hotly contested: nipples over lace

i tell them "i can see you're _____ and things are costing a lot. i know it's our first date but i don't fuck on the first date." they promise that the extra effort, the extra seventy dollars, isn't a ploy. then it turns out i'm in a park or walking by an alley, or in a living room or bedroom, and one of my proudest moments of escape was when a man had his hands bruising around my wrists and i panicked on the outside but on the inside consulted you both, and then i started chatting, and promising a striptease, swaying my hips, "moving my things out of the way," by the front door, sexily disrobing my feet from knee-high boots, carrying them backward to the door, and grabbing the doorknob and flinging the door open with my boots and bags in hand.

i left behind my most prized books but i can buy them again someday.

i ran until someone else saw me, then walked to the lobby. put everything back on, hailed a cab.

that's not the only time i've narrowly escaped. he tried first in a park, beating me up, and when i escaped he dragged me to an hourly-rate motel. luckily it was a part of manhattan that was cab-dense, and luckily there were two men who were more invested in protecting me than being rape advocates. i was so scared by the way he caught me in the park that i didn't think i'd be alive or listened to if i asked the receptionist for help. 

but the two of you in me helped me believe that despite being ugly all my worth is worth. it's still devastating when strangers want to tell me i'm ugly. my therapist wants me to say i will never let it hurt me but how can someone who hears it dozens of times a year or month or even week for 29 years not feel sad when people call her ugly?

that's not a rhetorical question.