You never need to run a train on a girl, but if you do, here’s what you should know.

You are running your fake manhood out of that room.

You will end up running from dark secrets that took place between one woman and more men.

You’ve birthed a sex creature of a single body representing many minds.

You’re no longer a man and a man and a woman and a man. You’re a squid of unspecific genders.

You embarked on that quest for the approval of men, and the woman understood that.

In college, I had one such night. Raheem has to be the protagonist because Raheem would holler at any woman south of Atlanta and north of the Carolinas. He was no student, but had enrolled at the school of ‘pussy ain’t got no face,’ which was his way of promoting body positivity. Or the most pathetic sexual discretion in history.

Raheem prowled the AUC strip, the walkway between Spelman, Morehouse, Clark Atlanta and Morris Brown, showing us omnivores what an apex predator looked like. He was an impish 5 ‘3, belly stout, with an old man’s laugh lines, and a boy’s smooth, boastful shell. The only quiet thing about him was the blunt behind his ear. Long white tees, charcoal denims, and Jordans made his silhouette. His uniform was Brooklyn construction and a puckish grin whitened all his boxy Nikes. We were dawdling on the strip one day and saw him.

“AYO! YERR!” and he dropped out of thin air.

“I got this fire dark-skinned joint. Y’all gon’ LOVE her. She be whipping me around Atlanta in the gray Mustang, nigga, the fuck you thought,” Raheem said and he meant it. She scooped him up in that gray Mustang a few minutes later and he hollered out of the passenger seat when he caught us roaming Peachtree.

He was the single most confident homeless man I had met.

How he ended up homeless I never fully understood.

Our friend Lee, Raheem and his boys were living in a house in Decatur, but then some other Brooklyn heads came down South and squatted them out of their four-bedroom house. The invaders moved their clothing, furniture, and baby mothers into the space without paying rent or bills. They also ate all the food and started stealing belongings, like Spank’s guns and Steve’s sneakers and throwback jerseys. Spank attempted to get his gun back from one of them with his other gun, the one he kept on him. They all used to be friends.

At the barbershop down the block from The Strip, Spank ran up on an accused thief and let off four shots, Raheem said. The man he shot survived but was in critical condition for weeks. Three of the original renters left the house rather than stay and become accessories to the shooting. They shacked up with my college friends who had a two-bedroom apartment, now with 5 young men in it.

Raheem loved two things: Brooklyn and hoes. If we were going to get groceries for the sparse fridge, Raheem would say: “It’s some hoes at the Kroger, son. Y’all better not come back dry.”

Or if we were about to take a walk to Little Five Points “You seen that ho selling keychains at the stand? She fuck with me heavy, I’ma bag that, watch...”

And on our approaches “Drew, that’s why you don’t get no hoes, son! You be walking around scary and shit. Go talk to the bitches, man!” I could not oblige.

On a Saturday night, as I sat on the couch with my freshmen year friends, playing video games and fantasizing about hoes I didn’t have, Rah dialed my friend G on the Nextel chirp.

“Yo, G, who at the crib, yo?”

“Wassup, Rah, bruh. It’s me, Drew, Sosa, and Fitz.”

“Your brother there? I need the room. We bout to jump this bitch off.”

“For real? Nah, he ain’t here; he at the club. Wait, jump who off?”

“Y’all boys ready for a night? Whoooooooo. I told y’all we was gon’ do it. Told y’all!” Rah was elated and I could almost hear his heart pumping.

Later, he brought in his date, as the chilly light from the T.V. washed over our faces and each glanced upward. She was onyx-colored with long micro-braids and a sweet, small voice. She wore a dress and knee-high patent leather boots. He swept her into the bedroom and we waved dumbstruck.

He whispered to her as we leaned on the frosted glass door. We couldn’t make out words but their shadows showed them seated bedside. He was convincing her, it seemed, and she’d also decided. Those two realities hovered, the implied future and the haunting present. I wasn’t privy to her past.

“Aight listen, y’all. No funny shit. I’ma go in there, do my little thing-thing. Don’t come in there while I’m fucking the bitch. You hear me, Fitz?” He looked directly at my eager friend.

“What you lookin’ at me for, bro?” Fitz asked exasperated.

