I want a guy to slap the shit out of me.
I know, ok. I know. Just let it sit there for a moment.
I did not realize what I wanted until a close friend expressed the same sentiment. Usually, whenever I heard about consensual acts of violence during hookups, I repulsed and worried. The idea of someone slapping, hitting, or choking my loved ones boiled my blood. I struggled to see the appeal because even if it has a scientific explanation behind it, even if it were consensual, the violence could far too easily traumatize one’s body, and consequently, their mind. The problem mainly lies in our society aggressively sucking at asking and giving consent. After hearing my friend’s sentiment, however, my subconscious did not instinctually ring its release-the-therapy-militia alarm. What happened was far more troubling—the inner me ecstatically agreed as if I had always enjoyed, wanted, violence in the bedroom. Suddenly, pleasure and relief replaced the long-standing anger and claustrophobia.
In this past year, I have noticed I am not the only one to experience changes in their hook-up appetites. Once my community of college students could somewhat socialize again, we quenched our social thirst by cutting out the foreplay and getting straight to—“real talk.” Whether it was through a drunken conversation or after watching a film/tv scene depicting consensual violence, I continually heard people, even ones who I thought would spend their lives in missionary position, reveal that they wanted someone to throw them around, slam them against a wall, hit them, choke them, bruise them, dig talon-like nails in their back, and generally roughhouse them. The drunk ones expressed their desires with depravity and passion like their cores were exorcising poison. The sober tv-watching ones did it in a self-conscious whisper, just loud enough for friends to validate them.
From college students, this is perfectly normal. We are at a life stage where most seize the opportunity to explore the depths of sexuality. The exploration gradually takes place over these four years. For us, though, we have not even had enough time in our safe college bubble to explore, and for students like me, we only have a year and change left. So instead, like ripping out a deeply-rooted, young sapling from the dirt, we indulged our unconscious desires and embraced what we may have previously believed to be “vanilla” or “taboo.”
We personified the expression: Life is short. But then added, So fuck them.
The shift was more in overall attitude rather than immediate action. Out of all the people who similarly expressed my desire, I only know of two who engaged in rough sexual acts. To excuse their inaction, some stated a lack of opportunity to ask their sexual partner while others expressed a lack of sexual partners due to either geographical isolation because of COVID or too tiny, too familiar of a pool to choose from. Disappointingly, I also was not one of those two actors. I was far too busy thinking about what my therapist (if I still had one) would say to me if I enthusiastically said I wanted to get hit: Let’s unpack this one, Arsh.
I could easily visualize the concerned, confused frown indenting into her forehead as her hands hesitantly juggled the weight of my mental health, but I struggled to hear her follow-up question. I sought out a friend who has similar life experiences rather than a professional specializing in trauma—obviously because college students know best.
My friend did not ask me a question. She just said, “Same.” We used silence to converse, reading each other’s thoughts over FaceTime: Are we entering our “risky sexual behavior” phase that psychologists predicted? If so, thank god, I have been waiting.
“I’m happy,” I said. She smiled, “Same.” The scary thing was that we both meant what we said. She continued, “Whenever I tell people what I’ve been doing, they keep asking me if I’m okay, but—I’m fine.” It might be strange to read how feeling “okay” or “happy” could cause someone to mistrust themselves, but what some do not understand is that experiencing any kind of abuse makes you constantly question yourself: Am I just like them? Am I capable of doing what they did?
Self-mistrust breeds fear. Healing breeds fear. Positive emotions breed fear. She and I have gotten so used to questioning ourselves, we do not, outwardly, mind anymore. It is all about asking the right questions: Am I happy, or is this just a toxic way of coping? Am I actually fine, or are my empathetic friends seeing something I am not?
Depending on the situation or the context, the answers constantly change, but to make life harder for me, my answer at that moment was, “I am happy.” The thought of getting slapped during a hook-up made me happy, like getting a deep-tissue massage happy, like cupping all over your back and shoulders happy, like biting down so hard to relieve a toothache happy.
Our conversation ended quickly: she had to clean her apartment for incoming guests. After I got off the phone, I did that thing we, straight, cis-women, do when life chooses the worst timing to get hard: we get out the Swiffer-Sweeper; we brew coffee or tea at inappropriate times of day; we cook a random collection of foods in a non-stick pan; we empty and fill the dishwasher; we decide to flip through the Architectural Digest or Vanity Fair laying on our coffee tables; we suddenly get out of bed at midnight and onto our Pelotons for thirty minutes; we sign up for Rumble or OrangeTheory because SoulCycle just doesn’t get us going anymore; we tend to the garden; we air-dry our clothes or beat them against rocks; we churn butter; we roll-up our sleeves and help the midwife. My poison was bringing out the Dirt Devil. You do not know pleasure until you dip your feet into a clean rug.
