by Amie Gibbons
My head snapped up and fury shot through my belly and made my heart tighten.
“That! Right there,” he said, pointing. “What happened?”
“You obviously know, so why are you asking?” I snapped.
“Because you need to say it.”
I took a deep breath. “I had a fight with my sister, I went to my boyfriend’s place, we got into his daddy’s booze, we had sex, it was bad. After that he dumped me because it was bad. Carvi, I’ve dealt with this. I was in therapy and everything.”
He leaned forward, putting his hands on my knees and staring me in the eyes. “No, you haven’t.”
He paused like he was lettin’ that sink in.
Yes, I did.
He didn’t know what he was talking about.
“If you had,” Carvi said, “you wouldn’t have reacted like you just did. You wouldn’t have wanted to slap me for just mentioning it.”
No. He was wrong.
“Eight years ago,” Carvi said, “you were torn apart because your sister essentially abandoned you, the sister you have said practically raised you, and you went to someone to replace her. You wanted to use him to fill in the hole that damage left, you wanted to forge a connection, and you saw sex as the way to do it.
“He wanted sex and you wanted to make a connection since you just lost a very important one. More than that, you wanted what you saw as a connection to someone who couldn’t leave you. You wanted to make him into a partner. Because in your mind, partners don’t leave you.”
Carvi paused, staring at me.
I was pretty sure I should be feeling something right now, but I wasn’t.
“Okay?” I finally said.
He nodded like that’s what he’d been waiting for. “Okay, there’s a but in there. What happened when you went over there?”
“What does this have to do with-”
“Ent,” he said. “Ariana, it has everything to do with this situation. Tell me what happened.”
“His parents were away for the weekend for his sister’s dance competition. We got into the liquor cabinet.”
“Because?” he asked.
“What do you mean? Because we were teenagers and we could.”
“You’re being stubborn again. What did you say when you got there?”
I searched my brain. “I told him about the fight with my sister, and that I was upset, and he was really sweet about it. I don’t remember exact things said.”
“So you told him you were going to go home after you guys talked?”
I jerked straight.
No, I hadn’t.
“No,” I said. “He suggested gettin’ out the wine and said he wouldn’t be able to drive me home if he did, and I said I wasn’t plannin’ on going home tonight anyway. I’d told my parents I was gonna sleep at a friend’s place because I was too upset to be there right then.”
Carvi snapped his fingers again. “Lea, you told him you weren’t going home, that you were spending the night, you gave him the green light.”
Anger like a hot poker in my stomach made me growl. “I never said I didn’t!”
“But then what happened?”
I took a deep breath. “We had wine.”
“How much?”
I blew out a puff of air. “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“So enough that it impaired your memory?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Enough that it impaired your judgment.” It wasn’t a question. “So now we’re getting to it. Why did you drink so much?”
Quackin’ crap on a cracker, I’d already dealt with all this in therapy eight years ago!
“Because I was upset at my sister,” I said.
He shook his head. “Wrong, try again.”
“What do you want from me!” I shot up and Carvi was up and holding my hands so fast I didn’t see him move.
“Right now, lea, I honestly want to help you, and you’re resisting. That reaction tells me we’re getting to something you haven’t touched in eight years, which means you never dealt with it.”
Tears filled my eyes and I gulped.
“That’s what he said to me,” I whispered. “When he was tryin’ to get in and couldn’t. He said I was resisting.”
“Okay,” Carvi said in a soothing voice, sinking back down and pulling me with him til I sat back in my seat. “I think we’re getting to it then.”
“Are you saying he raped me?” I asked in a small voice. “Because I went through all this with my therapist back then and we decided he didn’t.”
“From what you’re saying and what I’ve seen in your brain today, he didn’t. He didn’t cross the line legally. But now that we have that out of the way, does that make what you both did right?”
A tear leaked out and I wiped under my eyes, the mascara burning.
“Lea, why did you get drunk?”
“Because I was scared,” I whispered. “Sex scared me and I didn’t want to be a chicken. I didn’t want to hold back because I was scared. But I really didn’t want to do it, and I didn’t want to give myself an out.”
Carvi squeezed my hands. “By Jove, I think she’s got it.”
I smiled but it was weak.
My whole body shook, and I pulled my hands away to wrap them around myself.
“And now,” he said, “when you get scared, you either freeze or you barrel straight into it, because you don’t want to be a chicken. Your first reaction, depending on the situation, is to freeze or run right at it without thinking.”
I sniffed.
“Ariana, he failed the good guy test. You were practically shoving your virginity into his hands, and he should have said no, but most guys wouldn’t.”
He paused. “Most guys would fail that test, lea. He probably thought it was fine since you consented while sober, and he was wrong. He was an asshole who took advantage of a damaged girl who was so damaged she was getting drunk to have sex even though she was scared and didn’t want to.”
“And he should’ve known.” My voice broke.
“Yes,” Carvi said, voice still so even and calm.
“And he should’ve apologized. He should’ve said what he did was wrong. He just kept sayin’ I consented so it was fine.”
