By Anonymous C
I don’t remember my first time. I was passed out drunk. I think they call that date rape now.
Here’s what I remember like it was yesterday. I was so in love with him, the boy I was dating for a year. I skipped school, we had a picnic, he bought beer. I was 16 and I had never had a drink. The beer, the talking, we took a walk. We went back to the blanket. I was so drunk.
Then I have no memory except coming to, flat on my back, my bottoms off, legs spread, him on his knees and saying over and over “the rubber came off.”
I turned my head. I threw up. I began to cry. Then we were in his car and I was grasping the handle inside. He took me to a friend’s house and they gave me coffee. All I felt was mortal shame. He took me home. My mother smiled as we drove up. After that I didn’t have anything to do with him.
You don’t tell anyone when this happens.
I was 19 before I had sex again.
This experience occurred 45 years ago. It still affects the way I define myself sexually. I’ve met men who treated me as if I were precious, but I’ve never felt worthy of being wooed or entirely deserving. Date rape is still happening today.
© Anonymous C
Part 9 in a series on first sexual experiences.
Thanks for sharing this. My first time was a similar experience. In a dorm room after a party with too much to drink. This was 6 years ago. I dropped out of school my freshman year and didn’t go back to school for 2 years. The most difficult aspect for me has been peoples lack of desire to talk about it or hear about my experience. My therapists had a hard time with it.
Just because it is difficult to talk about doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it. It’s painful but you’ve heard the expression “no pain, no gain” haven’t you? Until we become more open about the fact that 1 out of every 4 16-24 year old woman is being date raped the problem will continue. Boys will continue to think that a passed out girl is fair game and girls will continue to be unaware of the possible consequences of drinking too much and passing out.
I wish that my mother had talked to me about it and I wish the university I went to school at had given me a heads up on the date rape statistics for that campus. I wish I I had been more aware but this isn’t the sort of stuff that people talk about is it?
Dear C, this post makes me so angry on your behalf. What happened 45 years ago should not define you and your sexuality in any way, that ought to be totally on him. But I get it. How can you ever trust again when you know that someone you knew for an entire year could do this to you. What a dick wad this boy was. I hope he got dick cancer and his dick fell off. And I hope writing this has brought you some peace. The shame you are carrying is the dick wad’s, not yours. You have nothing to be ashamed of.
My first time was no picnic either and similar—except I wasn’t dating the guy and, well, there was no picnic involved. Something I have on my list to write about.
First off, I agree with Chloe, I hope he got dick cancer and it fell off. Leave it to her to tell it like it is.
Secondly, I hope you one day are able to define your sexual value by something other than what this boy did.
And Niki, kudos for you for speaking out and up!
Thank you for having the courage in telling your story. I hope that exercising your voice in this piece offers some catharsis and freedom to carve out your sexual worth.
I know this is a completely socially unacceptable thing to say, but I can see the other side, and that’s what makes stories like this so tragic and makes it clear that we need to talk openly about how men and women experience sex differently.
I can imagine a young man who, wanting to create a romantic first time for his girlfriend of a year, takes her to a picnic and brings along some alcohol. They are both drinking. They go for a romantic walk and talk. They go back to the blanket, and are both drunk–and he doesn’t realize just how drunk she is–and have sex. She’s not saying no, so he assumes she’s on the same page and they are both enjoying it. He was no idea that she feels utterly violated and will remember the experience, 4-1/2 decades later, as a brutal rape. As a guy who takes his drunken girlfriend to her friend’s house so he can help bring her coffee to sober her up before driving her home, he probably had no idea how differently she experienced the encounter from how he did. And, since she didn’t tell him that he had raped her, he was probably extremely confused about why she never spoke to him again.
We tell boys that “no means no.” We perpetuate the idea that rape is when a guy holds a woman down who is saying “no” and has sex with her anyway. Most guys don’t do that and have no desire to do that and consider doing that reprehensible. But we don’t want to tell them the real truth: that a drunken yes might also be a no, both legally and in the woman’s inner experience. We don’t want to tell them that because it creates too much gray: because the line between “drunk” and “too drunk” is often murky, because we don’t want to disrupt the neat narrative of “no means no” and even “yes means yes” by being honest about how much alcohol complicates things, we don’t want to have to admit the double standard that, if a man and woman are both equally drunk and have sex, he’ll be the one charged with rape.
And then we wonder why we keep seeing these cases. We see them because we aren’t honest with young men about what we are really talking about when we’re talking about rape. We allow them to believe that we’re talking about cases where a woman is saying no, and instead we’re talking about cases where a woman was too drunk to really mean her yes. We talk past each other and then portray the men who have every right to feel confused as monsters who should spend their lives dickless.
