Nameless - Trigger Warning. This story contains sexual assault
Even your name feels like a privilege you donât deserve.
Should you stay nameless, or should I out you to the world? Scream from the tallest building what you did to me? Â What youâve done to so many just like me?
Apart of me wants your memory to stay tucked in the dark pocket of my brain where you live now, only seeing the light when I am triggered by a hotel room or when men buttoned tightly in business suits that resemble you linger when they look at me.
Another part of me thinks my story matters, that saying the truth out loud will make it real, tangible, throwable, crushable, flammable and maybe...healable.
I was newly 20 when we met. I thought I was an adult. My freedom was still new, my hips still narrow, my childhood trauma still unrecognizable - hidden in the basement of my chest.
I wouldnât go looking for it for years.
I would spend weekends at my friends 1920âs built studio in the beating heart of Seattle. The hallways smelt like a dusty thrift store. The dark green carpet and scuffed walls held memories of tenants for 90 years.
My friend has long red colored hair to the small of her back, she taught me to buy furniture from thrift stores and how to steal accessories from Nordstrom. We share clothes and dance at underage clubs in the city. It seems I am her only friend.
We would laugh little girl giggles listening to her neighbors fight through the wall.
We would share red wine from the bottle before going out in small skirts and knee high socks. We got into bars by over lining our eyes and flirting with bartenders outside while they smoked cigarettes. Most nights, we stumble back in passed two and fall into each other on her bed.
This friend told me about you one night in the winter. I remember the holiday lights lining the streets, I remember the white sweater I wore - my mother bought it for me the previous Christmas.
We sit in the back of an old Chinese restaurant. Sharing the entire place with only two other customers. The bartenders never ask us for our IDs. They know weâre underage...they also know weâll spend money. Â We drink long island ice teas, the only drink we knew how to order.
She tells me about her new gig being a stripper. Iâm entertained. Iâm envious. She seems sexy and mysterious in this moment. She tells me about making $700 in one night. She tells me her stripper friends told her about this new thing called âsugaring.â
âHe pays me just to go to a movie! he paid me $200 just for a date!â She says.
My friend explains that there is a website filled with rich men who pay young girls to do various things like have sex and go on vacations with them.Â
Getting attention from men had been second nature to me, I was good at it whether I wanted to be or not. I thought of my mothers friend from work being in our apartment when I walked through the door after school. I was eleven, my mother hadn't arrived home from work yet. She had asked him to look at the desktop computer.
âYou must have a lot of boyfriends at schoolâŚdon't you?â He nods up at me from under the computer desk.
I realized then that I wasnât a child but a girl. I was something to be looked at and consumed.
âNo way!â I say, shifting in the bar stool. My friends red hair matches her red lipstick. Suddenly, I felt too far from home.
âIâll show you!â She says and pulls out her phone.
She texts you. She tells you she has a friend she wants you to meet. Â
You walk into the Chinese restaurant some time later. Iâm slurring my words by the time you arrive, there are four empty long island glasses melting onto the bar counter. Weâre the only two in there now. You walk confidently, relaxedâŚLike youâve come to meet two girls twenty five years younger than you before.
Your hair is too straight, peekaboos of grey mixed in with jet black. You have small lips and tiny teeth. Your neck has started to sag with age but your face lacks wrinkles of a man your age. You look at me as if you are looking through me, as if you are testing my boundaries, seeing if it was safe to trust your dirty little secret with me. Unfortunately, it was.
âwow heâs so normal! Heâs not a creep!â I whisper to my friend while you order us a round of drinks.
You hid it so well. I flip my hair at you, apply lipgloss in the bathroom, regret not wearing something sexier. Suddenly, the white sweater doesnât seem to fit.
I want you to like me.
Iâm begging for your approval.
Lucky me, I get it.
We meet up just the two of us after texting for a few weeks at a Cheesecake Factory. I am embarrassed being out in public with you. Do people know what weâre doing? I see an old friend from high school serving tables near us and I almost run out.
âCalm down. Weâll say Iâm your uncle.â You laugh, the way a dad laughs at his toddler falling trying to walk - like itâs cute how worried I am.
I applied too much makeup, Iâm trying to look older.
Iâm wearing a fake fur vest and heels I canât walk in.
You ask me about my parents, my friends, where I live, you ask if Iâm in college. I tell you the intimate details of my life, spilling out all over the booth like you slipped truth serum in my drink. I tell you about my poetry, about my mothers alcoholism, my fathers absence, about my dreams of getting a college degree.
