Does that count as sexual assault?

A very obvious trigger warning for this one, besties <3

Three years later, and I still find myself wondering,

Does that count? 

I was drunk. Not stomach pump drunk, but Check Your Camera Roll In The Morning And Piece Together The Night drunk. Was he drunk, too? Not as much as me, I think. He was aware enough to turn off my lights and tuck me into bed, help me set my alarms for the next morning. I remember him asking me at least twenty times if I was okay and every time wishing he wouldn’t believe me when I said yes. 

Everyone has drunk sex in college, right?

But what separates the goofy drunk sex from the kind where you wake up the next morning and your jaw is sore and your insides are burning and you wish someone had stopped you from going upstairs? Where’s the fine line between sex you laugh about and sex you cry about? Sex you replay over and over again and sex you try to erase from your memory? How do you decide which stories make it to the morning debrief and which are reserved for your therapist?

But don’t I love sex?

Even in college, I was never afraid of advertising my sexual nature. Every Sunday morning, my girlfriends would excitedly await the news of what wild thing I had done the night before. Maybe I had banged a guy on our kitchen counter, maybe I rudely asked someone mid-fuck, “Do you ever just have sex with someone for the laughs?” I was never really the friend you felt you had to worry about or look out for on a night out. If you saw me walking upstairs with a guy, you would probably assume, “That’s just Mia.” You would never think to stop me and ask, “Are you sure?” 

I know you’re never supposed to ask this, but is it possible it’s on me?

I’m the one who’s always going around saying that I’m horny. I’m the one who blasts my sex life through a megaphone. I’m the one who had already messed around with four of his teammates (official slut status, I believe). I don’t remember for sure, but knowing me and knowing him, I’m probably the one who initiated it. And I’m the one who makes it seem like I’m always down to fuck, so how would he know that that night, I wasn’t? I guess maybe the fact that I was slurring my words could have tipped him off. 

If that’s really what happened, wouldn’t I know for sure?

Wouldn’t I be crying? Wouldn’t I be traumatized? Wouldn’t I think that he’s a bad person? Wouldn’t I know for sure that it wasn’t okay? Three years after the fact, I’m left to sit here and wonder if maybe he was too drunk to know, if maybe I sent all the right signals, if maybe it was nice that he tucked me into bed. 

Or maybe I do know. 

Maybe I know with absolute certainty that it counts. That it happened. That it was wrong with no blurred lines, no wiggle room, no legitimate questions or concerns. But I think that’s much harder to admit. So instead, I sit here and ask myself, Did that count? because I’m not sure I’m ready to carry the weight of knowing the answer.