Pink Matter
I have been told many things by men. Most slide through my brain, painful but fleeting. Others etch themselves deep into the pink matter like a brand:
"I usually only go for black women, but I'd make an exception for you. I ain't ever seen a white woman with all that in the back." —Man on the street at 12:30pm.
"Take off your glasses. Okay, now look at me. Now turn around. I'm trying to figure out whether you look more like your mom or your dad." —My ninth-grade gym teacher. I could feel his hot coffee breath on my skin.
"The girl in the biker shorts has a fat ass. Hey! HEY! Did you hear me? I SAID YOU HAVE A FAT ASS!" —Group of teenage boys walking behind me. I was on the phone with my mom.
"Isn't it a compliment, though?" —A male customer at my sports bar job who saw another man recording me, without my knowledge, and didn't understand why I was upset.
"She's stuck-up. She'd probably still fuck you though. Just keep trying." —A 25-year-old UNC student to a friend-of-a-friend, upon my first time meeting them both.
****
I laid across his twin bed with navy sheets in a frat house room called "The Cave"; fondly nicknamed for its dark walls and lack of windows. I would walk through the doors of the house and brace myself for the smell of old garbage and stale vomit. The boys that lived in the frat didn't ever clean; that was one of the many benefits of having pledges and a housekeeper. I'd hold my breath long enough to make it to that little gray room, with its stained navy beanbag and twin bed. Only there could I breathe safely. Sometimes, though, the smells wafted under the doorway, or the sounds of the fraternity's comments they didn't want anyone else to hear echoed through the walls, both feeding into the swirling of my stomach. There were always people around, always boys within a 10-foot range. But my ex would remind me I was safe, and for the time being, I felt it.
He ran his hands over my smooth shoulders, the panes of my stomach, the curve of my hips. He gazed at me with his puppy-dog eyes, adoring but hungry. He caressed my body, his prized possession. I was wearing my new set, a "rosy blush" underwear and bra I was particularly proud of.
"I almost want you to walk around out there like this. So they can see what I have."
He kissed me, and I relished it. I felt so desired, so powerful.
It is a sad thing, when objectification leads to pride. But I will not lie and say I still don't sometimes crave it.
****
Iced coffees and full-volume drives with the windows down as your hair sways in the wind. Head scratches with long nails. Sitting on the cold bathroom tile while your friend takes a shower, inhaling the lavender and rose and vanilla wafting from behind the curtains. "Can I borrow this shirt?" Complimenting strangers in bar bathrooms. "You're going? Okay, I'll come too." Kisses on cheeks, lip gloss in one person's jean pocket to be gently shared. Friendships lasting for years, decades, supplied only through compassion and loyalty.
****
"I can't wait for my senior year so I can fuck other girls." —First love and first ex, about seven months into the relationship and ten minutes after telling me how much he loved me. I was sixteen and had just barely started having sex.
"You're American? That's perfect. American girls are so easy." —British man in a club who said this shortly before asking my name.
"Pick up the phone. Please, pick up the phone. I'm going to kill myself. Why aren't you picking up? I thought you were my friend." —A once-friend who couldn't reach me because I was at my boyfriend's baseball game. These calls only started when I entered a relationship and no longer paid as much attention to him.
"Yeah well, if you leave me, no guy will ever fuck you like I do." —Man who did not understand my talent for acting.
"Can we have both of you? Can you make out for us? Oh, don't be like that. Just one kiss. It would be hot." —A man who had put his hot, sweaty body between a girl and me who were trying to dance, and his sidekick.
****
The breakup did not feel sudden to me. I had shattered and pieced myself back together multiple times in the months before I ended the relationship. I was no longer perky, rosy-cheeked and willing. I was dark and dry and loose, held together by the remaining pink flesh in my soul.
We grabbed at each other, desperately clinging to what we knew.
I pulled back and he lunged, sinking his claws into my skin, but it was so welcome, the pain so refreshing. I wanted to let go of him and let him heal. I wanted him to sink his teeth into my skin and lose a piece of myself with every bite.
I detached his hands from my body, watching as his fingertips left purple indents.
Gently, so gently, I released his hands from mine. Expressions washed across his face in waves; disbelief, horror, anger. I saw red overtake his features, yielding to gray as his skin turned to cold stone. I reached out to touch his face and felt only ice.
"I'm sorry." I looked down, watching my tears drip into my lap. I reached out one last time, hoping to comfort him for the betrayal of my decision to leave. It was selfish, to choose to take care of myself at the cost of hurting him. He took a step back.
"Get out."
****
"I know you said you didn't want to date anyone right now, but you'd make an exception for me, right?" —The first guy I drunkenly kissed after a breakup. Earlier in the day, I'd explicitly told him I didn't want to date anyone for at least a year.
