Rape (Part 1)

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Trigger warning: this post talks about my experience with sexual assault.

I hesitated, but only for a second, on how to title this post. People who I haven’t shared this blog directly with can basically figure out who I am. Vulgarity aside in the rest of this content, do I really want my name out there associated with this word?

Rape. is something that happened to me, that I should not have to be ashamed of. Rape. is what someone did to me that I refer to in polite conversation as “assault” or “something shitty”. Rape. is the only thing I could call this post to remind myself of its realness, and not something I imagined or exaggerated in the deep, dark pits of my own mind in the aftermath.

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S raped me on August 8, 2018 at approximately 11pm in their apartment near Lower Haight.

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We’d met just over a month prior, and at the time I appreciated that he was fine with just a coffee to check each other out. With a tenuous connection over a shared appreciation of heist movies, we agreed to meet again for brunch the following weekend. 

Thus began one of my more, ahem, physical arrangements. S was okay to talk with, but it was mostly bitching about work from my previous life of working in finance. He was dominant, so much so that we once did it on the kitchen counter while I was waiting on my lyft to the office. For the four or so times we met up, I dug it.

But the night I was raped was different. We’d decided to celebrate the end of my internship after I’d given a big presentation. On his end, he was going in for minor surgery and would be out of commission for awhile. In all likelihood, we’d never talk again; I wouldn’t be in the city regularly after returning to school. We went to sushi for dinner and took an uber back to his apartment where he was particularly touchy.

At first it was fun. We were back in his room and I showed off a bit of something special I wore, girlish and giddy. I knew this guy was into me, at least in bed, and I played it up a bunch. I had a cocktail at dinner, just enough to feel a little loose, and was still in control.

Until I wasn’t. I realized I must’ve eaten something weird or had a bad reaction to the drink. I felt so nauseated that I was literally going to throw up and asked to take a break. No problem, right? We’d done that plenty of times before on both ends.

At first I thought S just didn’t hear me.

“Hey, hey, S, can we slow down a second? I’m not feeling good.”

“Hey, hey S. Stop”

Did he think I was into it?

Hey S. S, STOP. STOP!

We made eye contact. His mouth was pressed into this thin line. He looked determined, like he was pushing towards something. And he flipped me on my back, and I looked back at him, eyes wide and scared.

And he didn’t stop.

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I made a feeble attempt to play it off, giving some dirty talk as if this is what I wanted. He put his palm over my mouth and said “I like it better when you don’t do that.” 

There was no post coital contact. I immediately got up and said I needed to take a shower, where I spent the next god-knows-how-long scrubbing his gross, poisonous sweat off my body. I crouched there on the tile floor, shocked as I let the hot, steamy water run over me.

My bones felt like they were scratching through the very fabric of my skin. 

I dried off, returned to the bedroom, and figured that I still had to go into work the next day. I’d planned to stay over anyways. S offered me some blow (wtf? no) and we had a brief conversation about the 90’s cartoon Cat-Dog before I laid down next to my rapist and went to bed.

Part 2.