Before coming to college, I had never so much as tasted alcohol. I had never let any boy go farther with me than making out. I believed that my body was special, something I wanted to share only with someone who I trusted.
I was a first-semester freshman. You were a senior. We were at a party. I was sitting alone off to the side of the venue and I was nervous. I had never been to a party as large and grandiose as the one we were at. You came up to me and asked if you could get me a drink. Thinking nothing of it, I accepted your kind gesture. How nice, to have someone to sit with in an area where I felt so out of place.
The drinks you kept handing me tasted of plain red bull or cranberry juice. There couldn’t have been a lot of vodka in a drink that tasted so good., right? Wrong of course. Two drinks in, I was feeling tipsy. You politely grabbed me three more drinks, putting one after the other in my hand.
This is where you’ll begin to think “stupid girl. I was only getting you drinks. You seemed to like them. What happened next wasn’t my fault, you should have minded your liquor.” But I was alone. I was scared. I was extremely intoxicated at this point. My world started tumbling and my memory was fuzzy. You offered to take a walk with me to make me feel better, which I said yes to. Dumb dumb dumb. I should have stayed right where we were, in a heavily populated area where your disgusting hands couldn’t have touched me without wandering eyes.
The next thing I could remember after we went for a “walk” was your hands and mouth all over me. Touching and kissing (if you can even call your foul mouth slobbering all over me kissing) every piece of my body I had kept hidden until now. Yet there you were, poking and prodding every inch of my once precious body.
I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I told you “I need to go” “we shouldn’t be doing this.” Your compassionate response? “Let me put it in>”
“Let’s go behind that shed and let me put it in.” My world turned red. You had already taken away so much from me, yet you wanted more? I quickly said “no,” frightened out of my mind, thinking you were going to take the last bit of dignity I had left.
You said “yes” “everything is fine, it’s no big deal.” But it was. It was a huge deal. And nothing was fine. Nothing would be fine for a very long time.
That’s when I said “No” louder. I said it a few times in a row to be exact. I told you I needed to go find my friend as I extracted myself away from your disgusting body. And you pushed me off, realizing what the situation we were in looked like.
I ran as far away from you as I could, trying to hide my shame. I felt dirty. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I wanted to run all the way home to my childhood room. I wanted to shower, scrub off any piece of my skin that you touched. I wanted to put on pajamas that covered every inch of my body and then build a wall of blankets around myself so no one could break in. I wanted to watch Disney movies and pretend I wasn’t just violated in almost every way a woman could be.
My innocence was gone, taken by you, a boy who didn’t deserve it. I would never get that moment back. I was supposed to share myself with someone I loved, someone who I trusted and made me feel happy. Not you. Not someone I knew for 10 minutes. Not someone who probably doesn’t even remember my name.
And that’s the worst part. I see you around campus every now and then. Sometimes I run into you at parties and beg my friends to leave. And they remind me “he probably doesn’t even remember it happening. You’re freaking out over nothing.” But I remember everything. It wasn’t nothing.
My mind can’t comprehend it. I told a few people what happened after, and they always told me “that’s just how he is” ‘he’s creepy like that.” You’re like that? And people just accept you for it? You’re greedy and make girls feel uncomfortable to even be in the same room as you, but it’s okay because you’re just “like that?”
My biggest regret is not telling someone. Maybe I could have prevented it happening to other girls. Instead, I wallowed in silence and self-pity. Did you know how much you could have scared me when you did what you did? Me, a girl who shares everything with everyone. Shamed into silence by you.
I still shake as I write these words. Reliving the fuzzy, barley-there memories of that night is haunting. It has taken me over three years to be able to sit down and put my feelings of that night into words. And you might not even remember, but I do, and I will remember for the rest of my life.