Backstory

So the most pathetic chapter of my life thus far begins in late January of 2016… When I lost my virginity to a one night stand, which was mediocre at best and something I chose to do because I did not want to become a 26-year-old virgin. Before this I’d never been kissed, never been flirted with, never even had a crush on anyone, absolutely nothing.

Technically I did have one kiss once — when I was around 6 or 7 years old — with a childhood friend of mine who’d agreed to be my “boyfriend” and who I’d convinced we should try French kissing because it was in all the movies. It wasn’t real in the sense that it was neither sexual nor romantic, just innocent kids copying what they’d seen on the big screen… so I don’t really count that.

As a teenager and young adult there were a handful of people who seemed to be attracted to me (or who I was told liked me) but none of them ever made a move. Maybe that’s my fault for being too shy and naive, for not touching them and not making eye contact because I didn’t realize that avoiding those things were because I’m autistic or that those things were necessary for successful flirting.

Anyway, the one night stand where l lost my virginity; there are much worse “first time” stories but I did not enjoy my initial foray into intercourse. The man it was with was far less attractive offline both in personality and physically but it could have been much, much worse. He was a 35-year old guitarist using pictures that were most certainly a decade old. He failed to bring a condom but didn’t tell me that until after feeling me up and shoving his cock in my mouth without asking – the first time I’d ever seen one up close in person or “given” a blowjob, though he said it was the best he’d ever had with what seemed to be spontaneous sincerity – and I wanted to kick him out. Would have, if it had been the kind of thing I could’ve contemplated for a few moments beyond not wanting to have only gone half way and still been stuck a virgin, so instead I blurted out that I had condoms and proceeded to direct him to where they were stored. After sex he expected another blowjob and he first began angling his anus upward in an gesture that was unmistakable even to my naive and inexperienced self, but I ignored it because I find the concept of analingus to be a major turnoff (only thing worse to me personally is degradation – no judgement against people who like those things consensually). Then he expressed delight at my ability to deepthroat whilst holding my head down so I couldn’t move, at which point I puked on his dick. He wanted to cuddle which I found creepy and suffocating. Then he slept in my bed for two hours while I drew a collage and watched Netflix with headphones on (after bathing in boiling water with a liberal amount of teatree oil).

Not long after that is when I met an enchanting young man, two years my junior and an inch shorter than I am – he had a vibrant energy and an air about him that was inescapable. We had texted daily over a few weeks (long and detailed messages). He is the only other human being I had ever encountered whose vocabulary could thrill me and up until that point an articulate compatriot was something I didn’t think could exist in another real live person — certainly not one where there seemed to be mutual attraction. He studied as an audio  engineer and made ethereal modern beats that eventually I begun to hope could accompany my singing. And he took complete control smoothly and seamlessly; admirably decisive while remaining deeply considerate and maintaining a sense of wonder and amusement. Or so it seemed at the time. He had the most gentle touch but with zero hesitation — and since I am both physically hypersensitive and have a history of being beaten as a child I had never encountered a situation where being touched even casually and/or briefly didn’t make me feel intense psychosomatic pain. At that time, he was the only person whose touch had never hurt. So of course I was instantly head over heels and it truly seemed like he was, too – he messaged me every single day, all day, every couple of hours for months on end.

We met once to share a couple of joints (a habit I have since quit) over which he told me things about his past that according to him he had never spoken about with another person and we got on wonderfully, but I was just getting over a brief tonsillitis that had lasted 4 days so nothing physical happened.

We arranged to meet two days later  and he began the interaction by bringing out a bottle of body oil… It was half empty and the label was curling off but I didn’t have many seconds to think about that before he was taking off his shirt and asking me to rub him down, which I did to his chest, back and arms both nervously and excitedly. Then he stood behind me and took off my dress and panties, then slid slick hands over my breasts and buttocks and between my legs before spinning me around to face his eager expression, at which time he enthusiastically asked if I’d ever been eaten out, knowing the answer was no because I’d told him that – in that instant I realized I had also told him I was a virgin who’d never been kissed or even held hands with anyone because not one person had ever expressed interest in me and I wanted to explain that only the first of those things had changed since we started communicating but before I could he proceeded to do so (eat me out) in short order and long form. After a few minutes of pure ecstasy the likes of which I had never encountered before – he took a break to check on my hyperventilating and I took the opportunity to reach out asking if it was my turn to return the favour with fellatio, but he wouldn’t let me touch him though he did mention that my moans were really turning him on.

Instead he pulled me into a standing position so we were both right in front of the uncurtained window fully visible to any potential passersby below. I bit his neck and he ran his hands all over my body, slowly caressing my breasts before bending down to suck on one of them for a moment or two. He then directed me to lay on my back spread eagle and kneeling between my thighs he placed delicate kisses up the length of my right leg. This is the point at which he pulled out a condom and put it on. But it fell right off as did the next two he put on – at the time I wasn’t cognizant enough to realize that it was because his penis was too small for them, so when he reluctantly uttered that it wasn’t working and three had fallen off I unhelpfully responded that while I wasn’t on birth control I did have more condoms he could use. 