“Cuz I know you be hype. Anyway, don’t do that shit. When I crack the door, that’s when y’all gon come in.”

For like 20 minutes, we heard the room bounce to their grunts and whimpers. We kept getting up to check near the door but ran away after the squeaks stopped. Like a hardcore round of musical chairs. We only had to avoid spilling into the room. But curiosity controlled us like a haint, the spirit following our brains into a hole.

Porn was so sadly essential to our consumption. My fantasy life looked like a West Coast Productions title, bikini bubble butts and pool party pricks. It seemed reasonable and possible that pockets of young Black women were sunk behind a veil of wanting, indulging taboos with special men. Every DVD we played invited us to dream of scenes where our organs were designed for an endless pleasure carousel with women at each stop who craved more. More of what we weren’t sure. We just had to be ready.

This is not to say that it’s impossible for a woman to want exactly this fantasy. I have been in scenes like it, orchestrated with chaperones offering water and check-ins. I’ve also been in adult clubs where these moments unfolded like moths, never skipping a beat. But this wasn’t that. Without the acquired etiquette, we were frozen in our low tops, hoping Rah would give the green light.

“Yo Fitz. Come in here real quick.” The shadows grabbed Fitz into another phase of adulthood, I thought. But then, I didn’t know how his life may have set the stage for this. Just like he couldn’t have known I was in a failed threesome in high school.

He pulled off his 4X white tee and stood there. Rah examined him and exclaimed over Fitz’s body. “You a big boy! What the fuck Fitz, how you ain’t tell niggas you a monster? Fuck outta here, this nigga Fitz yo.”

We laughed from outside at Rah’s first words we’d heard in a while. I was nervous. What had Fitz done in his reveal but put more pressure on everyone to be fuller and manlier? As Rah kissed her, Fitz went into the ensuite bathroom to wash up. Then he approached the bed.

She engaged, looking first at Rah and then at dopey Fitz who was getting closer to her open mouth. Through the cracked door, I heard my friend moan and the smack and pucker of nighttime kisses. I remained enthralled, Sosa and G behind me, stupefied but expectant. I could not tell if they were as anxious as I was. We barely spoke.

Fitz was first. Rah left with his white tee draped over his naked lower half as he hopped around the living room, excited we had joined his free-for-all.

“Nah G, I ain’t even gotta tell you nothing. Drew, you looking real sus right now, bro, you good? Sosa, you might be the silent killer in there, ha. You might sing a bitch panties off.”

He was coaching us on how to see his lover through him. I didn’t recognize this as homoerotic until later. His fervent need to establish leadership. His prodding at our masculinity, our readiness, it was how his desires played out. A power kink. Rah was from a region of New York toughs where lion-eat-jungle rules could define you sexually as either weak and unworthy or promising and take-charge. But he clearly wanted our affections and our approval too.

I feel awful for not remembering her name but his date seemed to dote on him. She wanted to make him happier than the veneer of aggravation he sometimes wore. He was small but spoke like a billboard.

Each of us went into the room for a turn. Fitz brandished a manic grin before letting G into the room. G was warning Sosa not to wait up, pre-bragging. G’s body was most similar to Rah’s, which I thought would gain him favor. The bed bounced and bounced. The breaths uttered a language of compliance. I was up last.

I’m reflecting on this experience 25 years later because the cultural conversation is, at once, on time and too late. Although it doesn’t feel like we forced her, although I never sensed that any ‘yes’ she gave was under duress, although there’s a strange, difficult compulsion in me to seem good, I know running a train never had to happen.

We never had to make ourselves known to her and each other as the single, unblinking sex creature. We never had to cede to Raheem that he was the lion, bringing back his kill, and we were the cubs. We never even had to cede to her fantasy, one I’m guessing looked different in the flesh than it did in her mind.

We did not know ‘fawning’ or ‘dissociating.’ We knew custom and power. We knew rank and hard-ons and virginity and lust. We did not own our “no” but rape didn’t happen this way, I thought. As it turns out, I hadn’t met enough women.

I thought rape happened in the stairwells of old buildings or the swallow of alleyways. Until I met her.

Then rape happened in the backseats of cars when the auto-lock clicked. Until I met her.

Then rape happened in the loamy taste of curbs after a poisoned drink. Until I met her.

Then rape happened in the sleepy twilight of a streaming app. Until I met her.

