Victim

I was reading Amanda Hess' wonderful blog at TBD the other day, and she's been doing this feature where LGBT victims of hate crimes in the D.C. area tell the story of their assaults. And reading this one, well, I guess how I felt is best described by the word "triggered"--for whatever reason, all I could think about for the rest of the day was The Day I Got Jumped. I was trying to run errands in Manhattan, shopping for books for my one year old niece, and I kept expecting someone to just walk up to me and punch me. By the time I got home, I was freaking out a little.

I started wondering if things would have been different if I'd tried harder to get the girl who jumped me arrested. I started thinking about the first time something like this happened to me, thinking about my personal history of victimhood. Breaking down why I always feel so helpless when something like this happens.

It was sometime in the first few weeks of my sophomore year of high school--I would've been 14. My (horrible, abusive) then-boyfriend and I would go to the park after school and make out. That day, we were approached by four guys from the neighborhood, one who lived on my street hung back. They demanded my boyfriend's watch, a tacky knockoff his dad had bought him in New York. He refused. They asked if I had any money, and when I said no (because I didn't) they turned their attention back to him. He kept refusing to give them his watch--they took his glasses, then punched him in the jaw and took the watch off his wrist.

I didn't want to tell anyone, not even my parents. Technically, I was only a witness, as I hadn't been touched and they hadn't taken anything from me, but I was terrified and shaken up. We went back to the school, where it turned out something like six kids had been mugged by the same group. The police were called, we went and gave statements, they arrested the muggers.

I didn't go to school the next day, I was too shaken up. When I did go back, a girl who was friends with the muggers threatened me. People made fun of all of us for talking to the police, for making such a big deal out of basically having our lunch money stolen on the playground. When one of the muggers plead not guilty and his case went to trial, we all had to testify and the defense attorney tried to make me look stupid, tried to make me out to be a ditzy girl who couldn't keep her story straight. There was a story in the local paper where the reporter talked to the mugger's family, who called us racists and whiners, said it was ridiculous to make such a big deal out of nothing. They didn't talk to any of the victims (at least one of whom was the same race as the muggers).

Years later, when I got groped on the bus, I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to stand up and yell, punch the guy, make a scene--but I looked around the bus, and all I could think was "no one will think this is a big deal. They'll think I'm freaking out for no reason. They'll think I'm a racist." So I didn't tell anyone (except, later that night, Jack), especially my mother, who I knew would want to call the police.

When I got jumped six months after that, and my mother did call the police, all I could think was "Oh, no, not again." I was actually relieved when the officer couldn't find the girls or any witnesses, glad that I never had to deal with any of it again.

And while it seems like I can't shut up about my victimhood here online, I almost never talk about these things in real life, except maybe sometimes to Jack. I'm scared that if I mention them I'll be brushed off, because I'm making a big deal out of nothing. I'm whining. In a world where something like 1 in 4 women has been raped, who cares that some guy grabbed my leg and ass, tried to touch my genitals? It's not a big deal, right?

A friend of mine asked for help online figuring out how to deal with street harassment yesterday. She said it wasn't something she'd ever really encountered before and she didn't know what to do, and she was worried that she was making a big deal out of nothing. I keep wanting to say that it is a big deal, it's not nothing, and if we don't make a big deal out of things like this, they continue. But that makes me feel like a hypocrite.

A Whole Bunch of Stuff

I know, worst post title ever.

I haven't blogged in a while. A lot has been going on, I've been cranky, Jack has been around the house more which is less conducive to writing, and since he's been on a less regular schedule we've both been partying more. Basically, I am full of excuses.

While I was busy not blogging, a new Carnival of Kinky Feminists came out! And they included one of my posts again! And lots of other peoples' posts that are far more interesting than mine, so you should go and read them!

While I was reading the various posts in this second Carnival post, I came across one entitled "What We're Expected to Be" over at Beyond the Hills and found it really fascinating. Roles are so complicated, and they get more complicated (for me at least) all the time.