You listen with eye contact, the way a therapist does. You nod and sit still in silence, waiting to hear more. You reach across the table and touch my arm. You tell me you want to mentor me and pay for some of my college. You say that it would bring you joy to help me reach my goals. I don't touch my food. The waiter clears our plates. You slide your American Express into the leather pocket next to the bill and tell me how much money youâd give me to have sex with you.
I ride in your car after we finish eating and leave my car parked in the cheesecake factory parking lot. I watch it out the window wondering if its too late to open the door and jump out.
âYou know what?!â You say pulling out of the lot. Weâre driving to the nearest hotel. You already have the cash in an envelope in your glove box. I would see you reach over me and grab it when we arrive to the hotel.
âWhat?â I ask.
âI think you are my muse! I write poetry too and you have inspired me to write, youâre my muse!â
Iâm flattered by the compliment, how did you know I always wanted to be someoneâs Edie to their Andy?
I shed myself at the door of the hotel. I donât find myself until a couple hours later when I am dressed again and have $500 cash in my purse.
Once I do find myself Iâm surprised at how great I feel. âIt was soooo easy!â I tell my friend on the phone. âI know!â She says.
We giggle on the phone my entire drive home. I ignore the smell of your sweat coming through my clothes. I have just sold my body for the first time.
You text me good morning and good night. You check up on my day every other day. I send you pictures of myself and receive compliments back of how beautiful I am. We meet late night in candle lit lounges or hotel bars for drinks and every time I shed myself at the door once the hotel key clicks. I am hundreds of dollars richer the next day and all I had to do was shed my body and watch my soul crawl away.
You set up your laptop in each hotel room and I wonder if you are video taping but I never ask. You bring a backpack full of sex toys that you use on me without asking. You put your fingers and tongue and body places I donât want you to. You pull me into to lay on your cold clammy chest, and I rest my hands on your rubber belly. You put on Japanese porn and ask me to relieve you while you watch it. You take pictures of us together and put them into a folder titled âToriâ in your phone - incase you need proof I consented. I smile in the pictures, often my bare shoulders showing, hotel sheets behind us, while I fight a war within myself. My eyes are always blood shot because I am always drunk. I ignore the countless other files titled with other names like âHeatherâ and âShelby.â
You give me psychological tests, tell me my Meyers Briggs results, ask me about my classes, tell me what you think I should major in. You like to read me your awful poetry and I cringe at the warmth on my neck as you whisper your ballads too close.
You tell me you love me for the first time while you cry on the phone. Youâre sad your other girlfriend broke your heart. I talk you through it. I comfort and coo to you like you are a small child. You tell me through hysterics that I am the only person that makes you feel better. This makes me feel important.
You call me honey, send me poetry books in the mail, send me pictures of yourself while on vacation. I ask you for money to go to Mexico, LA, to pay my rent, my tuition and my car payment. You do. So I keep coming back. I send you sweet texts and pictures of myself. I share my poetry with you and give you insider details to my daily life. You help me make up lies to tell my friends when they wonder where I am.
âReal friends donât judge you baby.â You tell me in a hotel room chair by the window.
Iâm special, because you tell me I am.
Iâm special because you give me money.
I am special because you need me.
You ask me to go to Vegas with you twice and I say yes and then no. Both times.
I canât imagine anything worse than being stuck so far away from home with you. When I am with you I feel like I am walking slowly on pins and needles.
Your gaze feels violating. You donât care that waiters stare, that women your age in the bar ask âhow do you two know each other?!â through giggles.
I hate holding your hand in public. I drink swigs from a vodka bottle in my glove box before I go to meet you, to ease the nerves, to forget what Iâm there for.
You take me to Victoria Secret and make me try on lingerie sets. You tell me to come out into the hallway so you can see. Iâm mortified as I spin in front of you. I see the sale associate make circles on the floor with her foot. You buy me the lingerie set and I walk away while you pay at the counter. I am looking over my shoulder for any familiar faces. I am thinking of lies I can tell if I run into a family member, an old teacher, anyone who knows my other personality.
Each time I pull open my drawer and see the jeweled pink panties and matching bra, my chest tightens. I eventually throw it away because it feels as if you are touching me all over again with every time they are on my body.
When I ask you if we can use a condom after I start seeing someone regularly, you ask me why I donât trust you.
You do a puppy dog face that makes my gut drop, you say âyou know I love you bareback. You know I get tested, I just wish you just trusted me...â I decide Iâm wrong for not trusting you. I don't bring it up again.
You ask if you can take me on a ferry to Bainbridge island. I agree, I needed the money.
I have told you that I donât do drugs. I have told you I donât like being out of control, that it scares me. You nod understanding, tell me âI know, I know.â You repeat stories of you getting high on MDMA on business trips and how the sex high is âso good!â I still refuse to do them with you.