He brushed that off immediately and instead pinned me down to the bed, proceeding to take my nipple into his mouth and slipping two fingers up and in to press and pump my gspot. I reached down to wrap my hand around his member and felt it expand as I gripped and rubbed his shaft. Whilst digging his fingers deeper inside of me I could feel the heated airspace between our genitals; fully conscious of how close the tip of his unsheathed penis was to the entrance of my vagina (and in that moment I remembered that precum was a thing which could impregnate me and somehow just didn’t care) whence my fervent moaning took on a lower more urgent tone and he clamped a hand over my mouth to muffle the sound that was reverberating off my wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling windows and echoing throughout the paper-thin building material which had turned the top floor of an old hotel from a restaurant to a series of small apartments… But I couldn’t breathe like that so I sucked his fingers into my mouth and continued moaning. Soonafter he took another break and joked about putting a pillow over my head because I was so loud. I found and drained a bottle of water that had been standing nearby and that was the end of that. We smoked a small joint together, he professed a desire to see me again very soon and confessed that he didn’t want to seem too enthusiastic, beaming all the while.

At the door, I performed a rap for him, with which he seemed very impressed and later with a sly smile said he didn’t want to say I was better than his brother (with whom he was currently creating a hip-hop album) and he went home. 

It wasn’t long before he was texting me like clockwork every morning and every day, every few hours, talking to me about how he was planning to raise his future kids, nor before his father was getting teary-eyed telling me how much he wanted grandchildren. It was weird and surreal on so many levels…

I saw him three days later when he invited me to his house to watch a movie and meet his family. It was somewhere around this point that he told me he was initially drawn to me because of the sadness in my eyes — and I didn’t see that as a red flag.

Later on, after he started gaslighting me and vascillating back and forth between feeling me up and telling me he had never been attracted to me, I asked why he had swiped right on Tinder if he had truly thought I was so unattractive right from the get-go, let alone kept up such close contact for eight months while it was obvious I was falling for him. His answer was that my colourful hair made me seem interesting and that it was my fault he stuck around because I truly was fascinating to him, because according to him “other women are all so shallow and dumb” (verbatim). Funny thing is, I almost swiped left on him. I was a split-second away from letting his profile go to the “no thanks” pile but I stopped and changed my mind because I thought “oh he’s not that bad” and I shouldn’t be so picky. Protip: be picky.

Anyway, backing up before that conversation: on our fourth meeting we went to the quay and strolled along the promenade, shared matcha green tea and he attempted to teach me to longboard, bending and kissing my hand after walking me home (a gesture he repeated many times between alternating  bouts of telling me I wasn’t attractive and blatantly seducing me). 

Then I asked him to accompany me to “Taboo” which is an adult convention in Vancouver. I also suggested that since I was overwhelmed by crowds and fluorescent lighting and such that it might be a good idea to have sex first and “fuck my anxiety into a relaxed submission,” so-to-speak. The event was on Friday February 5th and he worked nearby the location so we agreed to meet downtown the day of so he should come over the Thursday night prior and then I would bus West to meet him there the following evening.

When he arrived on the 4th he brought oil again and I gave him a proper massage, actually kneading his muscles this time. First he was extremely eager to suck on my nipples and we laughed about how they were more than a handful and how he didn’t want to get oil all over his face. He lay face down as I straddled his back to massage him and he reached up to grab my wrists and pull me down and forward, manipulating my body so he was rubbing my breasts all over his back. I moaned softly and he quickly rolled over on top of me and turned me so I was face down and he was straddling my back. Then he massaged me swiftly and expertly and my voice became deeper as I continued to moan with increased frequency. He stopped abruptly and stood up to bend me over, next biting my inner thighs gently as he fingered me. Then he rubbed his penis all over my backside before he penetrated me with it (vaginally) and pumped for a little less than a minute whence he gripped my hips tighter and held me closer to him — and then blurted a lie saying the condom broke rushing to my restroom. He left rather quickly after that. 

As I was commuting downtown to meet him the next day, he texted to tell me he didn’t want our relations to only be based on sex – I did get scared for a second that meant he didn’t want me, but the key word was ‘only’ and once there he wanted to pretend that we were married to get up on stage and mime sex positions in a competition (only open to married couples, he said we should pretend we just came from a spontaneous trip to the courthouse and that was why we didn’t have rings) to win a two-week vacation to an all-inclusive and clothing-optional resort in the Mayan Riviera. I hesitated purely because I don’t like lying and then it was too late for him to convince me to join in anyway, it had already started without us.

He kept his hand on the small of my back for most of the night and displayed enthusiasm for many of the booths (not all of which were sexual but most were) and we walked arm in arm after, but the next day he explained that he did not like my body at all and never had and that we could only be friends because he had recently cut his first love out of his life for his own good. So I reluctantly agreed to try platonic friendship, because despite that strange 180 he had thus far been the smartest, strongest and kindest person I had ever met and I did hope that he just needed time and space because all of his actions and words made it seem like he was very attracted to me and that was just an excuse to create distance but I also seriously tried to keep things platonic, which he never adhered to… upon hanging out he continued to put his hand on the small of my back and say that I looked good while ogling me with obvious longing and make deliberately sexual comments and touch me in ways that were not platonic at all and I mentioned it many times that if we were supposed to be just friends that he shouldn’t be doing those things because it wasn’t fair to lead me on.

In March I mentioned innocently that I had a tendency to roll tight joints that sometimes didn’t burn well for that reason, and he made a comment about how he knew how tight I was in other areas. And I ignored it because we were supposed to be “just friends” so of course he made it again the next time we were together (which was days later because we spent time together at least two times a week) clearly goading me on with a sly smirk, eyes glancing up and down my body. 

