Nothing Says Romance like a Little Murder

Content warning: death, threats, sexual assault

TL;DR Sexy talk and thinly veiled death threats rarely ever go hand in hand.

Picture it: Two lovers, limbs entangled, breaths synced, and nothing between them but a light post-coital sheen of sweat. One of them has a disability that makes any significant movement on their part impossible. The other one doesn’t. The latter smiles lazily and pinches the former’s nose and laughs while saying, “I could kill you so easily.”

***

There are really only two types of vulnerable in this life. There is the I-just-told-you-my-deepest-darkest-secret-and-I-can’t-breathe-until-you-say-something-vulnerable. Then there is the if-I-lie-in-a-certain-position-for-too-long-I-could-literally-choke-and-die-vulnerable. I’ll let you take a gander as to what type of vulnerable I am and what type of vulnerable I rarely allow myself to be.

So, it should come as no surprise that before I ever started having sex I imagined all the ways I could get hurt. I conjured up scenarios where men didn’t stop when I told them to. I told myself never to consent to sex if I thought I’d change my mind partway through, not because I believe consent isn’t retractable at any stage—it is—but because I doubt many guys would oblige. I talked to my friends and knew that the odds of me being sexually assaulted were significantly higher than that of non-disabled women. I taught myself to detach mind from body, even more so than I already did because if a sexual situation ever turned sour I didn’t want it to ruin me. There have been countless guys that I refused to ever meet because I never wanted to be alone with them. For the most part these precautions have kept me relatively safe; nothing too horrible has ever happened to me. But little things have.

***

The one who couldn’t move spent a few milliseconds considering her options. She searched his eyes and saw herself as the gazelle reflected in his cheetah gaze. She knew that predators could smell fear in their prey, and briefly wondered what her armpits smelled like. Already afraid of his temper she thought about the numerous times she had seen his anger flare up in six months and how she learned to make herself small in those moments lest the tendrils of his flames reached her. Ultimately, she thought about how anyone could kill her and how he was an idiot for bringing it up. She hated being reminded of her vulnerability. Him mentioning the elephant that was in every room of hers felt like a reminder more than anything else, that though he was only joking then that could change easily. Just like that she knew how to react.

She laughed a laugh covered in artifice, one that he was too deaf to differentiate from the real. In the end she thought him a fool for thinking death was a simple as cutting off air supply. It was often slower than that. Their relationship—or more like situationship—had been dying a drawn out, agonizing death from the second they met up for the first time at a cafe. But she wouldn’t let him know their relationship died that night along with whatever security she felt with him. Just like she would never tell him a part of her died that night too. A part of her she couldn’t name if she tried but it had something to do with hope.

Years later when she thought about that conversation and him—the first guy she surrendered her body to because she thought she would be safe, only to be reminded that safety wasn’t for her—she’d squash any left-over lingering fear and laugh.

Moral of the story for you: Fear doesn’t last nor does it have to win. Learn from the moments that scare you.

Moral of the story for the non-disabled reader: If you are inherently more powerful than the person adjacent to you, do you use your power to intimidate them or to do something beneficial?