He Smoked a Joint with Me and Then Demanded a Blowjob

“We’ve come a long way,” I like to tell the younger women in my life. I say this while imagining I am the wise old matriarch whose sole purpose is to infuse positivity and strength into the cause.

I say this while looking at the young women in my life and hoping they never find themselves in some of the predicaments I’ve found myself in over the years.

I say this, knowing they won’t because they are much more intelligent than I ever was.

We’ve come a long way.

Still, I worry. So I’ll write stories about the bad things I’ve experienced in this fast-moving life. I pray to a god I don’t quite believe in that the young women in my life will never put themselves into these types of positions because, once upon a time, a wise old matriarch told them a fucked up story about her life.

The lights were of the string variety and haphazardly slung over fenceposts at varying intervals. At sixteen years old, I didn’t care about string lights. It’s only a detail that hangs useless in my mind when I look back.

At sixteen years old, I was more concerned about finding a beer.

I was ill-prepared for the outing as I had been sleeping over at a friend’s place, and there were no plans of sneaking out to a party that night. The friend wasn’t really a friend, she was a family acquaintance and not someone I would choose to spend time with since we had vastly differing opinions of what fun looked like.

At sixteen, though, staying at home on a Friday night was akin to a death sentence, so when Mom suggested I go have a sleepover at Sally’s house, I agreed with my usual amount of lustre — which is to say no lustre.

“I heard of this party going on down in the cabin district,” I said to Sally as we mindlessly flipped through pages of Teen Vogue. Flipping through Teen Vogue was the same as scrolling Instagram for any young ones who may be reading this.

“Oh my curfew is 11 p.m. and it’s already 10. I don’t think we’d be able to make it back on time,” Sally said with a disgusting amount of virtue dripping off her halo.

“Oooor, we wait until your parents fall asleep and then sneak out to the party.”

“I don’t know…”

An hour and a half later, we were strolling across our tiny lake town in search of the fabled party I had heard about in math class earlier that day.

We had no business attending this party. It was full of grade Twelvers, and I knew exactly zero people there. Sally was no help either because her scene was more of the mathletes and after-school club crowds. She was decidedly not a party girl. We soldiered on. I was looking for adventure and gave Sally no choice but to follow.

I’ve always had a wildly varying personality. If I’m with friends who are loud and unencumbered with insecurities, I automatically become the shy one. I hold back and allow others to be the center of attention. I become an observer of moments and am content to watch the chaos unfold.

However, if I happen to be with someone who is naturally a quiet person, an introverted soul, I can flip the script like the flip of a light switch and become the loudest, most outgoing person in the room.

It’s a survival tactic, and it’s served me well over the years.

This moment was not any different. Sally was clearly feeling uncomfortable at the party — perhaps because it may very well have been the first party she had ever been to — so I took charge. I walked into that backyard and started talking to everyone.

“Hey, how’s it going? Where’s the drinks at? Got a doobie you want to share?”

After some solid mingling, Sally ran into an acquaintance she knew from, I don’t know, probably her beloved mathletes club, so I found myself in solitary confinement.

Being alone at a party is the greatest injustice a girl can know, so I glommed onto the first human interaction that popped up.

He was a heavy-set boy with wild brown hair and was wearing his football jersey. It’s a cliché, I know, but aren’t we all clichés at the core?

“You want to smoke a joint?” he asked right off the bat.

“Sure!” I said because that is the correct response when getting offered free drugs.

“Okay, but I don’t want to share it with anyone else, so let’s go somewhere quieter.”

*Pause scene*

This is where the red flashing lights should have alerted me that trouble was afoot. This is the moment in the story when Morgan Freeman starts his iconic voiceover.

“Lindsay knew that walking off into a shadowy alleyway with a strange boy was not a smart idea. She looked into his desperate, impatient eyes and ignored the anxiety that was spiralling in her gut. Who needs gut feelings anyway?”

The string lights didn’t reach the corridor of the backyard the football player and I were standing in. Maybe if they had, he would have seen the look in my eyes, which might have stopped what happened next.

“Hey, thanks for the smoke, man,” I said as he butted the roach on the bottom of his shoe.

“Well, what are you going to do for it?” his voice echoed through the darkness.

“Exsqueeze me?” I said, trying to use humour to push down the shiver cropping up all over my body.

“You don’t get anything for free. You should know that.”

I felt a meaty hand reach up and cup the nape of my neck firmly.

“Get your hand off me.” My voice was quivering, and I hated how afraid I felt. Like a fast-action replay, I saw the entire evening flicker through my brain. All the idiotic decisions I made to find myself here, in this darkened corner of the yard, alone with a boy twice my weight and more popular than I could ever hope to be.

The more popular thing is essential.

If this happened, if he forced me to do whatever it was, he was going to force me to do, and I told anyone it would be my word against his. He was a popular, much-beloved jock. I was a sometimes mousey, sometimes hyper little nobody that no one cared about.

“You need to fuck off, dude,” I said. The survival instinct was kicking in now. I heard the rustling of footsteps on the other side of the house. This reminded me that I wasn’t alone. There were other people in earshot.

“You’re going to suck me off the way you sucked up that joint of mine,” he said, laughing and snarling.

“No, I’m leaving,” I said as I tried to step around him. He moved to block my way and again placed his hand on my neck, this time with more force.

“Get on your knees, now,” he ordered.

“If you don’t take your hand off me, I will scream bloody murder. I will scream so loud that the cops in the next town over will fucking hear me.” Tears were streaming down my face, but I tried not to let him hear the terror.

Then, a few girls older than me rounded the corner.

“Trav, what the hell are you doing? Who is that with you?”

“Get the hell outta here,” he growled.

The interruption gave me enough time to slip between my assaulter and the fence. One of the girls made a comment about how much of an asshole “Trav” could be, but I didn’t stick around to gas with her about it.

I found Sally and told her we had to go. She took one look at me and agreed we did.

We’ve come a long way, I tell the young women in my life while thinking about my close calls and the times I wasn’t so lucky.

I wonder if we have come a long way, or are we, the matriarchs, just more steadfast in teaching our young girls not to wander off into dark corridors with men who think we owe them something?

First published on Medium.com