20. An organizer took advantage of me when I was 17, but it is not him that I am upset with
9 years ago, an organizer at a larp took advantage of me (at least I think so), but when I think of him today, I mainly feel grateful; grateful that he didn’t tell anyone.
When I was 17, I went to a larp on my own. I was supposed to go with my boyfriend at the time, but he backed out because of surgery. But I was really hyped about the concept, so I went on my own to a larp where I barey knew anyone. There was a guy at this larp, in the beginning of his 20s, and I thought he was an organizer. He kept doing organizer-ish things, at least. Let us call him Tim. Tim kept making overly sexual jokes towards me, that I wasn’t really comfortable with, but I had heard he had a diagnose, so I excused it, and I didn’t tell him off harshly.
On the last eve of the larp, he told me they needed to get some things from storage, to use the next day, and he asked me to go with him, and I said yes, because I wanted to be helpful. I didn’t realize just how far away this storage was. We arrived with the van around midnight, and then started to make our way back. I started dozing off on the highway, and so did he, because I woke up when the van swerved wildly back to the lane. I was scared, because I knew that falling asleep while driving is very dangerous, but I was so exhausted from several days of larping in hot weather, that I was still close to dozing off. Tim pulled over at a truck rest, and told me that our options were to either to stay here and sleep until morning, or find some way to wake him up. I didn’t want to stay and sleep in a van. On reason I knew it would be uncomfortable and I wouldn’t get a lot of rest, and I just wanted to get out of the situation as fast as possible, but mainly because I thought (knew?) that if we showed up the next day, then everyone would assume that I had cheated on my boyfriend with Tim. I would be publicly humiliated. So I asked Tim, what it would take to wake him up. And he told me it would help, if I let him touch my boobs. I thought in my tired and scared mind; “I will do this, because I want to live, and I want to go home. My boyfriend will understand”. And so I let him do it.
When we arrived back, at 4 am, unhurt, it rained. My tent hadn’t been properly closed, so it was full of water. One of the other participants had told me that if I ever needed another place to sleep, they had an extra tent, so I went there, but a drunk guy was in it. So I had to go back to Tim and sleep next to him. My clothes were drenched, so I had to sleep in my underwear. I woke up at sunrise, I found this big dirty carpet and wrapped it around myself, and I quickly left. Only 3 people were awake, one of them was my teacher. When I approached they were discussing “walk of shame” vs. “walk of fame” and when they spotted me, they burst out laughing very loudly.
I tried to tell my boyfriend, I told him that I was forced by circumstance to sleep in another guy’s tent. And he did not react well. He was angry, at me, he accused me of breaking his trust. He kept coming up with things I should have done instead; for example call him at 4 am, and wait 2 hours in my drenched clothes for him to pick me up. Eventually, I told him the rest of the story, and he was furious, with me. Told me that I had cheated on him. Came up with more and more things I should have done instead; I should never have trusted Tim, I should never have volunteered to help. For months he was hurt, and he kept ranting at me over chat. I would go to school, come home, and on good days, he would talk about computergames, and on bad days he would rant and berate me about lying to him, breaking his trust, not thinking about him, not caring about him. It affected my grades. I felt confused and weird about what happened with Tim, but it didn’t seriously hurt me. My boyfriends actions did though. I never fell out of love with my boyfriend, I just stopped feeling anything alltogether. I just woke up feeling tired and numb, and spent my entire day feeling tired and numb. My mother noticed and one night she told me; “will you please break up with him?” and somehow that got through the fog, and I was like “oh yeah, I can do that” and I did. I told her about the part about sleeping in another guy’s tent, and she was very understanding. She told me that “you shouldn’t tell your partner everything, men don’t understand”, and it was what I needed to hear.
I was scared that Tim would tell everyone. Young men like to boast. But he never told a soul. And I was so grateful, I still am, because I don’t that at that time my larp community was ready to think about a situation in a nuanced way. I think most people, at that time, would have reacted exactly like my boyfriend at the time, did, and chalked it all up to me being unfaithful. I think we are in a different place now as a community, and that is a good thing. I don’t want to punish my ex or Tim, I just want to tell my story.