You see, Jack has a bit of a masochistic side--sometimes he likes some pain and attention. And I have no problem providing pain, but I tend to freak the fuck out if I perceive a power shift. Basically, if a scene is going on, I am submissive. I do not want to be in control, I don't want to have the power. Order me to hurt you, and I'm game, but don't put me in control, that makes me really uncomfortable. Once, while discussing this, Jack said "The role of submissive, of being owned by me, so comforting that you don't want anything to threaten that." And it's true.

A story: So Jack and I have this friend, let's call her Eve. Eve and I once went dildo shopping together, and later I fucked her with a strap-on. While said fucking was going on, Eve told me to spank her. "What?" I said, thinking I'd misheard her. "SPANK ME!" she repeated, slightly more emphatically. So I did, while fucking her from behind, grinning from ear-to-ear the entire time while Jack watched. It was fun!

Now, it's possible to see all of this as me switching. I fucked a girl, I spanked her, clearly the roles here are obvious. But in my mind, I spanked a girl because she told me to, and that makes all the difference. I like taking orders, I like doing what I'm told. I will totally hold someone down, or hit them or bite them, but I'm not topping them, I'm helping or following orders. I like helping, but I have no interest in topping.
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Jack and I have been working on reworking the nonmonagamous aspect of our relationship. The break down of our rules has been, for the past year and a half or so, that I get to have sex with women, either in threesomes or by myself. And Jack gets to beat people up. Which...um...kind of wasn't that fair to Jack, despite the impressive mental contortions I kept going through to explain why this arrangement was totally fair and fine and anyway it works for us so it's really not your business and why are you questioning me and grrrrr.

You may have detected the confrontational tone there. Obviously I was having some trouble with things. But we talked the other day, and re-drew some boundaries (Oral sex for everyone! YAY!) and established a compromise in which, well, we both get to have sex with other women, for certain definitions of sex, but we'll also be doing more D/s stuff together.

We used to do a lot more D/s and service-y type stuff before we moved in together. Have I mentioned that here before? It was fun and hot and made me feel close and connected to Jack even when we only got to see each other on week-ends. I had lists of things to do! I kept a journal! And a lot of my fantasies have been D/s oriented, even before I knew I was kinky. But when we moved in together and actually shared a living space, lists of household tasks that I'd thought were super hot before abruptly became anything but sexy.

It also didn't help that I, not knowing about FetLife had fallen into an unfortunate Maledom/femsub community online where 24/7 was kind of viewed as the only real, authentic way to do D/s. It was kind of like how things were with my college boyfriend, when I was convinced we needed to get engaged because that's what people did and that's the next step and so why haven't you proposed to me yet? I (in my naive, deluded state) thought 24/7 total power exchange was the direction in which our relationship must inevitably go!

Now I realize I don't have to get married if I don't want to, and that D/s and service can be a part of our relationship without my being confined to a cage or not allowed on the furniture. Not that there's anything wrong with relationships where someone is confined to a cage or has to sit on the floor, it's just not for me. Like how marriage and 2.5 kids and a house in the suburbs aren't for everyone.

Actually, that's why actually being on FetLife and being part of a live-and-in-person kink scene and having kinky friends is so great--because you get to know people who have all different type of relationships that work in all kinds of ways and it's easier to avoid falling into the trap of reading one group on the whole internet and thinking everybody does it this way, so I have to do it this way, too.
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More stuff about body image: I have gained back some weight. I realize this is not supposed to bother me, and I actually thought it didn't. I'm working on eating better, not out of a desire to lose weight but more because I've realized I'm a grown up and I need to stop eating like a teenager whose parents aren't home. Also, I got tired of my coworkers making fun of my Hot Pocket addiction.

Like I said, I thought it didn't bother me. Sure, I've gained ten pounds, but don't my tits look great? I was feeling pretty awesome...

...until I found myself in bed with a friend who is totally conventionally attractive (which is to say, attractive in a way agreed upon by most of society, not necessarily conventional-looking), and she kept telling me I was pretty. Every time she said it, I felt awful and embarrassed and like I might cry. I wanted to shout "Stop saying that!"

So yeah...so much for being totally over my body image issues. I need to work on this.

Becoming Sally Bowles: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl and Me

When I was in high school, I saw the 1972 film version of Cabaret for the first time.

