I have teeth. They show when
I am angry
or afraid, lips peeling back
and gums flashing.
I know when
to hide them, but it is not
always easy; sometimes,
I feel as though I could
peel my lips back all the way
around my body,
until I am nothing but teeth,
a gleaming slavering
wreckage, ready to shred and
tear and never
be touched again.
I have a tattoo of a jaguar
skull on my hip, which
I got to remind myself in
its snarl that I have teeth
to defend myself.
Did I forget to use them? He
told me
if I really didn’t want it that
I should have kicked
(I did;
You should have kicked
harder, then) –
but maybe the truth is, I
should have bitten,
rendered, torn. A
jaguar’s
bite is neat and quick; I am
not a jaguar. I do not
have her grace, her allure,
I am not smooth
and feminine and lithe.
When I think of my gleaming
bared teeth and
glowing hungry eyes, I think
instead of a hyena.
A hyena is not
a dog, and not quite a cat, and
I am not a woman
and not quite a man, something
else, cast aside
with the aspersions
of, I hate men – and
I understand, believe me,
after what I have tasted of
womanhood –
then quickly amended,
Not you, of course, and of course not, because
you meant bad men, you
meant cis men, straight men,
you meant real men.
I bare my teeth when I am
scared, duck my
head, flatten my ears, and
let out the nervous
cackle of submission
and excitement. But when I
am hungry…
then the beast is a
slavering thing. I dream of using
my teeth to tear out
the throat of the man who dared
to crack open
my friend like a honeycomb and
suck the
sweetness from within;
wake up jubilant in the heat
and wetness of feasting
on his flesh; slowly come
around to the disappointment
of knowing I cannot
lacerate the life from his body
if he ever knocks
on our door. I preach kindness,
but there’s only
so many times
you can whisper, I wish I
could make the pain
go away, before you start to wonder if teeth
could do
what hands cannot.
It’s a war against women, the play declares,
how can men get away with
this?, and my voice
is not welcome,
because I have forsaken
womanhood, I have
forsaken victimhood, to join
the side of the
oppressors. A friend
of a friend performs a ten
minute piece about
being a male survivor of
sexual abuse, has
such scorn for women
because #MeToo did not
include him,
and I do not want my voice
to carry the same
hatred as his,
especially when he turns
around and snarls
to my face that I do not
deserve to stand beside
him because
I chose this. I was still a
woman to him, trying
to steal what little
platform he had been given
because I wasn’t
content with what I had. He
had so much hate,
not for the people who had
hurt him, but for the
people who had
refused to listen. I
understand, I want to say;
I am not the girl you see
before you, but he
does not want to hear.
He flashes his teeth, and I
do not dare show mine.
He is not the one who hurt
me, not in that way.
I will not try
to taste the blood of
someone who is just
showing their teeth because
they, too,
are scared.
Someone says, People
don’t listen to women who
are sexually assaulted, and someone else says,
People don’t care
about men who are
sexually assaulted, and
they’re not
listening to each other. Fact: women are 15 times
more
likely to be sexually
assaulted than men. Fact: only
1.3% of men accused of
sexual assault are taken to
court, and only 0.6% are then
convicted.
Fact: these facts do not
account for the fact that in the UK,
it is legal for someone to
force a man to penetrate
them without
his consent. Fact: there are
only three charities in the UK for male
survivors of sexual assault,
compared to over a hundred
for women.
Fact: all of these things are
true, and I slip through the
cracks of all the truths,
not a woman, and not quite
a man,
and maybe, if you picture me
as something
else, you will care: picture
me as the helpless, innocent
animal that, fact,
did not ask for this, that
could not defend itself, pinned down
by his hand over my mouth,
my muzzle, his whispered,
Sssshhhhh,
as he fucked me, and I lay
and waited for it to be over;
picture me a lamb, a dog, a
cat, anything but a man
who is not really
a man, and maybe someone will
care, but the truth
is this: I am not any of
those things. I am a transgender
gay man who was raped
by a cisgender straight man.
There is no social movement
for me. Being a man did not
stop it from happening. He will
never be convicted.
The night I performed a piece
about it for the first time,
thirty people I used to call
friend held a party in support of him
opposite my house.
They, mostly women, called
me liar and jealous and whore.
Weeks later, when another
story broke on the news and the
world burned
with the new trend, they
covered their social media with posts
about how important it is to
listen to women’s voices
when talking
about sexual assault. I
wanted to be gentle, but for weeks
after I was nothing but
teeth. I earned a reputation for biting
without provocation.
Wild animals don’t bite
without provocation, we just don’t know
how to read the warning
signs. Safer to muzzle than to try
and understand.
I have teeth. They show when
I am afraid
or angry. You can say, “Stop,”
as many times
as you like,
but some people will only
listen to a bite. My ex
would pin me down while I
asked over and over for
him to let me go,
until the animal fear
of it would kick in and I fought
free like a beast. He would
wail and whine that I
was wild, dangerous,
that I deserved to be
muzzled. Perhaps I should have
torn his throat out with my
teeth. But I do not want
to be made
of this blood and fury. I
suppose all I have is my
voice and my teeth. But I am
not alone. I will not
go quietly.
There is only so long I can
hold my grief and fury
inside. Eventually, everyone
learns that they, too,
have teeth.
