When I was fifteen, a dark shape came into my room at night. It was dark, but it glowed, which the first of many facts you will have to tackle with your imagination. It wasn’t in the shape of a person, but right away I knew it was like person in every way except for how it looked. As it turns out, our looks are not the main thing that makes us human.

            I knew right away it was a sexual predator because it was vibing me and I felt self-conscious in my nightgown, which was really just a big T-shirt. This is why you should wear underwear to bed. I was scared, but not in the way where you decide you would rather die than move or breathe. I kept my eyes on the shape and made a plan to jump out of bed and grab my jeans, which were on the floor. This was before I knew anything about anything, for instance that all human movement is in slow motion compared to how fast you can move if you are just a glowing darkness. I had only lifted my hand a little bit when the darkness was upon me. This is the part I stretched out over a whole chapter because I knew Madeleine L’Engle’s husband would get off on it. Basically, what happened was that it fucked me. It did this by entering my body with its whole self. All of the darkness was inside me, and I could feel it glowing, like the volume of music when it shows you how to move. Just the weekend before, I had danced in a sexy way for the first time; my butt and the beat had a connection in a way that portended great things in my future. But I didn’t think it would happen so soon, and like this. Later, I realized my dance moves were probably so powerful, they had called it from its corner of the universe. I’m not saying I asked for it, only that there are moments when we are sending signals not just to the boys in the room but to all of creation.

            It has been suggested that I invented the story of the dark shape to cope with the pain of a more earthly rapist. If that theory interests you, I can recommend some greater case studies about girls who did that, lied. If I was scared the first time, it was because I didn’t know I could survive such pleasure. I thought maybe I was trading my life for this. To feel my teenage desire escalate to inhuman proportions. To look down on my own body and know that falling would mean dying not just once but many times. To fall for a million years like a flute falls, musically, played by the air it is passing through. And to land with no mind, but with a heart that was breaking. We cuddled afterwards, and I was coy and shy. I passed my hand through its densities, asking if that hurt but knowing nothing I did could hurt it, I could only drive it crazy. Occasionally, it would seep back into me, and then I would sleep a bit and awaken with fear that it was gone. But there it was, cloaked around me, healing my appendectomy scar more completely than I could imagine myself.

            What else can you do?

            Love you.

            But can you do any more tricks?

            No.

            But I’m the only one, right?

            You are the sweetest thing in the universe.

            I am?

            Yeah, by a long shot.

            My disposition was that of all the girls who dated boys from other high schools. We were barely there. Our feelings could not be hurt because they lay elsewhere, off-campus, aurora borealis. I drew pictures of it on my binder, a smudge in a heart. A smudge and me in interconnecting hearts. Me and the smudge and a half-human/half-smudge baby. Before I went to bed, I put on makeup, and in the early years, I wore cute nightgowns, but by the end of high school, I just threw myself down on my bed, naked, waiting. Our conversations happened in my blood, or if I wanted to hear its voice, I could hold down F-sharp and middle C on my plastic Casio, and from underneath these notes came a far-off staticky voice, like a truck driver on CB, just out of range. There was a horrible longing inside this love. It would suck on my nipples, and my mouth would swell with thirst, I wanted to suck, too. I became convinced that having me was better than what I got. Now I know this wasn’t true, but you have to remember I was still technically a virgin. I had never even kissed anyone. This story ends in college, when I became angry and dismissive and wanted a real boyfriend. The dark shape wept in the incredibly sad way that only air can cry, and I had tremendous empathy, but only for myself. I was pretty sure the relationship was committing crimes against my brand-new feminism, and underneath that was a determined curiosity about this thing called cock. The shape did the only thing it could do: it promised to come to me in human form. It would be a man named Steve. 

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