Cigarettes and Feet by Brit Keech
CONTENT WARNING:
This piece of writing centres around intimate partner violence, coerced consent, sexual assault, and the resulting trauma of these experiences.
Cigarettes and Feet
It’s 2012. I’ve just become aware that I have something men want. It feels good. Like lev-erage. My childhood was Girl Power and participation awards. Exposed doughy midriff skin stick-ing to a pink inflatable couch. Platform shoes made me invincible. Feminism was lipstick. I went to an all-girls school and internalised a carefully curated illusion of equal opportunity. I’m study-ing psychology at a prestigious university. Gender Studies is my favourite. I like the way my pro-fessor doesn’t tolerate the almost-men that heckle her. She belittles them. We’re yet to ditch the witch. Beyonce answers ‘Who run the world?’ with ‘Girls’. I believe her.
So I shave my legs. Brush my teeth and let him in. He calls me beautiful and I let it make me feel good. He’s been thinking about me a lot. Watches me at work. Notices me watching him too. I smell cigarettes on his breath as he leans closer. It makes me mad like my Mum’s breath did when I was a kid. Shoes off. He’s settling in. I’ve given him the wrong idea. A new stench rises. Feet and something more. Too rancid to just be feet. I’m being judgmental. Too picky.
I call him a taxi. He hangs it up. I’m being ridiculous. I let him in, lead him on, judged him. It’s supposed to be fun. Just relax but I can’t. I smile and I giggle and my throat closes over and I cry. “Please go”. I call him a taxi and he hangs it up. Again. And again. I’m emotional, hysterical, laughable and cute and then I’m unclothed, exposed and gone. In my place is a fictional character I feel no connection to. I’m floating above her. A hole splits open in her stomach and its edges fes-ter as it grows. I fall in. It closes over. Leaves no scar. I’ll live inside this new, strange body forever. I wonder what they’ll call me now.
“We should have done that ages ago”.
“U-huh”.
I let him think I agree.
I let him.
I’m in the bathroom now. The only room not renovated. My family’s full stop. Dad would have re-tiled but it’s 70’s pink-brown with a swan motif I’ve never noticed before now. Dusty. There’s a millipede curled up in the corner. It’s too close to me but I don’t move away from it. I wonder if it’s alive or dead or somewhere in between. I’m aware it’s cold on these tiles but my skin is hot. My head is hot. Thoughts circle above me like they do when I run to escape my own mind. But the thoughts won’t land. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I don’t know how long I’ll stay. A few more minutes? Until morning? I’m so dramatic.
Ridiculous.
I let him in.
Light filters in through glass brick windows. Time has passed which registers but doesn’t land. The millipede’s not there anymore so I suppose it was alive. The tiles have left grid lines on my pasty thighs. Goosebumps on my arms so I suppose I’m alive too. I walk like normal from my normal bathroom to my normal bedroom. Get into my normal bed. Not normal with him there. Cigarettes and feet. A sanctuary once. Spoiled over time as childhood expectations went unmet. Spoiled again. He stirs, pulls me in. Apparently, I smile. The most perfect thing he has ever seen. I try to let that make me feel good. I tell him Mum will be home soon. He has to go. I lie. He says we should do this again.
“Definitely”, I lie.
I’m ridiculous.
I get on with life. Strange body. Lost name. Julia is the name of a quail dish. Small breasts, huge thighs, big red box. My thoughts won’t land. She rises in articulate fury and will not be lectured about sexism or misogyny by that man. She will not and that feels good. I drink a little more and I cry when I do. I’m emotional. It’s cute. I drink and dance and when Carly Rae Jepsen sings “here’s my number, so call me maybe”, I yell it with my arms up. But flirting isn’t power any-more. I tell my friends about Cigarettes and Feet. We’re at a bus stop. I say it loosely and approximately. They’re drunk too. It doesn’t land. They don’t bring it up again so neither do I. Feminism is getting on with it.
