How Rape Really Is

They had known one another for two years. It's not as if they were strangers. They were both 'underage' - fifteen-year-olds but the boy older by months. He was hopelessly in love. She enjoyed attention. Really enjoyed attention. She wanted him to be there when she came out of school. Be there and talk to her but not hold her hand. Once she let him walk her home. She kept saying she couldn't manage to get away in the evening.

Already he'd seen her breasts. Kind of. One holiday she'd called him over to her house because she was alone; she'd called him upstairs and he'd found her standing in the doorway of her room. She'd already undone her buttons. He could see everything. He remembers that one of her feet was sideways, the other pointed towards him. Then she'd raised her arm and leaned against the door frame and given him a mock adult 'come hither' look. She sort of laughed, made a little jump, and then slammed the door behind her.

It was by the fair. She'd suggested the fair, and wouldn't let him put his arm round her. Not even like a friend as he'd suggested. He told her he was in love with her. He was hopelessly so. What did she feel? Is it ever possible to tell? So he asked her what she felt for him. "I'm not saying anything" she pronounced. She was standing on the outskirts of the fair, and kept crossing her legs over and clasping her hands behind her back. She closed her eyes at one point and looked exasperated. She expected him to somehow know she wanted him to do something.

The boy took her hand and led her into the dark of the bushes. Laid her down. He lifted up her skirt and pulled her pants off; she lost a shoe when it got tangled. She was very white between her legs.

They kissed for a long time. Then she quietly said "Get off" and he raised himself onto his elbows. She folded her arms. "I mean it" she said, but he couldn't bring himself to move. After a while she got bored, reached out for a long blade of grass, picked it, threw it down. All of a sudden he swung forward on his hands, and felt himself sink inside her. He gasped. She jerked her head round, her mouth wide open in surprise, and looked at him.

He moved off at once; it must have looked like pain on his face.

Standing up now, with her feet splayed, she was trying to look down at herself, hunched over.

She straightened up and stared at him: angry; tears brimming.

That was a rape. He knows. And it had nothing at all to do with male power. If anything it was tied up with male desperation. Or possibly female power 'gone wrong' through inexperience. But it was still a rape. It's just that there are very many kinds of rape and not merely the one kind - the power kind - like you think.