It happened to women, mostly, out loud and ignored. It happened to some men in silence. It happened around your boys and at the holiday party. Rape always happened. And no one seemed capable of stopping it.

As I walked into the room and disrobed, I saw her nude blue-black sliding around the mattress. I remember neither her words nor her tone. What’s your name, maybe, and then we’d go on to forget. I crawled between her legs, lapping at her thighs and holding her bottom. She was still as I tasted from the canyon of drying lube and faint latex. My hands were searching for myself, checking if I was still hard from curiosity. Enough to continue but I lingered there. I searched for moans until she came alive in my mouth, pressed more into my hands.

“Go get a condom. I ran out.”

I shuffled toward the living room door, where my friends were now dispersed, and asked for a rubber. It felt uncomfortable to slip it on and she applied more lube to me, then herself. Her arms found my back and butt and she pulled me until I lurched forward, belting out a groan.

The friends laughed outside. Had I been too forward? Did I express too much?

“Yeaaaa, get it Drew,” said Rah (or someone). I thrusted forward and down. She felt so good, especially with her nails tracing my backside. I may have lasted five minutes. I could count on a hand how many choppy strokes I managed before finishing. I laid on her. She twisted out from under me and it was done.

“Damn, you ate that bitch out?! Ewwww. What the fuck, Drew,” said Rah the next day, walking around Lenox Mall. I knew I wasn’t supposed to do anything unsanctioned. But what was allowed? We were in the realms of secret sex, the kind written about on back pages or staged in motels. Yet, I was flush and embarrassed that I had looked for her pleasure where they had been inside. I never told anyone about that innate urge to go where the others hadn’t. I wanted to transform us back into humans instead of the sex creature. Apparently, it was wrong and we had to run a train from a position of dominance, detachment, and a real dose of terror.

When I heard the Cornell story, I thought about the decency demanded of consent. But decent consent isn’t real. There are no qualifiers. You either have clear consent or you don’t. It’s the same distortion as the euphemisms “date rape” or “running trains.” I’d like to think we weren’t taking without asking that night, but I didn’t see each trip into that room. I don’t know what she felt.

I spend time now imagining what a partner feels, in their mind and body, in the moment and after. I dwell on the idea that it could’ve been a night of errant violence for her, or disappointments drenched in shame. But then I’ve made myself too important. A sexual life can be vast and simple. I wish no trauma on her in reflecting on a night that’s a bold chapter in my life. It could be a redacted page in hers.

When I started re-telling it to different listeners, they asked: How did you know what she wanted?

I didn’t. Writing has produced newfound fears by vaulting me into her body.

I started to see it from her eyes.

Those boys are strange and quiet and they look corny. They wear big jeans, hunched over. No one’s moving. Rah’s been talking about this for weeks. I’ve known him like a month. He cares about this too much, more than food. He’s always amped up. He says words like he has to empty his lungs. He could teach a class on girls; talking is his thing. I’m parked on the other side of the street so I will get my car and go home if I have to. We had some cheap wine. He likes that headache wine, I guess. He’s more of a smoker, I can taste it on him, like a little talking ashtray after a long day. I don’t know his boys. He says they go to Morehouse but they could be anybody. They have a look of “not knowing” that isn’t really a turn-on but not bad either. We are walking in the room and they’re staring, not moving. Shy does not mean soft, though. I like this dress I got last summer. This feels more like a 2004 dress, anyway. The little one is the one whose apartment it is. He didn’t even ask if I wanted water. My hands feel ashy as hell. I might not show anyone my knuckles. This apartment is cold with no pictures on the walls.

When I’m remaking her voice, as told through my memory, I haven’t found the right panic. I haven’t painted the true danger. Her anxiety is fresh and warm but not a threat. Her fears are distant. I haven’t tried to find her, and it’s been decades.

I once sat with a therapist who challenged me when I said, plainly, “I don’t know.” Try to know, he would say.

This story feels like me trying to know the limits of a train. Of group sex. Of boys becoming men and girls becoming women. Of straight sex. Of pornography. When there is no fairytale ending, I get stuck in the guilt of an incomplete recollection. I have tried to know and I still don’t.

I’m running around inside her memory, a woman I don’t know.

She’s my Jane Doe.