I’d like to clarify that immediately afterwards, the question of whether the act was consensual did come up, there was an investigation, the fairies from the Bureau of Protection of one’s childhood set to work, they chided my mother for having sent me on my own into the forest, they lodged a complaint against the hunter for having failed to intervene sooner: negligence of care and assistance to a minor dressed in red, they shouted while waving their magic wands. I was interviewed by the constabulary, I recounted dutifully each step of my story: an individual of the woodland canine persuasion accosted me in a clearing, we exchanged amiable salutations and I indicated to him the address of the isolated house where I was headed. Later I became aware of his presence in the bed of the aforementioned house, a rapid exchange took place composed principally of a series of questions and answers with the intended goal of ascertaining his identity, and then suddenly he leapt upon me. I didn’t say yes, I didn’t say no. He asked me to do things to him, I did those things, physically it wasn’t terribly pleasant but clearly I never said no. I was in shock, I believe. The officer patted my shoulder with a wide grin, go home mademoiselle everything’s all right, what you described was nothing more than a sexual encounter of the utmost banality, you were a bit shaken up, your first time and all, but it happens more or less like this every time, boys are naturally unpredictable, stop fretting, the hunter on the other hand will be fined for interrupting your moment of passion. I felt oddly comforted: after having listened to the hysterics of the fairies, I had for a moment come to believe myself to be a victim of a horrible sexual predator who consumes girls like objects, who doesn’t think about anything but his own satisfaction, who denies to others their very humanity, but not at all, no no no, in reality what had happened to me was irreproachably normal. How reassuring. I went home skipping, and in my euphoria at having not been the victim, took a lamppost straight to the face. The lamppost, however, was connected to a different problem, one which shall be made clear in due time. Anyway, at that point, this whole mess didn’t seem so bad after all.
Except when I started to look for a husband, and you can certainly imagine that to wed and procreate abundantly were my ultimate goals in life. I cannot begin to tell you what a catastrophe it ended up being. The other heroines in fairy tales, they know how to simper, they have the necessary ways about them. I, however, am too unsophisticated. When I like a guy I go after him from the start, you know it’s honestly not worth starting off with all the usual bullshit: flowers in the undergrowth or tiring oneself out doing up a lacy negligée and putting on a ridiculous sleeping cap. I’ll suck you off right now if you want, it’ll save us some time. I’m kidding, of course. What I’m trying to say to you is that I totally fucked up my socialization in the game that is heterosexual seduction. I thought that not being a virgin anymore would be an asset, I proclaimed it from the rooftops, hey everyone, in my charming company no inert starfish here, no fears of a mattress sullied by a bloody deflowering. I’m ready for use. Calamitous idea. The sons of kings are absolutely down for social mixing if you’re a dithering shepherdess or an uneducated slattern, no worries. However they would definitely prefer to be your first, that no one came before them. Like during the first date, I ask you innocent questions about your grandmother but it’s really just to fuck you, it’s happened to me already, and like, I thought I had figured it out, I’d decrypted the mechanism. If a guy wants to try his luck, he’s welcome to, but he needs to not think I’m a total bimbo, cards on the table you see. In fact, boys are not at all equipped to handle it when we see their game for what it is, it undermines the whole thing, makes them panic, they feel attacked, to the point that I’ve always had to justify myself, no but like I’m a positive person, an affable, archetypal cheeky village maiden, not a soured, tyrannical stepmother, nor a jealous and cruel stepsister, the suspicions are unwarranted, no wait come back, please don’t go, I know a quiet house in the forest where we could go drink this bottle of wine. In the end, I felt thick as a brick.
