I watched my girlfriend get fucked in the ass today. By another guy. A guy she didn't like, and one I didn't care for either. The "Creep," as she called him. It wasn't as painful to watch as I thought it'd be. I was surprised that I found it erotic at all. I was very surprised. It brought out feelings that I didn't know were there. It was another side of my girlfriend that I'd never seen before. It was definitely more painful for her than it was for me. He was rough with her, but I think it was the misogyny more than the sadism that got to her emotionally. She probably hated every minute of it -- or she loved it in that sick way where you think you deserve it or that you've just got-to--have-it. Probably, a little of both. I don't know. She didn't let on. She barely said a word.
As we walked back to our cars tonight I didn't say anything either. I thought a whole lot, but I kept it to myself. I didn't know what to say, so it was best not to say anything. She said nothing, but her silence was louder than words. She usually had a comment for everything. She was obviously thinking about what had happened. She was always very astute in her observations, so it made me pay close attention when she said, simply,
"I didn't think that would ever happen again."
Alarm bells went off in my head. Confusion reigned. I wanted to say, "Again? You mean, you've done that before?" But I knew better. It was always better not to pry. Let things unfold with her. No matter how close we had become, she was always circumspect with me. A very private person. Besides, I sensed -- no -- I saw, that she was deeply embarrassed. She just wanted to get home.
As we went our separate ways tonight, she back to her husband, me to my wife, I thought: My relationship with her has changed forever. I knew her well enough to know that she'd worry about that, too, except that she undoubtedly had more on her mind than just that. She had to face her husband, and, literally, she had that foul taste of cock in her mouth. There hadn't been any wine to wash it away -- she wouldn't like that – and, her sore butthole was surely calling for her to get home as fast as possible. She'd want to recuperate in the bathtub. We'd fucked like that before, but gently, and only after she was fully aroused, and with lots of lube, and always when there was a bathtub in the motel room. This bastard hadn't wined and dined her. He had used her like whore, in the bathroom at the pub, in front of her friends (well, while they were close by) and he had literally laughed out loud at the sight of her on her knees as I scrambled to get her clothes back on before anyone came in.
I had contemplated leaving her right there in the bathroom. I don't know why I stayed to watch. I had been given my cue to leave. Initially, I was sick to my stomach, but as I said, it brought out a new side of me that was surprisingly cool and detached. As it turned out, it was crueler of me that I had stayed. To see her in that state -- what she later described as, "a dumb fuck with cockbreath and a sore butt," that was more unkind to her than what he had done with her, she said. She could have pushed it out-of-mind had she been alone, but because I was there, she couldn't escape the reality of it.
As I drove home, I had to backup and think, "How the hell did I get here?" I don't mean the affair. Plenty of people have affairs. Sometimes you get closer with the people you work with than with your spouse or the kids at home. Although she didn't have kids, I knew she probably questioned her choice for spouse and that she was looking for someone else, otherwise, why would she have said, "Yes," to me? I had often wondered if our affair was just a first step outside her marriage. I had guessed that she'd eventually leave me for someone else before she knew the answer to her questions. I didn't think it would be him though, arrogant creep that he was.
So the aftermath of her ... well ... let me think, you couldn't call it rape. I was privy to it all and, as much as I detested his methods, he was clear in his intent. She had countless opportunities to bail out. She never once tried to stop anything. On the other hand, she looked mesmerized from start to finish. We had always joked that she lost all blood to the brain when we fucked. She responded to him no differently than to me, despite a world's difference in intent. He had just wanted to break her, and he did.
At first she wouldn't respond to email and telephone calls. I thought, well, maybe she was shell-shocked. And, I also knew from past experience that she got reclusive for days at time anyway -- and at the drop of the hat, too. But this time, for once, I knew what had precipitated it, and it got me paranoid: What about those other times when she became reclusive? Had this happened before? Is that what she meant? Anyway, she didn't have to work for another four days, thank God. I didn't expect she could face her peers -- or him -- so soon. I wouldn't be able to if I were in her shoes. But why was she avoiding me? She could talk to me, and she wasn't going to be confiding in her husband, that was for sure!
I had never been there before, but I knew her schedule, and his, so I boldly knocked on her door. She wouldn't let me in – you know, something about violating the sanctity of the house, etc. -- but it got her to go out. That's when she said,
"I can't see what you see in me. Sometimes, you make me feel like the biggest slut in the world. Not when we're fucking -- then it feels good to let out the whore that's in every woman -- but it's ... well, other times. You can be so naïve."
I didn't understand a thing she was saying, but I knew it was important. I knew I didn't understand something about her that I should understand. I knew our relationship was changed. Maybe it was over. And it had something to do with me being naive. I plowed on, bravely -- stupidly, actually. I asked, rhetorically, "What's happening to us?" She showed no interest in coming down to my level. No interest at all. Just when it sounded like she was going to explain, she said, to herself, more than to me,
"He abused me."
Well, yeah, I thought, obviously he did. But, wait! Hadn't she said that before, just the other day? And, the way she said it was peculiar. The alarm bells were going off again. What was it? The "HE" sounded like it was in capital letters. It meant not just him, the Creep, but "HIM," the archetypal abuser. The way she said "abused" alarmed me, too. It sounded like it was more than just sexual. Power was involved. I knew it! She had said that about him the day before. Before he had even touched her that night, she was abused.
Anyway, she couldn't have gone to work given the shape she was in. I could see that now. I wondered what her husband thought. She wasn't saying much. That was unlike her. She stared in a fixed gaze, and she kept her arms folded against her stomach. She usually shook off feelings quickly, or covered them up with that gorgeous smile and musical laugh. Now, it looked like she had stayed in her bathrobe all day. The shift she had thrown on was unflattering. She didn't care. He had really gotten to her. I had not expected that. Where was the strong woman that could hold her own against any guy? I broke my rule, and I asked her that very question, and she said,
"It's happened before."
