"I-I'm here, I'm just nervous."
"That's okay. If you want to just take your time before you speak, I'm not going anywhere."
"Okay."
I'm pacing in my room, the cord tethering me from wandering too far from my desk. To stall and try to gather my thoughts, I stare out the window up into the unrelenting gray block of sky above. There had been a very brief break in the rain, but it looks like it was just about over with. Still, I open the window just a crack to let in some air.
"This is stupid, right? Like I'm not in any sort of crisis, I'm just safe at home and also it's just not relevant to whatever is going on right now, but I guess like... I dunno, an old friend gave me this number a long time ago and I didn't have much else to do except just... think a lot lately."
"Well, I appreciate that you confirmed you're safe and not in a crisis." The voice on the other end answers. "It's not stupid to call though if you felt like you had reason to, and with you saying that you've been doing a lot of thinking it sounds like you have something to talk about. Would you like to start there?"
I flop down into my desk chair with my head propped up in one hand, the other firmly pressing the radio up against my ear. Outside, the expected drizzle of rain has begun. "Just stuff from a long time ago. My friend was saying you guys could be helpful but I always figured it'd be more helpful if I was like, caught in an alleyway or somethin' instead." I explain.
The voice is a steady gentle cadence in response. "We're here no matter how long it's been, and it's a common misconception that we're here solely in the immediate aftermath of a rape though that is a portion of the calls we take as well."
"That's the thing--" I sit up suddenly. "She was convinced that's what happened to me but it's just--I don't know." There's a pause, and again: "I don't know." My voice is smaller, but I continue. "It's actually stupid."
"Well, let's talk about it if you'd like."
"I guess..." I can feel myself cringing. "I went to this concert with my first boyfriend. It was our first date actually, and we had a lot of fun, but a lot of that night is just vapor at this point. I remember pieces of it, and I think if I really sit with it I can remember a lot of how I felt and it was a mixed bag." I sigh again, deeply though my nose. "We went back to his place, and like the way I would tell it now is that we just got carried away quite fast. Kissing. We were fifteen," I laugh. "...Why I think it's stupid is because it's easier now to think about someone saying 'let's go back to my place' and not see where the night would end up. I just didn't know it then."
It's not that it's hard to talk about for emotional reasons, but the time that has passed has pushed it deep into the shadows. I need to dredge it up.
"I remember feeling like... my head get really hot and lightheaded. Like at the same time everything kind of went too quiet but I felt everything, and I didn't really know what to do. I didn't say anything for a bit, but it felt--weird? Like just before it felt good when it was just the kissing, but everything else was just almost too much. When I asked him to slow down, he did. And I didn't want to just lay there either, but I just wasn't also sure what I should be doing so my hands were kind of just going everywhere. And I guess I kept worrying about how late it was getting."
The rain is coming down much harder, creating a distant static-like sound as it hits the leaves in the trees. The helpful volunteer on the other side doesn't seem rattled by anything I say, but part of me is hoping the next words they say are "Nope, sounds pretty normal for your first time but you have nothing to worry about!". I could thank them, hang up, and then sigh with relief knowing I could let the confusion go.
None of that happens. Instead, their response is:
"That is quite a lot, and I can understand why you're confused. It's normal for people to feel a variety of different things, especially when those feelings seem to almost contradict each other like that, and then to just sort of..." They have to pause and think. "Let your mind do what it needs to in order to protect itself from the conflicting information. That sounds like it was hard."
"I don't understand what it needed to protect me from," I say rather bluntly.
"When you went back to his house, you were able to remember that you weren't expecting for the rest of the night to happen that way, and that it seemed to happen pretty fast. I can say at the very least, when the unexpected happens, it can be stressful and it also seemed to me that the ambiguity of what you were feeling made it even more stressful." The volunteer says.
"I guess so. That seems right." I say. Outside of my bedroom door I could hear the footsteps of my sisters run past. My whole body tenses as I wait for them to get far enough away; I wouldn't want them--or anyone--to overhear this call. "When I told my friend about all this, what freaked her about it was that I mentioned afterward I couldn't remember if he'd used a condom or not. She pointed out that it's not typical to remember that significant of a detail and was all 'are you sure you said yes?'." I press my hand to my face, my eyes closed. "But the way I see it, if I can't remember if I said yes that means I can't remember if I said no."
"Ah, so I think that must be the core of where your confusion about it is."
"Exactly." I open my eyes and stare at my wall. "The brochure she gave me kind of like one of those bullet point lists of like, you know, the things you might feel after a sexual assault but it doesn't seem like that fits exactly what I was feeling after it."
