the rape
I stayed up sticky and wide eyed all night. Switching desperately between 4 apps on my phone, blasting my eardrums with nostalgic music. 6am and alone, my happy place. A quiet los angeles slept under my 4th floor los angeles apartment. My vagina stung with the familiar pain of a night spent under someone. My hair tousled and packed into hardened spears with my own, or someone else's, saliva. My face felt hot and I could feel my heartbeat when I laid down flat in bed so I sat propped on a pillow.
Only 2 hours before, I had stood for 10 minutes that felt too long, waiting in a CVS 4 person checkout line, willing myself not to cry as the young woman rang up my plan B and gum. Smiling even.
I could not bring myself to make eye contact with her.
I had the inappropriate urge to tell her what had just happened to me. I noticed she looked about my age: a month shy of 20 at the time. I felt so grown up at 20. I think I still wore a beaded friendship bracelet, and wore converse with sharpie scribblings on them. For some reason seeing my age in another woman in front of me made me feel pathetic.
As i waited for my things i almost laughed at the idea of telling this stranger i was just raped. How I had gone straight from his air bnb to here, cum still dripping down my leg, and maybe even on to the floor of the cvs. How he walked me to my uber 15 minutes prior, and said “see you around velma” because I'd worn an orange turtleneck and he had forgotten my name. How id just been raped moments prior and my ego was perhaps more wounded that hed forgotten my name.
I laughed audibly at how ridiculous I was caring about something so seemingly insignificant.
Without ever making eye contact with the cvs clerk, I took my things, opened the plan b, popped it in my mouth like an altoid, leaving the empty package in the trash can at the entrance, i took a separate uber home, I thought about how sticky i was the whole drive home, i walked 4 flights of stairs up to my room, i took off my shoes, i got into bed. I don't remember if I cried.
My friend Melissa and I had gone out more days out of the week than not at this point. I had just moved back to Los Angeles months prior. Los Angeles feels very mature compared to Salt Lake city. I was a woman.
My friend Bella had given me her ID to use at bars as I had not yet turned 21. We were both brunette and the bouncers in Los Angeles couldn't care less, so it always worked despite being 5 inches shorter than the ID declared, and having green eyes instead of blue.
I didn't have the fake ID to drink. I just knew it was an all access pass to any man I wanted. I didn't have a taste for alcohol as much as I had a taste for The older reserve of men. Men my age did not understand me. They didn't understand my intellectual prowl, my chaotic nature. They couldn't appreciate that I was in my prime, my magic. Older men ogled me. It felt like sunlight.
I had fallen in love with this bar in Hollywood called “good times at davey waynes” where you would walk in through a refrigerator door and your shoes would stick to the ground the second you walked in. it was supposed to look like a basement in the seventies. Complete with dirty dusty couches, and decades of music. While sweat pooled in your clothing as you danced, you’d have to pull back your feet just a bit harder to get them off the sugar soaked floor.
I'd been dragging Melissa here. Melissa hated it but she loved me, so we went and she’d grin and bear it. She even dressed the part, trading her usual blair Waldorf wears for something more seventies appropriate, and I'd always thought it was sweet.
She watched me for weeks at the bars where we had been speed running, trying to go home with any man who looked over 30, any man who briefly looked at me.
At this same bar some night prior to this one she'd been in between me and a 50 year old banker in town for work, and while i spoke to him with my very grown up very sexy low register marilyn voice, she got my attention, made sure to get eye contact and said a stern, “no.”
i laughed and nodded, figuring she was right and deciding against the 10 minute sex in his hotel room where he'd eventually tell me he had a child only slightly younger than me, confessing tearfully his marriage was loveless, only to be followed by giving me too much money, in cash, for an uber home. There was a series of “no '' men she'd put me off of, but other times she'd just sigh. I think we both found the scenario endearing.
I'd been finally getting Melissa to dance with me at this bar. I loved to dance, and again, Melissa loved me.
But this particular June night it was packed, the most crowded I'd ever seen it. The music was 20% louder than usual.
Only 10 minutes had passed before I locked eyes with this 6 '3 muscular man with a goofy disarming smile. I can't remember if he approached me or if I approached him.
He asked to buy me a drink, I told him i didn't drink, he asked me through his laugh why i was at a bar. I noticed he had a British accent. He told me he played rugby.
I told him I liked to dance, and I liked to dance with British men who played rugby. He seemed impressed with my quick answer. He led me to the dance floor and I passed Melissa off to his friend. She gave me a quick mouthing of, “he's cute!” signaling her approval. Rarely, did I get Melissa's approval.
And we danced. We danced for an hour straight. It was queen night. If you know me, you know I love queen. I have a freddie mercury tattoo, i know his whole solo discography, if you've been in my car you've lost your hearing to my speakers blasting “killer queen”. It felt fated.
