Because we were all terrible clichés, we played a game of I Have Never. I hadn’t really done anything, ever. So I lied, unconvincingly. I’d had sex…at Wimbledon. In the Millennium Dome. I’d given a blow job in the gardens of Buckingham Palace! The more I drank, the madder my stories got. To be honest, it didn’t help that I knew London less well than Tyler and Russ. They started winding me up. ‘You think you’re so fancy, British. You’re a stuck-up bitch!’ said Tyler, laughing at me. ‘If she’s British and a bitch…she’s a BRITCH!’ Russ gasped. I remember Tyler looking at him approvingly, as though it was the cleverest thing he had ever said, and feeling strangely jealous. I wanted someone to look at me that way.

When Tyler started kissing me, I was confused, and a little disappointed. He was a bad kisser. He stabbed my mouth repeatedly, rapidly thrusting his tongue in and out of my mouth. I did what frustrated women have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years and attempted to use my own tongue to coax his to do something a little gentler. He pulled away for a moment and looked hurt. ‘What are you doing?’ he whined. As I searched for a polite answer, I felt my shorts sliding off my body. Russ’s hands were on the inside of my thighs. They felt surprisingly warm, solid. I felt his fingers tracing the outline of my underwear. Ohhhhhh.

For a long time, I’ve tried to make sense of what happened next, the bad decisions I made, and whether I really made any decisions at all. I wasn’t so drunk that I didn’t have any control. But I was drunk enough to be fully numb, floating away from myself. I wanted to do this. I wanted to not want to do it. I was scared. I was horny. I didn’t want to make the choice. I wasn’t fully present.

Tyler yanked down my vest top, and started kneading my breasts, hard, while carrying on with the terrible kissing. But with surprising subtlety, Russ seemed to be pulling my knickers down, agonisingly slowly. I could feel myself getting hotter and wetter. This had never happened to me before—certainly not with Neal, my ex. I moaned, unable to control myself, as Russ brushed me with his fingertips. Tyler took this as encouragement and squeezed my right nipple extra hard.