Like probably every other teenage musical theatre geek and outcast, I was immediately seized by an overwhelming desire to be just like Sally Bowles. Only maybe without the cocaine and the unplanned pregnancy.

Sally is flashy and dramatic and decadent, and flashy dramatic decadence was incredibly attractive to me (my other film obsession at the time was the Rocky Horror Picture Show) and I wanted to be just like her, to be flashy and dramatic and decadent and maybe just a little bit doomed. But how, exactly, does one go about being just like Sally Bowles? Especially if one wishes to avoid the cocaine addiction and unplanned pregnancy. It's difficult, since, well, Sally the character actually admits to the fact that she herself is attempting to deliberately cultivate a projected image of mystery and glamour.

Also, we, the audience, never get to find out what's going on inside Sally's head. She's kind of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, in that she is quirky and strange and sexy and lifts Brian/Christopher/Cliff/whatever-the-hell-his-name-is out of his dudely doldrums. Of course, Christopher/Brian/Cliff is asexual or gay or possibly bi, and so is not entirely won over by Sally's Manic Pixie charms, but still...she's empty. She's all style and no substance, all frosting and no cake. What the Hell is going on in Sally Bowles' head? We don't get to find out, because Sally is only dealt with through observation, from a distance. She's not a thinking, feeling person, she's a decoration, a glittery butterfly. The only time we maybe get to actually hear Sally's own voice is in the song "Maybe This Time," and then I would argue that it can only be interpreted as her voice in the 1997 stage musical, in which she sings the song outside the Greek-Chorus-otherworld of the Kit Kat Club stage. In the film, it's more of a projection of what she should be thinking, a comment on female loneliness and expectations of couple-hood.

Sally Bowles has been one of my only ongoing female role models. All the other film characters and celebrities I've wanted to be just like have been male, from David Bowie to Frank N. Furter to Sir Percy Blakeney to Adam Ant. And I think this is because they have that same flash and drama and glamour that I want combined with an actual voice. That's the thing about Manic Pixie Dream Girls, about female characters in movies observed through the male gaze, is that they don't have voices, or thoughts. They're a sparkly, completely empty construct that men get to put they're own ideas and feelings into. Christopher/Cliff/Brian may be a camera, but his observations of Sally Bowles come uncomfortably close to making her an object.

This makes it hard to figure out who you are as a girl. I remember years of writing stories in high school in which someone else observed the character who was supposed to be me, and rhapsodized for pages about how pretty and charming and fascinating she was. I also clamored for friends to use characters based on me in their stories, so that I could read someone else's observations of me and use them to figure out who the hell I was.

The closest I ever came to being Sally Bowles was my sophomore year of college. I was actually not especially tormented about this at the time, was just sort of bumbling along, being myself, doing dumb, quirky shit like leading around a female friend on a leash (I totally didn't know or acknowledge that I was kinky at the time). And then, second semester, I started hearing rumors that one of my male friends, we'll call him...Cliff, had a crush on me. No, wait, he was in love with me. There were livejournal posts that were unsubtly disguised, rumors and weird conversations and even weirder conversational pauses around me. And suddenly, without any regard for what I actually felt or thought or the fact that I was, in fact, already in a relationship, it seemed like all our mutual friends had decided that Cliff had found the perfect girl for him and that perfect girl was me, though when I heard about it all, the girl they were talking about didn't actually seem to share my thoughts or feelings or much else. They had decided I was Cliff's Magical Pixie Dream Girl, and that he and I should be together, with no actual thought or regard to the fact that I wasn't interested.

It felt creepy. I felt violated. I told my dad about the whole dramarama, which ended with Cliff awkwardly confessing his love for me via IM, and he said "Yeah, Lucy, that's kind of what 'objectification of women' really means." I felt like my friends had tried to shove the thoughts and feelings and personality they wanted me to have inside my head, inside my body, with no regard for the thoughts and feelings and personality I already had.

