Does it count?

Trigger warning for sexual assault


"It was weird, he was crying and apologizing for all this stuff," my best friend Megan* told me over the phone.  She called to because she couldn't wait to tell me about spending the night with the boy she liked.  They had hung out with some mutual friends and one, someone that I barely know, broke down. "He told me he was so sorry about when you gave him a blow job like when you were still drinking."

The hair along my spine stood on end.  I knew what night she was talking about.  One of my top three worst blackouts.  I knew that he was there that night but I have no memory of him.  The last thing I remember was staring at myself in a mirror with lines of coke on it, closing my eyes, and breathing it.  I came to walking around in West Oakland, a half mile from where I lived.  It was morning.  I lost maybe eight hours or so.

"Why would he tell you that?" My chest felt tight.

"I don't know, I guess because I was there." Her voice was tense and soft.

"I was totally blacked out."

There was a pause.  We both knew what that meant but didn't want to say it.  How do you respond to finding out that you were sexually assaulted over two years ago?  What do you say?  How do you feel?  Does it could as assault if you initiated it?  I did that a lot when I was drinking.  Does it count if he was wasted too?

I don't know how many times I've been raped/sexually assaulted/whatever you want to call it.  I was a blackout drunk.  Does it count as rape if I would have done it if I wasn't blacked out?  Does it count if I seemed super into it to the other person?  I wasn't a passed out blackout drunk.  From what I've been told, I would be animated and energetic and people often wouldn't know that I was blacked out.  What about that?

If someone else were asking me the same question I would, without hesitation, say that it counts.  That it shouldn't have happened.  That the other person was a predator and should have know better.

But it is hard for me to believe when I tell myself these things.  I don't want to believe.

*Names have been changed.