when i read the headline, i knew i was flesh
I lost feeling in my forearms when I read the headline.
Bill Cosby Freed as Court Overturns His Sex Assault Conviction
No, that’s impossible.
I read it again.
Bill Cosby Freed as Court Overturns His Sex Assault Conviction
A burning struck my intestines. It travelled through my digestive track, down, to my colon, my cunt, a word and part that’s lost all meaning, the serrated edge of steak knives turning me to pieces of flesh from the inside out.
Pieces of flesh.
Isn’t that what this means?
Bill Cosby Freed as Court Overturns His Sex Assault Conviction
He was sentenced to 3-10 years. 58 women came forward. 58 women. 3-10 years.
On the lower end of that sentence, which he didn’t even complete because, according to what was printed, the judge felt that the women should’ve come forward earlier, like it’s easy to change your life that has already been forever changed by sexual violence, like it’s easy, like he understands something that’s impossible for him to understand, but he says it anyway, what he feels, that it would’ve made them more believable, that and the declaration of “public panic” for women in the time of #MeToo tarnished reliability of memory, stories, and statements of sexual violence that oh my fucking god, we wish we could forget.
But that’s what the judge felt.
The judge felt.
Pieces of flesh. Is that what this means?
3-10 years and free. 58 women.
That breaks down to about 17 days per woman, and that’s only the ones who were able to come forward, to be publicly torn apart into more pieces of flesh.
Vultures have an easier time swallowing already pieced flesh.
Bill Cosby Freed as Court Overturns His Sex Assault Conviction
58 women.
He’s free.
He’s being welcomed home by fans. Welcome back Dr. Huxtable, we love you, we stood by you. You’re free. You changed my childhood, Dr. Huxtable. Thank you.
Dr. Huxtable was pretend.
Anyone can make believe. Don’t you get that?
We make believe, the ones, the pieces of flesh, because we have to survive. We make believe justice is possible when we’ve never seen justice because for this, for us, for sexual pieces of flesh who should know better, do better, the ones scolded to be better, there is no justice. It doesn’t exist.
Justice isn’t real.
The man that plays him is real.
The man that plays him is a rapist.
The man that plays him, the rapist, the one that, without consequence, violated 58 women and then some, the real man, admitted with his real words in his real life that he acquired seven prescriptions of illegal Quaaludesto give to women he wanted to have sex with. He said that.
If a woman wanted to have sex with you, why do you need the Quaaludes? The real man, in real life, with his real words.
58 women.
Welcome home, Dr. Huxtable.
And here is what I’m reading, everywhere, in the cesspool that is all and any social media, where everyone is brave because they are faceless and pretend, because there is no consequence on any platform, and there is no consequence for rape in real life.
I’m reading that anybody that goes home with a millionaire should know what they’re getting into, they’re saying, we should just know better.
We are failing.
We should know better when someone drugs us unconscious, that it’s our fault that we cannot say no, that we physically cannot say no, and so that’s our fault. We should know better. We are the ones that should know better. Behave better.
Be Better.
We are the ones.
We are the ones, the unconscious pieces of flesh.
Bill Cosby Freed as Court Overturns His Sex Assault Conviction
A quick scroll, and it is all men speaking, I see, all of you, who are the cesspool, all of you who are failing, all of you with the power todo better staying exactly the same, all of you welcoming home a make-believe-character that we want to believe, and I want to believe too, but it isn’t real. He isn’t real.
The man who admittingly drugged and raped 58 women and counting is real. He is free. That’s real.
There are jokes. There are memes. There are threads.
This is trash. This is trash. This is trash, trash, trash, trash, trash. Can someone explain where and how this is funny?
A raped girl for life = about 17 days of punishment, at best.
Bill Cosby Freed as Court Overturns His Sex Assault Conviction
So you’ll ask why? Why aren’t the women speaking? Why is the uproar taking so long? Why are we silent? Why aren’t we taking responsibility for someone else’s absence of responsibility? For someone else’s absence of consequence?
Because what the fuck do we say? What the fuck do we say anymore? What do we say when getting raped is decidedly our problem?
You are failing us. Hear me.
It is a hopeless wrath we live with.
It’s is a hopeless wrath unknown to those who are in the position of knowing.
What do you do when the world decides that you don’t matter? How do you grab a coffee with friends? How do you grocery shop? How do you take a shower and comb your hair when the world decides that you don’t matter?
17 days at best.
What are we supposed to say?
We have been assaulted, groped, raped, taken, beaten, murdered and forgotten. We have marched and protested and fought and forgotten.
We have adapted and evolved because evolution happens when survival is in question, and, forgotten.
So tell me, what are we supposed to say now?
We don’t matter.
What’s next?
Will Epstein be a marble statue? Will Weinstein be a stone monument? Will money and a penis defy humanity forever? Will money and a penis piss all over the faces of the raped, the assaulted, the forgotten forever?
Maybe the judge could coach us then, with what he feels, what he feels is best to say to the 58 women and counting, to women all over the world who are forgotten because they don’t matter, because right now, I, we, the millions of us who know better, we are at a loss of what to say to the women who are brushing their teeth this morning having to live on in their days when the world has decided they are sex flesh best kept silent.
Someone, please, tell us what to say. What we will choose will be forgotten.
Choosing, yes, what you love to throw in our faces like cold water, something to be grateful for as if we all don’t know that our choices are limited and governed by the men, the money, the systems, the platforms that are forever failing us.
How am I so certain?
I lost feeling in my forearms when I read the headline.
Bill Cosby Freed as Court Overturns His Sex Assault Conviction No, that’s impossible.
I read it again.
Bill Cosby Freed as Court Overturns His Sex Assault Conviction
A burning struck my intestines. It travelled through my digestive track, down, to my colon, my cunt, a word and part that’s lost all meaning, the serrated edge of steak knives turning me to pieces of flesh from the inside out.
Pieces of flesh.
Isn’t that what this means?
It is a hopeless wrath unknown.
Allie Dixon is a writer with an MFA from Lesley University. Her fiction and nonfiction deal mainly with systemic sexism and life’s uncanny, often creepy and unexplainable moments. Her essays and chapters from her memoir, More Than Bone, have been honored by Ploughshares and have appeared in SLAB Literary Magazine. Currently, Allie is living just outside of Boston, Massachusetts working as a freelance writer and finishing her memoir. When she’s not working, Allie loves horror movie binging, delicious local drinks and food – especially wine and seafood – and outdoor adventuring such as kayaking, hiking, and trail running.