think he found my twitter feed

and i linked to this

and said i wanted to kill myself

and it's all actually true anyway

it's just that sometimes

he's waiting for me, that one

and sometimes

there are others, like the guy who lunged at me, halfway out of his car

but the sharp dressers, the Black men in their early 20s who have decided not to be wary of me

just that there is a bubble dividing them from me, and i get curiosity and sizing up, and reluctant props

and that's okay for now, i daren't smile at them just yet, they're not ready to let it off without a snarl, not them

they're too cool, too good pretending

cool

for each other

they looked at him like he was an embarrassment, soiled white tee

bashed-in car

fat flapping out his rolled-down window

tee tucked in but starting to fold over the glass

so he slunk back in after

UNINTELLIGIBLE WHITE! BITCH! UNINTELLIGIBLE BITCH! WHITE! BITCH!

BITCH! WHITE! BITCH!

i have to choose

do i go where they prowl and eye me, and wonder what the fuck i'm doing there

and i'm just like, dudes, no, please, just, hi back?

the kids are unpredictable but most are sweeter than anything

even the preteen boys show me the most courteous of manners

their faces twisted with distrust

sometimes a smile

to get my groceries

and get home without dying

or

do i risk being pulled down a 30-foot-deep staircase in a quarter-mile expanse of woods by

shifty-eyed "tom"

caterpillar eyebrows and neanderthal face

red sweater

with three hiding places for me now, and a friend on speed dial

for dragging me through the woods

at the bus stop

to get my groceries

and get home without dying

**
no one will ever love me again, not with this

not if i explain about the men on the bus who explode and want to hit me

when i say no

you may not have my number

who look at me like i have just strangled them and they need to throttle me back

who make me furious, a white-hot fury, but the white

is fear

but funny

i like the art i make now

if no rape i no art now

the double-back, and not the double-backed beast--

but the feast, down to the gore.

the core said, it's enough

and i said, i will meet you there,

so i brought tit for tat, and everything, to cincinnati.

and in the rocking chair, it's a rocking chair now, oversized

so comfortable

so comforting for those who need the rocking

i like the choice of chairs

not so much her choice of words

she signs realize

means reality

and i mean to bring it up soon because it's just not time yet

for us to argue

i don't let her see me cry anymore, and i would spend two or three days crying and screaming

the first year

just crying and screaming

she'd make me three appointments and usually i'd miss one or two

come in crying and screaming and floating, dissociating

forgetting everything i meant to say, a cloud of dissonance, dissolution

suicide to keep my rapists' secrets

and now it's back--not all

but enough, and worse

so she says

you just never got over that abuser, the one from MSSD and gallaudet

and now she knows that he tried to come back in 2010

that i stuck with david

that david started hitting me the same way that fucker did

fatso is mean, and it's insulting to anyone who feels or is called fat, so...

woodpaneling

that's the car he picked me up in when it all went back to it, and i was fat, i was so fat, i just wanted to eat and eat and eat what happened with him into fake, into not real, into not me, into not him, into not us when we're alone and his eyes go so big and so blue and so blank, like he's calling the stars home, calling heaven home, calling himself back into heaven, calling himself an angel home, calling himself the beginning of the universe, calling the universe meaningless and nonexistent, the way he did

and they'd bang the table and call him back

and he'd close his gaping mouth and wipe away the drool

and he'd do it in class facing me...

just because...

he wanted me to remember...i couldn't get away, and because...

...it was the kind of class that triggered both of us back to our abuse, our deepest shames, that we repeated the class together, that we repeated it because i tried to kill myself to make it all stop, that he didn't really love me when he kissed me, that he started beating me up and laughing at me for crying, that he started to look for ways to make me cry and tell me that that was love, and just fall into trances, trances that would last for three hours when he'd rape me in my room at cogswell.

and i didn't want anybody to know, but everyone thought they knew.

so i stayed with david because the more i told him i loved him and the more i told him what woodpaneling did...

and i was really thin then, a lot of things that are stretched out from the last two years started out so baggy they needed a belt to define my waist, and i looked hotter than hell. i mean, i'm 37 and my rosacea destroys the texture of my skin so when i have a good day i'm amazed that i actually have elasticity and a smooth face, but even when it's terrible, when it's aging me and so bumpy my makeup  does little to fix it, i get hit on by people in their early 20s, and people think i look around 28 or 32. it's fucking funny, like, all this time i've hated myself for being ugly when all i needed was to stay thin both times, stop eating because of the abuse--

