Med school apps, obligatory moaning ensues

Well, I started my med school applications and I thought if I rushed in head first into my past blog posts, I would be charmed enough to be inspired.  The warning I would have told myself now would be to tread lightly.  Wow, I never realized how far u my head was up my ass, how “reason” and “fairness” and “explaining my mood swings” were all masquerading all the judgemental, idiotic bullshit I thought was okay to say.  Maybe censorship isn’t such a bad thing, after all (obviously only applicable in my case).

Though the extremities bled out and drowned what sliver of not-dipshitness I had, I think that I still feel the same sort of anxiety writing personal statements and “selling” myself as I did in high school applying for colleges.  And still I think that I got in because of a fluke in the system, a random mutation of code that accidentally accepted me into a pretty rad school where no other school cared to do the same.  How do I sit down and write out a lifestory I don’t even know how to even begin to articulate, much more articulate beautifully and profoundly in 5300 characters or less.  How can I start being the person I am setting out to fabricate?

 

Busted nose and sore throat

“Ni, you can’t write a post with me here! Blogs are supposed to be personal,” said my best friend and cousin.

I’m sick. Physically sick. Hopefully it is nothing more than the meager wrath of the common cold and not some virile, untreatable strain of the H1N1. Patient 0 status, here I come.  How sad is it that the only reason my name may go down in history is because I may be the person who will wipe out so much of mankind?

Emotionally sick. Ill. Not well.  The feeling of a slow, twisting grip lacerating my insides, churning and churning and churning.  I don’t want to grow up, though I realize the full futility of the statement.  Screams stifled in the loud stormy night and no matter how I flail my arms about in protest, there is no difference. I am sick with the thought that I have to have responsibility.  Like, seriously, I’m only 23, do I *have* to be able to take care of myself? The obvious answer is yes, but the child inside who missed out on her childhood demands restitution. I’m applying to school, moving out, friends gone away.  Did I mention, friends gone away? People that I have loved, cared for, held so deeply and profoundly in my heart have gone away. How fucking sad is that?

Here I am, legs spread eagle and regally draped in TJ MAXX’s java themed pajamas, half expecting the crumble into hopelessness and half expecting to build up so much apathy I can magically become the functional and successful person I want to become.

Regardless, I’m glad to be back, at least for a little while.

I love my best friend and need to get back to her.

T.

Bigger and better things

When I don’t know what title I should put for my blog post, I always pick on that off the top of my head no matter how random it may be.  Just to let you all know, of course.

It’s rather remarkable to me, no matter how many times this statement is tirelessly regurgitated, that I always find it so surprising to end up here at the oddest hours of my day, at the oddest moments of my life.  There’s something comforting and almost nostalgic about being lulled back to the knowing sanctity of adolescence.

I think I’m going to complain about my high school years again.  Obviously because I have nothing better to do at 1 in the morning, and obviously because high school has so preoccupied my mind in the last couple of hours.

How much do people change from high school?  How much have I changed?  I cringe at the antics I thought I could always get away with, at the sickeningly spoiled attitude, at the privileges that I still inhabit to this day but was so ignorant of.  Militant “feminism”, anti-religion,  catty woman-hater, stuck-up entitlement, entrenching rebelliousness, ugh!  What in the world was I?  Being 15 was hard.  16, difficult. 17, almost impossible.  My parents got on my nerves all the time because they yelled at me for sleeping at 4am when I had to wake up at 6am (the nerve!).  I felt lonely but at the same time didn’t really want to be around other people because I felt so much better than them, especially regarding the depth of my teenage angst.  One characteristic that definitely defined me was how angsty I could be all the fucking time, and how proud I was of it.  Thinking back to that level of self-righteousness and ridiculous source of pride, I marvel at how anyone was able to stand me at all, and how fucking tireless I was about being angsty.  God, emotions are exhausting.

But at least in high school I had a sense of goal.  I knew the next steps, and I delved into those blankets of security.  I was going to college.  And then, well, that’s 4 years away.  Why think so far down the road?