I spent time getting to know his family. He texted me every morning like clockwork and all day long every day. He sent me shirtless selfies (which I told him he shouldn’t do unless he wanted to be more than friends and he continued to do it) and we talked about things like my penchant for baking stark naked and I even suggested the possibility of me sucking his dick just to see where things went from there but he never let me. I would spend hours sitting in his living room or bedroom reading books or knitting while he worked on music producing, in between which we would stroll around the neighbourhood or share a bite to eat, sometimes with his brother and his father. 

In April there was an incident where I had mentioned not having any pockets in which to store a lighter and he joked that I should carry it in my cleavage. I asserted that besides it being an impractical concept (because it would fall out sooner or later) that it was inappropriate to tease me about let alone stare at my boobs as constantly as he did. But he didn’t drop it and jokingly asked if I was sure I didn’t want to store his lighter there instead of returning it to his pocket a few more times, at least one of those caused me to visibly tear up because I was already starting to break from the confusion of his vascillation. I think seeing that turned him on, because he got visibly more excited about it after that, all wiggly like a puppy waiting to go outside and play. But I only made that connection between my pain and his pleasure in retrospect after it was FAR, FAR too late.

At the end of the evening he walked me home and we stopped in an alleyway to smoke a bit – he asked one more time so I complied and put it between my tits before staring him down. He said “you know that means I’m going to have to come get it now” and smirked and sauntered over to me, placing his hands on my breasts, cupping them and slowly rubbing in tantalizing drawn-out circles. My knees started to get weak and I couldn’t suppress a moan any longer so instead I said “ohhkay, you’ve gotta stop.” And he did, immediately, and stepped away and audibly chided himself for groping me. Then he walked me the rest of the way to my apartment where he hugged me so tight and long that my legs began to feel like jelly and I looked at him and we both knew we both wanted him to come up, but he turned and walked away as quickly as he could without a word and I could barely take a few steps to get in to the elevator without collapsing. The next morning I texted to say that I hadn’t really wanted him to stop and he should’ve come upstairs and he agreed that he should have kept going and he should’ve come up to my apartment. 

A month of ignoring what had happened went by (still texting daily and hanging out at least once a week) before I got up the courage and asked why we weren’t pursuing the blatantly unmistakable mutual chemistry between us. And he told me that he had never been attracted to me at all, that he could never see me like that. I asked if he saw me like a sister then and he first looked at my tits for a second and then said “ew, no, of course not!” He’d expressed disdain for his sister in the past and the discussion moved towards him blaming his mother’s death when he was seven on him being fucked up and cold and dissociative. But the problem was that he wasn’t cold, he was blazing hot when he was around me and backing off and denying it at the last minute didn’t change the fire I was sure we both felt. Then he left me sobbing in the middle of a parking lot at midnight. The only reason I made it back inside to my apartment was to try and commit suicide – but as I sat there in the middle of the attempt at swallowing a bottle of pills he texted to reassure me that he cared and we would talk later. My mother’s birthday was also only a few days away and I didn’t want her to show up and find me dead so I stopped.

One week later I went to his house to make pizza from scratch and while my hands were covered in dough he came up close behind me and slid his body over to feed me pineapple, putting his hands to my lips and cupping my face so the juice wouldn’t run down my chin. After which we continued to be distracted by eachother laughing and flirting and ended up burning the pizza. That night his father and I had a moment alone and for the second time out of four total, he got all teary-eyed telling me how much he wanted grandkids – which is strange because according to the son, he had told his dad that we weren’t dating, weren’t having sex and that he wasn’t even attracted to me. 

One month after that I suggested we go see the Picasso exhibit at the museum and he wholeheartedly agreed to what was obviously supposed to be an official date. But the day before he asked if he could invite his brother and changed the dynamic – and we didn’t even go in because the line was so long that he got frustrated and didn’t want to wait. We stopped to try and order food but he got frustrated with the wait for that, too, and we also left, but as we were sitting at the restaurant waiting to order a homeless man on the street had sketched a picture of the three of us which he wanted to give to us in the hope of getting some monetary help (at this point I really didn’t need a reminder of my time with this guy but I would’ve given the man something if I had any cash – of course asshole rudely waved him away) and the drawing clearly showed us as a couple sitting close with love hearts – just further “proof” (for me, anyway) that I and my mother (who had met him a few times) weren’t the only ones who thought he looked at me with longing and hovered close to me like we were magnets orbiting eachother. 

The next morning he sent me a message on Snapchat. I touched the screen the wrong way and it disappeared so I didn’t get to read it. Thinking it was just the same regular good morning and term of endearment (every day he called me “my girl” and “m’lady”) and inquiry into how I was doing that he sent me every single day since we met (the only one exception was Valentine’s day, on which he was suspiciously silent) I replied pleasantly and mentioned that I hadn’t seen the message. He responded back “oh it was nothing, I just said that I have a girlfriend now but that shouldn’t effect our friendship.”

It was like being hit by a meteor. 

I told him that I was afraid of being alone and hurting myself so he came over that same evening and I asked a few questions. He said that he had only met her two weeks prior and that she had asked him out so he felt obligated to say yes. He clearly did his best to make it seem like it wasn’t his choice or his fault, like he was forced into it or something. He said he wanted to help so I suggested using a connection he’d proposed some time back to acquire LSD so we could take a trip together because it’s a substance with a reputation for not only altering minds but healing them from trauma. 

