Don't You Forget About Me (Page 57)

‘“I’ve got a boyfriend,” I said, gambling that a prior claim wouldn’t wound his masculinity.

‘He said, “Hah no you haven’t! Who’s that?”

‘I didn’t want to drop my boyfriend in it. I didn’t want to sell him out, and have outsiders storming in and trashing what we had, which was more precious to me than anything. He was blameless, and he was mine, and he must be protected at all costs.

‘I said, “You don’t know him.”

‘“Bollocks, Georgina. Everyone knows you’ve never been with anyone and you’re gagging for it. Going on about romance all the time like an old biddy in English class.”

‘This was like a series of precise stab wounds to the major organs. The worst thing imaginable – everyone smelling my desperation to be liked. This boy telling me it was common knowledge. I was hideous, gauche, needy, pathetic.’

I’m crying too now, but only tears, my voice is still steady.

‘He tried to kiss me again and I pushed him off saying, Let’s go back to the party, let’s get some of that punch, and he said, to show he wasn’t buying my casual deflection routine: “Are you a virgin?”

‘I said: “No.”

‘He said: “Well then.”

‘He unzipped his jeans and I stood, pinned against the wall, under the medical-bright lights, wondering why I was here, how to escape. How everything had gone so wrong, so fast.

‘It was my fault.’

I glance up at the room and see a sea of upturned faces. I can no longer focus on any one individual.

‘… A cleverer, more charming, better girl than I was, would have the right words to extricate herself and please him at the same time. That I couldn’t find a route out was yet more proof of my idiocy, my immaturity. Of course boys at parties try to get off with girls in loos, what did I expect? I was lucky enough someone so far out of my league wanted it. Ungrateful AND ridiculous. Maybe the cleverer, more charming girl would simply be complying.

‘I had lied. I was a virgin. I’d never seen the male anatomy before, not in real life, not like that. Suddenly there it was, liberated from his Levis, like seeing the alien burst from John Hurt’s chest. I panicked. Not only because I knew he’d expect me to do something with it. I knew that he’d gone too far to take this back now. He’d want something in return. There was no way I could leave with the ability to embarrass him, there was no way that was going to happen. There would be no transfer of power.

‘He grabbed my hand and I pulled it away, his hand large enough and my fingers small enough I could wrench them through his. He grabbed my hand again, I did the same. On the third try, with a grasp so tight it left bruises, he managed to keep hold of my hand, and put it on him. He let out a huge cackle of triumph, even as I instantly wrenched it away. We both knew he would now tell everyone on the other side of the door that I’d done something with him willingly, something I couldn’t take back. This is how it works. You’re broken down by stages.

‘The hand grabbing and pulling continued, my begging to leave continued, ignored. I felt like I’d been in here for an hour, it was probably minutes. I knew in social terms, in terms of my reputation, it might as well have been overnight.

‘“You know how to do this, don’t you?” he said. “You’re a sexy girl.”

‘Switching to flattery worked, for a second. He’d cut me down and now he was building me back up again. He was throwing me a lifeline that I could leave here with a good review.’

I look up from my page.

‘The moment where you consider giving in, or do give in, that’s the moment you torture yourself about for the rest of your life. That’s the moment where you think it happened to you because you are a bad and weak person, who wanted it really. When in fact, it’s about survival. And whichever choice you make, it wasn’t really a choice at all.

‘His hand was over my hand in a vice-like grip and he moved it up, then down, up, then down. “Now you do it,” he commanded. He let go. I did it, once.

‘“Yeah!” he shouted, in triumph. “Like that.” I had done it. I couldn’t take it back.

‘I’d let all this happen for the sake of the thing that mattered above all else, popularity. The great religion. Being liked. But I wasn’t liked. I looked into his eyes, the contemptuous expression, and I could see he didn’t like me at all. In fact, I could see my capitulation made him despise me even more. Yeah, I knew it.