Now that I’m somewhat more grown up, I have no idea what I am doing, and still often stuck with these emotions that get out of hand.

I re-read my angsty, late night posts from years ago, and I wonder how I manage to one-up my already melodramatic tragedy.

As I get more used to these weird emotions, they become more and more like familiar visitors, some welcomed and others barging in like uninvited guests who I cannot ask to leave.

A dear friend once told me that going to the therapist is like admitting you have a problem.

A colleague of mine was lost to suicide a couple of hours ago.

I read The Belljar once.  It’s kind of a story of Sylvia Plath and her struggle with manic depression… or was it insanity?  While reading, I joked to my cousin that I kind of identified with her character.

Though it really doesn’t worry me too much yet, I sometimes feel that my emotions have transformed into caricatures of their own, and I do my best to manage them into something resembling coherence and reason.  I go through periods feeling that calming, welcomed, soothing plateau of moderation.  My feelings are sincere, real, tangible.  Almost suddenly, a torrent of ugly and loud voices shatter my plateau.  They demand euphoria, anger, depression, spite.  This, too, is real.  And as quickly as they have come, they vanish into nothing, leaving me with nothing left to feel.  Sometimes I feel like I have to fake my emotions.  Fake feeling like a “normal” person, responding like a “normal” person.  Is this how I’m supposed to act when someone tells me something happy?  Do I frown when they tell me something sad?

I feel like there’s something wrong with me.  But I’m not quite sure because maybe everyone goes through something similar to this.  Or maybe everyone’s emotional system is built differently and mine just goes through particular periods, its own special clockwork.

For some inexplicable reason, it helps me to believe that maybe I’m just wrapped up in my own head, consumed with self-conceited and self-pitying obsessions.  Maybe whatever bullshit is going through my mind is hopeless bullshit because maybe I haven’t grown-up yet.  Maybe high school wasn’t so long ago that I could mature up.  Maybe I’m really just a particular brand of insane that manages to function precariously in the world.  I hope I don’t slip up.

This led to darker places than I thought it would.  I thought I was going to do my usual of nostalgic bullshit and end on some hopeful or otherwise affirming note.  Something heartwarming but not too mushy that transcends credulity.  Instead I might have admitted to everyone permanently that I’m just really fucking weird.

I really don’t know anymore.  It helped writing this.  Gosh, I hope blogging becomes a regular thang for me again.

 

Second hand serenade

Remarkably I’ve given up on trying to justify the various reasons for coming back to this blog that, honestly, I doubt anyone reads anymore.  I meander slowly through my past, capitalized and immortalized in brown and light brown text only to be reminded that I was once (and still am in many ways) an over-privileged, undeserving, and ungrateful teenager.  Like seriously, what was high school all about anyway?

I will die by this conviction — that the first heartbreak will always be the worst.

High school sucked.  Heartbreak sucked.  I had my first heartbreak by someone I was madly in love with (obviously for all the wrong reasons I was in love with him).  Looking back I feel like a veritable grade-A loser for hopelessly moping around for almost over a year wondering what the hell went wrong with our high school relationship, which definitely isn’t saying much because I’ve had chocolate bars last my longer than 6 months.

But now that I am single. Wow, how weird is that … that this is the first time since high school that I have been truly, truly, truly single.  I can’t say it was the most painful or even the most poignant break up.

We sat in the car in silence.  One of us asks if it’s over.  The other says yes.  I open the door and walk out. It’s over.

Sometimes I miss you dearly.  As I was sitting in the booth, waiting for my sandwich order to come, Falling for You by Second Serenade starts playing.  A moment of confusion, of nostalgia, then that bittersweet clarity of knowing.  I sit with my friend, who is unfortunately leaving college with no loose ends and no attachments.  We think about our lovers, some bitter memories, some angry, but mostly sweet.  I turn to my friend and tell him that this was the song that made me realize that I was in love almost 4 years ago.  He smiles and starts singing along, the lyrics tell me that this will be the night I will fall for you over again.  Marinating in that moment, I think back to how I felt that “click” as this song was playing through my speakers.  I used to think that being with you could have been the most perfect ending for me.  Best friends, we knew each other inside and out, we were goofy and sweet.  Sad to think that reality is the most crushing of all.

