I matched with a man on Tinder once. We talked for about a week, he seemed funny. I remember he made a joke after I’d asked him a serious question and when I called him out on dodging my question he got fairly serious.

He said he usually stays in the shallow end of things, making light of things, cracking jokes. He said it’s mostly to indicate what he wants – which is nothing serious but that also it means a bit of protection of his heart. He’d been in a serious relationship and it ended horribly and he didn’t want to put himself in that position to get hurt again. Okay, fair enough.

Maybe it was that moment of vulnerability that got to me. He suggested that we meet up for a walk. There was a park near him where you could see chalk cliffs and the walk was meant to be quite interesting with signs up to explain more about the history of these cliffs.

I was intrigued enough to say yes. He sent me a pin to direct me to the closest entrance to this wildlife conservation area. But when I drove to it, it didn’t quite seem like the right spot. So I reversed and parked along a residential road and got out of my car to walk to the park entrance. I thought he was driving too, but not long after I got there, there was with his loping stride towards me but I suppose he could have park on the same road I had.

His face was open and relaxed, quick to smile. He made a joke almost as soon as we said hello but for whatever reason, I didn’t quite hear what he’d said. I look back on it now and wonder if his joke could have been a red flag. I’ll never know now.

He suggested that we walk into the park and check out the chalk cliffs. He talked about them quite enthusiastically, like they really interested him and that he’d been curious enough to learn more about them above and beyond what were on the signs. From the street, we walked through a wooden gate, down a dirt path that were partially muddy and under some trees. He was walking ahead of me, pointing out the cliffs to which I’d smiled and nodded every time he looked behind at me.

We had been walking only a few minutes when he’d said ‘Up ahead there’s a more secluded bit’ which seemed a strange thing to say. It registered in my head that it was an odd thing to say but I was still deciding what to respond when he reached an arch of trees over the path we were on and he turned to me and he said ‘I’d like you to touch my cock’ and I laughed nervously at that, perhaps hoping that he was joking. But when his face remained serious I maintained eye contact as I told him very firmly ‘No, I will not be doing that’ and he said ‘Oh, come on now, isn’t that why we’re both here’ And I said ‘You’re making me uncomfortable, I said ‘no”

He was taller than me by a fair amount so the angle my head was in to maintain eye contact meant that it came as a complete surprise that as we were talking, he’d undone his jeans and had his erect penis in his hand. It was only as he lowered his eyes to the dick in his hand that I lowered my eyes to see what he was doing. He said ‘Just touch it’ and I looked at him again and I said ‘I said ‘no’ and I meant it. So I’m now going to turn around and I’m going to walk back to my car’

And I did. I walked through the trees, down that dirt path, through the wooden gate, onto the street, down the road and into my car where I immediately locked my car door. During that entire walk I didn’t know what he was going to do. I didn’t know if he was going to say something, if he was going to follow me, if he was going to touch me, or grab me. I had to walk and just hope that everything would be okay, that I would be okay.

I cried all the way home. I’d never felt so gross and dirty in my entire life. I felt so scared in those few minutes. And I thought … was this something I could have prevented or stopped? Is it my fault?