by Roxane Gay
And then when I am introduced to new people who know my family, there is always this look on their faces of what I will charitably call shock. “You’re Roxane? You’re the one I’ve heard so many wonderful things about?” they ask. And then I have to break their hearts by saying, “Yes. I am, indeed, part of this beautiful family.”
I know the look well. I’ve seen it many, many times at family gatherings and celebrations. It’s hard to take. It crushes whatever shreds of confidence I muster. This isn’t in my head. This isn’t poor self-esteem. This is what comes from years of being the fat one in the beautiful family. For so long I’ve never talked about this. I suppose we should keep our shames to ourselves, but I’m sick of this shame. Silence hasn’t worked out that well.
Or maybe this is someone else’s shame and I’m just being forced to carry it.
68
When I was nineteen years old, I came out to my parents over the telephone. I was in the Arizona desert, far from them, living with a couple I barely knew, working the kind of job that would scandalize anyone who knew me. I had cracked up, quite literally. I had dropped out of my Ivy League college and run away, cutting off all contact with everyone whom I knew and loved and who loved me. I was having an emotional breakdown, but I didn’t have the necessary vocabulary to explain myself or to understand why I was making such choices.
The second to last woman I loved during my twenties, Fiona, finally made the grand gesture I always wanted her to make after I moved on or convinced myself I had moved on, because she would never give me what I needed—commitment, fidelity, affection. We were still friends, but I was seeing someone else, Adriana, who was beautiful and kind and crazy, though we too would ultimately be incompatible. Adriana lived across the country and was visiting me in the Midwest. We were having a good time. We did not yet know the worst things about each other. As these things seem to go, something about Adriana’s temporary presence in our city made Fiona realize I was almost beyond her grasp.
My relationship with Fiona had been largely unspoken. We spent all our time together. Sometimes we were intimate. We knew each other’s families. She was single and developed infatuations and sometimes relationships with other women, and still, I was there. We were there. It was enough until it wasn’t. And there was Adriana. She wanted to give me more and I let her even though I didn’t have enough to give her.
During Adriana’s visit, Fiona kept calling me. There was an urgency in her voice I had always wanted to hear. She needed me and I was in a complicated place where being needed was very attractive. At one point during her visit, I dropped off Adriana at a bookstore and ran to Fiona’s house because she said she simply had to see me. I don’t even remember what we talked about, but I do remember that when I went to pick up Adriana, I felt guilty, couldn’t look her in the eye.
I had gotten in the habit, you see, of dating women who wouldn’t give me what I wanted, who couldn’t possibly love me enough because I was a gaping wound of need. I couldn’t admit this to myself, but there was a pattern of intense emotional masochism, of throwing myself into the most dramatic relationships possible, of needing to be a victim of some kind over, and over, and over. That was something familiar, something I understood.
When they finally tracked me down and we spoke, all my parents wanted to know was why I’d disappeared because they are good parents who love their children fiercely. They would never let me go, not really. I was too young and too messed up to realize what I was putting them through. For that, I still carry regret. I didn’t know what to tell them. I couldn’t say, “I am completely broken down and losing my mind because something terrible happened to me,” though that was the truth. I thought about their faith and their culture. I told them the one thing that I thought might finally sever the bond between us. It’s not that I didn’t want my parents in my life, but I did not know how to be broken and be the daughter they thought they knew. I blurted out, “I’m gay.” This too shames me, not my queerness, but how little faith I put in them and how warped my understanding of queerness was.
Saying I was gay wasn’t true, but it wasn’t a lie. I was and am attracted to women. I find them rather intriguing. At the time, I didn’t know I could be attracted to both women and men and be part of this world. And, in those early days, I enjoyed dating women and having sex with them, but also, I was terrified of men. The truth is always messy. I wanted to do everything in my power to remove the possibility of being with men from my life. I failed at that, but I told myself I could be gay and I wouldn’t be hurt ever again. I needed to never be hurt again.
My parents were not thrilled to hear that their only daughter was gay. My mother made a comment about how she knew because I once told her I wanted to get married in denim. I failed to see the connection. I expected my parents to turn their backs on me, but they did nothing of the sort. They asked me to come home and I couldn’t go to them, not yet. I couldn’t let them know how broken I was. Still, we were talking again. A few months later, I would go home, and they would welcome me. For some time, things wouldn’t be right between us, but they wouldn’t be wrong. And much later, things would be right, and they would see me for who I am, and welcome the women I loved into their home, and love me for who I am. I would realize that had always been the case.
The first woman I slept with was big and beautiful. I still remember how she smelled. Her skin was so soft. She was kind when I was starving for kindness. It was just a one-night stand at a party. Several CDs played during our tryst. It was an experience. My tongue tingles when I think of her name. The next woman I slept with I called my girlfriend, even though we barely knew each other. We met on the Internet, and I packed up my stuff, and I flew to Minnesota from Arizona to be with her in the dead of winter. I had a suitcase, no winter clothing, and it was so cold the locks on her car froze. I did not know such a thing was possible. She lived in a dark, cramped basement apartment where I couldn’t stand all the way up because I was too tall. We were ridiculous and young. We lasted two weeks.
