Seshy | Vaccinated 😷 · @SeshEvy
16th Jul 2021 from TwitLonger
My experience with D1
I’m going to try to break this down and proactively answer as much as I can.
June 2020 and why not come out then or before then?
- I thought I was the only one
- I didn't feel like I needed to speak up since one victim was enough in 2020
I’m speaking out now because the 2020 June “smash me too movement” changed things about how we-and I-viewed some people. I hadn’t felt like there was a need for my experience to be know or that others were at risk before last summer. I am speaking right now because D1 has just made a statement that may lead to him returning to the “the scene”
I avoided doing this because I thought I was the only one.
After last year and finding out I was not a fluke, or alone in my experiences I was profoundly disappointed. It was heartbreaking to know that somebody I considered a friend could do that-who I had still considered a friend even after our own “twit longer” experience.
One victim miraculously was enough to have him remove himself from smash. I was on the edge of my seat with anxiety waiting for the push back but it never seemed to be enough to warrant my story being added to the fire. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tell the story. I don’t like to share bedroom stuff. I hate this. I’m mad this needs to be said but I feel the responsibility to speak out now.
Context leading up to the event:
- Friendship
- Friends with benefits
We were good friends for a while. I have been playing and going to tournaments for years and came back to the scene in 2013/2014. At some point when I was single, we were at E3 in 2016 and we had started a very casual “friends with benefits” situation. I know that I can’t omit this because it provides a lot of context, and could be twisted easily by others. This lasted for one year almost to the day. I have to emphasize the casualness of this. A lot of successful men have the idea in their heads that women are trying to get something themselves, this was not the case. It was just two friends. I wasn’t trying to gain anything from it, he knew that was true so it was just fine until one night.
The "twit longer" event:
- FWB status needing change
- The party, lyft ride then hotel.
- The scariness of it
I was able to attend E3 2017 and had wanted a “crossroads” conversation with D1, it was summer so events were happening every weekend and it was hard to find time in our schedules. Another person I was casually dating wanted to do the “boyfriend/girlfriend thing” thing so I needed to tie up loose ends. Again, D1 were very casual and I was 95% sure he wasn’t suddenly going to want a relationship and if he did then this was going to be that talk and as a friend I wanted to give him the conversation however it went.
There was an E3 after party at a bar and I had finally had the chance to talk with him towards the end of the night. But if you were ever a friend of his or hung out during an event you will know that it is impossible to get a straight 5 minutes with him without somebody coming up to say hi. That continued to happen until all the patrons were kicked out. Outside was a crowded mess but we finally had a moment, I was at this point really noticing how drunk he was. Before I could even finish a sentence said his lyft had arrived and that we could talk on the way to his hotel. I asked where he was staying and agreed to go with since it was closer to my home than we currently were, and I planned to lyft anyways.
In the lyft he immediately tried to makeout with me. I told him to wait, that I had something to talk about, that we can’t make out right now. He didn’t listen and continued to grab and kiss. I was in the corner behind the driver, he was all the way on my side, I told him to put on his seatbelt to hopefully get a second to have him stop and hear what I was saying, it did but then he just leaned over all the way to continue to try to kiss me again. “I’m trying to talk I don’t want to kiss right now” and “no” was said enough times that I realized he was just simply too drunk for any conversation. I started to say “no I can’t do anything tonight. I wanted to let you know I have a boyfriend now so no more kissing. Please.”
His response was “I don’t know him. He doesn’t have to know.”
My jaw dropped, I hadn’t ever heard anything that disrespectful out of him before.
He continued to kiss me and I told him plainly “I will know and I care so I’m not doing anything tonight.” he continued with saying stuff like “I don’t care” and I annoyed, continued to say “I DO care and I would know so you should stop.” The kissing/attempts didn’t last much longer because we arrived at the hotel.
At this point I just wanted to make sure his drunken self could get to his room then I was outta there. That was my plan.
