***Trigger warning: Below you’ll find a description of an “almost” sexual assault.–aag***
I met him in a large, busy bookstore for browsing and conversation; this after a week or two of emailing and IMing. We got on well enough that we set a date for something more private. In the several days interim we discussed various minutiae of the upcoming encounter. “I use condoms every single time,” I told him. “Are you ok with this?”
He was.
“Shall I bring my own, or will you have some?” I asked this with the full intention of coming prepared no matter what he answered. He had his own, he said, and we moved on to other specifics of likes, dislikes and boundaries.
On the day we met I was bleeding, and uncomfortable with sharing that aspect of sex with a brand-new partner, we stayed on the couch and did, as the kids say, “everything but.” Panties on or no, it was enjoyable. I liked that he gave me the degree of roughness and domination we’d previously discussed. It worked well enough that we breathlessly scheduled another meeting the next week.
When the time arrived we drove in his car from the bookstore to his house. Not two minutes after pulling into the driveway we were naked and in his bed. He pounced even harder than the first time. I adore rough handling so of course I loved it. I loved the pushing and pulling and tumbling and ruthlessness until suddenly he was on top of me and his naked penis was between my labia.
I wiggled upwards. “Get a condom if you want to fuck me,” I said, imagining that he didn’t realize how close he was to entering me.
He followed me up the bed, the relative position of our genitals unchanged. “Let me put it in just once, just for a minute,” he said.
I wiggled upwards more, finally understanding how much taller, heavier and stronger he was. He matched my every move. “Get a condom,” I repeated.
His penis was still right there, nudging ever-more insistently against me. “I just want you to see what it feels like.”
I twisted my hips away. “You have to use a condom!” My voice was panicky.
He flopped away. It takes time to read, but you must realize that the time that passed between the moment he rolled on top of me and when we broke apart was next to nothing. Three seconds? Five?
“I don’t have any diseases,” he said in a voice dripping with disgust. “You’re not going to catch anything from me.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “You don’t know me. You shouldn’t assume that I’m not carrying some disease.”
“Then you can call me when you get tested and you find out you’re clean,” he spat, and we still had the ride back to my car, full of seething silence and tire screeches to endure.
I wrote about this incident before but lost the post when I moved from Blogger to WordPress. It’s a shame. The comments were just astounding in their helpfulness, suggesting in dozens of different ways that I brought this episode upon myself for reasons as far flung as “You dated before you were divorced?” to “What did you expect with someone you met on that site?” to “You must not have gotten it through his head that he had to use a condom.”
Here’s the thing: While it might (might!) be appropriate to educate our sisters and daughters about “sexual assault prevention tips” and “sending messages” before they set foot out the door, once an assault — or “almost” assault — has taken place, it’s time to shut up and listen. Advice about what the survivor might have done differently or should do the next time amounts to nothing more than victim blaming.
Every single time. Sincere or not. “Just trying to help” or not.
People who don’t want themselves or their loved ones to be assaulted feel great comfort in handing out those tips because they give the illusion of control. “You should never have gone to his house!” they say, or “You should have said ‘NO’ more firmly,” but what they really mean is that they hope that those strategies will work for them if they should be so unfortunate as to be assaulted.
They are wearing blinders. While I’d like to feel pity for their sightless state I cannot, because every time they try to rationalize assault, they hurt the ones who have lived through it.
