A night to forget

As I write this it’s the 6th December 2021, and yes, that means it’s officially coupling season. I work at a bookstore and all they’ve been playing is the classic Christmas songs; and whilst that puts me in a very festive mood, it also convinced me to download Tinder for 5 minutes, and if you knew me well, you’d know that’s no short feat. With some of my friends getting into more serious relationships and more beautiful babies born in my life, I can’t help but think of my own single status.

I’ve never had a relationship, and to be quite honest I’ve never really been close to having one. I haven’t spoken to many people romantically for that matter at all, and I’m not exactly the type to get chatted up or end up in some seriously romantic scenarios. As a 24-year-old virgin, I’ve been wondering whether I’m a-sexual, haven’t met the ‘right person’ or still need to get past trauma. I’ve been recently thinking more and more about an event that happened to me when I was 15 years old and hadn’t even consciously given it a thought until the past year.

I had a friend (let’s call her Ali) who wasn’t a very good friend to be completely honest. I met her at school when I was about 7 years old, and she only lived down the road from me, so we were more friends because of geography than anything else. I’m from the countryside so if I didn’t have to beg my parents to drive an hour to my friend’s house that was a huge bonus. Anyway, my parents didn’t really like Ali that much — she was very entitled and not very considerate of others. They also didn’t trust her dad very much, he was notorious for selling drugs in the local area and my dad was a prison officer, so they couldn’t be further apart really. But my mum and her mum got along very well as they are both very spiritual and hippy-esque if you will, and Ali’s parents had been divorced for a while, so my parents didn’t mind me spending time at the mum’s house. So, one day Ali invited me to her mum’s place for a sleepover. My dad was very paranoid and letting me stay over at others because he was afraid we would be hurt in anyway, but they trusted I was in good hands with Ali’s mum. So, my parents dropped me off with my sleeping bag and pyjamas waving me goodbye, and I was excited for the curry I smelt bubbling its way through Ali’s living room.

“What are you going to wear tonight?” Ali asked. I showed her my pyjamas and said, “these bad boys!”. Ali replied, “no silly, we are going to my dad’s club tonight, he’s DJing”. I felt very uncomfortable considering I genuinely thought we were going to watch some chick flicks, eat great food and talk about how fit Mr. Good was or how bad our PE lesson went today. After I vocalized my discomfort with Ali and how much I didn’t want to go, she ended up arguing with me saying fine, if I didn’t want to go, I’d have to go back home. In my 15 year old brain, it was already an uphill battle getting my parents to drop me off, so if I were to call them back up to say ‘could you please pick me back up because Ali is forcing me to go to a club underaged to see her drug dealer dad DJ’ I knew I wouldn’t be able to hang out with Ali again (not like that would have been a bad thing), so I decided to reluctantly just go along with her plan.

I was wearing one of Ali’s pink dresses and wore my hair down, straightened. She snuck some of her mum’s vodka out of the cupboard and was drinking diet coke and vodka before her dad knocked for us and we got into the taxi. I hadn’t drunk anything as I honestly felt like it was wrong and didn’t want to be as messy as she was starting to look very quickly. When we had arrived at the club, there was a security man at the entrance. We were clearly underaged and didn’t have any I.D on us, but for some reason we were let in anyway. The security guard must have been around 40 years old, and he was a black man. The reason why this struck me was because apart from my dad, I had never met a black man before, especially in my very white town. I was very taken back, and he asked me if I was Nigerian, sharing that he was Nigerian too. I instantly felt a sense of camaraderie between us, perhaps because he could have easily been an uncle like figure, I mean in my head the only other black man I had met was the most caring, trustworthy man on the planet.

As soon as we had got into the club, Ali’s dad parted ways with us, and I could see him openly sniffing coke on the countertop. Ali had made a B-line to the bar, and I was just standing in the middle of this dark, smelly nightclub being pushed around by high people dancing as if I was completely invisible. This scene was the furthest thing I had ever experienced before, I didn’t even make the habit of going to house parties, it’s never really been my scene.

The whole night was painful, I was watching Ali off her face dancing with any middle-aged man that looked her way. I was watching Ali’s dad behave like a teenager, I couldn’t believe anyone could be so irresponsible, and I couldn’t believe there were so many people having what seemed like the time of their lives in the grittiest venue I have ever been to. After I could no longer bear to pretend I was having a mediocre time, I tried getting some time out by going to the toilet. As I was walking into the bathroom, a couple of women walked out. As I was heading into a cubicle a hand grabbed my arm. Shocked, I looked around and it was the Nigerian security guard from before, but this time he didn’t have the same friendly look on his face. I remember him licking his lips as he put his arms around my waist pulling me in closer. I was repulsed and completely confused by what he was doing. I asked him to stop saying I didn’t want him to touch me and was uncomfortable, trying to pull away, but the more hesitant I was the stronger his grab was and the more he tried to kiss me. I remember shouting as he pinned me against the bathroom tiles, lifting my dress up with his hands and pushing his hand down my knickers. At this point I was petrified. I had no idea what was happening, and I remember my whole body freezing, I didn’t know what to do. My cries and screams were drowned out by the same music Ali’s dad was currently playing. In that moment, whilst it was all going on, I felt so betrayed that I had ended up there on that night in that moment. I have no idea how long I was being violated in the toilet, but it felt like hours. As he was undoing his belt and zipping down his trousers, I was so lucky. A couple clearly not being able to wait until they get home to make love started getting a bit handsy on their way into the bathroom and flustered the security guard. They turned around looking concerned clearly seeing the horror and tears running down my face and I quickly took the opportunity to run out of the bathroom.

I sprinted upstairs to find Ali, who was completely out of it on the stairs. I helped her up and was carrying her arm around my shoulder, making my way to her dad who was standing behind the decks. I had to shout to get his attention even though I was standing less than a meter in front of him. “Ali needs to go home” I shouted, with his response being laughter and saying she’s fine, she’s having fun. I insisted again “we have to get Ali home now”, and eventually he handed me £20 from his pocket to get a cab. Another random stranger helped me get Ali and her drunken state down the stairs and into the cab that was luckily right outside the club. When we got to Ali’s her mum was already asleep, so I had to hold her hair whilst she was throwing up in the toilet, change her clothes, take off her shoes and put her to bed. All whilst trying not to breakdown from what happened that night.

I am so thankful to the couple that made their way into the bathroom that night. I know that if not for them I would have been raped. To this day, the thought of being intimate with someone makes my vagina retract like a Venus fly trap. I have never felt angry by what the security guard did to me, always upset and hurt by what he has taken away from me. My sexual assault was the first account of intimacy I had ever experienced, and has tainted my trust, the ability to form healthy relationships and completely shat on my self-esteem. I have only had one other intimate experience which completely triggered the memory of this account. Sexual assault affects many people in different ways, and unfortunately for me it’s still something I am working on. Though it’s not my fault it happened, I do want to have the power for it not to affect me anymore and interfere with my future confidence and relationships, at least not with the same amount of hold it does now. This is something I have only spoken about with a hand full of people and being able to write about it does feel like I’m getting some power back. After all, it was Maya Angelou that said “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it”. I am grateful for the catharsis writing provides me, and also the positive relationships in my life that provide optimism in being able to become not only physically intimate, but emotionally intimate with a romantic partner one day.