Borderline Successful: Everyone Wants a Bite
Content note: This post discusses alcohol and drug use, explicit sexual activity, questions of consent, and feeling used after a sexual encounter.
Before X
This summer, I was involved with someone I’ll call G for about six weeks. The connection was supposed to be casual, friends first. It quickly became too intimate, too public, and too much like dating. When I tried to name that during a wine-and-cheese night, it came out as a frantic, slightly unhinged “what are we?”
G decided we should stop having sex. A day later, they decided we should stop speaking entirely. I respected that and left them alone, but they remained mostly silent in a community group chat I had organized. I didn’t remove them because I try to avoid freezing people out of a community they want to be a part of. Still, watching them ignore me while interacting with everyone else in small ways felt like a prolonged, clumsy silent treatment.
About a month into not speaking, G abruptly added X to the chat.
X is kind and funny, with a funky fashion sense. I could see myself being friends with her pretty immediately. She had no context for what happened with G until she asked directly, and I caught her up while trying not to shit-talk. G and X had met recently and hung out a few times as friends, but they weren’t incredibly close. It seemed G added X because she wanted to meet more queer people, and I happened to know some. Allegedly, G spoke highly enough of me that X said they may have fumbled me. I tried not to agree. I have to say, I did.
If X had been G’s new situationship, I would have been mortified. Instead, she seemed like a cool person whose new friend had connected her with more potential friends.
So is life.
The First Night
The night I met X, we got drunk together. We went to happy hour at a garden, then sat in the park drinking beers. Most of our real conversation happened in the park before we eventually made our way to a bar. Based on what I had told her about G, including the blurry lines and details that never got cleared up because of the immediate cutoff in contact, X gave me a pep talk about what I should demand from my connections. She said I needed a lover who would give me everything.
Then she got on her knees, pulled my dress aside, and licked my pussy to prove some point about what I deserved. It happened twice: first outside a queer bar on the sidewalk, and later in another queer bar’s bathroom, where the door said “ONE PERSON AT A TIME.”
Admittedly, the second time is blurrier. I remember standing against the wall and staring into space with my dress pulled up. I don’t remember having another drink at the second bar. I was already drunk and mostly following X around. Afterward, we got into another car with a third person, a guy she knew, and went to an overpriced rave in a house under construction with too few people to make it a rager. The three of us milled around, trying to see whether there was any fun to be had. There was some hubbub about picking up coke, and I was hazy-dazy while they coordinated their pickup. Eventually, they decided X would get me home.
At the end of the night, she got me home. I changed into comfortable clothes, and she lay down beside me and stroked my back until I fell asleep. She was soft, not flirty anymore. We were back to being a couple of girlfriends, drunk after a night out. As tired as I was, I still remembered the oral escapades.
We never kissed, X and I.
That matters because kissing would have made the encounter feel more intimate, or at least more mutual. Instead, I felt like she wanted to demonstrate something, prove something, or flex something. Maybe it wasn’t about me at all. Maybe she wanted to eat someone, anyone, out. I don’t remember flirting with her, asking about her dating life, or coming on to her sexually. Maybe I flirted and it’s a blur now, but I remember enough clearly that I think I mainly let it happen out of shock and maybe a fawn response. What I remember most clearly is my body signaling surprise and uncertainty, not a freely expressed yes.
I blanked out and let what was happening happen.
Later, X left to pick up blow from someone who had apparently seen us out earlier, although based on her description, I don’t remember speaking to him. According to X, he gave her shit because I had been, and I quote, “drunk out of my mind.” If that friend believed I was that drunk and watched me leave with someone they would later scold, why did they let me go? If you’re actually concerned, say something.
Bystander-effect-ass bitch.
That is not how I remember myself. Was I drunk? Yeah. Was I too drunk to remember the night, what happened to my body, or how we got home? No. I do not, however, remember saying I wanted her to go down on me or asking her to. I remember blushing, looking around frantically, and laughing nervously while I let her lead. I still don’t know whether to call that consent, acquiescence, or something messier. It was not forced, but it was not something I requested or expected.
Not fighting her off does not automatically mean I consented. I may have acquiesced because I froze and did not know how to interrupt what was already happening. Still, it feels odd to call it a flat-out violation of consent because I let it happen. The whole thing feels icky because I keep thinking I should have just said something. When I followed her into the bathroom, I thought it was the way friends do, when someone pees while you reapply lip gloss and text your ex while saying you fucking hate your ex. It was supposed to be fun and silly.
But there I was again, pussy out.
I do not think X assaulted me.
I think.
I do not believe she set out to take advantage of me. What I know is that she overstepped, and the person she mainly overstepped with was me.
It was mainly me.
Intentional harm and an experience I may still understand as a violation are not the same thing. That distinction matters to me. I can believe she did not intend to violate me and still question whether I experienced it as a violation.
I’m glad she didn’t use her fingers. I’m glad we didn’t kiss.
Distance
In the days after that first night with X, I saw G crossing the street and thought they had purposely avoided me. I later learned through X that I had misread the moment. My mistake. Still, seeing G activated me. Intentional snub or not, it clarified something: we needed to be fully away from each other. So I removed G from the chat. They were barely active in it and only knew the other people through me.
At that point, I had not heard about X’s guilt over what had happened with me. I only knew G’s presence had become too weird. Why remain in a chat organized by me if being around me is so uncomfortable? Even if G did not see me on the sidewalk, they had fully ghosted me while lingering in spaces I invited them into. Part of me wished G had fully blocked me and pretended I had died or something.