For the next several years I dated a string of women who were terrible in new and different ways. There was the woman who grabbed my arm so hard she left a bruise. There was the woman who enjoyed the outdoors, camping, and womyn’s music festivals, all of which I found horrifying. There was the woman who cheated on me and left the evidence of the transgression in my car. The bathroom at an Olive Garden was involved, which only added insult to injury. There was the woman who told me she could see being with me in the future but didn’t know how to be with me every day between now and that hypothetical future.
I was also terrible in new and different ways. I was equally if not more culpable in these relationships. I was far too insecure and needy, constantly needing affirmation that I was loved, that I was good enough to be loved. I was emotionally manipulative in trying to get that affirmation. I had terrible judgment with women because I labored under the delusion that a woman couldn’t hurt me, not like a man could. If a woman demonstrated any interest in me, I reciprocated her feelings, a gut reflex. I fell into the dangerous trap of being in love with the idea of being in love. I wanted to be wanted and needed. Time and again, I ended up with women who wouldn’t or couldn’t give me a fraction of what I desired. I ended up with women to whom I couldn’t or wouldn’t give a fraction of what they desired.
I performed my queerness so I could believe this half-truth I had told everyone, that I had told myself. I marched. I was here and queer. In the way of young queers of my day, I wore an excessive number of pride rings and pins and such. I slathered my car in stickers. I was passionately militant about any number of issues without fully understanding why.
To make matters worse, I was still attracted to men, often intensely. In bed with my girlfriends, I sometimes pretended I was with someone else, someone with a body harder in certain places, leaner in others. I told myself it was enough. I told myself everyone has fantasies. I hated myself for wanting men when men had hurt me so badly. I told myself I was
gay. I told myself this was all I could have so I couldn’t get hurt. I told myself I was stone. For quite some time, I touched but wouldn’t allow myself to be touched. I was stone and untouchable. I seethed. I was swollen with desire, with a desperate need to be touched, to feel a woman’s skin against my skin, to find release through pleasure. I withheld even that from myself. I punished myself. I was stone. I could not bleed.
Years later, I realized that I could bleed and I could make others bleed. At the end of Adriana’s visit, I returned home after taking her to the airport, leaving her with the promise we would see each other again soon. It was a promise I kept before I broke another promise and then broke her heart. Fiona had written me beautiful letters telling me everything I always wanted to hear from her. I sat on my couch, reading her words over and over, shaking because, finally, I had everything I wanted from her in the palm of my hand, and because, even then, I knew I was going to push her away. All I needed to do was pick up the phone and dial a number. All I needed to do was say, “Yes.”
69
For far too long, I did not know desire. I simply gave myself, gave my body, to whoever offered me even the faintest of interest. This was all I deserved, I told myself. My body was nothing. My body was a thing to be used. My body was repulsive and therefore deserved to be treated as such.
I did not deserve to be desired. I did not deserve to be loved.
In relationships, I never allowed myself to make the first move because I knew I was repulsive. I did not allow myself to initiate sex. I did not dare want something so fine as affection or sexual pleasure. I knew I had to wait until it was offered, each and every time. I had to be grateful for what was offered.
I entered relationships with people who mostly tolerated me and occasionally offered me a trifle of affection. There was the woman who cheated on me and the woman who stabbed my favorite teddy bear with a steak knife and the woman who always seemed to need money and the woman who was too ashamed of me to take me to work parties.
There were men too, but they were mostly unmemorable and, frankly, I expected them to hurt me.
My body was nothing, so I let anything happen to my body. I had no idea what I enjoyed sexually because I was never asked and I knew my wants did not matter. I was supposed to be grateful; I had no right to seek satisfaction.
Lovers were often rough with me as if that was the only way they could understand touching a body as fat as mine. I accepted this because I did not deserve kindness or a gentle touch.
I was called terrible names and I accepted this because I understood I was a terrible, repulsive thing. Sweet words were not for girls like me.
I was treated so badly or indifferently for so long that I forgot what being treated well felt like. I stopped believing that such a thing existed.
My heart received even less consideration than my body, so I tried to lock it away but never quite succeeded.
At least I am in a relationship, I always told myself. At least I am not so repulsive, so abject, that no one will spend time with me. At least I am not alone.
70
I am not good at romantic interactions that aren’t furtive and kind of sleazy. I don’t know how to ask someone on a date. I don’t know how to gauge the potential interest of other human beings. I don’t know how to trust people who do express interest in me. I am not the girl who “gets the date” in these circumstances, or that’s what I cannot help but tell myself. I am always paralyzed by self-doubt and mistrust.
Normally, I force myself to feel attraction to someone who expresses interest in me. It’s mortifying to admit that, but it’s also the truth. I doubt I am alone in this. I often think, Maybe this is my last chance, my only chance. I better make it work.