I don’t see the young man in this story as a monster who deserves to spend his life without a dick. I see a tragic story with two victims: a young woman who had sex she didn’t want because she was too drunk to make a real choice, and a young man who unwittingly committed a rape against a woman he appears to have had no desire to harm because he didn’t understand the differences between men and women when it comes to sex or the profound dangers of mixing sex and alcohol (as common as it is). I don’t see any good coming out of making him out to be a monster any more than it would do good to make her out to be a slut. Neither would be true. Sex can cause so much emotional pain sometimes. That’s what I see in this story.
Anonymous –
You bring out many points (and misconceptions) that are, indeed, tragic. However, this girl was “passed out drunk.” She was unconscious. That is not consensual. That is rape.
I am in full agreement that by teaching “no means no” we do not go far enough, and we truly must look at the terrible messages we send our boys in terms of masculinity, condoning (or encouraging) sexual exploits that blur the lines of consent, to say the very least.
Certainly, the role of alcohol in date rape is a factor. We have only to read about the drinking taking place on campuses to know that.
I strongly recommend that you consider the following thoughts on when no means no, sexual coercion, and alcohol. This is, I believe, a worry for all of us – and a particular worry for parents of both boys and girls.
A question, Anonymous. Are you saying that since he was drunk, we should excuse him? If he’s a drunk driver and hits someone and injures them for life (or worse), do we excuse him?
If she was honestly passed out drunk, yes, that’s rape. I have never met somebody “passed out drunk,” though, who was able to go for a walk, hold a conversation, return to a blanket , and then pass out for just the few moments it would presumably have took until the condom broke (it’s not like teen sex lasts for hours).
In our good desire to not blame victims, we should not move to the opposite extreme of vilifying accused perpetrators without any critical thought.
@anonymous, for full disclosure, I’m the woman this article is about. One reason I don’t talk often about that experience is because of responses like yours. You’ve made assumptions and written your own script about a day in my life that enables you to see things from his “perspective.” Just because you can imagine it happening one way doesn’t mean that is the way it happened. So, let me give you more detail. Not in an attempt to defend myself but in an attempt to help you understand that it can be dangerous to victims of a crime for others to make assumptions or add their own pre-conceived notion to the story.
The subject of sex had come up on several occasions during our relationship. There was a CLEAR understanding that I was not ready to engage in sex with him or anyone else. The picnic was an afternoon off school, not a planned first time sexual experience. Not in my mind anyway. As I looked back after it happened I realized what his motive was for the drinking and the picnic. He was going to get what he wanted and if getting me drunk was the way to do it, he had no issue with that.
He knew exactly how I felt about the experience the moment I gained consciousness. The “friends” home that he took me to was a middle aged couple who not only gave me coffee but the wife gave me a douche. In her words, it would keep me from “getting pregnant.” I now know that what it did was wash away evidence. He knew EXACTLY what he had done and took me to someone who could help cover his tracks in case I had the wherewithal to bring to light what happened.
Lucky for him, I blamed myself. I had put myself in a position for something like that to happen to me. I made the choice to drink and in my immature mind, it was all my fault. If you are going to get someone drunk and rape them you want to choose a naive, small town girl, which is what he did.
When I was 12 there was a rape in our small town. The woman was shamed for reporting it. The adults blamed her for putting herself in a position for someone to rape her. “If she hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have happened.” Those are the words I heard my mother say and those are the words that rang in my head 4 years later when it happened to me.
I knew that if I had told my parents, the police, or anyone else in my community, I would have been made out to be the slut. His behavior would have been excused as “boys will be boys,” especially with a passed out girl.
There was one victim in my situation. For years I victimized myself over and over again with shame and guilt. He weighed what he wanted against the harm it would do to me, and he put more value in getting what he wanted. He was a boy of 16 who allowed his hormonal impulses to determine an ethical choice. He chose to give in to the impulse instead of doing the ethical thing.
That has been the valuable lesson for me from the experience. Especially as the mother of sons. Because of what happened to me, I’ve known how to talk to my sons about hormonal impulses, self-respect, and what definitely is right and wrong when drinking and engaging in sex.
In closing, how long was I passed out before he engaged in sex with me? Did I lay there for 30 minutes before he decided to take advantage? I don’t know the answer to these questions. All I know is, we were talking on the blanket, I was quite intoxicated, and then I came to with him between my legs. While I was passed out, but he was sober enough to remove my pants, put on a condom, and have sex with me. When it comes to the ability to consent, he was more capable than I.