Don’t half-ass your ghosting. Commit to that bullshit.
Swallow Your Guilt
About a week after X and I met, she invited me out with some friends. That night, at some gorgeous house in a cute neighborhood, she told me she had spoken to G because she didn’t want to keep secrets. She felt “guilty” and thought G might be bothered. Apparently, G said they didn’t care.
X’s guilt seemed more about loyalty to G, and X confirmed it was a kind of bro code thing. The other friend’s comments about how drunk I had been may have added another layer, but X never clearly explained whether that was part of her guilt. What she clearly described was apologizing to G, then filling me in so things would not be awkward. Her guilt does not prove that she understood the encounter as nonconsensual. It does show that she thought something about it required consideration, while all that consideration went to G.
If you feel bad for doing something to me, apologize to me.
Is that insane to think? Sure, I understand telling your friend that you ate out the last person they were actively hooking up with. That is messy and silly and could be taken poorly. But I did not initiate it. X decided it was fine in the moment, then regretted it, or at least felt enough guilt to apologize to G.
Apparently, G did not care. I cannot assume anything further without becoming a conspiracy theorist. But shouldn’t the next apology and check-in have been with me? X filled me in on her conversation with G, but she did not say, “Hey, I’m sorry about what happened. It was messy.” She spoke as if we had shared some sexual moment. We did not exactly hook up. She did something to me, and I glazed over because I am too used to letting things happen to my body. I felt numb. I had not planned to hook up with X. She initiated, and I followed. Yet I was the one being handed her guilt, as if I was supposed to reassure her.
It was my pussy that got licked.
If she felt the need to apologize to someone, why not me?
Usefulness
What bothered me was not G’s opinion. It was that X’s guilt about something that happened to my body became a disclosure to G. She wanted me urgently in one moment, then discussed me like a difficult confession in the next. X had guilt, which I could only interpret as regret. G had whatever distant feelings they had. I had a cunt that had become something to apologize for, but no apology was actually given to me.
I felt cheap.
My body, my community-accessible body, became a bro-to-bro conversation between X and G, proof that X might have broken some rule in their budding friendship. I became the sexual link connecting them, a toy passed through an understanding I was not part of. I wish she had not told me she felt guilty unless that guilt included how the encounter may have made me feel.
I don’t think she actually considered that, probably because I didn’t scream and kick her off. But I never scream and kick people off. I go still. I laugh nervously. I let the moment finish, then ask myself afterward what I actually wanted. People can mistake my lack of resistance for comfort, and I can mistake surviving a moment for choosing it.
I felt used for sport, like a notch on a belt, or an NPC in someone else’s friendship, some slut they could discuss over brunch. Everyone seems to want parts of me. They want to touch me, lick me, push inside me.
Everyone wants to take a bite, then apologize to somebody else because maybe they shouldn’t have.
Whatever X believed about that night, if G deserved disclosure and consideration, I deserved both more.
I was the person whose body was involved.
Tender
Later that week, after X told me about her guilt, I asked what she wanted from me. Nothing else sexual had happened between us. I didn’t demand an immediate answer or want her to say whatever she thought I wanted to hear. I was trying to set a boundary before uncertainty overwhelmed me. I told her the part I feared would sound accusatory, but I was describing feelings, not declaring facts. I felt like collateral damage in something going on between her and G, even if that was a paranoid thought with very little to support it.
X said there was nothing between her and G. More importantly, she said it mattered to her that I didn’t feel used in our interactions. If engaging sexually made me feel used, then we shouldn’t do it. She said she appreciated me as a person first and foremost. Her answer was kinder than I expected. It didn’t make my feelings false. It clarified the boundary my feelings were pointing toward.
I told her I needed to pull back intimately and build a friendship. I wanted us to stay close in some way because she’s cool, and we could be good friends.
I just feel confused.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have risked saying any of this to her. I felt tender, and I needed her to remember that I was a person who deserved genuine friends, not just someone to lick on.
Loving
A friend totally unrelated to all of this thinks I should cut both G and X out of my life. G is the easy one. I removed them on Instagram and hid my story. I blocked them, decided that felt like overkill, and unblocked them. My account is still restricted, and they have my number if they absolutely need or want to reach me, which they absolutely will not. They are no longer in the chat, and I have backed off entirely.
X, on the other hand, gave me an eventful first impression, and I’m not sure what a friendship would look like. Hopefully, it would not involve her sharing things with G, but maybe I should be careful about that. My friend thinks this was all too immature to stay entangled in. I somewhat agree, but I’m still thrown off by it all.
If I’m totally honest, I still cannot process whether I was violated. I keep saying what happened out loud and trying to make it sound better. I do not want to say this person violated me. The word feels aggressive, and I do not know whether anyone would take me seriously because I was unsure in the moment and unwilling or unable to object. I’m scared of making the situation worse by naming something bad, but something happened that I am still trying to understand. G’s indifference does not settle that question for me; it only makes everything feel flippant and murky again because the apology was not given to me.
Care
At least I have a friend who will tell me straight up that I should cut these two off. I know they love me and are protective of me. I need more friends like that, and I need to follow their advice a little more. Neither person had to intend to use me for these experiences to echo a pattern I know too well. I accept being desired because it feels close enough to being chosen, then discover that I was useful to a moment instead of cared for as a person.
Pulling back is not a verdict on X. I can believe her when she says I matter as a person. I can appreciate her and remain open to understanding.
I still refuse to confuse being desired with being considered.
With care,
Atila
Contact: [email protected]
