Exciting Times

by Naoise Dolan

I told Edith about a summer in college when a few of us had gone to someone’s holiday home in West Cork. I slept on the couch, two of the lads took a mattress on the floor, and in the dark one of them came and lay on top of me – calmly, as if instructed to. I whispered I wasn’t sure, which meant get off but I’m scared what you’ll do if I say that, and he ignored me. His breath tanged of alcohol. I thought it was Colm but it might have been Ferdia. I couldn’t see. Probably I could have deduced Ferdia or Colm, but I didn’t, because then I’d know, and then for all subsequent interactions with either Colm and Ferdia, which I’d have to keep having because no one would believe me or they’d say yeah but he’s his own problems, I’d remember what he did, know his own memory of events was that we’d got drunk and hooked up, and be certain, too, that our friends would ‘not take sides’, i.e. treat me like someone who might be lying about rape. I told myself what they’d say – grey area, I just don’t think he’d do that – and soon became convinced I was actually making it up, then felt like a sick amoral person for falsely accusing someone of something that I hadn’t accused him of and that he had in fact done.