“I obeyed and he started pulling himself and slapping it against my face. When he was really hard, he shoved it in my mouth, down my throat. I gagged. He wrapped his hands around my neck and pulsed his hips. His fingers slowly tightening like the tendrils of the morning glory. He hit the roof of my mouth and pierced my throat repeatedly as my nose was buried in the deep curls of his pubic hair. His hands continued to tighten dangerously around my throat, crushing my Adam’s apple. I lifted my eyes to see him tighten his chest and grit his teeth. He moaned and hot, thick liquid spilled into my mouth, pushed unwillingly down my throat by his shaft.

“Salty. Like little rivulets of sea water spilling down my face. I couldn’t breathe. He was filling my mouth and the morning glories squeezed my neck. I tried to inhale through my nose, buried against his groin. Salty. He pulled out and traced his cock across my cheek, leaving a smear of cum.

“‘Fuck you,’ I spit, still choking on his seed as I bolted out of the shed.”

THE LIGHT blue walls of my therapist’s office slowly resurface, and I am back. And I hate it. I feel violated all over again, but somehow, slightly—ever so slightly—better. My bloody, embarrassing, confusing mess is out sitting on the glass table between us and for the first time I can look at it as something separate from myself. It is not me. I am. And it is separate.

GRINDR

“I’

“I’LL HAVE an egg-white omelet and a side of sausage. And a beer, if you’ve got one.” James shut his menu and looked up expectantly at the diner waitress. She was pretty, in that east-side Vancouver kind of way. Nuts and berries, no makeup, likely lesbian. After all, the diner was on Commercial Drive.

“It’s nine,” she answered with a shrug, as if that was answer enough to his request.

“So do you have any?” he asked as he pushed the menu into her hands. “Can you just check in the back?”

She took the coffee-stained menu and mumbled something incoherent as she turned toward the kitchen. James watched her stick his order tag up on the cook’s window and nod her head in his direction with a contemptuous smile. Her boy jeans hung low on her hips as she leaned her elbows on the ledge under the heat lamps, which obviously weren’t producing too much heat. James leaned back in the booth and pulled his iPhone out from his hoodie pocket. He twirled it on the table a few times and looked out the window. It was a perfect Vancouver day. Sunny, warm, with blue skies, and Commercial Drive was bustling with summer shoppers.