I then remember being in the bedroom and her pushing me against the wall while kissing me. Then flashes of moments: I am pushed on the bed; my shorts are off and she is on top of me; and finally I am in the middle of the bed on top of her.

At some point I got out of bed to get myself some water. I remember having my shorts and shirt still on and going into the kitchen. As I am filling up a glass, I remember talking with a girl in the kitchen. I can not remember what we talked about at all.

A few years ago I was at a small party with a few close friends and some other guests. I had been drinking prior to the party and so by midnight I was very intoxicated. Since it was a friend’s house, I decided to go ahead and fall asleep in the spare bedroom rather than continue drinking and get sick/embarrass myself. Around the time I decided to get into bed, I blacked out. I only remember flashes of what happened afterwards.

My first sexual experience was rape, in the sense that I was coerced and given drugs and alcohol. I was 14 years old, and the girl was 16. She was much more worldly, and very pushy. The whole experience was extremely unsettling, not least because I contracted a rather painful yeast infection from her, and visited several doctors who all told me I didn’t have an STD (VD, in those days). They told me to go away, that I was imagining things. Eventually, after a long time, it went away on its own, with me completely ignorant of what it was until many years later.

I don’t remember details and have no sense of the time involved, what was said, what anything felt like, or even what I did during those images. I just remember a series of images that do not seem real. I don’t even remember falling asleep. I woke up in the morning, confused, face down, and naked. She was on the edge of the bed getting dressed. On the floor were two used condoms that I do not remember even having on. She smiled, kissed me quickly on the lips, and said,”That was fun, but I gotta head out this morning. Bye!” She said that in a cheery, normal, not-hungover-at-all voice and walked out the door. I didn’t even respond to her. I just watched her walk out. I did not even know what to say. I still don’t. I still don’t know how to classify this. Yes, I know that getting black-out drunk is always a bad idea. Yes, I know that drunken one-night stands happen. I also know that I did not want this, and that everyone there knew that I had gone to sleep early because I was too drunk. I also know that when I think back on this I am equal parts angry, disgusted, and disappointed that I didn’t stop it. For some reason, I decided to tell this story to two separate female partners in the time since. In both cases, they listened attentively, and then responded in almost identical fashion, “If you were on top, then it wasn’t rape.” I do not know how to respond to that statement. I honestly don’t fully know what to call this story. I just hope that this story is helpful in some way.

Another reader suspects he was drugged:

I’ve decided to share my rape experience. Unfortunately, I don’t remember much of it, but I will do my best. I was living in Orlando at the time. Like most young people living on their own for the first time, I had a favorite bar with a good price on drinks. It was Thursday night, and a few friends and I went there because I didn’t have to go into school until very late on Friday. We took one of their tables, and we all ordered drinks. I got about halfway through mine and we got up to do some dancing. Retrospectively, that was a bad idea. When we returned, I finished my drink and ordered a second. I don’t even remember getting the second one. All I remember of that night beyond that point is a few flashes of an unfamiliar room, and two different women on top of me. I was woken up by a police officer poking me in the ribs with his nightstick around 10 in the morning. I was sleeping behind a bush, about 30 miles from the bar and my home. He asked me exactly what happened, and I told him as best as I knew. He offered to give me a ride home, which I accepted. When he dropped me off at home, he told me to be more careful in the future and drove away. I hadn’t really absorbed what had happened yet. I went inside, showered, and got ready for class. I was still a little unsteady, so I asked a buddy of mine to come pick me up for class. He advised me that one of my other friends (a woman) was very mad at me and I should avoid her, since I went home with a stranger the night before, and he had never seen anyone get so drunk from one drink. He then proceeded to make fun of me for being a “lightweight.” I’m not. This is the part that continually shocks me to this day, but I didn’t realize I had been assaulted. I knew I had to have been drugged, but the concept of being raped by a woman didn’t even enter my brain at this point, at least not consciously. I started having lots of nightmares on the subject, however, and didn’t realize it was rape until I tried to argue against someone that it wasn’t and realized I couldn’t defend my position. I decided to seek out the services of a psychologist. Otherwise, I figured this would haunt me forever. I told him the whole story. After I had finished, he started to counsel me, and it went ok at first. I was making progress. Then on the 6th visit, he said something I will never forget: Until I take responsibility for what happened, I will never get past it. I left, and I never sought therapy again, although I probably should. The nightmares never left. I feel like I can’t tell anyone. Only my wife knows and sympathizes. She also has to deal with some sexual difficulties, although I manage ok. But I can’t help shake the feeling mentally that, other than her, nobody knows, and nobody would care if they did. It’s very isolating.

