Hillman - Intersex (For Lack of a Better Word)

Manic D Press

San Francisco

I don't know what we were doing. I think we had just come home from a successful trip to Target, successful meaning not too much money spent and no meltdown on either of our parts, and we were rolling around on my bed, making out, laughing, and she said, Hey, I have an idea. Let me give you a haircut.

She wanted to give me a haircut. Down there. She thought it would be hot.

What I should have told her right then is that I'm kind of sensitive about my hair down there. That it's been there since I was a toddler, that it makes me feel special, and that I'm still ashamed of it even though most people have caught up with me by this point and have pubic hair too. I should have told her that somehow I always end up with hairless girls; no matter how butch they are, I'm always hairier than them. And that sometimes this makes me feel less than pretty. Of course, since testosterone has come into our community, that's changed, but I didn't say that either.

Instead I said, Sure.

I handed her the scissors from the bathroom cabinet. The haircutting scissors I stole from my dad when I was a kid, stolen as only a well-loved child can, my parents possessions mine for the taking, a birthright. These scissors are the kind with teeth so sharp they seem to cut molecules of air as they close. Like a surgical implement, they're long, thin, silver, and cold.

She wanted me to lie down on the bathroom floor so she could get a better angle.

There was one lover whose hands I jumped away from the whole time we were together. I didn't mean to. I couldn't help it. We had amazing sex togetherI certainly enjoyed itbut most often it was amazing for her. I couldn't relax. I couldn't trust her hands.

I did not want to lie down on the bathroom floor, even though my girlfriend asked nicely. I sat on the toilet.

Right before that lover whose hands I jumped from and I broke up, she had a dream about one of my best friends. Someone who is very beautiful, someone she kissed once. That lover told me, I dreamed about your friend last night, that I was making love to her, and that she wasn't ticklish, and that she didn't jerk away like you did. I told her I was sorry. I told her that it must be painful to feel you can't touch your lover right.

I think the ticklishness started with the doctors. Well, one doctor, whose job it was to make sure I was developing at a normal rate, whose fingers pushed on my chest to see if breast tissue was developing, whose fingers opened me to make sure my clitoris was doing everything it was supposed to and not one bit more.

It was cold sitting there, watching the scissors do their work, and I was getting more nervous by the minute, the ice cold of the metal biting my skin. Be careful, I said. I'm scared, I said. I'm not sure that's a good angle either, I said. The sharp scissor tips were poking my labia. I was beginning to panic, but I wanted to give her what she wanted, so I let her keep going.

Years of having sex with women, or people who were designated as female at birth, has taught me a lot about having sex with survivors of sexual abuse. I recognize the stillness of someone leaving their body. I know that one lover might want to be choked, while another will say, Never touch my throat. Another talks nasty, but you can never use the word dirty with her. Another likes to be hit, but never on the face because that's where he hit her. One only likes it on her back, while another only on top. The older I get, the more amazing I think it is that we share our bodies with each other, that we risk vulnerability again and again. The older I get, the more I follow the legends of these complicated maps, the more I appreciate the sacred ground I'm treading on.

She's on the bathroom floor, I'm sitting on the toilet, and even though she doesn't know it, she's totally in control. I'm reduced to feeling like a small child, and even though I'm petrified, I'm committed to letting her be in charge. I'm trying so hard to give it up.

And then she cuts me. The scissors slice my flesh, just a little bit, but it's everything. And then she says she needs to stop. Then she starts to cry. And then she leaves the room. She leaves me sitting there, naked on the toilet.

My mind races. I can barely grasp the fact that I am the naked one, scared and vulnerable, and that she's crying. It makes no sense to me.

The more I learn the secrets of other people's bodies, the more patient I am when they need to stop, slow down, the more I realize I haven't said No very often. That I apologize for being ticklish instead of listening to what it's telling me. That I need to teach people how to touch me so my body will trust them, that my body is smarter and wiser than I am. That maybe it realizes there's a survivor in many of us, or at least in me.

I am learning that being comfortable with sex doesn't mean sex is comfortable, and that not being ashamed of sex doesn't mean there aren't layers of shame hiding in there, invisible to my eye, places I've never seen, in the dark recesses, where only the sharp, cool tools of a doctor have been.