Once, I was an artist and I made material out of men.

I’m not really sure when it started. Let me think about it.

Maybe it was back in kindergarten, right at my big round table in the back-left corner of Ms. Malia’s classroom. It was Artsy Fartsy Friday. The table was covered in newspapers and my hands were covered in paint. Other kids were painting princesses or fairies or unicorns. I was painting my family. They were blue stick figures, missing hands to hold one another, and my real-life fingers globbed on too much paint so that their smiles just looked like big splotches. But Ms. Malia told me it was beautiful, and my little brain believed her, and I went home ready for it to be hung on the fridge.

The picture never made it to the fridge, though. My father walked right out of the picture—I did remember to paint him some feet—and I woke up dripping blue. I was slippery and smelled like chemicals, but it only lasted for a few days because Daddy came back. He said sorry and little me accepted it so my skin would grow back, and the paint would wash away. As years went on, though, I’d still hear my parents’ fighting while I laid in bed or brushed my teeth, and instead of saliva and toothpaste, I would accidentally spit paint into the sink.

But maybe it was several years after that. I needed a dress altered for my eighth-grade graduation. My mom took me to the tailor, but instead of being a cute old lady with gray curls and wrinkly fingers, he was a tall man with nose hairs that hung like loose threads off an old shirt. When my mom stepped out of the room for a minute to take a phone call, I discovered that the tailor had a touch slippery like silk. Instead of using measuring tape, he used his hands, lightly pressing on my hips and pin cushion butt. My nipples were thimbles, and I was afraid he would reach for them. He never did, but after I left, my hair turned into threads and that pins-and-needles feeling wouldn’t leave my hands and feet. It only went away gradually as I reasoned with myself that he never touched my private parts. There’s no need to reach that far beneath the hem in order to hem a dress, so he didn’t. I’ll admit, though, even all these years later, I still find a few silver threads in my hair sometimes.

Still, maybe it was even a few years after that, in my sophomore year of high school. Tommy Soote asked me to meet him in the art room after school. Throwing a ball of neon green playdough from hand to hand, he told me he had a great idea for our art project—Mr. Kelly had assigned us as partners. Tommy didn’t look like an artist, sporting a horrible bowlcut and a T-shirt with Spongebob on it, and I decided he definitely could not be one after he suggested we make a statue out of the playdough right on his palm. I rolled my eyes and walked out of the room because I noticed little green pieces caught under his nails.

Something in that rejection made Tommy show how truly fucking weird he was. When everyone walked into our art class the next day, we found a foot-tall playdough sculpture of me in the middle of the room. Except my big eyes were exaggerated so that they bugged out of my face. My flat chest was made concave. My face was covered in tiny, doughy pimples. And it was terrible because even with how ridiculous that statue looked, everyone recognized it to be me. It didn’t help that when I went home and looked into the mirror, crying, I found my mosquito bite tits were replaced with neon green playdough boobs. It only stopped when I ripped one of those boobs right off and stuffed the dough into Tommy’s mouth at school the next day.

Actually, now that I’ve said it, I guess that’s the answer: My artistry started when I made Tommy Soote eat that playdough. In that moment, I’d decided I had had enough and wanted my skin, hair, bones, nails, and fat to stay put. I was tired of trying to wash away paint and ink and glue before realizing they were my body parts. I was tired of having my facial expressions be replaced with stickers, my eyes replaced with buttons. From then on, I would use boys’ eyelashes as feathers, thumbs as crayons, and skin as paper, all to build monuments and craft murals. Art takes passion and I found it there.

After that, I went through a phase where I loved to work with clay people. I looked for soft, doughy boys, anyone who would let me slap them down on a wheel and turn them round and round against my fingers. I got my hands real wet with either their tears or my tears or maybe even with their drool—because, eventually, plenty of those boys did drool over me. Allen Black, a tall, malleable boy, I turned him hollow like a vase so he could hold the flowers that he bought me. When those flowers died, I decided I didn’t really like flowers and would rather receive affection in the form of food. So Chase Waldin—or was it Baldwin?—became a bowl in my hands, round and deep. He served up all the soup and mac & cheese and chicken pot pie that I could ask for.

Chase was problematic, though. He said he got hungry too and would like if I could share with him. When I said no, he got mad and told me I’d be doing myself a favor to share the food because I was getting fat. I didn’t like that at all. It made me consider picking him up and shattering him against the wall, but then I realized maybe I had just let his mouth be too big. So I closed it up until it was just a tiny hole, and he was a water jug. Water doesn’t make you fat!

After that, Chase was a lot quieter and a lot more scared. If he did speak, it was to assure me that I was beautiful, my body was perfect, my skin was glowing and hydrated. He insisted that maybe I didn’t even need his water. Even if I felt thirsty, he said there were probably better things for me to drink, and I shouldn’t waste my time lifting his thin jug lips to mine.

He turned out to be right, and as my interest in Chase dwindled, so did my sole focus on clay people. Instead of constantly keeping an eye out for clay, I started to notice other things people had to offer that I could turn into a project. There was one man I met during my college years who was so honest, so transparent, and yet still so fragile. He’d been through a lot to get to this point and was so afraid to shatter again. I started to see him—Augustus—as my beautiful glass statue. For a time, I let him be as he was because something in his delicateness was heartwarming to me. With him dainty and shining in the light that streamed through my bedroom window, I was content not to point out that his red locks and blue eyes and rosy cheeks would make perfect panes for a stained-glass mosaic.

But one day, he was sitting on the counter as I was cooking, and I accidentally knocked him off. He didn’t break into a million tiny pieces like I feared, but his shoulder did break off in a couple jagged shards. Suddenly, he became all sharp edges and yelled at me for being so stupid. I started feeling fragile, noticed my elbow turning clear and polished and hard. I didn’t like that. So I gathered him up, took him to the oven, and melted him down to a glob. Ignoring his angry shouts, I pulled out my blow pipe and let myself be excited to try glass blowing for the first time. It made me feel strong to put that heat on him and blow off some steam until it stretched him nice and thin. He was no longer my beautiful statue, but just another wine glass to be left on the shelf with the rest of them.

Augustus wasn’t the last glass man I saw, though I ventured beyond glass, as well. I met men of marble, taffeta, acrylic paint. I could pin down their exact potential, and the moment they tried to hurt or leave or change me, I let my work begin.

Until I met the one who put me out of business.