When I was ten my aunt dated a wealthy man for a while. The first time I met him they took me out to a dark restaurant with linen tablecloths and three forks to the left of every plate. My aunt was babysitting that night and told my parents that she’d take me to the movies. But he called and then suddenly I was in the back of this man’s car that smelled like black coffee and something I’d later recognize as bourbon. He asked me questions while making eye contact through the rearview mirror, even as he turned corners and sped through yellow lights. 

We were immediately escorted to a private table in the back of the restaurant. He asked me more questions, but mostly he told story after story as my aunt stroked his arm and nodded along. Every other sentence he’d let a swear word slip and always offered a dollar bill with an apology. By the time the waiter took my order I had eleven dollars. 

I finished my bowl of buttered pasta that the chef still managed to ruin with greens and some type of warm spice before the low lighting and slow music made my eyes droop. 

I don’t know how long they let me sleep. I woke up to the white linen saturated with my drool. There were ones and fives and some twenties, as I imagine his generosity rose with his blood alcohol content, rolling off my shoulders and tucked under my empty plate.

Things men have thrown at me: 

• A Courtyard Marriott hotel key card
• An 80s aesthetic inspired flyer asking if I’m interested in sex work
• Their faces, expectant
• Rocks, not the metaphorical kind
• Rocks, the metaphorical kind
• A Natural Light Lemonade beer can that exploded in my hand on impact

The first guy I dated drank one carbonated water for every cigarette he smoked. He said they canceled each other out. My parents met him several times without ever knowing he was my boyfriend. I always said, “You know my friend…” before I said his name and every time they had to think before they asked, “Is he the one with the corduroy jacket?” and I always had to say yes. And I know parents are usually wise to that kind of stuff, but I really believe they never suspected a thing between corduroy and me. He often ruffled my hair and he refused to go to prom with me because we had to get breathalyzed at the entrance. Instead, he attended the after parties.

While there I drank a few cups of vodka and asked him how to tell if I was drunk or not. He faced me head on and pinched my cheeks before asking, “Can you feel this?” I shook my head. “Then you’re drunk,” he said before walking outside to smoke with the rest of the guys.

We broke up a long time ago, before I told my parents, but sometimes I still stand in the bathroom at parties or bars and hold onto my cheeks until the skin turns red. 

Things men have bought for me:

• Drinks
• Plane tickets
• An extra-large pizza delivered to a bar because he thought I was going to vomit or blackout or both
• A self-help novel

I once stole a ring from my mom. It was gold with one ruby and one emerald, both fractions of a carat, encrusted in the center. My mom had lots of jewelry: mostly fake, mostly items I’d never seen her wear. I didn’t think she’d recognize the ring on my finger until one morning she grabbed my hand as I changed the radio station on the way to school.

“Where did you find that?” she asked.

“Your drawer,” I said, outmaneuvering her hand to switch the station away from a used car commercial.

She relaxed back into her seat, but I saw her eyes move from the road back to my hand several times before I spoke again.

“Why don’t you ever wear it?”

“It was a gift from an ex-boyfriend.” she said.

My mom had never talked about men in her life. She met my dad when they were teenagers. They dated on and off for an entire decade before getting married. As far as I knew, he was the only guy she was ever involved with.

“What was his story?”

She didn’t say anything for a while. The muscles in her forearms coiled with her grip on the wheel.

Finally, she laughed, “He stalked me for a while. It got pretty messy.”

Times I shouldn’t have laughed when men made me uncomfortable:

• When that one coworker backed me into a corner and wouldn’t let me leave until I hugged him goodbye
• When my boss told me that he couldn’t fire the Hugging Guy, but would try to schedule us at different times (then didn’t)
• When some guy on the street pulled out scissors and asked for a piece of my hair
• When we learned about menstrual cycles in grammar school Sex Education and all the boys in class made fun of the girls for something none of us had experienced yet

I broke up with a guy by moving across the country. I decided to move while we were dating and didn’t have the energy to actually break up with him. Rather, I waited until the week before I was set to drive back and mentioned it off-handedly as he held open the door to a rooftop bar. He said, “This place is kind of expensive, but I think you’ll like it.” 

I replied, “I’m moving back to Oregon.” 

The rest of that date was a bit of a bummer. I couldn’t really enjoy the infused liquor after he called me “fucking heartless.”

I packed my car the night before I left so I could leave early. When I walked outside, I found my car with every door hanging open and all my belongings strewn across the street. Some of my clothes had tire marks across the fabric and it looked like a family of raccoons got into the snacks I prepared. 

By the time I repacked it all the sun was up. There was so much stuff I still don’t know if he actually stole anything. 

Things men have pulled out of my throat:

• Notes to themselves
• A tied chain of rainbow handkerchiefs
• A pill as I tried to swallow
• A whole green grape as I choked

I once dated a guy who wore the same Metallica shirt every day. Each night he’d wash it along with the dirty plates and knives and forks in the kitchen sink. He’d stand there, shirtless, as I examined the raised red rash that formed across his lower back and under his arms from the dish soap residue he couldn’t wring out. He had other shirts, but he claimed this as his lucky shirt.

“Is every day so great that you still believe in the luck of that shirt?” I asked one night as I dried the forks and he scrubbed the lentil soup stain from the upper left corner of the faded M on the Metallica logo. 

“No, but it could be,” he said. 

We didn’t last long. He’s probably still out there, scrunching that shirt up as grayed suds burst through the loosened cotton fibers and a different girl dries cutlery.

