Anecdotes on Control by Max Polenberg

I cannot say no to a boy who wants to fuck me. Is that a flaw with me or with him? 

My creative writing professor has us pick the strangest thing from our bags and write about it. I rummage through my things and find my birth control calling to me. The strangest. 

How strange it is to control. To say no to the body 

On a high school field trip I watched a tiger pace the length of its enclosure,
back and forth, back and forth, so faithfully I wondered if it thought the pacing was its own idea. 

How lovely it is to have control. 
How difficult to tell the difference
between self-control and being controlled. 

How lucky am I? 

I get to have control of my body. 

I have to have control of my body. 

I cannot say no to a boy who wants to fuck me. Is that a flaw with me or with him? I’ve mastered the art of taking it, of going so still as a way to make it end faster. Oh, but he says it’s okay if I don’t want to, so then why can’t I tell him I don’t want to? Is that a flaw with me or with him? 

I sit in class and think about control. 

What a strange thing to control the self. To take a pill to limit the body. 

A pill every day. For the rest of my life. The tools for pleasure. 50 dollars a month with insurance. 

I sit in class and think about control.

Testosterone and birth control can cause blood clots. Well it’s great news that I have to be on them for the rest of my life. Even better that no one bothered to tell me this side effect until I was in the ER. 

It’s great news that my ex told me I should stop taking my birth control so he could knock me up. It's a kink he has. “I’m joking… mostly,” he says. I laugh it off like I’m supposed to and take the pill anyway. 

I control myself so he doesn’t have to. 

They told me self-control was a virtue,
a word so clean and polished you can hardly flinch at it 

The good animal doesn't rattle the bars. It doesn't bare its teeth at the keeper. It learns the
boundaries of its enclosure and mistakes them for the
boundaries of itself. 

I spent 8 months taking hormonal birth control, pills full of estrogen. Until I got a new doctor. Why are you taking these? she asks. I just took what they told me to, I say like that’s normal. Because for me it is. 

I take what I am given—Pills I shouldn’t be on. A job that doesn’t pay me. A boy who wants me for my ovaries, the words “I want to see what it’s like with a trans boy,” a body that gives me nothing but shame and medical bills. I take it all because I’m not sure I can get anything better. I let the “no’s” stack up in my throat until I’m choking on them. 

I sit in class and think about control. 

I look at the package of my birth control and realize with a sickening start that the strangest thing in my bag isn’t the pills. 

It’s how much I’ve learned to swallow.

Max Polenberg is a 22-year-old writer from Long Island, New York, whose work explores the quiet moments, the big questions, and everything in between. His work explores the transition from childhood to adulthood, trauma, and what it means to actually turn survival into living.