"Just so you know, I've had two sexual assault cases filed against me. I have to warn girls because they get like, freaked when they find out. But both the girls were lying I literally promise. One girl even admitted it, after her case fell in court." —Man who I was on a first date with. He had called me "mommy" twice shortly before announcing this.
"I'd fuck her but she'd have to put a paper bag over her face. I don't really want to have to look at it." —Old coworker after scrolling through a girl's social media and critiquing her bikini pictures.
"Do you want to have sex?" —Ex-boyfriend with the puppy-dog eyes. I was severely depressed and actively crying, face-forward on his lap, when he asked me this question. His hands slid up my shirt while the tears slid down my cheeks. It was one of the only times I can remember actually saying no. This was one week before we broke up.
****
Vomit threatened to lurch out of my throat as I stumbled out of the frat, but this time, not because of the putrid aromas attached to the hallway. I breathed in, out, in, out. The tips of my fingers went cold, numb, and the tears paused in my eyes. I stumbled back to my dorm, unaware of the onlookers, watching my feet move one in front of the other. I was a blur of shock and wordless confusion. I stood hiccupping on that elevator, watching the numbers click by, waiting to get home.
I walked across the outdoor cement walkway, holding my breath. I opened the door to the suite and two of my best friends, Abby and Sahra, stood there, watching. I looked straight down at my feet, crossing to my room in the back right. I barely made it past the door frame before I collapsed onto the hard ground. Only then, in the safety of my dorm, did the extent of my two-year breakup hit me. They caught my arms, lowering me to the floor with them. We sat there, listening to the symphony of my wails, the rhythm of my gasps. I let myself melt into their bodies, tucked my face into the spot between Abby's collarbone and jaw, hand gripping Sahra's fingers until they were a sweaty mess. They did their best to hold my wet, loose skin together, sustaining me with the warmth of unconditional love. Silent and firm, Sahra and Abby stayed with me on the floor until I stood up, years later.
****
Dancing in long dresses in the living room. "Can you do my makeup? And also my hair? And can I borrow that top you wore yesterday?" Calling your mom or your older sister for love on the bad days. Screaming to Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish and Beyonce and Stevie Nicks and SZA. Black hair-dye for bad-bitch era and red hair-dye for the healing era. Holding hands through crowds and parties for fear of losing each other. The Barbie movement, and the recognition of the beauty in all women that came with it.
****
"You aren't supposed to have hairy armpits." —Eight-year-old boy camper with a father I don't ever want to meet.
"When do you get off? Where do you live? You should come over." —Drunk customer who, angry at my rejection, left a single quarter as a tip for his dinner and drinks.
"She got her period while I was fingering her. I was good though, I wasn't mad or anything. I just took her home after. I mean obviously I didn't talk to her again after that, but I was really nice about it." —Ex-boyfriend with his sweet brown puppy-dog eyes. We hadn't had sex yet, and he was showing me his gentle side.
"You're only 19? That's fine. I'm only 35." —Man trying to get me to go home with him.
"You're so sexy I could just kiss you. Yeah, I'm going to kiss you." —Man who was actively grabbing my hand as I was trying to serve him his beer.
****
I started working my first job when I was 16. It was in a little family-owned business called Freezie. I had discovered Freezie with my best friend Mikayla, because she and I used to go every day, always getting the Thai tea with tapioca. One of the times we went, I asked for a job application. I needed a job somewhere, and I was there constantly anyways, it seemed like a two-birds-one-stone situation. The manager looked me up and down, gave me his personal phone number, and told me to text him to coordinate an interview time. Womanhood had been an inconvenience to me at this point, requiring a little more effort to gain the attention of adults I wanted to impress and a lot more effort to avoid the attention of adults I feared. I hadn't considered my sex to be a danger until this job. You never forget your first.
Freezie smelled like simple syrup and artificial strawberries. My feet stuck to the ground wherever I walked because of mediocre mopping jobs and inconsistent cleaning schedules. I made minimum wage and they took my tips, but it was my first job and I needed it, especially when Coronavirus leveled the job market. My manager Hin and my coworker Colson often visited during my shifts. We were friends, of course, so they did the friendly thing and told me about their sex lives. They'd ask frequently about my ex: Did I miss him? Did I miss having sex? He was my first, right? Colson would show me the blind spots in the back where he bent his ex-girlfriend over the cookies-and-cream frozen yogurt machine. I once asked why they still talked, considering they were broken up, and he said she was too easy to fuck to let go of.