--david, oh, what a silly boy, thinking he had me fooled, then beating me up because every step of the way i was like, dude...let me tell you what you do when you're with your friends, with other women. i was like, dude, listen, that doesn't give you any reason to beat me up for telling you i want to buy you a $7 milkshake that melts you into orgasm and gets you talking about how life is nothing like it is for me where you're concerned. it just doesn't. it doesn't, and it never will, and i won't fucking stop giving you presents and buying you shoes because yours have holes in the soles and you get brusque and almost dislocate my shoulder when you realize after you've run all around the mall in the FiDi really getting into hamlet, getting lost, me staying lost...because when we're together you're hitting me and yelling about what a shitty time you're having, how i'm a snobby white girl, but when you don't know where i am you're rapt, running as fast as you can to keep up with everyone else, edging ever closer and closer to the action, to the stages...

...when it's over and you're glowing, telling me how much you love me, that it's really true, you just didn't know life could be like this...and the white guy with the hat comes around for tips, and you have no money to give because you live with 300 flies, a mattress on the floor, rotting food, rotting dishes, rotting clothes, a couch of iron with padding that hurts (i found it a year later in a store downtown, ever the sleuth, and it's a $50 couch new)...you do not

have the right

to get so angry you jolt upward and out the door and yank me so hard

i've had my shoulder nearly dislocated by two assholes in 14 months

you don't get to tell me to give you $150 to fake it to your mom that you're making a salary raising a baby but coming to have an affair with me when you know my roommate has tried to kill me because i wouldn't let her rape me...an affair you give my roommate the blow-by-blow of because i'm deaf...and don't know you're doing it, and she tries to stab me to death a week later, screaming that i let you have all this fun, that instead of having the volume on the TV up all the way you've turned the TV and the cable box down to 0 and put them on mute...and all weekend you stand there laughing, laughing, laughing, and i'm like, what did you do, i don't get it, i know you're up to something, but what...you just waited for me to turn my back to do that after showing me you had them all the way up...i mean, david, i told you, all this time, i know that this is what you do now...since that night, since Hamlet...i know, i saw the change, i felt it in my shoulder, in my arm, my elbow, in that i couldn't wrest myself away, that you got more violent when i tried to give him a fiver...

...i saw it all, and the point isn't that you get to rape and beat me and cheat on me and tell me to die, and tell me i have to let other men rape me to make you happy that i'm not only with you, all because i'm a white woman in love with a mexican man...

...you don't get to do all this and demand $150 for your mom after you've told me you know she told me to kill myself and that i had to die to make everything better, and then twist my arm...

and this is what i've told marci

so i can feel the bone just barely bend to break

so this is the saga of how people give my abuser renewed access to me

and how i just want it to stop, but how

what david did to me as a direct result of my first real abuser doing as a direct result of hearing about my first rape and getting excited about it, getting horny over it, finally acting on the crush he'd had on me since before we ever exchanged words except "ugly polack" and "asshole motherfucker"--

--is really, really scaring me

and how joe

just started hitting and raping and trying to control me for the same reason those two did

he felt it was unfair that i have such a good grasp on life, art and on a lot of matters, just sizing things up in a flash. understanding almost anything immediately. he got so angry that day

and snarled

and ended with a fist and a sharp inhaled flair of his neck, boomerang

then a cold, smoldering, blue-flamed glare, and his nostrils

and that was

the break

it's always

the break

and it scares me

why was it always

the break

in gallaudet bathrooms

dorms

hallways

libraries

/my tomb?

i don't want to stop this flash that makes guys like this fucker in the red sweatshirt

the neanderthal face, the blunt nose, the heavy brow with bushy caterpillar eyebrows

start stalking me where the woods

(disappear the city)

dudes...

marci and i are on the same page but she just wouldn't believe that they keep calling the police. she's like, no, you must have it wrong.

