It is highly inappropriate to watch porn with guys, but I am a bit audacious, to say the least. Watching “Real Sex” on HBO with some guy friends, I learned that the biggest difference between male and female strip clubs is that absolutely no clubs allow men to touch female strippers, but at male strip clubs, women patrons go crazier than kids at a petting zoo. The guys found this unfair, but to me, it made sense. There is an obvious power imbalance. Quite simply, a man can rape a woman. Physically, we are often at their mercy.
On my last night at Georgetown before going abroad, watching that same soft-core HBO porn, Mike was also hanging out with us. He read there often, doing homework or playing X-box, so I had only said a word or two to him, but I had always found him good looking. That night, he was taking a study break, and we talked the entire time. As I left, I thought to myself how great it would have been if I had only talked to him earlier and not waited till the night before I jetted off to Sydney.
When my girlfriend and I left Burleith for campus I offered him a ride since it was cold and I just wanted to keep talking to him. Gladly accepting, he asked for my number and if I wanted to hang out later, when he had worked on his paper a little. I had no problem with this; I assumed we would head to some parties.
When he called, I told him to meet me at the party nearby. I assumed he didn’t want to walk to the party alone, because he kept insisting I meet him in front of his dorm. I agreed and rushed over, putting on lip gloss and fluffing my hair as I went. He led me in by the arm. This was not in the plans, but when his hand brushed my elbow, I shivered. A little tour of the room never hurt anyone.
The lights were out and his room smelled like a cheap scented CVS candle. He pushed me against the door and kissed me. I really didn’t know what to think. Wasn’t that what I had wanted? He pulled away.
“Stay here. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” he said as he tried to slip out of the room.
I grabbed the sleeve of his shirt. What? Where was he going? If he was getting a book from the library, surely it could wait.
“Don’t worry, baby,” he said, kind of patronizingly. “I’m just gonna get some,” he paused, “ya know, protection.”
My nose scrunched up and my stomach lurched. I have had a one-night stand before, and I don’t regret a moment of it. But this did not seem right. “I’m going to go,” I said. “I think I gave you the wrong impression.”
He seemed to become panicky. “Come on, I’ll give you the night of your life, baby.”
Mike was no longer the quiet guy reading philosophy books in the corner while his friends played video games. He was now a football player. The athleticism I had once admired in him, his broad shoulders and huge, strong hands that seemed to warp his small English books, now only made me feel tiny.
My heart started to race. All he did was tell me to stay, tell me that he would show me the best last night of my life..But his hands on my wrists no longer made me shiver; they made me panic, because when I tried to pull away, I realized I couldn’t.
I looked up at him and he still seemed, in his odd way, to be trying to woo me. If this romance did anything, it only calmed me down enough not to faint on the spot and for me to think, “What can I do?” At that moment, I seriously wondered if he might rape me. As I tried to pull away, I kept saying over and over, “I want to go. I need to go. Please, I just want to go home.”
“Come on,” he pleaded. His voice was becoming less sing-songy and more annoyed and loud. “Don’t you want a good last night?”
His hands had slipped up my arms and held my biceps firmly, so firmly, in fact, that the next morning I woke up with fingerprint bruises spotting my arms. But the sad thing is that even with these “battle scars” and a best friend who told me to call DPS immediately, I’m still ambivalent over whether he did anything wrong.
Did I send him the wrong message? I had gone to his room. What girl goes to a football player’s room just to make out? Did I forget I was no longer in the sixth grade? I felt like a tease for not wanting to be with him. As I walked back to my friend in Village A, I angrily stuffed my hands into my pockets, not because they were cold but because they were shaking. I was irritated with myself: for being scared, for going to his room in the first place, for misjudging him, for causing all of that to happen and, most of all, because, as I had left the room, the last thing I had done as I ran down the hall was turn my head over my shoulder and whine, “I’m so sorry. I’m really sorry.” Because somehow, I know that it was not my fault, but I still can’t help but feel guilty about it anyway.
“Mike’s” name has been changed.
