Bad Dick (P.2)

But most important of all is your vagina. It must be beyond reproach. It must be pure and tight. It must be not a day younger or older than twenty-two. Your vagina must be so saintly it could be . . .

Continued from Bad Dick (P. 1)

Bad Dick (P.2)

by Keti Shea

Eventually, you will put the shattered pieces of your limbs back together, zip up your skin suit, and set out to prove that you are still Hot, that you are rape material, which is to say believable, not because you will want to be believed (that would require speaking out loud) but because you will need to believe it yourself so you can hide in plain sight. You’ll play the part of the perfect victim so you can pass as loveable. You’ll study the requirements of the task ahead of you like a candidate for a job interview. You must be smart but not too smart. Just-right smart girls are prudent and wise; they never make poor decisions, even when they drink at parties. You must also be the perfect weight, one which appears effortless to maintain. You cannot be either a slut or a prude. You must be calm and collected, which means not too victim-y, because victim-y girls are attention-seekers. But most important of all is your vagina. It must be beyond reproach. It must be pure and tight. It must be not a day younger or older than twenty-two. Your vagina must be so saintly it could be canonized.

You will drop even lower into the bowels of hell, which means of, course, you will become suicidal. You didn’t choose to be born, so why do you have to keep living? You’ll be amazed at how far you can sink, how much hatred you can direct at yourself. You will not eat and you will not sleep, and all this deprivation will border on mania. Your flirtation with death, with nonexistence, will now reach fever pitch, and this will open new avenues of self-discovery. You’ll realize that above all else you must remain funny. This will seem imperative: People will be sad if you die, but only if you are funny. You’ll discover that funny and suicidal is a state akin to nirvana because it frees you to be yourself. It will be stronger than any alcohol or drugs combined. You will do and say whatever you want, all the while knowing you could kill yourself. If you drink too much and make a fool of yourself by falling down a flight of steps, it doesn’t matter because you can kill yourself later. Other people won’t know this about you, and that will make you feel powerful.

But wait.

You’ll realize there are a few more circles of hell and you’ll drop into those. You will sleep with men who are disgusting; it’ll be a real chore, but it’ll make it easier to hate yourself. You’ll drink until you black out. You will frequently drive drunk, and in the mornings, you’ll discover your car parked sideways in a parking spot outside your apartment. You’ll both impress and terrify yourself with the depths of your depravity. You’ll drive with eyelids drooping, not on one occasion but many times, swerving as if in a video game, until you’ll no longer trust yourself with yourself. When you drive down the road, you will fantasize about driving off the side of the highway, through the guardrail and over the overpass. Like a hot air balloon ride, you will think it the experience of a lifetime, especially because it could make you dead. You’ll think about this so much that you’ll jerk the wheel sometimes when you drive—this will scare you and exhilarate you. You can end this at any moment, you’ll think, and somehow that thought will give you strength not to die.

You will often wake to a pillow wet with your own vomit, which will be disgusting but not surprising, because you’ll find everything about yourself disgusting, starting with your vagina. You’ll treat your vagina like a schizophrenic who talks to herself and never takes her meds, the thing everyone turns away from in pity and horror. You’ll remember that in order to live you first have to die, so you’ll relinquish your hold on life even further. It will be a surrender, a thing so ugly it does a full circle to become beautiful again. This is the last circle of hell, where you will fall with a splat as if to the bottom of a deep and dank well. Your mom will be there, decrying your many shortcomings that all have to do with your body, and you won’t tell her to shut up because your crippling inability to speak up for yourself is another of your shortcomings. You will reach the end of your days at the bottom of this well, so you can start fresh now, you’ll think. But this will prove tricky because you will still want to die.

Somehow you won’t die, and you will have no explanation for this other than you are not very good at killing yourself.

One day, out of the blue, you will meet a man who will act as if he truly and undeniably loves you. You will find this terrifying, so you’ll seek out his flaws, pick fights, find excuses to leave him. Eventually you will stay, partly out of curiosity, mostly because he feeds you like a stray dog, and you are licking your chops looking for more. You will believe he likes you only because he doesn’t know you. He’ll do things you won’t comprehend, such as not care how much hair you let grow in your armpits. Such as wanting to hang out even when you have your period, and which will spark a withering conversation about tampons, which he’ll buy for you at the store unprompted. He will cook the food you once liked and begin stocking his pantry with snacks for you. You will be disoriented by this turn of events; this is no rip tide, though it’ll be unchartered waters.

