Twenty-six Years Ago: part one

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“Hey, Hoe!” Sarah “sang” in tune to the Naughty by Nature song. No song was playing. But she was playing me.

About 6 weeks prior we had been at a birthday party with older boys, just a couple years older, but we, the girls, were 14 and they, the boys, were 16 – that’s actually a big difference when you think about the amount of maturing you are doing during the teenage years…or lack of maturing.

Grabbing our butts, grabbing our breasts, trying to get us each alone in a bedroom – these were the actions of the boys the night of the birthday party. “Get off of me!” I heard Sarah fearfully command as I walked into Brandy’s bedroom. I can’t remember the boy’s name who was on top of her. It wasn’t the boy who was soon to be on top of me. One might wonder – where was this birthday party? Where were the chaperones, the parents? Two answers: Brandy, the birthday girl’s house, and downstairs. While us girls were swatting away horny teen boys upstairs in the game room and Brandy’s bedroom, and the bathroom where I would soon find myself on the floor, her parents were downstairs. They weren’t checking on us. I’m sure they thought giving us our “privacy” was the best choice. We were fourteen after all. Who wants to feel like they are getting baby sat at that age. But, when you have young teen girls and teen boys together, privacy should not be an option. I never thought I would think that so many years ago. But as I laid there on Brandy’s bathroom floor while the pressure of John’s body consumed me, I wanted nothing more than her parents to have checked on us. Maybe that would have stopped the grabbing. Maybe that would have stopped what was happening to me.

Now, I didn’t get dragged into the bathroom by John. It was actually my idea to go in there in the first place. “Want to go do something?” I asked John, just as he was about to leave the party. Only a few seconds away from freedom – freedom from the trauma that would soon consume my body, freedom from the bullying that would put me in the psychiatric ward of St. David’s hospital, free from the lifelong angst of questioning everything I knew about boundaries, my worth, and sex. His answer was, “Yeah.” He could have said no, too. I’ve always wondered why the onus was on me to stop what was about to happen. I asked the question, and he answered. I don’t know whose idea it was to go into the bathroom. Since the onus has always been on me, I will take the responsibility and say I chose to go into the bathroom.

And there I was. John was moving fast. Brandy’s bathroom light had a dimmer, and I remember John adjusting the light until it got to just the right dimness he desired. “Yeaaa,” he uttered lustfully. It was at that moment, when the lights went dim, that I knew I did not want to be in that bathroom. He immediately started unbuttoning my pants. He told me to lay on the floor. I still hadn’t said no, though my body language screamed I was hesitant. And there I was. On the bathroom floor, lights dim, with my favorite pair of boot-legged jeans being pulled down. I don’t remember my exact words, but I told him, verbally and out loud, I did not want to do this. His response was to pull my underwear to the side. I was blocking my vagina with my hands. Did I say no? Did I tell him to stop? In my head I did, but did I say it out loud. Why wasn’t blocking him with my hands enough of a message that I didn’t want to do what John was intent on doing. I wasn’t a virgin, a fact that would come to haunt me down the road. Someone at some point in history decided that only a virgin can truly not want to have sex. “No” means no when it comes from the lips of a girl who has never encountered a penis before. But once she has, she apparently welcomes all penises. He struggled to enter me. “It hurts,” I told him. “It’s supposed to hurt,” John responded. In the moment, and still to this day, I wonder why he responded that way. It’s “supposed” to hurt? Was it a fact, a challenge, a threat? After a few seconds of hurting and pushing the heaviness that was him off of my chest, there was a knock at the door.

I went into sheer panic mode. We both jumped up and hurriedly put our clothes on. “Get in the shower,” I told him as I answered the knock. “Hold on,” I managed to say. I heard a boy’s voice outside of the door. “Okay.” I remember his name being Alex. John got in the shower and closed the shower curtain. I opened the door, trying to look normal, wondering what the hell just happened. “Hey,” I said casually as I exited the bathroom and Alex entered. I went straight to Brandy’s room and laid on her bed. I wanted to be alone. In the dark, as still as can be, I didn’t move as my mind went a million miles a second. Did I shut the door all of the way? I heard a knock. Panic ran through my body again. Was this John coming back for me? Was this Alex?

“Hey, where is everybody?” I heard a man’s voice ask. It was Brandy’s dad. Now someone comes to check on us. Everyone had moved downstairs and out into the driveway. “Everyone’s outside,” I said meekly. Brandy’s dad’s footsteps moved back into the hallway and I heard him make his way downstairs. I wonder if he wondered why I was alone while everyone was outside. I wonder if, to this day, he asks himself what really happened that night.

Photo by Gamma Haqqul on Unsplash

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