Tonight Is the Night

This is a very early flash fiction piece, written when I was an undergrad. This story is a mix of fact and fiction about the trauma of attempted first PIV intercourse, and it’s named after a great song by a great songwriter, the late Betty Wright.

“Tonight is the night that you make me a woman...You said you’d be gentle with me, and I...I hope you will...”

That’s what Betty Wright sang on that old 1970’s soul record. It’s one of my favorite songs. But what it makes me remember...well, for me the night that was “the night” was a drugged-and-drunken scuffle in a parking lot with a guy whose name I didn’t know. Like Betty, I submitted to the great female sacrifice...but womanhood was not what I got in return.

My memory of the big night between the point when my running buddy picked me up from the house and the moment I felt the shock of the guy forcing his way into my body is a cloud in which sights, scents, sounds and other perceptions are suspended. The smell of the weed my buddy and I smoked in her car...the sick taste of warm beer...the booze on the breath of the guy sitting next to me, sour and strong...the gravel scratching my bare bottom. Did I even have a conscious thought floating around with those cloud particles of sensation? Yes, I remember the idea that Hell, I’m eighteen now, so it’s about time anyway. Then came the pain.

I screamed and looked up at the guy as if he was the Devil himself hovering over me. I heard the moans and grunts of other couples who were merrily screwing each other, their bodies semi-hidden by the shadows of the parking lot. The spectacle of the guy, the others, and myself was like a satanic mass straight out of Rosemary’s Baby, and guess who was playing Rosemary? I had been lured into a night-cloaked secret circle: the others were groaning and twisting in ritual debauchery, the guy I was with was a demonic priest bearing a ceremonial dagger, and I was the victim whose life was ended with the blade’s plunge. I saw the blood.

I jumped up and struggled with my pants, feeling the wetness run down my leg. Running the five blocks home, I felt the sting of my fresh wound. I got into the house, stumbled into my bedroom, and tore off my clothing. The blood left a rusty splash on the inside of my thigh. To wash the blood and my feelings of filthiness off my skin, I staggered into the shower. After drying myself off, I crawled into my bed for the night. A minute later, I felt a dampness beneath me. I turned on the lights, threw off the bedsheets, and wailed as I stared at the dark spot that soiled the bright pink mattress cover.

All that night I tried to sleep with a fat sanitary pad between my legs to catch the slow dribble. The bleeding wouldn’t stop.  The terror wouldn’t stop...not until the morning chased away the demons of the night, leaving behind a scarred and fearful girl.

“...I’ll never forget tonight, no, no, I’ll never forget tonight, that’s when you made me feel real...you made me feel real...good...”