I was molested on the bus when was around eleven or twelve. A squat man in a red shirt, specs and black hair approached me — we were both standing — and started to pinch and rub at my armpits and neck. Determined, focused on his task. He saw me and it was like he’d remembered to check that off his to-do list — like throwing in that last bit of leftover tomato into the garbage bag before closing it up and leaving it on the doorstep and then heading out, on to the next task.

He looked me straight in the eye. I waved him off, of course, I made my displeasure known. But he needed to do this and he got it done, and after a few more swats from me he moved forward — like a fly buzzing from one victim to another. (The term sex pest suddenly gains more currency in my mind).

We were standing because the bus was full as it always is on the Sliema-Valletta route in summer. The group of tourist girls seated by me may or may not have witnessed the whole thing, and they may or may not have turned to each other to laugh at what happened.

They were young, but not too young — maybe in their early 20s. One of them nudged their friend to attention in the row ahead and smiled, maybe pointing at me, maybe not. Maybe I’m assuming they were laughing at me because what happened to me kicked me off my center, and I expected a reaction from people and they happened to be the first people my gaze turned to, and I couldn’t imagine them to be indifferent so I imagined them to be cruel.

I never told anyone because that would mean that this had actually happened, that I had allowed it to happen and that this made me vulnerable to it possibly happening again. It would also mean that I was, perhaps, predisposed to this happening by something in my very make-up as a young person.

Not that I deserved it, exactly, but that I had somehow magnetically attracted this man towards me and let this happen because it was always meant to happen. Plus, the abuse was by all accounts negligible in terms of duration and measurable physical damage. Three rubs of three strategic points on my upper body, and over as soon as it began.

I return to the way he just materialised, as if he was put on this earth to do this one thing. No leering, no charming of equivocating. I was his for the taking and he needed to tick me off his list.

The heat and the crush of tourists, that old yellow bus bumping and rocking on the pothole-rich roads and jangling like a pocket of loose change in a fistfight. It’s so easy to get lost in these textures, some of which I’m even nostalgic for as the buses became more streamlined and less and less personalised — it’s the company that fully owns and runs them now, and the drivers aren’t assigned a vehicle each that they can decorate with that mixture of the sacred and the profane — a Madonna juxtaposed against a ‘glamour model’; Jesus side by side with Maradona on the dashboard — but are largely made up of interchangeable new arrivals brought in from other countries and rendered anonymous by the economic model which squeezes them into social irrelevance.

But back then, that day was just like any other summer day and it meant that the buses were an extension of the village festa: managed by burly men keen to keep things running as they always have, with tourists brought along for the (literal) ride to gawp in either genuine affection or creeping disgust at these ostentatious attempts at local charm.

Yes, there was a lot to be distracted by, on that day and many others since.

But what didn’t leave me was the sense that I was somehow built for it. I didn’t suffer a repeat of the same — no other man touched me without consent since — but I did come close. The man who sat next to me on the bus and tried to make conversation. The wiry frame, keen eyes. A manic energy that didn’t dissipate, even after he sat by me. Tanned, tanned enough to be on the prowl all day, I think. “Whoo, it’s hot, eh!” I didn’t respond. I didn’t even look at him. “German, German?” he asks. He gets off a few stops later, and my panic-response unclenches just a little bit. Even if I know there’s tons of these men about and that some of them may be on that very bus.

It feels like it was the same guy who some time later — months or years, I’m not sure — stretched out his towel right next to mine when I went for a solo swim at Surfside. Back when tourist season wasn’t a year-long thing, and this was either early or late summer and it was off-peak hours. I struggled with debilitating anxiety and depression even at a young age, and I was proud to have carved out this little ritual for myself, and by myself. That I could use this to beat boredom and to get some exercise. My mother noted the positive effects it was having on me, and it was quite something to get that rare bit of unconditional validation from a woman who held herself to an impossible high standard, which of course trickled down to everyone else.

The man turned to me face me. I’m imagining him as tan, lanky and tall, donning black Speedos and flashing a smile of milky white teeth. He asked for the time, and I think I indulged him. I then packed up my things and left. I stopped going to the beach alone after that.

These men demanded access to the bodies that they wanted. They assumed that my body was a threshold they were entitled to breach, either by brute force or none-too-subtle pre-emptive coercion before going in for the kill. But perhaps I’m being overly cautious, even generous. Entitlement means that a threshold doesn’t exist, or that it doesn’t apply to them.

“Why me?”, feels like a pointless question of course, but if it is pointless then all of the above is too. In other words yes, talking about this won’t turn back time, it will allow for neither revenge nor justice. But these niggling feelings are why we write, and I am writing right now about this, for the first time ever.

I thought about “why me” a lot over the years. The surface-level and ego-rattling interpretation is that I probably looked vulnerable, a ‘soft touch’. I was a skinny blonde kid — indeed, mistaken for German — in a Siculo-Arab island state where hairy, olive-skinned burliness was the norm. A waif. A twig just aching to be snapped, with the same pleasure you would pop bubble wrap or step on a dry leaf.

Men will demand accessibility to the things which are weaker than them, but from which they can derive even a tiny measure of enjoyment. I learned to believe that I was well-placed to fulfil that function, and I carried it with me everywhere. In school at the hilariously male-prison-like Hamrun Liceo, and at work too, where I kept my head down and worked without complaint even as the newsroom sapped me of energy (and my weekends) for a crucial chunk of my adult professional life.

But of course, none of this was true. It was the sickening thought planted inside me by the abuse, which assails you and then leaves a darkly humming mantra; a song whose refrain you’re forced to recite as a prayer each day. Like a pimp, the prayer promises to protect you, and claims it is the only thing in the world that can fulfil that function, and that without it, you will be cast out into the wilderness, and you don’t want to do that, do you? Surely you can’t possibly think that you’ll make it out there on your own.

Of course I cannot articulate the words of the prayer. That’s how it wields its power over me. It’s wordless, but it demands the incantation. I have to somehow say it, but I cannot use words, because words are my pathway to agency. Articulating it would enable me to pierce it and render it as ridiculous.

But I’m learning to let go of perfection. I accept that I will not be able to put down the exact words of the prayer. There’s no reason why it would be spoken in English, or any other human language, for that matter.

So I’ll try.

The prayer would go something like this: “This happened to you because you are weak and vulnerable and it is your destiny to be susceptible to these kinds of actions. There are people in this world who do, and others to whom things are done to, and you are in the latter category and the sooner you accept that, the easier things will be. You will apply this to all spheres of life, and in keeping your head down you will notice that you are safe and that people will like you. Some will use you and a lot of them will take you for granted. But that is just the price you’ll have to pay, and it seems to be a fair trade-off to me. Now, thank me for this insight, and for giving you and organising principle that you can cultivate and cherish in this otherwise chaotic life.”

It feels right on my fingertips, this approximation. I can puncture its silly assumptions and sillier logic because I can see it laid out in front of me just so. No longer looming, now stiff and splayed, a patient etherized upon a table. Who could’ve thought literary criticism could banish demons?