I don't want to be Sally Bowles anymore. I may paint my nails green, or sing "Maybe This Time" at karaoke, or ask Jack "Doesn't my body drive you wild with desire?" but it's a pose, a character I play at sometimes. Being Sally Bowles is being empty inside, a flashy sparkly package with nothing in it. It's not being a real person. Instead, I'm looking for female role models who are real, for female voices. They're hard to find sometimes, but they're out there. And I want to be a real person, like them.

The Submissive Vampire: A kinky reading of Interview With the Vampire

I kind of simultaneously love and hate Anne Rice.

When I was 10, the film version of Interview With the Vampire was released and there I was, already with an interest in vampires and (people tell me) a slight resemblance to Kirsten Dunst, just starting to figure out this whole "attracted to people" thing that was starting to happen in my body and head. I was attracted to the idea of vampires, the power and sophistication that vampires implied, the idea of being more, being better than humans, being special.

I was also, it's worth noting, completely terrified of sex. I had only just recently learned about that whole penis-in-the-vagina thing that was apparently sex, and I was horrified. Also, in my not-knowing, sex had mostly been something that older kids made fun of me for not knowing about, something that was a cause of humiliation and shame and jokes that I didn't understand and would later get in trouble for repeating to my parents. Any mention of vampirism as a stand-in for sex in the nonfiction books I would occasionally read made me intensely uncomfortable, but vampires were also my own personal sex stand-in. Being interested in vampires, being completely obsessed with vampires in general and Dracula and Anne Rice in particular made it okay to be interested in sex--because I wasn't interested in sex, I was interested in vampires.

When the film version of Interview was released on video and Pay Per View, I watched the preview guide all day while my parents were at work, hoping to see commercials. I wasn't allowed to see the movie. It was rated R, it was full of nudity and sex and my parents did not think I was old enough. I saw it on the sly at a friend's house and was actually kind of disappointed, so I secretly got out the book from the library and read it late at night and hid it under the bed.

I'd buy my own copy in high school. Now, from the wise old age of 25, I can say that I think Anne Rice is guilty of serious over-writing. Her prose comes in many shades of purple, and "savage" and "exquisite" are to her what words like "eldritch" and "gibbering" are to H.P. Lovecraft. But in the depths of my high school gothiness, Interview seemed hot and dark and lush and swoony. I felt Louis' pain, understood and wished for his weird, dark fantasies and hallucinations, wanted to be under Lestat's power. Until midway through my freshman year of college when I tried to re-read the book for the umpteenth time, said "Wow, this is overwritten and wanky," and put it right back down.

But it had a huge influence on me, both the book and the movie. Seriously, if you looked at a line-up of the guys I've dated (with the possible exception of Jack) they look like an Anne Rice casting call. And while I mention above that people tell me I look like Kirsten Dunst, and have since that movie came out, I've always claimed to not see the resemblance--not because I have anything against Kirsten Dunst, but because I really dislike the character of Claudia. I'm not like Claudia at all, so how can you say I look like her?

In criticisms of Interview, people tend to talk about the "vampire family" idea. It shows up in lots of modern vampire fiction, the idea that vampires change humans into vampires out of loneliness, to create a blended family, in The Lost Boys and lots of children's vampire fiction (Nancy Garden's books like My Sister, the Vampire) it's a major plot-point. But it never connected for me when people have said this about Interview With the Vampire, mostly because they usually follow this up by saying that Louis is the mother figure and we have a nice little conventional nuclear family here. Even though the Lestat-Louis-Claudia group is referred to as a family in the text, it resembles an actual family much less than it does a leather family (though still an unhappy one), a triangle in which dominant Lestat and Claudia butt heads and power-struggle over who gets to control submissive Louis.

Louis is not so much a mother as he is submissive, to both Lestat and Claudia, and I'm uncomfortable with the reading that says his following Lestat's orders and wishes, even when he doesn't want to, makes Louis feminine and mother-like. Ick. Also, it disregards how thoroughly Claudia has Louis wrapped around her dainty fingers (or, if you like the image better, under the heel of her little slippers). One of the main ideas of the book is that, while Claudia looks like a child, she quickly grows out of this role and has the mind of an adult woman--so why are critics so quick to stuff her into a child-box when talking about the "vampire family"? Louis is the least forceful, the least commanding of the three, and he transfers his loyalty, his submission and willingness to serve, from Lestat to Claudia as Claudia changes from a child-doll to a, well...woman trapped in a child-doll's body.