I have more sex. Not picky any more. I enjoy it and I don’t. I’m at a pub called The World’s End. Just to convince someone I don’t hate heavy metal music. I’m wearing thick black stockings under my button-up minidress even though it’s 35 degrees. My friend tells me he like likes me. I don’t believe him. Ridiculous. I look for someone different and I find him. He doesn’t ask me about myself but he looks like Ryan Gosling and I let that make me feel good. He follows me to the next bar. Wants to try my chapstick. For a moment that chapstick is power reclaimed. Girl Power.
Ryan Gosling wears a colourful, too-big op-shop shirt that won’t be cool for long. He wears it too often and calls it his party shirt. Boasts about how quickly his beard grows and he doesn’t. even. lift. bro. An identity flimsy like mine. I relate so I connect. Attach. He isn’t nice to me but I don’t care. I drive to his house at 1am. Put down my dignity in his room. Leave it there on purpose. Wait for him to text me back; Here’s your dignity but he doesn’t. I let him keep it.
The President of the United States grabs em’ by the pussy. On International Women’s Day, I get 15% off my sushi bowl. I let that make me feel good. I do not. In a new city, Tinder is free-dom. Jacob pops out of the movie three times to buy a choc-top and never offers me one. Liam is a milk-man who does lift (milk). He surprises me with a group of his friends at the next table who fake-cry when I leave without kissing him. Jeremy is a cosmetic dentist who could make me three times hotter. I’m a girl in a shell with no name. I read a lot. Lolita. The Colour Purple. A Little Life. I feel them all but the feelings don’t stick. Clementine Ford makes me stressed. Feminism is rage. My rage won’t land.
I meet someone whose rage is tangible. He’s push and pull. And pull harder and drive me off a cliff. He’s big. It makes me small in a way that feels good. My body is medicine but at least it’s something. He kisses my friend but it’s my fault. What I say is not what I mean. I’m ridiculous. He names me intelligent and kind. Awkward, selfish and insensitive. Emotional, which is cute. He texts 100 times a day or not for a week. Feminism is not tolerating that. I thank him for putting up with me for so long.
My prestigious university makes headlines - a Vice Chancellor touching bottoms. ScoMo has daughters so he understands. I watch documentaries. R Kelly, Epstein, a gymnastics team, an unsolved murder of a nun. Those things did not happen to me.
I let him in.
I fall in love with One of the Good Ones. A Not All Men man. He convinces me he loves me back. I let that make me feel good but I don’t. He’s coffee in bed and forehead kisses. Week-ends away and planning for the future. Safety and freedom at once. His touch offers worthiness and righteousness but his touch unexpected is cigarettes and feet. He can’t understand but neither can I. The thoughts don’t land.
I’m locked in my house. Learning dances off tik-tok. Feminism is Cardi B.
It’s 2021. Easy for me to know that Cigarettes and Feet grew a moustache to raise aware-ness for men’s health. He married a plain but kind-looking red-head and they honeymooned in Sri Lanka. He has a baby daughter. She unfortunately inherited his prominent eyebrow fold. He takes her to swimming lessons like an all-round nice guy and no part of me wants to destroy their lives so I must be fine. Does he think it was fine? Or - as the world changed and feminism changed and what is unacceptable did not change but is talked about - has he weaved ‘rapist’ into the fabric of his identity? Because I try to make room for ‘victim’ in mine but it feels awkward and it makes me clumsy like walking home drunk in my best friend’s shoes, two sizes too big.
A girl smears milkshake into her boyfriend’s face and they call it a consent campaign. The triviality makes me cry. My nine-year-old niece spends her birthday money on a t-shirt that says ‘GRL PWR’. They’ve ditched vowels. And hopefully 90’s naivety. Brittany Higgins is a lying cow. Grace Tame is Australian of the Year. Women march. Feminism is speaking up. #MeToo washes over me, floats by me, is all around me. I hear woman after woman speak her rage but I don’t. My skin is hot and my head is hot but my rage won’t land. Me Too. Not me too. Cigarettes and feet.
I let him in.
I let him.
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