Maggie Boyd Hare's Self Portrait in Essays I Don’t Want to Write

face down on the living room floor for the strength and guidance to be good, to feel peace. The apple. The tree. Essay would look at me look at her. Watch for her to wobble, and spin myself into sunshine to level it out. We speak the same language. We need no words. How wonderful, to be so fully like her, nestled behind my book, crying on my bed because the world is so full, so beautiful, so heartbreaking.

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The essay where I delve into my feelings about the church—how much it meant to me. Essay would rely on sensory details of being in the rooms of the church: the metal-and-wax smell from unscented taper candles melting in their gold stands, the light tinted by stained glass, the glass itself, giant Jesus with his lambs, his disciples, the steady sound of my dad’s voice. Essay would rely on the language of the liturgy that shaped my earliest understanding of myself: patience, presence, joy. Essay would say I believed in goodness, I had language for meaning, I worked always to see love in everything and it would say I learned to look for injustice and it would say when my mom says she prays for me, I feel wrapped in an irrevocable love. Essay has probably been written. Essay may not be taken seriously. People would ask essay to be more complex.

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The essay that could tell some sexual secrets. But won’t. Instead, essay would annotate the book my mom used to teach me about sex when I was twelve. The book was called Before I was Born. The cover had a watercolor of two little white boys shoveling sand into a red bucket, right under a big number 2 and small script: ages 5-8. It describes sex as “a special gift for new husbands

and wives,” and details God’s rules for sex: “only people who are married to each other should have sex...the man and woman are married, their bodies belong to each other.” And to bring it home, a technical description: “When a husband and wife lie close together, he can fit his penis into her vagina. His semen flows inside of her and their bodies feel good all over.” Essay would laugh, it would roar.

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The essay about how great my dog is. How we believed there was a dog just for us and this could have been hubris, but we were right. How we found her: 8pm on Petfinder after a day of trips to shelters. How her name was my name and she was born a day before my husband, and when I messaged the woman she said, “come on over.” How we were just going to look and not take her home. How, when we got to the house in the middle-of-nowhere Tennessee, the tall woman came out in riding boots and ponytail of thick gray-blonde hair like a vet from a Hallmark movie about horses, and led the dog to us on a rope. How the dog was so scared, my heart broke and I said, “do you want to go home?” How I really mean my heart broke because typing this, I’m crying, she was so small. How she trembled in my lap the whole way back and got hiccups that shook her little body and rested her head on my husband’s arm. How she howls and huffs and stretches and sighs. How every morning she eats her breakfast and then jumps back in bed and nuzzles her way under the covers and curls into a tight circle against my stomach so she’s the little spoon to my big spoon. How she smells so precious, all fur and musky paw and animal. How Mary Oliver and J. R. Ackerley already wrote the “I love my dog” books.

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The essay about “are you even gay if you’re married to a man and have only kissed one woman (but she was drunk and it was her birthday, so that hardly counts, and to be fair, you’ve only kissed three other people and you’re married to one of them, you dated another, and the third was your friend and it was in his car and you were a little drunk and afterward so proud of yourself for taking what you wanted, and then so sad because he wouldn’t date you because he knew you wouldn’t want to have sex unless you got married and he couldn’t do that).” Essay would admit all the times I watched a movie after coming out as bisexual and tried to make sure I talked about how hot the women were as much as I talked about how hot the men were, even though, really, movie women rarely turn me on. Essay is probably not gay enough. Because I am probably not gay enough. And I don’t want to take up space that other voices should have instead.

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The essay about the squirrel that runs the same loop through my yard several times a day. It leaps through the mildewy white lattice on my front porch and onto a small rusted spout connected to a PVC pipe, where it sits for a while, shimmying it’s tail. Then it leaps off into the yard, digs up an acorn it keeps there, and chews for a while before putting it back and running out of my sight. Some days, all I have to say is that squirrel. Essay wouldn’t say enough.

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The essay about my husband letting our dog off leash on walks so she can sniff all of the sidewalk, clover, and cat shit she wants. And how, when she runs up to a stranger, he just calls for her instead of physically going to get her, and she doesn’t always listen. Sometimes the people she howls at and tries to lick the faces of are all gushy over her. Sometimes the people are

perturbed, not unkind, but not gushing. Always, his body language is all, “what a stinker,” hands on his hips, goofy little grin on his face, when really he’s just being an irresponsible dog owner. Essay is really about control. About how I am horrified at the thought of inconveniencing someone, or a stranger having a mildly unpleasant interaction with me and complaining about me to their mom or their friend or their therapist. Which is so far outside of my control, I try to move through the world making as little impact as possible. Which I learned, in part, from being raised as a woman and an Evangelical, where the codes to live by were: be compliant, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Adhering meant safety.