I get my sandwich.  My friend and I wander to the park, swamped and buried with nostalgic memories of people we used to love or maybe were still in love with, however shallowly or profoundly.  We sit on the grass, unwrap the sandwiches, being with the moment of discomfort but verbalizing trivial conversation.

As I was walking back to the train I texted you to tell you about this moment, though I’m sure my succinctness captures only so much.  For whatever reason I had wanted to tell you exactly how sitting on that dirty booth waiting for my sandwich and listening to the faint words of a sad, depressing love song (which ironically was what made me realize I was kind of madly in love with you) made me feel.  Well, how confused it made me feel, to be exact.

I have gone past the point where I still desperately want to be with you.  I’m bittersweet, nostalgic, a part of me silently craves for what our relationship was supposed to be but knows that realistically, this will not ever be the case. Sometimes I wonder how true my desires are to my happiness.  Sometimes I am glad that we broke up.  The loneliness during a relationship was the most painful and infuriating to bear.  I hated feeling unimportant, uncared for, as if I were the only one who was willing to put in the time and effort to maintain my own standards. Sometimes I miss you dreadfully.  I think about how you looked for an orange straw to put in my milk tea, the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.  I think about the ways we rubbed our noses, the look of adoration I saw in your face in the morning as you rudely woke me up and told me to get out of bed, the way you told me you loved me and I could hear it in your voice.

I really have no idea why the fuck I am writing this, as it only serves the unproductive purpose of making me miss you more and prolonging my midnight hunger.  Like I seriously had to sleep one hour ago!

To sum it up, 3.5 years.  I guess this was what I took from it.

If I lose myself

I stared up at the sun, thought of all the people, places and things I have loved. I stared up just to see of all the faces, you were the one next to me.

I feel a little high school about this, as if high school is a coherent feeling capable of being summed up in such a way, but I wanted to pay dues to the nostalgia I’ve been feeling throughout today and start off this blog post with song lyrics.

As I have said before, I absolutely hate using this blog solely for the purpose of blurting out pent up feelings of angst and frustration (cause that’s seriously so high school) and I would have liked to think that grown-up me would resolve her emotional issues in a more mature way.  There is, however, a guilty feeling of pleasure that only this blog can give me.  Laying out words onto my keyboard, unloading all this confusion and madness onto these forgiving keys, being able to write down and write down and write down and write down.  In the end, some things just never change — I will always, always have this as my refuge of insanity, for all the times I have told myself over and over again that “I’m ok” and “It’s gonna work out in the end” and whatever fleeting thought of denial passes my mind, here is where I can admit that sometimes I just have no fucking clue what is happening in my life right now.  And that’s ok.  Well, I’d like to think that ambiguity is ok.

And I think right now, I want to validate heartbreak.

Heartbreak sucks. Duh, what else is new?  Angsty break up songs outnumber romantic love songs and big booty bitches kind of songs.  When I broke up with you, I knew that I would experience heartbreak, only, I guess I never really experienced this kind of heartbreak before.  It’s not the pining after my lover kind of  heartbreak, not the waking up to regret the things I have said kind of heartbreak, not the I can never properly function as a human being again kind of heartbreak.  It’s the I love you but we’re just two completely different people in two completely different spaces occupying two completely different social lives that it’s kind of not realizable to be in a relationship with each other kind of heartbreak.

No matter how many different times I tell this story in however many ways, I can never really understand it thoroughly and completely.  Maybe this is part of the whole breaking up process, but I get so lost and confused with where I’m supposed to fit inside this story.  People said it wasn’t going to be easy, but does it have to be so fucking hard?

I think this is the part where I give up on trying to figure out my feelings and give up on my convictions that this is something somehow inevitable.  This is fucking hard, and for the moment I’m going to drown myself on a mix of love songs, break up songs, and Fresh Prince.

AH.

