How The Mighty Fall In Love (Lesbian Story)

In Which... (9)

In Which…

A Girl Is Slut-Shamed For Having Sex For The First Time

 

It was 12 o clock on a Sunday night (or Monday morning, depending on how you look at it) when Jo rang me up, disturbing me from sleep and probably waking the whole neighbourhood in the process.

“Hello?” I asked groggily, forgetting to look at the caller ID.

“Eve!” That was all I could make out, since Jo couldn’t speak through her crying, slightly muffled from trying to hide her sadness under her duvet from her parents in the room next door.

When I finally calmed her down – and confirmed, yes, the mess on the other side of the line was indeed Jo, and not some slobbering stranger – I gently asked her what had happened.

“It’s Burt… On Saturday he stayed the night, and we,” She choked, embarrassed, ashamed, dignity lost. “We had sex for the first time. And it…it was my first time, and it was horrible!”

“Oh, darling…” I sighed, wishing I could hold my best friend in my arms and comfort her.

“But that’s not the worst part!” Jo cried, voice muffled, still rising and dipping in volume, voice still sounding in shock, “He-he… Burt dumped me! Said I was a slut for fucking him, but I… I’m eighteen, it was my first time, and we’d been dating for over nine months! I had been thinking about it for a long time, I thought I was being sensible. And now he’s dumped me…and he called me a slut! But it was my first time…”

My heart broke. I comforted Jo for three hours on the phone that morning, sacrificing my sleep, my sanity, and everyl inch inside me that contained anti-anger emotions.

I was furious! Burt did not get to come away from this unscathed…God knows how many girls have succumbed to him, yet he is never called a slut! It was sexist, and I would not stand for it!

I told Jo this, who tried to laugh, but instead choked and sobbed, as I got myself wound up, before we both fell asleep, clutching our phones in our hands, each other’s breaths lulling the other to sleep.

Jo was petrified as we walked into school together on Monday morning. Without a doubt, by now most of our year – and presumably other years – would now know of Jo’s misfortune, probably widely blown up out of the water.

Indeed, it wasn’t pleasant when Bonnie joined us at the school gates, and together we walked into Hell, giving ourselves up for the stares, the snickers, the pointing, laughing, looks, pushing, shoving, name-calling, slut slut slut slut lesbian lesbian lesbian lesbian, lesbian feminist, slut slut slut…

“Open your legs for us!” Was what Jo was met with as she breathed in deeply, in, out, toes barely touching the linoleum, barely classified as in school, barely there at all. Barely here or there, but a slut, and no one would let her forget it.

“Hey, Jo, how was Burt?!”

“Jo, you wanna come to my house after school?”

“A sausage, Jo?”

Stupid names, stupid laughter, pointless fingers pointing at a red-faced Jo, crystalline tears welling up in her makeup-less eyes, a weakness that she doesn’t want, but apparently having sex makes you weak, makes you a name, makes you less of a person, less of a woman.

Jo is not less of anything. Burt is less than man, Burt is animal, Burt is nothing.

His friends high-five him in the corridor as he comes in to school on Monday with swagger. He has guys telling him ‘get in there’ using words like ‘nailed’, sneering on their faces, hands on their crotches. I feel sickness curl in my stomach as I see Jo getting beaten down by every eye laid upon her – she looks up and into their faces, pleading for acceptance, for understanding – and even girls who are hardly virgins themselves, they look away and sneer. All Jo finds in her peers is disgust.

I walk up to Burt, leaning against the wall outside IT room 4. He still has the same smirk he’s been wearing all day – and same smirk people refuse to let Jo wear.

Burt spots me.

“How’s Jo?” He asks, suddenly uncomfortable now, finally seeing the anger in my face.

I stomp up to him.

Burt raises his fists in defence; he’d back up if he had anywhere to go. I know that if he could, Burt Ross would be running through this white-washed wall – stained with secondary schooler’s hopes and dreams.

I punch him in the face.

It seemed a good idea at the time (it’s not; violence is no way to win your cause). Now the white-washed wall is stained with a droplet of Burt’s blood, as well as his hopes and dreams.

I get detention for two weeks, and I make my mum sigh so despondently when she hears.

But it got a weak smile out of Jo – who watched the whole thing, hidden by a wall – and a tight squeeze of my hand from Bonnie; so it was worth it.

It was worth it to see the look of surprise on Burt’s, and all his friends’, faces. Worth it to make people stop looking like Jo like she was scum, stop spitting harsh words at her.

Yeah, it was worth it.