Some Girls, Some Girls, Some Girls

 Another time, perhaps one of the times I’d seen Lola almost at her angriest, was after our friend Margot had been joking about being held down by a guy who refused to let her go when she asked him to stop. 

I didn’t explicitly say no, Margot explained, as Lola sat gaping at her. 

You didn’t need to, Lola responded, too quickly, seeing as it happened to Margot, and not her. Pulling the things out of her bag that she needed to roll herself a cigarette, she asked how he'd known Margot didn't want to have sex with him

I think he thought I was joking when I-

Lola looks up at her. 

When I told him I was too tired, Margot said quietly, staring down into her drink now. Uncomfortably aware that her story was being taken seriously. 

So what, he thought holding you down and having sex with you would wake you up a bit? 

I, um. Margot looks uncomfortable now, but Lola presses on, oblivious or otherwise unbothered that Margot had only meant this story to be a funny anecdote.

What did he say afterwards? 

Margot. I try to catch her attention with my eyes.

I love Lola, but when she’s on a warpath she can sometimes deliberately ignore certain social cues if they don’t align with her view of things. Margot’s gaze remains fixed downwards. 

He said— Margot coughs awkwardly. He said he bet I was glad I’d stayed up for that.

And were you? Lola snaps, her rolled cigarette poised between her fingers now, and her eyes also searching for Margot’s which are still trained on her half pint. 

The silence before Margot answers is impenetrable. 

I don’t know. I was really drunk so maybe he thought…

Fuck’s sake. Fuck that fucking guy! Lola breathes, slamming her hand down on the table. Fuck him Margot. What a fucking cunt. 

Margot’s eyes snap up from her drink at the sound of Lola’s outburst, and I see her flinch backwards.

Around us, other tables turn to look at the sharp sound ringing out that the contact between Lola’s hand and the smooth wooden surface made. 

Please accept my apologies Margot, I need a cigarette, Lola says, enunciating each syllable clearly. And I’m tired, so after that I’m going to go home. She turns to me, I’ll see you later? I nod and she leaves, Margot and I both sitting there quietly with our drinks, each of us avoiding certain topics of conversation and making small talk about our respective courses until our glasses are empty. 

Sorry about Lola, I offered Margot as we got up to leave. She’s just upset. On your behalf I mean.  

Margot just nodded at me, sadly, gathered up her things and left. See you round I guess, she said as we reached the street outside the pub and headed our separate ways home. 

That was why I hadn’t mentioned my own experience to anyone else we were friends with at university. I hadn’t wanted to be the girl unable to just put up with it. Unable to just smile prettily and move on like everyone else seemed to. It was all just a joke, wasn’t it? The idea that our bodies were our own. The idea that our value came from within, and not by our ability to appease and please the male gaze. That of horny university students in particular. 

Stories like mine didn’t get treated like they were an actual issue. An uncomfortable experience was usually just a woman being prudish, or not following through when she’d said she would. To be like me, to have said no to what was only intended as a joke, a bit of fun they’d said, as if my right to refuse had been worth more than that of all of the other girls who’d been through similar things. Who found themselves in similar situations every day. I’d have been accused of putting myself up on a pedestal. Prioritising your pussy over others, they might have said.

It wasn’t like that. I could have explained. My stance wasn’t meant as a slight against other women. I was trying to use my experiences to protect them. To remove shame and guilt from their own experiences. To make other girls feel safer in their own bodies, in their own skin.

Because I knew how it felt to sit in a shower, alone, scrubbing away at your skin. Clawing at yourself to try and peel it off, to be rid of it, of the scent, the sensation, of them. Of men. Of their fingers and breath, their body parts against yours without your permission, and their tongue tracing your skin, less than a couple of decades old, while you plead with them, begging them, willing it, them, to stop. To get off. To please no more, you can’t bear it.

And afterwards, to will parts of yourself to be washed away with the soap and the water. To be absolved of the feeling of use. To protect yourself from yourself. From the body that you walk around in. The body that was treated not as something which belonged to you, but as something to provide pleasure. To provide, in general. Life and warmth and passivity. Penetration beyond permission. Never to be pleasured itself, or protected, or left in fucking peace. But to be an open place for men to bury themselves, their dirty bodies inside of yours, moving, and wriggling, while you lie still and wait. And for them to leave a mess behind them to show that even though, eventually, they would be gone, still, they had come.  

So he held you down and choked you. So you asked him to stop and he didn’t. So you were both drunk and you’re making a big deal out of nothing just because the beer goggles have worn off and ok, so you can’t remember saying yes but that doesn’t mean you didn’t. Some girls like that. Like it a little bit rough. Like to play hard to get and to be caught. Always to be caught. And sometimes to be punished for misbehaving. Because secretly they always want to give you what they want. Some girls will do whatever you want. And let you do whatever you want to them. Even beg you to do it. If you ask them nicely. Some girls will. Some girls don’t say no. Some girls want to please their partners. Some girls, some girls, some girls. 

So reluctant were we to call it what it was, to make a scene, to have our traumatic experiences cause someone else the slightest modicum of inconvenience. Instead it was our fault for wearing the wrong thing, or for walking the wrong way. Where could we possibly be going at night anyway. 

Why were you out at that time? Why were you on your own? Do I have to ask you what you were wearing? What have you been told?

It didn’t seem to matter that we should have had just as much right to go where we wanted to go when we wanted to, like men did. 

Ok so probably Lola’s way of dealing with it wasn’t the healthiest, or the most useful. Her storming angrily out of pubs wasn’t going to protect Margot from experiences like that in the future. But at least Lola was willing to call out what she saw. What we all saw. But what everyone else was too scared, too involved, too inexplicably socialised to stand up against. At least Lola would say something when she saw it happening to other people. When, if, things like that happened to her. She didn’t say. She never let on, not even to me. Instead she just got up and brushed herself off, and got on with her life. And so that’s what I tried to do too.