WARNING: Graphic Content ahead!
I wrote this story when I was 18, reflecting on an event that had happened two years prior. Now that sexual assault is a big issue in the news, I felt it was time to revisit that story. I didn't think I would ever tell it, and still i've only told a few people all of it, but this is that story. I didn't want to rewrite it, so here it is coming from an 18 year-old perspective: I do have something I know that I ultimately have to get off of my chest. It's something I've only told a few individuals and my parents aren't even included in this list. It's a story that shames me, something that I hate to admit to myself that ever happened. To this day I still can not believe I let it happen. Enough foreshadowing. Today I sit here writing these words knowing that I have to tell this story; that I have to put it on paper with hopes that one day someone will read it and be able to relate to my words and hopefully what I have to say will help them with their own experiences. The truth is, I am a survivor of sexual abuse. Damn. Those seven words are just script on a screen now and if someone else is reading this, that means it's ink on a page. That's all it is. I don't know how to put those words into more than just that sentence because in all honesty, it's impossible to explain all of the feelings inside my head; the shame, the fear and the hurt. Though, now I do hope that I am able to just leave all of my thoughts in this chapter and that afterward it will just be words on a page, something that I can let go of. I am a survivor. It's ironic because I never thought I was surviving anything. I thought, and still do think, that a little piece of me died that day when he took the one thing from me that I will never be able to get back. The man took my virginity and I just let him have it. It isn't until now, when I am much older, that I realize that was something that could be taken from me. I believed it was actually something that I had given away and I blamed myself for the entire ordeal taking place. I mean, I talked to him. I agreed to go to his house. I removed my own clothing that day. I believed that it was something I was giving away and that I was at fault if I regretted it. However, that isn't the entire story. I did text him that day. I did tell him I was a 17 year-old boy and that I was curious about sex. I did tell him that I thought I might be gay and that I wondered if it was something I could experiment with. I did tell him that I appreciated when he said I was cute and that he wanted me. I liked it. I felt good that for once since getting out of my first relationship that someone was expressing interest in me. I didn't care about the age gap. I still don't know to this day how old he was. Late thirties? Early forties? I don't know if I will ever know. I don't know a lot of things about this man. I don't know what his sexual history is like, I don't know if he had a family, a spouse or people who loved him. I don't even know for certain what his name is. If I strain to remember, it might have been Mark however, that may also just be the name that I made up to refer to him for the past two years. You see, I didn't know the man. I met him that day online when I was feeling low and wanted the company. Maybe it is my fault for deciding to meet up with a stranger. Maybe I should have been a smart teenager, but who has ever heard of one of those? The fact of the matter is that I did meet up with Mark. I did talk to him and tell him that I had never done anything with a man before, with anyone in fact. I told him that I was feeling lonely and he said nice things to me. He told me that, if I wanted we could get in that back seat and “fool around.” I said yes. He told me that, as he put his hand on my chest, I was attractive and that he was excited about meeting a nice guy like myself. I like that. He asked if I wanted him to go a little farther. I said yes. He put his hands on my leg and then my crotch and soon was unbuttoning my pants and for the first time I was experiencing anyone touching me like that. Then I was experiencing for the first time oral sex. Of course I like it, I was a teenage boy. I was nervous, sure. We were in a gas station parking lot for god's sake. He raised his head and looked at me smiling. He asked if I liked it and I said yes. He told me that the back of his car was pretty small and said that it might be better to go back to his place. I as hesitant, but what could be the harm. Sure, I knew that I could be hurt. I knew that I could be making the biggest mistake of my life. But I said yes. We drove to his house and I silently regretted my decision, but I wasn't going to tell this man that I was scared. He was twice my age and I didn't want to be the pussy teenage boy that he got mad at for wasting his time. So I sat in his passenger seat silent. When we got to his place, which seemed like it had taken an eternity to get to, we went inside and he showed me around. A couch, a kitchen, a bathroom. His bedroom. It was dark and we went inside and he opened the curtain just slightly so that I could see outside and into the driveway where his car was parked. I knew that if I never left this house and that was the last thing I saw, my chariot into his home, the only hope of leaving, then I would be living in perfect irony. Nobody would find me. I didn't tell anyone I was meeting this man. I couldn't tell anyone. I was in the closet and christian so there was no one to tell who wouldn't be angry at me for being so promiscuous and be angry at me for