Unmastered by Katherine Angel

Author:Katherine Angel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

5.

Sometimes it would be nice, I think—it would be a relief—to be so certain. To be so sure, to have such sharp edges. To know where one began and ended.

* * *

But I did, in fact, use to be sure, to be that certain. And it felt like this: like a hard stone in my body that caught and scraped, and made it difficult to move. That made it impossible to feel, to taste and trace the contours of myself, of others.

* * *

Today I am tired. I walk out, face burning, into the fresh January night.

IV

1.

I grew up acutely, unhappily, aware of the pull of sex, of what young female bodies could elicit.

* * *

I remember standing on a bus, around the age of thirteen, feeling the heavy stare of a sagging, tired man, around the age of my father. It was threaded with hostility, hostility and desire. It wanted me, but it hated me for making that want arise.

* * *

I remember, on another bus, a young man groping me. I kicked him. I got off the bus and he chased me down the street. I ran into a shopping center and lost him.

* * *

I remember a pushy older boy at school lifting up my skirt as I passed by with friends. I had a glass of Coke in my hand; I poured it neatly, decisively, over his gelled head.

* * *

I remember three drunk, middle-aged men surrounding me in an underground carriage, their acrid, sweaty breath crowding in on me. One of them pinched my fifteen-year-old ass. I raged, and hurled insults at them. My mother told me to be quiet; people would think I was the problem.

* * *

At university, a drunk interloper I had barely noticed at a party rubbed himself up against me. I pushed him away. As he was maneuvered out, like an unwieldy sofa, he called me a whore.

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