The “R” Word

When the aggressive white boy said, I’m going to doggy-style fuck the smirk off that one, he was pointing at me, and I was smirking. Acquaintances, a friend of mine, and I were smoking cigs in front of someone’s dorm building, and he was half-hurriedly stopping to ask us if any of us had seen a girl who maybe ran in this direction. I was smirking because I knew he wouldn’t find her, or I was drunk enough to be that optimistic. But he was wasting his time asking us. Most of us standing there knew enough to know that there was more than just one rumor that he was a rapist. We’d also been standing out front there for at least five minutes and not only had we not seen a brown haired girl who looked like a slut, we also hadn’t seen anyone at all. No one had walked by. Just us, him, and a homeless man who asked us for cigs were out on that street block on that Tuesday night. He wouldn’t find her. He was too drunk. Too stupid. And he knew it. And I knew it. He especially hated that I knew it, and I’m only now old enough to know how much men do not want you to know this. “This” being any incompetence. 

I smirked — and that was my incompetence. An underestimation of how safe I was amongst men. Amongst the men I was smoking with. It’s my fault. I was still looking for someone other than me to put faith in. When the rumored rapist pointed at me and said, I’m going to doggy-style fuck the smirk off that one, no one said anything. Maybe they saw the expression I had on. That, at first, I felt safe. I felt powerful. But the reality is when someone in real life tells you they’re going to do that to you, it’s not hot. It is not the same as putting the crumpled sock jammed up between your upper inner thighs and cumming hard. In your mind, you’re the guy telling you, I’m going to fuck you. Telling you that you’re going to like it. Choke, gag, come fucking good. Mastery. Unfortunately, men are not very good rapists, so you have to do it for them. 

Brooke Segarra is a fiction writer in Brooklyn, NY. Her stories have appeared in Hobart Pulp, Maudlin House, Rejection Letters, Farewell Transmission, Grimoire Magazine, the first issue of the Rose Books Reader, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School, and is currently working on a novel. You can find her online at brookesegarra.com.