Updated Narrative Writing Assignment 2

I would like to  provide a trigger warning, that this post gets graphic and contains details surrounding a sexual assault. A little explanation from my previous piece may also be helpful. I wrote about the chronic, undiagnosable vaginal pain I have had for seven years, this is the second part of that piece. 

 

Before I can sleep with a man, I have to explain all of the complicated issues about my vagina. It’s only fair that they know the mess they are getting into, Both literally and figuratively. A man I’m going to have sex with deserves to know that it’s a possibility for me to start crying in the middle of it because the pain is too much to handle. This conversation is always uncomfortable. My issues are very difficult to explain, just ask the dozens of doctors who have tried. One question I get often is “Can I catch it?” Which granted is a fair question. But watching the fear in their eyes as if I’m some gross enigma always cuts deep.

This conversation puts me in an incredibly vulnerable position. If you’re not in a relationship, and you’re trying to engage in a less intimate sexual encounter you normally don’t have to share something so deeply painful and personal. But that’s not my reality. It has also forced me to learn how to be extremely vocal about my sexual history, partners, likes, and dislikes, etc. before engaging in sexual activity with a partner. It makes me do all that adult shit before having adult relations. I was 20 years old when a man I had been sleeping with consensually used my medical issues against me to make me believe it was my fault that he sexually assaulted me.

I was dating a man named Michael that was 27 and was way more interested in me than I was in him. Looking back, this should have been the first red flag, but at the time it made me feel desirable. My messed up vagina makes me feel less feminine and I hadn’t felt desirable in a very long time (my inner feminist is screaming at me for that, but it’s the truth). I’d always been the one pursuing the person I was interested and this was a nice change.

On our first date he was very physical. He held my hand. He grabbed my waste. He kissed me deeply in the middle of the street. I’m not typically one for so much physical affection right away, and it made me uncomfortable. But again I ignored it because I so desperately needed to feel wanted.

Everything moved very quickly from there, we started sleeping together on our third date, but before anything happened I sat him down for the uncomfortable talk. I told him about my issues, the pain, my tendency for urinary tract infections, and the things that were a no go for me. Top on the list was anal sex. He told me he was fine with all of that and we began being intimate.

The second red flag I should have seen came a few weeks later. We weren’t exclusive and he saw that I had been talking to someone else on Tinder. He got irrationally angry with me. I tried to explain to him that he and I were not exclusive and it while he may not be entirely happy about it, he had not real reason to be angry with me. I was sure I was right, but somehow by the end of the conversation I wound up apologizing. He convinced me that I was being cruel and inconsiderate. I also wasn’t ready to be exclusive with him yet, but by they end of that night I was.

I decided to try to be positive about the whole thing. Maybe this would be a good thing. He liked me and it felt nice to be wanted. I would give it a shot. The morning I decided this I was heading to his apartment. I figured I would do something nice to Michael and pick him up breakfast to make up for the fight I had allegedly caused. He was grateful and it seemed like everything was fine. We were watching Breaking Bad, and the inevitable shift occurred that happens when two people who are together are laying in bed watching Netflix. We began to have sex.

It was fine at first, even borderline good. Or rather it was as good as it can be for someone who has constant vaginal pain. But then he decided he was going to have anal sex with me. He tried to enter me in a place where I had explicitly said he didn’t belong. I told him no. I told him to stop, but he kept trying to enter me there. I had push him twice to get him to stop trying to force himself inside of me. After he finally stopped trying to have anal sex with me, he pretended like everything was fine and tried to re-enter my vagina.

I was clearly upset. I  didn’t want to have any kind of sex with this man. I had never had to use physical force with anyone, let alone in a situation as intimate and vulnerable as sex. I was scared, confused, and upset and he just tried to continue. I needed him to stop but he didn’t. Finally I yelled that he needed to stop because I was going to get a urinary tract infection (which I did) from the transfer of bacteria. Not because he had just violated my trust and my body, but because I was going to get sick. It didn’t make sense, but in that moment nothing made sense. I could not even begin to grasp what had just happened.

He finally exited my body, but he didn’t get off of me. Instead he yelled at me. He told me how it was my fault. My vagina was fucked up and he shouldn’t be punished for that.I was being crazy and irrational. I gave him mixed signals. My body was too broken for him to really understand that my telling him to stop meant he should really stop.

I’m not one to sit quietly while someone is yelling at me and treating me unfairly. I always yell back and louder. But I said nothing. I just cried. He finally got off of me and told me how crazy I was. I put my clothes on and tried to talk things out with him. I actually tried to apologize for my body’s disfunction making him assault me. He ignored me as I left, as if he was disgusted with my mere presence.

I rode the bus home with a sinking feeling of shame that I couldn’t place. Maybe I was ashamed for overreacting. Maybe I was ashamed for my body being broken beyond repair. Maybe I was ashamed for having sex at all. All of these were racing through my mind, but none of them quite fit. I knew something was terribly wrong, but I couldn’t pin point exactly what it was. When I finally got home and crawled into bed, I started sobbing but still wasn’t sure why I was so upset. I couldn’t identify what had happened between me and Michael, but I knew it felt weird and unsettling.

A few hours later my friend Namit came to my room to borrow something from me. I think it was a stapler. He asked me how my day was and I had no intention of telling anyone what had happened, I hadn’t even figured it out yet. Let alone telling Namit, he and I were friends and coworkers, but we weren’t really close. But the second he asked about my day I simply exploded. 

“Um, something kind of weird happened. You know that guy Michael I’ve been seeing? Yeah well we were sleeping together and then he tried to do something I wasn’t okay with and I had to try and push him off of me, and then he yelled at me and wouldn’t let me get up. I don’t know, but I didn’t like it.” I rambled.

In hindsight, I think I told him because he and I as RAs both sat through the same training about sexual assault disclosures. He and I are no longer friends, but a part of me will always love him for how well he reacted. I was very lucky, he was everything I needed in that moment. He told me that what Michael did was not okay, I did nothing wrong, and that I had nothing to feel bad about because I was sexually assaulted. I started crying when he said those words. He gave a name to what had happened and things started to make more sense. He hugged me and told me that everything would be okay. I had been trained to deal with sexual assault in others. I knew exactly what to say, who to notify as a responsible employee of Baruch College, and what the protocol was. But they can’t prepare you for when it happens to you.

The next two weeks are a blur. Michael had taken a trip to Israel, so I knew I was safe and he was half a world away. I tried to move on, I told my closest friends what had happened and they supported me. I wasn’t okay, but I was dealing with it. Then Michael got back into the country and back into cellphone range.

He began calling me and texting me constantly. He texted me things like how he missed me, how he was sorry I misunderstood him and overreacted, how I was just scared of how much I liked him, and other things that given the situation was delusional and scary. I wanted to block his number, but I also wanted a record of everything he said, just incase something happened to me. I never answered his calls or responded to his texts.

One morning I got a call at 9 am from and unknown number. I figured it was probably one of my many doctors offices and answered it, It was Michael. Hearing his voice made my entire body freeze. He began rambling about all of the same things he would text me, but he said if I didn’t talk to him he was going to wait for me outside of the Residence Hall and make me talk to him. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. Once again my voice was locked deep within my throat under a thick layer of terror. The only thing I could choke out was for him to leave me alone and I hung up. I laid in my bed all day, I couldn’t bring myself to get up and go to class. He knew where I lived and where I went to school and I was scared he would show up to hurt me.

Later that night I turned to Namit and asked him what I should do, he knew the campus resources available to me just as well as I did, but he didn’t have the same fear clouding his judgement. He told me that I had to tell my boss Amanda. He had been encouraging me to report him to the police, but I didn’t want to. I knew that it wasn’t my fault logically, but I still felt guilty and ashamed. It also wasn’t a clear cut rape case, so I knew what the odds of being believed were. But he told me Amanda could ban him from the building so I could be safer.

I spoke with Amanda the following morning and told her what had happened. I stumbled my way through the story and asked if she could ban him from the building without getting the Title IX office involved. She agreed, but not without giving me a lecture. She told me that she hoped I learned something from this experience, she hoped that I would be more careful of who I had sex with in the future. I had already felt this irrational guilt and really didn’t need to have it told to me by my boss. Looking back, I realize how ridiculous this was. I should not have been blamed for his actions, but I was. And this wouldn’t be the last time.