next to it, ice cream rolling down our hands. ‘You’re so right,’ he half-whispered. ‘Right, that’s it. I’m deleting Facebook off my phone so I can be carefree like you.’
I almost choked on my cone. I’d never been called carefree in my entire existence no matter how hard I have tried to hide my anxiety. The adjective people most use about me, and when I say ‘people’, I mean men in the process of dumping me, is ‘intense’.
No, the dates couldn’t be going better. Joshua has surprised even me in his lack of aloofness – how happy he seems to be that this is quickly heading into relationship territory. Revealing vulnerable things like the fact he’s tried to stalk me online, rather than playing it cool. I’ve had the occasional thought blip that maybe it’s because he’s actually nice, but mostly I marvel at the Gretel effect, and how easy a man finds it to give his heart to a unicorn. Either way, I have felt like I’m walking three inches off the pavement by having so much power, by seeing him fall for me, by knowing it’s false and I’m not the one who is going to get hurt here.
But when I look at the latest message I feel scared for the first time.
Because …
Because …
I could only keep it up for so long. We’re entering date five. He’s been patient. He will worry something is wrong if we don’t have it soon, and nothing’s wrong with Gretel in that department thank you very much.
Gretel needs to have sex with Joshua, which means I need to have sex with Joshua.
? Fucking Without Fucking It Up — Gretel’s Guide to Hot Sex
* * *
First-time sex with anyone new is nerve-wracking, so it’s natural to be apprehensive which, sorry, is really unsexy. Confidence is what he desires. A woman who loves her body, and loves his body, and has no hang-ups and is totally up for anything. Make sure you get ready ‘down there’ and now’s the time to dig out that super-hot lingerie. It’s bound to make him go wild. The most important thing is to relaaaaaax and enjoy it and be up for anything and maybe hum when you go down on him and blah blah blah blah …
* * *
Sex after rape is a complicated beast. First of all, it’s worth making it clear that rape isn’t sex. It isn’t sex at all. Yes, it involves the components of sex – a body entering another body – but rape is not sex, rape is violence and rape is power. Rape is the entitlement someone feels to someone else’s body, regardless of the consequences on the soul inhabiting that body, who has to spend every moment of the rest of their life knowing their body is not as important as someone else’s entitlement. And because sex is so very different from rape, what people don’t understand is that you can have been raped and still really want to have a sex life. You can have been raped and still desire. You can have been raped and still desire angry, hot, thrusty, sex. You can have been raped and still want to initiate. You can have been raped and be sexually aggressive yourself. In fact, take every weird and wonderful thing that human beings desire on the giant spectrum of sexuality – the fetishes, the fantasies, the toys – a victim of rape can desire any of these things and it has nothing to do with their rape. You still want the things you want, crave the things you crave. Because sexuality and rape have nothing to do with each other.
What’s strange about your sexuality after being raped is that it changes nothing and yet it also changes everything.
Sex is never the same, not quite. Because once that act of violence is ripped into you, it’s almost impossible to not let it bleed into sex. On an intellectual level you know this is different – loving, consensual, hell you’re on top and you’re the one who started this thing. But, emotionally, your body remembers, it wonders if it’s happening again. And even though rape has nothing to do with sex, it still takes your sexuality away. It’s snatched from you. In your head, much as you don’t want to admit it, you are now a victim of rape. Well, you think you are. You’re never quite sure if you’re allowed to use that label. Not for you, not for your