‘Realising this stopped me wheedling him with sweetness, thinking I could bargain. I said: “I want to go back to the party now,” and moved towards the door. He stopped me, grabbing my wrists and throwing me against the wall. Before, he was forceful, this was violent. I was already scared, now I felt something more like terror. My dad used to say you don’t know how impossible it is to move a dead weight until you try to shift one. You don’t know how you can be physically dominated, until someone much taller and stronger than you, really tries. Even in films, I used to think, with the trapped damsel beating dainty fists against manly Tarzan chests, you could push him off if you wanted. You can’t. It comes as a shock. And with the shock, panic, as I knew at that moment that whatever he wanted to happen – it was going to happen. He was pulling at the hem of my skirt, grabbing at my crotch.’

The room is holding its breath, the tension as taut as a drum, a vibration of anticipation humming through everyone there.

‘I thought: Not like this, not with him. I’m not a selfless person, but thinking of someone else nearby, someone I wanted to save myself for, it helped. When I say “save myself” I don’t mean chastity, in a sexual way, the full meaning – I knew he’d want me to save myself. One last roll of the dice occurred to me, a counter intuitive way of getting this boy to let me go. I said: “What are you, some sort of gross rapist?”

‘He dropped me like I was radioactive.

‘“Don’t flatter yourself,” he spat. Someone who had locked me in a room and sexually assaulted me, told me I was overrating myself as a temptation. Being raped was too good for me. “You think you’re all that, Georgina Horspool, but you’re bang average.”

‘But it worked. I’d said the R word out loud, called it by its name, and he didn’t want to see himself as that. He zipped himself up and curled his lip at me, muttered his disgust as I unlocked the door and claimed my freedom.

‘Except I was walking into a different sort of trap and in some ways, one I’ve been in ever since. As I rejoined the party, it was as if everyone was waiting for us. Shocked noises, laughter, hands clapped over mouths, a ripple of conversation, as if our joint exit was somehow also an announcement.

‘I looked back at That Boy, and he was making a gesture: tongue pushed in the side of his mouth, fist shaking underneath. Everyone in his clique whooped and wolf-whistled. He gave a bow. I was motionless.

‘That Boy put a drink in my hand, saying, “You’re quite a girl, mad technique”, to more hollering. What should I say? Should I shout that I didn’t do it, I hadn’t wanted to do it? Everyone saw – I’d gone by choice into a toilet with him. Then I’d let him kiss me. I’d touched it, when his hand wasn’t gripping mine. I HAD done it.

‘And no one was taking mid-league, not-thin-enough, try-hard Georgina’s word over this Rock God, no one. When I’d be lucky to pull him, but he’d chosen me from a pool of eager hopefuls? UGH. Vindictive slag. A slapper, and worse, one with ideas above her station.

‘He high five-ed with his mates, who were awed. The queen bees, looking at me, were a mixture of admiration and repulsion. Someone muttered something about my surname should be “Whores-pool”.

‘He was That Boy and I was no longer Georgina. I was That Girl who waltzed into the toilets at the party, performed a sex act, and reappeared, bold as brass, to claim my free rum cooler as a prize for a blowjob. Ask anyone I went to school with, they probably know this story. It instantly became part of my official biography.

‘My best friend approached me, smiling, slightly scared, but thinking I’d taken some decisive leap across the threshold into adulthood, and decided to do it with the highest status boy there. Go, Georgina. Wow. How could I tell her that nothing was what it seemed, that I was devastated, that this triumphant night for us was now trauma? I didn’t have the vocabulary to repel this boy, and I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what had happened to me.

‘I didn’t run out. I didn’t burst into tears. I didn’t behave anything like a victim. The damage was done. And I didn’t want to be a victim. That’s not how I saw myself, it wasn’t part of my identity. It wasn’t even part of my story for this very evening. I hadn’t been ruined. No. I could choose for this to all be OK. I still had control and choice, the control to make this normal and the choice not to make a fuss.’

Now, a deep breath, for the last part.

‘But this denial, it all fell apart when I looked across at the boy I was in love with. He was kissing someone else. Possibly a reaction to what he thought I’d done, but I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to howl like an animal in pain, at the injustice. I’d lost him. Georgina the casual favour-giver couldn’t also be Georgina the girlfriend. I don’t even remember the rest of the party or when he left, I drank like I wanted to black out. Eventually when I looked around for him, he was gone. Forever. Nothing else mattered after that.