I still love you.  I still care about it.  I still kind of want to be with you but also kind of realize that that feeling is futile.  I still kind of think to myself how crazy this all sounds when I see it typed out in words.  I thought that blogs are supposed to help me form linear thoughts, but I suppose even the freedom of the blogsphere won’t help me resolve my epistemological and existential crisis.

All the same, what does everything here have anything to do with my life? Why do I still care?  What is this fucked up craziness??

I thought I had called it quits

I don’t really believe in lasts.  I don’t believe I have the creative juice to pull off a last post, so I had felt that with time, my blog could fade away slowly with the bloody and bizarre dream of a genocide as its last breath.  But I suppose I must be wrong, because here I am, searching still for words to write and learning how to put feelings, emotions, thoughts, contradictions, wants, needs, and dreams into linear sentences that could be read and understood coherently like a high school essay.

I don’t really believe in lasts, but I hate that I come back here when I have no other outlet for the mess pent up inside my brain.  I hate that I could not passionately type out in loving detail my personal transformation, my deeply felt personal convictions, my metamorphosis from a questioning and judgmental teenage girl into a now aware questioning and judgmental kinda sorta grown up.  I hate using this place as the last refugee for one thing and one thing only.  My sole constant  in my blog arguably is a driving need to figure out shit with all these guys in my life.  In my love life.  And for the past three tumultuous and wonderful years, that guy that I need to figure out my shit with is with my boyfriend, my partner, my best friend, the man that I cannot stand to be in this distanced  relationship with but cannot leave him because I love him.

I mean really, the old adage promises that love conquers all.  The muses sing that as long as you love me… then won’t everything be alright?  I live hinged on this hope that it will.  Eventually everything will work out, and though it will be far from perfect, we will learn to communicate, to grow, to love deeper.  That promise lives halfway as I learn thing have gotten better.  We talk, we listen, we are ever so slightly better at talking and listening than we have ever been.  Oh, and we love.  We love deeply, or at least I care to believe that.  I love deeply and care profoundly, and yet, I am not happy, only hinging on this hope that some day I will.  As I read what I am typing, it occurs to be it sounds ever the more ridiculous and cliche than anything I have ever written, and reminds me that I have far neglected this blog for too long (a billion months, I think) and the consequences are severe.  Regardless, the lack of ability to transcribe what I am feeling makes me so angry.

I love.  But I am unhappy.  Things are improving, but I feel trapped and empty.  But’s, but’s, but’s.  When can I stop qualifying my clauses with a fucking but?

My personal journal.

I wish I could use you more than to vent my hormonal rages and emotionally constipated frustrations.  I wish I knew what to do.  I wish I knew what to say.  I wish I had an answer.  But what I want is a happily ever after.  But you know, fairy tales and unlikelihoods and all that.  But’s, but’s, but’s.

Sometimes I wonder if you still read my blog, or whoever stumbles upon this still still, every single day.

I love you, but I don’t know what to do with you or with myself.

– T

Genocide

We  ran through the deserted streets indiscreetly carrying our bags of pilfered goods.  Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t thieves succumbing to the drive of greed.  In our hands we carried water, canned food, and flashlights.   Thieves born from circumstance, a world full of famine, crime, death, and sadness.  Driven by desperation, capitulating to the common need to survive, and leveling our desire for our own self-perseverance above compassion and love, we contributed to this ugly world.

And so we ran.  The “Don’t walk” sign started flashing, and we obeyed that relic of the past, out of nostalgia.  Ahead of me a young boy, about 12, started laughing.  He wore a purple shirt and a red cap, his curly hair burnt a discolored brown from the sun.  He turned around, his hand grabbing a fistful of my shirt, and he demanded my bag of stole goods.  Ironic.

Someone from across the street yelled to him, an older boy of 14 or 15, wearing a pink shirt.  His dark face heightened the whiteness of his smile.  He ran towards the other boy, laughing.  When he got to our side of the street, he pulled out a gun and pointed to the younger one’s chest.  He was smiling, wondering out loud of this dick deserved to live.  The older one looked at me and smiled; I saw only a childishness in his face, a simplicity mingled with a misconception of what death meant. He continued to joke around, keeping the cold steel on the purple shirt.  The boy in the pink walked away laughing, as if delighted that he was able to play God for a minute. Then, he turned around, looked at me, then shot the purple shirted boy.  In the face.  Blood splattered across my face.  I watched on, transfixed by horror and gross fascination, at the pieces of red brain and eyes and skull raining.

