Ugh, Guy and Health Issue

I got a call the other day from a guy who I went out on a date with a few years ago. I don't know why guys think that they can do this and I'll remember them, the details of our dating and why I didn't continue to date the guy. This guy was named Art. During our date, I felt uncomfortable and not safe with him. He also took off his pants to get comfortable-- yeah, right. The only thing he brought over was margarita mix and seemed to want me to get more drunk than just tipsy on the first date. I heard from him about two weeks later and he wanted sex. He said something like, "I've been thinking about you every day." Really? Then why did it take you two weeks to tell me that I'm on your mind all the time?
So, we talk on the phone the other day. He seemed just as perverted as ever. For some reason, he thought that at the time we dated, I wanted sex with no strings attached or casual sex without a committed relationship (which in my mind is two different things but maybe that's where the miscommunication was). He remembered I wasn't having sex at the time. But he insisted we only did what I was comfortable with-- really, then why was I so fucking uncomfortable? I didn't ask him to take off his pants or lay on top of me. I made up that I was having an outbreak so he'd leave. He said that if he was really a rapist, he would have been more aggressive. Really, that wasn't aggressive enough? I had an action plan of banging on the wall to get my neighbor's attention to get this guy off of me and out of my apartment.
So, his big reason for taking off his pants? I had my shirt off. Oh, so, that means I must want sex when I've said I don't want sex. Really?
After this date, I didn't date for a while. I didn't want to have anyone over. I was really scared. I was scared that he'd come back, stalk me, even. I blamed myself-- how could I be so stupid? I didn't feel comfortable and I shouldn't have had him over. When he blamed me, for having my shirt off, I felt like I was slightly to blame but he had a weird story in his head. And he continues to have this story-- enough to call me and ask me out on a date thinking that I'm still into this whole "sex with no string attached." I've never done that. There are always strings attached. I have enjoyed long term booty calls with no committed relationships. Mostly, it wasn't an official relationship-- even though it was a relationship of some sort. I also felt mostly respected in those type of relationships. Art didn't respect me. He also has some weird thing about having a woman who has money and can take care of herself because he doesn't want to take care of her. This makes me really happy to be with my boyfriend-- who respects me and will give me the shirt off his back if I needed it.

After all this, I got the test results back from my annual exam. I have to get another test to see what the abnormal cells are. I'm scared. I blacked out during sex one time and I had sex with a guy who then wanted a relationship. He had had sex with an older woman who I knew. She was very open about having her cervix removed from cancer. He didn't believe that she had cervical cancer when I told him.
I talked to him last night and he blamed me. He said that he couldn't get tested to see if he had HPV and that I couldn't have known if it was from him. I can't believe he said that. Then he accused me of trying to find a reason to hate him. If I hated him, I wouldn't have said anything. I would have just gone on and maybe sent him some message in a few months about making sure he uses protection because of the incident.
I had a friend come over last night to make sure I was OK. We talked about my worries-- for the future of me, of Jeremy, of children, of possibly having cancer, and on and on.
I know eventually I'll be OK. I just have to freak out a bit before I calm down.
Thanks for listening.

Not Safe

I haven't written in a while. I was closed to a man and he joined my facebook page which included the links to this page. He read through a lot of it and in the end, he wanted to find out more about what I was thinking in regard to our sexual life. I felt violated again and did not want to write for a while. Now, this man and I are barely speaking. He is friends with some of my friends and our interactions continue to be doused in confusion. He appears so angry. It's like he did a flip. I almost think that he sees the world as black or white. He was helpful and supportive for a time and then suddenly, he was making these odd accusations about this help and support. It took a lot of convincing to my conscious self to know that what he said is just simply not true.
Our sexual encounters were confusing and upsetting. He said many things that he later contradicted. While he wanted a relationship and realized that I did not want a relationship, he said that he wanted to have a physical relationship. I was cautious but I wanted to believe that he knew himself well enough that he would not just say this in hopes of a relationship. We were physically intimate on a few occasions. My body was uncomfortable. A part of me wanted to make him happy but the bigger part of me just wanted a good friendship. I would finish and just push him away. I didn't want to have more connections with him. I felt badly. I talked to friends. They reaffirmed that he just wanted it; he was OK with being treated this way. I felt that I was just getting back into those people pleasing behaviors. I did not like this feeling at all. I wanted to stop and to have some time away. Soon, I felt that any free time was commandeered by him. I felt a weird addiction to him. I hated it.
I think the last time we spoke, it was clear that he did not like that I was asserting myself again. I decided not to have him go out of his way to pick me up and drop me off. I met him out to have dinner. I enjoyed not having an extended time together. I liked doing what I wanted as I drove away to my apartment. I liked being able to process the night, without his company.
I'm feeling defensive about this blog. I want to start explaining how we did have great times together. I want to explain that he has a different perspective and that this is probably not what he thinks of the situation at all. Yet, that could be my nervousness, my people pleasing behaviors, and my want to get rid of these feelings and not hurt anyone's feelings. However, I needed to get this out. Luckily, I feel my readers understand this.

Thank you for taking your time to read this short rant.

Kurt and Rant about Vincent

I started having a memory that came up more than once. When I was 12, I dated a boy, Kurt. We held hands and kissed. Eventually, he put his hands down my pants to finger me and he broke my cherry. Then, we broke up. I wasn't too upset with it because I was upset that he had tried to get me to do more and that he had touched me in the first place. One of the things I've learned is that victims of sexual abuse feel that they don't have the right to say no. I felt like it was what everyone else was doing and I might as well do it. I hated the way he kissed and touched me. It felt like I sort of wanted him to touch me but I would have enjoyed myself better if we just talked.

