< Translator’s note: The original formatting of the stories has been preserved. The translations aim to remain as close as possible to each author's original wording and expression.
In my third year of studies at [the university], I missed many classes because of work. Usually, lecturers treated this neutrally, giving me barely passing grades. I was a fee-paying student, and expelling me was not profitable.
Only one of them stood out. He taught a non-core subject and was adored by other students. When I attended his classes for the first time, he gave me a contemptuous look and harshly criticized the work I brought him. The next time I showed up was before exams. For some reason, he behaved extremely friendly. He started actively explaining his subject, joking, and asking what my talent was. He invited me for a smoke and said he would definitely give me a top grade. He talked about how I urgently needed to quit my job and look for myself on a film set. He offered to find a director for my script and pitch a film together with me. He was well over 50; I was 19, soon to turn 20.
From time to time, he gave rides to female students who lived in the dorm. One of my acquaintances, for example. She always spoke of this lecturer as a cool person, someone fun to talk to during a smoke break. And she rode with him more than once. So I also decided to go with him.
He drove me around the city center for several hours, even though in reality it would have taken about ten minutes to get to the destination by car. He would constantly stop by for coffee or a smoke. He took me to a place like Puzata Khata and almost force-fed me at his expense. Overall, I didn’t mind the situation that much. At that time, I was happy even about the chance to save eight hryvnias on the metro, and here I was getting a free dinner and borrowing cigarettes from him.
And then, in the middle of an ordinary conversation about cinema and career, strange questions started to surface. For example, what I would do in case of pregnancy. And toward the end of dinner, he looked straight at me and asked whether I felt sexy. I got confused. I definitely did not expect such a question. I answered, trying to turn it into a joke, that I was very much my own type. At that moment, I became scared.
Then we left the place. Maybe I should have walked away already at the restaurant, but for some reason, that didn’t occur to me. I got back into his car.
He let me out where we had agreed. At the very end, he stopped the car and didn’t open the doors until he told me that when he has sex with a woman, his main goal is to make sure that the woman gets maximum pleasure.
I ran to the dorm at the speed of light. I decided that this strange old man was probably very lonely and didn’t want to sit in an empty apartment, so he fed small female students nonsense in exchange for three cigarettes and a bowl of borscht.
But the story didn’t end there. A few days later, the same acquaintance who had periodically ridden with him before ran into my dorm room. She took three big gulps of rum and said that this lecturer had offered to sleep with her. That acquaintance, by the way, was younger than me. She was about to turn 19.
I crossed paths with this lecturer again. He told me that I urgently needed to throw away my blue lipstick and emphasized that he wanted to get my script and help develop my career in cinema. And then COVID started, and I dropped out of university.
Almost five years have passed since this story. I often thought about this lecturer and his strange behavior. In particular, the fact that he first treated me harshly, and then, having far more reasons to be angry, staged the entire circus you’ve just read. In reality, the only thing that had changed about me at that point was my hairstyle. When we first met, I had shoulder-length pink hair. During our second meeting, I had already cut my hair into a red bob. The exact same hairstyle as my acquaintance, to whom he had offered to sleep with him.
And we had one more thing in common. In both of us, it was obvious that we really, really wanted to die, preferably right now. And, to be honest, neither of us was a crowd favorite.
Most likely, that was his formula. To look for vulnerable girls and slowly “work on” them. First, just ride around together, talk about different things, gradually gain trust. Feed them and offer support. And then make propositions.
And if anything happened, everything would have been by mutual consent. And if you didn’t like it, who would they believe: a lecturer adored by all students, or you, a strange girl barely holding on at that university?
A rhetorical question.
T., 24 years old; story shared in 2024 as part of the campaign “16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.”