20.

The edge of a memory will blur with time, becoming hazy. One will bleed into the next until they’re indistinguishable—three nights become one, seemingly happening at the one place you recall in the one outfit you remember owning that year.

So, perhaps I won't get this entirely right, but I believe I remember in fine detail.

I was 20 and wide-eyed, though the years stretching behind me felt like several decades and several lives lived.

The three-story condo owned by some friend's out-of-town parents became a small comfort. We took off and landed there almost every Friday and Saturday with Sunday clean-up and hangover recovery looming in the distance as cans littered counters and pizza hardened in the fridge. 

Some evenings, the cost of two cabs and the fight over mirror space to backcomb our hair felt too much to bear. We'd wind up popping open lawn chairs in the small yard, or sprawling over couches. This was one of those nights.

I heard my name being called from the kitchen. Matt held up my phone; it's screen bright. I squinted across the room to see what looked like messages from a dating app. 

"It's fine. I'll look later."

"No, like, it's gone off a few times." He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pushed off the couch.

There were a few messages from a woman I couldn't remember the profile of. Most of her photos were taken from strategic angles where you couldn't tell quite tell what she looked like, just a faceless body. But I was reminded why I liked her profile when I scrolled to the end of her photos and found a snapshot of a book I was also reading—The Ethical Slut.

What awaited were benign, slightly dull messages. Standard compliments, questions about my upcoming weekend, an offering of her own plans. I sent a few short replies and put the phone face down on the counter. The evening descended into a frenzy of shots, card games, bad music, terrible dancing. The next morning, my throat scratchy, head pounding, a dying phone lay next to me with a number of notifications.

Most of them were the woman from the night before. My memory was riddled with dark spots, moments I couldn’t recall, and I felt guilt low in my belly. I wasn't interested in her. The strange anonymous photos, the profile clearly stating her non-monogamy and the age listed as 42 were all out of my depths. But we'd exchanged several messages, and she'd told me, at length, about her fairly recent divorce from her husband of a few years. The unanswered messages, sent while I slept off too much cheap tequila, asked if she'd said too much or been too much.

I didn't know much then, but I knew what loneliness felt like. A current of anger buzzed under my skin for years, sometimes flowing, other times searing—leaving me like an exposed wire, dangerous to the touch. I knew what it was like to gather your pain and fold it neatly in hopes that someone else might hold it for a moment. People rarely could.

I told her no, it wasn't too much, I’d just fallen asleep. She responded so eagerly and so quickly that leaving her vulnerable messages unanswered felt cruel, but continuing to engage when I had no interest felt similarly unfair. I gave vague, non-committal answers and tried to let the conversation fade over the week before finally telling her, "I just don't think I'm comfortable with the idea of meeting."

In response, she sent her address.

Sitting in my office, the numbers and street name looked so foreign. Before my confusion faded, she sent real, genuine photos, her pleasant face clearly visible, along with a short reply. A few words to let me know she understood why it would feel strange or unsafe, but she was interested in me. I had her address—I could use it if I cared to. 

It felt so strange, a type of boldness most people abandon out of fear. I was intrigued.

I thought of being 16-years-old. I thought of that long, curved street and standing under a streetlight as Michael, who’d loved me since 8th grade, shouted at me, “What is wrong with you?” He’d been so angry, his voice echoing through the suburb, his knuckles white as vodka sloshed around my empty stomach and I fought the desire to vomit on the hard black tops of my shoes. His eyes were frenzied—all agitation and craving. I looked at him and knew I was supposed to want him to kiss me but it made stomach turn; it made my skin itch. He was drunk and I was petulant, so he dug his thumbs into my hips hard, my skin bruising under his fingertips near my backside. I shoved him even harder.

Despite his frustration, I believed Michael was a good guy. He was so often gentle with me. He walked me home from school and was polite to my parents, he left poetry in my locker and broke up with two different girls when he thought I might like him. He wanted me, and I supposed I should want him too, and I hated the way it made me feel. On that street, under the streetlight, I knew I'd never love a man and I felt no more confusion about it. 

I grew into a community of queerness before most of my peers. My experiences with women had been less than bold, less than passionate. At 20, I couldn’t recall a woman explicitly or soberly stating, with any amount of confidence, that they were interested in me. Most moments happened in dark, shadowed corners late at night, crowded by shyness, hesitation, and doubt. Anyone I'd been with, I'd pursued by offering an endless stream of reassurance, slowness and gentleness.