This continues and is heightened when Claudia and Louis meet Armand. Louis gets all swoony and strange in the pull of Armand's age and power--he's pretty much in subspace when they interact. Weirdly, Armand is also able to subdue Claudia, in a domlier-than-though display that seriously creeps her out, because she doesn't want to lose Louis or lose control over him. Louis is always kind of a passive figure--he doesn't really decide much for himself, or do much because he wants to. He does what Lestat wants, then what Claudia wants, then, Armand tries to take him away to do what he, Armand wants. Louis doesn't seem to want much, except to make whoever his current dom-figure is happy. Or, in the case of Lestat, who Louis doesn't really get along with once the honeymoon period of their relationship is over, not actively angry.

I can see how this eager-to-please Louis can be read as feminine, as a mother-figure, but it makes me uncomfortable to read it that way. I don't like Louis being cast as feminine because he is passive, especially when Claudia an actual female character is there being all strong (and sometimes crazy and obnoxious and demanding) for contrast. I would instead argue that submission does not equal femininity or femaleness, and that Louis and Claudia's relationship much more closely resembles a femdom/malesub relationship than that of parent and child, at least once Claudia "grows up."

And while the "vampire family" idea comes up again when Claudia brings Madeleine, her chosen mother-figure, into the equation, Claudia is still in charge and Madeleine's characterization of Claudia as "'a child who cannot die'" seems creepy and wrong because Claudia is not a child at this point, except in appearance. Claudia wants a family, wants an appearance of normality, but she also wants to control her "parents." Also, Louis has no attraction towards Madeleine--and why would he, when he's clearly attracted to dominant personalities? Madeleine is more like his co-sub than any sort of interest for him. He doesn't want to "curse" her with vampirism, but he also knows her view of Claudia as a child is incorrect and, I suspect, resents her competition for Claudia's attention.

This also explains why, despite being a girl, and blonde, and looking maybe a little like the actress who played Claudia in the movie, I've always related far more to Louis than Claudia. In my reading, the book and movie were not about a vampire family or Louis' loving Claudia like a daughter. They're about Louis, and his transitioning from an uncomfortable relationship with Lestat (who would have him be subservient, but also mocks him for his "weakness") to a fulfilling one with Claudia (in which most of his actions serve to please and serve the object of his affections) to losing Claudia because of being drawn to a similar relationship with Armand. For an oblivious submissive girl like me, Louis was a far more relatable character than the one who was superficially more like me.

Note: This is not to say that Claudia and Louis have an ideal relationship, or that the whole Claudia-as-a-woman-in-a-child's body thing isn't kind of creepy, or that all people who identify as submissive are doormats like Louis who need to or can be taken away from their respective dom(me)s by force. No one should base an actual relationship on anything Anne Rice has written ever, and that's doubly true of her porn, which I'll probably write about in another entry.

So I keep trying to find a way to build a big, important post about this framing it within lots of meaning about trying things I'm afraid of and being brave and adventurous and what I've gained from that...but that post kept coming out really pretentious. So I'm just going to skip to the part I want to brag about...

...Guys, I got set on fire this week-end.

Actually, the fire was burning just above my skin and only felt uncomfortably hot when left to burn for more than a second or two. But still, I was pretty much scared to death and I did it anyway and it turned out to be really awesome.

so yeah, thanks to the friend who set me on fire, I did something scary and I was okay and that's awesome.

The Last Time I Had Sex

I've written here before about my creepy abusive ex from high school, and I've written about being groped by a stranger on the bus. And since April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I've been reading lots of other people's assault stories. For some reason, what reading these stories reminded me of was not my own assault story, but...well...the last time I had sex with my creepy abusive ex-boyfriend.

It was consensual. It was, in fact, probably what I wanted almost more than anything else in the world at that time, because I was convinced that if we had sex again he would want me back. But I'm getting ahead of myself...let me start over.