So God has spared me for another day, his attention elsewhere and he danced through the streets waving a gun, unaware of the fatality he has caused.  This is a game, born out of circumstances, in a world full of famine, crime, desperation.

I stood, transfixed, not moving, even as the light showed me that I could walk.  The warm blood mingled with dust, encrusted someone else on me.  How funny he was in front of me mere moments ago, mustering all his boyish strength to threaten me.  Now he is dead, what was left of his life crumpled on the floor, disfigured and ugly.   I threw up, vomiting what food I had into the street, my bile mixed with his blood.  Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

So this is fear.

Hello, is it me you’re looking for?

My, my, my.  How long ago it has been since I’ve last ventured here, how long ago since I’ve last ventured here bearing an original thought.

Maybe it’s maturity, maybe it’s growing out of a fad, maybe it’s finding inner peace with myself; whatever it is, it has made me stop blogging.  Oh, don’t get me wrong.  I still think longingly to write upon entombed walls, and I still scour my mind for something to write with. Again, that acursed something!  That unknowable, anonymous word that plagues the meanderings of my thoughts.  After years of maturing, of growing up, of finding inner peace with myself, I can never find that concrete something that I always happen to be looking for.

Strangely enough, even to me, I feel myself falling off that radical feminism, that loud feminism, that raucous and blaring and shut-the-fuck-up-misogynist feminism. Please, I’m still a girl lover, equalist, and crazy feminist at heart, but that phase of hopeful “fuck yeah I’m a girl” has gone away.  Yet at the same time, I find myself quietly questioning and enjoying the happenings in my life. Maybe the falling out of blogging has to do with an assured identity.  Have I found myself? Have I become who I’m meant to be? Have I finally overcome those psychological, emotional obstacles that tear at my heart? Seldom do I lay awake at night wondering about my identity, myself, nor do I think about the past.  In a way that I really cannot explain, I feel so much more at peace with myself, as if I’ve made amends to some demon hidden deep inside.

To be honest I have no idea where this is going, I jsut wanted to say -again- something, anything that would fill this space up.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this blog, but I don’t want it to end this way.  I imagined a bang.  A wistful goodbye.  Something recounting my growing up and changing into a fuller, brighter, cooler person (at least in my point of view).

 

Posted from The frenemy

Why I Love Being A Girl (in 2011)

 

