On my fourteenth New Years Eve, I lost more than my innocence; two boys took my control. Desperate and powerless, I tranquilly sighed in pain just to make it through that night. Before that night, I didn’t think I would end up like this. As I look around at these white walls and barely move my body under these thin cotton sheets, I cannot help but to remember that night. These sheets hurt my legs, but my eyes sting more to look down at them. My body trembles, the calm chills of this claustrophobic room startle me as I spot my kneecaps poking through the thin sheets. I gaze out the window of this small, quaint room and wish I could shake that night from my memory. I can’t.
New Years Eve night reminds me of how my shaking apprehension began. That night, I remember shuddering but most of all I remember having my body becoming paralyzed. I had no control then like I have no real control now. I recall that night as I turn over in these sheets. My body tingles like it would on a first date, except it’s a numb tingle. I think about the boy’s faces as I rub my eyes. My wrist has a red plastic bracelet on it and I feel out of control. I feel like I’ve lost my control as I lie here. A little similar to how I lost it that night.
New Years Eve night started as a guiltless night in Houston, Texas with my cousins, Rishi and Anita, and their friends. The celebration came to a grinding halt at two in the morning. Fourteen years old and awfully innocent, I was your typical self-conscious maturing young girl with her entire childhood still intact.
That night took it from me.
The night began and ended with empty emotions. Two seventeen-year old boys and a curious fourteen-year old girl found themselves in an exercise room at the two in the morning on January 1st. My sleeping aunt and uncle downstairs had returned from their New Years Eve party and told all the kids to go to bed. Rishi and Anita followed direction and went to their rooms, but I decided to go talk to Rishi’s two close friends, Sean and Neil. Like an idiot, I went back out to the living room where Sean and Neil were sleeping. I wanted to talk to them because Sean and I had been talking all night long. He knew I liked him because I had told Rishi earlier that night about how I thought Sean was attractive. After brief conversation about the movie, Fight Club, that we had all just watched, Sean began to lead into the next room.
From then on, I froze.
The sinister room was pitch black except for the moonlight peaking in the window through the blinds. Nothing clicked about what could happen in the next moments. I wanted him to like me the way a fourteen-year-old girl wants a boy to like her, even for just that night since I was leaving in a couple days to go back home to my childhood life as a freshman in high school. A brand new black exercise machine, similar to a bow flex, sat pushed up against the wall. Even without the thin coating of dust, one could tell it never gets used. No one worked out in this family. Double glass windows to the left, a white door to the right, an additional door behind me, the boys in front of me. The basic white walls enclosed me like a cage; I was trapped. Sean turned the black lock on the door clockwise as soon as we entered the room, but the additional door behind us could only be locked from the other side, since it lead to a bathroom. This house had seven bathrooms but four people. It contained an indoor pool, a waterslide for the pool, a sauna, a den for each of my cousin’s room, three closets in my aunt and uncle’s room and a mini movie theatre. Well, everything is bigger in Texas right?
Please get me out of here.
Sean didn’t even kiss me before he forced me to give him a blow job. When he asked, I told him I had never done that before. He told me, “It’s not that hard, just try it.” Sitting there staring into his brown eyes like a helpless puppy dog I didn’t know what to do. Next thing I knew, he placed a red and gold blanket over my head and put his hands my face. Pulling my straight, black hair I tried to do what he insisted. Salty tears rushing to my eyes. I didn’t know what was going on or what I was doing. I just wanted to get this out of my mouth. The most disturbing part of the night wasn’t Sean. It was the other party involved, Neil, who was doing the worst of all. Neil brought the dark blue sleeping bag and the red and gold blanket that they put over my head. At first, Neil acted like he was sleeping during the acts with Sean. When Sean would force himself in my mouth, Neil came up behind me and started to finger me.
This was the least amount of pleasure I have ever felt in my life.