He broke up with me. He broke up with me in April for unclear reasons (I was convinced it was my fault, because everything had always been my fault) after at least a month where he was increasingly distant and strange. Later, I would remember the IM conversations with my "best friend," a girl we knew only online, that he had finished by saying "I love you," and it would all add up, but for the time being I was devastated and confused and spent pretty much all my time either begging him to take me back or deciding when, exactly, I was going to kill myself.

The day it happened was the day of his graduation. After the ceremony, I went out to dinner with his family and back to his house. We were kissing, making out in his bed, and I think he asked me what I wanted. I told him I wanted to have sex. We left his room and went into a closed-off room that no one used for anything except storage. He kept asking, over and over, "Are you sure you want to do this?" It seemed like things were going so well, he had been so attentive, so affectionate, so nice to me, that I was thinking I had passed the "temporary break-up test" (because up until this point, everything had always been a test) and that we were going to get back together. I was very, very sure I wanted it.

I laid down on the floor and he got on top of me. It was brief, in my memory it seems like it only lasted a minute or two but I'm not completely sure. I remember being confused about where the condom had come from, as he'd said a while before that he was out of them and that's why we weren't having sex any more. And then, after he came, he got up and went back to his room. I followed, and sat on the bed. I don't know what I was expecting--that he would say we were officially getting back together? That he would come sit on the bed and cuddle with me? Instead, he picked up a cheap plastic bracelet off his dresser and tossed it to me. Then he went to sit down on the floor and play video games with his brother. He pretty much ignored me for the rest of the night, until I went home.

I didn't have penis-in-vagina sex again for six and a half years, and for that time this was an event of huge, terrifying significance in my life. It was "The Last Time I Had Sex."

It would hit me a few months later, the awful symbolism of the bracelet and the way he ignored me. I ended up tearfully telling my next boyfriend the story, concluding it by saying "he thought I was just a worthless whore."

The creepy ex didn't speak to me for about two months after graduation, after the last time we had sex, and over the course of those two months I woke up. It was that sudden. I got up one day, and I wasn't in love with him anymore. I wasn't devastated. I was, well, me again. And I slowly reconstructed my life, figured out who I was. He and I were in contact for a few months after, on and off, with me telling him to leave me alone and him convincing me we could be friends. Eventually I stopped replying to his e-mails.

I'm still scared of him sometimes. Part of me is scared he'll find this blog post and read it and recognize it (there are enough details here I feel like he would) and then he'd have found me again.

Part of me hopes that if he did, he'd be scandalized by what I'm up to now, since he would constantly say that he "hated sluts" and that open relationships were wrong and cheating.

But today, thinking about this, I'm really unnerved by how many times he asked if I really wanted to have sex with him that day. I'm convinced he knew it was a bad idea, he knew I'd look back and regret it, and he was really just obtaining clear consent over and over to cover his ass. I'm so creeped out by that thought.

Coming out of the kink closet...

Over the course of the past year-year and a half, I've gradually been telling people in my life that I'm kinky. Not everybody--my mom, grandparents, and fuckton of cousins don't need to know. But as I've started going to more and more play parties, and made more and more friends at said parties (hi new friends!) it's become increasingly more difficult to tell people I've known since middle school (hi old friends!) amusing anecdotes without going into detail. And the more people I tell, the more I feel like I'm hiding something really big from the people I haven't told.

Telling people can be hard. I think I actually make it harder than it has to be a lot of the time. But it always seems like kind of a big deal.

The first time I told someone I was interested in BDSM-y type stuff I hadn't actually realized it myself. It was the beginning of my junior year of college, I had been dumped over the summer by my boyfriend of two years, and I had started flirting with a cute freshman to...I dunno...take my mind off how shitty I felt. We were walking around campus one evening, talking about past relationships, and my emotionally abusive ex from high school came up. I believe what I said was "...I've realized since then that power games and stuff really need to stay in the bedroom where they belong."

On the surface, the conversation went smoothly along, but in my head I was freaking out thinking "WHERE THE HELL DID THAT COME FROM!? Did I really just say that?" I avidly read Savage Love every week, and usually Control Tower as well, so the idea of kink was not completely foreign to me...it was just that I very definitely thought of it as something other people did. Never mind that I fantasized all the time about being tied up...that was normal, not the sort of extreme stuff other people got up to.

