All he saw in me was a body part; men like him call 'Grab ‘em by the pussy'

“I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the pussy.”

In the winter of my junior year in high school I met a guy in one of my classes. Tall and handsome, he possessed a crackling electricity, a supple self-possession that drew people around him. He shone. We had a couple of brief, charming conversations. One night, on a whim, I flipped through the little blue student phone book, found his number, and asked him to lunch. He turned me down, not rudely, but without hesitation. I was embarrassed, but wasn’t emotionally invested, and forgot about it, and him, almost immediately.

Several months later, I was in a record store with my best friend, Anna, when we ran into him. When we said we were going to a movie, he said he’d tag along. He was nice enough, but said little to me. I assumed he wanted the arrestingly beautiful Anna, and that was fine with me. But after the movie, when he walked us back to our neighborhood, instead of turning the corner to go with her, he stayed with me. When I went into my house, he followed me in.

I felt awkward and confused. I hadn’t flirted with him, nor he with me, and I was sure of his indifference, even to friendship. We had little to say, so I turned on the TV and we sat down to watch.

Then, tumbling. He was against me, his mouth roughly on mine, his hands on my body. My back was against something hard and I realized that in an instant, he’d taken me to the floor and climbed on top of me. He was muscular and about six-foot-two, oppressively heavy on my small body. I could barely breathe or move.

I was, for a few seconds, completely passive. Some of it was my surprise, which left me disoriented and unsure of what was happening. Some of it was the authority he carried, in his handsomeness, his shine, his stature, his overawing maleness. The power of him rendered me deferential, untrusting of my instincts, paralyzed. “When you’re a star, they let you do it.”

He pushed his knee between my legs, and I felt him under my skirt, grasping crudely at my panties. Blind, I threw a hand down to stop him, and my palm met not his hand, but his bare penis, hard, hot, and wet. Startled, I realized that while we’d been watching TV, he’d been unzipping his pants and baring himself next to me. His weight, his breath, his smell, his muscle, the harsh stubble of his mouth, his penis, were overpowering, smothering. I was drowning under him. Seconds after quietly watching TV beside me, he was trying to force himself into me.

I twisted beneath him, trying to push his penis away. I said no, no. If he didn’t stop, there would be nothing I could do to save myself.

*No.* He stopped. Abruptly, he got off of me, and I breathed. He stood and angrily zipped his penis into his pants. He grabbed his jacket and stormed from the room.

Lying on the floor, my clothes in disarray, I felt ashamed and guilty. I felt sure I’d violated some sacrosanct rule. I was supposed to please him, let him have what he wanted, wasn’t I? Wasn’t his anger, the unalloyed purity of his righteousness, proof?

I followed him as he swept out the door. I felt distressed, not for me, but for him. I felt compelled to apologize, to explain. It felt more dangerous to have stopped him than to have let him do what he wanted to me.

At the end of my front walk, he spun around and moved toward me, his face menacing, contorted with rage. I stopped, frightened. He shouted, the force of it so powerful that his long upper body bent at me. I see that image now and think: He’s a bolt of lightning.

“What do you WANT?” His voice rose and broke on that last word, spat at me with bitter contempt and incredulity. Blazing in that word was his outrage at his thwarted entitlement, something that belonged to him that I'd stolen. What could a little nothing like me want, other than to be used by him?

I was an outgoing girl, but in no way promiscuous, in no way a girl anyone might have thought was easy. The boys I'd dated had all been sweet and respectful. I'd never so much as flirted with this guy. All I’d done was to ask him to lunch, months before. Yet he believed unequivocally that he had the right to violate my body, without preamble. No smile. No words of endearment. No question. No consent. I wasn’t even certain he knew my name. He'd led with his penis. All he saw in me was a body part men like him have a name for. “Grab ‘em by the pussy.” He believed he was the one wronged. At that moment, I believed it too.

I told Anna what had happened and, with her sweetly fierce loyalty, she promised that if she found him, she’d kick his balls with all the strength in her. It was her fury that made me realize I had no place feeling ashamed. It was only then that I realized what this had been.

From that night I carried a lasting, deep-set difficulty in trusting that I could be desired for more than my body, but I was surer of what was mine. Months later, when another guy tried to force himself on me, I instantly shoved him almost to the floor, told him off, fled as he chased me, jumped in my car, and, as he opened the door and tried to bull his way in, floored the gas and peeled out onto the street as the guy dropped away and the door swung wildly.

I saw the young man from school only once more, passing him on my way back to class from lunch. His gaze slid over me with unaffected indifference. In the years since, I’ve almost never thought of him. It was only the vile words aired during this presidential campaign that brought him vividly to mind again, as they’ve brought other such men to the minds of dozens of my friends, my sister, and so many other women. For many of them, the stories are much, much worse, leaving wounds from which these women have never recovered. Wounds of which they still cannot speak.

If ever I cross paths with him, and he speaks of having known me, I’ll reply that he’s mistaken. This is the truth. He knew nothing of me, because he had no interest in knowing me. The only thing I knew of him was his penis as he tried to force it into my sixteen-year-old body.

This post first appeared on the author's Facebook page.