One Year
Content Warning:
Mention of Sexual Assault
Image: Namitha Rathinappillai
They say that for the first anniversary, the customary gift is paper. For our first anniversary, we went to a cabin. And what is a cabin but paper that has not yet been drained and pressed and dried? What is a cabin but paper in its first form? Paper in a glass case that is not yet touched.
There is a wood-burning stove where we set alight paper in this yet-to-be paper house. I watch my partner make a fire in the beating heart of the cabin. I see them feed her like a fussy newborn. She wants only the driest of fare. They strip logs bare, grip and then yank to undress the wood of its bark and place it in the mouth of the woodstove. I watch only their back for the longest time. Watch their muscles contract and relax beneath their shirt. I see their commitment to keeping her content. They cup their hands around their mouth and blow softly on the flames, and it looks as if they are whispering to her. I imagine they are saying,
“Thank you for keeping me warm.”
They check in on her often, cranking her door open and closed when she grows cold; nourishing her when she is hungry. I learn about my partner’s relationship with consent from the way they feed this stove that keeps us both warm. They follow her pace: never rushing her, never pressuring her into something she does not want. They know this means they may grow cold at times because she has not yet said ‘yes’. When they are shivering, they do not yell at her to keep their body heated. Their voice and fist do not shake the walls when they are cold. Rather, these two are symbiotic. After an entire trip around the sun, I am still in disbelief that my partner’s body, a body that looks like my abusers, can treat all with kindness.
Image: Namitha Rathinappillai
My partner and I have a candlelit dinner and we spend the whole night laughing. I ask them if I can have the extra chocolatine for dessert instead of splitting it if I give them a blowjob, and they contemplate it and agree. We fill these 130 square feet with the sound of our joy with the faint hint of marijuana. I think the wood stove laughs with us too, her belly roaring with the rhythm of the flames.
We are still and we find out there is always more to learn about each other. We ask about how the other first lost their virginity. They tell me the awkward fumbling story of theirs, and like their story, the words fumble out of my mouth.
“I guess technically, the first time I had sex, I was assaulted? And then the second time I had sex, it was his way of doing right by me so he made sure we had sex where he wasn’t assaulting me?”.
These answers, I suppose, were questions, too. I tell my partner the way my abuser tried to erase the memory of a hostage by rewriting it with something that was just duress. I feel my face burning up like paper in the woodstove and my partner interrupts me with,
“Can I give you a hug?”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what you do when someone tells you something sad.”
This story is not one about sadness but rather, the realization that goodness is not a rarity that a woman needs to earn through pain. To go through trauma is not a next-in-line ticket to a Good Lover™, nor does it need to be. This may have been my path, but let it exist as an exception to the rule. I no longer hope to burn myself like paper to warm another man’s body. Let a man keep my body warm with tender kindling that let me burn bright.
We leave the cabin and find out from the hosts that we are their last guests. For some inexplicable reason, this feels important. That we entered this cabin and it will be left as we left it. Our memories are the last this cabin will hold. Of my learning, of my partner’s learning. That we keep each other warm.
Image: Namitha Rathinappillai