After the ill-fated hookups with the cute freshman came to an end, I kept thinking about being tied up. I wore a corset in a show and loved how it felt, so I made my own (even tighter and sturdier than the costume-y one I'd worn before) and fantasized about being fucked while wearing it. I thought about being corseted and tied up. But still, I wasn't kinky. It wasn't until Jack broached the subject years later that I was even able to admit it to myself for real.

I'm still in touch with the cute freshman. We were in a show together, and we follow each other on Twitter. We're not close at all, though, and it's really weird to think that he's the first person I came out of the kink closet to. I doubt he even realized the significance that once little sentence has taken on in my life.

That one time when I got sexually assaulted.

I have alluded to this in other places, and I have sort of told my two best friends from high school and laughed it off ha ha ha. But the only person I have ever really told about this, with all the details and emotions and feelings is Jack.

And I know this blog has been a little low on sexy BDSM-y content lately (as if anyone I don't know personally is reading this anyway) and I promise to remedy that soon, but between the comment that Tails posted on my last entry and this article I happened upon today (and its companion piece), I decided I should really write about this.

It was October, and I was 23, a year out of college and working two jobs. I was living with my parents, and had only just passed my road test. I took the bus pretty much everywhere, including to and from my primary job at the mall every day. On this particular day, I had gotten out of work early and was headed home to get ready to go to my much more interesting second job.

I was sitting in my usual seat, three rows back on the "passenger" side, window seat. I was listening to my mp3 player and reading Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire. I forget which stop it was, but an older man (in his 60s or so) got on and sat down next to me, in the aisle seat. His hand, which I remember had unusually long and well-manicured nails, hovered just on the edge of my field of vision.

I concentrated on my book, barely even noticing as the hand brushed against my thigh. It actually took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on...and by then his hand was creeping higher and higher up my leg. In my head, I was panicking. I was convinced that if I caused a scene no one would believe me. I pushed my book down against my thighs, trying to block him from moving his hand higher and to my right, towards my inner thigh.

I think I was shaking. I was trapped in my seat, a few stops away from my usual stop. I had to do something, so I decided that I would act just like a normal passenger. "Excuse me," I said, "this is my stop." He didn't move, so I stood up as the bus stopped, figuring I'd just push past him. As I stood up, he grabbed my ass, his hand moving, trying to get between my legs. "I SAID THIS IS MY STOP!" I half-shouted, and shoved him into the aisle with my shoulder and ran off the bus. People looked up. He just laughed at me.

I know I was shaking once I got off the bus. I half-ran through the park, terrified. I could already imagine what people would say if I told them. My mom would call the police, my friends would say what they would have done--"I would've screamed," "I would've punched him"--and I couldn't stand the thought of those things.

I think I took a shower when I got home, thinking that I should want to get clean. I changed my clothes and forced down some food, got my Halloween costume together to change into for the party I was going to later. I waited for my ride to my second job, and she picked me up and we went to work. I acted like nothing had happened, though I knew that if anyone touched me at work that night I would lose it. I chugged a five-hour energy shot, so I would be "on" for work and the party. Nothing unusual happened.

Weirdly, coincidentally, the party that night was where Jack and I first got together. I told him what had happened, and then I promptly forgot all about it for about six months. I actually can barely remember it now, despite other events that same day being crystal clear. Jack and I hooked up, started dating, and started exploring our kinky proclivities and I didn't really give it a second thought.

About six months later, I was jumped walking home from the bus by a teenage girl I'd never seen before. She hit me until my nose started bleeding, while a group of girls watched, then she ran off. She didn't try to take anything--not my purse or my mp3 player or my cell phone. Some guys pulled up and offered me a ride, but I refused, terrified. I walked home, crying and covered in blood. My mother wouldn't let me wash my face until the police came. I remember everything about that with complete clarity, including what I was wearing and what song was playing when it happened.

