I Felt Nothing.
“Kevin” kept walking after we got outside, beckoning me to follow him.
“C’mon,” he said. “It’s right around the corner.”
I glanced at the bar, considered going back inside. But I wanted that cocaine.
“Okay,” I murmured, and followed him around the corner. He struggled with the key then swung open the door. A staircase loomed in front of me, clean and carpeted.
As we walked upstairs, his breathing was heavy behind me, like his footsteps. I got to the top of the stairs, noticed that the room was completely empty, and turned around to face him.
“Where’s the co- ?” I started, but didn’t finish.
He pounded me once in the face, knocking me onto the floor. I was stunned and confused. He landed on top of me, his weight enormous, his knee on my neck. I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t move; I couldn’t scream.
He started to growl at me: “Shut up you cunt,” he said.
His knee lifted slightly, just enough for air to get through, as he unbuttoned his jeans over my face. “Shut up and suck it,” he said.
“No, I just – ” I started – and WHAM! he slapped me across the face, hard.
“Suck it cunt!” he bellowed. “Now!”
He smelled like rotting garbage, but I did as I was told.
He did not get hard. I stopped. “I don’t want to do this.” SMACK!
I kept going. Still, he didn’t get hard.
“No,” I said.
BAM!
He hit me and screamed obscenities and I tried to do what he wanted but I just wanted to go home.
“Stop you fuckin’ bitch!” he yelled suddenly. I stopped.
Still flaccid, he decided to try vaginal sex. He held me down with his elbow as he manipulated himself, his hair greasy, fruity-smelling in my face, as he tried to find a way to penetrate me.
“If you could just – ”
“Shut up!” SLAP!
I pleaded for him to let me go. I asked to go back to the bar. I asked to use the bathroom. Again and again and again, I spoke and he smacked me.
I was like a broken appliance.
“I just want to go home,” I cried. WHACK!
I stopped speaking.
I thought about home. I realized that home wasn’t with Larry. I missed my parents and my sisters and my dog and my real life, my real home. I wanted to go home.
Meanwhile this guy shoved his fist into my crotch, repeatedly punched me between the legs.
I felt nothing.
I thought: I could die. They’ll find my body in this empty apartment, the rotting carcass of some drunk girl.
Then I had the most awful thought – not about my death but about afterward, about the person who loved me most in the world.
I pleaded: “Do you know what my mother would say if she saw me now?”
SMACK!
I shut up.
He shoved himself into my mouth again, tried to get inside me again. He punched me in the crotch, in the gut, in the face. He couldn’t do what he wanted to do.
After an eternity, he stood up and zipped his pants.
In the quietest voice I could muster I whispered, “I won’t say anything to anyone. Please, please, just take me back to the bar. I’ll buy you a drink. It’ll be like it never happened.”
He towered over me, his rancid sweat dripping onto my half-naked body.
“Get dressed,” he slurred.
I didn’t know if he would kill me or not.
I only had one thought as I stood up: I didn’t even get any cocaine.