I almost choked on my cone. I’d never been called carefree in my entire existence no matter how hard I have tried to hide my anxiety. The adjective people most use about me, and when I say ‘people’, I mean men in the process of dumping me, is ‘intense’.
No, the dates couldn’t be going better. Joshua has surprised even me in his lack of aloofness – how happy he seems to be that this is quickly heading into relationship territory. Revealing vulnerable things like the fact he’s tried to stalk me online, rather than playing it cool. I’ve had the occasional thought blip that maybe it’s because he’s actually nice, but mostly I marvel at the Gretel effect, and how easy a man finds it to give his heart to a unicorn. Either way, I have felt like I’m walking three inches off the pavement by having so much power, by seeing him fall for me, by knowing it’s false and I’m not the one who is going to get hurt here.
But when I look at the latest message I feel scared for the first time.
Because …
Because …
I could only keep it up for so long. We’re entering date five. He’s been patient. He will worry something is wrong if we don’t have it soon, and nothing’s wrong with Gretel in that department thank you very much.
Gretel needs to have sex with Joshua, which means I need to have sex with Joshua.
• Fucking Without Fucking It Up — Gretel’s Guide to Hot Sex
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First-time sex with anyone new is nerve-wracking, so it’s natural to be apprehensive which, sorry, is really unsexy. Confidence is what he desires. A woman who loves her body, and loves his body, and has no hang-ups and is totally up for anything. Make sure you get ready ‘down there’ and now’s the time to dig out that super-hot lingerie. It’s bound to make him go wild. The most important thing is to relaaaaaax and enjoy it and be up for anything and maybe hum when you go down on him and blah blah blah blah …
* * *
Sex after rape is a complicated beast. First of all, it’s worth making it clear that rape isn’t sex. It isn’t sex at all. Yes, it involves the components of sex – a body entering another body – but rape is not sex, rape is violence and rape is power. Rape is the entitlement someone feels to someone else’s body, regardless of the consequences on the soul inhabiting that body, who has to spend every moment of the rest of their life knowing their body is not as important as someone else’s entitlement. And because sex is so very different from rape, what people don’t understand is that you can have been raped and still really want to have a sex life. You can have been raped and still desire. You can have been raped and still desire angry, hot, thrusty, sex. You can have been raped and still want to initiate. You can have been raped and be sexually aggressive yourself. In fact, take every weird and wonderful thing that human beings desire on the giant spectrum of sexuality – the fetishes, the fantasies, the toys – a victim of rape can desire any of these things and it has nothing to do with their rape. You still want the things you want, crave the things you crave. Because sexuality and rape have nothing to do with each other.
What’s strange about your sexuality after being raped is that it changes nothing and yet it also changes everything.
Sex is never the same, not quite. Because once that act of violence is ripped into you, it’s almost impossible to not let it bleed into sex. On an intellectual level you know this is different – loving, consensual, hell you’re on top and you’re the one who started this thing. But, emotionally, your body remembers, it wonders if it’s happening again. And even though rape has nothing to do with sex, it still takes your sexuality away. It’s snatched from you. In your head, much as you don’t want to admit it, you are now a victim of rape. Well, you think you are. You’re never quite sure if you’re allowed to use that label. Not for you, not for your violation. Not when so many women are violated much worse. This messes with you on so many levels. How can you be a victim of rape when the rape itself was quiet and by someone you know and maybe you’ve just been overreacting? How can you be a victim of rape when you weren’t dragged into an alleyway? How can you be a victim of rape if you still want sex? Surely that diminishes it? Surely you’re taking a label away from someone, someone more deserving of it?
But you were raped. You know you were. Your body and soul knows you were.
On your bad days you curl up into a ball and sob uncontrollably about the fact you were. Or you know you were but you can’t handle it and don’t want to open up that box thank you very much because you’re terrified it will destroy you when you finally do, so you push it down and numb it out and continue getting on with this torturous business of living a life hoping eventually that the big ball of shame and confusion and pain will erode away, rather than blobbing after you quietly, tapping you on the shoulder every so often, saying, ‘I’m here because you were raped, and I’m sorry but I don’t think I can go away.’ And you bat it off and numb it out and drink too much and fuck fuck fuck men to prove how well you can do it, even though the blob of emotions is hanging like a limp balloon in the corner.
Or you have learnt to wear the label, to talk about the label, to get up and say ‘I am a victim and this happened to me’ and other people say you are brave and other people are wondering if maybe you are making it up. And you tell people you want to have sex with and hope beyond hope it doesn’t change how they see you, how they screw you, but, also, at the same time, you secretly want them to be more gentle, more caring, more understanding, but also really fancy you and not see that label ever, and not let it change how they have sex with you. And you know it’s an impossible task and you wonder whether it’s better not to tell anyone, because you are so much more than a victim of rape, but then, also you are still a victim of rape. You are both, and that is inescapable.
You wish every day that you’d just never been raped.
You feel sick with jealousy at women who have never been raped. You fantasise about how amazing their sex lives must be without all the ‘rape clutter’ that you’re constantly rummaging through and trying to make love through, and you hate them for having it so easy. Then you start talking to other women and realise there are hardly any women you’ve met who haven’t been raped. They say one in five and I call bullshit, probably more like four out of five.
But people get uncomfortable when you say things like that.
The thing about being a victim of rape is you are constantly a source of discomfort. To yourself, as well as others. So many men have sex with women who have been raped, and yet they do not know it. Because the women don’t tell them, because, here’s the thing: it’s so hard to admit … Being raped is the least sexy thing ever.
It has nothing to do with sex and yet everything to do with sex.
It’s too complicated and painful and there’s nowhere for the shame to go, so you bury it and bury it and try to be like the other women. The other women who do not carry this ball of anger and shame and can fling their legs open and pant and scream. You pretend to be them. Sometimes you can con yourself, and him. Other times you can only con him. You tuck your sexual trauma away to make yourself sexier to the species who took your sexuality away from you.