The first time I saw one, nobody asked me if I wanted to.

Second year. Evening bus from college, the kind that is already full before it leaves the stand. I was standing near the middle door with a bag on my shoulder and a file under my arm. There was nothing cinematic about the day. Heat, sweat, someone else’s elbow.

The man beside me had been only a shirt and a bag until the bag slipped. For a second I thought he was adjusting himself the way men do in crowds and pretend they are not. Then I saw that he was not adjusting. He had it out, held low against his thigh, half hidden by the bag, waiting for my eye to fall there.

It was not the clean picture girls are warned about. It was close, slightly ridiculous, and very specific. Darker than I had imagined from talk. Softer at first, then not. I understood what I was looking at a beat after I had already looked. My stomach dropped. My face went hot. I felt sick and alert at the same time.

I looked up at his face. He was already watching mine. That was worse than the rest of it. I turned toward the door and pulled the file higher. I did not shout. The bus was too loud and too packed and I was twenty and I wanted to get off more than I wanted a scene. I pushed toward the front at the next stop even though it was not mine.

I walked the last stretch to the hostel too fast. I told one roommate that a man had been disgusting on the bus. I did not say the word. I did not describe it. That night I kept seeing the angle of it against his thigh when I was trying to sleep, and I was angry that the image would not leave. There was a brief, stupid heat later, the kind your body offers before you have voted, and I hated that too. I did not dress it up as curiosity. I dressed it up as a thing I wished I had not been shown.