This next reader also blacked out—and owns up to that fact:

First, I’d like to start by saying that I’ve been a huge fan of the Notes section since its inception. It’s very rare to find a comments section worth reading, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who has benefited from the myriad perspectives and stories you’ve published thus far. This is the first thread I’ve felt qualified to contribute, which I suppose is a bit of a mixed blessing. Hopefully someone out there can take something valuable from my experiences. *** Sex has been a difficult issue for me since before I had any grasp of what it actually was or entailed. My first sexual experiences happened at an extremely young age, something that was not due to molestation or rape at the hands of an adult, but rather child-on-child sexual abuse initiated by an extremely close friend. It’s a complicated subject—one that has no easy answers or identifiable parties to blame. There are only victims. Needless to say, my views on sex and intimacy have been cast in the shadow of those early experiences. Due in part to unresolved issues that blossomed from them, I have had many problems with mental health in my life, including depression, disordered eating, suicide attempts, and substance abuse. These have all blended together in ways both positive and negative with regards to my love life; I have never had a relationship that wasn’t either extremely passionate or crazy or both. Clinginess is a part of my romantic personality, as are jealously and a propensity to shut down. On the flip side, I can be extremely sweet, caring, and tender, to levels that my partners attest they haven't experienced in past relationships. In spite of all these hurdles and difficulties in my private affairs, I’ve managed to become a somewhat regular guy in the public realm, with a well-paying steady job and a small circle of close friends. I preface the story with this information to let you know that this is not a clear-cut tale of “woman rapes man.” It is confused and messy, an experience that can’t come down to a simple act of someone else exerting their power over my person. I felt in the aftermath of it, and still feel now deep inside, that I share some of the blame for what happened to me. *** I had just graduated from university and was in a rut. My partner—the longest relationship I had ever had at that point and a woman whom I loved dearly—had graduated in the same class but was clearly bound for bigger and better things. Our relationship was the most stable and regular one I’d ever experienced. That was not just my opinion; we were such an item that our friends referred to us as the “old married couple,” a moniker we took great pride in. As the college days began to recede, however, the fear of abandonment and loneliness set in. I became afraid that she would leave or that I wouldn’t want to follow, and I began coping by drinking and closing myself off. The relationship obviously began deteriorating at that point, which only further exacerbated my paranoia and despondency. One weekend, she and our mutual friend group left town to go to a concert in the country. I was supposed to meet up with another friend at a local bar, and since it was a Friday, I went out early and had a few drinks beforehand. Six beers, and then to the other pub. The friend never showed, but another mutual friend did. He bought me a drink—some sort of mezcal martini that’s popular at that particular establishment. That’s where my night ends. There are a few blurs of consciousness in between; I see a seat belt out of the corner of my right eye; the flash of pines and brick buildings flying by; the reflection of a sedan in the storefront windows. Nothing more. I woke up the next morning and couldn’t see. My glasses were gone. I didn’t recognize the apartment, or the futon where I was sitting upright, my genitals exposed, my pants around my ankles. I had no shirt on. My head was so fogged that I was convinced that this could not be real. Time didn’t seem to move correctly. This wasn’t reality. A woman enters the room after a time. She apparently owns the apartment. I tell her that I can’t find my glasses. She looks on the counters while I crawl on hands and knees reaching under the furniture. Eventually I find them and put them on, but they do nothing to remove the blurriness from my perception. She tells me that I fell asleep in the middle of it, and so she went to bed after she couldn’t wake me. She invites me to bed. I agree. We have sex, again apparently. She takes a picture of me with a Polaroid camera and writes my name on the white border, then slips the image into her drawer. The dream doesn’t end, and that’s when I start to be afraid. I tell her I need to go home. She drives me to my place, which looks surreal in the morning light. She gives me her phone number, then a kiss, and then drives off. I went inside and sat down for an hour. Nothing changed. Nothing became clearer. My head hurt worse with every passing minute. And then I knew that none of this was a dream, and that I had really just done this. After what seemed like years, I took a shower, dressed myself, and walked to my girlfriend’s house. She opened the door and I told her that I needed to talk. I told her I had cheated. I had. There’s not much in my life that I would like to eliminate from my memory, but the look on her face when I said those words is one of them. We didn’t speak for two weeks, and then she called me to tell me it was over. Frankly, it would have been over at some point, but to have it end because of what I did, and didn’t even remember, was terrible. I dropped out of all my social circles, deleted Facebook, and didn’t leave the house for about three years. Two months after this happened, in a fit of severe depression, I called the number my rapist gave me, convinced that she was the only one who would have me now. She didn’t answer and didn’t return my message. *** Things have gotten better now. I have new friends, good friends, a new partner, and a better job that has brought some financial stability to my life. My friends are hard-drinking, rambunctious, and crass—a personality type that suits me well—and we’re unafraid to get into taboo territory with our conversation. I’ve told some of them about what happened. They are sympathetic but I can tell that they don’t really believe me. My partner doesn’t fully believe me either. That a late-20s male who’s over 6’5’’ could be taken advantage of seems absurd. It’s more likely that I got drunk and wanted it, isn’t it? I know that I really didn’t want any of it, or any of the consequences, but that’s how life works. My rapist is still in our town, and I see her regularly. We neither speak nor acknowledge each other, though my friends are close to her. Just a few nights ago, a new addition to our social circle got swept up in conversation with her, and she began acting aggressively. My friend (who knows) tried to wedge herself into the conversation while I took my buddy to the bathroom to fill him in. I don’t know if anything would have happened, but I’d like there to be no more Polaroids in her collection.

This next reader didn’t appear to be drinking a lot that night but was fast asleep when the incident began: