on being pretty

It is an insanely powerful feeling, realizing that men find you attractive. You walk through a bar and their heads turn and all of a sudden, you realize it:

"There are men here that want me. There are men here that really fucking want me. They look at me and think about running their hands down the sides of my body, about whether my nipples are pink or brown and how they'd feel in their mouths, of running their tongues along the crease where my leg meets my ass. They think about my lips on their throat, my lips moving down their chests and further. There is alot they would do for that."

It becomes a game- how will this man approach me? Does he like it when I act like a bitch to him? When I drop a casual 'fuck' or 'shit' or other four letter word into the conversation, is the surprise in his eyes followed by disgust or lust? When I turn him down, will he be angry or will he think he was lucky just to talk to me? Will he call me a bitch when his friends asked him what happened? Or will he make up a story about how he kissed me, got my number, fucked me behind the bar?

This game is new to me. I was never the pretty one, never the one the boys talked about. No man called me beautiful or pretty or asked me out until I was nearly 19. And a man did all of those things and I dismissed it as an attempt to sleep with me. I was the smart one, after all. The smart one doesn't have men fighting each other over her.

I see the hunger in their eyes now, and it scares me a little. I know exactly how far a man will go when he wants a woman, I know exactly the lengths he would go to get his way.

But I think I scare them too.