Friends to lovers

Friends to Lovers.

Carefully, my friends and I chugged along The Hill (the main neighborhood where students live

in Boulder) to get to a house party on 18th st. The street lamps always caught the snow

perfectly in the winter, turning everything into this orange gradient into purple haze that

illuminated the streets beautifully. Eventually, but not without a few comical, cartoon-like slips on

the ice, my friends and I made it to the party. The house was slightly hidden away from the road.

A dirt path led us to the door that was guarded by a tall pine tree. It was a beautiful house, but at

the time it was merely adorned with the typical LED lights, flags of various sports teams hanging

from the walls, a panel of old 12pk beer boxes to fill empty wall space, a deer head, and some

old skis. The floor was always covered in a thin layer of watery-mud, dirt, and beer. Enough to

make your shoes stick gently with every step.

The music was always too loud to speak, which happily led to all of my friends and me

dancing… or just embarrassing ourselves trying to dance. Either way we had a good time and

either way it prevented us from realizing how gross and mucky our shoes had become by

stepping on the floors there.

The two girls I always went with and I enjoyed going to this house on 18th st as somehow, it

seemed as everyone we knew would end up there. We saw people from our classes, people

from other friend groups, hometown friends, friend’s from the dorms, you name it! Often, I saw a

group of boys there who I had met my freshman year of college. One boy in particular from that

friend group of mine had always been kind to me so I ended up asking him to walk me home

that night. Of course, he gladly agreed to walk me home, even expressing how it can be

dangerous for girls to walk home alone at night. This boy was also my friend’s ex boyfriend so I

knew he’d never do anything to hurt me or ever make any advances.

I was wrong.

The rest of the party I spent drinking a lot of Busch Light, Burnett’s vodka, and Keystone. The

holy trinity of alcohol at Boulder, emphasis on Keystone (it was cheapest of course). I had

consumed enough alcohol to make a girl of my size (5’4”, 113lbs) extremely drunk. Drunk to the

point where I don’t remember leaving the party. Drunk to the point where I barely could

recognize the fact we were at the front door of my rapist’s home and not mine. Drunk to the

point where I believed him when he said “I’m gonna get you home safe, you’ll be okay”. I can

remember his voice perfectly to this day saying those words to me. “I’m gonna get you home

safe” particularly sticks in my mind as it has been the biggest lie I’ve ever been told.

“You’ll be okay” rings in my ears frequently too, along with flashes of memory and pauses in my

alcohol (and fear) driven blackout I experienced that night.

To give you a glimpse of the little I remember, here is a brief list:

- Me in the living room while he got me another beer and water from the kitchen. I overheard

his roommate say “She’s here? Good job dude!”

- Me lying down in his bed, naked, realizing with every meaningless thrust, my head was hitting

the wall behind me. Hard. He didn’t care.

- Me sitting upright, unable to keep myself up so he pushed pillows around my body. I

remember him holding his dick in front of my face. Occasionally trying to force it into my mouth.

- Me suddenly in tears, bawling. Checking my phone to see the time “4:17am” and then it dying.

Now feeling more helpless.

- Me waking up covered in cum.

- Me waking up with the inside of my thighs bloody due to the force he used.

At some point I must have fallen asleep while he was inside me. I don’t remember much of the

rape as I was drunk and terrified. However, I remember that morning nearly perfectly. In the

early hours of the morning, I scrambled in the pitch black darkness of his bedroom to find a

phone charger. I had a headache due to a horrid mix of the alcohol from the night prior and the

fact that my head had been slammed into the wall so many times. It slowed my phone charger

search but I eventually located one. “4:34” my phone now read as it turned back on. I found

myself in tears, spitting on a shirt of his to wipe the dried cum off my breasts and stomach.

I used the flashlight of my phone to find my clothes –– of course the lowest setting as I didn’t

want to wake him in fear he’d try to rape me again. Balled up in the corner of his room I saw my

clothes; a black skirt, a black top, and a brown jacket. I put them on and sat in that corner, still

crying, waiting for my phone to charge enough that I could call an Uber to the local Walgreens

to pick up Plan B.