1. Whiskey. I get to drink whiskey and I don’t give a shit if it ‘looks awesome’ or ‘is so tough’ because it’s not, it’s just delicious and I will drink too much of it and I will burp in your face and then order a taco. Screw you, that’s what I do.
2. I don’t have to wear heels, but I can if I want to. Heels make me look taller. If I feel like tricking people into thinking I look taller by wearing tiny pencils on the bottoms of my shoes, so be it. For the most part, I have flat feet and I trip everywhere and I can wear some weird-ass ankle sandals and so be it. But sometimes I wear heels if I want to sound like a tap-dancer when I walk.
3. Girls don’t really ever have to wear pants if they don’t want to. Skirt? Sure. Leggings? Fuck it. Most of the time, I can go months and years without wearing pants and I don’t give a crap-o who knows it. I haven’t worn pants since 1994. I’m not wearing pants now. I’m wearing shorts, which are like cut off pants who didn’t go to a 4-year college, they went to a community and still made a fucking name for themselves without the extra buttload of loans.
4. I can ask a guy out. I can just go up to a guy and say ‘yo, you wanna eat a slice of pizza and then kind of go to a smoky bar where I playPsycho Killer on the jukebox and then we make out? Because I don’t need to wait for you to ask me. As you can see, I’m doing that asking now.’ Sure, maybe I don’t ALWAYS ( or ever) go up to a guy and do that, but you can always text the girl or guy you like and that’s kind of the passive-aggressive way way out of things. And a lady is entitled to take the easy way out, if she so chooses.
5. I get to be all independent and shit. Focus on a career? Why, I have these ovaries that are exploding inside me! I have to pop babies out of them! Oh, wait, I’m 22. I can tell my ovaries to shut the fuck up and stop annoying me while I become a multi-millionaire or become a business person or do whatever else the hell I want. And then I can lead from there.
6. When I get my period, I bleed and it sucks! Nope, it sort of doesn’t. It doesn’t because I can roll around and eat all the nachos and all the food things and whine and bitch and watch movies and most people are SO SCARED TO FIGHT ME. Well, sometimes it hurts. But that’s just a side effect from all the pasta I’m eating.
7. I get to put all this colorful makeup shit on my face, kind of like war paint, and it looks awesome. I go out on a Friday night and I’m basically like Braveheart. Braveheart wore makeup, right?
8. I can shave my legs and they feel like two Zen stones that you find in the Zen garden where you take a tiny rake to all the sand. Or I can not shave them and see how crazy hairy my legs can get. Am I Bigfoot? No, I’m not nearly as tall, though I do have the tendency to run through the woods naked.
9. If I want to wear ruffly shit and some crazy ass necklaces, I can. Well, you can do that as a boy, too, but you’d look a little less like you were in a period piece. Same goes for dresses! I like looking like a flowy piece of shit sometimes, at least when I’m going to a barbecue.
10. I get to spray all this freesia scented perfume on me in truckloads, and when guys do that they kind of smell like The Jersey shore. And then I get to smell bad sometimes, because sometimes I don’t want bugs to eat me alive and get all the ‘amber romance’ in my mouth when I spray it. Although my deodorant gets to smell like BABY POWDER!
11. I don’t really care if you’re looking at my boobs, but I get to wear a Victoria’s Secret sack for said boobs and when I run they bob up and down, like two friends who are very excited to see me.
12. Nail polish is nice! I love seeing the progress of how much I have bitten my nails today because of how much polish has chipped off at the end of the day.
13. Ladiezzzz night! Let’s all put a bunch of hairspray shit in our hair and try to hit on people but mostly instead just find an excuse to eat something unhealthy late nights and wait on line in the bathroom and talk about all the sex we are not having or are having.
14. My crotch shoots fireworks! No, I’m kidding. It doesn’t, but at least I don’t have my genitals on the outside. That sounds a little bit daunting, especially because sometimes those things have a life of their own.
15. I can truly enjoy not relating to Cathy Comics or The Bachelorette.
16. I get to be extra proud of women like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and my mama tearing it the hell up.
17. I get to fantasize about my wedding, or not give a shit about it at all. Sometimes I think a soulmate would be really romantic, most of the time I think that movies and my best friends and Gruyere are said soulmates. Who cares? I’m pretty intent on owning my own dog, so fuck it.
18. I can eat a whole lot of food, and I don’t give a crap who knows it. Sure, I might be expected to ‘wear a bra on the beach’ but mostly I don’t give a hoot about that because sand between my toes feels like little ticks all over my skin.
19. Guys think I’m so weak? Well what if I punch you in the face, or you know, get a better job than you. That’ll show you.
20. Totally allowed to vote SO I DO! Thanks Susan B Anthony, for giving us that shit and also for bringing back the bun hairstyle.
21. If I wanna carry a baby in my tummy? I can. If I don’t want to, I don’t gotta. And if I wanna cry at some fucking sappy movie I can do that too. If I wanna enjoy the romantic comedy, or make fun of it, that’s my business. I don’t have to own a ruffly apron or know how to bake cookies unless if I’m under the influence and want to. And if I want to tattoo Rosie the Riveter on my ass, I’ll so do so. Tattoos last forever though, y’all.
22. I curse a lot. That’s not so much ‘being a girl’ as ‘being an awesome human with a limited way of expressing herself’ but that’s fine, too.
23. I want to do ‘girly’ stuff like Google celebrities and tweeze my eyebrows but I read lots of books and stuff and all of these things I take pleasure in.
24. Shopppppppppping is both an activity I love and despise. This has nothing to do with being a girl, except sometimes I can stare a lot at a rack of bracelets without getting very bored.
25. I understand the movie Mean Girls a lot, and that is awesome, because high school sort of sucked for a lot of us. Except now I can’t wear a denim pleated skirt, which is something I imagine I have to really live with.
26. I can shake my booty at a bar and give you my number, but most likely I PROBABLY WON’T.
27. Well, I mean, I can buy face masks and Lean Cuisines and pints and pints of ice cream or chamomile tea and just be like ‘so what, I’m wearing a cool pleather jacket I’m one icy and progressive bitch.’
28. Nobody needs to buy me flowers. They just need to know I won’t put up with any kind of nonsense, that I can beat them at Jeopardy, and that holding doors is nice, but holding my own is better.
29. Other girls are the best. Girls who stand their ground. Girls who wear red lipstick. Girls who don’t. Girls who inspire me to want to do better and hang out and talk about how our hair looks good in this conditioner and how we might take over the world someday. I get to be very, very proud of the progress we’ve made. Very Beyonce of me. I also get to smugly dance to Beyonce a lot.
30. I can do what I want, and fuck you if you don’t like it. Be your own definition of what a girl is, I don’t give a honk. I’m sorry for being aggressive! Oh wait, no I’m not.

