I was exploring the past via face book and discovered the profile of someone that I hadn’t seen in over 35 years.
Let’s call him David.
I wonder if David ever thinks of me?
He is now very successful and firmly established in the bohemian, moneyed, intellectual world into which he was born.
He looks well fed, on every level.
I met him in my mid teens and we became close friends. I was very messed up then, heavily caught up in my eating disorder, with an escalating drug consumption, and had already made several suicide attempts.
I was also clever, interesting, beautiful and creative so I imagine these benefits outweighed the liabilities of a friendship with me.
We wrote letters to each other, and especially when I was put in a psych ward of the hospital when my problems became so deep as to be life threatening, his letters with accompanying cartoons and drawings, were a life invigorating delight.
When I fled from the hospital, I ran to his house which was nearby. I had no clothes, as part of being on the behavioural modification therapy entailed your clothing being confiscated, so I was only wearing a backless hospital robe.
David loaned me some of his clothing, which created an odd but endearing fashion statement.
I remember we both had bought the same jersey at one stage. Grey wool and voluminous with maroon spots. David later customised his, and removed the sleeves to create a vest.
We stayed good friends, even when he moved to a different city, and continued our exchange of wonderful, mad letters.
Later I lived in a house with flatmates who were mutual friends. One of them, Mike who later had a religious experience on a peyote trip and became a born again Christian, suggested we hitch-hike up country, to visit David.
We took some pills, and commenced the adventure.
One of the lifts we caught shared some dope with us, and another some alcohol. Being incredibly thin, I passed out and by the time we reached our destination I had to be carried into the house and put to bed.
I woke up to David having sex with me.
Some months later, he tracked me down at one of my intermittent visits to the university that I was enrolled in, to tell me, in an angry and accusatory manner, that I had given him an STD.
Later I had a few more experiences where gentle, liberal, kind and creative male friends would sleep with me when I was unconscious.
Aside from my wondering where the pleasure in a sexual act like this lay, I wondered how they qualified their actions.
Was it because I was promiscuous and casual about sex? They would have known I worked occasionally in brothels, and perhaps because I became so incredibly wasted, they thought I wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t be hurt by such a betrayal of trust and friendship?
These men would have also known I was damaged, and vulnerable, but was the sex act or the act of power and possession enough to so thoroughly disregard me and any value in our relationship.
I wonder if David ever thinks of me.
Charlotte Rodgers 