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19 Feb

Asking for it

The following personal story can be seen as a supplement to my series on rape and consent, although I didn’t set out meaning to write it. I started relating the experience as a brief example in an upcoming entry and it got longer and longer until I realized it was its own piece. To be clear, I’ve never called this incident rape; I’ve never known what to call it. It was a bad experience, though, so if reading it will upset you, read about tentacle dildos here instead!

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Reginald Sleeth and I were having a fight again. We fought a lot: snarling, ugly fights. He’d threaten to kill himself, or to hurt me. I’d bawl until the salt from my tears formed little icicles on my lashes. Sometimes the battles started when I’d raised my eyes too high from the ground in public and looked another man in the face, which always convinced Reginald that I was hell-bent on fucking that visibly-faced man. Sometimes they started when I found out he’d been making promises to other girls behind my back again. Sometimes I didn’t even know what the problem was and the fight just seemed to start without me.

We sat on his futon. I was sobbing, and he was only getting angrier. I just wanted things to be okay; I apologized again and again, not really knowing or feeling why. I said the words “I’m sorry” so many times they stopped sounding like words and became a strange background noise interrupted by the gasps and hiccoughs spewing from my wailing, puffy face. The part of me that I considered my personality had been broken for a while, and whatever was left of me seemed to cry a lot.

His face got crueler and he looked more disgusted with every sorry I said. But I couldn’t stop. It was mechanical now; it was the whirring gears that kept me breathing. Finally, I said the “I’m sorry” that tipped him into a rage. His movement was so abrupt and violent that I assumed he was going to hit me, and I flinched. But he turned away–toward the door–not toward me, so then I thought he was going to leave me all alone in his apartment with no car, no phone, no self. That scared me too. I reached out to stop him from exiting, but I realized I was already being pulled, dragged to the floor by my shirt. He ripped it trying to take it off. He tore my favorite bra too but it clung, wounded, to my body. His grip was too tight on me. The air conditioning was suddenly too cold on my newly bared skin. I shook my head, tried to back up, struggled to regain the safety of the furniture, to get away. I was sure he was going to hurt me. Badly. Maybe he would kill me. He was stronger.

Reginald was on top of me, holding me down with his knees while he undid his belt and opened his pants. He was hard and I was terrified. His anger and his force and my misery transformed even the erection I’d always been happy to see into something frightening. He grabbed my hair and moved me around to my knees, facing him. I cowered as he loomed in front of me, and I couldn’t look at him. I pulled away but he had my hair and I was too afraid of him to really fight. I didn’t say any real, human words because I wouldn’t stop screaming, and then he slammed my head down and rammed his cock into my mouth, and it felt like my face was on fire. I choked on my tears as much as his thrusts. My mewling panic was muffled now, less shrill and more like a ragged, guttural hum. I wonder if the vibrations made it better for him.

It didn’t take him long. When I felt him release into my raw throat it was bitter and nauseating. I wanted a drink of water. I wanted to be sick. But then his fingers jammed into me between my legs, raking against the dry flesh there and now a new pain tore through me. I was afraid to tell him no and I’d run out of screams, but I shook my head again and whispered “please”, mute tears running down my cheeks. And he did stop after a minute, and I curled myself into a ball thankful he hadn’t killed me, all the while just wanting to die.

Why why why why why? It kept buzzing in my brain. It was punishment. I’d finally done something that bad, and I didn’t even know what it was. The amount he must hate me is unfathomable I told myself, like hovering at the edge of a bottomless pit.

Reginald sat on the floor with his back to the wall, looking away from me. His presence nearby was ugly, but no part of me was willing to move. I was still and he was still as I tried to ride the roaring whys in my head. It wasn’t until I heard him crying that I looked and saw that he’d covered his face with his hands. I don’t think there were any tears.

“I’m scared now,” he told me, in a shrill voice that threatened hysteria. “I’m scared because I thought you wanted that and now I’m afraid you didn’t like it.”

Of course I hadn’t liked it! What the fuck? I probably looked at him like he was speaking Icelandic, like he was a Martian teapot or a huge aphid-shaped gumball. Why would anyone want that?

“Remember?” he sputtered. “Remember how you told me you wanted that? I didn’t think I could, but I wanted to try. For you!”

Oh shit. It fell on me, a cold, dead weight. Months ago I had told him that I’d fantasized about “forced” blowjobs. I had wanted it to be like a game, defined sex play done in fun. Not like this. Never like this. How could a misunderstanding be so profound? But it had happened. He’d done it for me. He’d taken my throat while I cried, while I was terrified. And it was my fault because I had literally asked for it.