I have this friend, a total princess, and she explained it to me, she told me, you have to make yourself desirable otherwise it won’t work. I asked what that meant, and she gave me a sort of seminar, well, you smile, you act nice, you play dumb, and avoid coming on too strong, you let the boy take the initiative. For example, on the first date, you lie down in the brambles and pretend to sleep for one hundred years. Even if I feel like talking a bit first? Affirmative, my friend responded, men fall for inaccessible girls, unattainable trophies, don’t forget that you’re in competition with the Holy Grail, glorious military exploits, plots for the throne, even the triumph of good over evil, so seducing you must feel a bit like a challenge. The idea seemed fundamentally twisted—simulating disinterest in order to arouse interest wasn’t logical at all, but whatever, I was determined to try her method. I bought myself a dress covered in thorns, I learned to feign an enigmatic pout, I trained in the art of expressing myself evasively. It worked, but never for very long, because there was always a moment when I gave myself away: I would forget to hold my pout, I would unexpectedly take off my dress, my affection showed itself, and then, invariably, the guy, or the frog as it were—well yeah I also tried it on with a few amphibians—would disappear back into the woods, my apologies I am the youngest of an uber-huge family and as my eighteen brothers have not taken wives I find myself, alas, unable to engage in the contract of marriage, later and thanks, you were pretty cool as a fuck buddy, though. It was actually like a video game, each time I would hit game over, but I lasted a little longer each round. At first, game over on the first date. Then game over after the first night together. Finally, game over at the moment the question of marriage came up. I was simply unable to crack this ceiling, though. Jesus Christ, it pissed me off restarting the game over and over, it really sucked, super demoralizing, and not even considering the fact that playing the inaccessible idiot required an impossible amount of energy. I was on the brink of burning out.
I didn’t want to give up, though. Finding love was my all-consuming dream. I had no professional plans or political ambitions. I clung on and decided to pull out the big guns. I rented a dungeon with super thick walls, I hired a dragon to stand guard, I hung up a blinking sign YOUNG AND SINGLE AND IN DISTRESS, and I closed myself up inside. And I waited. And waited. And waited. I can’t tell you how bored I was, I had fuck all to do each day, I hadn’t thought to bring something to read, there was no Wi-Fi, and, twit that I am, I had thrown the key into the moat. At a certain point I was so fed up that I started to scream out the window, fucking save me, help help I want to get out, I don’t care about guys, I don’t care about finding a husband, I just want out, to see the horizon, check my email, read the paper, I can’t take it anymore, I’m going mad. And then, a cloud of smoke, a procession of hinkypunks, a solo by a soprano dove, and then appearing out of nowhere, fifty or so knights in shining armor clamoring to slay my poor dragon and claim the distinct honor of inviting me to the cinema. I was taken aback. I immediately ordered my dragon to fly far away, I didn’t want his death on my conscience, and while the men below were calling for a locksmith—well, you know, I was only leasing the dungeon, I had to return it in its previous state otherwise goodbye deposit!—I thought about what to do. I thought how stupid I was, I just decided that I would never get married, that I would become a lay nun. I had finally accepted the idea that my love life would be a rocky desert, and suddenly, all these candidates. I nearly sent them all running, but it was so flattering, so validating, after all these game overs thrown in my face, my confidence hung in tatters, and I couldn’t resist. So I took the one who was both the hairiest and the most enthusiastic—yes, I’m into hairy, no need to drill down on that. As for enthusiastic, I mean that he seemed exceedingly motivated, he told me over and over how beautiful I was, how appetizing I was. I was transported; I felt exceptional. Very quickly I moved into his castle, everything was fabulous, he gazed at me with passion, he held me in his arms with greed, he prepared delicious dinners for me and endless compliments, compliments raining down, you’re so beautiful, your skin is so soft, I love your thick thighs. There were certainly a few things I found odd, like when I wanted to go out for a walk he would say, you know nothing of my people, of whom I am king, I know them, out there they are barbarians, you would be savaged, it would be best if you stayed inside, oh look it’s already time for your dinner, I made a Chips and Crisps Peanut butter pie. To be honest, being his captive didn’t bother me that much. I was totally happy, absolutely over the moon, I finally felt loved for who I was. In turn, I grew visibly larger due to the inactivity and the diet a smidge oversaturated with fat, and yet he continued to find me magnificent. As for marriage, I waited patiently, I had learned my lesson, being the first to the subject was not allowed, waiting until the guy was ready in his mind was rule number one of the simple method for seducing men taught to me by my friend. In any case, we already lived together, we shared a roof, table, and bed, it was marriage in every way minus the paper, one day or another we would make it official, and voilà. And, well, not exactly. One day, the cold shower. A huge pot on the fire, a butcher’s knife between his fingers, spittle in the corners of his mouth and a book on the table: A Bachelor’s Guide to Seasoning Your Food: Human Female Meals for One. I was horrified, I rubbed my eyes, I couldn’t understand and yet at the same time I understood all too well. But to believe it was itself the deepest of wounds in my heart, a seismic fissure, so everything was just to . . . to . . . eat me? He looked at me smugly, he cackled with disdain, listen fatty I never claimed to be prince charming, I never promised you anything, if you imagined things on your own it’s not my fault, all things considered you should be pleased, you were well treated, it shows that I liked you, come on lie down on the cutting board now, if you cooperate the live vivisection will be less painful, believe me. At this moment, by I don’t know what miracle, the survival instinct kicked in, and I managed to get away, I leapt from the window and I ran for hours, days, weeks, I don’t know, my memory is a bit foggy. In any case, I ended up at home.
