I have decided to write down these things. I’m not really sure why. Maybe it’s a form of self-therapy, or maybe I have a compulsion to re-live certain moments in my life. Maybe it’s a cautionary tale. Or maybe…it’s a lure.
Whatever the reason, this is my blog. And I’ll start at the beginning.
I was in a sorority in college. That’s when my first real fight happened - Spring Formal, my junior year. My date was a guy named David. I didn’t really know him that well, but he was hot in a lean-muscled way and we had flirted at a party at his frat house. Remember what it is like to be twenty years old and head over heels in lust? Flirting led to a night in his bed. I wasn’t that experienced then, but he was. Neither of us slept. I had more orgasms than I could count.
The cruel truth is that it was a set-up. He came on to me that night because a Delta Zeta named Britney got him to do it. Britney and I - well, we hated each other. There is a long story there, that I can summarize as the dynamic of two competitive girls spiraling out of control. We were night and day. I was the dark-skinned Asian, the daughter of Indonesian immigrants. She was the blonde daughter of privilege. She decided she wanted to Carrie me. Not buckets of pig’s blood, of course, but she wanted to humiliate me, in front of everyone. David was her tool. And it worked. He asked me to the dance and I said yes. Yes yes yes! The bastard.
I was so excited. I didn’t have a lot of money then, but I splurged on my dress. It fit me like a glove. Don’t confuse “Spring Formal” with anything conservative. Most girls dressed like total sluts for it. My dress was made to wear - at most - a thong beneath it. Definitely not a bra. I modeled it for him, and he practically tore it off of me. I felt so incredibly sexy.
Then he went away, and showed Britney a photo he took of me, and she bought the same dress.
The dance itself is a blurred memory to me now. Mostly, I remember that Britney made sure she was there first, and then after I arrived she spread the whisper that I’d copied her out of pathetic envy. David pretended to be sympathetic as I fought back tears. He took me to the after-party, at his frat house again. I was a little drunk, and I very very much wanted to follow him straight to his bed. He peeled away, though, and said he’d be back with more drinks.
I found him on the dance floor, with her.
They were practically fucking. Britney, wearing my dress. Her tongue was in his mouth but her eyes were open and looking for me. Bitch.
I don’t really know what she thought I’d do. Run away in tears, maybe? I don’t really think she would have been satisfied with secret pain. She wanted everyone to see. Holding my eyes with hers, she ground her pelvis into him, her arms draped around his neck.
People noticed. Heads turned to look at me. People knew I’d come there with him. She was flaunting her power. She was silently shouting to the room that she could take anything from me that she wanted.
A life has moments where a choice echoes through the future.
I didn’t run away. I stepped forward onto the dance floor and I shoved her.
She didn’t expect that. But when her blue eyes turned back to me, through the veil of her hair, I could see she welcomed it. She wanted it. It was her invitation to do what she really wanted.
She slapped me, hard.
Another girl stepped between us, but David pulled her back. The DJ cut the music.
“Let’s take this to the basement,” David said. His voice was thick. Britney pushed her hair back. She nodded. I didn’t know what he meant, but I nodded too. He turned, and we followed. “What the fuck?” the girl who stepped in said, but her boyfriend said something I couldn’t hear and she didn’t say anything more.
Most of the fraternity followed us to the basement. I think they locked the door. After a moment, the music thumped above us again, a raw rhythm without more. The ceiling was low, and harshly lit with a scattering of bare light bulbs. The floor was bare concrete. Two steel poles were spaced in the middle, there to support the floor above.
Britney stood between them. David stood behind her.
“So you fucked my man, you rice-paddy slut?” She slurred her words a little, drunk enough to have zero inhibitions about her racism or her loathing of me. David smirked. I hated him but I hated her more because of course I understood now she had sent him after me, to lure me in, to paint me as a whore. With her back to him, she lifted her arms, her hands stroking his hair. His hands cupped her breasts as they bulged in her neckline. “He said you were terrible in bed,” she said lazily.
They laughed. They all laughed. My face burned
“Fuck you, Britney, you bitch. Fuck you!” My voice was so harsh, on the edge of out-of-control fury.
She dropped her arms and her face was cold stone now. A buzz ran through the basement as she peeled her dress - my dress - up over her body. She was tanned enough her bare breasts featured slender pale bikini triangles around her pink nipples. Her stomach was hard. Her thong barely covered her pussy.
