Chemical Reactions

The most mind blowing thing about being physically attacked by a guy is that you feel weird telling people what happened. Not because you're embarrassed per se, but because as a woman you're hyperaware of accidentally making too big of a deal out of the things that happen to you, thus, possibly, annoying others, the highest of crimes. When you do say it out loud, you do so plainly and you hear yourself sounding inappropriately at peace with the whole thing. You coin the phrase "low key assaulted." The people you do tell look to you to figure out how to react but because you've just mentioned it like you were sharing what you had for brunch. They don't know what to say. You hear yourself talking and suddenly you're wondering yourself if it was really that bad. The girls on your two most frequented text threads ask if there's anything they can do and you accurately answer, "I don't know."

It's wild.

It felt like a big deal in the moment. When he grabbed your ass, your initial reaction was to yell "don't fucking touch me," so, you did. Loudly. But in your righteous fantasy world that was enough to scare the men away from you. When, in very real life, he came back with, "Or what?" and hit you, hard, right where he'd grabbed while moving in even closer, you realized how bad things could get and a wave of fear washed over you. His eyes were blank, his mouth was foaming a bit in the corner. While he hit you again, he kept up a string of words under his breath. You caught "bitch" and "get laid" and "or what" again when you told him to leave you alone, this time with much less indignant energy behind it.

48 hours later, you're already questioning the validity of your reaction, googling "what is considered sexual assault?" Vacillating between "a big, scary man attacked me a block away from my home and I'm 100% certain this wasted guy would have hurt me even more if I hadn't recovered enough in the moment after he hit me the second time to understand that I needed to run" and "I'm overreacting, I managed to run, I'm fine, maybe I should eat something, I think I have some Triscuits somewhere."

You kinda almost cry a few times but you can't follow through. Your eyes get kinda damp and you get that headache you get when you're about to cry but you can't, because you're a girl and you've trained yourself to only ever cry in your office bathroom. Silently. You haven’t successfully cried since Feb 2020.

Actually expelling tears would probably feel good but to be honest you've always found it kind of performative in most cases, and remember, you don't want to make a bigger deal about anything than you need to. You google "what should you be feeling three days after a hostile stranger enters your personal space and refuses to leave.” You're overwhelmed by the number of results.

You think a lot about the #metoo movement. You realize that while you've absolutely been verbally attacked, and chronically minimized at work, and buying the razors that are more than the dude's razors because they're pink and smell like lavender since you were 12, you've never been physically touched. There was always a bubble, and you were always, lezbereal, irresponsibly confident in its impenetrability.

You've successfully avoided blowing someone for a promotion, which had you feeling pretty good about yourself. Now you've been researching personal alarms to carry with you when you walk your dog after sunset. You wonder if an alarm would have had any effect on him. You drink six cups of coffee, get worked up and consider rallying your fitter girlfriends to go find him. You could take him as a group- you’ve all done a lot of HIIT classes over the years. Should you, like, start packing a knife? Do you have the personality for it? Maybe a little paring knife, the smaller one from your knife block you don't use very often... maybe a switchblade would be better, and easier to carry... would you keep it in your sock? You'd almost definitely stab yourself and bleed out on the sidewalk before you'd disable a predator.

Mostly, now that you're safe, it's fucking disappointing. If you're really being honest you knew you weren't going to escape New York without being physically violated in some way and it's coming up on 10 years. But you wanted your neighborhood to be one where that doesn't happen. You were happy in the bubble. And for it to be burst just so some incoherent asshole with crazy eyes could feel your often touted superhuman ass is just such a goddamn bummer. That's the only way to describe it. A massive, massive bummer. A fucking shame. Humiliating, and terrifying but also inconvenient, annoying and boring. Lazy. Do something more original, you know? And don’t touch me while you do it. Stand a respectable distance away and insult my mother using 1950s slang. Rap at me aggressively in Korean from 15 feet. Why do you have to make it sexual? So much porn exists. In fact- flag me down and ask if me if I have any free porn sites to recommend. I can't promise a cheery response but I'd bet it would satisfy your urge to be a creep without putting your gross hands on me.

I guess, if you’re taking stock of your feelings every hour on the hour and averaging them, you're ok. I mean, you are. It could very easily have been worse. The only lasting physical effect you have is a legitimately sore butt but you've done enough squats in your life that this isn't out of the ordinary. Maybe this post is making too big a deal of this, but you've already formatted it, and how many peopler read this blog. really? You google "best breakfast sandwich in Crown Heights" and, even though you're pretty sure it's Monday, you climb back into bed. Everything is both fine, and awful, and you remind yourself that you're a woman, and that this is nothing new.