He has me bent over the guardrail and he’s railing me from behind. I don’t know his name. Well, he told me his name but I forgot it seconds after he told me. The only thing I know about him is that he’s from Italy. He’s about 6’4, has dark hair and he’s attractive enough to be sleeping with after only an hour of drunk conversation. We’re on a two day ferry ride from Manila to Coron in the Philippines. The boat is huge. It holds hundreds of passengers and has plenty of bunk beds for all the passengers to sleep. I spent most of the boat ride drinking too much rum and chasing it down with cheap beer.

There is karaoke on the deck at night. There were so many amazing Philipino singers. They were almost as good, if not better, than the professionals. My group of friends and I sat on the deck watching the singers and playing drinking games while the sun set behind us. We were definitely the most rowdy group on the boat. Other backpackers kept coming up to us and joining in on all the fun. We all flirted and laughed until our faces were numb. My good friend Parker, who I had been traveling with for weeks before, was my closest companion on the ferry. He and I always got into a lot of trouble together. We both liked to drink too much which led to poor life decisions and risky behavior.

Parker and I ended up meeting a nice dutch girl who was also into partying too hard. We all ended up fooling around on one of our bunk beds. It was difficult trying to be intimate with three people on a top bunk surrounded by tons of other people. There was an attractive dark haired guy a few beds over watching us. I kept winking at him. I was playing the lusty traveler who liked to get in all sorts of promiscuous situations. I played the part well. During mid hookup, the dutch girl gets a little emotional and starts crying. I’m trying to console her when a security guard appears out of nowhere and starts yelling at us in Philipino. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying. He’s pulling each of us off the bed and pointing in different directions. I’m guessing he wants us to go to our own beds and stop messing around. I couldn’t help but thank him for breaking up the party because my buzz was starting to wear off and needed to replenish. We pulled ourselves together and went back to our friends on the deck who were still playing drinking games and singing karaoke.

I noticed the attractive dark haired guy, who I was winking at earlier, was now on the deck a few feet away from my friends and I. I wave at him to come over to us. He introduces himself to everyone, but everyone is so drunk they don’t even notice someone new has joined the group. Him and I make small talk. He’s from Italy and he’s traveling on holiday. Not even an hour later, Mr. Italy and I are walking around the ferry trying to find a private place for us to “get to know each other better”. We find some stairs leading towards the bottom of the ship. There is a little chain prohibiting anyone from using the staircase. We ignored the chain and snickered our way down the stairs like two horny teenagers. We have a private balcony all to ourselves. I can hear the water crashing along side the boat and I can feel mist spraying up at us. We’re in the middle of the West Philipine Sea with no light pollution so you can see every star. It’s so romantic I can hardly contain myself. I grab his face and pull him close until our lips touch. He is an amazing kisser. Rough, but sensual. We’re grabbing onto each other like we’ve only known each other for an hour and we may never see each other again. Without saying a word he turns me around and pulls down my pants. We’re now back at the beginning of my story.

I’m bent over the railing and looking out at the horizon. The moon is almost full. It’s huge. I can hardly believe what I’m seeing. What feels like not even a minute later, he’s done and I’m confused. “Did you just cum in me?” I ask Mr. Italy. No answer. I turn around and notice his eyes are wide and he looks guilty. “Why the fuck would you cum in me?!” “I don’t know!” he shrieks. I slap him across the face with my pants still down around my ankles. “Why the fuck didn’t I use a condom? What was I thinking? Holy shit, I’m in the middle of god knows where with no Plan B.” He starts apologizing profusely. He went on to say that he was so excited that he couldn't control himself. Wow. Great. Just fucking great. I roll my eyes, pull up my pants and run up the stairs to try and find Parker. We are still a day away from reaching land. Not only that, but I’m also not sure how contraception works in the Philippines. I don’t know how easy or hard it would be to get the morning after pill.

Yes I should’ve been using condoms and should maybe be on some sort of birth control. I tried so many different kinds of birth control and every time I was an emotional roller coaster and the weight gain was unbearable. So I choose not to use birth control. Yes, I shouldn’t be having sex with total strangers in the middle of nowhere not even remembering their name. Yes, I know. But at this point in my life, I didn’t care. I was careless and reckless. I was trying to feel something, anything, but nothing was working anymore. There was no amount of alcohol or drugs that could give me the high I so craved. Sex was loosing its magic. I had to keep trying new things with new people because nothing felt exciting anymore. So the riskier and riskier the sex became.

After you’ve been sexually assaulted, sometimes you avoid sexual activity and isolate your sexual self or you do the opposite, which is what I did. I became more sexually active than ever. I felt like I was trying to gain some sort of control over what had happened to me all those years ago. I tried to be in control of the sexual encounters I was having by making the first move and I would try to be the more dominant person in the hookup. However, I would just recreate the trauma all over again. I would be so intoxicated I’d hardly remember the interaction or the person wouldn’t listen to what I wanted and they’d proceed to only satisfy themselves. Most of the time I was left feeling empty and used. The very thing I was trying to run from.

