At my friend’s Christmas party, I don’t remember how many drinks I had, your Honor. I know I had some amount of alcohol and that I was less drunk than the most drunk I would get around that time. I was not wasted. He was there.

He walked me home, and as we walked, he started saying something very stupid about how silly it is that “society” says you can’t be with someone you like just because you’re with someone else. I don’t exactly remember his wording but I remember that it was stupid, and that I said yeah, you’re right, while thinking it was stupid and knowing what was coming. Then we were against a fence and he was kissing me. It was good, I’m sorry to say. It was exciting, even though I was not attracted to him at all before or really during that moment, because he liked me. An electric feeling of validation.

We walked back to my house, and on my steps we kissed more, and he confessed that he had always liked me, and that he thought about me a lot, and that he had thought about me that one time when I wore a shirt where you could see my bra. I remember these things that I had automatically pinned as little affirmations of hotness, not that I derived any pleasure from them. I said, do you think it’s a good idea to get married if you’re thinking about someone else? It’s too late, he said, our bank accounts are combined and everything. That struck me as very sad. He groped my breasts clumsily in between the kisses; that struck me as embarrassing but mundane, like seeing someone trip over on the sidewalk.

I went home for Christmas. I thought that would be that, a drunken stupid mistake we wouldn’t really discuss more. I started to talk to another guy in our class a bit — again, someone who I don’t think I would have fancied had I been less determined to be fancied, but who was a very nice and funny guy — and didn’t think much of it.

I had to go back early from Christmas break because I was due to start a two week class, required by my grad program, 9–5 every day including weekends for two shit weeks, with him. He picked me up from Dulles — that’s a pretty significant pain in the ass. I don’t remember whether we addressed the incident but I don’t think we did. I know I felt weird and stupid in his car.

The class started. We sat together for the whole thing. Same seats every day. It was miserable, for reasons not to do with him — it was about how to be a lobbyist, and a parade of lobbyists came to talk to us about how fun lobbying is and how it’s actually not at all evil. I had to work very hard on a very stupid group project.

The class culminated in a presentation, where we had to wear suits and act like DC People do. It was incredibly stressful in only the way that unimportant classes that impress upon you their massive importance can be. That meant the logical thing to do at the end was celebrate with alcohol, which we all yearned for; when this is over, we’ll get fucking trashed, because that’s what fun is. The other boy, the one I liked, was in the other class — you could either choose lobbying or campaign management — and his presentation was the day after ours. But he came out to our drinks even though it was the night before his big presentation, because he liked me.

I got very drunk. I was aggressive about drinking that night, and I was always a lightweight. I was wearing a bodycon skirt. I drank lemon drops. I was beginning to get visually impaired by like, 7.30. By the end of the night, the guy I liked and I were gently holding hands under the table. I tried to convince him to stay out, but he had to go home. It was nice, though; the sweetly painful wait with the promise of more is always better. He left.

I was drunk, and my friend, my previously safe male friend who I assumed had moved on from our drunken kisses because I had, was suddenly walking me home. I remember a sense of inevitability and a sense that he was the one in control of the situation. He was much more sober than me. I remember nothing about the walk itself. I remember being outside my front door fumbling with my keys, and he was going to come inside, and he did. Then I remember being on my bed, lying down sideways, and he was lying down sideways, and he was stroking my leg. Then I don’t remember. I didn’t remember the next day and I don’t remember now.

At some point I realized we were having sex, and became much more sober. I did not like it, but the decision was already made for me: we were doing it, and it’s easier to let him finish, isn’t it? So I carried on. I even ended up on top. Get it over with. Go through the motions. I remember when he came, he looked so impossibly stupid, and sounded stupid, like a fucking woman, and I hated him, and hated everything. He told me he liked my tits. I did not want to hear it. I wanted to put them away. He was burbling like a moron; he thought it was great, everything was great. He left. I think I fell asleep naked.

The next day I felt shit; I had a hangover but it was another kind of shit too, a grey feeling. I didn’t tell anyone, I think. I watched Lord of the Rings and ate bacon. The other guy, the guy I liked, came over to celebrate the end of his class. I felt utterly disgusting because it was so soon after, and he didn’t know someone else had been here, someone he knew, someone with a fiancee. I can’t remember if I changed the sheets. But I liked him, and I didn’t want to spoil anything, so he came over and we watched Harry Potter and we hooked up. It was good. He was very nice, and in the dark he told me I was beautiful and meant it, and that meant more than the cumulative evidence of drunken strange men could ever mean.