Dear Diary

Dear Diary,
 
     I woke up on the dirty vinyl floor of a friend's bathroom. My underwear were wrapped around my knees and my blouse was unbuttoned when my eyes blurred open to the bare light above me. I could feel that. My eyes took longer than my mind to adjust to the situation. I knew, before I could see anything clearly, I needed to write about what has happened and how I feel about it. It has been a long time since I've written anything.
    Last night was a rare thing for me. A rare thing, but not an unknown thing: a night I am familiar with, but only through feeling. I got drunk at a party. A boy who barely decided what he was wearing that night, but still managed to look somehow sexy, due to some glitch in young male American's psyche, started talking to me. Budget American Male Model started hitting on me and, as the night progressed, I followed the rules of pretty girl looking to get fucked at the end of the night. BAMM fucked me at the end of the night, or at least my night. It was a fuck I only know in abstract after the fact.  A fuck I only feel after the fact. A fuck I feel completely backwards. It feels as if I was never there.
    I need to write what is on my mind.

    After homeschooling failed when I was a teenager my parent's sent me to a girl's school. They were always over-ambitious about my education, but eventually unwilling to really put in the parenting effort. At the girl's school I didn't learn much more than how to push other girl's buttons in various ways. But Mrs. Kendricks, my English teacher for both years I was there, helped me realize that writing my thoughts down helped me understand not only what I am feeling, but also what I am thinking. She also tried to teach me to write properly (which BLAH! what does that even mean?) She helped me appreciate the coded evidence of who I was at a specific moment. Writing in my diary helped me understand.
    I chose English in college because I continued to love it, even if I still didn't care about the rules most of the time. I kept a journal the whole time. I mostly wrote about Maxwell.
 
    Freshman year I was exposed to a truth that exists within many American girls reality. I never thought it would really happen to me, but I kind of always understood it could happen to me. And then it happened to me. I was cornered in the business hallway by two boys. One of them had a Letterman jacket on. The other one was smaller in baggy black clothes. I never told anyone what happened. My memory of it remains the same. The boy in the Letterman jacket took my virginity, even though that claim means less and less each day.
     I think about the reverse, though. "Tonight's the Night" sung by Rod Stewart. Gross.
     I write a joke because I know I should hate the experience, but part of me doesn't. I hate the boy in the Letterman jacket and the boy in the black baggy clothes, but not the experience. If I ignored the whole situation outside the feeling of it, it would only be different. If I ignored the whole situation and juxtaposed my own personal perfect reality with my imagination, it would be both different and good, possibly great. If I could learn from the situation and eventually find the right people, it would finally feel both good and real.
    I started spending most of my time with Maxwell after that. And soon after that was when my parents made there dreadful attempt at home schooling me.
    The shorter boy in the baggy black clothes just stood and watched. That still seems pathetic.

    Everything with Maxwell seemed hyper real. We were driven by adrenaline and endorphin for a period of time that seems longer than possible, now that I am older, even if I still feel young sometimes.
    Sometimes is abstract. Occasionally, abstract turns out to be vivid when one is in the appropriate (or inappropriate) state.
    No other part of my life has such sustained vividness as the time I spent with Maxwell. Until that vividness became too real. Maxwell had a friend, Samuel. Samuel was dumb. Maxwell explained it was about me and him and Samuel would remember it, but never understand it. Maxwell explained that is what made Samuel perfect. It didn't make sense to me at the time, but I agreed, and I regret it to this day.
    A strap on dildo.
    Maxwell staring into my eyes.
    Dakota Figg bent over.
    Samuel, with his camera phone, a black rectangle blocking his face.
    Me in a strap on dildo.
    How can that ever feel right in reality?
    Is that why I seek the abstract?
    Maxwell seemed entirely diabolical that Monday afternoon. Anytime Samuel was around Maxwell seemed to love me in a way that he could conger in no other way, and we were young. But that Monday afternoon, he was not anyone I thought he could be. He was the boy I hate in the baggy black clothes and this time around he had another friend watching, and this time around I was the boy in the Letterman jacket.
    I went to a girl's school. I went to college. I wrote and rewrote about the experience whenever I thought I needed to write about. Dakota killed his mother and was shot and killed by the police. Eventually, after a lot of hard years I married. A professor in Political Science, among other things. I have not talked to Maxwell since.
 

    This doesn't have to be something I only understand in broad strokes and high contrast. This doesn't have to be something I only understand objectively through blurry visions. This can be whatever I want it to be so long as I manage to keep my wits about me. These things don't have to end up toxic all the time.
    Even after I write these words, I still miss Maxwell. Every idea he had seemed visionary and at a time when most boys I knew seemed like they didn't have any ideas at all, much less their own ideas. He was scary smart and that was the opposite of the boy in the Letterman jacket and the boy in the baggy black clothes. They were scary dumb.
    Maxwell made me confront my own personal vision of hell from a different perspective. Not my perspective. I should hate the experience, but part of me doesn't. I hated Maxwell at the moment, but that hatred eventually faded with distance and time. I didn't know how I felt about Samuel, with his black phone partially blocking his face, and Dakota bent over in front of me at the time.
    Now, as I write, they both seem pathetic.

I have never talked to anyone about this experience. I never told my husband about it. I never told my parents about it. I never even talked to Maxwell about it. I don't bring it up and other people do not bring it up, even though the evidence of it existed for public viewing by anyone who happened to stumble upon it online. This evidence was quickly flagged and removed soon after it was posted. After it happened I put it out of my memory for as long as I could forget.
    I still have anxiety about writing about it.
    How it is possible to feel more guilty about words than actions?
    Is it because the actions somehow feel more abstract than words?
    I was fucked on a bathroom floor last night by a stranger during a party. This sentence seems more vulgar than what happened, but that is exactly what  happened. Things do not always have to be toxic, but I have very little evidence to prove otherwise. This can't be all my fault.
    Writing helps.
    Thank you, diary.
    Sincerely,
    Sarah.