Having standards, or trying to have standards and sticking to them, has proven to be more difficult than I imagined. It is hard to say, “I deserve something good. I deserve someone I actually like,” and believe it because I am so used to believing, “I deserve whatever mediocrity comes my way.” In our culture, we talk a lot about change and growing up, but man, we don’t talk nearly enough about how difficult it is. It is difficult. For me, it is difficult to believe I matter and I deserve nice things and I deserve to be around nice people.
I am also plagued by this idea that because I’m not a slender supermodel, I really have no business having standards. Who am I to judge someone whose opening salvo is “hi u doing?” That is a literal message I have received on a dating site. This self-esteem issue has shaped so much of my romantic life. My past is littered with mediocrity. (I have had a couple great relationships too!) Most of the time, though, I end up in these long, deeply unsatisfying relationships.
Even when I am in a good relationship it is hard to stand up for myself. It is hard to express dissatisfaction or have the arguments I want to have because I feel like I’m already on thin ice by virtue of being fat. It is hard to ask for what I want and need and deserve and so I don’t. I act like everything is always fine, and it’s not fair to me or anyone else.
I am really trying to change this pattern and take a hard look at the choices I make and why. I don’t want to be relieved when a relationship ends. I have things to offer. I am nice and funny and I bake really well. I no longer want to believe I deserve nothing better than mediocrity or downright shoddy treatment. I am trying to believe this with every fiber of my being.
I often tell my students that fiction is about desire in one way or another. The older I get, the more I understand that life is generally the pursuit of desires. We want and want and oh how we want. We hunger.
71
Sometimes, I get so angry when I think about how my sexuality has been shaped. I get angry that I can draw a direct line between the first boy I loved, the boy who made me into the girl in the woods, and the sexual experiences I have had since. I get angry because I no longer want to feel his hands on my desires. I worry that I always will.
My first relationship was my worst relationship. I was desperately young. My first relationship was with the boy who turned me into the girl in the woods. He was a good boy from a good family living in a good neighborhood, but he hurt me in the worst ways. People are rarely what they seem. The more I got to know him, the more I realized that he was always showing who he really was and the people in his life either saw through him or closed their eyes. After that boy and his friends raped me, I was broken. I did not stop letting him do things to me and that remains one of my greatest shames. I wish I knew why. Or I do know why. I was dead, so nothing mattered.
Since then I’ve had many other relationships and none nearly that bad, but the damage was done. My course was set. And it’s a shame that the measure is what is not so bad instead of what is thriving and good. I look at some of my worst relationships and think, At least they didn’t hit me. I work from a place of gratitude for the bare minimum. Since then I’ve never been in a relationship where I’ve had to hide nonconsensual bruises. I’ve never feared for my life. I’ve never been in a situation where I couldn’t walk away. Does this make me a lucky girl? Given the stories I’ve heard from other women, yes, it does make me a lucky girl.
This is not how we should measure luck.
I have had good relationships, but it’s hard to trust that because what I consider good doesn’t always feel very good at all.
Or I am thinking about testimony I’ve heard from other women over the years—women sharing their truths, daring to use their voices to say, “This is what happened to me. This is how I have been wronged.” I’ve been thinking about how so much testimony is demanded of women, and still, there are those who doubt our stories.
There are those who think we are all lucky girls because we are still, they narrowly assume, alive.
I am weary of all our sad stories—not hearing them, but that we have these stories to tell, that there are so many.
72
In one of my past relationships, again in my twenties, things between us were not good but also not that bad. It
was the kind of relationship that reminds me that sometimes emotional abuse is even worse than physical abuse. I don’t mind getting knocked around. I don’t say that cavalierly. There are simply some things to which I am numb. This person, though, wanted to break me down, which became interesting because I did not realize I could still be broken down further. Who knew? They did, I guess. They smelled it on me.
There was nothing dramatic or violent between us. It was simply that I faced a barrage of constant criticism. Nothing I ever did was good enough. I was in my twenties and desperately insecure, so I thought this was what all relationships were like. I thought this was what I deserved because I was so worthless.
I couldn’t spend time with this person’s colleagues without a rigorous critique of everything wrong with me that I needed to try and improve. Most of the time, as you might imagine, we were not together in public because I was just not good enough. I never looked nice enough. I talked too loud. I breathed too loud. I slept too loud. I was too warm while I slept. I moved too much while I slept. I basically stopped sleeping. I just hugged as small a sliver of the edge of the bed as I could and I stayed awake so my sleeping wouldn’t be such a nuisance. I was always tired.
I didn’t wash dishes correctly. There is a right way and a wrong way to wash dishes. I know that now. Don’t get water on the floor. Drain the dish rack. Be careful how you organize the dishes in the dish rack. One of my favorite things to do now is to wash dishes any old way. I spill water on the floor and I smile because these are my fucking floors and these are my dishes and no one cares if there is water on the floor.