At the hotel he leaned on me to walk to the room. He was very drunk. We get to his room and he pulls me in, he goes straight to the bathroom and I sit on the bed and order my lyft immediately.
He comes out of the restroom completely naked and I start to stand but he pushes me down before I could and rips off my stockings, actually ripping them. I say “no don’t” then he forcing his head between my legs and that was the moment I realized that I was in a situation that was either him or me. I sat there silently thinking about my options.
Have you ever considered actually maiming a friend? How far was I willing to go to get out of this situation? I was scared and scared of the horrible things I was considering to get away. I didn’t want to hurt my friend but I didn’t want to be hurt either.
I decided to try to pacify. I asked him to join me on the bed, he had climbed on top of me and continued kissing and touching. I asked to just cuddle for a while, hoping to maybe to get him to fall asleep. He was drunk and tired and my adrenaline was up, maybe at least I could slip away if we were in a different position. He had spooned me and was slowing down, it did not take long for him to fall asleep. I was amazed and thrilled it worked. I left as soon as could and just in time for my lyft to arrive. All of that lasted about 15 minutes.
The next day:
- My feelings on it
- His shitty reaction (familiar story)
- My own clout saved me
I felt like I was going to be ok, I survived, and that there was no way he would even remember what he did. It wasn’t ok at all and I was going to tell him that when I had the chance, ask what he actually remembered. I wanted to say “You know how you always want to avoid a twit longer right? Well last night I definitely have one on you-not cool-So maybe consider not getting that drunk ever ever ever again. Saying this as a friend.”
He had ignored all of my casual messages. I thought maybe he was in for the day, probably hungover. Eventually we did bump into each other and the groups we were hanging with all said hi since we have so many mutual friends. He ignored me there too, not greeting me.
One of the people he was with who is a mutual friends had asked me about last night. He mentioned that D1 had said something to THEM about me being shitty the previous night “cock teasing” him but since this person knew me they asked me, wanting to know if their friends were beefing. In the group of almost a dozen of us, in the middle of the LA convention center during E3 I didn’t divulge much other than I had wanted to talk with him, he was too drunk to talk so we didn’t and I left.
I hadn't heard any rumors after that weekend, I think me actually being friends with people he talked to helped prevent that.
Aftermath and relationship since then:
- I had my own clout, which helped me against any rumors being started
- I let it go for the friendship and what I thought was actual remorse
It was really weird seeing that he was lying about the evening, or talking about it at all. I had a bad feeling but unlike a lot of victims who spoke out in 2020 and before, I feel like I have my own status in the smash community. I have been playing since 2003, I have friends who are important to events, the community, and who are just good people who go to tournaments. Essentially, this wasn’t going to be enough to exile me with my established community connections and friendships. But I was very upset that he was painting an inaccurate picture of what happened, before we had even talked about it.
I have privately spoken to friends about the incident, even right after E3 to get my head around it. Ultimately I messaged D1 directly to ask to talk about the night. He was pissed at me! He said I had selfishly taken him away from “other opportunities” that night and that I had “suddenly decided that having a boyfriend matters” I explained to him that that was fucking bonkers and not how the evening happened, and also not cool for him to be like that to a friend, then I explained the actual events of the night.
And to his credit (the reason why this hasn’t been publicly brought up sooner) he accepted what I said and apologized profusely.
Our friendship was pretty frayed for a while. He had apologized multiple times when we had ran into each other, for a while it felt like he was just scared I would go public. He wasn’t acting like a friend anymore, and I was still trying to but also needing distance. It was shitty when sex wasn’t a possibility anymore so that person stops including you in anything. I had mixed feelings but decided to bring this up eventually. Maybe a few months or closer to a year after.
