Secret Life Of A Prude

You can not open me up so easily.  You cannot come closer than three feet without risking your limbs and your eyes.  I have teeth like needles when I need to strike and you would suck up my marrow with your desire and then forget you'd left me boneless.  Forget what you took and think no more of it for the next twenty years while you take and take and take from others.  What you ache for does not feed what you hope it feeds.

You have no idea what I want. 

Frigid bitch.  Me.  Ice Queen.  More like ice reject. 

I was never sure whether it was worse to be a slut or a prude?  People seem to love sluts in literature because they are warm, they share, they have hearts of gold.  There is only derision for the prude.  Society has more use for women who put out than women who don't.

My ice floe of a heart beat just as fast and just as furiously as the heart of every girl of easy virtue.  I became the object of endless teasing because I would not even pretend to be dirty for the fun of it.  It was always assumed that I suffered repression like a disease.  It became a common goal to unbend me, to open my body up to all the fulfillment it was assumed I was missing.  It became a game to so many people to guess my virgin state.  To guess how long I would be a virgin.  No one really knowing for sure if I was.  It became a game to get me to blush and to squirm. 

Prudes are so much fun. 

Hunger is a curious thing, the way it calls to us from our instinct almost from birth.  Our appetites may change but humans all hunger for something besides food. 

I see you all twisting up your limbs together and sharing fluid intention, fluid motions as though written on cue cards, and sharing- well...fluids.  I see it like a scientist watching monkeys.  I would like to understand why my hunger is so different.  Why was I not made to desire flesh as avidly as every other human?

I saw flesh like business as far back as I can remember.  Flesh is cheap.  I learned this from the trailing off of the great "free love" movement of my youth which really meant "free sex".  I learned that you can have as much sex as you want in this world and you will still wake up in the morning and you will still hunger.  You will never be full.  Not by sex.  Like breathing, it is a thing that people do.

I wanted something more.  More than flesh.  I've never wanted anyone else's soul but I wanted something, something even rarer.  I wanted something ephemeral from spirits connecting on earth.  I wanted chivalry.  Real chivalry.  I wanted sex to mean something.  Not two hairy sweaty people gettin' it on in the back of a VW bus and saying "Thanks for the roll!" and moving swiftly past the moment as though there was no cost to sharing skin.  No cost.  Cheap. 

I liked it better when a man had to slay a dragon to get his sex.  I liked it better when a man had to wait for it.  When he had to work for it and a woman had to be worthy.  I liked it better when it was something costly and worth doing.  Time blurs for me.  Time shimmers like a hallucination and I don't know where I came from.  I don't know why I feel like I have lost something I could never have had.  Because what I hunger for has never really existed.

Sex can be expensive for people who have never a day in their life felt safe.  I value safety above common ideals of romance.  Romance to me is someone else's coat thrown over cold shoulders.  Romance is doors being opened, not obsequiously or chauvenistically, but for the desire to remove obstacles.  Romance to me is not a prelude to sex but actions precipitated solely to protect, provide, and to love.  To cherish.  Romance is not a slurry of obvious compliments.  Compliments in action are far better than words.

The night I was mugged in San Francisco was one in which I was gravely disappointed in the courtship of young people as I knew it.  I went to a nightclub I didn't really want to go to with my room mate and his close friend who I was dating.  They talked me into going.  I said I would only go if I could get a ride there and back to our apartment.  Promises were made in great gushes and I relented.  When we were ready to leave the club at 2 am I discovered that our ride had bailed on us.  My room mate and boyfriend had a ride but there was no room for me.  I had to walk from the club on 4th and Mission to the Zim's on Sutter Street where I was to meet these modern men of mine.

I was angry.  I was betrayed.  I was disillusioned.  But I would find myself far more disillusioned by the time I made it to Zim's.  I was followed as I walked.  I knew it right away.  I steeled myself for battle.  I was wearing club gear not battle gear.  High heels clicking loudly on the sidewalk in the deadly quiet.  I walked more quickly.  So did my follower.  I was determined not to run.  Instict told me to stay calm and don't outrun an assailant in heels.

The man grabbed me from behind.  He wanted my money I suppose.  I hardly knew.  I knew exactly one thing: get out of his grip and kill the mother fucker.  I used the only self defense move I knew (that I didn't realize I knew) and slithered out of my coat to turn around and face my attacker.  The ire of an iron maiden rose in me so that my chest was swollen with rage and I let it loose on this poor small being of ill-purpose.  I let loose the most vile string of curses and yelling and accusing and anger so that I could not have sworn I wasn't possessed by something much fiercer than myself.  Suddenly my assailant seemed so small as he backed away from me and then took off running.

I met my room mate and my Airforce boyfriend with ripped pants and shaking from the aftermath of an unexpected violent encounter.  They laughed.

They laughed.

These are the men a woman is supposed to desire?  These are the men a woman is meant to be eager to open up her body to? 

I have been a prude my whole life.  Covering my body so that no one would feel an unspoken invitation to something they could never be worthy of.  Not because I'm such a catch or such a red hot scorcher, but because no men seemed interested in being worthy of anyone, just available.  Just grabbing.  Taking.

So it is only in my head that I am warm.  Warm and the kind of woman that men don't make fun of.  No innocent as is always assumed.  I know physical desire, physical exploration.  I know the appetites of humans.  I am not embarrassed by sex or nakedness.  But it is private.  When my hair was long enough to reach past my waist I wore it up in public, rarely taking it down in front of anyone.  It felt private and intimate.  To let it down was like being naked, inviting, intimate.  I enjoyed letting it down at home out of the public eye. 

Being called a prude didn't make me uncomfortable because I was ashamed of myself not wanting to grope with immature boys behind school sheds.  It was uncomfortable because I couldn't explain why I was different and I knew they had got it all wrong.  It wasn't a frozen libido which prevented me from normal teen action, it was a lack of motive outside of myself.

It's not me, it's you.

Chivalry isn't about women being weak and men being strong.  Chivalry is about reverence and respect.  It's about strength in caring.  It's about giving your best gifts.  It's about treasuring someone enough to be willing to endanger your own comfort to ensure theirs.

I cannot tell all my secrets.  If I tell you what I dream of at night it would take some of the sugar from my sleep.  I will never open easily.  I no longer mind if you call me a prude.  I no longer care if you try to tease me relentlessly to see me blush, I wish you luck with that.  I am happy with my own hunger for chivalry.  I am not always as dissappionted as I used to be.  I know much better men now.  I am married to a man who often thinks of my comfort first and I treasure him for that.  He has seen my hair down more than any other person.  I always save the best of me for him because he has worked to be worthy of a faithful love.

Throwback.  Frozen muse.  Icy bitch.  Cold cold woman.  Frigid. 

My secret life isn't better than yours, but it's mine.