Helena does not like hitting.
Helena likes other things much better. For example: Modest Mouse. And: seashells, orange juice, Denny's, and nice blue pens. Hell, Helena likes just about anything better than hitting.
(I'm not talking about sweet, wholesome little love-spankings, or even severe injuries acquired by way of excessively forceful thumb-wrestling. I'm talking about HURTING. I'm talking about intentionally hurting someone. I'm talking about wanting to punish someone by making part of their body hurt.)
(...And as far as you know, I'm not talking about anything at all in particular...)
I used to have this dog named Heidi. Heidi, who was a Heinz-57 mutt, was probably the smartest non-human on this planet. She was smarter than most humans, come to think of it. And she had this way of loving just about everybody, taking care of them, and rounding up her family like we were sheep. She also had a way of stealing food and occasionally crapping on the living room floor if nobody had let her out for awhile. And what the hell; I steal food too sometimes, and if nobody let ME out for awhile, I'd crap in the living room too. You really couldn't blame Heidi for fucking up once in awhile. She'd emerge from the living room sometimes, having just created a nice foul heap of feces, her head down, her tail between her legs, and she'd sit down at your feet and beg for forgiveness. And if one of us hit her, she'd give you this look of utter despair, this humiliated, embarrassed SHAME. She'd look at you like she had killed your mother. She looked at you like she had chewed up your 3,000-year-old Family Bible. If you hit Heidi for crapping in the living room, she looked at you like she had ruined your life and deserved to die.
Admittedly, I smacked Heidi a couple of times. Not hard enough to hurt her for more than a few seconds, but to this day, several years after Heidi has passed on, I occasionally think of the times I hit my dog, and I feel like I chewed up the 3,000-year-old Family Bible. What a horrible thing to do to a living being: to take command of its body, and to force it to feel an unpleasant sensation.
Heidi never deserved that.
Helena has never deserved that either.
(EXCEPT when she was a kid and tried to stick her finger in the electric socket. And the time she tried to taste a raw egg in pre-school and her teacher smacked the back of her hand... Those are the only times Helena has ever deserved to be hit.)
Helena did not deserve to be hit when she was seven, and went outside after a rainstorm and accidentally got muddy. Helena did not deserve to be hit when she was sixteen and her then-boyfriend decided to teach Helena's little brothers what to do with a willful woman, and bent her over his knee and beat her on her ass.
Here's the deal, one fucking final time... And this goes for everyone, forever, for the rest of my life... I AM a willful woman. If this was 1850 and I was in a covered wagon bound for the West Coast, I would have my skirts hiked WAY above my ankles. If I was a dog and nobody let me out for a few hours, you bet I'd crap on the living room carpet. In the here and now, I say lots of mean things, and I DO lots of mean things, and sometimes I don't show up on time for things, and sometimes I don't do my homework. Sometimes I'll get to thinking about Eva and Norman and Marketa, and I'll take the name of the Divinity in vain, and get to talking about The Baby Jesus Buttplug. Sometimes I write things that are mean and nasty and horrible. Sometimes I mean them. Sometimes I sit in my room talking about what a fucking cunt-rag the girl down the hall is with her Diet Coke and her stupidass Cyndi Lauper CD's. Sometimes I tease people about things they don't feel like getting teased about. So fucking pardon me if I'm not always polite, nice, pretty, eager-to-please, seen-but-not-heard, whatever-the-fuck-else-I'm supposed-to-be.
If somebody hits me, they're saying to me: "You have abused your position in this world and in my life, and I hate you for it. I hate you so much that I'm going to hurt the one part of your identity I'm sure I can reach." If somebody hits me, they're saying I shit on their carpet, killed their mother, chewed up their 3,000-year-old Family Bible, and ate the cream cheese they'd set out on the table. If somebody hits me, they hate me enough to want to see that humiliated, despairing shame in my eyes, and that hurts a lot more than the spot where they hit me. If somebody hits me, they are saying I am not in charge of my life anymore, that I am not capable of running my own life, that the hitter is superior to me and that he has the authority to punish me.
WELL GUESS FUCKING WHAT!? MY LIFE IS MY LIFE, AND MY BODY IS MY BODY, AND I AM CAPABLE BEING IN CHARGE OF THE WAY I FUCKING WANT TO LIVE, AND YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO HURT ME. I DO NOT GIVE YOU THAT RIGHT, AND YOU DO NOT HAVE THAT PRIVILEGE, NO MATTER WHAT YOUR GENDER, AGE, OR PLACE IN MY LIFE.
"Kiss it and make it better?"
FUCK you, that's NOT that way you treat a willful woman.
If I'm any part of your life, I'm going to be a bitch, and at some point or another, you're not going to like me very much. So my fucking skirts are raised above my ankles. So I'm not always very nice, and sometimes I keep talking long after you wish I'd shut my mouth. If you don't like that, you tell me so. If you'd like, yell at me, tell me I'm a bitch, tell me what a lousy friend, daughter, sister, lover, or student I am. But if you can't handle my bitchiness without hitting me, then YOU DO NOT DESERVE ME. You do not deserve to be any part of my life.
It is so fucking weak to hit a woman who cares about you, just because she said something you didn't like.
"I'll never do that again. I'll never touch you again in anger."
That's right. You won't. You will never, ever, ever touch me in anger again. You will never touch me again.
How can you be so against war, so anti-military, so peace-loving, so turn-the-other-cheek, and I can still feel your hand on me twelve hours later? How can you say you care about me, and then turn around and hate me so much that you'd hurt me like that? How dare you?
If my dog, Heidi, was still alive and she saw you hit me, she would have bitten your hand off.
~Helena*
"You can't trust violence..." --Low, "Violence."