After that, Jack and I had to dial some things back for a while. No hitting my face, of course, but it didn't occur to me until later why I would get so freaked out when he laughed while we were playing. It was because he, that other man, laughed at me when I shoved him and ran off the bus. Once I figured that out I started getting more and more uncomfortable on crowded buses. I had to sit in an aisle seat, in the first row where I'd be visible. Now I have a hard time even getting on a city bus.

I didn't really talk about it. I actually found myself one day posting a comment on a friend's blog that said "I've never been sexually assaulted..." and then I suddenly remembered that I had. I would like to forget this. My brain is apparently trying to forget this. But I don't really want to be quiet about it. I got groped on a bus by a horrible man and, while it wasn't the worst thing to ever happen to me, it was really awful. I don't think I can explain how or why just being touched can leave you feeling sick and violated and awful, but it can and it does.

It wasn't trivial or stupid or nothing. It wasn't just something to brush off or forget. It's something I'm going to talk about and call by name: sexual assault. He assaulted me. And saying that isn't causing drama or making a big deal out of nothing or blowing it out of proportion, it's simply saying what happened and telling the truth.

Sl...lighty Promiscuous

So in college, I had this friend. Let's call her Cara. And while we started out close, over the course of one semester in which we had almost every class together, I slowly came to hate her. This is largely because, at a time when I couldn't for the life of me get laid, she would not shut the fuck up about her sex life. And really, what's more irritating than hearing about someone's multi-orgasmic adventures when you haven't had sex in years?

Part of what made me so uncomfortable was that I don't think a lot of the guys she was having all these multiple orgasms with liked her very much. I know this is kind of my personal hang-up, but the thought of having sex with someone who I wouldn't want to just hang out with, or who wouldn't want to hang out with me, makes me cringe.

It all came to a head when we were both kind of interested in the same guy. I hate telling this part of the story, because I'm afraid it makes me sound like a crazy, jealous nutcase...but anyway, we both knew this guy. And I was not up for NSA sex, and Cara was. The guy hung out with me one night, and told me all about how dumb he thought Cara was and how annoying he found her. I found out a month later that after that night, he and Cara had sex.

I was horrified. I just felt so icky thinking about my friend sleeping with this dude who clearly didn't have any respect for her at all. It seemed to me like no guy I knew wanted to have sex with a girl he respected, and that really freaked me the fuck out. I flipped one night and told Cara all the shitty things he'd said about her. We didn't exactly have a falling out, but we were never even sort of close again. I was left feeling awful about the whole situation.

In an unfortunate effort to make myself feel better, I started referring to Cara as "my slutty friend Cara." Not to people we both knew, as I was out of school and away from anyone who actually knew her, but just when telling stories about things that happened. "Jen, Allie, and my slutty friend Cara were at the bar..." Stupid shit like that. Then I started dating Jack, my awesome, awesome boyfriend, who would not stand for that sort of nonsense. I amended "slutty" to "sl...lightly promiscuous," said just like that, with the l sound drawn out, just to be a smartass. "My sl...lighty promiscuous friend Cara." It annoys Jack slightly less than just calling her a slut would.

But now, as part of my self-improvement campaign to end the slut-shaming inside my own head, I feel like I should maybe knock it the fuck off. I have no reason to identify her this way anymore, except to validate my own issues with casual sex. I kept telling myself that the problem was with Cara, and with the guys she banged - it wasn't that she was more attractive than I was, just that she had lower standards.

It still makes me really uncomfortable to think about people I care about having sex with people who don't respect them. But it's kind of awful of me to lose respect for my friends because some asshole dude (or lady, though this only ever seems to happen to my female friends) doesn't respect them - the dude (or lady) is an asshole, so why would I care what they think about my friends?

And really, thinking about this today, part of me wishes I could go back in time and take Cara shopping for a vibrator. That would've been a lot more productive than causing a big, stupid blow up. Not that a vibrator is necessarily a perfect sex-substitute (as I knew very, very well at the time) but I feel like more college-age girls should know that they can take charge of their sexuality and have multiple orgasm adventures without hooking up with skeezy dudes.

And honestly, I'm sl...lighty promiscuous myself these days.