Hard to Get. Leslie Bell
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THE BAD-GIRL STRATEGY
Being a bad girl, on the other hand, gave Jayanthi a strong sense of identity. Particularly for women from families with traditional ideas and teachings about sex (for example, some immigrant families and conservative religious families), being a bad girl can enable them to feel independent and “bad-ass,” and to separate from the parents and traditions that may have felt restrictive to them while they were growing up. Tired of being a good girl who met all her parents’ and community’s expectations, Jayanthi began casually hooking up with men after college, often meeting several in one night.
I was twenty-one and hadn’t had that many experiences in intimacy, didn’t know what it’s about, really. I was still a virgin, I went to a women’s college. I’m my mom and dad’s ideal child—what is that? Fuck the standards, fuck the expectations of what I’m supposed to be. I’m just gonna break them. So I just broke them. So I ended up really going crazy. . . . I was just like, “I don’t want to be the poster child, so the other extreme is this.” It was like the Virgin Mary or the ho. And I was going to the other side. And I just didn’t like that. And I was like, “Okay, I’m not gonna do this anymore.” I’d try not to do it and then it’d be the other extreme. I wouldn’t find anybody meaningful. I’d try not to associate with that group of people, and then I’d be having a really, really sheltered life again and I’d be like, “Fuck this, I don’t want to do this,” and I’d go and freak out again.
She was aware now that she had been feeling insecure at the time, and that she had been seeking out attention and affection. She reflected that she loved part of it, but also felt lucky for not having gotten STDs and not having been raped or killed (although, as we learn later in this chapter, she was in the process of redefining a specific encounter as rape, one in which she “kind of gave my body without giving my mind; I didn’t really want it to happen”). At the time she had longed for a sexual history, for stories that would make her feel real and alive.
[At the time I was] in one box or another box, and in both ways I had censorship. I was censored on this really sheltered side ’cause it was limiting what I wanted to do. And when I was doing everything, I was censoring myself, ’cause I didn’t know what . . . I wanted. I kind of knew what I wanted, but I wasn’t able to really express that. I wasn’t able to really say no. I wasn’t able to be honest to myself, [to say,] “Jay, what are you doing to yourself ?” . . . I would just give in. So both sides had censorship. Both sides had limitations, and [on] both sides I felt I was being trapped in some way. So I felt like, “God, this is shit, this is terrible.” So basically what happened was . . . by the beginning of ’98 I realized I was being played by a lot of different guys. I was being manipulated. I was given fake affection. I was silencing myself. I was putting myself in hard situations, dangerous ones, risky ones, not even pleasurable situations at times. But it wasn’t all bad. Otherwise I wouldn’t have continued on with it. I also liked the drama, I liked the excitement, I liked the fact I was having stories, I liked being bad. And then there were some people I actually loved having sex with and I loved the intimacy with. So it all came in a package. I don’t want it to come across as all negative. Otherwise it makes no sense as to why I stayed there and did it, okay?
When I asked how she made sense of it at the time, she replied:
What I was thinking at the time was, “I’m liberating myself, this is liberation, I’m getting myself out. I’ve been repressed for so long, and I’m just gonna let it out. I don’t care.” So that’s what it was. . . . I look back and I’m like, “Damn, I should have cared a little more about protection.” But at the time I was like, “I don’t care, I’ve been so repressed, this is all about letting it out.” That’s what was going on at the time. . . . “I want to party, I want to meet people, I want to hook up, I want to have stories, I want to have a history.” I didn’t have a history, so I wanted to create a history. I don’t want to be naïve.2
Jayanthi worked hard to give herself a history that differed from her family’s expectations—she needed sexual experiences and crazy stories about sexual exploits to create that history. Prior to her crazy time, she felt herself to be meeting all her parents’ expectations of a good Indian girl. She went to a women’s college, was not sexually promiscuous, did traditional Indian dance, and cooked Indian food. Releasing herself from the repression she felt as her parents’ daughter allowed her to feel more her own woman.
The bad-girl strategy also appealed to Jayanthi because prior to college, she hadn’t felt attractive. Growing up in a predominantly white town in the Southwest, she found that the attractive and popular girls were always white, and Jayanthi felt that boys didn’t find her pretty. On top of not feeling desirable because she was Indian American, Jayanthi felt sheltered by her parents, who would not allow her to date. Embracing the bad-girl strategy highlighted for Jayanthi the degree to which she actually was considered desirable and attractive.
Being a bad girl allowed Jayanthi to control her identity, rather than having it controlled by either her family or the men she encountered. With American men, Jayanthi had felt stereotyped as naïve, passive, innocent, shy, submissive, and virginal because she was an Indian woman. Indian men also expected her to be a nice, virginal girl whom they could bring home to their families. By having extensive sexual experiences, Jayanthi could feel herself to be different from these stereotypes.
Being her own woman in charge of her identity, however, didn’t automatically translate into her enjoying sex. Jayanthi never had orgasms during the “sexual frenzy” time: “I didn’t really express much desire, I just took whatever was given. It wasn’t about how I liked it. No one had any interest in making me come, and I had no interest in coming ’cause it wasn’t even about me.” She also says that 30 percent of the time, she had sex because she felt obligated to do so.
A turning point in Jayanthi’s bad-girl era came one night in India. It was only recently that she was able to recount fully this experience.
I used to go and dance at this one club a lot. There was this one African person there, ’cause a lot of West Africans, East Africans come do some studies in India ’cause it’s cheaper for them. So there was this one; I think he was from Sudan. He—I forget his name. He was kind of cute. I was like, “I don’t mind fooling around with him.” And I didn’t have a car, so had to depend on these guys to take me home. I wouldn’t sleep at my place ’cause my mom was so mad at me at the time for doing all this. She was just like, “If you’re gonna do it, you have to come back in the morning. I’m not gonna open up the gate for you.” So I’d have to sleep at other people’s places. So I decided one night, he asked me to come home with him. I was like, “Sure, I’ll come home with you.” But he stayed with three other African roommates. So we get home around five in the morning after dancing at the club. Me and him are fooling around, then we start talking, and we have sex, and I’m okay with it. Not that I really want to have sex with him, but whatever, I’ll do it. Then we went to take a shower. He stepped out for a minute, and then his friend came in and took a shower with me, finished up with me. And I didn’t know what to do. ’Cause, again, I’m in this unknown place. I don’t want to be like, “What the fuck are you doing? Get the fuck out!” I didn’t know what to do. I was like, “I guess I’ll have to be cool with it, have to pretend like I’m cool with having a shower with his friend.” After the shower with his friend, his friend wanted to have sex with me. And I think I had sex with him too. And then he was lying down with me for ten minutes and then he got up. I was lying there [thinking], “Oh, my God, I need to get home.” I didn’t know what to do. Then his other roommate came in, and he wanted me to have sex with him. I didn’t have sex with him. I just kind of gave him oral sex, which I didn’t really want to do. By this time, I was like, “This is so crazy.” And then the fourth guy came in. By then I was like, “I’m not doing anything.” I just got up and was like, “I’m just gonna go home. Can one of you help me get a taxi or something to get home?” I still had to be nice to them ’cause I needed their help to get a taxi. That’s the powerlessness I felt. . . . It was only recently, literally recently, Leslie, that I thought back on it, and I was like, “Oh, my God, that actually happened to me. Oh, my God, what