A Tale of Two First Kisses in Rape Culture

I had recently reconnected with a man I had a fling with a decade ago. He lives in another city, so our reconnection has been taking place over Facebook Messenger. The other night, we were texting.

What song was playing when you had your first kiss? He asked me. He had just come from the pub, and the song that had been playing during his first kiss had come on the radio. It sent him down a nostalgic path of reminiscing.

My first kiss happened during an attempted rape in a field when I was fifteen, I texted back. My first consensual kiss happened a few weeks later in a cabin, on a school field trip.

What followed was a discussion about how different our experiences were. His first kiss was a pleasant memory, and a cheesy song on the radio brought him back to being a teenager at a school dance. He commented that, even though we came of age in the same culture, there was a chasm between his pleasant coming of age experience, and my traumatic initiation.

I still think about that day from time to time. At fifteen, I was living in a small town in Northern British Columbia. I was awkward as a teenager. There was speculation that I may be on the spectrum, but no diagnosis. I had bad acne and situational depression on account of the bullying I was subjected to at school. At fifteen, even though I was developing, I could not imagine a man being interested in me sexually. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind.

So, in that field, when the old man with throat cancer who was drinking cheap wine offered me a drink, I didn’t think anything of it. I was sad. I was lonely. I figured he was lonely too, and I was too young to buy alcohol. The rape culture in which we live would quickly damn me for my actions that day. Taking alcohol from a strange man? Getting drunk in a field with no one else around? What did you expect?

The wine hit me hard, harder than I thought it would. Then he was on top of me, unbuttoning my jeans, kissing me with his smelly mouth. His voice, robotic and raspy on account of the throat cancer, kept insisting that he just wanted a quickie. “Please my baby, please…”

I kept saying no and trying to push him away. He would unbutton my jeans. I’d button them up again. My head was spinning, and the fact that the alcohol rendered me incapable of further resistance terrified me. I tried rolling away from him, because I couldn’t stand up on account of all the alcohol in my system. “Please honey, just a quickie, please…”

As I rolled away again, buttoning my jeans again with trembling hands, he said something to me that I have thought about often ever since that day: “Oh come on baby, you’re not a virgin anyway.”

In fact, I was a virgin. I’d never been kissed before. And this was not how I wanted my first kiss to be. I wanted it to be something I chose for myself, with someone I was attracted to, someone who cared about me. It chilled me to the bone that he thought that his perception that I was not a virgin was enough to nullify the need for my consent. It’s terrifying to live in a culture where your body is not considered your own.

I protested that I was a virgin. I asked him to stop again. He was still trying to unbutton my jeans. At this point I vomited all over myself. He stroked my hair. “It’s ok sweetie, I’m not going to rape you,” he said. “You good?”

I mumbled that I would be fine and threw up some more as he stumbled away. I walked home covered in vomit and spent the rest of the day getting sick. I lied to my mother and said I got drunk with a friend from school, that he had been a perfect gentleman. It wasn’t until later that I told her the truth. I was afraid of being judged and blamed for what this man did. After all, what did I expect?

A short while later, I participated in a school trip to Gwillim Lake, a local park with cabins. During that school trip, I connected with a classmate. He was tall, dark and handsome with gorgeous curly hair and dark brown eyes. After sharing some banter in the sauna, we met in his cabin when all the other boys were out playing games in the woods. We shared a kiss and some over-the-underwear groping. He asked if he could take my underwear off. I said no, and he respected my boundaries. It felt good. So good. This is for me, I thought. This is my choice. The second time I had been kissed and I was already trying to reclaim my right to my own choice and pleasure. Over the years that followed, I have had some amazing sexual experiences, and some horrifying sexual traumas. The theme of reclaiming my body in a culture that does not value female choice and agency has been with me since that day, and I suspect it will follow me for the rest of my life.