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CRUSHING is just one of those words, one of those words that itself is like a poem.. To crush: to love, to want, to long for, to sometimes need. To crush: to be break into pieces, to snap something in half, to step on something, to ruin.
Another word like this that comes to mind is suck. To suck: to keep in one’s mouth, to hold between your lips like a lollipop, to tongue around, to sometimes give someone pleasure with one’s wetness. To suck: to not be good, to be terrible, to be a fucking bummer. Oh, that reminds me, fuck, also. To fuck: you know, to have sex with, to make love, to act on one’s passion. Fuck (just fuck on its own): shit, goddammit, ugh, something is wrong. Crush, suck, fuck: they express the duality of love, the way it intertwines so casually with pain and regret. * The first time I listened to Julia Jacklin, I cried. Her album Crushing came out months before I’d heard of it. Released in February of 2019, it’s an intimate indie album meant for the winter—to keep you warm while you stay inside, well aware of your loneliness during cuffing season. I found it in the fall, with the encroachment of ache upon me, both of cold and of heartbreak. My relationship fell apart as the winter was born. Two years, blown away in the New York wind, sweeping me into the arms of anyone who could make me forget this fact. I was alone. Her ballads range from endearing to menacing, from funny to painful, from snarky to defeated. No matter what, though, every track contains overflowing emotion. “Good Guy” Tell me I’m the love of your life Just for a night Even if you don’t mean it The guitar in the song is soft, softly strumming in the background, barely there. Jacklin’s honesty is the centerpiece, requesting love; I think about when someone I was in love with texted me: Why are you asking someone to love you? Because that’s what love is, that’s how love works—love is an emotion that can only be shared when it’s stripped to its core. It’s naked, humiliating, dramatic, painful, exciting. “Good Guy” sounds simple, but this act of begging and pleading showcases the complexity of love, of loneliness, of humans. In that way, it is revolutionary, basking in its own tragedy. I don’t care for the truth when I’m lonely I don’t care if you lie I don’t care if in the morning You get up not saying goodbye * So it was fairly ironic for me to get rejected and hurt by a guy at a Julia Jacklin show in November of 2019 where the background music was live renditions of songs about getting rejected and hurt. After sneaking in three airplane bottles of three different liquors in the cuff of my jeans, I meandered around the venue drunkenly, getting trapped in conversations and losing focus and sinking into feelings of loneliness. It ended with everyone dancing as she covered Avril Lavigne; everyone seemed happy, and that felt wrong and fraudulent. We should all be seeing Julia Jacklin because we’re in agony. I left, and I drove in a dizzy haze to the apartment of someone on a dating app. We drank more rum and he made me tea as a chaser. Our sex was slow and as burdening as it was freeing. It would take a long time for me to shed the intrusive guilt; my ex would hate me forever, I was sure of it. The next morning I walked into the bright, cold Brooklyn streets and was not the same person, but I was still naïve. I left my black fur coat on his chair, and I knew it—as I left, I knew it. A few days later, my best friend Alex and I were getting drunk and walked from Bushwick to Ridgewood, we were near his street, and I asked if I could pick it up. We sat freezing on his steps as he was walking from the subway train to his apartment. I’d looked him up online, scrolled through this twitter, watched his short films, read the descriptions. He arrived and I took excessive sips of my airplane bottle of whiskey. When he let us in, I watched him fidget with pieces of a camera that looked like they made up a giant piece of machinery. Are you taking that apart or putting it together? I asked. He answered: Putting it together, hopefully. At this point, he definitely regretted having a one-night-stand with a girl seven years his junior. I wanted to say something, to ask him for something, to extend what ended—I was not satisfied, I’d never be satisfied.
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Talking to men online is electrifying, especially when you’re in your early teens and no boys your age pay attention to you. They see right through you and your tiny, underdeveloped body; they don’t hear you when you speak, but your voice is trembling and similar to a child’s anyway. They’ll add to the already existing dullness of your life by making fun of you in science class or ignoring your attempts to speak with them. Men online bring color, life—they aren’t deterred by your childlike qualities. They’re pulled in, easily. They don’t just pay you attention; they cherish you, they need you.
