to the man who threw my sneakers in the passenger seat

Somewhere, I think, in the last week of May, 2019, you threw my Adidas trainers into the passenger seat of your car.

Let me rewind. I was in the eternal city, working on dissertation research and spending a lot of time alone. You asked me about my tattoo. We had so much in common and you were nice to talk to in a warm city full of cold strangers. What did you think?

I had a Napoli, and you had something else. I forget. A small glass of red. Lots of water. Paper plates and napkins. Plastic chairs (weirdly casual). Only twenty euros? A steal. It truly is the best place. Later. Gelato? A navy button down shirt and raincoat. A black bodysuit and Jean jacket. White Adidas trainers. I knew your first name, your mother’s dog’s name.

My mind was running, thinking about my shoes. Kind of. I don’t know if I thought about it then, or immediately afterwards. I think I just froze. I wasn’t thinking about the shoes and escape, just how to muscle through what was likely going to happen, and how to pretend that I wanted it enough for you not to retaliate against me. Would you have? I didn’t know you enough to find out. I didn’t want to know you enough.

I felt like a cornered animal.

A car — how did we get there? I didn’t want to be there — I said no, softly, gently, afraid to be assertive — and you said, come on, come on, I want you, and I said I don’t think I want to, I really don’t want to, stop it. Why didn’t I do more? Is it my fault? Did I bring this upon myself? Did I actually want it to happen?

You had kissed me up against a stucco wall, shoved me. Then the cobblestone street was where your car was parked, conveniently on the way to the taxi stand. I said I wanted to go hail a taxi home. Somehow in the back of your car. You were a horrible kisser. It was like a dead fish tongue but with more saliva and you tried to perform sophisticated dental work with your tongue. I hated it but I didn’t have the words to say okay, I’m good. Bye. You put my tote bag on the back dashboard. Then you took off the shoes and threw them on the passenger side floor.

I don’t know why you threw them there. That detail sticks. I know, in my intellectual brain, that it’s not my fault. I know I did not say yes, not once. That a frozen response, complete dissociation, silence, and being badgered until silence is NOT consent. The shoes are what I hold on to, a sign it’s not my fault for being your friend or flirting or talking or being a human woman, because surely you know what you were doing.

I felt like a cornered animal.

Then, the internalized shame of this-shouldn’t-happen-to-me

I-have-a-masters-and

I’mnotstupid

andwhydidIevengoanywayanddidIdrinktoomuch

and why, why, whydidithappentome

whycouldn’tIsaynowhydidIfreezeandwhydidmybodyrespondandwhydidn’tmybodyshutitdown

did-i-really-want-it

Or am i

lyingtomyself

andwhydoifeelstiffandbruised

butnobruisesshowup?

And the smell of my sweaty feet distracts me. Those shoes were leather, not breathable. Really held in the stench of it all.

Do YOU know why you did it — why you took them off and threw them there first?

Was it intentional? A way to slow me down, a way to convince me to stay under you, not to push you away? An added obstacle?

Had you done this to other women?

I wish I knew what you were thinking. Did you even know? Or has this been so ingrained in your mind from birth, from a divorced family, an overbearing mother, an absent, asshole father. You think you can have whatever you want with no consequences. You told me your father was an asshole and you didn’t speak anymore, it was too difficult. You spent Christmas Eve alone on your bicycle (you showed me a photo). Who failed you, failed to tell you that wearing someone down, that continuing to push and push and ignore the “no”, is just as forceful as forcing them into it? I am at war with myself over what you did to me.

I felt like a cornered animal.

My body is at war with my mind. My back held a bruise, vaguely shaped like a seatbelt buckle, for a couple of weeks. It yellowed like the insides of those leather shoes, which were once white and now stained. The skin on my spine, once pale as a metaphor for purity, now yellowing, bruised. I thought it was from leaning on the metro railing. I didn’t remember the seat belt digging into my back until a year later. My body betrayed me. Or I betrayed it. Actually, you did.

It’s a year later, May of 2020, when I really begin to think about what you did again. The coronavirus pandemic has forced me to clean my house, purging my collection of clothes and items and art. I used to own 43 pairs of shoes, before the moving and the minimalism and the Marie Kondo that I watched at the end of that summer.

Those Adidas were the first to go to Goodwill. I don’t own them anymore, just like how you never owned me.

Fuck you.