Third Place: Nothing but the Truth

I was waiting for him, again.  He said he would meet me at Bangkok, a karaoke lounge and the first place I ever took him— ironically, he was late that day too. We were supposed to meet at the Recovery Room, but I kept waiting and waiting until I pulled what was for me an epic feminist move: I left. It would have been more epic if I hadn’t told him where I was going, but I did turn off my phone after texting him, so I’ll give myself half credit.

When he finally showed up at Bangkok, I had already sung The Story by Brandi Carlile, but he was charming and tall, so he won me over. It’s been months since then, full of golf lessons, pizza I paid for, and yes, pretending that I didn’t care that he didn’t want to make our relationship official.

It was May, and I was still living in Delusional Land, sitting patiently by my overdressed self in a karaoke bar on a Thursday night. It was so empty; I wouldn’t have been surprised to see tumbleweed spinning across the dance floor. Sitting in the booth, I looked out over King Street on one side and down the stairs to the peculiar, covered alley that housed the Bangkok bouncer. I am just sitting here, watching minutes and then hours tick by. I shrunk deeper and deeper into my little baptismal fount of self-loathing. My inner critic is railing like a heretic, naming me stupid, stupider, stupidest—stupid and ugly and unlovable and pathetic and embarrassing and just stupid, no wonder he didn’t show.

It’s just a sad little slideshow now: being snuck past parents, breaking up before Valentine’s Day, and going solo to dances.  Every single time my mother said that boys feared me because my emotions were just too much, flashed through my brain like strobe lights. Just too much emotion, like when I burst into tears on the Saturday my brother came home early from deployment and surprised the family over the holidays. I fell to my knees and started sobbing and my father quipped, “Well, she couldn’t have faked that.” I struggle to remember a time where I was faking my emotion, but other than faking orgasms and customer service smiles, I thought I was a genuine person. A catch, really!

After the first tequila shot, I redownload Bumble. After the second, I start swiping right. Three tequila shots and this guy is kinda cute, oh, I’ve matched with Evan? Eric? Eli? Ezra? After four tequila shots: “Come hang out with meeee! I totally got stood up by my now EX ---I swear I’m not tooo tispy:).” After five, “lol, tipsy*.”

Water.

Water.

Water.

Bathroom.

Water.

Who needs guys anyway? I have a degree and my own apartment and two tuxedo cats and freaking abs, forget this, I’ll order an Uber—oh shit, he’s here. Not who I was waiting for, but a kinda cute guy with an “E” name who forgot his ID and is stuck outside with the bouncer. I wave to Cullen, my new favorite bartender and hold onto the railing as I walk with all the elegance of a juvenile flamingo down the stairs. At the bottom and down a short alley, he’s waiting with Richard the bouncer. He’s not as cute as his picture but who is? He’s five ten, maybe five eleven; I’m brushing his height in heels and I’m five seven. Watery eyes, I can’t tell the color. Brunette, white, clean shaven— no, nothing about him stood out, Officer. I didn’t see any scars, birthmarks, or tattoos. He says it’s too late, he has work in the morning, but he can drop me home on his way back to North Charleston. Another rejection: I try to look unaffected and sober. It would save me the cost of an Uber back to Mt. Pleasant and so I step out of the covered alley, but Richard the bouncer stops me with an outstretched hand.

“Woah, Suzannah, do you know this guy?”

“Yeah, I’m her friend, she’s good,” Slightly Disappointing Guy speaks for me, stepping up onto the curb.

I look back and forth between them. Richard has seen me leave here with a guy before, why is he questioning this one? Is it because this isn’t my guy? Does Richard remember him? Is he judging me? Pounding in my ears, my heartbeat echoes, “Too much, too much, too much.” Deep breath in and—

“Yeah, it’s fine, he’s a friend.”

We’re walking down King Street on this quiet night. I trip on the broken sidewalk, and E-something grabs my elbow to steady me, then slips down my arm to hold my hand. I wish he was him. Squinting, I can pretend, but my guy’s hand is bigger and calloused from hockey, his eyes are almost alien blue, and he’s so tall, he makes me look dainty. For a second, I can pretend I’m walking down the street holding hands with my sorta kinda maybe boyfriend and then it comes to me, this is a fucking stranger. I’m being tugged along to a red Jeep Cherokee by a stranger. I’m in a parking lot in front of the U-Haul rental with a stranger. I’m about to get into a car with a stranger. I start scanning the street for a woman I can pretend to know, but it’s empty. Empty, except for an unhoused person yelling and shaking their fists at their own reflection, and a trio of men, smoking on a stoop, who’ve already clocked the two of us and are tracking our movement like the Secret Service.