So we arranged it for the end of July and agreed to radio silence afterward for a period of two weeks, which was more than triple the amount of time we’d ever gone without seeing eachother – let alone texting. The night before we were supposed to take LSD he almost canceled, citing the fact that his girlfriend was angry about it but said that he would probably go through with it anyway because he didn’t like to go back on his word (which is ridiculous because he made direct promises to me and used the words “I promise” that he later broke – teaching me chess was one frivolous example).

During the trip neither of us experienced hallucinations or a substantial change. He didn’t take his eyes off me though and had to pull his hand back a few times from his habitual gestures – something he’d never done up until that point and never did after (even though he had a girlfriend), he always just put his hands all over me with no hesitation even though he’d been told many times how it made me feel.

He talked about how he’d broken both his wrists mountainbiking and how he used to get into fights a lot and used to drink heavily (none of which was news, but he went into more detail). Also he couldn’t resist indirectly revealing his rape fantasy twice but he avoided touching me for the first time in the six months I’d known him… Until the end of the evening that is – we had met up with his brother and the three of us broke in to a petting zoo around midnight to see the animals and were cooing at a gazebo full of kittens when some cars drove by and we all ducked down out of sight… Crouching in the dirt, he made intense eye contact and inched closer to me, spread his legs wide so that the knuckles of his hand which were resting on his knee pressed into my bare thigh and very carefully, very obviously watched my bosom begin to heave as my breathing got deeper and faster from the arousal he knew his touch instigated within me. 

Then we hung out at my place for a while and when they got ready to leave, his brother stepped out around the corner to give us a moment alone and he hugged me longer and tighter than ever before – which is really saying something – and whispered in my ear to please let him know how I felt after this evening and that he had some insights he’d like to share with me after the two weeks was over. He never did share whatever insights he was referring to with me.

[During that two week break – which didn’t even last a full two weeks – I went from zero to ten tattoos and got anther twelve the following month. I’d always hesitated to pick just one thing but realized it didn’t have to be one it could be many and I liked the balance of having little ones all over. Of course he told me right away that they were badass and directly said they were arousing (this was despite him still having a girlfriend although at the time I wasn’t certain they were still a thing because he hadn’t mentioned her once).

When it was time to reconvene and we met up again he came to a small local show to see my paintings exhibited and he was armed with compliments and bedroom eyes and got all bouncy and excited when we both happened to be simultaneously reading a collage of poetry about BDSM done by another artist and eagerly asked me if I had liked it. He walked me home and came upstairs to share a cup of tea but once inside changed his mind; he made a very obviously fake excuse to say he had to meet his brother downhill at the skytrain… If I hadn’t already known he was lying through his teeth that was easily proven when he exited my apartment and went raging up the hill towards his house in the opposite direction from the station he’d claimed to be headed for.

Next visit after that he took off his shirt and beckoned me closer to get a good look at some of his new tattoo work (he had a sleeve that was incomplete) and I asked if I could go watch him get it finished at his next appointment on September 17th. He very happily said yes.

In the meantime we hung out on a couple of occasions and he continued Snapchatting me every day all day every few hours. 

One night he invited me over and we watched Empire Strikes Back while laying on the floor together in close quarters underneath his desk. It was quite obvious that he couldn’t take his eyes off my fishnets all night. But he also pronounced my name wrong (and not for the first time) even after almost a year of talking, texting every day and hanging out so often. I’d corrected him before so for a long time I thought I just wasn’t important enough to him to be worth remembering but now in hindsight I know he was doing it deliberately to make me feel that precise way.

That night he also kept getting texts that made him frown and grumble every twenty minutes or so – it was pretty obvious it was his girlfriend but when I repeatedly (sweetly) offered to go home and leave him to deal with “whatever was going on” he just got angrier and said I shouldn’t have to do that and that he wanted me there.

It had been almost two months since taking acid and he hadn’t openly mentioned a girlfriend once. I really did suspect it was her he was texting and that they were still together but it also really seemed like it was failing to work out with them. Again, all things he orchestrated to purposefully make me feel doubt, fear and unworthiness.

He came to my apartment to share some fresh homemade sangria and cocaine with my mom and I – another night spent frowning at his phone and claiming it wasn’t anything important when asked nicely. After a few hours and another text he stood, groaning, and claimed he had to meet his brother, leaving in an air of infuriation. 

It wasn’t the first time my mom had observed us together and when he left she commented about how he followed me around like a puppy, how his eyes were glued to me, etcetera – and even though she’s not the most reliable witness, his father had made similar comments to me (and he admitted his dad had made at least one to him when I wasn’t present) and there were a couple of strangers like clerks and cashiers who also assumed we were a couple. I can’t believe it was all in my head like he insisted it was at the end.

Another night he invited me over to record my voice for a project he was doing at work but he was late and noticeably drunk, both things were for the first time ever since I’d met him. He talked about having anger that made him want to murder people. He said he fantasized about jumping someone in an alley and slitting their throat so he could watch the light drain from their eyes (and added an “oh but never to you, just to some random drone”) … And a little later that evening he turned to look at me, as I was laying in his bed wearing neither bra nor panties underneath the thin romper I had on as it was a persistently balmy evening, and he looked like a hungry wolf or a wild stallion with a bit in his mouth — and in almost the same breath as he had been discussing violent brutality he quietly cursed himself for “thinking about things he shouldn’t.” I innocently thought he meant more homicidal tendencies and so I asked what he was referring to. And he looked back at me and up and down my body with that same urgency and said he was thinking about sex. And I wondered then if he had finally broken things off with the girlfriend and was maybe ready to face the truth about his attraction to me, but I kept silent because I didn’t want to push things in any direction.

