The last time I ever saw John was my junior year in college at Loyola University Chicago. I was about to turn 21. I received a call from him telling me that he was staying with a mutual high school friend on the northside of Chicago and would really like to see me to catch up and see where our lives had taken us. I had not seen him since we met to say goodbye before leaving for college...and, of course, to give him one last blow job. That had been three years earlier and seemingly a lifetime ago. I had barely thought about him or the years of humiliating and barely remembered sex acts that he had done to me. Without any premeditation, I realized that I had an opportunity to confront him...to tell him that I was angry with him and never wanted to see him again, and I said yes. My loose plan was to confront him with the truth of our history together and leave him ashamed and racked with the guilt of taking my sexual innocence and dignity away from me without consent.
My memories of the next 12 hours of my life are jagged, out of focus, and with little recollection of sounds, feelings, or my lived experience. I remember him opening the door of the one bedroom apartment in a small apartment building above a bank at a very busy intersection from which I had to park very far. I remember saying hello to our mutual friend before sucking on the end of what must have been a bong full of marijuana, I can only suppose. I had never used drugs before and had no intention of ever trying them. I see a dirty window next to the bed through which I can see a maze of fire escapes and old wooden decks. It was gloomy yet bright outside. I think I was cold. John is shoving his penis in my mouth with a condom on it and I choke. He cums on top of me and I can barely breathe...I tell myself to breathe. I'm walking the several blocks back to my car and remember giving him a hug as we said goodbye. I am cold. I am empty. I am an abject, slutty failure. I am chain smoking cigarettes in my dorm room back at school and it is night time. I go out to the local dive bar with friends and have several gin and tonics and shots of tequila. I do not think about that day or those events for the next five years. At least not in any way that resembles normal memory...I live my shame, I eat my fear, and I feel my sadness every day of my life from that point on.
To this day those sharp memories that seem to be part of a movie that no one ever lived are all that I have to anchor myself to the events of the Last Time. I am still so very sad for that overweight red headed young woman on the verge of adulthood who had every intention of being the powerful, smart, funny person that she tried so hard to show the world and who really felt like a broken, lost, numb, unloveable girl. I pushed it all down as far as it could go in an effort to survive.