Alright, my options are one, get into this guy’s car or two, be alone on this street where, yup, the smokers are now sending wolf whistles to slither around my ankles. I get into the car, suddenly feeling stone cold sober. I have a panic button app on my phone and feel reasonably sure I can take this guy. I mean, I took taekwondo for years, my coach called me Guts and made me spar the black belts. I take a gulp of bottled water and— It’s blank. Gone. Empty of memory. Being drugged is different from blacking out after drinking too much, it’s the absence of self. Drunk, there are bits of memory, like clips of a movie you watched while falling asleep. Concussions feel like going through a windshield or blowing out speakers or falling through a rotten floor. Wildly unpleasant, but you’re still you. Fainting, well, I’ve only fainted when sick. It’s sink or swim, flushing your consciousness down the drain.

I don’t remember taking a sip of water, just the offering of it and my reasoning of why the bottle would be safe. It was full. The lid was hard to get off, like it was sealed, and the bottle was room temperature, like he just kept it in the car, it wasn’t something that he had especially brought along for the occasion. Of course, with just a quick YouTube search, you can learn alongside 921k other people how to reseal a water bottle to make it just like new. I thought I had reasoned everything out, but I found myself failing. Whatever this was, I don’t remember any of it, not the arches of the Ravenel Bridge, not the turn onto Shelmore, not the pull into Parish Place, not the steps up to my apartment.

“Uh, oh! Looks like someone is sobering up!” His hand is pulling my head back by my hair. Dark alcohol is being poured into my mouth while my nose is pinched. I’m swallowing, choking, and out again.

Naked, I come to consciousness on my knees at the side of my bed, like an unspoken prayer to some god figure, at the sudden pain that is sodomization. I’m restrained by the trick handcuffs I bought as a joke months ago, but in my panic, I don’t remember the little side button that release them. Instead, I pull both of my hands as hard as I can against the metal and they come loose, leaving skin like crinkled ribbon behind. I tear out of my bedroom and into the kitchen. Fight or flight, I pull out a butcher knife amid the shock of light and sound and movement I suddenly have access to again. In this minute window, I pour a fistful of ibuprofen, another quote of my mother coming to my mind:

I’d rather be dead than raped.

The door opens as I raise my hand to my mouth, and he steps out. What a comparison we must have made. On one hand, my rapist. On the other, me, dripping blood on the knife I fisted in one hand and mixing with the red coating of the pills in another, completely exposed except for tattoos: a lightbulb on one wrist, still growing on my right bicep, my old house number on the inside of the right middle finger, and PHENOMENAL WOMAN across the right side of my rib cage. Blonde hair sticking up everywhere and, in my eyes, the fight he drugged me to avoid.

Whatever it was, anger or fear, strangled the Rohypnol in my system and I glared down at this leech, this sack of shit, this pathetic slug of a man as his eyes welled up in tears. He looked sickly, the kind of pale you find in deep sea creatures, plants grown in the dark, and fat trimmed off roasts. He looked like some clay creature that hadn't been put in the kiln. I dropped the pills into the sink. This slime, this failure of biology, this sludge on the bottom of my shoe will not be what forces me over the edge. I forge my own quote in contrast to my mother:

If I’m going down, I’m going to fucking take you with me.

I watch as he takes it all in a fully awake woman, now leaning casually against the kitchen counter. The handful of pills dropped into the kitchen sink. The knife, the best IKEA could sell, gripped backwards with the blade facing him. Oddly, the cats, who have no idea what is going on, are now twining between the woman’s legs, like some Norse goddess warrior’s faithful companions. He takes it all in: bunched muscles, the disgusted sneer, the electricity humming around me—and he crumples onto the ground and starts to cry.

“What happened to you, babe?” he whispers, pulling his knees to his chest and resting his head against the wall. “Did I, oh god, did I trigger you?” Years later, I told this to my therapist as proof I wasn’t raped.

