What I Build Will Outlast Every Man Who Ever Wanted Me.

What I Build Will Outlast Every Man Who Ever Wanted Me. On choosing permanence over performance. My memoir Drystone - A Life Rebuilt is out in just two weeks. Some people will receive their copies even sooner. The fact of it has been... not looming exactly, but definitely dominating thought and feeling, hope and fear. I’ve been quiet, sitting with it, trying to reassure myself that I’m doing this on my own terms, that I’m not making myself unsafe. I’m 41 now, a therapy veteran, but still unravelling the ways trauma lives in my body. That’s for many reasons, but mostly because my body has always been directly implicated in so much of what I’ve faced. First time in a pub age 15 This essay is adapted from the book, and it’s the one I’ve waited longest to share. It’s not exactly an essay on desire, not quite an article about trauma and misogyny, not just a reflection on motherhood, my body, strength, or even craft. It’s about all of those. And something else. About what it means to spend so long being shaped by the world. And what it means instead to shape the world around you. I love this piece, it’s one of the clearest things I’ve written. I’ve spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours contorting myself in front of a phone camera. Sucking in my belly, pushing out my tits, reshaping my body to match what Jack, David or Chris wanted it to be. I’ve cut my hair, curled it, coloured it to suit the preferences of men I barely knew. Once, during a late bar shift, I bought a disposable razor from the Spar across the street. Using a wet paper towel and hand soap from a pump dispenser on the wall, I shaved my pubic hair in a toilet cubicle at work. The man who had texted “come over” didn’t like body hair. I didn’t particularly like him either, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, I knew exactly how to disappear, or reappear, whatever a man wanted. From magazines, conversations in the playground, and early experiences with boys, I learned how to be attractive. I realised early on that the fastest way to get there was simply to hate myself. The 90s obliged by pitching self-loathing as a form of discipline and personal growth. Any boy willing to overlook my obvious, irredeemable physical flaws was generous. A catch. I could show my gratitude by choosing one of Cosmopolitan’s “Fifteen Ways to Be a Bad Girl in Bed”, but not before brushing up on “Men Rate Their Top Ten Dating Turn-Offs”. ‘Girl Power’ and ‘I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want’ may have been the headline, but the subtext never changed: What I wanted didn’t matter but male desire and attention did. And being desirable was currency. Doors opened. Rules bent. I went to a pub for the first time when I was fifteen. My friends assured me that the...

Preview: ~500 words