The Education of a 'Good Girl' [1/3]

Part 1: Eve’s Exile

Content warning: This piece contains descriptions of sexual assault, rape, and rape fantasy. Part one of a three-part series exploring consent, sexual assault, desire, and healing.

You and I alone
Far away from home
Into the great unknown
Hand in hand we roam
Apple from the tree
Give a taste to me

"Before I Fall" – Latch Key Kid

Biting the Apple

I met the freshman I’d later lose my virginity to in my very first week on campus. I'm almost embarrassed to tell this story because it highlights a truly staggering level of shelteredness. But you, dear readers, deserve the truth.

My first ever kiss took place on a makeshift playground that other students had built on campus. The wooden structure stood firm against my back as he leaned down to kiss me. We kissed more on a bench outside his dorm, autumn leaves drifting into place around us. When he invited me back to his dorm room—a quad that he must have somehow sexiled his roommates from—I agreed, in part because I wasn’t super comfortable with him fingering me on the public bench. Sitting on the couch in the middle of his dorm room, I was nervous. Thanks to an aggressively sheltered upbringing, I was armed with only the most basic understanding of what might happen next.

He asked me for a blow job, and I quite literally thought I was supposed to blow on it. With some coaching, I survived the most reluctant and halfhearted BJ of my life.

We were both virgins, and it was clear he wanted to have sex with me. As a good Catholic girl, I knew it would be better to have sex with someone who was my boyfriend rather than a near stranger. I therefore told him, "I don't feel comfortable having sex with you unless you are my boyfriend." He quickly declared me his girlfriend. Looking back, I wish I'd had even the most basic sex education beyond the clinical definitions, and a bit more healthy skepticism of the sincerity of horny freshmen boys.

What followed was the kind of awkward first-time experience that only two virgins can have. I experienced it more as a third-party observer, too disconnected from my body to access much pleasure. He came, I came nowhere close. Later that night, back in my single, I went deep on the incognito searches, determined to be at least passably capable of giving a blowjob the next time it came up.

We probably had sex one more time before he told me he didn't actually want to be in a relationship. I was more upset by feeling like he'd lied in order to sleep with me than I was at actually losing him. I'd maintained my plausible deniability that I was not a slut, but learned this was a bad strategy for getting a real boyfriend.

Slut Genesis

As you may have noticed in the above anecdote, I was not always comfortable with being openly slutty, and was raised to be very much the opposite. My skepticism of Catholicism and my skepticism of purity culture went hand in hand, yet breaking free was a fraught process. I could write a whole different story about how my Catholic guilt around sex blocked my ability to orgasm with partners for years and probably resulted in my non-consent kinks. But for now, let’s get back to campus and to the 18-year-old who had just discovered Urban Dictionary and was determined to eclipse her high school days of not being invited to prom.

While my slut career is now in full swing, there were some false starts. I tried to meet boys the way many college girls do—attending loud frat parties, hoping certain men would make moves on me in person. I was at a nerd school, which made this a frustratingly slow process. I wasn't making things any easier on these men, having yet to figure out how to make myself approachable or signal interest.

While I did have a couple of hookups that started this way, none were remarkable. Sex was underwhelming relative to the hype. Plus, what I really wanted at that point was a Boyfriend, and I was rapidly losing hope that frat parties would deliver on that front.

My slut career truly began in the winter of my sophomore year. Trapped inside my dorm room by a raging snowstorm, my roommate and both downloaded Tinder. That was the start of a decade-long love-hate relationship with dating apps.

My roommate and I would compare our matches and the openers they sent us. One time, we realized we'd matched with the same guy within minutes. Being inexperienced sluts, we didn't realize this was a prime opportunity to orchestrate a threesome. Instead, we decided to troll him. He had sent us both the same opener so we sent him identical, increasingly weird replies until he caught on to our game.

Despite downloading Tinder primarily as a joke, I soon recognized its power. I could match with, chat with, and be asked on a first date by almost any guy I wanted. This strange reckoning with desirability would gradually overhaul my self-conception. But of course, there were also some bumps along the way.

The Serpent

The first such bump was my very first Tinder date. He was a classical guitar masters student, complete with long fingernails on his right hand. He was handsome, and polished looking, and about six years older than me. We met at a coffee shop near his apartment—he drank coffee while I sipped hot chocolate, still too young for a caffeine habit.

After small talk, he invited me to his place to listen to him play guitar. I politely declined, citing hunger. He persisted, offering to buy me dinner if I stayed. I felt slightly uneasy but agreed, and he guided me to a nearby burrito spot. I tried to eat quickly while he waited, having ordered nothing for himself.

What happened next would haunt me for years.

I followed him back to his studio, naively expecting him to actually play guitar for me. He did not. Upon arriving in his room, I found myself seated on his bed. He was kissing me, and I was surprised by how quickly it had escalated. As he rapidly transitioned to removing my clothes, it was dawning on me that he was expecting sex right then and there.

I started freezing up. I forget how much I actually verbally protested. But I will never forget the chill I felt when I asked him directly to wear a condom. I know he heard me because he said "I can't do that" followed by my name. He then proceeded like nothing had happened.

I was stunned. This was pre-Me Too. The concept of date rape wasn't in my mental model. Health class had taught me to use condoms and even how to decline sex. But in all the roleplays of how you can turn down sex, the other party had readily agreed. We'd never been taught what to do if he refuses to stop, refuses to put on a condom.