I got mad at him, I told friends that he had touched me and eventually felt that it was necessary to tell the school administrators what happened. It was months of them interviewing our friends and even our family about what happened. I was too scared to even mention the fingering thing until it went to the school board.
What I remember most was the principal. She said some very messed up things. She seemed mad at me for one reason or another. What hurt the most was that she asked me how he was supposed to know that he wasn't supposed to touch me if I held his hand. When I look at it now, I think, "Are you f*cking kidding me?" She made this imaginary link between holding hands and groping. I can't imagine that being OK in anyone's mind. It is beyond reason.

I look at this now and think, "No wonder I blamed myself for Kirk raping me." I had this story in my head-- well, I did go outside with him, I did talk to him. How was he supposed to know that it wasn't OK to have sex with me? In reality, I told him no. I was reluctant to go anywhere with him and if he wasn't looking so much to get laid and wasn't a f*cking scum bag, he would have seen that. Instead, he took advantage of a young girl who didn't know what to say to get this piece of shit to stop bothering her for sex.

In my mind, I still think of the way Kirk acted and the way Rafael acted. Rafael much younger and I'll say horny, knew that something wasn't right and chose to leave the situation. Kirk was on his way to becoming a man and felt that he had to get this out of the way before it was "really" illegal, even though it was illegal then too. A few more months or years doesn't make a person more able to make an adult and responsible decision, as we can see with Rafael.

I think of other points too, where it seemed that by some societal or media influence, I got the message that it's OK to just go along, even when it's not in my best interest to go forward. I think about the times I felt that if I had sex before, I might as well have sex with the guy who I'm dating or that he'll expect it so I might as well do it. There wasn't anyone there or any voice in my head asking, "Do you really like him? Do you see this lasting a long time? Does he have any particular qualities that you really dislike or that you find attractive and unique? If you get pregnant, have you both decided what's best for the situation? In any case, do you really want to do this?"

A lot of time my sexual experiences were about disconnecting for my body. I wouldn't be in the moment. I would get headaches with fighting with my conscious that I didn't really want to do anything with anyone. I wanted to be alone and to feel safe with a friend or a lover. I remember writing about how during sex, I'd think of roads I went down or houses that I saw that I liked. I would now identify that as dissociation. I wasn't present during sex; I had simply given into hormones instead of rational or emotional thoughts/reasoning.

--Warning: Rant--
When my older and immature boyfriend at the time, Vincent, read this passage in my journal while I was on vacation and had hidden that journal, he had said it was OK. He had also made it clear that if I didn't want him reading it, I would have hidden it better. OMG, A-hole!
Vincent was a special (read: traumatic brain injury "retarded") person. His thoughts were more like a 10 or 15 year old boy instead of a 23 year old man. He'd make up these crazy stories. We broke up because I was tired of dating him. Our dates included us sitting on the couch for hours, watching TV, barely talking. I got bored. I could do that by myself and have more fun. He didn't want to do anything else because everything else required money and he didn't have job. I asked for an engraved bracelet back. He didn't want to give it back and instead said that I must have taken it back. In his mind, the only reason I'd ask for it back was to make him feel guilty (because in his world, I already had it). Eventually, he gave me back the bracelet and a bag that I had made. But as a last bitch move, he put "Vincent and Venus" in paint marker inside of it. I gave it to a friend who said she really liked it because I was still trying to use it despite being pissed at him. After all that, he had an older friend call me to see if I would date the older friend. Then, he started mooching off some 17 year old in the next town over, while still leaving me voice mails (on my pager, back in the day) saying I was the only one for him, he didn't know how he'd find someone else, reminding me when our anniversary would have been, and asking me if I had driven by because he saw someone with a similar van and kind of looked like me. He created screen names with his new girlfriend's name in it, something like "VincentLuvsLindsey123" on my parents' AOL account (because my screen name had been something like "VenusLuvsVW123" for my VW van). He sent an email to my mom asking her out, making it seem like he was just sending out to see if any single women wanted to date him. He sent me various voice mails over the course of two years, wherein I didn't call back to talk to him once. He was so dumb, he asked me to hang out but not if I had a boyfriend. He also drove passed my house several times. He made me scared for my safety. I was worried that once I moved to San Diego, he would still find me and stalk me. These thoughts stopped after moving again. They have also disappeared now that I'm on a different coast from where I grew up.
This girl, Lindsey, left a voicemail one day before I cancelled my account. I talked to her briefly. She said that he had lived at her dad's place, she was paying for this cell phone, they had broken up and she was calling numbers on the bill. Some of the places, she reported, were really weird. She asked if we met up or I cheated with him. I said the truth; I hadn't talked to him and didn't want to talk to him. We talked a bit about him and what had happened between them and what had happened between us. I made sure not to mention where I was moving for school, but that I was moving. Again, I was worried about his odd behaviors.
---- End Rant----

I'm glad that I can get this all out. I really needed to just sit and reflect. It's interesting to me when I have these memories that are persistent. I often wonder what's in my life now that is triggering these memories to come up. Sometimes there's a connection. Sometimes it takes me a while to see what I was trying to tell myself through these memories. I think, though, it might be time to make some art while having these memories in mind.

Thanks,
Venus