““When I still lived in Arizona, I sat down on a tattered futon at the house party and my blond friend handed me a bottle of blue Gatorade. There's vodka in it , she said. She was the kind of woman that served drinks at other people's parties. The vodka gave strength to my desires. Everyone watched. I was the last person to leave the party. As I buttoned my coat, the host of the party touched his beard, laughed, and said, No no no . I wrapped my scarf around my neck, picked up my bike leaning against the living room wall and walked toward the door. Stay , he said, and he wasn't asking. ...Though he did force himself on me, the truth is I stayed at the party waiting for something to happen. Everyone at the party left, and still, nothing had happened. He wasn't a stranger―I knew he was a bad man, I'd known that for a long time. That's why I stayed. I spent so much of my youth waiting for something to happen. Unsupervised, I had my choice of dark rooms. I knew which rooms were bad and I entered then anyway. It was a sort of power.””
