In all seriousness

Ed. note: This post was originally published on the Community site. 

Emily Yoffe is best-known as “Prudie” of “Dear Prudence,” a long-running advice column on Slate. She’s made a recent pastime out of complaining that sexual assault concerns on campus are overblown. Her latest, “The Problem with Campus Sexual Assault Surveys,” highlights the Association of American Universities survey of students at 27 universities. She claims that the AAU report is plagued by methodological problems: only nineteen percent of the students in the study filled out the survey, and that group could have included a higher proportion of victims.

A nineteen-percent response rate is lousy, and women who are sexually assaulted may well be extra motivated to respond to a sexual assault survey. Yoffe makes another argument against using sexual-violence survey data as an indicator of the prevalence of sexual violence. There was a wide overlap in the AAU survey between women who reported “nonconsensual penetration” and women who failed to report their assailant to the police.

Yoffe notes that more than sixty percent of these women gave their reason for silence as, “I did not think it was serious enough to report.” According to her, claiming that “nonconsensual penetration” is “not serious” is an indication that these young women are all mixed up. Sex is a complicated thing, and maybe these women aren’t sure of their feelings. Maybe they don’t feel violated so much as pressured or misunderstood.

I was sexually assaulted. I decided that it was not serious enough to report. I can explain my reasoning to all of you right now.

My sexual assault was about four years ago. I can’t remember what month. I could probably calculate the date to within a week or so, but I prefer to give that memory a wide berth, so I’ve turned that year into a nature preserve where my not-rape can roam free.

I can tell the night itself. It happened while I was living in Argentina, eking out a miserable living as a business-English teacher. I shared an apartment with an Argentinian couple my age; the male half of the pair was a musician who played in a jazz band. One night, they put on a concert in a friend’s apartment.

I had a friend, a man I had found through an expat website. I had put up an ad seeking a conversation partner to practice my Spanish. (My Spanish was excellent. We always communicated in Spanish, and he never had any problem understanding me. This becomes important later.) We met a few times in bars and cafes. He usually paid. He never asked me out or expressed any kind of romantic interest in me, never touched me. I assumed that this meant we were simply friends, and I invited him to this concert.

My friend showed up after the performance was over, when the concert was shifting into a house party. He had a friend with him I didn’t know. I was relieved. I was embarrassed to be bringing an acquaintance to a place where I was a stranger and glad he had someone to talk with.

Both men seemed nervous, in a hurry to be somewhere else. I thought we would stay at the house party, drinking and talking, until it was time to go home. I wanted to socialize with my roommates, to make amends for coming late.

He asked me, right away, if I wanted to go to a party at his apartment. I didn’t want to go, and didn’t see why we should leave this party for another one, but I felt responsible for him and didn’t want him or his friend to feel uncomfortable. So I said yes, we could go to the other party, and finished my drink.

He had a car, and so the three of us drove to their apartment on the other side of town. I didn’t have much money, and an extra five or ten dollars in taxi fare was burdensome then. I didn’t say anything. Who was driving? I can’t remember whether it was him or his friend, although I remember sitting in the back seat while they were in the front. I remember both of them always in profile, him in particular with his face turned away.

Their apartment was in a tall, narrow building with a gothic façade the same color as the asphalt at night, covered by a wrought-iron gate. We climbed the stairs for two or three floors and entered their apartment, which was carpeted in a bruisy salmon color and whose ceilings felt low. They had a couch the color of steak sauce and a tall black lamp, a table somewhere to the right and two bedrooms off the wall that faced the door and open kitchen.

His roommate immediately walked across the carpet and into his bedroom and shut the door. I think he kept the light on for a while, but he was totally quiet, as he had been once we got inside, so he may have been listening to headphones or playing a video game without sound. He didn’t speak directly to me after we were introduced.

We were the only people there. I believed that I had misunderstood what they had said about the party. We sat down on the couch.

He had red wine. He served us both some after his friend was out of the way. I was beginning to feel nervous. I was unsure how to handle the situation, and I was nervous about betraying that I was nervous or unhappy. I wanted to forestall anything that might happen.

We sat on the couch for a minute or two with the wine, and then he put down his glass of wine and said, “All right, beautiful,” and leaned in to kiss me. I think I let him kiss me for a very short moment before moving away and saying, “I don’t feel that way.” He didn’t try again. He removed his arm from around my shoulders and said, “All right.” Then there was a pause. I thought about leaving, but I didn’t want to offend him. I was drunk, tired, and chagrined, and the thought of flagging a taxi and navigating home was daunting. I was also worried about standing outside for any length of time, in a neighborhood that seemed unsafe.

He told me that it was okay, that I could stay there, that nothing would happen. I wanted to believe him, and I did not think that I could indicate that I was worried. I did not want to go out and find a taxi, and was worried that I couldn’t pay for one. I was tired, and very grateful to have a way to go to sleep immediately. He offered me his bed. I assumed that meant he would sleep on the couch.

I got into his bed fully dressed. His room was dark, and it was dark outside – there was either no window on the wall opposite the door, or no street lamps to shine in. After a few minutes, he came in and got into bed with me. I didn’t say anything. I may have pretended to be asleep. I was tired and suddenly felt more drunk. I wanted to sleep. I still thought it was possible nothing would happen.

