Euphemisms

 

Most people know about euphemisms. They are words we use to make ugliness sound better, more acceptable, less repugnant.

Women of my generation took this idea to lengths I'd never realized until I read a book by Roxane Gay called Hunger. That book is very appropriate for this time. A time when women are allowed to talk about the unspeakable. A time when the unimaginable may be voiced without shame, although it still feels shameful and difficult to talk about.

The first time I had sex I did not expect it. I did not want it. I said, "No." many times. I pushed him away firmly but gently, so I wouldn't hurt his feelings. It didn't stop him. 

Afterwards he said we made love and I wanted him to feel for me the way I had felt for him, so I thought maybe he was right, but I felt awful.

Every morning after that he would come up to my bedroom at his mother's home and do it again. I would push him away and whisper, "No," so his mother wouldn't hear and when he didn't stop I would threaten to tell her. I even threatened to call out for her help, but I didn't want to embarrass him, or her, or shame myself, so of course I did not. Sometimes I barely slept trying to figure out how I might escape him in the morning.

I hated making love with him, but he wouldn't stop. 

I couldn't tell anyone. I didn't want them to know and I didn't want them to think bad things about me, or him, so I finally began telling myself I was a modern girl. I made love just because. He went into the army and we agreed to date other people when he wasn't home. He said men couldn't be expected to be celibate. 

I didn't understand why the boys I dated didn't try to make love to me. I wondered if it was because they could tell I had already done it and was a slut? I felt trapped by what I had done with him.

Eventually he came home from the army and we got married like people do who have already made love. On our honeymoon he gave me all kinds of slutty outfits and wanted me to wear them when he did it to me. It made me feel used and unloved, but I didn't want to make him sad.

We were married nearly thirty years during which I had lots of bad feelings about his truthfulness and faithfulness and doubts about his love for me, which turned out to be well founded. I made lots of excuses for him. I blamed myself for not being loving enough, good enough, kind enough. When my doctor told me I had chlamydia I couldn't figure out how I got it. 

Now I wonder how I could have been so deluded for so long, but it felt right at the time. At least it felt as right as anything else in our relationship did. 

Now I prefer solitary living.