last spring i got catcalled by some boys on a school basketball court. i told my friend later and she said oh, she had ridden right past them and they hadn’t said anything to her.

i remember telling her it was fine, she was still desirable. i was desirable! but i felt sick, even in the moment i could realize i didn’t want this feeling i was getting. i felt the same way i had felt after riding a roller coaster with a full stomach. even as i was talking to my friend, assuring her that they just hadn’t seen her and that was why they hadn’t yelled hey sweetie hey can i get your number baby, i felt something was off.

why was this a good thing? i knew i wasn’t supposed to like when boys yelled at me and i didn’t like when boys yelled at me. when they had, i had pitched forward on my bicycle and gripped the handlebars so i didn’t fall off. i had felt sick and dizzy and i felt my swimsuit stuck to me like aluminum foil. my thighs and my stomach were thrown into sharp relief. everything i had ever hated about myself was under a spotlight.

i think that i felt relief. because i was fifteen and never been catcalled and in some twisted way i had convinced myself that there was something wrong with me. catcallers are lowlifes. there was something so disgusting about me that the foulest men in the world didn’t want to use me like a cigarette. the people who beat down and destroy didn’t want to destroy me because i was disgusting.

i realize now that i never went anywhere alone, i was usually with my mother or with a male friend and therefore untouchable to these people. i was never alone because i was afraid of them because i had always been told that when you are a woman you need a guardian from the drugs they will put in your drink, the guns they will point if you don’t accept.

but in that moment, i was a target. they had chosen me over my friend, when they yelled at me, hey baby, hey sweetie, hey, you have worth as a commodity, you are a valuable item.

it was fine, because she had told me a few weeks earlier about the man who threw his arm around her on the city bus and didn’t care that she was sixteen.

when i was twelve years old i got an instagram account. the account was public, but i don’t think i ever got more than a hundred followers. even so, i remember getting messages from grown men saying they wanted to talk to me. i never told anyone. 

i would have to give up the account, my self expression, being just like everybody else with my bad filters and oversharing, for my safety. 

i blocked them. my parents had told me there were dangerous people online, but i didn’t think i was the kind of girl people liked. 

throughout elementary school i had had it thrown in my face again and again that i am fat, and gay, and ugly, and stupid. and every time i thumbed through a magazine and saw these FLAWLESS GIRLS i thought their lack of flaws added to mine and by the time i was eight i wanted to lose weight for THE BOYS. i don’t even like boys.

and you see how when twenty-thirty-forty year old men slid into my dms it vindicated me. i now realize it doesn’t matter what kind you are, as long as you’re vulnerable (ie: young, ie: sad, ie: lonely, ie: careless, ie: a girl of any kind at all) you’re the kind people want.

i think that girlhood is something that has been stolen.
i am never more aware of myself than when i’m walking alone.
my mother has told me that i should never let my friends stay out too late.
women post twitter threads letting others know the symptoms of date rape drugs.
and remember ladies, yell fire not rape because no one cares if it’s rape because you shouldn’t wear that skirt you shouldn’t have those hips but they care if it’s fire.
now that i’m older, when i talk about college people say remember, if you go to parties don’t ever leave your drink.
i think it’s kind of disgusting.