What I Didn’t Say

On silence under the influence of men (part one)

“I have to honor all the silence… honor my own silence. Our silence is a survival strategy. Our silence has protected us against potential violence, an unfortunately common response of patriarchy and/or other kinds of power met with rejection.

Our silence protects us from being rejected. Our silence upholds social norms that teach us that it’s more important to be polite than to be honest, even when discussing our own flesh.”

— adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism

Your head swivels as I walk barefoot up the grassy hill. It’s midday at the music festival and the September sun parches fields flattened the night before by hundreds of dancing feet.

I have just exited a porta potty where I’d managed to change into cooler clothes. You fall into step behind my flowery sundress. My ass pricks with the sensation of your eyes on it.

No, the inner voice says. She senses a tracking in your stride, a hounding in your gaze.

Yet another part of me likes this being noticed.

I sneak a glance. Take in your tall frame and stylish glasses. Too young, I think. Too concerned about how he looks.

Later, I stand behind a wooden counter serving burgers — a volunteer shift that helped pay for my ticket. There you are again, crossing along the side of the barn. Your gaze zeroes in on me.

I feel a squirming.

And also a rush.

When you walk in the kitchen an hour or so later, I pause in disbelief. What are the odds we’d have overlapping shifts?

Up close, you look even younger. Early 20s. I wonder about your all-white outfit at a music festival where we sit and dance on the dirt, on dusty barn floors, on fallen logs in the woods. Where we fry burgers made from the meat of a cow who grazed these fields not long ago.

Doesn’t he know this is a kitchen shift? With grease and grime and sauce and spills?

Later, I learn you are in fact a chef in your mid-thirties. But in this moment, you seem to me a fresh-outta-college boy who mostly orders takeout. I guide your white pants to the aprons. Protect yourself — this place is messy.

You slice onions behind me and I try to keep my focus on serving the disheveled hippies lined up before me.

After my shift, I sit at the communal bonfire, warming up. I see you come out of the kitchen and beeline right for me.

Here we go.

I play along out of some stale sense of obligation that I should “give you a chance.” I answer your questions even though they feel a bit scripted, like they were pulled from a party game. Deep Ice Breakers for Spiritual People.

I’m not really vibing… but then you mention you lead healing circles for men.

A guy facing his shit, doing his work… leading the work!

You guys don’t come around every day. I’m intrigued. I have questions.

Your answers are a bit too long. I’m getting annoyed, but I don’t show it. I know how to act like the most engaged listener so well I don’t even have to try.

Eventually, you ask if I want to go for a walk — that fateful move from communal to private space. My body answers first: an uncomfortable tightening in my stomach, a cloudy confusion, a pull to stay by the warmth of the fire.

But another part of me overrides the discomfort, ignores the truth that hesitation means no for now.

We wander to a stage and stumble upon the only musician I had looked up before the festival: John Orpheus. A good omen, I hope.

I wish I had remembered then the hook of the one song I had listened to, Get Right.

If it feel right, JUMP ON IT
If it ain’t right, WE DON’T WANT IT

So simple. As my healing/spiritual guide says: If it’s not 100% yum, it’s yuck.

It’s the reminder I need in that moment, but it’s not the song John plays.

Instead, he asks us about our favorite fruits. Mango comes to mind, ripe ones right off the tree, collected in buckets on the side of the road in western Puerto Rico. Almost too sweet.

It’s the fruit on the Trinidadian-Canadian singer’s mind, too. He plays Mango Tree:

Climb me up inside your mango tree
Lay your branches, kiss the sky
Let’s see how gentle we can be
There’s no need to wonder why…

If we could just go back to the place where when we were fine
The river and the trees
The socca and the breeze
Bangin’ on your body and we feeling so free

He’s singing to — almost seducing — this part of me that wants this to be simple. That longs to stop overthinking, questioning, playing referee among all these fighting parts of me.

The song quiets the voice of my actual desire, who already struggles to make herself heard. She carries the silence of generations before her. Silence born of consequences we endured if we did reject, of the deference that was required for our safety, our survival.

It turns up the volume of a voice that tends to be louder in these moments. One that needs to be liked and desired and isn’t all that picky about how or from whom she gets validation. She cries out from a hole where her radiant self-confidence should be.

So instead of acknowledging that I’m uncomfortable with you, that it ain’t right and WE DON’T WANT IT, I try to convince myself to “loosen up,” to “enjoy the moment…”

« Stay tuned for the next chapter of this story in part two »