Harriet Jacobs on rape

Everybody has had sex that went clumsily, or embarrassingly, or regretfully, and most people have had drunken sex, too, and it’s horrifying to imagine that the next day you could be accused of rape (or you can replace “accused of” with “find out that you actually committed,” because that is a possibility, too).

But it’s comparing apples and oranges. EVERYBODY KNOWS WHAT A CONSENSUAL SEX PARTNER LOOKS LIKE. Even if you’ve never sat down and really thought it out, you know, because you don’t want to have sex with anybody who isn’t. This isn’t just a “no rape” moral button, but normal human beings don’t want to have sex with people who hate having sex with them. It feels bad. The only people who like that are rapists.

A consensual sex partner is active, engaged, happy, excited, reaching out to grab at you. If you were having sex with somebody who didn’t want to have sex with you, YOU’D KNOW. A “misunderstanding” in consensual sex looks nothing like rape. Drunken consensual sex looks nothing like rape. Nobody who isn’t a rapist is going to mistake consensual sex for rape, because nobody who isn’t a rapist wants to rape. Rape is fundamentally so different from sex, because it involves having sex with somebody who is not engaged, not active, not touching you, not happy, not excited, not liking you, not liking your body. Normal people do not want that. They do not pursue it. They avoid it, if sex starts edging that way. If you were having sex with somebody, and they were unengaged, lying still, not touching you, not moaning, staring at the wall, flinching, or just completely passed out, YOU WOULD NOTICE THESE THINGS. And if you were a rapist, you’d keep going, because that’s the kind of sex encounter you want. Somebody who wants a consensual sex encounter does not keep going when sex becomes nonconsensual, because it’s not sexy. There is no way to “oops” your way into rape unless you like having sex with somebody who hates having sex with you. You can have sex that gets wacky or you bump them in the eye or you pinch them and they are like, “uh, no, I don’t like that,” but throughout all the drunk or regret or accidents that can happen during sex, your partner is still engaged and actively trying to sex you if it’s consensual sex. That’s not rape. Rape may involve sex, but eating rusty nails involves eating: that doesn’t mean we call it dinner. You would notice if you were eating rusty nails; you wouldn’t mistake it for real food or enjoyable food. There is no way to accidentally shove that shit in your mouth. You would only do it if you wanted to.

I think (total presumption here) that when your friend is talking about drunkeness or mistakes, he’s imaginging perfectly reasonable things. He’s thinking, “What if my best friend’s girlfriend and I have sex and then later she feels bad for cheating?” Or, he’s imagining, “What if I’m at a club and there is a super drunk girl I like and she drags me back to her house where we have wild energetic sex all night?” That’s sex that’s a mistake. That’s drunken sex. That’s not rape, and women don’t call that rape. If your friend thinks they do, he needs to check out the stats the government puts out about false accusations: women falsely accuse men of rape at the same rate that (surprise!) people falsely accuse other people of any crime. It’s somewhere in the range of 1%-2%.