Her shamelessness was exciting. The idea that she might want me, soberly, for herself, excited me.

But I didn't reply to those messages.

Days later, Matt and I cooked dinner as I read the details of our exchange.

"She just… gave you her address?" He asked in disbelief. 

"Yeah."

"To show up anytime?"

"Presumably."

"Well, now you have to.”

"I'm not doing that."

We spent the evening arguing about it. I was certain it only fascinated him because he was a man, and most women are not readily sending their addresses to men. He insisted it wasn't that. He just needed to know what this was all about. We drank small glasses of whiskey and discussed all the potential why’s and how’s. As the minutes dragged on, the liquor worked through my limbs. I felt warm and curious. Suddenly, it didn't feel like a weird meeting with a woman from a dating app. It felt like investigative research, a plot we had to complete.

I texted her.

She was quick to reply. Her evening was open and I could come by anytime.

I let the rest of the whiskey burn down my throat, "If you don't take me now, I'm never fucking going."

We crept along the street slowly. Her "house" was actually a large, looming downtown high-rise, and the idea of setting foot inside felt like stepping into a maze you may never find the end of. Matt and I looked at each other for a long while. He didn't look so thrilled anymore.

"You should have her meet you out here."

So, I texted her and told her I wasn't sure how to access her suite, instead could she meet me outside.

She asked if I'd like to take a walk. 

Matt parked across the street, and I stood outside on that warm summer evening, waiting.

When she opened the door, I almost laughed. Charlotte was tiny, a few inches shorter than me, incredibly thin. If somehow things went south, I would be just fine.

She greeted me excitedly, rushing to throw an arm around me. Whether from time or from nerves, the rest is a blur. We crossed the street into a park, and I watched Matt's SUV disappear down the road.

She talked and talked, hands tangled with the leashes of her two dogs. She shifted between looking at me intently and staring forward for long stretches. I told her about my job, maybe a bit about my life, and she started a story about her brother. It was a long and winding tale halted by two girls asking to pet the dogs. 

When they finally looked up from where they were crouched, I realized they were about my age. We all fell silent, looking at each other before nodding politely as they pivoted past us.

“Do you wonder who they thought we were to each other?" Charlotte asked, though it didn’t seem to matter if I answered. The intrigue laced through her words as she looked back at them made my eye twitch. I didn’t wonder.

When we rounded the corner and found ourselves in front of her building, she was in the midst of a story.

“Why don't you come up?" She asked, "I'd love to be able to tell you the rest of my story."

So, I did.

Her apartment was nice. Clearly, she lived alone like she'd said and was a doctor like she'd said. It was simple but comfortable. I noticed the lit candles.

We sat on the couch and talked for a long time. I couldn’t help glancing at the clock, all too aware that I had to work early in the morning. But it felt nice to talk to someone who wanted to know what I had to say, who asked questions and listened when I answered.

"I should get going." I finally said.

She stalled. Her eyes darted around for a moment until she stood from where she sat across from me and strode over resolutely. Her knees ended up on either side of my thighs, she hovered in my lap and whispered something in my ear that I couldn't quite understand before she settled her mouth over mine, hard and smothering.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to kiss me—I’d expected her to. But there was no real excitement. No need had built inside me, no desire burned, no interest poked at me. It was fine, if not a little forced and a little rough, like a kiss meant for a different night, perhaps a different mood or a different person. 

She grabbed my hand and asked me to follow while she led me down the hall. We turned into a room with tens of small tea lights lit. In the centre of the bed was a selection of sex toys, ranging in size and colour.

We hadn't spoken explicitly. I hadn't communicated any desires nor boundaries. The items seemed to leer at me, some unfamiliar and sort of unpleasant looking.

"I can't," I said quickly, "I have a yeast infection." It was a lie, I didn't. But I hadn't yet learned that "no" was a complete sentence. 

"That's fine," she said, pushing me toward the bed anyway.

She didn’t attempt to move the toys, grinding herself into me as hard plastics and silicones slipped toward the centre of the bed, under my back, my hips, my hands. Odd angles nudged and prodded into my skin and bones as she moaned. Between her pulling at my hair and clutching at my hip, I wondered how expensive the cab would be. 

It ended quickly, clothed and unsatisfying. She called me a cab, and I went home.

We didn't speak soon after.