Then we went outside to smoke the joint he had been rolling and he had a violent outburst kicking and breaking a cinderblock because he stubbed his toe on it, after which he got into an argument with his brother about said cinderblock (but clearly about much more), leaving the two of us to smoke alone in the shadows without his trusty third wheel and then sat as close to me as possible, touching the whole length of his body to mine, side-by-side, and barely spoke or barely took his eyes off my legs for the rest of the night.

Then the 17th came up and the morning of I asked him when and where we should meet since I was supposed to accompany him to his tattoo appointment. But he stood me up and didn’t answer until hours later – offering “sincere apologies” because his girlfriend had “insisted” that she come last minute. At which point I realized how much I’d been hoping that it hadn’t lasted between them.

A few days later he came to visit me because I confessed to him that the revelation that they were still together had sent me spiraling into a second suicide attempt. I sliced just one of my wrists as deep as I could in an X or cross over my left radial artery on the 17th and when I saw him later the following week I called him out on what he had been doing; teasing me and leading me on for so long. And he made it all the worse by claiming that he had only ever treated me like a platonic friend and insisting that I was exaggerating all the examples I gave and said that it was all in my head. He did typical “liar moves” like nodding his head yes while he said no (and vice versa, shaking it no when he said yes) and creating physical distance between us, first moving his chair to the far end of the table, then getting up and standing behind the chair, getting up and pacing, etcetera.

I told him I loved him and just like Han Solo he replied “I know.” That at least was true to form, but of course I had to push it; I pointed out that he had to have known I was falling in love with him months ago and he could only concede vague suspicion – and I accused him of loving me back and he did agree, but quickly qualified that it was never romantic… 

I asked if he treated all his friends like that, putting his arm around them and hands on their thighs and staring at their bodies and making sexual innuendos all the time – he said he was just being gentle and reassuring because he knew I was damaged. I asked if he’d do that to his brother or another male friend, he said of course not. He said he guessed he had been too intimate with me because we had slept together before. I asked if he did that with every female friend he’d ever had and he said yes of course and I asked if he’d slept with them all and he tried to look bashful which was ruined by a wolfish grin when he said yes — then I asked if he was still friends with any of them and then he truly did look ashamed when he whispered “no.” Although to be clear, I don’t actually believe he felt shame or remorse, he was just aware of how bad he’d have looked if he didn’t at least try to hang his head.

When I mentioned the “lighter incident” and how he had agreed the next morning that he shouldn’t have stopped and should have come up, he nonsensically blamed it on being high on marijuana – something we both smoked every single day in large quantities and had built up resistances, neither of us ever expressed high behaviour like people who don’t smoke often do. He blamed another incident on being intoxicated from having one single drink – also complete bullshit.

Despite being far too familiar with gaslighting from years of growing up being subjected to such subtle (nevermind more blatant) abuse by multiple relatives, it still crushed me and completely shattered my heart.

How could I ever trust anyone again? How could I trust even my own instincts again? I fell for it, for him. My first love was a complete monster.

So that night, the last time he willingly chose to see me in person, September 22 on the autumnal equinox, I tried to commit suicide for the third time that year. I combined two full bottles of hard liquor with nearly four grams of cocaine, a bottle of extra strength aspirin, about a hundred micrograms of ativan and tried to slit both of my radial arteries. But I only went one inch deep and two is necessary. It did nothing but make me nauseous and tired for a few hours.

At first he said he didn’t want me to kill myself because he preferred having me in his life, but after calling him out directly about leading me on like that so blatantly for so long and how he must’ve known better, he started saying he understood if that’s what I wanted to do and when I asked him to “help me move on” he agreed to come and “hold my hands steady” while I did it and he had the same excitement in his eyes as he did when he talked about jumping strangers to slit their throats. A part of me still wishes he had just killed me.

The next day, unaware that I had tried without the help he’d agreed to lend, he texted an answer to an earlier message of mine about his promise that we’d get together soon to rehash the recent turmoil with “we’ll see things through one way or another.” But then that was the last I heard of him for a month. 

I did tell my mom about his offer to “help” after the fact and discussed with her how that was far more sick than my own morbidity. We even speculated about testing it, like if she could have come over first and hid in closet, what would we do if he really followed through on “holding” the weapon for me while the deed was done? But of course none of that ever happened, because all he needed from me was to know I’d have let him.

I tried texting a few times but he ignored me. The last time I opened Snapchat before deleting it for good (along with all of my social media) was on thanksgiving; I saw he’d posted a picture of his girlfriend. I saw that she was tiny and short (unlike me, I’m 5.7″ and fat as fuck) and that she also looked almost identical to his older sister (in fact, I had to do a double-take to make sure it wasn’t her) which is particularly Oedipal since his mother died of cancer when he was seven and thus his sister (whom he’d previously expressed a vicious distaste for) was probably the closest thing in his life to a mother figure especially since he’d mentioned that his alcoholic dad had blamed him for his mother’s death (she’d refused chemo because she was pregnant with him) and that he hadn’t gotten a chance to know his younger brother until the last two years (before meeting me) after separating from the family. When I saw that picture I fell to my knees in relief because I knew the kind of women he followed on Instagram (and jerked off to) were “suicide girls” (ironic how guys love them but can’t handle one who’s actually suicidal) and looked much more like me (at least in style; big blue eyes, big boobs, dyed hair, piercings and tattoos) than the plain and petite girl he was dating so I foolishly still thought it could never last. But of course he stayed with her for over a year after that and did so treating her better than he ever did me (at least it appeared like that, but “behind closed doors” and all it could’ve been much worse), regardless of whether they were/are happy or not, so there was never anything to be thankful for on any level – except maybe that I escaped alive, but it doesn’t often feel like that.