He’s assuming that everybody has this definition of mistakes or drunken sex, but rapists don’t. To a rapist, sex that is a mistake is a girl who was flirting with you and doesn’t scream and run and hit you when you rape her — obviously she wanted and deserved it because she was flirting, and that’s what he’ll say to make bystanders call her a liar. Bystanders will believe this, because they’re imagining what they think “mistake” means instead of realizing what definition the rapist is using. To a rapist, drunken sex is spiking a drink or finding a girl who is voluntarily so drunk that she’s blacking out or passed out and raping her while she’s unconscious or unable to move. She’ll call it rape, he’ll say “she was drunk!” and bystanders will think about the times they’ve had drunken sex with a consensual partner, and how HORRIBLE it would be if they were accused of rape later, so obviously THIS couldn’t be rape, never realizing that the rapist has a very different definition of “drunken sex” than they do. A rapist and your friend could have a conversation about mistaken sex and drunken sex and think they were talking about the same thing, but your friend would be talking about active, engaged, consensual sex, and the rapist would be talking about sex where the woman wants to die.

The fact that your friend thinks it’s possible to “accidentally” rape a woman is a perfect illustration of “rape culture,” and how his life and ability to reason has been damaged by it. This is why your school is creating these new resources — because otherwise intelligent and probably well-meaning people like your friend are walking around under the impression that rape can ever happen by accident. If he were to examine his own personal sexual encounters, it would be obvious to him that consent was given and maintained throughout, and that it was OBVIOUSLY there — no questions, no confusion, no difficulty ascertaining. It’s not a fuzzy concept — it’s a girl who is active and engaged and enjoying what’s happening. He would probably also find the idea of having sex with a woman who isn’t active and engaged and enjoying what’s happening repugnant. He could not accidentally have sex with a girl who was reacting that way, anymore than he can accidentally eat nails for dinner. He would know there was something wrong. Only rapists can have sex with people who do not want to have sex with them. Only rapists can enjoy sex like that. Only rapists can look at a person who is unengaged and dissociating from sex and say, “Oh, she’s just regretting it.” Normal people — non-rapists — they know what regret looks like. It looks like a girl calling you the next morning and saying, “Yeah, we can’t ever do that again, you’re really nice, but I don’t know what I was thinking,” and then looking a little embarrassed every time she sees you in public. When rapists say, “She just regretted it,” we’re imagining the concept of regret we have in our minds. But that’s not the definition the rapist is using, and it’s testament to how badly rape apologism has fucked your friend up that he, a reasonable fucking person, couldn’t see through that shit without a careful explanation from a third party.

As for resources, I would recommend the Feministe article on Predator Theory, and the research behind it. This shows exactly what I’ve been saying, and then some. Rapists specifically target women with whom they can use these pre-made excuses — drunk! regretted it! — because they know that people like your friend will support them and consider the woman to be a liar. When your friend says this shit out loud, a rapist is going to hear him and think they are BFFs. And that rapist is going to feel perfectly comfortable raping any friends of his who ever get drunk, because they already know that your friend thinks that’s okay.

You could put it this way. “If I got drunk and somebody raped me, would you tell me it wasn’t rape?” If the answer is yes, then this is easier: this guy isn’t your friend anymore. If the answer is, “No, of course not!”, then you can tell him, “So stop saying this shit out loud. If you want to believe it, in your head, fine, your head isn’t my business. But when you say these things out loud, rapists hear you, and they’re going to think I’m a good target. They’ll think that if they get me drunk, you’re going to call me a liar, because that’s what you say out loud. Women who are drunk aren’t getting raped because they’re drunk — they’re getting raped because guys like you go around saying drunk girls deserve it, and a rapist realized he could rape drunk girls and get away with it.”