I didn’t feel as though I could leave his bedroom and take the couch. The lights were still on in the living room, and I wasn’t sure I could sleep out there. His roommate was still in the apartment, and I didn’t want him to see me in the living room.

He got into bed with me and put his arms around me. I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t feel like I could resist. Then he kissed the back of my shoulders. I flinched but I didn’t move away. He ran his hands over my shirt. I moved them away. He put his hands on my waist. I moved them away. He slid his hands down my waist to my hips. I moved his hands. He put his hands back on my waist.

It was a back and forth: he would put his hands on me and I would push them off. He would put his hands under my clothing and I would pull them out. He slid his hands under the waistline of my jeans, under the elastic band of my underwear, and then over my crotch. I pulled his hands away. He touched my breasts, and I moved his hands away. Then he would start again. I think this went on for hours, but I kept either falling asleep or passing out.

I’m not sure where it would be right to say that I had downed two cocktails containing fernet, an aperitif just that much stronger than whiskey mixed in a tumbler with coke, before that glass of wine. I might have had more. By the time we left the party, I was drunk enough to be suggestible. I don’t think I was incapacitated. I was tired. Or I couldn’t move or couldn’t make myself move and that felt like exhaustion. I wanted to be left alone, to sleep. I thought, if I pretend I’m asleep, he’ll leave me alone. I focused on my breathing.

Eventually he did leave me alone. He fell asleep. I slept fitfully. Closing my eyes was difficult. I saw aureate pinwheels behind my eyelids, spreading and rolling from their center points. My hands were heavy.

I woke up early in the morning, although it was springtime and the morning seemed bright. I wasn’t hung over. I wanted to leave but wasn’t sure how. I was also confused about how far I was from the city center, and afraid of trying to get back into town without help. He was there in the kitchen. He made me coffee and went out to get me a package of muffins. They were like bath sponges under the cellophane, but I ate at least two.

I didn’t talk much during breakfast. Neither of us did. He didn’t seem nervous. I may have had an excuse to leave. I think I walked down the stairs by myself. We didn’t say much beyond goodbye. I didn’t talk during breakfast. I felt mute. He didn’t touch me when we said goodbye. His roommate wasn’t there.

I told my roommates a day or so later when they mentioned him, the guest at the concert. They looked concerned and told me that he was not a good guy. I didn’t use the phrase sexual assault. They were sympathetic but didn’t seem to think it was very important.

I told a friend who said it was so obvious that he was trying to make a move, that “party” and “with us” and “nothing will happen” were all a transparent ruse, and that in my place she would instantly have known.

I told two other friends who thought of it as sexual assault and were concerned and angry on my behalf. They have asked me several times how I feel about what happened, and I have tried to answer earnestly because I agree that this is a serious problem. I seek them out sometimes, for their certainty.

I never considered telling the police, then or later. I felt confident they would never have taken the complaint to the man who assaulted me, let alone arrested him. That they would have ignored me or laughed at me. That they would have treated my assault as not serious, and they probably wouldn’t have filed a report.

So the young women in the survey might mean “not serious” as in, “to law enforcement.”

But of course it goes further than that. I was convinced that what had happened to me wasn’t serious to anyone. It took me years to admit that it could even be considered sexual assault. It took additional years to acknowledge, even to myself, that it was traumatic. Even now, I feel embarrassed to use words like “damaging” and “traumatic” and “sexual assault.” I feel melodramatic.

Most of my friends I didn’t tell. Until lately the people I spoke to about sexual assault in general I didn’t tell. I never mentioned what had happened. I felt self-important dignifying it and myself with words at all.

I had panic attacks afterward. I can remember two. Once when a friend kissed me, and once when I thought another friend might hug me. (Mortifying, that they might read this and recognize themselves.) I can’t name many other adverse reactions to physical contact, but I haven’t had much physical contact these past four years. The last person I had any sexual contact with was my assailant.

Semantic fatigue on the first repetition – assailant, no, this man, that man, the man who caused this damage, no, who touched me, the last person who touched me, no, this man who assaulted me, the one I mentioned before.

I froze, I think. With my friends I held very still.

I haven’t had sex with anyone since I was sexually assaulted, because I am still recovering.

I haven’t dated anyone in four years, because I am still recovering.

Sometimes I can’t tell my friends from my assailant, because I am still recovering.

Still because this not-rape, this violation, this assault that could very well have become nonconsensual penetration if I had been less alert or more drunk or who knows, this encounter that wasn’t serious enough to report did me serious harm.

One reason I have taken so long to recover is that people like Emily Yoffe are so intent on telling people like me that nothing serious happened. We are not really hurt. We admit that we were not really hurt. Our inability to say that we were hurt is proof.

I was afraid of what would happen if I said no, if it became a fight, if I did not fight or refuse. He was not a threat.

I don’t like being touched. I can’t prove that I don’t enjoy sex, because I haven’t come close to sex since this story happened to me. This is something I have failed to address. I suffer from neck and shoulder pain. In the morning, the yoke of my shoulders is sore. I should speak to someone. This is not trauma.

I try to still my breathing. When I lean on the treadle of my chest my heartbeat zings forward like a harnessed needle. This is not pain.

Some things I do differently now, especially among men. I don’t like to face them sometimes. When I’m upset I turn my head away. One friend noticed that I was hyperventilating, but I assured him that I was all right, that I was not upset. I am not upset. I was not hurt.

Or memory is an animal crouched over me, and here you see me playing dead.