*It’s been an age since I have posted anything on the theme of ‘The First Time’ but then this arrived in one of my inboxes. I have slightly edited it for clarity. I haven’t abandoned the project, just trying to figure it out, recalibrate and re-think how to and who to. The truth is, too many women experience their ‘first time’ in a painful or demeaning, embarrassing or shame-filled manner. K.B certainly did.
He was 18 and the biggest football star in my high school, which means in the the entire county. He was headed to college at Wake Forest on a full athletic scholarship. That I do remember, because it was such a big deal for someone from our school. I was 15 and incredibly naïve and ignorant and stupid. My mom, by that time, had been fighting cancer for 6 years, but both my parents were still working and barely hanging on in a lot of ways, so the birds and the bees talk? Nothing even close to it ever happened. Plus, North Carolina. I wasn’t getting sex-ed in school, either.
I was incredibly young and incredibly stupid, and I was also so, so, so incredibly flattered by him being interested in me. I was thrilled, to be honest. He was good looking and popular. I was just this little sophomore, but on the Principal’s List, so he’d said he’d noticed me for that, which I realized later was a joke, or sarcasm, actually. He came to my house. My parents were both working and my little sister was still in school. His suggestion. It felt safer to me, to meet him there, so I agreed. I figured would make us both some iced tea, or maybe some Crystal Light lemonade.
High school had a half day for some reason. So there we were. He drove over, but parked his car a ways down the street, ‘just in case,’ he said. Just in case what? I know I said that, but he just smiled, and for a while I thought that him doing that was thoughtful, him looking out for me, or something. I didn’t know it was going to be about sex that day, although I did think some necking would happen and I was excited. I’d done some of that, kissing and rubbing around, but not much. At that point, it – kissing and rubbing around – was nice. It felt good.
I’ve known for a long time that what he did to me that day was rape, but what messed me up for years was that because I was so ignorant, I really thought sex, fucking, and relationships were almost designed or meant to be painful and coercive. At least for women, I mean. It might also have had something to do with all of the cancers my mom fought, starting with breast cancer, then uterine, ovarian, and cervical until it finally got into her lungs and spine. An almost 25 year battle.
Anyway, it was the 80s; it’s not like I could Google it. And who was I supposed to ask? My grandmother? I would have died. She would have died. We were Christians, too, so there weren’t sex manuals or even Playboy in my house, not that I would’ve known if there were. I was busy being a good daughter while my mom was sick but still working to keep her health insurance. Busy too being a good older sister, and a straight-A student who was actually a total idiot in a lot of ways. You know?
He tied me up and gagged me. He hurt me. He stuck kitchen implements – my mom’s kitchen implements – inside me. He raped me, yelling at me, biting me really hard on my neck, arms, buttocks, and breasts, calling me a stupid fucking bitch and fat ugly whore the whole time. And what’s worse? Sort of worse. Even though it really hurt, and I knew that – my gut told me this wasn’t how it was supposed to be – I still agreed to meet him again that weekend in the woods near my house.
I did it because he apologized the day after in school – cornering me in the hallway – for being ‘a little too rough’. He said he felt ‘so bad’ and he said he needed to talk to me, to explain. He was just under so much pressure, he said. We needed to talk. I was – ugh. I hate this. But, TBH, I was thrilled by him saying ‘we’. Like ‘we’ were a thing now. Like there was a ‘we’, which there wasn’t, ever except in my Sleeping Beauty brain. Or whatever. And then when I got there he came out from behind this big tree and punched me in the stomach and gagged me and tied me to the tree and did it all over again.
Even I knew it wasn’t supposed to be that painful; even I knew it was not supposed to cover me with bruises, make me bleed. He put sticks – parts of tree branches – inside my vagina. He went away and left me there and then came back and raped me again. I think I took the longest shower on record after that. Once I got free.
My mom didn’t even notice that I was wearing long sleeve turtlenecks and jeans in the heat. The school year was almost over, thank god, and then with a little effort I wouldn’t have to see him ever again. Thank god too there weren’t cell phones then. He’s the kind of nasty subhuman who would’ve wanted a record to share, with his teammates, who I could tell knew at least the minor details.
I think a long hallway you have to walk down in high school is the closest thing to hell on earth. I hate them all, those boys. I always had big breasts, since like 6th grade, and they thought it was soooo funny to pop my bra. Fuckers. If I weren’t against violence (I’m not religious anymore, just anti-bad shit), I would very happily hit every single one of those boys with a baseball bat for every time they did that, or pointed out, slapped, pinched, or called my breasts jugs or whatever.
After it went down, I skipped my dance classes and gym for like two week plus, which I never did. My sister noticed something was wrong, I think (I haven’t ever talked about it with her), but she was even more clueless at that point than I was, about sex, about consent (we all were then, you know?), about how violent and ugly these ‘nice guys’ can be. She was in awe that he was interested in her big sister. We were a football town, a football family although I think my parents both mostly faked it because it was what you did if you wanted to fit in. I faked it, too. Or, maybe it’s just that I bought it hook, line, and sinker. Ra-rah! Siss boom baa.