A few weeks later, drunk at a bar down the street from her apartment, I texted her. I’ve spent a lot of time asking myself why. But sometimes, we make a choice simply because we can. I didn't know what it felt like to be wanted; I just knew I didn't want to miss the chance.

Around 3 am, she let me in, and I spent the night for the first time.

Every few weeks, usually on a Saturday night, she’d wait up for me. I'd wander over after a long night of drinking and dancing. She was always sober.

A few times, she invited me just to hang out, watch a movie or eat dinner together. So, I did. Charlotte and I were completely mismatched. In fact, worse than mismatched—we were diametrically opposed. We never would've dated, and we would've been awful friends. But she was an interesting person, confusing and a little erratic, but mostly nice and, from what I could tell, intensely lonely. Spending time with her required nearly nothing from me.

One evening, she invited me over. I let myself in like she'd asked me to, and I heard her on the phone in another room—"She's here," she said.

My stomach dropped as it would if you heard your name being whispered around a corner. Charlotte and I were not involved in each others daily lives. We never texted for conversation, only to make plans, we never saw each other before 8 pm, and never once met outside of her apartment. She was never going to tell people in her life that she was interested in women, and I wasn't going to grow feelings for her. It just was what it was—a fine arrangement.

But the way she said "she"… to someone, somewhere. I was the she—someone worth mentioning.

"Who was that?" I asked when she emerged from her bedroom. She said his name so casually, like I'd heard it tens of times.

"Who?"

“David." She said again, nearly shrugging.

“Who's David?"

"My boyfriend."

"What?" There was no perceivable bottom to how far my stomach fell.

We'd been sleeping together for weeks, maybe months. She'd never mentioned a boyfriend, let alone ever seemed to see or speak to one. My mind began to turn, reminded of everything I'd ever read about informed consent in non-monogamy. How could she not tell me?

“You know I'm non-monogamous.”

It escalated quickly; confusion became raised voices as she shrugged and waved her hands—a casual dismissiveness. David lived across the country, she said. They hadn't seen each other in nearly a year, she said. 

“But he knows who I am?"

“Yeah, of course."

“He knows me, but I don't know him?"

“I was already with him when I met you."

“Has he seen photos of me?”

She looked suddenly nervous. Because we both knew the kinds of photos she had. The kind a 20-year-old sends from the bathroom at a club to someone they want to want them. “Yes,” she said.

"Photos that I've sent you?"

"Some." 

I felt sick.

"You're not allowed to share my fucking photos with random men, Charlotte. That's not for them. I'm not for them.”

And you don’t understand, I wanted to say. I didn’t even get a chance to decide how I felt, Charlotte. You didn’t let me.

He was there, before I even knew he existed. In her bed, in her phone, in the way she casually dropped his name into my life, like it had always been there—except it hadn’t. He had been thinking about me, existing inside our relationship, and I never had a say. I never even knew to give one.

Another decision made for me about how my body would be used, offered up to a man I’d never met without a word of permission. I felt myself slipping into that suffocating space—discovering I’d been handed over without choice—just a thing to be consumed without my consent, without thought, without a single moment to ask me how I felt about it. And that sick, familiar feeling took root in my belly, my power taken by someone who thought I didn’t deserve to keep it.

Of course, I said none of those things because Charlotte barely knew me, and I didn’t want her to.

She seemed pissed, insulted even, that I would think of this man as exactly what he was to me—a stranger.

I was violated and humiliated, and she was so casual. She spun every conversation we'd ever had about non-monogamy until it was a great mass of unrecognizable contradiction. She wanted me to believe I was wrong, that I'd misunderstood what she'd told me and conversations we'd had, that she'd been honest in the ways she believed she was expected to be, and if I wasn't comfortable with that, then I was the one who'd been dishonest with her. 

The problem wasn't what she'd done, of course. The problem was that I wasn't ok with it. 

I didn't see her for weeks. She reached out often over text, trying to call, leaving voicemails explaining in several different ways what their dynamic was, that they never saw each other, that I'd consumed more of her life than him recently, and that it didn't matter. I mattered, she said.

When I did see her again, I was so angry. I drove daringly, took the elevator with knots in my stomach, wondering why I was there when I wanted to be left alone. I wanted her to stop. I crossed my arms in her hallway and asked “Why?” Why did you do it, why did you lie, why do you have to see me again? Why. She didn't have much of an answer, busying herself with wiping counters and putting dishes away. I pulled a small joint from my bag. 

