Girl to Complete a Portrait

I can already see the way I presume teenagers are too un

formed to make decisions but I remember my destruction

well. I masturbated to the livejournal community _nakedparts,

a blog made of livejournal users who showed off various

quality photos of their naked bodies. There was a beautiful

woman naked and splayed against a tree, her butt in full

bloom. Spiky blurs of genitals. It could never be fully

satisfying, which was the greatest arousal of all. I read comments

and the tiny wars winnowed in the flesh grids. A man 

commented on a woman’s vag shot, Shave. Another man

condemned the comment, because her full growth was hers.

I was 14, believed feminism to be an older, won battle

despite my body’s multiple invasions and the natural silence

expected. The silence was a tautology and I needed its shape.

Everyone loved a winner and to speak was to lose. So I touched

my naked parts to the safety of a flat screen. I fantasized

posting, amazing the community with my firm figure.

I learned I was desirable when a stranger at the mall threw me

over his shoulders and ran with me screaming to his sedan.

My friends stopped him. Everyone laughed. I was 13

and knew to cry meant I was a prude. I swallowed terror.

I knew I was desirable when Ryan, 21, kept grabbing my butt

in the food court. Everyone laughed. When he found out

where I lived. Got me into the car and led me away.

I show my students Mary Ruefle’s essay, “I Remember, I Remember,”

and she has written “I remember saving everything” after

saying she never did like to save things. Last night I dream

my apartment suffers an electric fire, the second fire of my life.

My landlord screams that I’ve ruined her beautiful house

and she is right. I mastered cateyes. In HS, wrote Chuck Palahniuk

fanfic. My best friend returned from college and said L

drugged and raped him. He slid his hand up my knee, in a gesture

I’ve never allowed myself to understand. My other best friend

fought three women at the mall, ripped out a hoop earring

and kept it on her nightstand with her bracelets. I learned

I was desirable when I used textbooks to cover my butt

in the halls. When S taught me skinniness required a finger

and vigilance. A student comments on Bhanu Kapil’s “Text

to Complete a Text” that she is having difficulty articulating

its genre. Risk is a kind of twin of permission, says Bhanu.

I woke up this morning stunned by the confidence we have

in our houses. There is a belief about houses that is in line

with our capacity to live, that they are upright, secure, impenetrable.