Lived Through This
What I Don’t Ask You to Hear
I don’t believe I know who I am if I’m not special, targeted, marked, hated
My greatest fantasy is that someday, wherever I am, a man with a blank face will walk up to me and hit me so hard that I collapse to the ground and black out.
When I was 16, my best friend dropped me off at my house a few hours after school let out. I remember the canned reek of onion rings from the local Sonic, the way the rolled-down window framed my shirtless father walking to the passenger door, the look in her eyes as he swung the door open and pulled me out by my arm, the moment of hesitation before she slammed the gas pedal and fled. The next weeks, alone at lunch, trying to catch her glance. The girl, also named Amanda, who replaced me very soon after, less funny than I was but with a car of her own.
I have a big mouth. I am too forthcoming and honest. I am an expert at giving witness statements, at speaking to doctors, police officers, emergency personnel, hiring managers. I am built for confession.
I still have dreams where my father and I are together in a distant seaside town, where we are the only inhabitants, and I have no phone. I still have fever dreams where I am having sex with older, angry men. Sometimes I watch their…