This time our conversation was really good, he seemed to express genuine remorse and horror that he might do something like this again. He apologized, said he was shamed by it and that made it hard to hang out even as friends and it felt like a good apology. Our friendship was more normal after that 2nd talk. I had still never hung out with him alone again, there was absolutely nothing like flirting or intimacy again. He still drank. I kept an eye out sometimes, but he seemed to be doing better. I didn’t think it had ever happened before (with the way he apologized to me) and I wasn't 100% positive, but I had the assumption it would never happen again.
2020:
- Confirmed and profound disappointment
- Going forward
My heart dropped when the twit longer about D1 came out. I didn’t want to believe it (nobody wants to believe the horrible things their friends do) but her story was bullet point similar to mine.
I don’t even know her real name, I have never met her (that I know of), and I couldn’t even point her out in a crowd but I believed her entirely.
It all made me realize if I had handled things any differently that night in the hotel, if I hadn’t been lucky that my actions happened to be the right thing with him, in that mental/drunken/tired state he was in, I would have been raped.
I hadn’t vocalized that to myself because before 2020 it didn’t seem like that was truly something he didn’t seem capable of. I knew it was serious at the moment, but didn’t want to believe that was a possibility. My friendship had helped me deny how serious that night really was.
It’s painful to realize a friend (and somebody who generally provides positive experiences for everyone) had this dark side too. The betrayed feeling I had from everything made me glad he had excommunicated himself from the scene. It felt like there was hope for him as a person by him doing so, that he really, truly did know how badly he messed up.
It gave me hope despite his public apologies after the "twit longers" not being great. He had never actually messaged me during the whole thing to apologize or check in or talk about my own similar experiences with him. Thinking back on it now, that is something worth bringing up.
During the 2020 outings, multiple friends reached out to me for blanket apologies for anything they may have done to make me feel uncomfortable. Some people I had reached out to myself privately about other uncomfortable situations I was put in, and talking out the nuance of things, it all led to some great closure.
Some friends had reached out to me specifically about D1, to ask me how I was doing and what I was planning.
A handful of close friends had heard about this story between us before over the years since it happened. I let them know that one person seems to have been enough to get him away from the scene thankfully, so unless he tried to come back, I wasn’t going to speak up.
Again, I’m mad that this should be said but now that he’s addressing the community, and now that he’s DENYING the stories about him I have to sit here writing 5 damn pages to add to the reasons to not let him back in the scene
Personally I am more disappointed and sad than anything else. With Covid I don’t know how many years it will be before I will feel comfortable going to these again, and with how different it would be after all that’s come to light…”normal” is gone. But...
I’m mad he’s denying it, I’m mad my hope that he was actually changing for the better alone away from smash has been dashed, I’m mad I didn’t speak out sooner if he wasn’t ever going to change anyways, I’m mad I was wrong that I was the only one.
I’m mad that I do just really wish (and still believe) people can change but it’s really important to never forget that even with that thinking, it’s not worth the risk. It’s not worth putting more people at risk just on the gamble that some people could change.
In his video he said he understood that consent can be changed at any time, but that was not my experience, he disregarded any objections I had and ignored the concept of consent that night...
My trauma from it is minimal, I’m not much younger than him, I have irreplaceable friends because of smash, and I was able to escape from anything really traumatizing (for me)
That doesn’t mean that’s how it would be for somebody else in the future-it was worse for others.
I feel compelled to tell my own story, to contribute to the betterment of the community. Even though it’s simply sadly not what it used to be, I still want to try to do the right thing.
I understand the argument about “ruining a career” but I have to make a general and specific statement about that kind of thinking here and for smash.
After years of being an-all expenses paid-celebrity-partying every single weekend talking about *thing you love* and it being your job, with perks of excess sexual “opportunities” then having this career “ruined” (by your own actions) so that now you have to work a normal job and be a normal person is just...tough shit.
Tons of people don’t get to ever experience their dream job and we should never have any tolerance for those who take advantage of the more vulnerable keeping their dream job.
We can do better than that.
And privately on your own, D’Ron I do still hope you can do better and change too.