Following this episode, I fell into a deep depression. I ruminated on the king of the ogres, my thoughts turned wild, I thought that I shouldn’t have run away, I shouldn’t have left him, being sliced up cooked up eaten up is still attention, it’s still a connection, in his stomach I would have been warm, romantically intertwined. I was getting it all mixed up, I wept for the ogre who let me go—if he had loved me, really loved me, he would have barred up the windows, he would have chained me to a wall, he didn’t really care about me, the prick. I was in the middle of stewing over these absurd ideas, rocking in my chair, I want to be a red doll, your inanimate doll, your doll without will, but if I become a doll, my will to be a doll will be annihilated, how can it be so? I was losing my grip. In the meantime, my princess friend had become a radical lesbian, she would lecture me, men are a waste of time, they are programmed to make us miserable, it is essential that we deconstruct the stereotypes in which our tales have enslaved us, wake up, don’t you realize that you always choose predatory partners? I was very much in agreement, though awareness was little consolation. On the contrary, I blamed myself endlessly for failing even at my own feminist self-critique.
In the end, I went to see an elf alienist covered by the national health insurance, seeing as all these expenses tied to my marriage quest had left me absolutely wiped out financially, and I told him all my problems. I thought, oh god, I’ll spend ten years on his couch at least, expounding on my irresponsible mother, my absent father, the wolf attacker, the late hunter, and in the end I’ll find that in the secret burrows of my subconscious I held an unshakable desire to sleep with my grandmother. No, not at all. He furrowed his brow and said, what you’ve said doesn’t hold up: you don’t seem all that stupid, you should, as it were, be able to tell the difference between an old sick woman and a hairy beast. I recommend you consult an ophthalmologist. And bam, the verdict came down, I am blind as a bat, straight away I got contacts and without them I can’t see shit. Prior to this knowledge, I thought the world was naturally blurry, made up of impressionistic stains and vaporous smears, of washed out shapes and imprecise figures—it’s rather pretty, really. Fuck, that bowled me over, you can’t even imagine. I replayed the scene with the disguised wolf, it’s true I couldn’t see him well, it’s true I could barely distinguish the bed from the rest of the room. I was seeing red, so to speak. My fucked-up life, the concern for my mental health now eclipsed by a problem of diopter. I was devastated. The Pierre Richard of fairy-tale heroines. Ready to offer my services to the International Association of Certified Science Fiction and Supernatural Opticians, with a bit of luck they’d hire me to be the spokesperson for their next campaign to promote early testing for nearsightedness. Then I thought more, yeah, I know I think a lot, but as I don’t have a boyfriend, I have so much free time, it’s the advantage of being a non-practicing hetero, yeah that’s it I had totally sworn off being in a relationship, I don’t have the necessary skills, but I thought some more and I remembered that, myopic or not, once I got to my grandmother’s house, I had a doubt. An intuition. But I hadn’t listened to myself. Perceiving a blurry shape in the bed, with a strange voice, unusual features, finding myself awash in a sea of red flags meant to raise legitimate suspicions as to the real identity of the person before me, I could have, yes, I could have decided that it was all super fishy and that the smart thing to do would be to get the fuck out. But for that, I had been raised too well, I would have needed to be less submissive, less respectful of authority in general, and that of adults in particular. From now on, dear Nina, since you had just been asking if it wasn’t a bit maddening to live in a tale which presents a retrograde image of women, I would say that in my opinion, though I don’t have the be-all and end-all of interpretations of my experiences, one might consider that the moral to be gleaned is something to this effect: do not be so docile as a matter of principle, do not be so mechanically servile, exercise your critical mind and at least doubt. Disobey.”