being gay. No one would no what happened to me. So I sat on his bed and decide that if I kept him happy, I'd be leaving and I might just make myself a little happier in the meantime. I sat on the bed and he sat next to me. I don't remember what he said exactly but I'm sure it was as charming as, “why don't you let me see a little more of you.” I know how disgusting that sounds now after experiencing more of life and actually having decent experiences with sex, but at the time I just went with it and we undressed ourselves. For literature’s sake I could spend a paragraph describing what he looked like and turn this into a “Fifty Shades of Grey”-esque chapter, but for my own sake, and even any readers, he was old, Mexican and averagely endowed. I was a fatty teenage boy who was shy and completely awkward considering this was the first time I had ever been completely naked with someone. Mind you, I was home-schooled throughout middle school and spared that ever embarrassing locker room scene in my life until a much later age. From here on I am ashamed of the events that transpired. I wish I had don something, anything differently and that I wouldn’t have gone on to lose my virginity to a man who I struggle to even remember his real name. It was a Saturday in February. We were both naked and we started by lying next to each other on the bed. I guess that was something I was okay with. I always have been a sucker for “romance” and cuddling has always been my biggest turn on. That said, this was in no way romantic. He quickly got to what I imagine he may have done multiple times with different people on that same bed before me. I closed my eyes and figured if anything, this could just be pleasure and that would be the end of it. That's what I wanted anyways, right? Pleasure? I know for a fact it isn't. I wanted someone to replace the empty feeling I had for the only person to have ever broken my heart at that point. I wanted someone to make up for the loneliness I was feeling and this man was not that person. I grabbed him at his shoulders and gently pulled him up off of me. I told him I wasn't really into what was happening and that I was hoping he would take me back to my car. He assured me that everything was alright and that I just needed to get comfortable. He told me to go down on him. To pleasure him. He told me that it was polite to reciprocate what he had already given me. I wasn't so sure. I had never done anything like it. He put his hand on my head and raised his crotch up to my face. I didn't want to but I knew I had to. I stopped after only a second. This is the one thing that in the last two years I have /been called a prude for. When I tell people I don't enjoy giving oral, most have said that I just need to suck it up or that I am a wimp for it but it all goes back to this moment honestly. I hate the feeling of reliving this moment. I slid back up the bed but he grabbed my waist and told me to fuck him. This is the reason I never thought of myself as a victim. He didn't force himself on me, but he did psychologically have an advantage and he knew it. I felt like I had to please him. I didn't know if I’d leave his house otherwise. So we went all the way. I lost my virginity to him and it has been my biggest regret ever since. I was scared at that moment. I was the only one besides him to know that this had happened. What if he told someone? What if my parents found out? What if I got a disease? He didn't have a condom. I didn't even know to ask. So many thoughts were running through out my head in this moment and I had to be strong. I didn't want to seem weak in front of him. There was a mirror in his bedroom and it was positioned right next to the bed. Of course it was. I can still vividly see myself in that moment, naked and hunched over his body. I can remember every detail of it, including my face. I was ashamed even as it happened. Finally I got up and started to dress and we said nothing the entire drive back to my car. After he dropped me off and had driven out of sight, I sat in my car alone and embarrassed. Like most pivotal moments in my life, I turned on music to try and escape to another place. This had always been my tactic. It was that moment that I started to cry. I cried as the music started playing. I'm not sure entirely if it was the song that was playing that caused the emotion, or if the song was just the perfect soundtrack to all of the emotions I was already feeling. Just a few months earlier “Artpop” the fourth studio album from Lady Gaga had been released and this was the album I blasted when I was in my car alone. There were plenty of care free party songs and great tunes to make me happy, but on that day, the song that was playing as I cried in my car was a ballad. A love song entitled “Dope.” I sat in the gas station parking lot bawling. Hot tears fell down my face for the entire four minute length of the song. I didn't move the car as it played. I was surprised, baffled even, at what I had done. I was supposed to save myself till marriage. I was supposed to save myself for a nice Christian girl. I knew neither of these things were actually any type of goal for me, but I did want my first experience to be with someone I cared about. Someone I could say I loved. Someone like the person in the song that was playing. But that was all over. I couldn't take back what I did. So I started my engine and drove to the only place I could go. Home.
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Erick L. Graham Wood
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