“But he cried, Katie! He honestly started crying like he was sad for me, something is wrong with me, I think I’m just a narcissist or maybe I have manic depression or maybe a brain tum-”

“Suz. He wasn’t crying for you. He was crying because he was caught. He was crying because you wrecked his plans. He was crying because he was a rapist and if he didn’t figure out a way to get out of there, you were going to put him in the hospital or jail. Look at all the evidence! Yeah, you were messaging on Bumble, but who drives all that way without checking to see if they brought their ID? Who offers to drive a stranger home instead of ordering them an Uber? Who lies to a bouncer? Who parks that far away unless they’re trying to stay out of view?

He gave you bottled water and then you remember nothing, even though you had been drinking water for a while and didn’t feel that intoxicated. Despite you remembering nothing, he was able to drive you home, probably because he went through your wallet and found your ID. When you started coming to, he poured more alcohol down your throat. He went through your apartment, found the handcuffs, and took off all your clothes. You were handcuffed to your bed, and he didn’t know they had a side release button because you were not conscious to tell him. He did not ask for your consent, and you were incapacitated, you were incapable of giving consent. He was not drunk. He made these decisions because he wanted to hurt you and now, you were too much to handle, you were too strong for him. And he couldn’t have you calling the police, he couldn’t have you keeping him from doing this to more women in the future so what does he do? He gaslights you.”

I wince and rest my hand with the knife on the counter. Oh god, what have I done? But no, how did he even fucking get in here? Where are my clothes? Why am I bleeding? I am not being too much, this is really happening, I am not overreacting!

“Do you want me to go? I could get you some water, let me grab you a towel—”

“If you leave, right now, I won’t call the police,” I hissed.

“Sweetie, it’s ok! I think you had a panic attack; it was just too much for you and---”

“Leave right now and I won’t call the police.”

“Babe, you invited me in, and we got a little tipsy watching a movie, it got a little steamy and you wanted to play—”

“Leave and I won’t call the cops.”

“Nothing happened! You just freaked out on me!”

His eyes were so wide, and his lip trembled. I started feeling an uncomfortable tinge of shame, oh god, what was I going to tell my guy? Looking at this mess whimpering in a corner like some kind of writhing, parasitic worm, I could see the attention he put into his “bedhead” hairstyle. He wore the same brand of boxers that my mom bought for my dad at Costco, and he had the vaguely concave chest of someone who avoids hard labor. I’m whistling past fear and landing solidly in shame, shame that I was so desperate to be trolling for guys like some sort of boy crazy middle schooler, shame that I had picked this one, shame that I had cheated on my boyfriend, shame that I was such a slut, shame that once again I was just too much, having this crazy reaction to casual sex.

“You know, this is just too much for me, I’m going to go. I’ll text you later.”

Too much, too much, too much.

I stayed standing with my back against the sink as he picked his way through the apartment like a vulture, putting back on his normal guy disguise. Later I would realize he had also taken the bottle of rum he had touched, the top sheet of my bed, and the beer bottle he had tried to force inside me. I don’t know what else he took, but I remember locking the door behind him and putting on the chain. I turned on all the lights and watched the Jeep Cherokee peel out of its parking spot and disappear around a building.

The shower was so hot I blistered but didn’t feel it.

I stripped the bed and slept on the couch.

In the morning, I cartwheel the mattress down the stairs to the dumpster.

I donate the dress and throw away the handcuffs.

I swallow Plan B with orange Gatorade.

In October, I find out my guy was cheating on me even when we were exclusive.

In January, I hyperventilate during a date.

The psychiatrist says I have severe PTSD.

Over treatment, you rewrite your story over and over as you progress. It’s supposed to be a hopeful thing, oddly, as you track how the story changes, how you stop blaming yourself and move past denial toward acceptance. It’s odd to feel hopeful. It seems almost disrespectful to the warrior who stood in that kitchen to think that day, to think, one day, I’ll just be over this. Hope doesn’t have to be sunshine and rainbows. Hope can just be the choice to be curious about what the hell is going to happen next. The fight didn’t end in that kitchen, when I kicked “my guy” to the curb, or when I walked into trauma therapy and then a year later, when I walked out of it. It never ends. Every damn day is a fight, but I’m still here, and that’s the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

-Suz Guthmann

Suz Guthmann is a poet and essayist whose work explores resistance, identity, and the emotional labor of truth-telling. Her writing has been featured in Our Magazine, The N'West Iowa Review, and swamppink. She is currently working on a collection of poetry and essays that examines the struggles and resilience of sexual assault survivors in the United States. Suz holds a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in Political Science and will graduate in May 2025 with an MFA in Creative Writing from the College of Charleston. She loves her two cats, Brillo and Dulce, andlives in Charleston, SC