Toshiro

by Amy

I still remember the first day I arrived in Cambridge, nearly seven years ago now, wandering around in a daze as I filled out forms and moved remnants of my old life from my parents’ car to my new room. It all felt surreal yet at the same time exciting, with a healthy dose of terror thrown in. Here I was about to start a whole new chapter in my life, but I had no way of knowing whether I would succeed or fail horribly. So far the college itself seemed fairly welcoming but uninspiring, a modern building in red brick slightly different to the one I had done my interviews in, and my student room was stark and tiny. My mum picked up the programme of freshers’ week events that had been left on the desk.

“Look at this, it says there’s a mix and mingle event in the college bar tonight! You should definitely go to that and try and make some new friends,” said my mum.

“Oh, I don’t know if I’ll go to that, I’m not great with new people,” I said. I’d failed to make a single friend throughout the two years of sixth form and frankly I wasn’t sure I was even capable of doing it any more, let alone with cool, scary university people. They were probably just like the people I didn’t fit in with at sixth form, I thought. Bet they got drunk and went to clubs. They wouldn’t be interested in talking to someone like me.

“Come on Amy, at least give it a go. You could meet some really nice people! It’d be a waste not to bother. You can’t just sit in your room and not talk to anyone,” my dad added.

“Look, I’ll think about it, okay? I’m just not sure I really fancy it,” I said. My parents rolled their eyes and carried on unpacking boxes.

Later that evening, I somehow plucked up the courage to go to the event after all. To this day I have no idea how I managed it, but I returned to my little room high on social interaction, sweaty-faced and slightly out of breath. I had never spoken to so many new people in such a short space of time! And they actually seemed interested in talking to me! Just as I’d been secretly hoping, it was like I’d fallen into a parallel universe where I wasn’t doomed to spend all my lunchtimes hiding in the library. People wanted to be my friends! After the bullying and isolation of my school years, finding myself suddenly liked and accepted was like being presented with an all-you-can-eat buffet after weeks of being starved. I was desperate for more.

Still chasing the high of the freshers’ events, at some point during that hectic first term I downloaded Tinder. This was 2013 and this hot-off-the-press dating app was at peak popularity – absolutely everyone was giving themselves RSI from non-stop swiping on sexy singles in their area. It was addictive, like a video game. I had already met one or two people through Tinder when I came across Toshiro’s* profile one evening. He was a PhD student with a photo of himself from the chest up, wearing a sharp suit and tie. He looked pretty decent to me and given that I had come to Cambridge to study Japanese, it seemed like a great idea to practice my new language skills with an actual Japanese person. I was pleased when we matched and quickly sent a message in my clumsy Japanese. It didn’t take long for a reply to come.

Soon after we arranged to meet in real life and went on a few dates. While I was quite happy to maintain a mostly platonic, on-again off-again language exchange/plus-one for events arrangement, it hadn’t really occurred to me he might have something else in mind. Of course I’d had crushes on other people and even a couple of awkward teenage shenanigans when I was younger, but I was still painfully naïve, no matter how strenuously I would have denied it at the time. It’s not that I didn’t like Toshiro – I was just innocently amazed that any man would actually be interested in me, not to mention I had zero interest in sex. If I could just ignore it and put it off for as long as possible, it’d all be fine, I told myself. For most of my teenage years I’d felt ugly and struggled with body image issues that had left me convinced I would never let anyone see me naked. Looking back now it doesn’t surprise me that getting a chance to finally feel pretty and wanted caused me to miss every red flag that popped up. He was eight years older than me and made no secret of the fact he was rich and well-connected. I was too dazzled to question why somebody like that would want to hang around a teenage state school girl living away from her family for the first time, and was all too grateful to be taking part in the glamorous events he invited me to.

It was after one such glamorous event in the third term that my life would change forever. One of my classmates was good friends with some girls in the year above and they had arranged for us all to go to a formal dinner at Emmanuel College. Since it wouldn’t be finishing too late and we hadn’t made any post-dinner plans, Toshiro and I arranged that I’d go hang out at his place once I was done with dinner since it was nearby. Although I realise now that what transpired that evening wasn’t my fault, I still wish I had just taken a taxi back to my own college. I wish I had driven away from all the pain.

Those formals are dangerous. I had never really drunk alcohol before coming to university and it was still a novelty for me in a big way, not to mention the old adage – “everyone else was doing it”. With what may have been half or may have been a full bottle of wine in my stomach, I said goodbye to my friends and walked, stumbling a little in my black heels, over to the rendezvous point.

The details of the next few hours are blurred by the alcohol, but I still remember how pretty I felt in my crimson formal dress that I was so proud of sewing myself the summer before, my hair tied up with velvet ribbon. I don’t remember what we talked about or how my dress ended up on the floor. I remember throwing up. I don’t remember how I ended up on his bed. I remember telling him not to do it to me. No, I’m a virgin, I don’t want to, I said, over and over. I remember how much it hurt and I remember screaming, begging him to stop through tears but the hurt just carried on.

The weirdest thing about it was, the next morning and for a long time after I didn’t feel anything except numb. It was like floating through an endless expanse of blinding white nothingness. My brain blocked it out to protect me. I don’t think most people really know what to expect from their first experience of sex, least of all me, but I had at least expected that I would have agreed to it, and I will never forgive him for taking that away from me.       

[*pseudonym]