"What were you feeling?"
"A bit of everything," I laugh a tiny bit into the receiver. "Not all of it was bad, not all of it was good. I first remember feeling a bit ridiculous, I remember feeling like it was sweet for him to make sure my clothes were set right before I left, I felt a lot of dread--" Something catches in my throat. I've pulled out enough of the memory to where now I'm finally accessing feelings. "I kept seeing him afterward, and we still had sex after that. The other times weren't as confusing, or didn't feel as big." They felt much like how it often did during college: okay, sometimes even really nice, and then I would crash land back into my body later. Much later.
I stop to listen to the rain for a few moments.
"I want her to be wrong about it," I finally blurt out. "He and I never really talked about it so after we broke up I just kind of tried to not think too much about it. If I called him right now and point blank asked him if I said no, he literally could not lie to me."
Until that moment, I didn't realize that was something well within reach. The idea doesn't leave me.
The voice on the other end remains steady, but I could feel a very brief hesitation as they try to find the most straightforward path through. "It's never easy for anybody to consider that what they went through might not have been as consensual as they thought, so I'm wanting to know more about how you're feeling: why do you want your friend to be wrong about this? Are you worried that, say, if you work through this more and conclude that it was an assault that you'd be changed forever?"
"I don't know, I don't think it's that simple. It's just--" I huff in frustration. "I want it to be simple. It seems like it should be, and it wasn't. At the end of it I just kinda thought that I was probably not ready and wouldn't really want to try again with anyone else until I was."
"And you've been thinking about it quite a lot. When you say you could ask him about it right now and he couldn't lie to you, I think that itself is telling how much it impacted your life."
"I asked him to slow down because it kinda hurt a little bit and then he did." I say. "And it stopped hurting. If I'd asked him to stop I feel like he would have, and I just... didn't."
"With first relationships especially, it sounds like you might not have known the best ways you know how to communicate and he may not have either. That being said, with him not directly asking you either if you wanted to have sex with him and just assuming instead did create -- at best -- a confusing and stressful experience for you. I'm not here to force you to call it something that you don't want it to." There's a heavy silence in those few seconds of pause at the end of that sentence. "But, you did call at least the right hotline to work through that confusion. It sounds like you don't talk about it much."
"At all, actually." I say. There's a fuzzy static I could feel right at the back of my head and I'm trying to fight it. I press a hand flat down on my desk to stay on the line, and stay here at this moment in time. Whether it's just my magic stirring or the stress from being so in deep with this talk I can't say. "I guess... I guess over the last couple years, since I was having a stereotypical college experience, the nights I've had with guys have gone different."
"How so?"
"They'd just ask me directly if I wanted to have sex or if I was feeling bold I'd ask," I say. "Once or twice I wasn't up for it and nothing bad really happened when I'd ask for a raincheck. Just some frustration. Sometimes it wasn't really discussed. It'd just kinda happen after making out but that's what I would hope for you know?" I rub my forehead. "And I just can't really see it that different from going home and thinking we'd be making out and then everything just getting carried away from us." I sit with it for a moment. Downstairs I think I could hear my parents talking, but their words are just vague noise with all the space between us. "...Before I called you I was reading this magazine, and there was this article in there talking about this whole "gray area" rape thing, but the examples they wrote didn't seem ambiguous to me. There's women in those stories that still say no, but they think it's a weird gray area because they weren't loud enough or something like that. Like, to me I mean--you say no, and it keeps happening, that's a pretty clear case."
"That point is true. I think that what articles and stories like that are trying to explain is that there are situations that people fall in where, even when "no" isn't explicitly said or heard, there's other ways to tell if someone doesn't want to aside from the verbal confirmation." The volunteer explains. "Like for example if someone is too drunk or otherwise incapacitated to know what is happening, or if they feel too afraid to say no, or if they freeze."
I've found that I started chewing on the corner of a fingernail at some point in this conversation and force my hand back down flat on the desk. "Freeze?" I ask. I think I already know what they're saying, but I just want to hear more.
"Freezing is essentially when you can't move your body or speak and often happens from a sense of shock. It's like the instinct to fight or run away, though quite a number of survivors call and report that they felt like they simply couldn't move." The volunteer explains. Hearing this feels akin to that bullet point list of associated emotions: not quite right, but not wrong either. There was just...
"It--I'm deathbound you see," I say quickly. This person doesn't need to know that I'm a Wild mage specifically, but maybe context for what I'm about to say would help clear my case. "And it's--it's just that--when people have snuck up on me or something, I tend to react a lot more fighty than just freezing up." Like Vesa at the party.
"It sounds like this was somebody you trusted." The volunteer on the other end says. "Somebody you trusted after a date rather than somebody very suddenly catching you by surprise. "
Would he have known to slow down if I didn't ask him to? That thought floats by and I shake my head. But his hand was on my thigh on the bus. There were so many early cues I just didn't notice.
"He was dared to have sex with me." I say quietly into the receiver.
"Dared?"
"He said he'd liked me for a while so one of his friends just kinda dared him to do something about it. I didn't--" I laugh suddenly, but I don't feel particularly amused remembering all of this. "I didn't know about it for months actually, long after we broke up. It only came up because I went to this stupid party one of my friends was throwing, and one of his friends actually did assault me by shoving his tongue in my mouth. My ex knew it was going to happen but didn't... warn me." I sigh. "So he called me the next day to apologize and come clean about when we started dating, and I just had this feeling about the kiss."
"That's really tough. I'm sorry to hear that," The voice says. It's the softest I've heard it this whole conversation. "It sounds like now this whole friend group had this culture of social pressure we could call it, and you were just outside of that. If you haven't, I would maybe ask yourself if it's something you don't want to name but still want to examine it: would you have wanted to have sex with him on that date if you'd known he was dared to initiate it?"
It is easy to think about and imagine a thousand different ways it could have gone: it's easy to imagine me saying no, it's easy to imagine me smiling into a kiss, for all of the little forgotten or half-remembered or half-imagined details of the room to come back. The couch might've been blue, or it might've been gray. I can't remember what specific shirt I would've been wearing or what the closing song on the setlist was. I know though, with that question, two complete truths about that night: One, we used protection. Two, I don't think I would have wanted to sleep with him for the sake of him fufilling a dare.
"If I say that I wouldn't have, that's it then? Like, that makes it less confusing and I have my answer? I just--I don't know if it's pure regret especially since he was shitty to me later."
Regret that he was shitty to me afterward, that we were probably too young, that it was probably too soon and too fast.
"We do unfortunately live in a time where a lot of women are being told they're 'crying rape', and that it is just regret over sex rather than an assault. It's a myth that's fed by the idea that it's a crime that only happens in alleyways by strangers. That's not to say that's never happened in the history of the world, but it's more commonly done by someone known to the survivor." The volunteer says.
"Yeah." I reply, looking through my window again at the downpour. "It sounds contradictory to what I just said, but mostly he was a nice guy. A bit awkward, but tried to be sweet." My head still isn't feeling super clear, and I try to focus in on the sound of the rain to stay present. It's hard. "I... don't think I'm wanting to call it anything different than I have been, but I do have a lot I think I'll still be thinking about."
"Of course."
I'm quiet for a long moment before speaking again. "Is it--" I have to pull the radio away from my mouth, because an unexpected catch rises to my voice. My eyes are wet. "Is it weird or bad that regardless of whatever you want to call it, it actually hurts to think about now?"
"It's not weird or bad at all." The volunteer on the other end says, their voice trying to sooth the abrupt spread of heartbreak I could feel rising from my chest up to my head. Nothing about it is making sense, not the sudden unveiling of deeper feelings from so long ago, not the tears in my eyes, not any part of it. I wanted a clear-cut answer, or so I thought at the start. It seemed like it would be an easy thing to work through and then receive. The fog of the confusion is instead finally receding and being replaced with something I'm quickly trying to tamper down: ache only caused by remembering. It feels formless and lost, very similar to the brief anger that roused when I talked with Merin about this ages ago. This ache though, this pain, is old. I don't know what it means.
After a brief, professional farewell from the volunteer, I set the radio back on it's receiver and stare at it. I can barely process anything now aside from the sound of the rain; even my own heart and breathing seem silent at first. It starts softly at first, until it's harder to ignore: I could feel the thumping in my chest as I contemplate it, a sudden frightened uptemp of my heartbeat as I imagine the scenario:
pick up receiver tune in the correct signal wait see if he's there ask him
He probably doesn't even live there anymore. Real awkward to end up talking to his mom or stepdad. I keep imagining it. Every step. My hand twitches. More time passes than I realize as I'm stuck deciding on how good of an idea it actually is before I start to come back to myself. I inhale once, holding it before it escapes, and breathe out. Maybe it's okay if I'm not confident on all the answers right now, I think. I could always just call that line again.