This new man will get lost while going down on you, and you’ll stare at the ceiling and wonder what the catch is. You’ll believe that your mask cannot slip because then you won’t pass anymore; he will know you’re a monster and he will stop loving you immediately. He’ll smile at you during sex, and you’ll try not to notice. He will come on your face, but only when you want him to, which will surprisingly not be never. The boundaries of role play will be as clean and clear as his detergent. When the day comes that you freeze like a dead cockroach on your back during sex, he’ll pivot seamlessly into cuddling and watching TV. He will wait for an appropriate time to discuss the dead cockroach thing, the cause of which he will have already intuited. He will pry words from your mouth faster than a creative writing prompt. You will not spontaneously combust, he’ll still want to cuddle, which will make you worry you might actually be losing your mind.

You’ll do the dead cockroach thing less and less, and that will delight and also confuse you, as will many things related to your body that don’t involve self-harm. You’ll decide to inhabit your body again so you may reclaim it. You’ll go for slow runs in the park. You’ll cut your toenails before they burst through your socks. You’ll brush your hair. Somewhere along the way you will drink less alcohol. You’ll consume drugs not to numb or obliterate, but to laugh. And because drugs will make you eat food. One day you will not be high on anything, and you will watch cottonwood dander drift like summertime snow, and it’ll make you cry at how much you have missed. You’ll remember once loving a tree as a child, and that memory will feel like a former life, an ache.

You’ll come to understand this new man is medicinal, that he is Organic and Cruelty-Free. He will encourage you to cry at trees, even though you’ll think yourself a very ugly crier. You’ll realize this new man is a therapy session and a health-food store; he is pastured-raised and grass-fed. He will laugh when you laugh, and you’ll think he’s laughing at you until he explains he’s experiencing joy. You’ll tell him you don’t know what joy is, and you’ll mean it as a joke but later you’ll realize it’s true, and he’ll smile like he already knows you don’t know what joy is. He’ll buy you small presents that you’ll refuse to use because you’ll be unaccustomed to presents with no strings attached, and you’ll think using these presents will ruin them. When you complain about having to shave your vagina, he will shave it for you, not because he thinks it needs doing but because you want it done, and this man will want to please you. He will come only after you come, and you will find this truly disorienting.

For a long while, you’ll struggle to trust this Organic Cruelty-Free Dick until the first time he lets you eat cereal straight from his bowl. Then the truth of it will wallop you: A man has chosen to love you, not despite you but because of you. You’ll wrestle with this because you’ll think you don’t need saving by a man. You’ll believe yourself a feminist in that you share memes about patriarchy on social media, and so you’ll resist the idea of a savior. But then you’ll realize you’ve never once been saved, so you’ll save yourself for a change by letting another person treat you kindly. At some point you’ll realize it’s actually easier not to hate yourself, it takes much less energy, although that will confuse you too, because what exactly are you supposed to do all day unless you are hating yourself? You’ll begin to do things you think you might enjoy, if personal enjoyment were ever a factor you took into consideration. You’ll look around the empty room as if seeking approval, and you’ll understand no one is watching you, it’s just you in the room, so you’ll give yourself permission to relax. This will feel like playing hooky.

One morning it will dawn on you like a sunrise. You’ll look in the mirror and you’ll be surprised at your reflection. Bowled over by it. Seeing yourself, you will smile: You are a beautiful and wild thing, aren’t you. That will be a great day for you, it will be an opening. You’ll let Organic Cruelty-Free Dick comfort you—because you’ll be so very tired from chasing bad dick and thinking you can make it good. What a strange new world this will be for you: You’ll feel like a pioneer, like some gunslinging cowgirl. You’ll let Organic Cruelty-Free Dick hold your hand when you walk together. You’ll let him smile at you for no reason, and you will smile back. He’ll kiss you on the top of the head, and the smell of him will remind you of your sleeping bag as a kid, the one you used to read in by flashlight. At night he’ll laugh at your jokes, even the ones that aren’t that funny, and then you’ll eat cereal straight from his bowl and fall asleep with his hand on your butt.

This will feel like an ending, and it will be the beginning.

*Bad Dick was originally published in Oranges Journal

Keti Shea is a lawyer and writer. Her writing appears in Reverie Mag, Swim Press, Wildroof Journal, and elsewhere. She is a two-time Best of the Net nominee and a 2025 Pushcart nominee. She lives with her husband and daughter in a former nunnery in Northern Colorado.