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The essay where I don’t know what to think about when I masturbate. Essay would use the fact that as a freshman in highschool, my guilty pleasure was waiting until my parents fell asleep to watch Glee on my purple Dell mini. All those teens-played-by-adults were so hungry for each other. Essay would sheepishly admit that I made myself stop watching Glee because I masturbated after every episode. Essay would explore how, even after an episode of Glee, what I thought about while getting off was Jesus dying on the cross for my sin. Essay has potential research areas of: the physiological effects of purity culture, sex therapy, the physiological effects of shame, BDSM, and possible church-related kinks.

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The essay where I delve into my feelings about the church—how much it tore at me. Essay would rely on sensory details of being in the rooms of the church: the light tinted by stained glass, the glass itself, giant white Jesus with his lambs, the deteriorating carpet and pew pads, the sound of my own

voice pushing into the microphone singing I am unworthy, and before, my mom’s soprano did e’re such love and sorrow meet? Essay would rely on the language of the liturgy that shaped my earliest understanding of myself: sin, sinner, fall short. Essay would say, I believed would never be good, I worked always to be perfect as my Father in heaven was perfect and it would say, I grew up worshiping weekly a god of white straight able male power and it would say, when my mom says she prays that I will find what I need, I feel wrapped in her love.

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The essay about every time I was told that I could not wear a dress if I was going to sit with my legs open like that. Every time I wanted to know I was being looked at with longing by a man. Every time his looking scared me. Every time it felt good. Every time I was told to be polite, to smile, to stay out of the way. Every time I was told to make sure my body was covered enough. Every time I was made to understand that when I became a wife, or a girlfriend, or an object of desire, I was worth more. Every sentence would be tight and straightforward, but never outright admit that I still care more about the opinions of men than women.

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The essay untangling my enmeshment with my mom. Essay would rely on metaphor because metaphor is the language my mom loves. Images from my childhood where the shapes of our bodies are almost indecipherable from one another. The apple, the seed, the tree, the apple, the seed. My body an extension of hers, separate, but overlapping. Essay would tell reader safety exists only when nothing is held back, then ask if that is true. Essay would look at my mom while she weeds her vegetable garden and listens to Ocean Vuong say, “you have to articulate the world you want to live in,” and sits

down and cries, then texts me a link to the OnBeing episode and “this broke me open.” The seed. The apple. Essay would look at me read the text and throw the phone because they are words I wanted and needed, but could not take from her anymore. Because I did not want to see my mom sitting in the dirt crying. I did not any longer want to feel what she felt. Because I wanted to roll outside of her shadow and split open in my own way.

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The essay of God as container. God as safety. The moment I realized how little I knew of the world. I was at a coffee shop on a date with my first boyfriend. I had been reading Rilke, who called God a “boundless presence.” My mentor had called the Bible the “myths you are most familiar with,” and told me that Thomas Merton studied Zen Buddhism and that made me uneasy. I told my mentor I was uneasy and he said, “If your God is so easily threatened, can it be God?” I was telling my boyfriend these discoveries, saying boundless, myth, and my mouth filled with thin spit and my chest screwed tight. I stayed at our table, smiling, talking for another several minutes before walking to the bathroom where I lay flat on my back on the dirty tile until I could breath again. Essay is interested in that bathroom floor: that I had no language for panic, that panic is what I had to pass through to get here. Essay asks me to reenter panic for its sake, to plunge into my body’s twitchy memory and lay it plain in language.

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The essay that figures out what I want sexually and admits that sex with my one and only sexual partner has been a consistent improvement on the first time, which involved a fistful of lube and still managed to be bone dry. But I still don’t get it. I mean sex. Essay would admit that I feel like if I had sex with just one or two other people, something would shake loose in me and I would

better understand the essence of desire. Essay would be funny because I am still afraid you cannot be a good writer if you’ve only had sex with one person, so I would have the impulse to make myself a joke before anyone else can. Essay would talk about my sister’s frequent dreams that I cheat on my husband and how in the dreams, she knows better than I do. Because when we’re awake, she knows better than I do. Or I think she might. Or it’s easier for her because she sometimes orgasms after she poops.

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The essay about the plant on my desk and its leaves that go limp the moment they want water. How reassuring it is for a living thing to so easily display its needs. My envy of this. The pleasure of watering the plant and touching the leaves moments after to feel them rigid and sated.