windmills over Zaandam

My friends went to a sex show in Amsterdam and I told them I’d wait outside. When they left, a group of men approached. They grabbed me and laughed, yelling comments about my body, about what they wanted to do to me and I froze like I had the first time I’d become a statistic on my college campus, the one in five women. I wasn’t the type of person who’d get herself in the situation to be sexually assaulted, I remember thinking. I’ve since learned that’s not how abusers work. Power-hungry teeth don’t differentiate like that. Sometimes I forget my own name and call myself only body, call myself only victim. But not all people use teeth to bite. Not all walks alone end in attack. The next morning, I caught a train to town by myself and a kind man made me the best waffle I’ve ever eaten.