Don’t You Forget About Me(98)

‘His hand was over my hand in a vice-like grip and he moved it up, then down, up, then down. “Now you do it,” he commanded. He let go. I did it, once.

‘“Yeah!” he shouted, in triumph. “Like that.” I had done it. I couldn’t take it back.

‘I’d let all this happen for the sake of the thing that mattered above all else, popularity. The great religion. Being liked. But I wasn’t liked. I looked into his eyes, the contemptuous expression, and I could see he didn’t like me at all. In fact, I could see my capitulation made him despise me even more. Yeah, I knew it.

‘Realising this stopped me wheedling him with sweetness, thinking I could bargain. I said: “I want to go back to the party now,” and moved towards the door. He stopped me, grabbing my wrists and throwing me against the wall. Before, he was forceful, this was violent. I was already scared, now I felt something more like terror. My dad used to say you don’t know how impossible it is to move a dead weight until you try to shift one. You don’t know how you can be physically dominated, until someone much taller and stronger than you, really tries. Even in films, I used to think, with the trapped damsel beating dainty fists against manly Tarzan chests, you could push him off if you wanted. You can’t. It comes as a shock. And with the shock, panic, as I knew at that moment that whatever he wanted to happen – it was going to happen. He was pulling at the hem of my skirt, grabbing at my crotch.’

The room is holding its breath, the tension as taut as a drum, a vibration of anticipation humming through everyone there.

‘I thought: Not like this, not with him. I’m not a selfless person, but thinking of someone else nearby, someone I wanted to save myself for, it helped. When I say “save myself” I don’t mean chastity, in a sexual way, the full meaning – I knew he’d want me to save myself. One last roll of the dice occurred to me, a counter intuitive way of getting this boy to let me go. I said: “What are you, some sort of gross rapist?”

‘He dropped me like I was radioactive.

‘“Don’t flatter yourself,” he spat. Someone who had locked me in a room and sexually assaulted me, told me I was overrating myself as a temptation. Being raped was too good for me. “You think you’re all that, Georgina Horspool, but you’re bang average.”

‘But it worked. I’d said the R word out loud, called it by its name, and he didn’t want to see himself as that. He zipped himself up and curled his lip at me, muttered his disgust as I unlocked the door and claimed my freedom.

‘Except I was walking into a different sort of trap and in some ways, one I’ve been in ever since. As I rejoined the party, it was as if everyone was waiting for us. Shocked noises, laughter, hands clapped over mouths, a ripple of conversation, as if our joint exit was somehow also an announcement.

‘I looked back at That Boy, and he was making a gesture: tongue pushed in the side of his mouth, fist shaking underneath. Everyone in his clique whooped and wolf-whistled. He gave a bow. I was motionless.

‘That Boy put a drink in my hand, saying, “You’re quite a girl, mad technique”, to more hollering. What should I say? Should I shout that I didn’t do it, I hadn’t wanted to do it? Everyone saw – I’d gone by choice into a toilet with him. Then I’d let him kiss me. I’d touched it, when his hand wasn’t gripping mine. I HAD done it.

‘And no one was taking mid-league, not-thin-enough, try-hard Georgina’s word over this Rock God, no one. When I’d be lucky to pull him, but he’d chosen me from a pool of eager hopefuls? UGH. Vindictive slag. A slapper, and worse, one with ideas above her station.

‘He high five-ed with his mates, who were awed. The queen bees, looking at me, were a mixture of admiration and repulsion. Someone muttered something about my surname should be “Whores-pool”.

‘He was That Boy and I was no longer Georgina. I was That Girl who waltzed into the toilets at the party, performed a sex act, and reappeared, bold as brass, to claim my free rum cooler as a prize for a blowjob. Ask anyone I went to school with, they probably know this story. It instantly became part of my official biography.

‘My best friend approached me, smiling, slightly scared, but thinking I’d taken some decisive leap across the threshold into adulthood, and decided to do it with the highest status boy there. Go, Georgina. Wow. How could I tell her that nothing was what it seemed, that I was devastated, that this triumphant night for us was now trauma? I didn’t have the vocabulary to repel this boy, and I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what had happened to me.

‘I didn’t run out. I didn’t burst into tears. I didn’t behave anything like a victim. The damage was done. And I didn’t want to be a victim. That’s not how I saw myself, it wasn’t part of my identity. It wasn’t even part of my story for this very evening. I hadn’t been ruined. No. I could choose for this to all be OK. I still had control and choice, the control to make this normal and the choice not to make a fuss.’

Now, a deep breath, for the last part.

‘But this denial, it all fell apart when I looked across at the boy I was in love with. He was kissing someone else. Possibly a reaction to what he thought I’d done, but I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to howl like an animal in pain, at the injustice. I’d lost him. Georgina the casual favour-giver couldn’t also be Georgina the girlfriend. I don’t even remember the rest of the party or when he left, I drank like I wanted to black out. Eventually when I looked around for him, he was gone. Forever. Nothing else mattered after that.