She drops her head onto my shoulder. Her long brown hair falls down my chest. I can smell the sourness of her throw-up breath. She suddenly starts crying.

“Why is life so freaking hard? I don’t understand.” She sobs.

“What’s wrong? I thought you were having a great time here.”

Her head suddenly bounces up off my shoulder. “Can I tell you something?” she says before burping in my face. “Oops, sorry.”

She starts whispering in my ear even though no one else is in the room. I am shocked by what she says.

“He didn’t mean to,” she says. “We were having a good time. He’s not a bad person. We were just caught up in the moment and I was so drunk. Even more drunk than right now.”

“Did he hear you when you said stop?” I ask. She nods and then stares ahead at the curtain covering the window.

“But I know he didn’t mean to. He’s a good guy.”

I’ve known many men who “didn’t mean to.” Men who are wolves with gnarling fangs and claws. They don’t look like wolves, though. They look like regular people. They go grocery shopping and play football with their friends after work. They smile as they pass you on the sidewalk. Some even go to church every Sunday morning, as if faith can neutralize their monstrosity. It can’t. It is always our bodies, and souls, that pay the price for their atrocities and all the ways they “didn’t mean to.” The man who raped my mother was a family member, trusted and respected. The one who raped her mother was a pastor, influential and kind. And the one who raped me was a prince, regal and popular. His name was Prince Mack and he was a known rapist in the neighborhood. No one did anything. So he was free to keep raping without consequence.

There is rarely any price to pay for taking the body of a woman. So I understand why Manda Panda needs to reframe him as “a good guy.” It’s so she can come to terms with the fact that even if she tells someone, it’s likely nothing will happen, especially to a white guy at an Ivy League school. And since she was drunk and wearing a very short dress, she “must have asked for it anyways.” So he will get to live a normal life, grocery shopping among us despite his monstrosity, while his victim, Manda Panda, must paper over it. Crochet it into the fabric of her memory and pray the threading holds for the long term.