When thinking critically, shouldn’t we question every scenario, not just the one that fits what we need to believe? For some reason, you need to believe that he was a victim also. Your need doesn’t define what actually happened that day.
Disgraceful, unethical, immoral, selfish comments. That’s putting it nicely.
If you had even remotely close to an idea of how serious rape is and how much it damages people (especially when continued abuse), you might think differently. Then again you might not – people like you only make the situation worse. You try to say it’s good to not blame the victim but you can’t then go too far when vilifying the perpetrator. That is utterly disgusting. Either you sympathise with rapists (whether you recognise or admit it is irrelevant) or you’ve done similar things. You only fuel stigmatisation and stigma is very harmful; it does nothing to help the situation and it shows unwillingness to learn all out of personal weakness and cowardice (both, and to a strong degree).
Obviously she wasn’t unconscious while walking. That’s a stupid suggestion by itself. It’s quite obvious they walked and she later was so pissed (drunk) she was unconscious. That very idea of yours shows exactly what I mean – at least to any decent person (as long as they can think well which ironically you brought up but failed to do yourself). No, there is never, ever an excuse for those who rape. Never. Only cowards will excuse rapists. Only cowards would rape. Only cowards would say maybe the perpetrator isn’t as guilty as it seems. If there is no evidence? Fine. But the evidence was here; the fact she didn’t even NAME him shows good character on her part and it simultaneously shows she is much more sincere (it was to share the story rather than – as you put it – vilify the rapist).
People like you make me sick and that’s an understatement. How could you even consider writing ‘unwittingly’? So weak, so cowardly, so selfish…shameful. That’s what you are.
In most jurisdictions, consensual sexual acts are required and without consent the act would then be a crime. It is hard to imagine in the case of a person who is unconscious that it is not a rape. I think this is obvious without any legal knowledge and even for a teenager.
There may be circumstances when parties are conscious but there is an honest mistaken belief of consent. There are other types of rape where there cannot be consent because society or the law deems the person is mentally ill or lacks capacity, lacks the years of age and hence the ability and capacity to consent, or that there is a power or trust relationship that puts a person in a weakened position and unable to consent (e.g. teacher/student or physician/patient).
The “yes may mean no” is a notion, I hope, that died in another time. I would hope that women would say yes or no and mean it, and not say one but mean the other.
Alcohol on the other hand lowers inhibitions but also may incapacitate the person, rendering them unable to consent. That said, in the 1950’s and 1960’s, drinks were developed to provide to women in order to loosen their inhibitions. This was a silly and chauvinist approach at the time.
Young women today may in fact drink too much and have sex they are sorry for later, but I would hope they are more savvy than their predecessors in deciding to have sex. That said there are still occasions when males and females drink too much and have sex they might not otherwise have, or even forced sex and rape. OR, they will use the alcohol as an excuse later for the sex they wanted, but did not want to admit to themselves or others.
As a father of teenage girls I am aware of these scenarios and try to explain what teenage boys are like and that they will later develop into normal men once the hormones die down. I also relate to them things I have seen in the hospital and legal setting, as teaching points.
They have not engaged in alcohol to my knowledge, and I have also warned of our Celtic blood and ancestral disposition to alcoholism to make them aware of the genetic potential to become alcoholics.
I have always advised them to be in groups at parties and make sure they do not leave a friend, especially if they have been drinking, and develop friends that would not leave them either. I think the `buddy system` is so important, especially for young women. They need to have talks before they go out. Not only does this ensure unwanted sex is less likely to occur, but also they become harder targets for predators.
While less common, there are also women that men need to be careful of as well, for unwanted sex and false allegations.
I have given a friend`s son similar advice that I will give my daughters: know the person and be with them in a group setting before having sex, avoid persons who have mental health problems or are taking drugs for serious mental health problems, avoid alcoholics and addicts, see how many long term friends someone has (at least three), listen to how they describe relationships with family, friends and past partners, see who you know in common and stress this in a casual but assertive way, don`t have sex while drunk (at the very least in the beginning of the relationship), if she is not in a position to drive a car she is not in a position to consent, and when in doubt – say no or postpone, then go to the gym or masturbate.
Finally, ask yourself how you feel about the person and sex should also be important and therefore fun and loving.
All that said, sex sometimes occurs and sometimes while the parties are drunk. Further, society and the media often send mixed messages. I agree that discussing this and having it in the open helps everyone.
This just killed me. So beautifully written and horrific at the same time. I’m so sorry the writer had to go through this. Thanks for being brave enough to share. I plan to talk to my daughters about this.