What is rape? Growing up I thought I knew exactly what it was, I didn't realize that the definition could get cloudy and confusing. It was a time before alcohol had made it's way into my life and things were a lot more black and white, right and wrong. At the time rape was when a woman was walking alone at night and a man jumped out and grabbed her and physically overpowered her in order to have sex with her. This was before I knew that only 21% of rapes are committed by a stranger (https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence). Not a lot of people were talking about rape to me when I was a teen. In fact, not a lot of people are talking to me about it now either.
I was unprepared. I was 17 when I graduated from high school and that summer I had more freedom than ever before. I was about to go to college in a few months across the ocean, across the continent even. So I think my parents decided that there wasn't a whole lot left to do at that point, not that my mom didn't at least try to keep some tabs on where I was if I didn't come home. But I had older friends through my job and access to a lot of alcohol and unfortunately a car. It's god's gift to me that I only damaged the car in my drunk driving escapades.
I don't remember exactly how I came to be on the east side of the island in the vacation home of a visiting Canadian college student and his buddies, but I was excited because one of them even went to the college that I was about to attend! There was a lot of drinking, these guys were over 21 so they could purchase alcohol in the states, and there ended up being a lot of sex, wanted and unwanted, but I never really knew which was which.
That night I was drinking, I was tired, and I had a long drive home, so I was ready to sleep in anybody's bed just to avoid the tiresome drive home and the alcohol made Sean attractive to me. When I was 17, I thought that anybody in their 20s was automatically cool because they have life experience, they're independent, they know what they're doing. I wanted to be cool like them. Now I'm 28 and I realize the opposite.
Sean and I did it, it wasn't too unpleasant, but it wasn't exactly great either and for whatever reason, maybe as a brag to his buddies, he left a very large hickey on my neck. It wasn't a passionate, heat of the moment, accidental hickey. It was a purposeful, deep dark bruise of a hickey.
Kiko took it as an invitation. Kiko was from my island and somehow had come to know Sean and Julian who were visiting from Canada and they all partied together. So one night, Kiko hands me a rum and coke in an orange plastic cup filled to the brim that is literally a liter in volume. I say thanks, thinking it's nice of him to offer me a drink and it makes me feel included in the group. I'm naive and don't realize that he's getting me drunk.
Kiko fucked me all night long, and from what I remember it was fun for the most part. I thought that we were doing what people do when they fall in love. I'm sure I thought at some point, that maybe this would be the man I married. I didn't know it at that moment, but he was actually already dating a girl who was 2 years younger than me.
I didn't call this experience a rape, but after writing this, I guess this was the first rape of this summer. I don't know if calling it a rape really helps me though. It's a scary word that I still don't know how to define. If you're drunk, but seem willing, is it a rape? If you regret it later, was it a rape? Are men to be blamed for 'raping' someone if it seemed like the person was interested at the time even thought they were wasted? At what age is one meant to take responsibility for knowing if it is an appropriate situation in which to have sex with someone? If the woman had an orgasm, was it a rape?
The rape that I felt traumatized by, was when I was solidly blacked out. I think we were taking shots of something and I had a friend with me this time, at the vacation home on the east side of the island. She had recently moved to the islands because she had been forcefully gang raped by a small group of boys that she went to high school with and she couldn't stay at her school with all the judgement and accusation that she was lying. She was taking refuge at her mother's best friends house, who was my drama teacher at the time. She too changed her name.
There were two reasons I pieced together that I was raped. The first was because of my friend's recount of me being pulled by the arm to a bedroom and saying to her, 'I don't know what's happening'. The second was because the following day Kiko bought me flowers and while he presented them to me, he made fun of how I was slurring nonsense while he and his friend fucked me during my black out the previous evening.
My first reaction was shame. I wasn't very experienced with sex and I didn't want to be bad at it. My second reaction was anger at my friend for not recognizing what was happening and preventing it. At this point in time, I'm sorry that after her own trauma that she was put in this position. I'm sure that she felt remorse about the situation as well, although I have not had the opportunity to discuss it with her, nor do I know if she wants to talk about it.
After all this, the other man I mentioned, Julian, whom I was so excited to meet because he went to the university I was about to attend told me, with entitlement, that it was now his turn to fuck me. I said no. He was so butt-hurt by the situation, that when I ran into him on campus thousands of miles away from all this bullshit, he continued to ask me for a couple of years. He even offered to have a threesome with me and his girlfriend at the time. He was really desperate to get his chance.
I literally could not get physically away from this rape. Kiko has tried numerous times to add me as a friend on Facebook. I got off Facebook for a few years because I was tired of his attempts. I felt harassed, I felt out of control, I felt terrified.
After the rape by Kiko and his friend, I continue to sleep with both of them, though never at the same time. I became close friends with the friend's girlfriend even because we were all hanging out together. Her name was Lauren and she was quite a bit older than me and I thought she was so cool and fun to be around. One night the friend told Lauren that he had been fucking me and she asked me point blank mid-sob if it were true. I remember her exact words because it was one of the most excruciating moments of my life, 'Casy told me that he slept with you to hurt my feelings, but it's not true is it?"
I said no. It hurt with my entire being, but to this day it feels like the correct response for the situation.
I felt like I had no free will that summer. I felt like I was being controlled by these guys who didn't give a damn about me. That summer Kiko went on to 'borrow' around $800 from me for various things. One time he came to my house for a few hundred to "bail him out of jail", and told me that his 15 year old girlfriend was waiting in the car and had made him pull over to fuck him before he saw me. He drove my car, he used me completely.
I just got back onto Facebook about 2 months ago. Kiko tried to add me as a friend. I finally couldn't stand for it. It's been over 10 years. I wrote him a message that I did not view the time we shared as a positive experience for me and that I wish he would never, ever contact me again.
I haven't heard from him since.
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