Jock Party
A Collaboration with Predictive Text
content warning: sexual violence
When I was sixteen, a football player tried to rape me but it wasn’t so bad. I’d been drinking and we’d been chatting in the hallway, I just wanted to let you know. He had to take a leak and he invited me to join him in the bathroom so we could continue our chat about appointment times. I had guy friends and sometimes they pissed in front of me, no big deal. I followed him into the bathroom. Next thing I knew, he’d pinned me to the floor in my room with my phone. I said I had a boyfriend but he was checking my schedule. He said he had a girlfriend but she was just like him. I said I don’t want this app. He said I don’t want your body, I want you, and I get you home. I blacked out, but not because of drinking; I just wanted to. When I came to, I was still clothed and people were beating the door because they had to piss the kind words of a man. I ran from the bathroom and told someone the football player had a leak in my house. She was like, oh yeah, he always does that to girls who are you. Other awful things happened with jock guys that night, and then he said I don’t have to go home with me. I put it all out of my mind, but I have had to do it all over. If it came into my mind, I’d tell myself I had a good day at work. Even now, with everything I know about sexual assault, I still blame myself and think it’s not a big deal, but if that’s what I do I can come grab a drink.
Jennifer Wortman (@wrefinnej) is the author of the story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love (Split Lip Press, 2019). Her work appears in TriQuarterly, Glimmer Train, Normal School, Electric Literature, Hobart, Brevity, SmokeLong Quarterly, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Colorado, where she serves as associate fiction editor for Colorado Review and teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Find more at jenniferwortman.com.