At 16 years old, I searched “Sugar daddy” on Twitter. The internet was booming with girls reclaiming their bodies—empowering each other, encouraging one another to make money with our beautiful bodies. Men were our prey, we collectively decided, so we had to take control and get what we wanted. I figured I wanted money or something. A 27-year-old man whose profile picture was him, bearded and unattractive, holding a fish messaged me. My worth was 20 dollars a month for messaging him and sending him naked photos. I agreed because I didn’t know what the norm was. When I was bored, I’d go to my bathroom, sit on the sink, lift my shirt up, and snap a picture. A 19-year-old British boy charmed me with his swoopy dark hair and his sentences that always ended with an “x.” He said: “the age of consent over here is 16 :) x.” His profile picture showed him standing next to a statue of Karl Marx. I would ask him how he was doing, and he would gracefully reply, “just a bit nostalgic for sovietism.” There was an air of mystery to him, obviously intentional, like he wanted to be a bit just out of reach, a little inaccessible, distant, slightly above me, even if he bowed down at my feet because I was pretty. I preferred being worshipped by these random men as opposed to interacting with boys my age. --- Jake and I met on Twitter—he responded to my Tweet about incessantly writing erotica. He DMed me asking to read it, and made fun of my use of the word “incessantly.” I was at my grandma’s house, sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop in front of me. I smirked guiltily. We texted back and forth for a while, sometimes sexting, and eventually we FaceTimed and I got really nervous. At first, I held the camera so he could only see my eyes and above. “I can only see your forehead,” he said. “Show me your face. I want to see your pretty face.” He liked to have “FaceTime sex,” though, to have “FaceTime sex” I feel like more than one person has to come. It was uncomfortable and awkward, but his face appeared to be pleased. Do you want to see how hard you make me? he would ask. “Sure,” I said, like I was reading a script. What? he would scoff, his digital face contorted in disappointment. I had read my lines wrong. He demanded that I beg him. I proceeded to say stuff like “please daddy,” lowering my voice to a whisper. Then, he would flip the camera so I could see his pixelated penis, his hand using lotion. Sometimes he would tell me to talk dirty to him, and I didn’t know what to do without a specific prompt, and I would pause and there would be no noise except for his breathing and his hand moving up and down on his dick. Come on, he’d persist, say something. My face would get red and my finger would hover over the red button, not knowing whether it would be more awkward to stay in the video chat and be silent or to leave and have to explain myself afterwards. He and I were stuck in this web of awkward affection. We would meet up, but I was never comfortable. I thought that was what I had wanted, but it wasn’t. I barely wanted FaceTime; I wanted my sexuality to be restricted to the cyberspace dimension where I could text, send pictures, and not have to speak or have my current face seen. I wanted to have time to think of flirty lines, to take good photos, to become someone else. That’s what the internet is for, after all—building a new self, crystallizing the persona you’ve always desired. I desired to embody the idyllic, submissive, pretty girl. It’s easier when it’s done online. It’s like controlling a sim; I get to be above myself, watching myself like it’s not me. It’s just a character in a game. The beginning of the game is the best part. I could feel my adrenaline rush as I typed away, getting to know someone, reeling him in. It got old fast. And men who worshipped me forgot about me once they turned off his phones. I was only one pixelated face and body in a sea of billions—I was a picture they could click on, among many other clickable, alluring pictures. Just like how I was a character to myself, I was just a character to them, too. I was no human. I was an idea of a human to play with when they were bored. The British 19-year-old left a dirty photo of mine on read; I was hurt. I thought I was an angel. Who does that? I asked him, in something of a pissed-off following-up email. Someone who is super busy, he said. No “x.” Busy? I was never busy, no unemployed 16-year-old is busy except for school. I didn’t care about grades; I wanted love and attention. I said: it’s ok........i’ll wait for u my love, no punctuation, just open-ended, sitting there still, the final message, drifting, promising, waiting, like I have been faithfully holding my breath ever since. In the 7-Eleven parking lot, our lips connect roughly, miscalculated like we can’t decide where to start. It’s easy to romanticize, but in reality, I’m not actually attracted to the face that’s shoved up against mine. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to feel like; I thought there would be some sense of electricity, but it’s plain and awkward. Our friends went in to buy beers, and Stephanie exchanged a suggestive look with me when I remained in the car. It felt like I was in a movie and one of my big scenes was coming up. It’s now and I’m disillusioned, as always.