At dinner on Bainbridge island you pull out two small red colored pills with cartoon characters stamped into them. You take one while I look. âGuess Iâll be alone getting high then!â You say, swallowing the pill and grinning at me.
I think I am a consenting adult on a vacation with my much older, married, kind-of boyfriend who pays me each time I sleep with him. I think that I am in charge on all of our encounters. Iâm convinced that society has this whole sex worker thing wrong - that this is a two way street, that I want you to offer me drugs ten more times after I say no the first ten times.
I think that you taking the drugs in front of me was about what you wanted, not about what you wanted me to do.
My heart races after you swallow the pill, I text my friend - ask her what the red pills do. She tells me itâs just ecstasy and itâll be ok. I copy you, take mine with a swig of wine.
The car ride home from dinner Iâm already buzzing. I turn the radio up loud and play a song by the spinners that I no longer listen to. I stick my head out of the window and sing âIâll be arouuuuund.â When we get back to the house you rented for us you parade your bag of pills around me. I feel so good, I beg you for another. You give me one. I catch myself in a mirror and don't recognize the reflection. I can only see a fully black eye, the brown of my eye has disappeared behind my pupil.
I lose myself soon after that in a cyclone of hallucinations and electronic music you play on the stereo. I see cartoon colored objects floating around the room while you sweat on top of me. I donât remember how we got to the bed upstairs or how my clothes came off.
I am too high to make a sound. I am too high to keep my eyes from rolling back into my head. I am too high to focus on what is happening to my body.
I slip in and out of reality for hours, Iâm not sure when the sex stops and when the light begins to peak through the blinds. Iâm not sure I slept.
We gather our things around the house silently. I feel dirty. My limbs are still vibrating. The drugs are still pulsing through my veins, and I wish I never took any. Â My hair is curled in various places and my swim suit is in a wet heap near the bathroom. I vaguely remember being in the hot tub.
Finally I say, âThat was crazy.â Â Iâm hoping to get some clues about the night before.
âWell, you barley talkedâŚyou were silent most of the night.â you say.
You offer me a breakfast sandwich on the ferry home and I refuse. A breakfast sandwich and the hundreds of dollars you will wire me later that day doesn't seem like payment enough for what I gave away in that twenty four hours.
It takes me longer to find myself this time. I search for days and it seems I lost apart of myself on Bainbridge island. Maybe you accidentally packed the part of me Iâm missing in your suitcase, maybe you took it when you were on top of me all night, maybe I gave it to you.
Maybe I wonât ever see it again.
I hide the memory of our night together to the darkest part of me that I can find. I zip it up tightly hoping it never finds it way out. It will find its way to the surface of course, as all of our time together will.
I color that night in humor, laughing with my friends about how high I was.
I color it in guilt, saying I consented, I asked for it. After all, I went with you willingly. After all, we had a ârelationship.â
I color it in silence, I donât talk about it, donât think about it - hold it down in the dark space for as long as it will stay.
Do you justify what you did? Have you found a way to sleep at night? Have you found someone with a small voice and a shaky foundation who will easily let you in and stay a while?
Do you ignore the way she canât keep eye contact? The way she shakes slightly at dinner?
Have you practiced and perfected your act? Youâve got that caring way you look at someone when they share their trauma down. Youâve found a way to pull out womenâs stories from their body the way Ursula pulls out Ariels voice box. Once you have them, you use them to your advantage - pushing every boundary and seeing what you could safely cross.
Itâs easier to cross young girls with alcoholic mothers and absent fathers, turns out you get away with it.
Your daughter is only three years younger than I was when you met me. Does she wonder why you come home in the quietest part of the night smelling of hotel liquor and perfume? Do you wipe your hands clean of the shame on your way home? I wonder if you look at her and see the 17 year old baby sitter you raped. The one you bragged about to me. You told me you were in love with her, that society was wrong for keeping you two apart.
You must take showers and scrub off your night telling yourself it was consensual, that the twenty year old girl you left in the hotel sheets wanted it. You must tell yourself that she was closing her eyes the whole time because she liked it.
I have decided that you will stay nameless.
Your name will eventually die out and my memories will fade but my story will not.
My shame will see light so that it can breathe, so that I can breathe.
Iâll bathe my story in so much sunlight that itâll grow into something beautiful, the way âLily of the Valleyâ flowers grow despite losing their color for some time in the Winter. They come back even more vibrant and beautiful come Spring. They return happier and stronger.
Although, they look delicate, this tough but beautiful flower fights off predators with a poisonous sweet smell and her strong base can make it through even the harshest climates.
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