no means NO

Last Friday, I attended a party for my Counselling class. I was looking forward to it as it had been a intense few weeks.

I stayed at the hotel as I had a course booked the next day in London to see the world famous Elizabeth GIlbert (more on that later). I chose a pair of zipped brown boots, navy Levi 511s with a white shirt and a grey ted baker blazer with dark grey piques. I had to keep he blazer undone to hide the fact it was hard to fit in anymore.  I felt the affects of getting fatter/bigger as I wrestled with my blazer button, causing me to feel like a adult hippo in a child’s suit. No doubt the affects of not training properly for almost a year and my current poor diet

Now, my counselling class has been together for almost a year, where  i’m the only male, the rest of the women are around my age or older, but it’s a good mix. We all recieved our certificates for the completion of our course, then dived into the buffet - which was a marked improvement following the last event where they ran out of food.

After our meal, I ditched the blazer for my navy dressing gown (still fully suited underneath). I was going for that Sherlock Holmes look - but it was pointed out that any man in a dressing gown fully clothed underneath is more Hugh Heffner. The ladies dragged me up for a dance (3 of them!). Now don’t get me wrong, I love music, and I do tap my feet here and there when there is a quality tune on. However I don’t dance. If you believe the ‘Infinite Universe’ theory, where there is an infinite number of versions of me, all slightly different and therefore uniquely individual, you still wont find a version of me that dances.

Anyway, I digress. The ladies eventually dragged me into the dance floor where I did the classic sidestep and some standard moves I learnt back in my youth. By this time, ‘Wake me up before you go-go’ was playing and the ladies all left, as I was about to.

However I was then pulled back onto the dance floor by one of the ladies in my class, who was wearing a short red dress and started dancing with me, whilst her ginger boyfriend (who we nicknamed ‘Ed’ after ‘Ed Sheeran’) was sitting at the side. So I played along, allowing the Lady In Red to twirl herself with my hand and move around. Then, she move in fast and started gyrating into me pressing her leg  between mine, becoming more aggressive, whilst I kept trying to moving away trying not to cause a scene. She then wrapped her arms around me, encouraging me to grab her back as she started to kiss my cheek and neck telling me to ‘give into it’ ‘you know you want me’ ‘let’s just fucking do it’ ‘fuck my man, let’s just fucking do it’.

As all this was happening, I focussed on keeping my hands behind my back, refusing to make contact with her as she kept her aggressive advances towards me, pawing at me and kissing me as much as she could as I kept moving my face out of the way saying ‘no’ ‘stop’ trying to get the DJ’s attention to help me out, but he looked at me uncomfortably, like he knew this wasn’t right but didn’t intervene. So I kept focussing on not reacting, repressing my urge to push her/pick her up and throw her away from me, but I didn’t want to make a scene.

I already knew I had disassociated and detached myself whilst she kept pawing at me, moving her knee against my legs making me feel sick, wishing for the song to end.

It finally did, and the minute she let go, I moved off the dance floor and back to my seat, feeling my PTSD tremble slightly as I was trying to work out what was happening, whilst I had a couple of whiskies to try and settle my nerves.

I was quite upset by all this, whilst my thoughts were racing. Why did she do this? Why didn’t anyone intervene? Why couldn’t I make her stop, or leave me alone? Should i have just given into it and kissed her back? Should i have just given into my primal urges and just fucked her? Is it wrong of me that I didn’t want to do that because i didn’t find her attractive? Does attraction matter in sex or just fucking someone? I can’t even tell anyone about this because they will think there’s something wrong with me!

Later on in the night, I told two women in my class that I get on with what happened, and although they acknowledged that it wasn’t nice, they had told me ‘well shes always liked you’ ‘figured you’re both indian and single, so you’d make a good couple’ ‘no chance of a wedding then?’ ‘Who out of the single women there do you like?’. I acknowledged what they were saying, but i felt this was a really shitty experience which they just didn’t catch. I also found it frustrating because this is stuf I hear quite a lot, especially when I was at school.

For the attention of anyone reading this, your single friends do not want to be paired up with each other, just to make your life that litttle bit easier. And, those of us from ethnic backgrounds also do not want to be paired up with people from the same ethnicity!

We ended up chatting whilst I had my final whisky where we noticed the Lady In Red having sex against a post with her ginger boyfriend. The ladies then started to ask me about my past, so I told them about by ex, the relationship, broken engagement, the trauma i experienced, Everest, death etc. Their advice was ‘find a good woman and settle down’. I told them one of the reasons i want to learn the skills of being a Counsellor is so that I can be a good husband and father if the opportunity arises. They said to be ‘you’d be a good husband and father as its what drives you towards self-improvement, you care enough and are ambitious enough to do this’.

When i got back to my room, whilst I felt better, I was still a little angry and upset. Angry at the double standards within society - the fact that if this happened to a woman, there would be a social outcry, but if it happens to a man, it’s taken in jest, or that hes a stud. The fact that i’m a man, i’m expected/encouraged to have sex, fuck around, be dominant, aggre I felt the affects of getting fatter/bigger as I wrestled with my blazer button, causing me to feel like a adult hippo in a child’s suit.ssive, drink, drive fast cars, be ambitious in my career etc. Yet it’s not acceptable to ask a girl to stop, and i was upset that I couldn’t make her stop, I didn’t know how to react and just froze and focussed on not touching her in any way

I’m having a really bad week