Then on my birthday (October 28th) he responded to a question about whether we’d ever see eachother again to say merely “closure is only fair” so I said okay, pick a time and place to say goodbye face-to-face. No response. 

In November I gave him my piano keyboard because he’d always liked it and it was better than the one he was using to make music at the time. I left it on his doorstep with a note quoting the Bhagavad Gita (a book he kept in his bedroom, and which I really loved reading) that said “there is action within inaction and inaction within action.” 

A few weeks later I texted him to say that I was planning to sit on his porch that evening to receive the closure he said was only fair and that if he simply texted back and told me not to come, I wouldn’t. He didn’t answer though, so I went there. When I knocked the curtains fluttered but he wouldn’t open the door. Instead he texted to say that he would return the gift I gave him if it was just a bribe to make him talk, I said it wasn’t and that I wanted him to keep it. He responded back to a quip I made about “Schrödinger’s closure” to say that he thought “distance was best,” but “just for right now.”

Three weeks later I tried phoning him and we talked for over an hour. It was actually the first time we’d ever spoken on the phone. He described the situation as trying to pet a tiger with sharp claws but  more than once assured me that “right now” did not mean forever. That was December 19th, then on Christmas he texted unexpectedly to wish me a “happy Santa Claus day.” His birthday is on December 30th and I delivered a bunch of presents to his doorstop that day; one of which was an expensive prototype off kickstarter called “Nervana” that played music and stimulated the vagus nerve, many of which were antique family heirlooms he had expressed a fondness for (ivory Buddha, vintage iron flare gun, etc), plus some hand-crafted things. He texted to say he’d only opened the perishable food I’d baked for him (banana bread, scones and muffins – the latter two being what he’d told me were his favourites) but he would get to the other things eventually. 

I was a pathetic stalker, leaving letters and gifts and I never thought any of that would make him want me, I was doing it more to provoke a reaction and get him to tell me to fuck off and leave him alone so I could have closure. I asked multiple times for him to just say goodbye or tell me to never contact him again and I’d obey his wishes but he kept “leaving the door open” by saying things like we’d see things through sooner or later or that the distance was only temporary and when I asked if I should leave him alone that he did want to hear from me. 

A month later I texted to say that I’d been working a temp job and the radio was hard to listen to (I didn’t mention specifically how/why but I ended up quitting because all the love songs kept making me burst into tears on the job) and asked if he could send me some of his music – he did, immediately. 

We didn’t talk for all of February. I didn’t try either, but I did check his social media to discover that he’d blocked me on Instagram but not on Twitter and also changed his profile picture on Twitter to one where he was wearing a necklace I’d given him.

At the beginning of March I randomly ran into him on the bus and we spoke briefly. He looked really happy to see me, but did not look well. I asked how he’d been doing and he said good then asked how I was and my voice broke replying “okay.” He put his hand on his heart and conceded to say he was only okay, too, not good. Said he’d lost his job and was working a different one (from creating audio tracks for video games, which was a job he didn’t love but was related to music and virtual reality, which he did, to entry level construction). Then got really excited remembering something and dug into his bag to pull out a book I’d given him to show he was reading it. My stop came up first and he seemed sad to say goodbye and said he’d get back to me soon. 

A month after that I begged him to feed my cat while I was out of the country in Switzerland for a few days. He agreed but said he was too busy to meet me so I had to leave the keys on his porch and when I got back he said the same thing so I had to pick them up from his porch – of course I left a bag of cool and interesting souvenirs from CERN and the UN in exchange. While I was gone he texted updates on my cat, compliments on how I’d redecorated my apartment and said he was sincerely interested in hearing about how my trip went. I expressed doubt that he really wanted to and he replied right away to reassure me it was true but then when I did send an email telling him about my trip like he’d insisted he wanted me to, he never answered. 

Another month later and I had another trip planned to leave the country – this time for two months to attend a meditation retreat in the rural mountains of Oregon (I only ended up going for 2&1/2 weeks). I asked him to watch my cat again but he didn’t reply until last minute to say that he couldn’t because he had his own cat now out of the blue and it didn’t play well with other cats. I asked if there was any point in me ever contacting him again once I got back and he replied instantly to say “please I’d be interested to hear about your pilgrimage.”

When I did get back he ghosted me again. I decided to check online and discovered that besides not taking my photo and info off his website team page (as I’d requested the previous summer, calling it an obituary) he had updated it to add the photo and info of the girlfriend he was still with from before – and that led me to seeing a picture of them kissing (which was taken on December 19th, the day we’d talked on the phone for over an hour) plus a more recent picture that had only been posted a few hours prior to my search – of her wearing a watch that I’d given him to which he’d commented only minutes before “what a hottie.”

So I gave up.

Finally. 

I tried to find other people to date and just got so disappointed. I only got solicited for gross hookups and then ignored when I want something more respectful and less temporary than that. I wasn’t even interested in something serious, just not skeezy one night stands. 