So here I am, in another sticky situation. No pun intended. I find Parker and I collapse into his arms and start crying. I told him what happened and he assured me that as soon as we reach our destination we will find a pharmacy and get the morning after pill. Parker had a way of making me feel better almost instantly. His dutch accent was soothing to my ears. He’s an amazing human being. He’s my rock. My mind is racing a mile a minute. “I just want to get off this fucking boat.” I feel so far from anything. I feel so out of touch with reality. I start thinking about getting pregnant and having to go back home to get an abortion. I wonder what that would feel like and if I would be able to go through with it. I grab a random bottle of rum off the table and take a huge gulp. “Maybe I can drink away the pregnancy?” Just then I see Mr. Italy walking out onto the deck. I can tell he’s looking for me. “Oh hell no, that mother fucker better stay away from me!” He makes his way over to us and is trying to apologize to me and asking if there is anything he can do. Parker tells him I’ll be okay and to leave me alone. Just then a girl walks up to Mr. Italy and taps him on the shoulder. He turns around and she gives him a kiss on the lips. She introduces herself as his girlfriend. My mouth dropped. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I try to smile at her. I take another gulp of rum trying to hold back my tears. They are making small talk with some of the other people at the table. Parker keeps telling me it’s going to be okay and to relax. I’m so upset that I slept with this stranger and now come to find out he has a girlfriend on the boat. “What is going on? This is another level of fucked up.” She seemed really nice and a bit confused by how I was acting. Mr. Italy said his girlfriend wasn’t feeling well so they said their goodbyes and went back inside the cabin. “Why couldn’t I have just kept my fucking legs closed for once?”

The rest of the ferry ride was a blur. I didn’t see Mr. Italy or his girlfriend for the rest of the trip, thankfully. I’m sure he was avoiding me like the plague. I woke up feeling hungover and dehydrated. I almost forgot what had happened the night before. We are ushered off the boat like cattle and thrown into another town we are not familiar with. “First things first, let’s try and find you the morning after pill,” Parker says calmly. “Thank god for him.” We found a pharmacy close by. We ask the pharmacist if they have the morning after pill and she says, “We don’t carry the morning after pill. We have birth control but here in the Philippines we do not have the morning after pill.” My heart sank. “Wait so nowhere in the Philippines can we find the morning after pill?” trying to make sure I heard her correctly. “That is correct,” she responds. I look at Parker, “What the hell am I going to do?”

I’m pacing back and forth smoking a cigarette while Parker is fiddling on his phone trying to figure out what to do next. I start to wonder what motherhood would feel like. I imagine a little human growing inside me. I can’t even remember what the guy looked like. I couldn’t wrap my head around what happened. Why did I fuck him? Why would he have sex with me when his girlfriend was on the boat too? Fuck. That’s just crazy. I wish I had the strength to tell her what happened so she could know who she was dating. But at the time I didn’t think it was a good idea. I felt like it was none of my business. It isn’t really. My only job now is to try and figure out what to do with his cum sitting inside my cervix.

Parker walks over to me snapping me out of my day dream. “Okay this is what you have to do. We’re going to buy birth control and you’re just going to take a few of them at once. It’ll act like the morning after pill.” “That’s it?” I reply. “Yup,” Parker nods. So that’s what I did. I took a few pills at once and I got my period a few days later. We continue on with our trip as planned. I did not have to go back to the states and get an abortion. I did not have to face any real consequences for my actions. I want to say that this experience changed me. I want to say I was much more careful with my next partners. I was, sort of. I still went absolutely crazy and partied until my pants came off. I still did everything and anything my drunk self wanted. Luckily I made it out STD and pregnancy free during my few months of traveling Southeast Asia. I’m amazed to be honest. The pregnancy thing did happen shortly after. But it happened in my hometown. In a way my experience with Mr. Italy planted a seed, no pun intended, in my mind about what it would be like to get pregnant. I had never thought about having kids before. But this experience made me start to think about it. It was never more real than it was that night, looking out over the horizon at the endless sea with some random guy fucking me from behind. You never know what experience is going to leave a lasting impression. Mr. Italy showed me a part of myself that I had never really seen before. I had always said I would get an abortion if I got pregnant. But the more I thought about it, the more difficult the decision became. It turned out it wasn’t such an easy question for me to answer. It turns out my body and my mind have two very different ideas. It’s the very thing that happened when I found out I was actually pregnant. I wanted it. My mind was saying no, but my body kept saying yes. It felt like I was hugging my insides and couldn’t let go. My body knew what it wanted. So thank you Mr. Italy, you gave me a nice practice run before the real thing. Wherever you are, I hope you know that you do not have a kid with that random girl on the ferry in the Philippines. I hope your girlfriend found someone new and hopefully you grew up a little, like I did.

I like reflecting on these stories because now I can look back at them and laugh a little. I was so lost and confused. I couldn’t figure out why I was so careless with my body. I craved control over sex and I was constantly wondering where I fit into the world. Losing my virginity set the tone for every experience after. Men just want one thing from me and they will do anything to take it. So why not just make it easy? I thought the only thing I had to offer anyone was my body. I felt dumb and uninteresting. Therapy has opened my eyes. I’m in shock. I can’t believe I never sat down and talked about any of this with anyone. I just kept it all inside. I accepted it as my reality. Now I’m learning what I really like, both sexually and in life in general. I’m figuring out that I’m super adventurous, voyeuristic, an exibitionist and a non-monogamy loving person. I’m also very sensitive, anxious, have a delicate ego and have a hard time sticking up for myself and asking for what I want. There are so many things I get to learn about myself now that I’m sober. It’s fucking hard not using things to numb and not care. It sucks having to give a shit. It’s fucking hard. But it beats feeling empty and lost inside. It beats being hung over everyday. I feel like I’m getting to know myself for the first time ever. I like getting to know me. I like taking the wheel and watching me fuck up and get back up again.

After we made it safely to Coron Palawan.