Hin was a little older, somewhere over 20, and super into blondes. He'd show me pictures of girls he'd talked to, girls he wanted. He'd pull up Instagram accounts and show me different body types he liked, which women could lose weight in different areas. He thought Addison Rae was a little chubby, and that Kim Kardashian had a good butt but not a pretty enough face for his liking, this man who managed a Freezie.
Two days after he hired me, he told me he'd have asked me out if I was only two shades blonder. I laughed and swallowed while he stared at me.
We bought Nerf guns and we'd shoot each other during slow shifts, which was very unprofessional and even more enjoyable. Sometimes, when I was cleaning up front or working register, they'd shoot me in the ass, and then point at each other when I turned around so that I didn't know which one of them to blame.
I worked almost 40 hours a week during Covid, but customers became less and less frequent as the virus raged. I made minimum wage, and they took my tips, but desperation for routine and familiarity can trap us from finding out what else is out there. I sat for hours in the back room, scrubbing sugary stains off of the floor they had resided on for years and boiling giant pots of boba that would do nothing but grow stagnant in my churning stomach. I cleaned and I ate and I waited for a reprieve from the routines I was chained to, watching the bright days turn to dreary nights through the giant glass windows.
Hin, recognizing the frequency of my shifts and feeling the confinement the pandemic caused, began to escalate his visits. He was really into the stand-too-close thing that men like to do, where they feel you up, brushing a hand past your chest or pressing up against your back so you have to feel their dick against you, and then when you move away or give them a funny look, they say sorry or whoops and make you feel silly for insinuating it was anything other than an accident.
In April, we began to do deliveries to a local private school about twenty-five minutes from the store. Sometimes, out of boredom or to stall getting back to work, he'd drive random routes through back roads or speed as fast as his BMW would let him on the highway. After one of the biggest deliveries yet, Hin drove us to a local farm everyone went to for the sunset view. I heard the click as he locked the car doors and pressed my face to the glass intently, watching my breath fog up the window. From the corner of my eye, I could see him staring at me. I clenched my stomach, trying to sink further into the door and away from his desire. I began to draw swirls in the steam my breath left, waiting, heart stuttering, for him to give up and drive us back home. He waited a few more minutes, silently hungering, before he finally put the car back in drive. He hit 110 miles per hour on the way back to Freezie that day.
After trapping me in his idea of a romantic gesture failed, he changed tactics. He texted me more frequently, and then decided to begin Snapchatting me. What a joy it is, to be Snapchatted by your boss. Do you block him and lose your job? Or do you respond the least amount possible to keep it without fully degrading yourself? Never really figured that one out. I hadn't responded to his texts in a few days, so he sent me a nude photo of himself, stomach painfully clenched and arms strained to a flex, followed by a picture saying "omg that's so embarrassing that wasn't meant for you." Colson told me a few days later that Hin had bragged to him about his plan to "make me jealous."
I began to have sex with a new man, and this worked as a decent repellent. Men will only respect other men. As I got more serious with my boyfriend at the time, the sexual comments stopped, as did the unrequited texting. I finally got a new job as Covid restrictions lightened slightly, and I texted Hin to take me off the schedule as soon as possible. He had given up on trying to have me for the time being, and I didn't work another day; no two weeks' notice needed.
A year later, I was sitting in an American food restaurant called the Loop with my mom and my great-aunt, appreciating the goat cheese and salmon salad and crunchy ice. This was a few weeks after a serious breakup, and they took me out to admire the red booths and slow the accidental weight loss that accompanies sadness. I soaked in their support; soft hands running over my arms, brushing over the parts of my legs where I had drawn on myself in Crayola marker. I looked up from between their gentle bodies leaning into mine, absorbing the cheesy, fake street-style art, and made unfortunate eye contact with Hin. My voice left me, and the salad threatened to make its return up my throat. Aunt Sandy and my mom kept talking, the noise reaching my ears like radio static. I breathed in, out, in, out. I told my mom it was time to go. She picked up on my cue, and as we passed his table, I studied the window, ignoring the way he turned his full body around in his chair to watch me. I felt his gaze as we passed through the door frame and onto the concrete and I started running, heaving sobs leaving my body as each foot hit the ground. I reached the red Mazda and yanked on the handle over and over again, grabbing it with two hands and pulling and pulling.
My mom handed me a brown paper bag from her morning pastry to puff into. She always knows what to do when I enter the wordless state. She can pick up on my feelings from a world away, based on the tone of my voice or the weight of my footsteps. With the help of her sweet-smelling bag and the window she cracked, my breathing slowed, and I tried to explain myself.
"Hin there. Old Freezie manager. Leave now."
My mom put the car in reverse while Aunt Sandy apologized over and over, desperately wanting an explanation and deeply fearing it simultaneously. She never got one, but my mom broke the silence after a few minutes.
