After my assault, my life changed a lot.
For the sake of the sex diary, I have to fill in some details that I feel really inform the next rungs on my sexual ladder. But I won't bore you with a novel, skip a few paragraphs if you want to get to the good parts.
I went through a pretty conventional cycle, now that I look back on it: my first emotions around it were of shame. I felt so stupid and helpless; the question that kept showing up in my mind was "How could you be so FUCKING DUMB?" And so I kept it private, and didn't tell a soul for a long time.
Junior year started just three weeks after the assault. I changed in ways my friends remarked on: I was suddenly socially nonexistent, quiet for things that they knew me to be loud about. I very much retreated into myself and built a wall. But though I stopped being so vocal, I became even more radical. I felt filled with righteous rage. I took an introductory women's studies class my sophomore year, and in my junior year, made it my minor. The things I learned obviously spoke to me and let me depersonalize my rage and direct it at patriarchy and capitalism; cute, considering I was a marketing major.
Naturally, I lost all appetite for dating and for men in general. I deleted the profile, and after a few months, was sure I'd never want to date a man again.
It's only now in hindsight that I can understand why I did some of the things I did that school year. When the semester started, I immediately ditched a marketing course for a women's studies one, making two that I had that fall. A month in, I literally took my dad's clippers to my head, and gave myself a really, really bad buzz cut. I got a tattoo under my left breast, and then another on my left shoulder blade, and another underneath my right ass cheek (not saying exactly what they are, pervs). I got my left ear a second and third piercing, and my right labia its first. After the labia piercing, I stopped shaving my bush; after all, no one was seeing or touching it. I covered up again, like in high school: sports bras and loose-fitting shirts that hid the girls, long skirts that hid my ass and legs—a lot of black and other solid colors.
These aesthetic changes weren't strategic so much as they were an exploration of identity. Today's me cringes at the pictures taken, even though I'm mostly jealous. Any artist's best work is done when they're experimenting, and that's what it was: I needed control over my body, the controlled pain of a tattoo, having something external represent some pain, even if literally no one saw it. Well, Quinn saw them, and was really happy and excited for me, but she knew nothing of the assault.
My mom and I had a very cliched conversation about the hair and the piercing, she showing concern and I being utterly disdainful, assuming she could never, possibly, in a million years understand, and I now regret the assumption. She did what any loving mother would do: check in. She tried hard not to judge, not to warn me against what "people" would think, but expressed curiosity. However, I was a fortress, and repaid the approach like defenders on a wall would, with boiling oil and arrows.
When I think back, of course, that must have been concerning for my parents, because not only was I doing all this shit to my appearance, but I also was SO ANGRY ALL THE TIME. Again, this was a stage of trauma recovery, though I didn't know what that was, and it's obvious now that the anger was about what had happened. I'd be normal in a totally mundane situation, something would happen that should have been a minor annoyance, and then at that, I'd express a rage that had never come out in public before.
My dating life vanished into nonexistence; not only did I not have any lines out, I put on such a "do not fuck with me!" vibe that even the cockiest of horny men didn't care to put in the effort. If I was ever alone at a cafe or running errands, I noticed a massive decline in the amount of random approaches I would get. Even though achieving this level of carapacity felt good for that time, it was based on fear, because I had no way of knowing I could ever trust any man again. It felt like the incident could happen again with any new guy the moment I let my guard down.
One positive side-effect of it, though, was that I became monk-like in my studies. For me, that was the school year of reading great books and thinking great thoughts. I got very deep into feminism and cultural studies, and aced the Marketing Statistics Methods class, usually the junior level class that would force people to change majors or retake it. I was also laying the groundwork for my senior thesis the following year, narrowing my interests and brainstorming topics. I made a great impression on my two favorite professors that semester, one of whom would advise on my thesis.
My parents were great, and living there as an adult was not oppressive at all, but I could never be fully and comfortably myself there. So I contemplated moving out, though I'd need to work on the finances for a bit. Quinn and I talked about being roommates, and we got very close. Having a goal, even one as simple as that, focused not only my mind, but the relationship. We spent a lot of time at each other's houses, and got even more personal. We talked about jobs and ways we could make some extra money, each of us giving ourselves a $1,000 goal, at which point we could make our jump. We revealed much more about our fears, failures, and insecurities.
There was an emotional night where I did really badly in an interview earlier that day. I sought Quinn out like a drug, looking for something to make me feel better without getting stoned since I didn't know when I'd have to get drug tested. I texted Quinn and she invited me over immediately; I think I shed a little tear over how sweet she was to me.
When I showed up at her door, she opened it and hugged me, and of course I exploded into tears. She didn't shush me, but she held me tight and rubbed my back, which was soothing, and also made me cry harder. But she held me for a good while, letting me openly weep into her chest for all the world to see. "Okay, c'mon," she said softly after a minute. I couldn't blame her for treating me like a sad puppy; that's what I was.
I didn't realize it at the time, but Quinn went into parent mode, and I can see now that she was adopting a coping strategy that many parents use when their kid has suffered a terrible injustice and there's nothing the parent can do to take that back: she put me to work. "I need your help," she said and guided me to the kitchen where she then made me chop stuff. I felt like I could barely hold the knife at first, then got used to it. Luckily, it was a really good knife and it went smoothly through the bell peppers and garlic. "No, look, I need these in a minute. Here!" She caught me crying and showed me how to make slices in an instant. "Do this please, this oil is...burning."
We wrecked her kitchen. Ultimately, we got all the stuff chopped and into the pan on time, with some droplets of oil on our arms accompanied by screams. What came out though, was good old-fashioned comfort food. It was a pile of thin soy noodles with all kinds of things stirred in, spicy but not obnoxiously so. Quinn tasted it on the stove and tentatively approved. She judged herself the hardest, because that instinct has to exist in an artist. From culture or compassion, she deferred to me: "This came out good, but only because you cut the things really well."
I muttered a thank you as I filled a large bowl to the brim and fucking crushed it. It wasn't just good, it was spectacular—the best memory of noodles ever, and I had helped to make them—but of course Quinn could've done everything herself. Though the kitchen was messy, because it was big, it still looked manageable. The house smelled of wonderful food aromas; I've no idea what spices she used, but something gave up a beauty that made me sneeze with delight.
It was getting dark when we finished our noodle feast. We didn't talk about much, but I asked about her parents as they didn't seem to be around at all; they had taken a quick trip to Vegas and would be back the next day. I was a little relieved, as I was still in the age of wanting to be nice to a friend's parents but didn't want to have to pretend around them. I felt like shit and it was nice to have this space to cry and be ugly.
Back then, streaming wasn't as amazing as it is, and so a lot of people had DVD sets of their favorite shows. In Quinn's case, it was Buffy, and she put on the second season. I don't even remember what, but something in it made me start to cry (again) and we went from being on opposite ends of the couch, to me laying on my side with my feet on her lap. It felt instinctive, done as anyone would do for any friend, but Quinn began to rub my feet.