After my third suicide attempt I realized that I had lost the ability to feel any kind of pleasure or even force it. The night I took acid at the end of July was the last time I had an orgasm for an entire year. I tried for a while after that, both sex and masturbation, but neither worked. So I quit that, too. Between November 2016 and August 2017 I did not attempt to try or even think about masturbation or sex for 11 months. I did learn the value of chastity over fornication and the difference between chastity and full-on celibacy.

Other than the forgettable first and the second who was the only person to ever eat me out (until very recently) or break my heart (which is why I have his name tattooed close to it) I have had sexual encounters with 15 other men total (one time with most, never repeated except for three of them, never more than three times with anyone). I’m bi (queer is more fitting I suppose) but I’ve never been with a woman; spoken to a few on dating sites but they all only want hookups too.

The third gave me my second kiss ever in my entire life, which was brief and terrible, just like the sex. The fourth spanked me with a paddle viciously and triggered a CPTSD flashback, leaving marks, asked for a blowjob and then instead held my head down by his anus trying to force me before leaving in a huff when I wouldn’t rim him. The fifth bruised my boobs so badly they were blue for a month. The sixth called me a dirty little slut and made me cry. Number seven choked me without consent while giving me the third kiss I’ve ever had in my life. Eight pretended to want me as a girlfriend and we hung out at his house twice before trying anything, then he ghosted, too. Nine, like the others (1&3-7) was just a pathetic hookup one night stand because gross empty sex is all that anyone has ever wanted from me. And I told them all a brief version of this saga before agreeing to meet them, discussed boundaries they crossed and limits they ignored.

I also had never been on a single date before and am loath to count the one that happened this August because it was “blind” having never seen eachother before and we were supposed to just be meeting for coffee but he took me to dinner and a movie instead with no warning and never actually asked if I was okay with that. He said he wanted something serious and was able to at least attempt a real conversation and was a pretty good photographer – but right before meeting for coffee we texted a bit and he joked about raping the pizza delivery girl to teach her a lesson for being late and then even though I reacted negatively and told him it was creepy and gross he proceeded with it relentlessly. His pizza never showed up for some reason and he kept going on about tracking the delivery girl down and going to her house to rape her. Then while we were eating he mentioned that he had recently been on a date with a 17 year old and he’s 32. Obviously that was the first and last interaction with him.

My first real date that I actually agreed to go on knowing ahead of time that it was a dinner date, dude wanted to get a hotel room “just because he was tired after work and wanted a place to sit down.” I said no and we walked around and kissed a bit and I agreed that the next time we could try a hotel room. 

The second date with that guy was right after my first date with a different guy — and that’s how I got raped two days in a row. 

The first date with the second guy we went to a restaurant and he felt me up a bit after in the car which I said was okay but then he pulled over into a deserted industrial area and I said no repeatedly, asked to be taken home, he didn’t stop. I didn’t physically fight him because I didn’t want to end up getting hurt worse or be stranded in the middle of nowhere.

The next day I went on my second date with that other guy and we had agreed to use a hotel room but he couldn’t book one because he didn’t have a credit card. He wanted to just have sex on the side of the road and I said no, but maybe if we could find a secluded park bench or something it would be okay – he led me to a dirty mossy log, shoved me down into the dirt and held my head onto his cock and I couldn’t breathe and then he wanted to have sex without a condom and I said no and that I’d only agreed to do it with a condom and I had condoms with me we could use and he started pushing me down into the wet mossy log and I stopped fighting it and it was painful and gross — and it took me a week to realize that it was rape because I has said no repeatedly and only agreed before to do it with a condom not without and somehow I was dumb and desperate enough to still see him again one more time after that where I paid for an airbnb and the sex was still awful and painful. 

Third time I got raped in less than six months was another date, where I’d explained what happened in my past and said I was apprehensive to get in his car or be alone anywhere other than a public place and he called me paranoid and I fell for that and he invited me back to his place just to watch a movie to which I agreed and then he wanted to make out and I agreed to that too but then he wanted to have sex and I said no and tried to get up and leave but he was like speedy Gonzales slipping on a condom and coming in two pumps. I left immediately after that and cried on the bus home.

Everyone I’ve slept with has been terrible in bed, didn’t give me any orgasms and didn’t get consent first. 

That’s when I decided to start selling my premium Snapchat (and custom solo porn videos) – it was a way to earn extra money to pay for the travel costs of getting to New York to attend the conference of states parties and the civil society briefing on the CRPD at the United Nations headquarters, and it was also a way to redirect all the unwanted attention I get; everyone I match with on dating apps like Tinder, OkCupid and Plenty Of Fish all just want me to send them nude photos for free and I get nothing in exchange – so now they can buy access to them making it a fair trade or they can get blocked for disrespecting me on every level. I get some semblance of validation that I’m attractive enough that I’m worth a small token of appreciation from a few people in return for seeing me naked, instead of unattractive and worthless, as has been ingrained into me so deeply. 

Because really, the common denominator here is me. Almost every friend I’ve ever had has either abandoned me, lied to me, stolen from me or worse. I was badly bullied as a kid. All of my family members are abusive, I spent my whole life being teased and bullied, verbally insulted, gaslighting a plenty, physical violence like hitting, choking and pinching, by my father, aunts, uncle, grandmother (my mother being the least abusive still neglected and verbally abused me). Now I’ve been raped and violently sexually assaulted a few times but after being led on like I was, that doesn’t phase me much. 

