I Said No

To the Boy With the Thumbs

Image Courtesy of Meaghan Garvey/Noisey/Vice

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

It was a misty, warm night on Cary Street at an abandoned bar as I lingered in the back. As the wind turned the water white, to black. You showed up late, and dropped your phone.

You dropped your phone in an angry puddle. Its screenface looked at us like a scrying glass, foretelling sins and judging harshly, I begged to pause and listen to its favor, you were not here for it.

Back to your house we went. Angry words.

I played loud, calming music in the background, hoping to reset the note of the evening. I have had these conversations, the kind where the tempo of his particular inflection is carefully delivered in a tapestry inviting shame. I was too tired to do this again, to have one of these conversations with another person. They make me feel like Overdraft Bills and dirty dishes in the sink.

And I don’t know how to tell this story.

I am a professional teller of stories, but I don’t know how to tell this one. That would require constructing a complex sequence of events into something logical, into a broader narrative arc of time, blending paint smears from that night with broad brushstrokes into an ongoing portrait of thematic elements which comprise the Life Of Alice Minium and sync up okay…