by Roe McDermott

Shane Rowlands, Queen of the Night, digital photograph, 2020. Courtesy of the artist. — Shane Rowlands, *Queen of the Night*, digital photograph, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

Things I Can Do

With my mouth

Roe McDermott/ MAY 2021 / ISSUE 8

Things I Can Do With My Mouth

I can bite, maim, break skin, make bleed, spit.

I can speak, shout, scream, screech. I can become megaphone, alarm, crow, lioness, wolf, Banshee.

I can taste, devour, eat, chew, feed, swallow, regurgitate, vomit. I can bite my own cheeks, tongue, lips. I can make ulcers and blood bubbles, I can house decay, fungus, infection. I can grow teeth, damage teeth, lose teeth, use teeth.

I can translate words into thoughts; body into poetry; opinions into columns, critiques, capital. Can translate academia into broad audience and back again. Can translate English into my country’s language, though less now, is oth liom gur lig mé duit mé a fhágáil. Can translate people’s actions into motivations, past traumas, arguments why they need me to fix them. Can translate any man into reasons I need to fix him. Can translate expressions/actions/punches into reasons they did it, reasons I deserve them, reasons to stay, reasons to always stay. I can translate what ‘hysterical’ and ‘shrill’ and ‘overreacting’ mean and why they are coded, but I can also translate my hysteria into more palatable forms of logic and reason when I want to stop fighting to be understood, and settle for being acknowledged. I can translate this action from self-preservation to self-subjugation and back again.

I can brandish words like weapons, spit out observations like knives, hit targets you didn’t know I could see. I can lay down questions like breadcrumbs and traps, leading people into a lair. An ex once described this transaction as ‘Give me your words, give me your words, give me your words - Here are your teeth.’

I used my mouth to tell that ex that we were done. It’s the first time I had ever left a man who was cruel to me. I told myself this was progress, this was a milestone, this was change. I told myself it would be different after that. I also cried and apologised to him. I never heard an apology back.

I have used my mouth for so many apologies, even when they wouldn’t tell me what I had done wrong.

I can give presentations, I can cite evidence, I can quote experts and academics, I can present as one, I can call myself one and not be lying. I can feel like I’m lying. I feel like I’m lying a lot.

I can lick, suck, penetrate, caress, fuck, invite a tongue into my mouth, a clit, a cock. I can taste pleasure and body and sweat and skin and orgasm, I can taste you wanting me.

I did lie a lot. To protect men. “I’m fine.”

I can explain what consent means to children, to teenagers, to adults. I can give lessons and monologues and analyses of rape culture and toxic masculinity and victim-blaming. I can eviscerate justice systems, patriarchy, social norms that enable abusers and silence victims. I can quote statistics of how often sexual violence happens; why victims are likely to become revictimized; what predators look for.

I told my predator that I was what he was looking for.

I can tell you what I did and said to signal that I was a survivor, I can break down word by word revelation by revelation how I told on myself, how I shone my own spotlight, how this time the breadcrumbs led straight back to me. I could tell you why I was so open, all raw nerve, no filter, what I was searching for, what I hoped for, why I couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out, from outing myself, from giving him an instruction manual of what to say so that he could do what he did.

I could tell you that I regret this, but I won’t. I don’t.

I could tell you what trauma does to a body, can explain fight or flight, but also freeze and fawn, I can explain the gender differences in adrenalin responses, I can detail how trauma begets and shapes other trauma, shapes the future, I can tell you why I did what I did.

I can stay here and explain everything. I can articulate the truth that exists within my body.

I can tell you everything.

I can say the word ‘No.’ And did.

Things I Didn’t Do With My Mouth

(When A Man Forced Himself Into It.)

bite maim break skin make bleed spit

shout scream screech become megaphone alarm crow lioness wolf Banshee

devour chew vomit

make blood bubbles

damage use teeth

translate words into thoughts, body

lig duit

act

fight

be acknowledged

spit out

left a man who

was cruel to me progress change

hear an apology

give evidence

invite into my mouth a cock

protect

myself

stop

what he did

fight flight fawn

shape the future

stay within my body

tell you everything

No.

Roe McDermott is a writer, journalist, and Fulbright scholar with an MA in Journalism and an MA in Sexuality Studies from San Francisco State University, where she studied Irish women’s experiences of abortion. Roe is a columnist for The Irish Times, the film editor for Hot Press magazine and has had essays published in The Rumpus and The Coven. In 2020, Roe was awarded the Irish Arts Council’s Next Generation Artist Award for Literature. She is currently completing an MFA in University College Dublin and is working on her first essay collection which will explore PTSD, trauma, and patriarchal constructions of knowledge and credibility.

Shane Rowlands is a writer and collage artist who lives in Brisbane, Australia on Yugara-Turrbal country. She has published two poetry chapbooks—rear vision (Spindrift, 1997) and cicatriced histories (Metro Arts, 1995)—and has written for theatre and live performance. Recent exhibitions include fall seven times, stand up eight (PF Studio, 2013) and Royals, Angels & Assassins (WAG, 2015). She has worked as an editor and dramaturge, public policy maker, arts and cultural strategist, and as a researcher, curator and writer for exhibitions and business storytelling.