It was an exciting romance, at least the idea of it was. He was my Lecturer at university, and I his student. I always had a fantasy of being with a professor, and in my last semester of my 2nd year of university the fantasy came true. All semester long I sat in his classroom with my jaw proverbially dropped as he spoke my mind out loud in a room full of attentive pupils. He was captivating, knowledgeable, and whenever he turned the lights down to show a video his eyes fixated on me and didn’t move.
I barely spoke in his class but I knew that at the end of the semester I had to give him my number. My attraction to him was strong, and I needed to learn more about him. So after classes ended but before the final project was due I went to his office hours. I knocked on his office door and when it was opened I found him standing in the middle of the room conducting a meeting with other professors in attendance. I fumbled on my words a little bit but managed to squeeze out a shy “I was looking for you”. He said to me in a cool tone I’ll never forget “just give me five minutes,” and then the door was shut and I was on the other side of it.
I waited for roughly 20 minutes before deciding that was too long to wait to give someone your number and knocked on the door again. By this point only one of the other professors remained and I asked him when his next office hours were so I could come back. He invited me in as he finished the meeting, then the other professor left and we were alone.
Later he would tell me that was the first time he was in his office with a female student with the door shut, he had a policy of not being alone with female students. I told him I had a few questions and proceeded to ask my first question about the final project. Then when that was out-of-the-way I said, “Now the next question is not school related…I was wondering if you’re seeing someone.” He paused, let out a big “wow” and then I proceeded to say “I know, I don’t normally do this but so many of the things you say in class are so in line with the way I think and I was wondering if you wanted to grab a cup of coffee or do something some time.”
We both sat there, kind of shell-shocked, and with my nerves jumping I managed to say “How about this. Why don’t I write down my number on this paper and when you’re officially not my teacher you can give me a call.” He said “alright” and I shakily wrote down my number, saying “I’m not sure if I can even make this out”…He replied “That looks like it says…” and read my number back to me to confirm that he had the right one. I said “yup” and he said “okay. Let me know if you have any other questions about the final project” and within seconds I was back on the other side of the door on my way to finish the assignment.
About a week after I received a text message from an unknown number, claiming it was him and asking if I was still down to do something. I responded yes, and a couple of phone calls and text messages later and he invited me for “a smoke” by the water at a certain resort in Entebbe. I was surprised to learn that a smoke was of marijuana and not a cigarette but I was intrigued all the same. At that point I wasn’t a big smoker, but I occasionally dabbled in weed here and there. We went for a smoke which lasted about three hours, mostly consisting of him talking my ear off the entire time, and ended the night at his Ntinda apartment.
At this point I was on the fence about whether or not to see him again, but sure enough we ended up back together the next night. This time going for a drink and a long walk to his place again. We stopped to kiss on our way back , several times along the way and finally, lastly, in front of his apartment. At this point I was all in, I had been pining for him for months from the seat of the lecture hall and now my dream was finally coming true.
The next morning he invited me over to hang out and excitedly I got out of bed, put on Drake’s “Find Your Love” and got dressed. I still remember what I was wearing, a light grey striped crop top with a pair of baggy white sweatpants. I showed up at his place excited at the prospect of pursuing a romance with this man I found so intriguing and similar to me in so many ways. We ended up in his bed, my clothes eventually off and engaged in what was up-to-that-point the most charged sexual experience of my life. I remember thinking as he kissed down my torso “what have I done to deserve this” thinking I was the luckiest girl in the world.
Everywhere I wanted him to touch he touched, everywhere I wanted for him to kiss, he kissed. Then it all changed. I was prepared to engage in sexual acts, but not the act of sex itself. I wasn’t ready. I really liked this guy, and wanted for it to work out and knew that waiting for sex was the best course of action, so I said no when he wanted to take things further. But that didn’t stop him. In the blink of an eye everything changed as he overpowered me and thrust himself inside me, having sex with me against my will. I remember feeling slightly embarrassed as he used my body as a play toy, and when he finished I said to him “you know that wasn’t consensual, right?” to which he responded “sometimes no means yes”. I then said “I think I’ve heard that in a courtroom before”. And that was it.
I’d like to tell you that the next thing I did was going to a police station and report the incident. I’d like to tell you that I walked out of his apartment that instant and never saw him again. But I didn’t. That’s not my story. I proceeded to go downstairs and pick up a coffee for him at the Javas and go back upstairs to spend more time with my rapist. You see, even though I’m a bright intelligent woman, and even though I’m quite strong, I deleted the whole incident from my memory. I don’t know why and I don’t know how but after our brief post forced coital conversation, I literally forgot the whole thing had occurred. Chalk it up to an incredible degree of shock, or call it whatever you want.
We had a long drawn out on and off relationship after that point. He never raped me again, but the threat of it must have always been there. I fell for him, hard. I’d call it love, but I know that love doesn’t do that. I know that love doesn’t rape. We had an intense mental connection, it both intrigued me and scared me from day one, but I had never experienced that sort of connection with someone before and I always wanted more. For long I let him string me along, giving me very little until finally, somehow the relationship came to an end. To quote Beyoncé, “thank God I found the good in goodbye.”
Many months later I have struggled with getting over this man who so brutally mistreated me from day one. It has shown me the incredible intricacies when it comes to matters of the heart and just how far we can push ourselves to pursue a romance even when that romance is so blatantly wrong for us from the start.
…as narrated by a UCU finalist that preferred anonymity
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