The vacuum blocked out the noisy filters of my conscious. I imagined a slap; it cooled like menthol-infused lidocaine. A wall-slam replaced a chiropractor. Choking felt like hands digging into tense shoulders. Clawing nails felt like scratching at a mosquito bite. Pain was not just a form of pleasure—it was pleasure. However, I could not help but notice a few things. All of these imagined feelings ultimately led to relief—not in-the-moment relief; rather, relief from something external, outside of the intimate domain. These moments felt practiced, like it was known how to make a slap feel like lidocaine instead of a dizzying, burning sting. Lastly, I realized I knew these feelings; they had been there before, just not in a sexual way. \
When I was younger, I loved violent sports. Initially, in the leagues I played in, rules did not restrict girls from engaging in violence. In a controlled fashion, we released any anger we had to constantly hold inside of ourselves. When the rules archaically embraced the notion that girls could not play violently, we learned how and when to secretly engage in violence without facing a penalty. To maintain its sting, the violence became quiet and intimate, only done in close-quarters. As it is commonly described, we “played dirty,” yet the greater physical intimacy did not become more personable. My body memorized the feelings of being tripped while running full speed and crashing onto a hardwood floor, spraining and squishing my fingers, sweaty bodies crushing me to the ground, colliding skulls, elbows railing my ribs, long nails reddening my neck, all the air getting knocked out of my diaphragm, and the taste of a dirty and sweaty hand shoving my lip into my teeth. Yet, I have no recollection of their names or their faces—only of what their bodies did to me.
Memorizing this physical pain did not lead to any fear of it happening again. I know these feelings so well only because I felt them so often. We consented to this violence. We knew how hard and where to hit so that someone could get back up and continue to enjoy playing this game and the next. Only amateurs or assholes caused pain that crossed the line. And, there was something extremely gratifying about still performing well after getting hit, for what is greater than overcoming adversity with resilience? What else provides that necessary adrenaline boost from a crowd cheering and clapping once you stand back up even though on the inside, you know you are completely fine? Who receives the most validation, attention after the game?
To remember a person as a physical action instead of a being reminded me of what it feels like to hookup with a guy to whom I was not sexually or emotionally attracted. In these rare situations, intimacy becomes a surface-level interaction, only about what you show and look like and how well you perform. The lack of a shared rhythm results from two people agreeing to intimacy so that they can independently feel something in the presence of another.
To desperately want to feel something has been universally shared this past year and a half. Emotionally and mentally, I was spent—not just from the heightened and sudden grief, isolation, and anxiety but also from masking all those aforementioned emotions. What we have collectively experienced is violence. And, my skill in subconsciously masking and adapting emotions to the extent that I do not even realize I have been affected is exceptional, resumé-worthy.
Life is hard. It has been fucking harder during the pandemic. No longer able to dictate and mask that inner violence, I unknowingly, gradually made the choice to externalize it not for what it is but for what I wanted it to be. Sexual intimacy is a simultaneous relinquishment and taking of power. It is a reality in which we feel what it is like to live in someone else’s body, to taste their essence, drinking in their genetic makeup. I wanted to feel powerful while ridding my body of its anger, grief, and anxiety. I wanted to decide when and how I processed this violence. I wanted this process to take place in a separate domain that I could leave and return to at my will. I wanted to revel in my conditioned guilt and shame and tell him exactly what I wanted.
But I never did.
And it was fucking killing me.
I was afraid. If I felt out of practice, so did the guy, probably. Trial-and-error in rough hookups can be incredibly harmful even with proper communication and aftercare. We are young, and doing something we have been socially conditioned to believe is wrong will lead to mistakes. What if the “heat of the moment” led to a concussion, a deep bruise, or a bloody nose (I mean, hot, but also boo! bad!)? What if it triggered harmful memories during or even afterwards? What if I was completely wrong about what I wanted? What if the feeling did not provide me any relief? What if he also wanted me to act violently towards him? I could never reciprocate; is that fucked up? I thought about what my older mentors, the ones who put in so much love and effort to help me process my past, would think, and it made me gag from embarrassment. The funny part is that I knew I was not out of practice, I knew how to handle all those what ifs, I knew it was okay if I did not feel comfortable reciprocating violence, and I knew that if somehow my older mentors learned what I was doing, they would just hope I was safe.
Ultimately, I did not feel ready—what I knew did not align with how I felt. The continuity of our bodies and minds leads to belief and then action. We cannot act unless we believe it will benefit us. Yes, we self-destructively act all the time, but even then, we know, if just for a second, it will be gratifying.
Today, I believe in the benefit of my new attitude towards intimacy, and whether I take action, does not really matter to me. What changed over these past blurry, few months is somewhat of a mystery, but I am too tired to investigate. And more importantly, I am exhausted from feeling tired, from feeling like in order to heal, I have to constantly question myself, process my emotions, allot free time for self-care (whatever the fuck that means), or justify my thoughts.
Today, I stepped out onto my balcony. I could feel the dirt staining, seeping into the cracks of my feet. I crouched and stared at the floor. No matter what anyone did, dirt would always replace dirt. It could never be clean nor was it supposed to be. So I spat on it.
Arsh Dhillon ’23 (asekhon@college.harvard.edu) claims to be the Indy’s Sexpert.