I yelled at him through the music between us how much I loved queen while he spun me around over and over.
He picked me up over his shoulder when bohemian rhapsody started, swung dance with me, held me up above him like Swayze in dirty dancing. We laughed and laughed, our faces right up to each other, teeth touching. For the 5 minute song I had planned our wedding, and named our 4 children. A crowd had formed around us dancing. They clapped while he spun me, I beamed. He kissed me for the first time right there in front of everyone, while slowly putting my feet on the ground after the last lift, lowering me while our shirts stuck together. Tight against each other's bodies, he kissed me.
When the song ended an older woman had come up to us separating herself from her group of friends, and said we were the cutest couple she'd ever seen. She asked how long we'd been together and held without skipping a beat told her we'd been together for a year. He beamed about how lucky he was while I swallowed hard, choking back a deceptive laugh. I nodded at her and she gushed to her friend beside her as she walked away. I looked back at him curiously, and he winked at me and gave me another kiss. I felt drunk.
I remember this night, oddly. Even as I write this I remember half of this night being one of the best memories of my life. The gift he gave me of the first part of this night I still cherish. I mean, it feels like a fucking movie even writing this. In fact, I smiled the whole time I wrote it. I just read it to my fiance as a first draft and he tilted his head to the side like a dog, half wilted, half pity.
I don't want anyone to take the first part of this night from me.
The second part of this night.
We arrive at his air bnb
His friend is staying with him, and getting married so he decides not to join after me and my dancing man lead him to the bedroom with us
We lay in his bed talking for an hour
He traces the scars on my wrist and asks what they are
I tell him
He tell me i remind him of his little sister
We confess our childhoods
He tells me he's never met anyone like me
We start to have sex
We puts too many fingers in me
I tell him to put less in, laughing
He pretends to not hear me
I laugh through this
We have sex
i tell him to wear a condom, while he's looking at me
He looks at me and laughs and puts his penis in me without one
I am scared
He is going really hard and fast and it hurts me
I tell him he's hurting me and
He tells me he's going to cum
I beg him through tears not to cum inside of me, i'm not on birth control
He does but i don't realize it yet
He gets off of me and grabs my hand to kiss it
I am still softly crying
He literally pretends to not notice.
I start grabbing my clothes to leave saying its late, lying about having work in the morning
He grabs me playfully and brings me back into bed
He compliments my vagina and my eye color
I realize maybe I am being sensitive and he was just SO attracted to me he couldn't help himself.
We talk for 20 minutes while i calm down and convince myself i consented
I now feel that he had cum inside of me and i panic and yell at him that id told him not to
He gets hard again
I immediately have a fear response to this erection
I tell him i need to go
He gets on top of me
I tell him i need to go
He starts to jack off on me while sitting on my arms
I tell him a stern no
He jacks off to completion after 5 minutes of silence on to my chest and face
He gets off of me and lays beside me and tells me i'm cheeky and feisty
20 minutes of memory is gone from what happened directly after this
I asked him to walk me to my car, to my uber. I laugh typing this. What was I afraid of in Hollywood at 3am walking alone? Getting raped?
We don't kiss goodbye after he hugs me, unrequited.
I asked him for plan b money, he said he doesn't. Want. to.
He says “see you around, velma”
I scoff at him forgetting my name, i think i even call him an asshole
And the uber took me to the cvs.
I am a bad rape victim. I make jokes about it that make people uncomfortable. I laugh about it frequently, I laughed about it the morning after it happened. I went to the mall, i sat in my car with my best guy friend and while sucking boba down my throat i declared how happy i was i could make rape jokes now. Id gotten the, very sought after, elusive rape joke pass.
He laughed uncomfortably, checked my face for a hint of sadness and when he didnt see any, he made his own rape joke. I laughed so hard I almost peed.
I didn't shower him off of me for two days,unlike the movies where the victim comes home and shrinks down, sobbing in the shower
i didn't tell the police, i didn't cry , i let my friends make jokes about it, i remember him fondly when i hear bohemian rhapsody (which plays everywhere by the way), i don't talk about it often, i haven't spoken about it in therapy, i didn't write about it in my journal, everytime i hear someone's name is paul i look over to whichever loved one is next to me and joyously remind them through a laugh that my rapists name was paul while they blink the shock out their eyes and i smile deviously. I am a terrible rape victim.
Months ago i said something mid conversation that people who hate me havent let me forget online “if rape is the worst thing thats happened to you, youve had an easy life.”
Of course this is just a terribly off color joke I've made in my own personal experience to relay how it fits in my life. I got to say, the rape fits in my life nicely.
Juxtaposed against the trauma of my childhood, the trauma of my adulthood, my neurosis and the noise of the house I've filled with too many animals. I mean truly the rape pales in comparison. I go to therapy weekly and haven't yet had a moment to fit it in.
