@DreamsOfChi - I’m new to this forum, and I haven’t learned how to quote someone’s post yet, but you say:
“I’m driving myself crackers picking apart what I could possibly have said or done to invite such an incident.”
Short answer: you didn’t! What happened to you is exactly what #MeToo is about. PLEASE stop trying to work out what you did “to invite it”. PLEASE stop trying to take responsibility for the irresponsibility of men who think they have carte blanche to lay their paws on whatever they like the look of. This was not the result of something you did wrong, it’s the result of living in a culture of male entitlement and toxic masculinity in which far too many men grow up with zero respect for women’s bodies and personal space.
The twisted mental process of self-blame you are putting yourself through is the same one I knew as a bullied kid in school: “There must be a reason they’re doing this, therefore it must be my fault”. I un-learned that crap. I recommend you do the same.
You feel angry? GOOD! You feel violated? That’s because YOU WERE. You feel like maybe you should’ve just kept quiet? NO WAY. That’s how they get away with it, have been getting away with it throughout history. Good little girls are brought up to be meek and quiet and acquiescent and to take the blame for “tempting” men into bad behaviour. It’s a controlling narrative of bullshit and it has to stop.
Sorry if I sound shouty, but over the years I’ve seen too much of this crap: friends, relatives and work colleagues getting verbally intimidated, groped/molested …and once, a long time ago, my own girlfriend raped.
HE did this thing, not you. He did it because he wanted to, and that was all the justification his entitled brain needed. He acted without your consent, and consent is everything. I pray it never does, but as @VanillaWithSprinkles points out, the odds aren’t greatly in favour of that - so, should anything like this happen again, resist all that “good girl” conditioning: call it out and call it loud.
…and by the way, an uppercut to the jaw is so much more effective than a slap.