Passion Flower

Trigger Warnings: Sexual assault and discussions of CPTSD

Queer women have a language in subtle glances and fleeting touches. Elusiveness is notorious in the community. We are always simultaneously complaining about  how we dance in circles around each other but then never being the ones to close the gap. She was bold. She was even bolder than me (which is saying something). We spent the night in each other’s orbit, exchanging glances over the top of every body’s head. I would catch her eye every time the crowd would part; and every time it felt like an invitation to step forward hurriedly… But, I’m somewhat of a veteran of queer parties. When you put that many people who are pretty and drunk and have something to prove about their liberation in a room, the world is only as big as that dance floor. In many ways it is beautiful. It’s this liminal space where people can live out the things that reverberate in their head. It’s like a medium. The issue is, if you put people in heaven for four hours and tell them they can be anything they want to be, they move rapidly and intensely. Mouths start crashing against each other at neck breaking speeds, hands snake inside the back of jean pockets, people bend each other over railings. Everyone is moving like they’re running out of time because we are all acutely aware that we will never be this young and raucous and unbound again. I’m not exempt. So even though I pretend like I won’t for the first thirty minutes of the party, I still find myself behind her. 

She calls me ‘Naija babe’ because she can’t remember or pronounce my name. I can’t remember or pronounce her name either so I settle for ‘my love.’ And the beautiful thing about existing in that liminal space, is that she really could be. We could unfold the hours in each other’s arms. We could create our own inside jokes and secret signals. We could sneak off to some quiet corner in the party and learn to pronounce each other’s names. If we really wanted to, we could pretend like the doors would open, not shut, at 4am. We could pretend like we had time. 

The other thing she said to me was that she liked how I looked. I was so proud because I had actually been saving the outfit for months. It was a navy two piece with tendrils that flowed from out of the top and the skirt. Every step I took made me feel like a sexy passion flower. (Barely) covered in that blue, I looked like the person I had spent years building up myself to be. It’s cliche, but I felt beautiful. I’ve always been the slightest bit afraid of showing my arms and my legs. I haven’t always felt very feminine. It’s in my behaviour as well as in my looks. I’m 6 feet tall and I’ve always had a very muscular build and a flat chest. And where I was supposed to counteract these things with grace and softness, I’ve always been angry and outspoken. Liking girls was just another dimension to this. One of the things that initially repulsed me about my identity was the idea that I was aligning myself even more with masculinity. Here I was looking like a man and acting like a man and now lusting like a man. I was horrified. Being able to wear my micro mini skirt and super duper cropped top wasn’t an epiphany that introduced me to or reaffirmed my femininity, it was simply coming into myself. In the moments that I’m out with my friends and we’re turning blue and yellow and pink with the flashing lights, it doesn’t matter who I like or how I look. It only matters that someone is seeing me. And that what they see, masculine or feminine or neither or both- looks good. My love looked at me like there was nothing horrific about me, and when I looked back at myself in her eyes, I believed her. 

I’m glad she liked my skirt, I’m less glad that she tried to rip it off in the middle of the dancefloor. I won’t tell you what  else she did because there are only so many things you can do to a person in public without catching an indecency charge - even in queer parties. When my friends ask what happened I tell them that I suffered that night and leave it at that. I always make sure I say it in a playful voice and with a laugh so that whatever they imagine is better than the reality. I want them to think that I’m being dramatic and blowing things out of proportion (which sometimes I still think I am). I think I’ve always approached conversations around sexual assault with anger because it’s easier than dealing with the other feelings that wash over me. Pity has a nasty connotation. It’s not as lovely and soft as a word like compassion. It’s not even as melodramatic as a word like sorrow. It’s just plain, disgusting pity. I want to say I read and hear and watch stories about assault and I don’t pity the victims. But each and every time I hear that another person has been touched and tortured in ways they could never invite upon themselves, it feels like there’s a cork-screw in my stomach. In my response I give all the rage that I have. I give all my headshakes. I give all my disbelief and disgust. But I don’t say the first thing that I think, and the thing I mean the most - I wish that hadn’t happened to you. 

