My sexual assailant and I have identical breakfast routines. He’s like a ghost, my personal haunting — appropriate, since ghosts linger in places where they shouldn’t.



What did I do to deserve this? I always thought that my sin was my silence; he lingers on campus because I am keeping him here by failing to speak up.



Years ago, on Halloween, my sexual assailant grabbed my butt, stuck his hands up my shirt and put his arm around my throat. I was wearing a “Risky Business” costume, boxer shorts and a white Oxford, and the ghost reached in, up, and around while I realized that my workout routine had not made me strong.



“Do not kiss me again — you're bad at it,” I said.



“Then I have to practice.”



Tongue down throat.



Two years later, a different boy asked me permission before every move. “Can I touch you here?” “Yes.” “Can I kiss you?” “Yes.” “Can I take off your shirt?” “No.”



Pointed look, eye roll, come on. Yes?

I said yes until I was naked, save socks, and I never wanted to be and wasn’t sure how it happened. I exploded into tears — a tried-and-true method for getting a boy to stop trying to have sex with me.

I biked away from his fraternity at 2 a.m.



Because he was still my friend, I told him a few days later about yet another boy I was fascinated by because, “He stopped me from going down on him because he said I was too drunk to consent.”



“So you like him … because he didn’t rape you? That’s the standard?”



I don’t know what I said, but I know what I didn’t say: “Better than what I got from you.”



Like I never told on my ghost, I never told my friend who he really was. I never told him that he, question-asker and yes-receiver, does not understand consent at all. And I don’t know who I think I’m sparing with my silence. I’m certainly not sparing me.

Madeline , New Hampshire