"When I was in high school, a teacher consistently hit on me. He took me to a Taco Bell to celebrate graduation, and as we walked through it, he told me every man was 'eye raping' me. I was lucky to get away."
She stopped there, unsure if there was anything to offer me but solace.
A few days later, my mom told me she didn't realize how bad the situation was with Hin. She sat me down, but didn't touch me, letting the strength of each of her words land. I needed to go to therapy, she said, because my fear of men was getting out of hand.
"It's ruining your life, Zoe."
****
"You're showering? Without me? (sad face emoji). Haha, just kidding." —Hin. I had been working for two months at that point.
"I hope you don't mind, but I asked this girl I used to hook up with for advice on getting you to give better head. These are some of the tips she gave—why do you look upset? I didn't mean to upset you. It's just so you can be better." —Ex-boyfriend with his sweet puppy eyes.
"Do you suck or swallow? One hand or two hands? Have you fucked him yet? Why are you not answering I'm literally just being a good friend." —Friend of a roommate who was in my house when I got off work. He had just found out I was in a relationship.
"I just feel like you aren't even attracted to me anymore." —Ex-boyfriend when I didn't want to have sex. He looked at me with his heartbroken brown eyes, so I cheered him up by taking off my clothes and letting him inside me.
****
I closed the door of the Mazda, returning to the concrete path to my dorm. I reached the door to our hall and my roommates reached out to me. Tears and snot flew from my mouth as I swatted at their hands.
"No touch no touch no touch."
I sat on the floor of Sahra's and my room and pulled my extra-large Avengers t-shirt over my knees, tucking my face between them. I forced myself to pace my breaths, taking deep inhales to recognize their scents around me. My stomach stilled, and I tucked my wet eyelids into the soft parts of my legs. It was safe there, breathing between my thighs, in my dorm room with its five women.
Somewhere, my roommates, my anchors, pulled out their laptops, leaning against the wall on the other side of the room, close enough but perfectly far away.
****
Any man can be harmful. I have been darkened, in some way, by every single man I have ever loved. My closest guy friends, my boyfriends, my family. I have never left a male relationship unscathed. I worry that I never will.
I am falling in love. It is an all-consuming, beautiful, haunting kind of love; the kind where colors brighten when he enters the room and I feel his presence like a tether. I am so terrified I can barely breathe. But I must ask myself, over and over when it's needed, would I rather never love anyone again? Or love at risk of continuing to hurt myself?
And if I choose to love, as so many women do, will he see all the parts of me and be disgusted? And tell me what to fix? Will he try to mold me into the perfect format? Take my pink patches and change them to match his colors?
Can I survive that, again?
I do not know.
****
When I think of love, I am not transported into his arms. I do not flash through memories of romance in the cinema of my brain.
I picture myself on the floor that day, held in place between Sahra and Abby. I think of sitting on the couch with my roommates, recounting every detail of the limited hours we've spent apart, procrastinating the work we promised ourselves we'd do. I think of my mom and my aunt and my sister, silently supporting me through the good, the bad, and the ugly. I think of returning to my home full of women, my eternal safe space. When I think of love, I think of the little girls around the world learning there is strength in numbers, and strength in each other.
****
Saying "love you" every time you leave the house. Cutting new bangs when the season changes, or trying to, and accepting fate when your roommates step in to rescue what's left of your hair. Comparing boob sizes. Conversations that start with a nightly debrief and turn into a discussion of power dynamics within each relationship. Crawling into your sister's bed for no reason other than craving the comfort of her smell. Communal closets. Running potential text messages through group chats before sending them to the intended target. Light kisses on flushed cheeks. "If you don't go, I won't go." Laying on soft stomachs and smooth skin, head balanced on squishy thighs and shoulders, and falling into a peaceful sleep.
****
Being a woman is my biggest burden and my greatest attribute. I'm not sure when I stopped being innocent and started becoming carnal. I wear red and tight and I am pretty, I am slutty, you can have sex with me. I wear black and baggy and I am boyish, maybe hot, you could definitely fuck me. I wear white and flowy and I am beautiful, you could make love to me.
I have watched as hands took chunks of me away and I crumbled like sand in their grip, but I did not fight back. I did not stop the hands from taking. Maybe I tried, but as they persisted, I eroded.
I crave the soft firmness of women, the subtle strength, the constant endurance. I crave their love and their kindness and their featherlight kisses on my hair. I want to kneel at the feet of every woman and I want to scream at every girl.
Pink flowers, pink cheeks, pink flesh. Pink friendships and pink love, as kind and soft as it comes. I am nothing but pink matter, and it is everything to me.