I wish that hadn’t happened to you because I understand that it feels like there’s some part of you that has turned to stone and that you’re going to spend the rest of your life rolling it up a hill. I understand that it’s going to be sisyphean. I understand that someone will ask you what happened that night and it will feel like watching the memory through a gauze. It will always feel like a wound is on the other side of it. I understand that you will hear the same words and look into eyes that hold that same singular determination to touch you, and your heart will rearrange itself in your body. I understand that you will feel fear that you tell yourself is something milder like ‘not being in the mood’ or being shy, or not knowing that person all that well. I understand that you will come to know the words ‘no’ and ‘stop’ as powerless, so you won’t bother saying them. I understand that you will step out of your own body and see yourself how the people who hurt you saw you- as a beautiful thing to own. I understand that sometimes, for weeks at a stretch, you will feel like you swallowed a bowl of acid. You will feel it ripple through your stomach and threaten to come up in words that you know describe you now like ‘broken’ or ‘damaged.’ Sometimes the words are less forgiving like ‘whore’ or ‘prostitute.’ I understand that you’ll understand that it doesn’t matter how much you drank or how hard you flirted or what you did. You’ll tell yourself over and over again that it wasn’t what you wore. But the stronger memory will always be of pink gin and the way you said ‘you look gorgeous’ and the way you leaned into her and grabbed her arm. The stronger memory will always be how you matched your eyeshadow to your two piece and took a dozen pictures before leaving the house and allowed yourself to feel so beautiful when you looked like a slut. And how if you waited three months to wear the outfit you might as well have waited an extra day because it’s a fucking cliche to be assaulted in a micro mini skirt and crop top. I understand that anger for yourself is unfair and damaging. But in the moments that you pull away from kisses and lean away from arms and shy away from hands it is ruinous. It would almost be a blessing to be touched and feel fear or shame or disgust. It is ruinous to be touched and feel nothing at all. Or maybe I don’t understand anyone else, maybe it’s just me. 

I think the worst crime might be that she took some magic from me. I return to those liminal spaces and nothing is hazy around the edges and sparkly at its centre. I watch people writhe on the floor and all I see is the bacteria attaching itself to their skin. I see bodies pressed up against walls and all I can feel is how every bone in their back must be slowly breaking against the hard surface. People stop to look at me and I look right through them and respond to their enthusiastic ‘you’re so pretty’ with a high pitched, dismissive ‘thank you’ and nothing else. I let strangers hold my hand and sometimes I let them spin me around. I leave them when the songs change and I don’t let them convince me into a corner. Because I’ve peeled myself off the poster of debauchery and parties. Because I insist on being real. 

Reality is not as miserable as I imagined it would be. It has its limits, and maybe I’m just a bird that has learned to love its cage but… I’m okay here. When I go out now there’s no pretence to it anymore. I’m not anxiously looking at the clock wondering whether I will fall in love before the crowd disperses. I don’t see people cradling my worth in their hands and chase them around the whole night hoping they’ll distribute it to me in words like ‘you look good.’ Humans are just humans and they’re as beautiful and as disappointing as they’ve always been.

In biology class we learned about positive phototropism and how some plants can’t help but reach for the light. I thought that might be me. Because, well, I’m alive. But sometimes I feel as if you could crash a cymbal stick into the middle of my chest and hear an echo. Which is to say, some days I feel a little bit empty. I’m positively phototropic in that I grow towards the light, artificial or not. Strobe lights remind me to dance and the glare of my office lights reminds me to work and the first flash of a lightbulb in the morning reminds me to get up. I’m alive in a battery powered sort of way. But that doesn’t feel like a life, so as it turns out I’m something else- heliotropic. It’s growth in response to the sun, and compression in the absence of it. I exist. And I can be as bright as the brightest light in any room but I still miss the sun. I miss being warm. 

I think everything I do is in pursuit of that feeling. Even the stupid and brave things like walking towards joy. I still think that one day I can lock eyes with someone across the room and feel the music slow down and the world sporadically start glowing. I still imagine the crowd parting and me making my way up to them. I imagine the fear washing over me with every step that I take. I imagine remembering rough hands and forceful grabs. I imagine feeling the acid agitate around my stomach from one end to the other. I imagine persevering through it and walking towards them anyway.  I imagine reminding myself I could never belong to the people who have hurt me. I imagine reminding myself that I’m more than the things that have happened to me. I try to live in the love despite. I make the journey. And when I’m in front of them I let them tell me how pretty I am, and I return the compliment in earnest. I imagine telling them my name and waiting to hear them say it back and say it right. If they don’t the first time I’ll smile and correct them and let them try again. When they touch me, tentatively, I will feel something. I have to believe that things can be ruinous, but I myself am not ruined. I have to believe that even if my tendrils tuck into themselves and my petals recoil I will still, always, want to be warm. And if it takes forever to reach the sun, then it takes forever. I might just be lying to myself though, my whole life might be that liminal space, but even in it- I’ll pretend like I have time.