It was my melancholy anthem when I left Missouri... I absorbed those lyrics and they infected me and ignited until I could do nothing more but send tears falling onto my skin, cooling the burn.
But today I didn't cry to those lyrics. Today I smiled at them, knowing that I had freed that caged little bird. No one whistling or feeding me stale crackers.
I'm satisfied with myself and where I'm going. I have a well-paying job that has me constantly learning in a beautiful action-packed city. I met an Irish American man, with huge green eyes, shy but ablaze.
As I walked to the metro to meet him, smoking a cigarette, realizing I could still see the stars, I wondered, 'What if he rapes me?'
The new housemate Arun--a dark skinned, married, Portuguese Indian who talks so much it tickles my insides--and I were talking about sex while we sat awkwardly at the end of a pizza parlor table full of "writers."
"Have you heard of Diane Arbus?"
"No," he said as his dark eyes peered beyond what mine were hiding.
Arbus, a photographer, my biggest inspiration, who took photos of bizarre people from midget strippers to the mentally insane. I remember thinking, as I read her biography, that I want to be like her, not giving a fuck what people think, so independent and unafraid. Some might argue I'm already like her...
But before she killed herself, she told a friend that she wanted to be raped. She was dark, obviously, but I remember my thighs getting warm and my back arching as the sensation overtook me when I read those words.
And I wondered, 'What if he rapes me?' Would I walk miles back home, clothes torn, blood dripping onto my calves, tears of black caught in my laugh lines? Would those laugh lines be brand new or forever constrained? Would I be a different person, shamed and plagued? Or would it be a pleasant end to a fantastic day?
