When Your Prince Turns Out to Be a Toad

I've always thought of myself as a straightforward person no matter how controversial the topic. That's why I was disappointed to discover that I'd been lying to myself for the past three years.
It wasn't until after a recent conversation with a friend who had had a similar experience that I admitted to anyone -myself included- that my first sexual experience was not consensual, but it was probably technically...

Well, it was date rape.

Date rape. A phrase for a very ugly act and very ugly images that go along with it. Of course, it's easy to argue (I've been doing a good job of it for the past couple of years) that a woman makes a conscious choice to be in a bad situation and therefore chooses whatever follows.
Rhetorically, it sounds right, but in actual terms that argument falls apart. I chose to drink a fifth of whiskey, and therefore chose to lose my virginity? Of course not. I chose to drink to get drunk, although I've joked somewhat bitterly that the first man who sucked me was Jack Daniels.
It's been very easy to rationalize what happened as a product of my own decision making, despite my ability to move, much less think that evening.
I was old -a freshman here- and just about the only virgin I knew. I wanted to "lose it" sooner or later, so why not sooner? And anyway, I fortuitously felt none of the pain that was supposed to follow "deflowering" except for a hangover. Easy, right?
Not so easy. Believe it or not, I was brought up to be a nice girl. While I never planned on having a white wedding (more along the lines of cream colored), I certainly had planned on waiting until I found a man I respected.

And the notions planted in my head by society kinda expected this, too. Storybook romances always protray happily ever after: what to do when prince charming comes and shoves a ring on your finger. But they never show you how to react when your prince turns out to be a toad. Should you try to transform him into the man of your dreams?
It's much more difficult (believe me) to turn a toad into a prince than merely to give up the idealism. Especially with an acquaintance. After that night, you'll never meet each other's eyes. Him, because he can't quite face you without feeling -in his heart of hearts- that he did something wrong. And you, because you're desperately trying to work around that horrible, unutterable four letter word: rape.

You call it anything but that. A learning experience? Good drunk fun? Inevitable?

I feel the need for some explanation. I don't think columns should be a forum to complain about one's problems.
Unless these problems affect other people. And from the conversations I've had, date rape is a huge problem on this campus -hell, everywhere- which needs to be discussed openly rather than locked away in someone's psyche for years.
I'm absolutely flabbergasted at the number of women whose experiences have mirrored mine, and who have also never really made the connection between date rape and That Incident.
It needs to be defined and called what it is. No, Women, it is not your fault, not a minor communication breakdown. Just because there's no gun to your head, no ropes tying you up, does not mean that it isn't rape. Just because no court of law in this misogynistic country would indict the man does not mean that it's not rape.
It is something that'll haunt you for the rest of your life no matter what you call it.

The way a woman loses her virginity significantly affects her feelings about sex. When it's with someone she loves, the tendency is to revere sex, to enshrine it like some Olympian god. She, too, feels sanctified by her lover. When on the other hand, there's no love involved, sex becomes no more than a bodily function, the same as defecation or menstruation. And the woman... well, she probably doesn't expect to be put upon a pedestal with a great big crack down the middle.
If a woman's sexuality is affected, obviously the men she dates will also feel the results of this experience.
As many of my past boyfriends can probably attest, all too often the victim becomes the victimizer. My women friends take vicarious delight in the way I tend to treat men. Lovers have accused me of having a "locker room mentality" and of abusing men in the same way women have been abused.
My only defense is a resounding "Hell, yes!"
I'm no touchy feely person who believes in self-help books.

Perhaps my mother read aloud too much from the Old Testament when I was a kid, for I strongly believe in revenge however misguided. It's a hollow victory, but so is the power play that comprises date rape.
I recognize that I'm not the nicest of people, and I warn lovers off. I'll probably never love a man fully because I can't trust him completely --I'll always suspect that I'm nothing more than a lay.
No matter what's said or done, or how emphatically it's stated, I won't allow myself to believe that sex means much of anything.

I'm not looking for sympathy. (And I definately don't want strangers coming up and hugging me while mentally pushing me away for getting drunk enough to be in that situation.) I could probably take anything the world gives me and kick it in the balls.
But that doesn't mean I don't have regrets. Sometimes, especially after a weekend of debauchery, I wish I hadn't become the person that I am.
I wish that I could still think about having sex with someone as "making love" and actually consider spending the rest of my life with someone.
I wish that I hadn't gotten drunk on the night in question, and that my acquaintance (now thankfully living out of town) had been kinder.
I wish that no other woman in the world will ever have her illusions shattered like a liquor bottle on pavement when she realizes that love is a myth, that sex means nothing, and that all men are not white knights on steeds charging to her rescue.

More than anything, I wish that I did not have to write this column --for either myself or for anyone else.

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