His kisses are sloppy and raced, like he’s eating a hamburger after a day of fasting. I have an urge to open my eyes, but I know that would be weird. I feel less like I’m actively kissing someone and more like I’m someone who is being kissed—I’m passive and barely alive. I’m buried and powerless. In the weeks following, we make out a few more times. I’m sixteen and I assume that this is what I’m supposed to do. In the parking lot of Trinity Church, in the backseat of his gold 2004 Toyota Corolla, we kiss in the same messy way, and in-between breaths he vents about his ex-girlfriend. I’m pathetic, he whines, I live in my grandma’s house and go to community college for art. He’s a completely broke 24-year-old who will never evolve into an adult or get over his ex. His art is objectively repulsive. He’s not even attractive in the slightest; his face is hairy like a werewolf’s and his eyes bulge out of his face like he’s constantly stoned. Sometimes when we’re kissing, his tooth bites into my lip so hard as to leave a lip hickey. I didn’t know those existed until one forms on my bottom lip, plump like a blueberry. It makes it difficult to talk and eat food for a couple of days. I’m embarrassed for not mustering up the guts to tell him when we were making out that he was hurting me. I was afraid of making him feel self-conscious. Milton convinces me not to lose my virginity to Ryan. I’d never felt or seen Ryan’s dick, but Milton claims it’s abnormally massive, that in high school he was known for his nine inches, his nickname being rocket-cock or something along those lines. I’d met Milton and Ryan the same night at a high school party. Ryan’s brother Johnny is a friend of Milton’s, and is a high school dropout who still attends high school parties. The other two tag along, using him as an excuse. Milton is 19, but he’s not any less of a creep than Ryan. Milton likes to hang around younger girls, girls in the early stages of high school, girls making brave choices about their sexuality, girls who are curious about drugs and alcohol and sex. Milton doesn’t have a job, but anyone could crash in his room whenever they want to, as long as they pay him back in some way. Milton always wants things, if not in the moment then eventually. Milton feels he’s entitled to them. If you need a ride somewhere, even if it’s only 10 minutes away, you have to send him naked photos. Milton likes virgins. He likes virgins so much that he’ll beg and whine and persist, hoping they’ll break. He tells me at 2 A.M. on a Thursday night during spring break: It’s the perfect time. It’s a pretty arbitrary time, I thought. You’re not good at kissing, he tells me once. Let me teach you. I think I know how to kiss, I say. Maybe with white dudes. I shrug. He lies on top of me, the weight of his large body oppressing mine. He proceeds to instruct me on how to kiss. It’s important to let the guy take the lead, he says. When we kiss from then on, I understand that it’s my responsibility to submit, to not move my lips as much, but to let his lips maul mine like letting a dog slobber on your face. I feel that detached sensation again, sort of floating above myself, watching it happen from the ceiling. Like watching myself in a dream I can’t control. I continue seeing him for quite some time, like he has some hold over me. It feels like a pleasant escape to sit in the passenger seat of his car with the windows rolled down, feeling free as the wind blows in my hair and my dreary music vaguely reverberates through space. It’s always around two or three in the morning when the roads are completely deserted, like no one else exists. It seems that adolescence is encapsulated in this feeling. Most of the times I forget Milton is even there, and I feel like I’m the only person left on the planet, and I’m content with that. I don’t lose my virginity to him, but he’s the first guy I give head to. I heard a lot of people saying to be careful when you lose your virginity, because your body is always attached to that person afterwards, no matter the circumstance, just because of chemicals. There’s definitely no scientific backing to that, but I wonder if I’ll be attached to Milton because of the head. The answer arrives fast, and it’s no, not at all. I find it extremely easy to block him out of my life when he rapes my friend, and then a few weeks later another friend. The only hard part is keeping quiet about it, not spreading the word that he takes advantage of inebriated young girls. It’s not my story to tell, but it’s a story that could save other girls. All I could share with others to prevent them from engaging with him are weird anecdotes of discomfort, not rape, but vague assault: He doesn’t know how to finger girls. He just plunges his finger inside of you and tells you to wait until it feels nice. It doesn’t feel nice, ever. It hurts and he won’t stop no matter how many times you ask. But a lot of guys like to finger girls that way—clinically, as if he’s a gynecologist feeling for cysts. Girls are reduced to holes that guys want to curiously poke their fingers into, which is foreplay before they awkwardly try to stick their dick in, too. And even though that’s all you are to them—a hole, a void, a warm abyss—they will never forget you or leave you alone. They will message you years later. They will miss you. They will obsess over you. They will never stop begging you. |
Danielle
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