“Yes, but that’s on him. That is his burden. The fact that he did that and it went so badly probably does haunt him now, or if not at twenty-three, it will by thirty, or forty, or when he has a daughter that age.”
“Twenty-five,” I corrected. “He was seventeen.”
“Okay,” he said. “Whatever. That’s on him. The wrong he did, leave with him.
“People who say you need an apology to feel better are full of shit. That is people trying to push the responsibility of them feeling better onto someone else. Accept that he did something wrong with you. Even though it wasn’t illegal, it can still leave damage, you can still have been victimized, and if your therapist said that since it wasn’t rape that you weren’t victimized, then that was a bad therapist.”
I shrugged. “That wasn’t exactly what she said.”
“Okay, it doesn’t matter. You accept that someone wronged you, and leave it with him. You need to deal with what he did to you by accepting that it happened and it’s okay. And you have to look at yourself and what you did.”
“I have,” I said.
“I don’t think you’ve dealt with either his role or yours, because you are reacting like someone who hasn’t. I felt you when you were getting the vision upstairs. The tub is, for lack of a better term, one of your triggers.
“If you have triggers, it means you haven’t dealt with something and therefore things that remind you set you off. The fact that you are shaking and shirking away now also tells me you haven’t dealt with this.”
Was I shirking?
I had my arms wrapped so tight around myself I could almost cut off circulation and I was hunched, huddled back into the cushions.
Yep.
“Ariana, what was the gu
y’s name?” he asked.
I flinched.
“You don’t like to say his name,” Carvi said. “That’s common. You have given him, and by extension, his name, power over you. Since you flinched thinking of it, I’m guessing it’s an uncommon name. Because if it were more common, you’d be more used to it.”
I nodded.
“Can you say it?”
I nodded. “Zane. He hated it. People called him Zany as a kid, like as an insult, and he went by his middle name of Benjamin for a long time, til he hit puberty, shot up a foot, started workin’ out, and became a big, impressive football player. He was Zane when I knew him.”
“Okay,” Carvi said. “If you can name it, it has less power over you. Now, let’s get back to you. You wanted to trade sex for a connection and you had to use substances to do it.”
I snorted. “Like a hooker using coke to get through her first trick.”
Carvi shrugged. “Yeah, that’s what I was getting at.”
I flinched.
“And that reaction tells me you’re not okay with that. You helped victimize yourself, to get something, and not only were you victimized, but you also didn’t get what you wanted, and you never forgave yourself.”
I curled my knees up to my chest and pushed back further into the chair.
“Take a breath,” Carvi said. “We’re going through a lot here. You felt victimized. We’ve gotten that far. Can you tell me why you felt victimized? Lots of women trade sex for things. Why was this so traumatic?”
“Because I was a virgin,” I said.
“You say that like it’s obvious, but you need to dig into it. What does that mean?”
I took a deep breath, closing my eyes. “It means it was something special. Something no other guy in the world will ever have from me.”
“Okay, a lot of girls think that way. A lot of guys do too. That means you traded something huge for something you didn’t get, but what else. What else does being a virgin mean for girls?”
“It means it hurt. A lot!”
“Did you tell him it hurt.”
I snorted. “Yes. I felt so embarrassed later, like of course he ran from me, who wants a girl who’s basically tellin’ you you’re bad in bed?” My voice picked up speed. “I mean, he was, but I was a virgin so-”
“Ent,” Carvi said. “You start to babble when you want to deflect. Focus. What about it was so bad?”
“All of it,” I said.
“Ariana.”
“See, when you say my real name, I know you’re trying to make a point, but I-”
“Be specific,” he cut me off. “Walk through what you do remember. What was so bad? Keep your eyes closed, that’s okay, but try to remember. You obviously have this story down as a soundbite, a quick, ‘this is what happened,’ but you use that to glaze over the actual pain.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “We were making out and got our tops off. We’d gone that far before, but I never let him go to third, that was too much for me. So when he took off my jeans… I remember it was one quick motion, like he had that move down.
“So I asked how many times he’d done this and he wouldn’t answer me. I knew he hadn’t been a virgin, but I was asking like how many times had he been with his old girlfriend, as if he would’ve kept count, but he took it as me askin’ how many girls he’d been with and said he wasn’t going to tell me how many he’d been with because it was rude to talk about when he was with someone else. Warning sign, right?”
Carvi didn’t say anything.
“Things get fuzzy,” I said. “I knew he took off his pants after mine. He went down on me and it hurt. I don’t know what he was doin’ down there, but it was way too rough. He fingered me and that was okay, but he was still too harsh with his motions, I think. He got two fingers in and that hurt, like he was stretching me out. I remember asking what he was doin’. I don’t remember being able to see. Maybe it was too dark? And he told me he had two fingers in.”
I paused, holding myself tighter. When did it get so cold in here?
“Lea?” Carvi said gently.
