Sex Object by Jessica Valenti

girlfriend.
    One of his friends who lived on our floor told me that he broke up with me because I got too fat over the course of thefirst semester, and because I was too “mouthy.” He said you had anal sex too , this friend said, smiling. I insisted that was a lie, which it was, but his friend replied that it was okay if I didn’t want to admit it— it was a pretty nasty thing to do .
    Despite my best efforts I had not been able to get drunk the first two nights of Mardi Gras week—just barely buzzed despite drinking as much as Kyle taught me to. So my friends and I bought Boone’s Strawberry Hill and each drank a bottle and then funneled Jack Daniel’s until we were spitting it up onto the gray dorm room floors.
    We went to a bar called the Boot that was so close to campus it might as well have been on it, beads on our necks, carrying whatever was left of the Jack Daniel’s. I don’t remember much. I know the crowd was huge and that I saw Kyle’s roommate there. As a song was ending he kissed me, and I let him. I know we had sex, that I asked him to please not tell Kyle, and that he answered by laughing.
    I made it back to my room somehow and woke up a few hours later when I heard Kyle screaming outside of my door for me to come out. I didn’t want him to wake up my roommate and so I went into the hallway in my pajamas and sat with my back against the door to my room. He stood over me, telling me I was the dirtiest piece of trash he could imagine.
    You’re a piece-of-shit garbage whore, do you understand that? I didn’t answer, but I didn’t think he was really looking for me to. I can’t even stand to look at you because of how filthy you are. You’re a garbage person, you smell, do you know that? You’re fucking trash and I don’t want to ever fucking see you again because I don’t fucking associate with whores. He went on like this for a while, maybe five or ten minutes, before leaving. I didn’t say anything, I just sat. I remember being surprised that no one came out of their room, if not to help, then because of the noise.
    In the middle of the night I heard multiple men outside of my door. Open up, whore! one said. I recognized one of the voices as a friend of mine who also knew Kyle. I put my pillow over my head. In the morning I found a condom taped to the front of my door with what looked like semen inside of it. WHORE was written across the door’s dry-erase board in marker. It may have been SLUT . I don’t remember the word, just the definition. As if the condom wasn’t clear enough.
    A few days later when I was walking across campus one of Kyle’s fraternity brothers, someone I had never met but knew by his reputation for hooking up with freshmen, stopped me as I was crossing a piece of grassy field in front of one of the ivy-covered buildings. I hear you like it in the ass , he said. I stayed silent and tried to move around him, but he shifted his weight to one side so I couldn’t. Maybe you’d like it from me. As I walked away he spat on the piece of grass I had just been standing on.
    I called my father, and while I didn’t tell him the whole story I did tell him about the condom taped to my door and about hooking up with Kyle’s roommate. He told me it would be fine. It could have been a lot worse , he said. When boys get to that place they can do really bad things. I was lucky.
    I stopped leaving my room during the day. I didn’t go toclass and ignored the mailed warnings that arrived in my campus box. I knew I did not want to be there next year.
    Spring was rainy but beautiful in New Orleans. I spent more time walking around the neighborhood that surrounded the campus than going to class, dodging the buck moth caterpillars that fell from the trees. They were plump and cute but their stings hurt like hell.
    I heard a rumor that Kyle’s parents had shown up at the dorm. They found out that