My school was fairly progressive
They even taught contraception in our sex-ed class
When I was 14, my dad handed me a box of condoms and said,“You know how to use these right?”
We were taught which preventive methods were the most effective
I was in Texas, so Dad’s with shotguns
And where to go if something broke, what to take, how to fix this mess you’ve gotten yourself in
We were taught about herpes and gonorrhea and Syphilis and how to keep all your fluids to yourself
My friends taught me which clinics wouldn’t tell my parents
Which ones handed out free condoms
But I was never taught that there were worse things that could happen than a baby or a disease
Yeah, we learnt about roofies
We learnt how to respect when a woman says ‘No’
We learnt about protecting your drink, carrying a pepper spray
We learnt what to do when a woman is assaulted
But not that this could happen to me.
I was a virgin when I was raped for the first time
When it happened to me it was 10 A.M. and my parents were home
My textbook hadn’t described the way I wouldn’t even try to fight
There was no paragraph on how to stop him/her without making a scene
There was no worksheet for how to stop him without waking up my sleeping parents
There was no correct answer to her threats of suicides when I wasn’t in the mood
There was no manual for the polite victim
You know, it wasn’t like they said it would be
I was sober, he was sober
We were seventeen/fifteen
They didn’t teach me that I wouldn’t know how to protect myself
That my lungs would close up and we would make pretend husband and wife
Make pretend love
The thing about pretend, is that it flattens everything to one colour
It makes it too simple
It makes it one syllable and that syllable is always captioned as a ‘Yes’
They didn’t teach me that I could wanna be with someone but not always want them, that being curious about sex doesn’t mean I was asking for it.
What I learned was I was supposed to want it
I was supposed to feel stolen, supposed to feel like less of a human being
I learnt that if you don’t scream, no one will listen to you
They don’t write about the ones that got away
I learnt that foundation comes in fourteen different shades
No one wants to hear your skin is changing colours
They only ask how you’re doing to hear you say ‘Fine’
I learnt that I was supposed to feel fine, We were lovers after all
And with a love like that, you hardly have to ask right?
I don’t want to blame my school
I don’t want to blame her
I don’t want to blame my church, or my mother or even the boy
We were just children
But this is preventable, so someone must be responsible for preventing it
We can teach this better
Some paintings are built from a thousand points of colour
If you stand too close, the sunset becomes just a series of red dots
We teach that rape is always a man in an alley
Always a clenched jaw and a closed fist
Always a stained white shirt
But I never used my pepper spray
I never had to worry about an uncle or a locker room
Do not confuse one story for all stories
Do not stare at a red dot and say, “The Whole painting is just one colour.”