Not long before I was born, my father found out that his father had molested his sisters – ordering them to undress and using a pencil to point to the body parts he wanted them to touch – this was on top of being viciously violently abusive and beating all the children and their mother. This messed him up further and made it so he could no longer control his pent up rage. He beat the dogs, hanging his beautiful husky by the neck in the garage, filling the holes it dug with water and drowning it in them, trying to shove a broomstick down it’s throat and getting bitten in the ass for it. He didn’t treat my mother much better. With me he hit and choked me a few times but more often just used angry threats of such violence to keep me terrified and used hateful insults to make me feel like shit. He also wanted to do the opposite of his father’s pedophilia so he insisted on hugging me and holding my hand and getting into bed with me to read whenever I stayed at his place and wouldn’t let me go when I pulled away and accused me of being “too cool” and embarrassed rather than listening to me say I was uncomfortable with being touched like that against my will. I told my mother about him hitting and choking me and not letting me go when I tried to break free of his hugs but she didn’t believe me, she believed him when he said I was exaggerating (plus she was scared of his threats that he’d get full custody because she smoked pot). She also believed him when he told her that her hugging me was “too sexual” and would mess me up so she never hugged me as a child… when I went to her for reassurance or a hug she’d wait for a count of approximately two Mississippi before physically shoving me away and saying “okay that’s enough now.” So I have never experienced true affection from anyone in my entire life but plenty of disgust and rejection everywhere I turned.

At sixteen, after dropping out of school because I couldn’t keep up the good grades and the social games and after becoming intensely physically ill and spending a year in and out of hospital emergency rooms in near-constant excruciating pain with no answers I was mildly suicidal (nothing like more recently where I made real attempts, just wishing I could escape the pain and sadness but never actually planning or trying) and got into an argument with my mother. She shoved me back with both hands while yelling at me and in response I punched her in the face, just once. When she left the house after to get smokes I locked the door and refused to let her inside because I needed time and space to cool down – I told her that. She was worried that I was going to kill myself so she called my father who called the cops. They broke down the door, arrested me, kept me in a cell and chose to press charges for assault and a restraining order against the wishes of my mother, the purported victim. I was then forced to leave my home and stay with other relatives who were far more abusive than she was. It was only for a few months but I have never recovered from that experience.

And yet… I thought I was getting to a good place when I chose to lose my virginity. Finally had my own space and felt like I’d come to terms with the crap in my past and was ready for some kind of a future. I’d accepted my body and begun to like it, thought I was getting over my eating disorders (anorexia, bingeing, bulimia, orthorexia), had come out as bi and been working in activism to get better representation for my fellow autistics. 

But I was delusional. All that broken crap came back to the surface. I’ve always known I can’t trust other people, that they will only hurt me, but I was foolish enough to let my guard down when I thought I had finally met someone who liked listening to what I had to say and who looked at me with both love and sexual desire – and I learned that I can’t even trust myself anymore.

When I returned from Switzerland last year after speaking at the civil society briefing for the CRPD I was evicted. I’ve spent the last year stuck crashing at my mom’s place – which she brought fleas into, spends all her money on cocaine, verbally abuses me and has a perverted unfaithful boyfriend with no boundaries. I can’t afford to get my own place again because the prices of housing have skyrocketed. I can’t afford mobility aids for my Ehler’s Danlos syndrome, can’t see through my glasses because my eyes are getting so much worse so quickly and can’t afford new ones. When I was invited to the CRPD and conference of states parties at the U.N. headquarters in New York I had to start selling porn and prostituting myself to get the money to go and even that wasn’t enough (because again, my mother spent all her money on cocaine so I had to contribute extra to food and rent and toiletries, plus of course the one time I literally prostituted myself, the guy refused to pay me, reversed the e-transfer I’d watched him send so I went through the #1 most disgusting experience of my life for absolutely nothing) and I returned to another eviction notice. 

None of it, even all of it combined, can compare to what this guy – the first and only person I have ever loved or mistakenly felt loved by – did to me. Nothing ever will. I never felt half as good as when I was with him and never felt even a tiny fraction of how bad I have since he threw me away like the piece of trash that I am. 

I’ve been asked why I didn’t report the rape or sexual assault* – and besides the fact that the cops and child protective services both ignored reports against my father for violence, besides the fact that I’ve been constantly threatened my whole life with institutionalization and that I’d be locked up forever for being crazy, besides the fact that I was locked up by the cops before, besides the fact that I didn’t know the last names of these guys anyway – why would I care enough to try and get them in trouble for something so inconsequential when a much more insidious and pervasive type of harm is perfectly legal? That would be like calling an ambulance to take you to the emergency room for a papercut in a world where hospitals refuse to treat gunshot wounds or even believe they’re a real injury.

[*I’ve since filed detailed reports with CVAP]

I’ve since learned that all this guy’s behaviour fits perfectly what is known as “narcissistic abuse” and I’m loath to “armchair diagnose” anybody, but there is no denying how well this pattern matches up or writing it off as coincidence. I know what he did to me. But it worked; I still feel like I’m the pathetic stalker, like he really was just being friendly and I’m the insane one, like I really am terribly unattractive and everything that happened was my fault.

And the absolute worst part is that almost every human has a story like this, of tragedy and trauma which has left them irreparably broken and jaded, too.

Actually, no, I’m wrong, the worst thing is that so many other people have been through much, MUCH worse. Vicious atrocities abound and countless others have suffered far more and far longer than I have and I really have no right to complain about such petty problems when I should be grateful for all the privilege and sheer luck I’ve had in my life.