Being a Body, Vulnerable and Warm

Yesterday, I was walking across a train platform and a man shoved me hard in the chest. It wasn’t an accident. When you bump into someone…

Yesterday, I was walking across a train platform and a man shoved me hard in the chest. It wasn’t an accident. When you bump into someone by accident, your arms brush. You pull back, or you look up, startled. This man was heading towards me at the Howard stop, and I kept my ground, staring forward, and he leaned into me, put his shoulder into the thrust. He hit me hard. It wasn’t a dull thud, a chest thumping against another through layers of parka and sweater on either side. He threw his arm into it, pushed with a grunt, and sent me flying back.

The first thing was the pain in my chest, where his shoulder struck me. Right between the ribs, just below the breasts. If he’d hit me from another angle, or with just a bit more focus, I’d have cracked a rib. It ached the whole rest of the day; my chest hurt, it was hard to breathe. The next thing was my whole body flinging towards the ground. Cartoonishly, almost, like an orange and red explosion had just popped out of a barrel with a skull crudely drawn on it. I could have broken my tailbone hitting the ground, but Nick caught me, both my arms in his.

The platform was full. There were people everywhere. But they didn’t do anything, because nobody ever does. I’ve seen it dozens of times at this point. Somebody flashes their dick at you, grabs your breasts, breathes down your neck, folks are chickenshit. They get as stunned as you are, and don’t realize that somebody has got to act. Usually, when I see this shit, I act. Because I know what it’s like for nobody to do a thing. This time I was the victim, so I was numb, scared. Very aware, all of a sudden, of the vulnerability of my body. The man walked around us and down to the south end of the platform, grumbling, and disappeared around the corner and down the steps. Nobody gave chase. Even the CTA attendants were dumbfounded in their bright yellow vests. An old woman in a white fur hat looked at me and apologized.

We walked, Nick behind me, until I was overcome with tears. My feelings were hurt more than my body was. I was shaken, terrified to even pass any more bodies, any more men, lurking and looming, so capable of doing so much harm. All kinds of people could hurt me with the same ease as this man. I’m small. I’m so weak I can barely carry a gallon of milk across the street from the grocery. I have a way with words, a scathing wit and an iron will, but when a body crashes into mine, none of that matters. I am just a weak, small thing, easily ended. Effortlessly stopped.

So I cried. And then we walked down the stairs to Howard St. and I sobbed, rocking back and forth pressed against Nick’s body, which is small, and not scary, otherwise I would have never been with him, if I’m being honest. When I met him, a lot of bad things had been done to me by bodies that were bigger and stronger. I’d always liked beauty and delicacy in men, but after all that, it became a necessity. Being on top became a necessity. Splaying out on the couch or the subway seats, legs wide, an arm around Nick’s shoulder, became a necessity. I always had it in me. I let bigger, worse people make me forget.

And that really was why I started crying, on top of the shock and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it brush with real harm. It was the memories it evoked, of all the times that my body has been too small, too weak to defend itself, too physically tangible to vanish and keep all harm away. So many horrible things have been done to my body. It has been choked, pushed around, grabbed, fondled, revealed, held down, pressed against, shoved without my consent. It has been pawed over with eyes and hands and teeth; it has hurt and gone numb and slipped out from under me, so my mind could escape, again and again. And just when I think I’m safe, another threat brings it all back in one sharp shove.

It reminded me of something that isn’t exactly healthy: I wish I didn’t have a body. My body has brought with it a lot of abuse. If I didn’t have a body, this body, I could float through life as a dark, swirling cloud of interesting thoughts and compelling feelings, and be safe. I don’t like having a body very much. I’m not good at using it. I don’t like it. It comes with too much pain. It makes everything tenuous. No matter what wonders my mind can create, it can all be ended with one particularly strong shove to the solar plexus. This body sucks. It could be destroyed or irreparably traumatized just like that. I know because it’s come close.

When this happened, we were headed to a sauna. The irony made me want to turn around and go back home. Among the lockers and nude women (or at least people categorized by the spa, bluntly, as women), I felt acutely aware of my body, its softness and vulnerability, the pain still in my chest that did not abate when my bra came off. I was reminded of my breasts and hated them, again, a feeling that comes and goes. The best I can get is feeling like they’re not there. Those are the best days — always a consequence of comfortable clothing, good posture, confidence, and luck. This was not a lucky day. Anytime I try to take good old-fashioned care of my body, I am punished with reminders of how everyone seemingly sees it: female, soft, alluring, not mine. The doctor who pulled my breasts out to make his interns look at them, when the problem was my blood. The people I trusted with sex, who turned pleasure into torment. Now this, the trip to a sauna that turned into a weepy, jittery post-assault processing session.

