Being And

Trigger warning *sexual assault / heroin use*

I’ve been thinking a lot about narratives lately. I’m going to try and unpack some of the stories I use my body to tell. 

*seriously the above trigger stuff will show up*

 

 

So I use my body to tell stories, my vocal cords rumble around or my fingers do their spider thing at a keyboard.

My body tells stories, if vague ones. I fell off my bike last Sunday at work and my palms are scrapped up. I have an ugly bruise on my leg. 

In this post I’m going to try and focus on the stories I tell about my body, things I have done to my body in search of a story to tell.

Over the break I talked to a nurse on the phone. I was trying to renew an old steroid prescription that I take sometimes for eczema. I hadn’t needed it over the summer, but biking around in the cold has slowly been turning me into lizard man. I found out that I needed a dermatologist appointment, and that it was impossible to schedule one. I said, “I really need the doctor to just renew the prescription right now because it is really starting to get bad and I work in the food service industry and it’s going to start looking like a staph infection soon and please just tell the doctor that I need them to do that”

Master of conversation over here, I know.

I hung up right after gasping for breath.

I was having a Proust moment.

 

The song ‘Pink Stones’ by Memory Tapes was playing the first time I was with a man. I had put my iPod on shuffle a few minutes before he dragged me into a side room. Sometimes the song is a trigger and sometimes it isn’t. I walked to the train, waited a few hours for it to start running. I broke my lease and left for Chicago.

I told people I didn’t feel anything during, laughed that it didn’t last very long. By the time I acknowledged the assault I had learned I could lie about my body. 

I wanted my flesh to be spectacle. I wanted to be bright for other people. My body was timber. 

To enter a homeless shelter in Chicago you need to arrive in either an ambulance or police car. I thought you just needed to stand in a line (thanks, The Pursuit of Happyness). I bounced around short term living situations paying rent with sex work. I was really convinced that my body horror would be narrative gold at some near future point.

Around this time someone told me, “everyone is running from something”. I’d felt so lonely before that. Later I wondered, how do you run with the thing you are fleeing?

 

I met my first boyfriend and got a job selling phones. He was so patient with me. We both kept waiting for me to get better. I kept telling him I’d be fixed soon.

Our first night together we walked on the beach, it was snowing. 

I told my roommates that I’d jumped in Lake Michigan that night. My boyfriend told them later that he’d stopped me. 

I fumbled and said that I’d just put my legs in.

I started using heroin.

I kept telling my boyfriend that I would get better.

Heroin is often described as an incredible bodily pleasure, better than some large number of collected orgasms. 

When I used it I didn’t have a body at all.

I called family and friends I hadn’t talked to since moving.

I wrote.

I could be around people.

I’d use in front of my friends, told them I trusted that they’d keep me safe.

I just wanted them to remember me.

I knew nothing could keep me safe.

I developed eczema around this time. Opiates make you itchy. I scratched at the air of myself all the time.

The eczema started to weep.

The first doctor diagnosed it as staph from the hallway. The second doctor gave me two courses of the drug used to treat anthrax. I was refused a bacterial culture until this point. I needed an $8 steroid cream.

I bandaged myself while the nurse texted someone.

 

I got caught shoplifting during this period.

The cops kicked me through doors to avoid touching me. They put disinfectant on their boots after.

Sometimes I’ll randomly think “I’m banned from Whole Foods for life” and I’ll laugh.

I haven’t used heroin in around 30 months.

I’m still scared I can’t write without it.

I can’t tell these stories.

I was assaulted again this past Fourth of July.

When I told someone I embellished a weapon into the story. 

My flesh isn’t enough.

I’m not bright.

Every time I hear ‘write what you know’ my heart drops. 

It isn’t a good story.

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m