My rape is not even close to the worst thing thats happened to me. I don't think about it until June 17th comes around and my phone reminds me of the poem I wrote the night it happened.
Not to mention my grandparents had prepared me, like a chinese gymnast, relentlessly for years.
They spoke to me as if my rape could happen at any moment.with his addiction to watching and tracking crime news, my grandpa didn't even want me to be seen in public with uncrossed legs, he'd poke me or slap them when I got lazy and uncrossed them, as young as 6. As if the moment they opened in public, I would summon a rapist between them. I was vigilant. It was like waiting for the new year's ball to drop. It was just gonna happen at some point. The stats are 1 in 4 women. I knew like i was going to be raped like i knew all the lyrics to bohemian rhapsody. By heart, i knew i was going to be raped some day. But I had prepared, god damnit.
I didn't drink when i was out, i thought id had a good vetting process, i am VERY blunt about sexual things i don't like and i've never had trouble saying no. i thought sometimes in my most hopeful moments, i wasnt the type of girl to get raped, whatever that meant…
But after two years of being a sugar baby and escorting, or selling pictures of your vagina you desensitize yourself to sex, and id become promiscuous. I was playing loose and fast. I was having sex like it didn't mean anything, so why would someone taking it from me mean anything to me? When I would tell my friends subsequently after it happened, they all sort of just knew it was coming. When I told Melissa I almost sensed that she felt like she'd had some responsibility in letting me go home with him. So i made more jokes to compensate, i made sure to let her know the rape wasnt that bad.
I always say my rape wasnt that bad. I always say it could've been worse.
I am just shy of 25 now. I met my fiance 3 months after i was raped. We waited a month to have sex. My world record. As I type this he keeps checking on me and rubbing my left foot that's propped on my right knee. He nows im writing about “the rape”. He keeps looking for pain in my face.
5 people called me a whore today on social media, and i decided it was finally time i write about my rape for the public. To make a spectacle of my pain, to arm my enemies with more loosely packed, messibly scribbled, incorrect thoughts.
And i don't know if i should unpack it. If I start unpacking the things that have been done to my body, if I even loosen the ribbon around its neck holding it together, it could flow out for years and never stop.
How will I get anything done if it doesn't stop?
How will i ever breathe again if i stop turning the hyperventilation into laughter
What happens when I stop laughing?
Im friends with two therapists who say a lot of women actually report not being too affected by their rape.
When i didnt shut down after my rape i was confused. I thought about all the op eds and women on dr.phil who said they'd disassociated for years. I found that I could not remember a time when I'd…associated. Couldn't remember the last time I felt like I was a person and not a fine mist.
I guess as women, we are all like my grandparents in some way, preparing for one of us out of a group of girlfriends to be the one it happens to. When you spend years preparing for something it doesn't feel as shocking when it happens.
We are all just sitting ducks.
I think of being a little girl coming to terms with it, the concept of it, not understanding even what sex was and still knowing someone could steal it from me.
Forgive my sardonic tone, my casualty. Ive always thought there wasnt enough casualty among rape victims.
I half joke when I say this.
When i told my grandma i was raped the look she gave me made me want to peel my skin off and cower. A paper mache of pity, sadness, even guilt. Everytime you tell someone you were raped they look guilty. Why does everyone look so guilty?
I don't know why I have this response.
I've had this response for as long as I can remember to telling anyone anything bad about my childhood. I sit in this space between, where I want someone to understand that I'm in pain but if they acknowledge it in any way I cower. but , along with this i also feel the soreness of not being taken seriously. God forbid I'm taken seriously and I crawl out of my skin.
I've lived in this oscillation for as long as I can remember. I train my loved ones to ignore my feelings by dismantling them in public and minimizing them and then I get angry when they do, even though I much prefer the ignoring.
I might be addicted to needing. The act of reaching for something.
I'm a naturally unsettled person and it's almost like I keep myself here. As an antidote or punishment I do not know.
Something to do with my mother.
I am just a statistic, with no emotional ties to it. I feel annoyed at myself as I write about it, thinking I could be missing something. Thinking maybe i'm not as grown up as i've told myself i am, and not as therapy trained as i've thought. 12 years in therapy and i could still have feelings about my rape im not processing. Or maybe I'm just not someone who cares about things like this, or maybe I care deeply and I'm lying to myself so I can hide. It feels like it may be all of these at once. Maybe everyone is lying about rape being traumatic, maybe im broken.
Maybe all of this is true. Maybe it's something to do with my mother. I don't have many female friends I'm close to. None of them have been raped.
I was the 1 in 4. I told you, I knew it by heart.
I'm still going. It's not the worst thing that's happened to me
a photo taken the day of june 17th