44
– because, let’ s be real, frotteurs are almost exclusively men – who rub on women and girls on the train, in bars, wherever they can do it while getting off unnoticed. They have handles like“ Bum Feeler” and“ Rock Hard”, and share stories of their exploits and pictures of the women they have surreptitiously dryhumped. Some give advice, such as backing away occasionally, so your victim gets the impression that you’ re working hard not to touch her and that any contact is the fault of the crowd.“ Women are forgiving if you can make it seem like this,” Rock Hard writes.“ Almost like you can’ t help it, not like you’ ve preyed on them like a piece of meat.” *** There was a large mirrored cabinet above the sink at the house I grew up in. If I pulled out all three of the doors, I could create a three-way mirror to look at my face from all possible angles. I wrote in my diary at the time, I’ m so ugly I can’ t stand it. I have a big gross nose, pimples, hairy arms. I will never have a boy like me or a boyfriend. All of my friends are pretty and I will be the one with no one. I was feeling that loneliness acutely at the time, because I was obsessed with a boy named Matt. Matt – the first in a long line of blond boys I would fall for – told me once that I would be so, so pretty if not for my big nose. All I heard was, he thought I could be pretty! I started to measure my nose. First with my fingers, which I would try to keep the same distance apart as they were when they were on my face and then bring them over to my mother and her nose to demonstrate just how much bigger mine was compared with hers. She would insist that my nose was smaller – the kind of well-meaning parenting that just inspired fury and distrust. The nicest thing someone said to me was that a lot of people my age had big noses, and that I would eventually“ grow into it”. The comment acknowledged that the ugliness I was feeling was valid and not some childish self-hatred. It was the only thing that gave me hope, the idea that my face would slowly morph into something more proportional than the monstrosity I was currently working with. The thing about hating your face so intently is that it takes an extraordinary amount of care and attention. The obsession is almost contradictory, because you start to love the self-hatred a little bit. It becomes a part of your routine – you whisper,“ I hate you” when you pass by a mirror, or you think it when trying on clothes or putting on makeup, acts that feel foolish at the time, because you know you’ re not tricking anyone into thinking you’ re beautiful. There’ s nothing that you could pile on your body or face that would make it worthy. But at least I could bear to look. A friend I lived with for a short while had an ID card for work that she was supposed to keep around her neck at all times. To avoid having to look at the picture of herself, she carefully cut a small piece of yellow paper into a square and taped it over her face. Later, I would find plastic bags of vomit hidden underneath her bed, wrapped in towels meant to mask the smell that eventually led to their discovery. I started carrying a piece of paper with me that I would position over the bump on my nose when I looked in that three-way mirror to see what I might look like if it were gone. My father tells me my nose is part of my Italian heritage, that getting rid of it would be a slap in the face to our ethnicity. I tell him we’ ll always have spaghetti. He is not convinced.