Even as I lie here in this uncomfortable bed, I know that I haven’t forgiven myself for that. One never gets over something like this. Ever. Like a whirlwind, it swooped me up and blew the wrong direction. I cannot imagine how I would feel about myself today if this didn’t happen. I think the next part was the most skewed, twisted act anyone can do to a fourteen year old. It messed with my mind then and still does today. I do not get it and I do not think I ever will.
I just do not understand what these boys were possibly thinking. I merely remember my whole ninety-pound body shaking as this whole event was taking place. Every time I turned around to look at Neil he would stop fingering me and pretend to sleep in the corner. What kind of gangbang was this?
I truly have not gotten over what happened that night and as much as I block it out I remember it all too well. The worst of the shaking was my mind. I cannot tell you how many times the thought of leaving that room crossed my mind. I remember saying I need to go. I remember saying “I am going.“
I remember trying to get up and leave. I remember my body shutting off. I remember my mind shutting off. I remember shutting off.
This night took me with it and I had given up fighting it. I remember my eyes being as watery as a fan blowing a centimeter away from them and getting that extreme pain in your nose when you are holding back tears. I just hurt. Every violated part of my body hurt, screaming as loud as possibly could under my breath but no one heard. I looked out the window at the dark night and felt hopeless. I was living in a nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. The window showed a clear view of the night sky and I wanted to jump out of it.
Someone please save me.
I had my shirt on, a bright red one I got from volleyball camp that summer, but that article of clothing covered only the top of my body leaving the rest exposed. Two in the morning maybe three, and I realized sleeping that night was not an option. The disturbing motions and movements of three of us carried on for thirty minutes, but these minutes felt like hours. I remember the terrifying feeling of Neil fingering me more than three times and I desperately wanted him to stop. My brown eyes, filled with terror and helplessness, would make any normal person cry. The look on a young girl’s face as she gets grabbed by her kidnapper. I can’t imagine how any person would ever possibly finger a girl again after seeing those eyes.
Neil and Sean forced those eyes to graduate from terror and helpless to empty.
Maybe I was partial to my own sanity but by this point but I needed out.
After Neil, my cousin Rishi’s closest friend whom I had known for years, completely disregarded my pleading eyes, I could not look into his direction ever again. Please don’t make me. I had known him for years and I could not understand why he was doing this to me. Didn’t he know it would hurt for years? It would hurt so much more, not only the act, but also my poor heart that these boys were beating in the early hours of not only the morning but of the entire new year. I have never been more mystified in my life. I don’t even know what one called this because I didn’t think it wasn’t rape. I could say that if I would have been in that exercise room for five more minutes. It would have been.
I heard Sean repeatedly saying that he should put himself inside of me for a few seconds because I wouldn’t get pregnant. Incredibly adamant, he insisted “Just a few seconds. It wouldn’t hurt.”
I repeated no over and over as my head spun. As if I had a choice at this point. My heart had dropped and I didn’t even feel it beating. Was this how I was going to lose my virginity? Is this supposed to be some sort of game to get the fourteen-year old to have sex with you? Please stop.
He kept the oral sex fixation continuing with head movements and controlling my body. It never actually registered with me how terrible the situation I had gotten myself right into was. How was I seriously in this room? As my limp body kneeled on the carpet I had passed the point of my emotions taking over and I just thought about one thing. I thought about how I needed to leave. My ripped body was incredibly heavy now. A body should never feel that heavy. The question repeated over and over, ”Can I just stick it in you for a few seconds? Nothing will happen.” “NO. No. Please no. I really need to go.” “No just finish. Just finish.” I have never been more afraid. Complete terror. Did he not get it? This sequence could not have lasted longer only for me to see a crack of light from the bathroom. Neil stood there next to my aunt and I had no idea when he left. My aunt looked at me and spoke, “Maya, What are you doing?”
Neesha Arter is a freshman at Chapman University in Orange, California. This is her first published prose.
Permanently archived at http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/45-excerpts/160-0310-controlled and shortlinked via http://frsh.in/8w