I unraveled myself from my fetal position on the floor and gestured toward him affectionately. I could not bring myself to touch him yet. I was fighting back nausea and shudders, and tears leaked silently from my eyes. I was so thirsty I couldn’t afford the tears, but they wouldn’t stop. “I’m sorry,” I told Reginald. My voice sounded tired and raspy, but I tried to make it soothing. I knew I had to say this or worse things would happen. “I’m sorry I made you do that, baby. I know it was so hard on you. It’s okay. You never have to do anything like that again.” I hoped like hell he never would. I stared vaguely at his cheap, stained carpet because I couldn’t look over at him and I couldn’t look down at me. I hated us both too much just then, as I kept purring my lies and his breathing quieted. “You were so good, baby. You were only doing what I wanted you to do, and it was very wrong of me to ask. But I’ll never, ever force you to do those things again.”

  1. Mab
    February 19th, 2010 at 09:37 | #1

    To me, that was rape and he knew it and that’s why he said what he did, to cover his arse after the fact. http://mabdreams.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/a-hard-scene-for-me was my more borderline experience, at least I think so – I wrote this at the time and it’s hard to look at going back. And I don’t think I’ve written about my other experience, only talked to my counsellor about it. Well done for sharing – it helps me and I assume others, to understand that other people have had these feelings.

  2. February 19th, 2010 at 10:19 | #2

    It may not mean anything, but I’m sorry this happened to you (and that things like it happen at all, to anyone, ever). It was brave of you to share it.

  3. February 19th, 2010 at 13:24 | #3

    Looking from the outside I’d call it rape too, but I find the people who seem to be honestly confused about how marital rape could exist to be unfathomable and a little scary, so.

  4. February 19th, 2010 at 13:45 | #4

    I agree with LabRat. It really looks like he deliberately used something you’d said as an excuse to hurt. I can’t buy that a person could be that incapable of distinguishing the difference between fantasy and reality. You had a fantasy and shared that. You understood that there was a proper time, place, and manner for living out that fantasy. He picked the wrong place, wrong time, and the wrong manner to deliberately twist something that could have been awesome into a weapon to hurt you.

  5. February 19th, 2010 at 15:36 | #5

    I’m impressed by the fine quality of his manipulation. He managed to do a vile thing to you and take a fantasy you shared in hopes of building intimacy and hurt you twice. This is weapons-grade stuff. Making you praise him for his vile acts was icing on the cake.

    Fantasy is fantasy, and reality is reality, and using what was intimate and private to hurt is really twisted.

  6. Mousie00
    February 22nd, 2010 at 09:43 | #6

    I’m really sorry to hear about that. Even if it was a mistake, which I don’t buy, he was a horrible person. Some of the people I’ve known who were the best manipulators of others were also the worst at admitting their own motivations; the best at hiding from themselves. He probably manipulated you into this and convinced himself he was just following your suggestion.

  7. February 22nd, 2010 at 23:45 | #7

    Ugh. I’m really sorry this happened to you. I’d call it rape, yeah. I don’t buy that anyone could be stupid enough to think that a sexual fantasy means “do this without warning during a fight”, and frankly, if he WAS that stupid I don’t care. It’s like saying “I didn’t realize babies needed to eat,” at some point stupidity isn’t even an excuse.

    Also, and it sounds like you’ve realized this (I hope), that “fight” was completely abusive. Sometimes it’s been hard for me to recognize these situations too, but turn it around–could you look at someone crying and apologizing over and over and just keep laying into them? I couldn’t do that to someone I HATED.

    I really hope something absolutely horrible happens to him.

    (Like this story getting out with his real name. I can completely understand you not wanting to associate your own real name with it, and that outing it would require you to do that and possibly lead to all sorts of headache, but it kind of infuriates me that HE gets some sort of right of confidentiality, because raping your girlfriend is a very private matter and having it public would just be so goshdarned AWKWARD for him.)

  8. quizzical pussy
    February 24th, 2010 at 03:48 | #8

    Thanks to everyone who commented. What happened with Reginald here does fall under my definition of rape, and I’d say so to anyone else who told me a similar story. It’s really hard to let yourself off the responsibility hook when it’s YOU, though, if that makes sense. But at the same time, I don’t want anyone who went through something similar to feel like I’m telling her she wasn’t raped by an evil asshole. I would only ever say such a thing to me, apparently!

    Mab, thank you for sharing the link. It was moving and emotionally difficult to read, and I’m glad you wrote it.

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