Anonymous Story: The Christmas Party

This is a long story, but I make no apologies for it.

I was 18 when I was raped. It was December of last year (2016), and my friends, D and J, were going out to our favourite nightclub, for a christmas party that lasted from 10-6am – of course we were going to get super drunk.
I thought the person who raped me was my friend.

I don’t remember much of that night; I can only go by the accounts of my friends. What they tell me is that I was drunk – the kind of drunk where you can’t walk, you can’t talk, you’re seeing double. You’re practically passing out, almost. If I had any more than I did, I probably would’ve.
And maybe I wouldn’t have been raped.

We get into the club, nice and early, and immediately we spot some of D’s friends. They’re kind of acquaintances to me, I knew them from school and they were cool, but we never totally got on. After a few more bevvies, one of them started to look really good looking. We ended up pulling. Totally innocent, just kissing. I would never go further than that on a night out, that’s just not who I am.

This guy isn’t the person who raped me. The person who raped me, let’s call him A, was the guy I lost my virginity to back in the summer, because I was in love with him. And I thought he was in love with me. After that, I found out he actually had a girlfriend, or someone who was virtually that, and so I left that situation, and hadn’t spoken to him since.
Obviously, he was at the night club the same day I was.

I was wearing a Mrs Claus outfit, which covered absolutely everything except my knees and the rest of my legs. I had friends all around me who looked out for me, who I trusted, as I always do. Girls nowadays can’t go around clubs by themselves, it’s dangerous. I knew that, and so I was careful.

Because I was pulling my friend, D and J got pissed off, and at about 2am, they left the club, and me, alone with strangers, pretty much. But I wasn’t that phased, I knew that this guy would look out for me (he’s a gem of a guy), and I was also incredibly drunk.

Anyway, enter A. I’m outside having a cigarette, one of life’s many guilty pleasures, when I spot him. I rush up to him, pull him into a big bear hug, grinning from ear to ear, and asking him how he was, what’s been going on, is he okay?
I made no attempt to pull him at any point. I gave no indication I wanted to sleep with him. Because I did not.

The night led on, we were dancing, and A was nowhere in sight. We decided to leave, and we were deliberating over the taxi. The guy I was pulling was going in one direction, and me the other. Plus, I needed money out.
That’s when A came outside.
I told the guy that A was my friend, that he lived close to me, and to get in the taxi and go, because I would be safe. A would look after me, as he had done many times before.
I had no idea why he raped me.

A and I walk to the cash machine, and as I get money out, he started to kiss me. He was a little drunk, but not to the extent I was; we could both see that I wasn’t in any place to make my own decisions.
He grabbed my hand, and led me down to a carpark, at 6 in the morning, which already had some cars in it, and people milling about. We were outside a 24 hour ASDA.
He pushed me down onto the floor, and I didn’t really know what was happening.

I remember there being no foreplay, I remember there being no kissing, no touching. Just the lifting up of my new dress, and then entering.
And then being turned onto my back, doing even more awful things.
He didn’t use protection. Neither did I. I didn’t expect it to happen.

When I woke up the following morning, I couldn’t remember it. Until I looked down at the bloodstained covers of my bed; at my thighs caked with old blood.
That’s when the little flashbacks of the evening came back to me.
I tried to move, tried to turn my body, but it ached so much. I must’ve cut myself on some glass whilst it was happening, because it stung to pee, to sit down properly, to move in any way.
I messaged D and asked him what happened that night; he said he had left at 2, and didn’t really know.
I spent that morning crying.

I couldn’t really tell anyone what had happened. I wasn’t even sure that it was rape. When I did, I got this horrific name for myself – someone who has sex with men after nights out in bushes, in car parks, that sort of thing. Like I had asked for it to happen.
When I tried to explain to my friends what had happened, most of them shrugged it off, laughing that it was ‘typical’ of me to do something like this, when it wasn’t at all. I’d only had sex with another person besides A; how was this situation typical?

I took to googling things such as ‘is it rape if she’s drunk?’ in order to make myself feel less alone, less like a fraud. I thought I was a fraud. Surely I was asking for it? I mean, I’d let him kiss me. I’d let him take me down to the car park.
In reality, I thought we were just going to the car park to get to the taxi.

A week later, A popped up to me, asking to meet up for ‘more of the same’. I declined.
He said that he would tell my friends what had happened; that they would think I was a slag. That I was a slag, and no one would believe me if I said otherwise. That I had practically begged him to have sex with me that night, and I shouldn’t believe otherwise. The pain and the guilt I felt was unreal; it got to the point where he was threatening to tell my brother, who was sure to tell my mum what a ‘slut’ I had been,
I ended up sleeping with him that one final time. It was not pleasant, I didn’t want it. I just hoped that after it had happened, he would leave me alone, and I could move on away from this horrible event.
I blocked him, and then told all of my friends. But it still haunts me today.

I still haven’t been able to tell anyone the full story. It’s really hard to come out and say it, when you’re known as the girl who had sex with someone in a bush. No one seems to give a damn that it wasn’t consensual. ‘Oh, you were drunk, you were practically asking for it, weren’t you?’
No, I don’t think I was.