“Fight me,” she said. “Strip and fight. Or turn and run.”
The room was breathless. Waiting.
I stripped. What else could I do? My thong was no more substantial than hers. The buzz rose like a nightmare of hornets. For some reason, we both kept our heels on. It was suddenly swelteringly hot, but my nipples were impossibly stiff.
“Fuck, look at her tits.” A watcher blurted clumsily. Maybe Britney thought all eyes were going to be on her. They weren’t, and that spiked her fury like a sudden fever.
I met her head-on as she rushed me. I can’t really describe the feeling of that first violent clash, except to say it was something surreal, and primal, and thrilling.
I was nearly naked, and I was in a catfight. In front of a basement full of frat boys.
We both went for hair; conditioned, I guess, by every catfight ever on television. But it also felt instinctive. It felt right. As I wrenched Britney’s head sideways, screaming bitch! as we staggered, I felt alive, powerful, aroused, I mean fucking sexually aroused, wet and wanting David or any of the boys in the room, wanting them hard.
But mostly, wanting to hurt her. Hurt her badly.
She was strong. She twisted my head, my neck flaring in pain. I stumbled sideways in my heels. The crowd was roaring now, not buzzing. She used my momentum, jerking harder on my dark hair, dragging my head down now, trying to fling me off my feet. My scalp was on fire.
One of the steel poles caught me full in the ribs. I moaned in sharp pain as the hive cheered for her. She tried to slam my head into the steel next. I took the impact across my collarbone instead and I screamed. She pinned me to the pole like a witch to be burned at the stake, and drove her knee up into my lower stomach.
I landed on my hands and knees on the concrete floor, trying not to puke. She twisted a handful of my hair and dragged me crawling behind her as she strutted for her fans. She lifted me upright on my knees, my head dragged back, my spine arched.
Displaying me.
She screamed “Fuck you, Sahara!” and sank her manicured nails into my breast.
Britney sank her nails into my breast, and twisted it. Her thumbnail tore open my skin. She pushed it deep into the gash. She wanted my blood.
Britney threw me face-down on the concrete. I couldn’t get my hands down fast enough to break the impact of my head. She stomped my back, her heel stabbing me. Through my tears, I stared into the blackness of quitting, of submitting.
Then I whipped my leg across her ankles. She couldn’t break her fall either. She crashed to the floor next to me and I didn’t think - I just reacted. I flung myself on top of her. She was lying on her side and I jammed the heel of one hand into the inner curve of her lower breast and crushed it against the floor as my other hand dragged her head back. She screamed, a pure sound of pain and fear as I ground her bulging nipple against the concrete.
I screamed too. I spat in her face. I lifted her head And I slammed it down. Her cheekbone was bleeding. I pulled her onto her back, straddling her, feeling her hot stomach against my pussy, and I punched down into her stunned face.
I don’t know how many times. I just know that one of the watchers finally caught my wrist and pulled me to my feet. Britney turned back on her side, covering her face. Blood welled between her fingers. I looked blankly at the boy holding my wrist. My voice seemed to me to come from some place outside my body. “It’s not enough.” He let go, and I fell on her again, like a raven plummeting to its prey.
I took her thong. I led her like she’d led me, crawling. I stood her naked against one of the steel poles and I tied her wrists behind it with her thong. I used my nails on her helpless, quivering body like a cat at a scratching post. She screamed, and begged, especially when I did her nipples. They were soft and pliable by then.
She didn’t faint until I gouged my thumbnail into her clit, my fingers forced inside her.
David was the one who pulled me away. He untied her and gave me her thong, because I told him to, and he didn’t dare disobey. My final act of her humiliation was to take him upstairs. I hated him, but I fucked him, because I’d won.
That was my first fight. The first step down a twisted path. I discovered something in me. Something dark and thrilling. A hunger.
God…I’m trembling as I write that.
Years later, I ran into one of the frat boys who watched that night. We had a few drinks and he told me how savagely erotic it was to see us fight, how he still replays it in his mind to get hard to have sex with his loveless wife. My hand dropped into his lap as he talked. We ended up in a hotel, and as we fucked he found the scar Britney left in my breast, among the later scars, and ran his tongue-tip over it.
I’m able to tell you that now, because scars heal, even if they heal as something ugly.