I was beginning to feel sick and weak in the knees. I shouldn't have asked. She was saying very little, but I was hearing more than I wanted to know. I knew what she meant: that other creep. The first boyfriend. But I was beginning to get paranoid again. Was there something more recent? I wanted to ask how long this had been going on, how many times, when, where, and by whom? But for now I was just going to keep my questions to myself. I wasn't going to say anything. After all, I'd already given her bad advice. I had no right to pry. And the Creep had basically told me the same thing that night: I had no right. The way she talked to me now simply reaffirmed that I had no right.
I left her that day still unsure of what it meant for the future, but I was thinking: it can't be good. I left understanding what she had been talking about a few days earlier, though. I knew now that I had underestimated the gravity of what had happened at work. She had told me about her unhappy day at work, and I had, unintentionally, given her bad advice. That's happened before. Let's face it, I can be an idiot, but this time the consequences astounded even me.
We both worked at the hospital, and we had become friends over lunch times. She talked about her residency; I about my research. She talked about her friends; I bitched about my colleagues. I knew her professors, and most of the resident advisors, including "The Creep." During the discussion of her workday upset, she had piqued my curiosity when she said in a surprisingly matter-of-fact tone,
"He abused me."
Of course, I thought at the time that she was exaggerating, that it was just some hyperbole for dramatic effect. But she reiterated it. She said it solemnly, like she was acknowledging that she had been bested by an adversary to whom she was obliged to pay due respect. I questioned that. She seemed to agree, at first, and then she said,
"I don't respect what he had did -- I know that was out of line."
Right! So why would she put up with it? She prided herself on knowing how to put guys in their place with feminine sarcasm that effectively withered a guy's egos and shrunk their penis to the bone. Apparently, it hadn't worked on him. (Later, I realized: she had never had a chance with him in the first place.) She said,
"It was better just to take it and get it over with."
Now, this wasn't like her at all. I didn't understand. Later, at the bar, she had demonstrated exactly what she meant when she got fucked by him in the restroom. She had just taken it, but at the time of our discussion, she had simply demurred when I said that she was capable of handling herself with guys in the workplace. She said,
"I tried, but the attending physician ignored me, and the rest of the residents were sheep while The Creep took control of the show."
So, I thought, they pretended it wasn't happening while he dished out his ugly treatment on my girlfriend. That sucks, I said, but I reminded her that, although it was unfair, it was not uncommon to mistreat the residents, to which she said,
"Yes, but not this much."
She wasn't being specific. She wasn't being emotional about this. This was strange. I thought, I want to know more, but I just wasn't getting it. I was beginning to think that there was more going on here than I wanted to know. It wasn't the first time that I got that sick-to-the-stomach feeling. As it turned out, she gave me the whole account, anyway. She said, in a bland tone of voice that was uncharacteristic of her,
"He asked us to consider a list of symptoms in a 50-year old, overweight male, with bulging stomach and abdominal pain. He suggested an enema prep and he asked – no -- he handed me the syringe and bag and gestured to the hook above. I lifted the nightgown, but there was nowhere in that mass of flesh to get at it. He said, 'You've done this before. Go for it.' I said, I hadn't. He said, 'You're a nurse, of course you have.' I told him that I'd never been a nurse in my life! He said, 'Well, you've had plenty of experience with these at home. Girls like you don't stay that thin without a little binging and purging.' I said, 'Not me!' 'Well, go for it girly,' he said. My face was burning red, but I channeled my energy into heaving on the guy's buttocks, lifting one cheek high enough to get the syringe in. To my surprise -- and disgust -- his anus got larger than the syringe, and he farted, practically in my face. When the chief resident laughed, they all laughed at me. The doctor looked perturbed, but he said nothing. I hated his look more than the laughter. I was setup, and I felt like a fool -- obviously the guy was bloated with gas. I didn't hear the rest of what The Creep said until I heard my name called repeatedly. He was telling me to practice at home, but not to get too sore. I started to say, 'Okay,' but stopped because I hadn't digested what he had said. I had said enough though, because it brought further gales of laughter from the other residents. The rest of the day was a blur."
What an ugly day, I thought. We had met that night after work, and, at first, she had seemed her normal self. But after I had described my day, and she had described that ugly scene, she had made that haunting comment:
"He abused me."
It was the dead-panned manner that was so unlike her. And she had added,
"At some point, I just took it and let it happen because he wasn't going to stop."
That was not like her. She loathed the fact that some women fell for the myth of male superiority. There was no way she was going to tolerate being called "girl." I had suggested that she needed to get back on the horse, so to speak, and to show her fellow residents and "The Creep" that he hadn't gotten to her. That was my first bad advice. It was bad because she took it. She went to work the next day, and that night, Friday, we were to meet after work for drinks with her fellow residents.
That's when it got even uglier. We walked in, trying not to look conspicuously like a couple, but rather as colleagues. We probably didn't fool anybody. They were there already, but -- surprise -- he was there, too! His back was to us, and he was regaling the residents with stories. The sound of his voice made her freeze in her tracks. I tripped over her, and she half-fell to her knees – that was the first time that night that she was on her knees before him -- and that drew his attention. And then it began. He shouted out her name. He greeted her grandly and he ignored me. He grabbed her bare arm, encircling it tightly with his hand, and he jerked her up from the floor and toward the bar. She was still recovering from nearly tripping, and she hadn't time to say a word before he had put a martini glass in her hand. He made a toast:
