He moved out soon afterward, which helped erase the existence of that place for me. Every addition to the tally meant I was one moment closer to the end. Eyes squeezed shut, the tally was the only thing I focused on at times - like a ticking clock in a solitary confinement cell. By weekend's end, it was 17 times, according to my fog-of-war count. I had received anal sex twice in my life before that night. Sometimes I think I never left his apartment, that someone who merely looks and sounds like me walked out. I spent the weekend - about 60 hours - semi-conscious and didn't leave his apartment until Monday morning. Later came several more druggings, as he held Gatorade up to my limp lips with who-knows-what mixed in. 'I said G.' He meant GHB, gamma-hydroxybutyric acid, commonly known as the date-rape drug. So I drank it and it was a bit sharp but really delicious, like tart watermelon. Then he pouted, comically and even adorably: 'But I made it just for us.' 'Gin!' I thought he said, more excitedly than he should have. I laughed and, holding the towel around my waist in one hand and the shot glass in the other, I looked at it.
I felt sore and had just taken a shower to rid the bus experience from my skin. It was already 9:45 p.m on a Friday last summer. I had been on a long, gruelling bus ride up from Washington, D.C., to his apartment in New York.
