it wasn't rape, but it wasn't consensual either

i love being a woman except for the part where i know a man could kill me.

I feel compelled to preface the following story by saying that, while I’ve never forgotten about what happened, I’ve also never felt defined by it. I don’t consider myself a victim, I consider myself lucky in the way that so many other women who have been victimized by men they once trusted are not, and while what happened was definitively not okay, I’ve always felt, if not okay, than at least untethered by that night. TL;DR: Sometimes shitty things happen to you and you don’t feel shitty about them, you just learn from them.

It was 2013, and I had just graduated from college the year after Tinder burst onto the scene in all its’ tiny flame glory. My college boyfriend had recently dumped me, and while the prospect of having to meet someone in the real world might have intimidated me before, Tinder renewed my sense of hope that perhaps, I wouldn’t die alone after all.

So as it were, that September, I swiped right on Michael Gallagher, which of course, is not actually his name, but even though I can’t remember what I had for lunch two days ago, I’ll never forget his real name—some people are like that, they come into your life and split it into two halves: the life that existed before them and the life that exists after.

We went to Jack’s Wife Freda, and the only portion of the conversation I can remember twelve years later is the fact that he kept calling me a “Conshy girl” despite the fact that I’m not from Conshohocken, I’m from Malvern, but I guess that was close enough for him. I wouldn’t say there was an electric chemistry of any kind, but I was twenty-two and in that stage of life where being nice and borderline funny was enough for me to see where the night would lead…