“Okay, um, at some point I ran to the bathroom. I wasn’t turned on and I was freaking out because I wasn’t turned on, and I started playing with myself, trying to get me there. He knocked on the door and asked if he should come in or something like that, I don’t know, and I screamed no, like full on panic.”
I shook my head. “Eventually I went back out there and we got back to the bed, I don’t know how. Um, I really don’t remember anything between that and when he was actually in. He said, ‘See, you’re having sex,’ and I said, ‘It hurts.’ I think he said that’d stop or something.”
I paused. “No, there was that part before, between the bathroom and actually having sex where he said I was resisting. He was usually such a nice guy, but he sounded so sharp and harsh then, like he was mad about that. It hurt to hear that and I thought it was me, so I was tryin’ harder, but I didn’t know how.
“Like, he had to definitely push past something to get in. I remember babbling after it stopped hurting, and he was annoyed, told me to stop talkin’. I know he was doing stuff. I was so out of it, I didn’t even feel it after a while. He kept moving me to different positions and he got really frustrated. I think he was trying to get me off and eventually just gave up.”
I took a deep breath again.
I wasn’t feeling much of anything right now either.
“I remember laying in his arms after and liking that part. Feeling right and comforted, and like this was where I was supposed to be. We fell asleep and I woke up with kind of a hangover a few hours later.
“It was past midnight and I checked my phone. Daddy had been calling. He’d left voicemails saying he called my friend’s house, and her mom said I wasn’t there. He sounded really freaked so I asked my boyfriend to drive me home and he said he couldn’t because he’d had too much to drink and was tired. I’d called a cab to get there so I called one to go back and I went home.”
I shook my head. “I was so scared Daddy was gonna be mad at me, and he was when I got home, until I walked into the living room light and he saw my face. He knew. Somehow, he knew and he hugged me. He hugged me so tight, and I started bawling.
“When I finally stopped and pulled back, I saw he was crying too. It’s one of the few times I’ve seen my daddy cry. After that is the stuff I think you already know from what you said about the tub being a trigger, like my sister tearing into me the next day, my boyfriend not calling me back, him breaking up with me, me slitting my wrist.”
I let out a shuttered breath.
And finally opened my eyes.
Carvi sat across from me, body completely relaxed, no sign of any emotion on his face.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
I barked a laugh. “Not much right now. It’s kinda nice.”
“That’s going to end, probably in a few minutes, and you’re going to start crying. Before you do, I’m going to see if we can hold it off, so we can get to the issue here.”
I nodded.
“You were not legally raped, no, but you were violated. You pushed yourself into doing something you weren’t ready for, and you took away your ability to check yourself, to tell him to stop, to let yourself run if it was too much too fast. You made yourself helpless and your boyfriend took full advantage. Sound about right?”
I nodded.
“What happened after that? You don’t need to go into details, but in general, what happened in your sex life after that?”
I snorted, pressing my lips together. “I got a little slutty.”
“No value judgments,” he said. “You know there’s none from me. What did you do?”
“I learned,” I said. “I fooled around with the next guy I started datin’ maybe two months after that. We went pretty fast, but never went past third. So I learned how to do blow jobs on him, how to let myself go to have a guy bring me, that I liked to bite.”
“Was he yo
ur boyfriend?”
“Nope. I dated him and we fooled around on and off for the next two years until he graduated, and I was dating other guys during that time too. I had sex with them when I felt like it, and I got around. I didn’t have a boyfriend again until college. And I… I got to the point where I stopped just jumpin’ into bed with guys, but if they tried to jump into bed with me too fast, I’d leave and say the relationship was over. Until Quil. I got my visions, and after that I couldn’t get intimate obviously. Again, until Quil.”
“Why couldn’t you have sex?”
“Because I’d get visions during sex.”
“So for two years you didn’t kiss anyone, go dancing and rub up against someone, brush against people on the street?”
“Of course I did. I dated guys, made out with a few, went dancing as long as the place wasn’t too crowded because that would be a sensory overload, but… why?”
“You have been able to live your life with having visions. Sometimes you brush up against a stranger and get one and you seem fine. So why would having one during sex be so bad?”
“Because it’d take me out of the moment.”
“Possibly, but there’s more to it.”
“Carvi!”
“No, lea, there’s more to it than that. What happens if you’re out of the moment?”
“Then that ruins it.”
“And? So what?”
“What do you mean so what? That ruins it.”
“Ariana, what happens if sex is ruined? Sex gets interrupted, goes funky, or weird or whatever all the time. So what’s the big deal if sex is ruined?”
I paused.
Then the guy doesn’t come back.
Carvi nodded. “Yeah. You have a fear of abandonment. Your sister left and your boyfriend did right after, and you are terrified if you are not good in bed one time that the guy is going to leave you.
“You said yourself, after that first time, you learned. You went out and practiced because dammit, you weren’t going to get abandoned again. But, if you liked the guy, you didn’t sleep with him for a while. I’m betting that boyfriend in college, you made him chase you. Because you’re also scared if you fuck someone you care about too soon, they’ll leave.”