I couldn’t strip in front of everyone. Nudity never bothers me, keep that in mind. I stride naked in front of the windows of our apartment in the middle of the day when I know there are construction workers on the wall. Being seen, by itself, never makes me feel unsafe. Except when I don’t have the choice. After getting struck, I couldn’t let myself be vulnerable like that. I couldn’t let myself slip naked into the water. I couldn’t look at myself like that. That was the worst part. It wasn’t that I lacked trust for the people around me, striding easily in the buff, drying their hair and scraping dry skin off one another’s backs. I knew they were safe. I couldn’t see my body right then. My memories and my attention were the things I was afraid of.

So I dressed and went into the unisex, dry sauna room. I entered a gold pyramid and laid on my back. The ground was a straw mat, and two women in pink guest uniforms stared up on the other side of the room. An older man in a grey uniform entered and slowly slid into place by my side, looking me in the eye a few times. Rage tensed up inside me, ready to protect me from any future invasions. After I got assaulted in 2010 and 2011, I turned into a rabid animal. I’d scream and thrash and turn menacing if somebody so much as told me to smile on the street. Adrenaline would course through my neck and chest the whole rest of the day. It’s not the most energy efficient method of coping, but fuck, it does help keep you safe. PTSD is not an illogical disorder, that much can be said for it. Being pissed, hyper-vigilant, and lacking all trust is super effective.

But this man didn’t want anything from me, and meant absolutely no harm. He settled onto his back and placed a towel across his face. He was just a friendly older man, receptive to conversation or a polite smile if I’d give him it. He didn’t even seem to mind that I had denied him that. I didn’t feel bad for glaring at him, but I couldn’t relax, either. I stared up at the tip of the pyramid, pressed my palms into the heat.

It didn’t take long for me to become reasonable again. The man who’d shoulder-checked me probably never goes to saunas. Even if the ticket was only $21, it’s still an extravagance few access. Nick thought he was probably mentally ill, possibly homeless as well. It’s hard to tell these things. I don’t want to draw connections between mental illness and danger. The most dangerous people I’ve known were frighteningly healthy. Most mentally ill people are harmless, and are in fact more likely to be victims of crime than the mentally healthy are. Myself apparently included. I’ve sure taken some licks at this point, Jesus Christ.

Still, the man who hurt me yesterday almost certainly had a harder life. He was grumbling and mumbling before he struck me. He kept plowing along as if nothing of consequence had happened. Knocking the wind of me was like swatting a fly. Mental illness or not, he was not well. He certainly did not look rich or privileged in any conceivable way. He didn’t get caught for throttling me, but if that’s how he carries on, it’s just a matter of time before he suffers for his actions. Probably more than he deserves. As my body thawed and my body eased into a stretched-out position on the mat, all I could think of was how fortunate I am to even be there, in this brilliant prism of sparkling warmth, and how if this man could have known that’s where I was going, he might have wanted to pummel me more. And he wouldn’t have been wrong.

Nick and I spent about five hours there, all told, sweating in rooms of charcoal, amethyst, salt, and steam. I ate a spicy soup that, combined with the thrumming in my chest, made me feel like I might have a heart attack. I took deep braless breaths. My irritation turned from mortal terror about the vulnerability of my body, to minor annoyance at the kids running around from sauna room to sauna room, slamming the doors behind them. Life went on and became more mundane by the second. The abstract disappeared and the concrete kept me distracted, like it always does, and it was mostly a blessing.

When we were done, I stripped in the locker room and looked at myself in the mirror. It’s still so weird that the thing I see there is me. I wish, on some level, that I could be an invulnerable dark cloud of nothing but thoughts. I think that all the time. Getting hurt made me yearn for it more acutely than usual. My brain is so lovely, and so strong. If only I could just be that. I don’t like having a body, not this one. It gets me hurt. It doesn’t look like how I feel. It’s feeble and small in a way that doesn’t suit me,lumpy in places where I don’t want lumps. When I think too much about how it looks and where it curves, I’m distracted from myself. When I feel best about myself, I forget about it or how it looks.

But there is no life without a body. Without it, there isn’t even a self. I would have never become the strong, funny, intimidating person that I am if this body hadn’t been hurt. Without skin to brush up against skin, I couldn’t really love. I couldn’t comfort myself slipping, at the end of a hard day, into a vat of steaming hot water. I would never know that relief, that pleasure. I’d barely be a living person at all. And so I have to treat this body as kindly as I can. I have to protect it, and defend it, sometimes with my words, sometimes with a scowl, sometimes with a defensive shove. But most often, with softness, delicacy, and warmth.

And I bet if that guy had been treated to more softness, delicacy, and warmth over the years, he wouldn’t have shoulder-checked me, either. It’s not actually my body that brings me all this abuse and hurt, after all. It’s people. People who have been warped and hurt, who don’t know how to use softness and warmth, often because they were denied it themselves.