"Can I step outside and smoke this?" I asked. She nodded without hesitation.

When I returned, head a little swimmy, nerves calmed, she had her back to me, furiously wiping at a spot on the counter. She seemed to be buzzing with anger.

“What's wrong?"

She spun quickly, the cloth wiping and cracking loudly. She couldn't believe I would do that, that I would smoke weed so casually around her, a sober person.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with the absurdity of these two people, me and her, staring at each other. How did we look? Like a young, stoned, blonde woman and a perpetually indignant and resentful brunette hurdling toward middle age. Absurd.

She was so angry with me, and I had nothing left. I was 20 and unsophisticated, not someone who understood the tricky nuances of intimate relationships. I didn't know how commonly people could become passive or aggressive or both when they feel unseen or disrespected. I didn’t know that sometimes, when people lack the right words, they search desperately for other ways to get what they need.

I didn't know any of this. I knew what I knew, which wasn't much.

I didn't have the language then. Lightly stoned, I let her yell at me. I let her be angry. I let her cry, this bundle of wild anger exploding outward, as I rubbed the skin of my stomach under my black t-shirt. When she eventually spit out the truth, I felt so foolish for not having seen it.

David wasn't her boyfriend. David was a man with a pregnant wife and two kids who lived on the other side of the country. Charlotte was a woman he slept with once a year if he could, and only ever spoke to on the phone often enough to keep her coming back.

The woman who had any influence over me, the woman who made me feel so small, suddenly melted away. Instead, a red-faced, childishly furious stranger stood in front of me. She looked so pathetic, I almost felt bad for her. 

“This isn't non-monogamy, Charlotte. You're not in a relationship. You're having an affair.”

“He's going to leave her after the new baby.”

I wanted to laugh nearly as badly as I wanted to vomit. It was all so fucking cliche.

I was humiliated by how little I'd seen. How little I knew the person I'd let have me over and over. I was just the intimacy placeholder, an inconsequential person to spend time with in between rendezvous'. I wasn't threatening to David like a man might be, in fact, I was a fun utility—something to whisper about in the closet or in his office. And I hadn't been concerned or invested enough to demand answers from her. Convenient, I certainly was.

I left, and I never saw her again.

A few weeks later, she sent me a message that, at first, I thought might be for another person. It was intimate, personal, and affectionate in a way we didn’t share. It was as if she was jumping in mid-conversation. I didn't reply. Instead, I checked social media and found that she was in David’s city. I could imagine her sitting next to him, hoping to get something, anything, from the woman she got to share photos of and purr about late at night when he found time.

I deleted every trace of her.

There are dynamics in which age is incidental, and then there are dynamics where it is imperative. Charlotte needed a willing and malleable person who wasn't going to ask too many questions, someone who didn't know better. For that, I wanted to blame her. But it didn't feel so simple.

I've never doubted that Charlotte should have been better—I've doubted that human fallacy has an age limit. I've doubted that sad, broken people trying to get what they want in this world, trying to know exactly what it is to be loved, have the strength to look past a grey area that lies in the way of that.

“She should’ve known better.” We know we're not supposed to speed. We shouldn't illegally download music or litter. We take vows, and still, in a quarter of all marriages, someone will have an affair. The question is never whether or not something is right or wrong. It's never about if we "knew better." It's about how we justify it regardless.

The difficult realization was not that I'd been used, but that I'd be remembered as an insignificant detail in a story that was never about me. If you forced Charlotte into some semblance of accountability or to take ownership of who she'd hurt, it wouldn't be me. It would be him. I didn’t matter. I wasn't a full, real person. I was a means to an end. If I happened to get hurt along the way, then I was just an unfortunate casualty in her blind spot. Her eyes were firmly fixed elsewhere.

She called me two years later.

I was standing in a bathroom, visiting a friend miles and hours away, putting on lipstick. Music filled the house, people were laughing in the next room, someone had just poured a gin for me. I was genuinely happy. Her name on my screen was so shocking, I cackled out loud. 

 "Hey!" She said enthusiastically.

"Yeah?"

"I have a friend in town who really wants to go dancing. I never know what the cool places are anymore, so I thought I'd call one of the hippest people I know."

Flat and uncaring, I named a place or two.

"Great, thank you!" There was a pause, her voice lowered. "Maybe we could get dinner sometime soon?"

"No, Charlotte."

I hung up.