I tried to avoid my body parts. I was a shy person. The kind who does not pass before a mirror without being dressed. The kind who quickly changes from pajamas into clothing, eyes wandering to the morning sun or dust bunnies in the corner of the room. When it came to sex, I kept the lights off, asked to be taken from behind so I wouldn’t have to gaze at my belly and nether regions. You’d have thought I was captured from the 1950’s, set free to roam in the 2020’s as an experiment to the flashy, body-obsessed culture we were juicing ourselves in.

I was afraid.

It hurt to look at my hips or backside. My breasts were profoundly off-limits.

I had only taken two lovers.

One was older. A PhD student at the college I was attending. He didn’t seem to mind my extreme aversion to bodily recognition.

The second was a student from my math class. So awkward and so afraid, he made me look like Madonna.

I had been a virgin until I arrived at Pace University. The downtown scene of New York City was both isolating and invigorating. I didn’t know where to look first. I set out to explore New York and all it had to offer, but instead spent a lot of time in my dorm room crying or at the library eating donuts and feeling lonely. My roommate was rarely in. It was hard to make friends. I didn’t look at me, and men didn’t really look at me either.

Everyone knows confidence is sexy.

The word sexy made my skin itch.

The sex that I had was good though. Surprisingly.

The PhD student liked to call me a dirty slut. And the math nerd hummed when he came. I was trying to catalog my experiences so I could understand them better. I was trying to become real.

Both men had made mention of my areolas. Because I rarely looked down I merely moaned in response. I was unsure what to make of it, but I filed this information like I did everything else. It would remain boxed and neat until I needed to pull it out and use it for some report or relationship.

Sophomore year, I made friends. It took me by surprise. Caitlin and Jenna were normal. They didn’t seem to realize, on the day they invited me to get lunch with them, that I was not normal I felt like an Other. Not the same as the Other that was the subject matter of our Critical Writing class, but adjacent to. Except the Otherness was inside of me. My body. Our professor had great gusto when exploring what the feeling of Other was. To her credit, I had begun to feel less like this. She gave me a language, and even if I wasn’t using it correctly, it helped. Perhaps, it was this, and not the group project we’d been assigned, that allowed Caitlin and Jenna to feel like I should join their crew.

We went to parties together. We did cocaine.

We had sleepovers in Jenna’s giant loft and ate marshmallows off the counter while listening to Taylor Swift.

They talked about dick. Girth and length and left-leaning and circumcision. I rarely added to the conversation, often blushing when they giggled at my discretion.

I wore pajama pants and long-sleeved tee shirts. I was aware of camel toe and chicken skin. I was afraid. Even while I was unafraid.

Halloween night we decided to skip the festivities and stay in to watch scary movies and eat candy. They asked me about the best compliment I had ever received. The best compliment on my body. I looked out the window.

They chided me.

I told them about the areolas and they instantly demanded to see my nipples. What could they be like if men had lauded them? I shook my head vehemently but was talked into it. When I removed one bra cup they stood up and came closer. The moonbeams through the window made them seem like ghosts.

They told me I was perfect. I flushed with pleasure and quickly pulled my bra back up. We talked then, of the validation of men. The validation of women. Which mattered more and how it all seemed so very important in our stage of life. Essential almost. Like oxygen or music. Jenna loved her legs. Caitlin loved her ribs. They both adored each other's eyes. Amber, Green. I lay on my back on the couch dangling a black licorice stick into my mouth. Feeling its firmness get gooey in my mouth, slinging it around from wisdom tooth to wisdom tooth. Flexing my jaws.

Hours passed as I stretched like a cat.

When they were asleep, I wandered barefoot into the bathroom. I ran a shower and took my clothes off. The water and steam felt precious against my skin. I ran my fingers through my hair, soaped my thighs. I let my hand linger between my legs, felt myself get wet.

When I stood, wrapped in a towel in front of the mirror I slowly lowered it and tucked it around my waist. The reflection of my breasts was almost obscene.

I sat there, in the obscenity. I looked at my areolas for a while. I pinched them. Watched them turn into darts and then softened them again with my thumb.

I was afraid.

But then I couldn’t feel it anymore. For a second it was all gone.

I moved my tongue gently over my bottom left tooth.

It was still sweet.