He had kissed her. In that dirty bar, after three beers, but he had done it. She had explicitly expressed her discomfort prior to it, and he had inserted his tongue into her mouth, and this had happened in Germany, so technically that was already rape by German law.
I would call you all kinds of nasty things if I didn’t know better. But I must admit that you very astutely noticed her naïvety, or, as I prefer it, lack of experience due to queerness. This was probably not due to any intelligence — after all, you didn’t perform excellently at work and didn’t even have the social skills to get yourself a friend to drink your daily beers with, not even one. Yes, I am talking to you, my rapist.
Had Michelle read these two paragraphs before it had happened, maybe that would have been the end of the story. And she could have enjoyed the time that followed, instead of becoming physically and mentally traumatized.
But Michelle knew nothing. Michelle was a diligent person who tried to act in the way people expected from her. And Michelle believed that a kiss was a sign of sincere affection. So it should come as no surprise that she did not scream. She did not hit. She sat there and didn’t know what to do — run out of the bar (and hope to never see you again), or believe that you really really liked her (although, if you had, you wouldn’t have approached her in the way you did, rapist).
You saw her wide-open eyes and decided it was your time. You shifted to her side of the table and started to touch her all over the place. And Michelle for f*ck’s sake didn’t know what to do. You talked about visiting her in the town in France in which she was working over summer and to which she was departing in two days. (After all, that wouldn’t be a big deal for you, this weekend you were spending in your girlfriend’s town and you were departing in an hour. So you were kind of used to the lifestyle of f*cking up a girl in a different town at the weekends, I guess.)
And when it was time for you to go to your girlfriend, you told me to write him an Email to tell him when you can visit me.
Michelle was completely confused and utterly overwhelmed. She went back to work (it was a Thursday after lunch — and by the way, yes, the rapist had just enjoyed three beers immediately before driving a car). She worked as normally, did her farewell for the colleagues the following day, packed her bags and went to France.
The first couple of weeks in France she had lengthy phone calls with her best friend concerning the kissing incident and what to do next. Her best friend encouraged her to try something new as Michelle had never had sex with a man, but she also told her to be careful about it as she didn’t know much about this (rapist) person.
Today I find it hard to understand why Michelle didn’t ignore you immediately after the incident. I believe that she was shaped by a society for which queerness was a rather new concept, and as such had been encouraged to have (protected) sex with the opposite gender, even casual sex. In short, she was trying incredibly hard to fit into that cisgender heterosexual box. (Spoiler alert: She really doesn’t fit in that box and she is f*cking proud of it today.)
Michelle was an intelligent person. But even though she had always refused sexual activities with men because she didn’t feel comfortable with it, she felt pressured to do it. And during her first two weeks in France, these were her thoughts (although admittedly most of the time she thought about her new work and the soccer team which she had founded and her new friends in France and everything else that belongs to life, of course):
1- She must be a woman because she had been born in a female body. (Spoiler alert: Nope.)
2- As a woman, it is her duty to engage in the activities that a man and a woman do (in private). (Spoiler alert: Nope.)
3- This man obviously had real feelings for her because he had kissed her (and that is a display of feelings). (Spoiler alert: Nope, he kissed her as a prelude for f*cking her over.)
4- The fact that this person had a girlfriend but still kissed her puts him in a bad light, for sure, but it also shows that the relationship with her is not going well. And if he is cheating on her that surely means that that relationship is going to end soon. (Spoiler alert: Nope. He was treating his girlfriend like the last piece of sh*t, as Michelle got to witness later.)
Today I marvel in Michelle’s power to have developed such an elaborate chain of thoughts around such a stupid incident. (Spoiler alert: Today, people still sometimes try to approach Michelle in a manner of disrespect or predatory behavior because she has style, and some swag and attitude also. The best outcome for these people is to be ignored. Sometimes Michelle just invents a story so stupid that eventually they leave out of confusion. If necessary, she defends herself in a way in which the physical integrity of the predator cannot be guaranteed.)
Michelle had the power of (non-queer) thoughts, but she didn’t have the power to neglect little *ssholes like you. And there is an easy explanation for that: She had just got out of a very difficult time in her life, but I will write about that another time. (Alert: Stay tuned!) And you just took advantage of her situation in the dumbest way imaginable. Admittedly, your dumbness was effective in this special situation.
So, two weeks into her new work in France, she dropped you a short Email telling you that she was free the coming weekend.
Part 3 following soon. Stay tuned, follow me here and on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and check out my art page if you like!
[Please, please, please no personal requests for sex, not on this site and nowhere else, I don’t do that (and I hate it when #metoo members like myself get sexually approached because somebody finds it exciting to harass a #metoo member).]