It was a little after 5am when the Uber picked me up outside my rapist’s house. With tears

streaming down my face, I wiped them away and got into the Uber. I tried to initiate small talk,

“hello sir, how has your morning been?” The man didn’t say much, he didn’t even bother to

respond to my question. Instead he said this: “do I need to call someone”. I was quiet for a bit,

my face got hot and my eyes teary once more. Slowly and softly, I said no. The rest of the drive

was silent.

The Uber driver stopped the car in front of Walgreens, I hopped out and walked inside the store.

I asked the cashier to grab me a Plan B as it was locked up behind the counter. The cashier

gave a brief chuckle and lightly shook his head. He wouldn’t make eye contact with me and just

waved me past after I paid. I felt humiliated.

I walked back to my apartment from Walgreens, trudged up the stairs to my front door, went

inside, and looked in the mirror. I had mascara running down my face, my hair was tangled into

one big knot, and I had a hickey. How sweet… he gave me something to remember him by (you

know, along with the lifelong trauma). I fell into my bed and laid there with my eyes open. I

stared at the ceiling until about 10am when I got a cheery phone call from my friend. She was

excited to tell me about finally getting with the guy she liked. I was happy for her, she kept

saying how he made her feel so comfortable and safe. Again, I was happy for her but those

words did sting. After the phone call with my friend, I went to the kitchen and grabbed a whisk.

It joined me in the bathroom, where I vigorously rubbed the hickey on my neck, trying to get any

proof of the rape to disappear. It didn’t work.

I went back to my room. I felt numb, something I had never experienced before. I always knew

exactly how I was feeling at any given moment, this numbness terrified me as I felt complete

and utter nothingness. Thanks to my rapist, that feeling of nothingness and numbness

disappeared and was replaced with fear and discomfort. I received a Snapchat notification from

him.

His words cold and inconsiderate read,

“I was drunk… don’t tell anyone. I’m sry. No one can kno. Get Plan B”.

I responded, “I got Plan B. Won’t tell anyone”.

And there it is, there is something so many women do, hide in fear of the “what if people find

out?”, “what if no one believes me?”.

For me, it was due to an overwhelming sense of guilt. My bizarre sense of guilt I blame on good

ol’ society. Society, to a degree, has led women to believe that we put ourselves in these

situations.

- “What were you wearing”

- “Boys will be boys”

- “Well, were you drunk?”.

I don’t like those phrases that blame the victim, never have. However, that victim blaming line of

thought is powerful. It sits in the back of your mind, poisoning every rational idea that tells you

that you shouldn’t feel guilty. Self doubt creeps in like a plague, silently, until it overwhelms you

all at once.

It took me a while to stop feeling guilty, to process the rape as a whole, and to even to be

intimate with others I knew were safe. I’d cringe and flinch when someone would merely hold

my hand or tuck my hair behind my ears to kiss me. Even with my last boyfriend, someone who

made me feel nothing but loved and safe, I had a moment of panic while having sex with him. I

am still not sure what my boyfriend had done to trigger me, I know it was nothing intentional, but

at that moment I was transported back to two years prior, in the bedroom of my rapist. I

remember asking my boyfriend to stop, me turning over, and crying. He hugged me, confused

as to what he did. I explained he had done nothing wrong, yet he still apologized, making me

feel safe and secure once more. My boyfriend showed me what unconditional love was.

Something I know my rapist is incapable of showing to any person at all.

I write this as I can no longer let my rapist interfere with my life and new relationships, as a

release to something I have never written down in such detail. My rapist shouldn’t be able to get

his dick wet and leave me hanging out to dry. I hope he has since realized what he has done

and feels the guilt that I wrongly felt for so long.

Metaphorically of course, and as this project of Maren’s suggests, this is how I just killed my

rapist.