Sex Object by Jessica Valenti Page A

he was failing classes and so they pulled him out, putting all of his things in the back of their car and not even giving him a chance to say good-bye to anyone. When I expressed my relief to one of my girlfriends on the floor, she scowled at me. It’s shitty , she says, to take pleasure in someone else’s pain .
    Before I left at the end of the semester I got a letter saying that if I wanted to stay enrolled I would need to take summer classes to make up for all the ones that I skipped in the spring. I threw it away and told my parents that I wanted to transfer—leaving out that I didn’t have much of a choice.
    FRIENDS MAKE FUN OF PAUL AND ME FOR BEING BASICALLY married while in college but we are far from perfect. I am far from perfect. One day while we are at Paul’s house in Westchester, he plays video games with his youngest brother, sitting on the floor in front of the bed that belongs to his middle brother. His middle brother and I are lying on our stomachs, headspropped up by our hands, also watching. At some point, this brother slides his hand over and puts it on my ass. I don’t move my eyes from the screen; I don’t say anything. I’m not sure what to do so I do nothing and let him leave it there, though I think I remember his rubbing me at one point. He is seventeen years old. I am flattered but also frozen.
    We catch up over a dinner years later, and Paul tells me that despite his support of my bourgeoning feminism I got drunk one night and yelled at him when he tried to pick me up off the floor, saying something about not needing a man. I’m not sure if this is the memory of a person who has caricaturized what a feminist might do or the actions of a drunken idiot newly finding her politics, but either case does not seem very flattering to me. I am either an asshole or someone that a person remembers as an asshole.
    I WOULD LIKE TO SAY THAT BEING WITH SOMEONE WHO LEGITIMATELY loved and respected me brought out the best in me but the truth is that anything good that Paul gave to me I rejected. I know that I loved him—he’s probably the only person other than my husband for whom I really think that’s true—but I treated him poorly, still. I’m sure I was a good girlfriend in many ways (see: road head, above) but although I was drawn to someone who treated me as his equal, I did not know what to do with that gift.
    That I thought it was a gift rather than a given was probably the problem.
    Being treated nicely felt wrong somehow, as if we were acting out what a relationship should be rather than being in it. For men who hate women, an admission like this one is proof that see, women want a guy who treats them like shit but that’s not true either. What is closer to the truth is that when confronted with the love you deserve, it is easier to mock it than accept it. Especially when everything else you have experienced of love and connection is based on something more like control or disdain. That is part of the reason I ended up with my husband. I loved him, yes—passionately and fully. But I also recognized at some point that loving him was a good choice. It took me a while to get there.
    Before we moved out of our apartment in Albany—heading back to New York so Paul could move back in with his parents and look for jobs and I could move in with a friend and apply to graduate school—our cat, scared by the noise and disappearing furniture, snuck behind the stove and into a hole in the wall. Neidra ran far in and couldn’t figure out how to get back out. As friends helped us move, she stayed in the wall—for hours, I think. Paul sat by the wall, calling to her, reaching in occasionally, trying to lure her with treats and then, finally, tuna fish.
    We decided that I would keep her, but one night when my roommate got drunk she slammed the door on Neidra’s tail—amputating most of it and skinning the rest. My roommatedidn’t