It had been at least a year since I had seen him and even longer since I had enjoyed seeing him. I still despised him and yet, for some reason, I got a message from him asking if he could visit me at Cornell. I actually considered it for a second, but my better judgement helped me decide against it. A few weeks later though, I felt this inexplicable need to see him. I had hated him for so long, but now I wanted nothing more than to be with him. So, I impulsively bought a bus ticket to Pittsburgh. Just the thought of traveling so many miles to be with a guy that I couldn’t stand, someone who irreparably betrayed me, turned me on immensely.
Night 1.
After traveling for 16 hours, I finally made it to Pittsburgh. He was waiting for me at the station. After an awkward hug, we hailed an Uber. The sexual tension was heavy and the Uber driver kept asking questions. He answered for me, explaining how he had plans to show me Pittsburgh. And if Pittsburgh was the interior of his apartment, then that claim wasn’t entirely false. Finally we made it to his place where an ice-cold 750 mL of Absolut awaited us. We took maybe a couple of shots, but less than five minutes later we are already making out.
The Following Day.
We woke up so late. The first thing we did was have more sex and smoke…followed by even more sex, shots and joints. I’m not sure how long this went on for, but at some point we went out for lunch. Our little outing, one of the few times we left his room that weekend, was ethereal — a little bit of heaven wedged between the hell I craved. Then we walked back. More alcohol. More pot. More sex. After dark, we hit the streets so he could show me his campus. The classrooms were rather old and creaky. There were chalkboards and well, before I could observe much more, he pushed me to the ground and forced his fingers inside me. Then he pulled me off the floor and pushed me to the back of the classroom. He forced my naked torso out the window as a few people walked by the building, holding me there until I was both shivering and dripping. Horny and high as hell, we stumbled out of there after a while, in somewhat of a rush to get back home. We traversed a dark hill, speckled with trees. At this point he was quite drunk and I was experiencing an entirely new side of him, one even he wasn’t in touch with. It was as if an infinitely more sadistic man had replaced him. I would’ve done anything for him in those moments. He was irresistible. Crossing that threshold, he warned me to stay away from him. Having never been so aroused, I walked toward him, inviting him to hurt me. He responded by violently shoving me into a tree and choking me, watching the light as it started to drain from my eyes. Then, as if snapping out of a trance, he dropped his hands from my throat and we continued on our journey back. We stopped by a CVS in search of some lube, which incidentally had to be price checked in one of the most awkward interactions I’ve ever had at a CVS. By this point, he was on the verge of blacking out. Minutes later, we were back at his place. And as soon as we got into his bed, we both passed out, unopened lube on the ground, still wrapped in its plastic CVS bag.
Day Two.
It was noon when we woke up, dazed and hungover, trying to remember the night before. My bus was scheduled to leave in about twelve hours. I got dressed and cleaned up in the bathroom only to be pulled back into bed and fucked. That whole afternoon, that’s all we did. It was an asynchronous blur of taking shots, having sex and smoking pot. Once it was pitch black outside, we headed out to take advantage of the public backdrop. There were about two hours left. After walking a few blocks, we eventually found the ideal ally, one with a few people in it. On the side of a building, out of their sight but completely within the eyeshot of cars driving by, he sat me down with my bare thighs pressed against the cold stairs. He forced my underwear down, pulled my shirt and bra up, and fingered me as headlights illuminated our transgressions. After some last minute sex on his living room floor, uninterrupted by the arrival of his flatmates, we headed to the station. A couple of hours later, I was on a bus back to Ithaca, wearing a necklace of bruises, struggling to find a comfortable position for my aching fucked-over-twenty-times body and yet simultaneously feeling complete, previously-unattained sexual satisfaction.
Lo is a student at Cornell University. Bananas and Cream appears monthly this semester.