June 21st, 2006
Lierre Keith on Sex and Violence
WARNING: POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING MATERIAL
Anyway, the manila envelope had a stick-um with my name on it.
‘Skyler,
How about a “centerfold” of these photos? From the Lesbian/Power Conference.
–Annelise’The quotes around centerfold gave me a bad feeling, but there was no point in putting off the inevitable. I stuck my hand in and pulled out the contents.
Ick, was my first thought. Followed closely by, why me? The third runner-up wasn’t a thought really, just a reaction as I spread out the photographs. Terror, grabbing my insides like an orphan, or hunger, or a bird of prey. They’d tied my hands with a belt, just like that. Just like that. And they’d laughed and I think I screamed but I’m not sure. I was fifteen and on my way home from work and there were three of them and the asphalt was so hard. I’d never felt anything so hard as what they did. Beg for it, bitch, the one guy kept saying and nothing’s ever been the same since, not really. It was dark, they’d dragged me past the dim circle of light, and there were smashed soda cans and stray tufts of grass breaking through and you don’t realize how meaningless clothes are until three boys drag you behind a dumpster and tie your hands with a belt and rip you apart one at a time. If anyone was home across the street, no one cared.
I didn’t look at the pictures again. I didn’t look at anything for awhile, though I remember putting them back in the envelope and then laying my head on the table. I wanted to scream and I wanted to bleed and I wanted to die and nothing was real. I couldn’t feel my hands or feet, I couldn’t find the world…
Annelise didn’t waste any time. She’d probably been fantasizing about it all day. The thought made me feel even sicker. It was gonna be one great big scene, and just for the record, I wasn’t consenting.
‘Where’s the centerfold? Didn’t you get the pictures?’ she asked. And then sat back and waited…
‘I didn’t make a “centerfold.” I don’t want to put those pictures in,’ I said as emotionlessly as possible. I up-ended the envelope and let the pictures tumble down, burnt leaves, acid rain, the nuclear fall-out of woman-hatred…
‘That’s censorship,’ Annelise said, leaning back and hanging one arm over the back of her chair. She was having the time of her life.
‘It’s self-defense,’ I replied. ‘We’re surrounded by women being tortured and brutalized.’
‘But this is women taking power over their victimization,’ she said with a pouty smile.
‘No, it’s women victimizing other women. “Taking power” would be smashing the systems that create torture, like male supremacy and racism and imperialism,’ I replied, mimicking her goading tone.
‘Skyler, why are you so disturbed by women’s sexuality?’ This was her foreplay and I didn’t want to play but the only way I knew to stop it was with words.
‘I’m disturbed, Annelise, by women training themselves to get off on sadism and cruelty and pain. I’m disturbed that women aren’t resisting the basic dynamic of oppression or trying to create something different.’
‘Maybe we don’t want to resist. Maybe we’re tired of the patriarchy telling us to say no to sex.’
‘Men aren’t telling you to say no. They don’t let you say no.’
She snorted and shook her head. Then she leaned forward, lips parting.
‘Why don’t you admit you want it, Skyler? Just a little?’…
‘When I was a teenager,’ I heard a voice, small and faraway, it had to be mine, I could feel the air in my throat, ‘I had a lot of violent sexual fantasies. Rape fantasies. Like a lot of women. And then I was raped. Really raped. Three guys in a parking lot, on my way home from work. And you know what? I haven’t had a rape fantasy since. ‘Cause it’s not a fantasy and it’s not a game and neither is this, Annelise, and I’m telling you ‘no.’ Can you understand, No? No? Can you?’…
I wanted to feel something, the hard chair or the wooden floor or the weight of flesh on my bones but nothing came through. Except a small, hard fist in my chest. Was it called a heart? I wanted a bath, no lights except faded sun, behind a door that locked, and then I wanted sleep, a long stretch of unconsciousness, days of it, years, more, what would I find when I woke? That the earth was covered in vines, in dark forests and deer prints and I was the only human left? No, it would be piles of refuse, steel bridges, rain that burned over deserts of dead mushrooms, the end had come, the boys had had their way, stripping the rest of us raw, the earth, the sky, the waters, the women, while the lesbians had stood back and laughed.
_________
From Skyler Gabriel by Lierre Keith (1995, Fighting Words Press)