Things I’ve stolen from men:

• A silver bottle opener keychain
• A navy blue and hunter green flannel shirt that was perfectly soft
• The answers to a multiplication quiz in third grade
• Their breath, according to the men who worked at a construction site next to my college dorm room

         My friend and I had a name for older guys we saw lingering in college town coffee shops. They’d wander around and sit with lone girls as we watched from the comfort of our full capacity two-top table. We’d overhear the one-sided conversations about metaphysics and the much better coffee they drank while backpacking through Colombia twenty years ago. I always said I wanted to help, to distract the Coffee Shop Mystics so the girls could escape. I listened to the conversations for a way in, and attempted to make eye contact with whatever girl was trapped. My friend started calling me the Coffee Shop Martyr. But I couldn’t bring myself to sacrifice my time for their comfort. 

         I once made the mistake of going to a coffee shop alone. I was sitting there, reading something or typing something else, when a Coffee Shop Mystic walked up and sat across from me. He immediately took off his cycling shoes and started rubbing his feet with lotion. Where he pulled lotion from in his thin hydration vest, I don’t know. He asked what I was studying and changed the subject before I could respond. 

         I began going to the coffee shop alone more often. He always found me. We never asked for each other’s names, but I’ve been all over the world in our conversations.

I asked if he’d ever want to grab dinner or a drink. I don’t know if I clung to his attention, despite my presence being completely interchangeable, or that some part of me knew the reversal of power would make him squirm.

It was the first time I saw him cut off mid-sentence. He said he needed to go to the bathroom, but I watched him walk directly out the front door. He must’ve found a new coffee shop after that, because I never saw him again.

Things men have never asked me:

• Probably a lot of things

I dated a car guy once. He told me on the first date that he’d never love me more than his gold 2001 lifted Jeep Wrangler. I didn’t take it as a red flag because plenty of guys had told me they loved their modes of transportation more than me. Cars, motorcycles, and even a skateboard. I’ll admit that one hurt. 

But nothing hurt as much as the time we got a flat driving through Idaho. He didn’t carry a spare, the circular case on the back of his car filled with beer and camera equipment instead. We weren’t close to any towns and just out of cell service. 

That’s when he said, “Can you make your body into a circle?”

I said, “What?”

He said, “Bend over backwards and grab your ankles, then hold on.”

He removed the blown tire and screwed me into the back-right wheel position. It was thirty-three miles to the next town. I broke my nose on the first rotation and blacked out after ten. But I remember the gravel and dust carving into my skin as my shirt rode up my stomach. I remember turning my head sideways so my nose wouldn’t break more and watching the blood trail behind the car. I wanted to watch the scenery, the snowcapped mountains in the distance, the cold sunset swallowing the horizon in orange and dark blue. 

Things men have expected from me:

• A smile
• To pay the full price of Plan B after he refused to wear a condom
• To know all the teams in the West Coast National Baseball League
• To wash his faded Batman logo sheets

My friend dated a guy who kept his house cleaner than any hospital I’ve seen. Whenever I visited, he’d follow me around with a broom or Swiffer because he was convinced I tracked micro dust all over his linoleum hardwood floors. My friend sat there in her plastic clothes coverings and shrugged. I could almost hear her say, as she always did when I brought up his aversion, “He’s just particular.” 

He had a chemistry lab safety shower at the front door with pristinely washed and folded clothes next to it for all guests. One time he pushed me underneath the nozzle and turned on the water because the deodorant I wore was too potent. The pressure was strong and smelled of chlorine. I watched my friend through the downpour, hoping for something I can’t name, but she was also plugging her nose. 

Places men stuck their hand down my pants (unprompted):

• An alleyway off a busy street
• On the dancefloor of a club
• Under the table at a restaurant as I waited for a pregnancy test result

I dated a guy who rearranged my bones. Dated is probably too generous of a label. We fucked on occasion and in the mornings after we lay together in his bed before living our separate lives. He talked about the space I occupied as if it was up for debate. He pulled each of my toes until they elongated and moved my teeth back and forth like he couldn’t decide what to wear. He removed several of my ribs and sold them online as jewelry racks. He used my fingers as bait when he fished in the Columbia River, but they never stayed on the hook.

It took some time to hunt down all of my parts across the web and pay to get shipped back. I tossed out nets into the Pacific, but only retrieved one ring finger and a thumb. 

Art men made for me:

• A story that painted me in a much better light than reality. He switched the names and locations, but I knew. I still read it sometimes
• A voicemail that was almost poetic in its assassination of my character
• A yellow ceramic mug from Color-Me-Mine

         I was single for a few months. Every morning I woke up alone, drank coffee, then walked sixteen city blocks to work. I usually kept my gaze down so I wouldn’t slip. Optic nerves and vitreous body ooze smeared across the concrete. Men lined the streets, scooping out and then throwing their eyeballs at women walking past. The words they shouted congealed, existed as one noise.

Things I’ve done for men’s attention:

• Drank IPAs
• Watched Tarantino movies
• Danced on bar tops
• Faked drowning

         For a whole year I dated a full-length mirror that I bought half-off at Target. I carried it everywhere, ate with it sitting across the table, wrote all my calculus notes across the top of it.

Things I have given up for men:

• Food
• Arguments
• My favorite vanilla scented candle because the smoke made him sneeze

I dated a guy who pointed out that I have no character growth. That it’s the same thing with me over and over again. He workshopped my personality during dinner, all the events of my life typed out and spread across the table, and said I need less tension, more motivation. I took notes as he fiddled with the timeline so everything made more thematic sense. He told me where to cut down and expand. 

“He just doesn’t seem like a person capable of assault,” he said about this one guy from my college years. 

“But that’s how it happened,” I argued.

He made a tsk-ing noise then wrote another note in the margin. 

“This character,” he said referring to me, “needs a new inciting event.”     

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Sabrina Canepa is a recent graduate of CU Boulder’s MFA program. She has work forthcoming in The Emerson Review and elsewhere.