First Rape

I did not really know this guy but I agreed to come into his house anyway, and he lived in Laguna so I had to ask him which provincial buses to take to get there. There were some girls in his house when I reached his gate, and they looked at me strange. I was not sure who they were or if they were even related to him.

He ushered me into his room which was brimming full of books. Stacks and stacks of them. There were some crude paintings too, which he made himself. And there was even a pale pink guitar. It looked like a movie setup. A room of an artist. He pushed me down and made me sit on the bed. I was hoping we'd just talk, but his moving and darting hands told me we wouldn't be doing much of that.

He pushed the door closed without locking it. We must be quick he said, because the other people in the house did not want him bringing men inside his room. His mother forbid him. He did not lock it, he said, because he did not want them to get suspicious. I should have bolted for the door right then. But what can I do? There was no easy way out of that tangle I got myself into.

He started pawing me. So I took hold of the guitar so as to form a barrier but he calmly set that aside. I picked a book instead, but he took it away from me as well. Then he unzipped my pants and took off my shirt and he made me do things I did not want to do. And he made me kiss him and it felt so awful because I did not want to and I really just wanted to get out of his house and run but he had this manic gleam in his eye and although his madness was what attracted me to him in the first place, what he was doing to me was really getting out of hand. So I let him have his way as he sat on me while my mind flew away and I waited until he was done and he was satisfied.

But then he started asking me to do more things for him, and it was all that I could stand and tears leaked out of my eyes but he went on and on and it felt so terrible because I could not push him away because I don't know how he'd deal with that so I just did what he wanted me to do and I was crying I swear I was.

And after was worse. After, he rummaged through his clothes basket and threw an old shirt at me to clean the mess he made on my body. I didn't think I would feel any lower, but the way he regarded me after, as if I was something used and done with, to be discarded, was worse than him forcing me to kiss him. And the way he pretended that nothing bad had happened to me, the way he opened the door and pretended that we were simply talking without even waiting for me to pull my pants up, made me feel violated in more than a sexual way.

I went outside to smoke and to get away from him but he followed and breathed down my neck, calling me all sorts of pet names and making believe that we would be an awesome couple. He was fussing over me, giving me all sorts of books, a handmade compilation of some of the pieces he wrote, and even drew me a portrait right then and there and through it all, I kept still. I held in my disgust. My overwhelming disappointment. Because I knew that there was an even more overwhelming sadness behind his desperation. I kept still. Because I did not want to hurt his feelings.

On my way back, he kept sending me text messages and I replied to none of them.

When I got home, I promptly went online and blocked him from my Facebook profile.

And for a while, I was numb. I needed to be numb.