Defying Gravity
A meditation on the normalization of non-consent
The finish arrives without a sense of completion.
It is never done, I am never secure. I have not earned love this time. I have not earned connection.
He turns away from me. Avoids my kiss. Doesn’t hold me close, utters no affirmations.
I don’t feel used. I just want to matter.
After a year, when I’m on the verge of leaving again, he tells me he loves me.
He is breaking the glass in case of emergency.
I do not feel more loved by virtue of his saying it. I might even feel less so. The gap widens between the words and reality.
Before this there was consent that didn’t feel like consent. There is an oddness to not objecting to the act.
I desire to be told what to do. I like getting on my knees. I like giving, offering. I like being called names, playing at being a dirty whore.
The way he does this doesn’t feel like an option. I was not asked. There wasn’t negotiation. There was testing of boundaries, resistance disregarded, pushing past the no, ignoring the limit in conversation.
You introduce the element of a man abusing power and authority and access. A personal trainer, police officer, maintenance worker. This tells me that as I woman I am never safe. I am always a potential victim of assault, in your view.
You eroticize this. These are situations that can be eroticized but you do it without asking. You don’t pause when I pull back. You don’t stop when I say I don’t like it.
Even the non-cooperative kitchen appliance becomes a victim, another woman subject to your probing. Take it, you say.
Sometimes I want to take it. I want to play in the fantasy. You don’t know where the lines are and you don’t care to learn.
Maybe we just don’t align. Your fantasies are all centered on you being served. Mine are of being wanted, desired and taken because of that desire. I never feel wanted. I don’t get the assurance at the end.
You make excuses for your lack of cuddling and pillow talk. It’s the male brain, you say. Most of my partners before and since have wanted to cuddle. I get kisses on the forehead. Gentle stroking on my skin. Attention to my comfort. This is true whether it’s our first time together or 30th. Most of them are men.
It’s no wonder I fall in love a little the first time someone treats me like a person after we breakup.
On the surface of it, the things I do now are more extreme. I wear a collar. I get tied up, flogged and spanked, called a slut.
I feel safer than I ever did with you.
You laughed at BDSM, didn’t take it seriously. You just wanted control without accountability.
You accept the imbalance as the order of things. You say you’re a feminist. Your actions and choices show you believe you are entitled to women’s bodies, our comfort, our kindness, our empathy. You know the right words to say sometimes. It does not change your belief that you are at the center, that men’s bad behavior is as unchangeable as gravity.
