But seriously, if you were mature enough at 18 to be traveling alone in France, you should have been mature enough to know that even driving across the city with a strange man in a city where you have no friends was a bad idea, let alone driving to Brussels. You are very lucky you only had to resist some pawning in a hotel room, there are many men that would have gone after what they wanted much more aggressively much sooner with you left on the side of the road in the middle of no where (and in God knows what state between simply traumatized or dead). I’m not saying you are responsible for this guy’s actions and intentions but you are responsible for your own. If you were not capable at the time of taking care of yourself, you should NEVER have been traveling alone.

I was a lousy mannequin (as the French call ‘models’)… which would help to explain a perpetually-broke American girl idling in Paris for several months.