In that era, before Me Too brought sexual assault into mainstream conversation, I lacked the vocabulary to fully process what had happened until it was too late. I think if I had known this could happen, I may have been prepared to fight back.

Instead, I shut myself down as much as possible. I waited for it to be over. When he asked me if he should come inside my pussy or in my mouth, I said mouth. I wasn't on birth control yet. I waited while he made pillow talk afterwards, playing along but feeling dazed. I waited until I deemed it was socially acceptable to excuse myself and then I left, hurrying back across the bridge to cry in my dorm room.

Looking back it frustrates me to no end how concerned I was with observing social niceties to avoid making my rapist feel bad.

Exile From Eden

He called me days later to invite me to the symphony. I was baffled. Did he not know? I declined politely. He called again weeks later. I was outside, trudging through melting snow between classes. He told me he had tested positive for chlamydia. "But don't worry," he reassured me. "I am pretty sure it was from someone after you."

I figured out how to get myself STI tested on campus. Thankfully, everything was negative. I deleted his number off my phone. I have an epicly bad memory for names. But I still remember his. I googled him again while writing this, and watched videos of him playing guitar on his Instagram. He is still my type, physically anyways.

This violation haunted me for years. It had been so callous and so casual. Why hadn't I fought back? Why did I put myself in that situation? Why did I let him come in my mouth? Why didn't I say "neither"? Why did he care enough to inform me of the STI risk afterwards, but not enough to wear a condom when I asked? What was wrong with me? Should I try to report it somewhere, so he doesn’t do it again? Should I confront him?

It was wholly bad, it was not sexy during, it is not sexy in memory, it was devastating. It felt like paradise lost. My trusting innocence was marred. I was locked out of the garden, alone, and confused. Part of me knew that exploring my sexuality was normal and good, but part of me wished I had never downloaded Tinder.

For years afterwards, I felt I couldn’t talk to anyone about it, lest they see me as irresponsible, slut, victim. It took me ages to forgive myself. It took therapy, it took art, it took journaling, and crying to sad songs. It took years of good men who rebuilt my trust. It took finally telling my parents and friends about what happened, years later.

Fast forward ten years. My current boyfriend started playing classical guitar, complete with grown out fingernails on one hand. Ten years post-rape, feeling his long fingernails against my skin triggered flashbacks. He got to join the list of men who’ve held me while I cried about that trauma.

Forbidden Fruits

One might think such a first experience on Tinder would have led to a long hiatus from dating apps, but paradoxically, I ramped up usage. Maybe I was seeking distraction after the assault, maybe I was still chasing that elusive boyfriend.

I had learned I should not go back to a man's place with him unless I was certain I wanted to sleep with him. I steered first dates toward casual daytime encounters, so that I would have more time to assess each potential partner.

Most of the Tinder dates from that period have faded into a blur of ice cream shops and forgettable conversations. But one stands out all these years later.

I forget where we met for the date. My memory says "bar," but I was underage and certainly not cool enough to have a fake ID, so I'm not really sure. In retrospect, he was probably using PUA (pick up artist) techniques, but I was still too naive to recognize the signs. Breaking my own first-date rule, I went home with him despite a lack of any signal that he intended to date me seriously.

He moved quickly to sex, but unlike the guitarist, he used condoms without argument. When he wrapped his hands around my throat, I didn't know that choking required negotiation and consent—this was still pre-Me Too era. And I was too aroused to care. He tossed me around, ordered me around, gagged me with my own wet panties. Each command and confident touch tapped into something core to my sexuality.

I saw him several more times before an incident finally made me walk away. He “accidentally” shoved his dick in the wrong hole, hard, without warning. When I cried out in pain, he barely apologized. At the time, I didn't classify any of his behavior as assault. I can't remember his name now, but that wasn’t important. The important part was that I had tasted the forbidden fruit of dominant sex and I was not about to forget it anytime soon.

Balancing Temptation

My next notable Tinder find was a nice senior boy at my school, who treated me very well, and became my first real boyfriend. Unfortunately, he bored me out of my mind sexually. Still, he was actually interested in me as a human, and he was quite tall, and smart—double majoring in math and physics. We spent much of spring semester together, happily monogamous. Then he dumped me after his graduation, in accordance with the traditional ritual of going off to grad school.

That summer, I had my first hot girl summer. If finding more dominant sex was going to require swiping through half of Tinder, I was up for the challenge. I probably spent more time on dates than on the research I was supposedly doing, but my advisor hardly seemed to notice. And it paid off. I met another guy who made sex exciting. I don’t think “situationship” was in the lexicon yet, but that would probably be the best way to describe our dynamic. I was hoping he’d want to date me, but he made no moves in that direction.

I was beginning to fear I was facing an impossible choice: between guys I actually enjoyed sleeping with, and guys who actually wanted to date me. I was left wondering if “eating the apple” (discovering dominant sex) was sort of an infohazard. I feared I would only be able to have what I wanted sexually if I made serious compromises relationally. Little did I know, this false dichotomy would shape my relationships for years to come.

Having been kicked out of the garden, I was making fumbling efforts towards the Promised Land. My interest in sex and relationships was coming into focus, as was my resolve to stop getting dumped. I was starting to notice a tendency to let romance dominate my priorities, and resolved that I would continue to carve out time for my studies, family, and friends. I was looking forward to my year abroad, and in particular to basking in sexy British accents.

Would I find a British boyfriend? What would a year abroad do to my body count? Stay tuned for those answers and more in Part 2: Pandora’s Prying.