Don’t You Forget About Me(97)

I glance up again and see Jo, tears now coursing down her face, her hands gripping Clem and Rav’s on either side of her, both of whom look pale and shocked. I look away again before I catch Jo’s tears, still not able to look back to where I know a man with dark hair and dark eyes is watching me.

‘He went to kiss me again, and tugged at the front of my dress, trying to wrench me out of my bra. Fortunately the fact my dress was a size too small meant it was tight as sausage skin, and he barely moved it a centimetre. “Don’t!” I said.’ Here, my voice breaks for the first time. I swallow it down and continue.

‘But I tried to say it in a light, playful, coy way. A don’t that was supposed to translate as: Don’t, but of course DO another time, only maybe not right now, because I am a Good Girl. An instruction, that was begging.

‘“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said. I hated myself for not succeeding in deflecting him. I was funny, cool Georgina, and I wanted to prove I could cope. I wanted it to turn out well. I didn’t want to upset him. That shouldn’t be beyond me. Yeah, what the fuck WAS wrong with me?

‘He might not have managed to pull my clothing down, but he was exposing a terrible truth. I wasn’t what I seemed. I tried to fool everyone I was this bouncy fun girl who nothing fazed. But I was inexperienced, and scared, not at all cool. I still thought that this being found out was the primary threat. I had been plunged into the psychological warfare of trying to work out how to reject him, without him thinking I’d rejected him, because rejecting him would go very badly for me. He wasn’t worried about how this story would play, but I was. He would be the storyteller.

‘“I’ve got a boyfriend,” I said, gambling that a prior claim wouldn’t wound his masculinity.

‘He said, “Hah no you haven’t! Who’s that?”

‘I didn’t want to drop my boyfriend in it. I didn’t want to sell him out, and have outsiders storming in and trashing what we had, which was more precious to me than anything. He was blameless, and he was mine, and he must be protected at all costs.

‘I said, “You don’t know him.”

‘“Bollocks, Georgina. Everyone knows you’ve never been with anyone and you’re gagging for it. Going on about romance all the time like an old biddy in English class.”

‘This was like a series of precise stab wounds to the major organs. The worst thing imaginable – everyone smelling my desperation to be liked. This boy telling me it was common knowledge. I was hideous, gauche, needy, pathetic.’

I’m crying too now, but only tears, my voice is still steady.

‘He tried to kiss me again and I pushed him off saying, Let’s go back to the party, let’s get some of that punch, and he said, to show he wasn’t buying my casual deflection routine: “Are you a virgin?”

‘I said: “No.”

‘He said: “Well then.”

‘He unzipped his jeans and I stood, pinned against the wall, under the medical-bright lights, wondering why I was here, how to escape. How everything had gone so wrong, so fast.

‘It was my fault.’

I glance up at the room and see a sea of upturned faces. I can no longer focus on any one individual.

‘… A cleverer, more charming, better girl than I was, would have the right words to extricate herself and please him at the same time. That I couldn’t find a route out was yet more proof of my idiocy, my immaturity. Of course boys at parties try to get off with girls in loos, what did I expect? I was lucky enough someone so far out of my league wanted it. Ungrateful AND ridiculous. Maybe the cleverer, more charming girl would simply be complying.

‘I had lied. I was a virgin. I’d never seen the male anatomy before, not in real life, not like that. Suddenly there it was, liberated from his Levis, like seeing the alien burst from John Hurt’s chest. I panicked. Not only because I knew he’d expect me to do something with it. I knew that he’d gone too far to take this back now. He’d want something in return. There was no way I could leave with the ability to embarrass him, there was no way that was going to happen. There would be no transfer of power.

‘He grabbed my hand and I pulled it away, his hand large enough and my fingers small enough I could wrench them through his. He grabbed my hand again, I did the same. On the third try, with a grasp so tight it left bruises, he managed to keep hold of my hand, and put it on him. He let out a huge cackle of triumph, even as I instantly wrenched it away. We both knew he would now tell everyone on the other side of the door that I’d done something with him willingly, something I couldn’t take back. This is how it works. You’re broken down by stages.

‘The hand grabbing and pulling continued, my begging to leave continued, ignored. I felt like I’d been in here for an hour, it was probably minutes. I knew in social terms, in terms of my reputation, it might as well have been overnight.

‘“You know how to do this, don’t you?” he said. “You’re a sexy girl.”

‘Switching to flattery worked, for a second. He’d cut me down and now he was building me back up again. He was throwing me a lifeline that I could leave here with a good review.’

I look up from my page.

‘The moment where you consider giving in, or do give in, that’s the moment you torture yourself about for the rest of your life. That’s the moment where you think it happened to you because you are a bad and weak person, who wanted it really. When in fact, it’s about survival. And whichever choice you make, it wasn’t really a choice at all.