I was catcalled for the first time today.
Really catcalled.
Not a few whistles from an open car window,
or the flash of a phone camera out of the corner of your
blue eye.
Catcalled.
The kind of catcall
that goes
on
and
on
and
on
Even when his friend whispers,
“they’re girls”.
As if to say they’re just girls
not women.
Save them for later.
But still he calls
Even when you’ve crossed four lanes of traffic.
Even when you’ve walked down the slanting sidewalk
to the ice cream parlor with a polar bear
plastered on the window.
It was the kind of catcall that
you blame yourself for.
That you beat yourself for.
That you go over one hundred times in your head
how he yelled,
“that one’s smiling. She likes it”.
And you realize that ‘one’
was you.
That you had smiled because your first extinct was to think
this can’t be happening.
Your $7.50 banana split melted
before you could
work up
the nerve
to eat it.
You were watching for the park bench,
for the three men outside the used bookstore.
You feel like you’re five years old again,
forcing walnuts and
browning banana
down your throat,
chocolate syrup melting into your skin
and dripping onto your shoes.
Your laces were untied,
and you thought the whole way home
what would have happened
if they had chased you.
You think about the fact
that you didn’t see
the catcaller from the bench
or how he had stood to watch
you and your friends run.
You walk your friend to her class
across campus
because you’re all scared
that he’ll
come back.
Your body seizes when you see
a man and you think to yourself
What will happen
if he speaks?
You hurry home and the counselors
file a police report,
and you watch a movie
with your friends
to pretend nothing was wrong,
nothing happened.
You’re shamed for being scared,
for feeling threatened
when his words followed you
all
the
way
home.
For being terrified when
you thought the other men were him.
The friends that felt it,
the shock and the fear;
they shut up because,
“it happens everywhere”.
You shove the panic and the shame down because,
“It’s normal”.
And you try not to think about the intense
fear that has developed
to walk downtown again.
I was catcalled for the first time today.
The kind of catcall that
shatters
your perception of the world.
The kind of catcall
that makes you thankful that
you’re not a woman yet.
“They’re girls”.
But our age didn’t stop them,
our group didn’t stop them,
our clothes didn’t encourage them.
All we wanted was ice cream.
Instead, we became women.
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