I TELL YOU IT IS THE POLICE CUZ I CAN READ THE BODY LANGUAGE AND THE LUNGING. they have people coming after me when i'm crying and scared because they say i'm aggressive when i say i'm really too scared because i can't understand what i'm reading to function, and that i feel like i have to kill myself. my professor wants this one assignment due that's a journal and i can't figure out what it is. i think i've read every page of the syllabus but i can't remember because when i get to a glitch and a page won't display i get really suicidal and have to stop, just stop, just watch some copper or red dwarf and fall in love with men who don't exist, and then feel so sad that despite donal logue choosing characters who are just so feminist he plays a complete asshole who will cut a woman while she's down and leave her fetus bleeding out....

anyway, so i have to do that or all the flashbacks will unlock...because...if i can't read...then how do i exist? if i can't read how is it possible that anything in my life has ever been real? i have this deaf friend who gets really pissed off when i correct her in the store looking for baby stuff, and i said to her that "priced as marked" means no discount, so don't expect one, but maybe you'll get lucky--and because she did get a discount she keeps telling me i'm not as smart as i think i am and that my english is far from good.

but i just turned to her in the checkout lane and said, "i'm fucking right...don't you ever, ever doubt my ability to read and understand english...you got lucky, i said you might, and it's not worth fighting over, so drop it--but i'm telling you, i understand grammar just fine." she did...after a while. and i am just not the type--it's just that she had a budget, and then in line she was like, "here, you pay for these two things; i can only spend $20."

i was this far from telling her to stuff it. but the baby is just too cute, and too sweet, and she's increasingly rough. i keep telling her that i understand it's frustrating raising a baby by yourself, but you can't jerk a baby around and slap him for sliding down in an ill-fitting wooden high chair, you tell me to watch your baby while you enjoy being at a restaurant...or let him slouch because he's happy with peas all over his face. cutest little bundle!...

so if i'm scared i'm not real and that all this is a just a creepy nightmare and i can't actually read or write, and i'm having flashbacks of being raped by a lot of guys who are really intimidated by my writing--my talent--hearing men are just as bad as deaf men, but not all hearing guys--they're just already married!

and mike made me promise not to marry anyone who won't have my back and do all the housework because holding down a job outside the home and all the artistic jobs i have at home are much more important than vacuuming. that i can't let myself get trapped with someone who won't support my talent in that way. and i just get discouraged when i remember all the ones who tried to beat me up or kill me. it's really scary because when they try to kill me usually it's a spur-of-the-moment anger that just aliens forth in a bloody fury they didn't expect to have to employ. because i'm like, "no, no, no sex." mostly no kissing either. i had to physically eject this nasty bastard who made out with me as we were waving goodbye on a dark street, his hand down my pants--and, thank god, it was the bronx, so a bus flew by and he disengaged.

he was thin and peruvian, but he didn't mention that half his nose cartilage was missing, so he had a really flat nose. it actually wasn't unattractive but i kept wanting to vomit throughout the date and refused to let him draw it out. i asked him to leave early. he was so pissed off and i had to literally push him all the way to the door. he looked just like a peruvian fatso because of the nose--it was kind of a cute, wide, smushed button nose--it just kept my body ringing NO NO NO NO NO NO.

it's rare that someone actually looks like him, but i've met at least four in the last four years. i think six but for sure four.

david was the first, and i told david he was so my favorite man ever, the way he looked just like fatso until he started signing, moving just like joeray and the eyebrows and elbows, but suave, and with ty's facial expressions and eyes, chocolatey warm but on alert...and that it was amazing because he didn't hit me or threaten to destroy my life because i can really write but it's not fair that i can write because they want to write.

then he hit me. right away. to tell me he wasn't like them. and he tore my head off.

and i just kept going back to see why he'd hit me. but he just kept getting angrier and angrier. he almost dislocated my shoulder the next time i saw him, our fourth date, because he was so ashamed that he couldn't donate any money to the wall street play we saw, a really fun one he fell in love with, just could not stop beaming through, chasing hamlet all through the mall, then abruptly yanking me when i started to pull out a few bills...down the stairs...almost dislocating my shoulder, snarling, furious, stalking in the rain, not quite stalking off but boiling with shame and anger, hatred...of me.

then i slipped into his arm with the umbrella and gave him the lighter. when i tried to ask a few blocks down why he was so angry that i was paying for something i asked him to do, nice and dreamy, he just pushed me away and disappeared. i took the D alone, and he rode the D one stop further than i did.

this is what i don't like about people who try to grab me or keep me from getting out of the room, or break my arm. or strangle me. they're all about telling me i've got to become someone else to live, and i won't.