we talked about rape in class today. i didn't expect to be affected but my eyes welled w/ tears twice and once i thought i'd have to get up and leave.
and its been 4 yrs since.
i hate the word rape. and rapist. and especially the phrase "my rapist." i dont wanna hafta claim any of that shit, particularly b/c the phrase "my rapist" makes a victim out of the speaker.
that's the term i loathe more than anything.
i've so many thoughts threatening to drive me mad right now, i dont know where to begin.
so yeah, we talked bout rape in human sexuality today. as much as i didn't want to i saw myself in the statistics my professor scrawled on the board. i cld feel how big my eyes were & how nervously they darted about & i was ashamed of myself. not ashamed, but embarrassed.
everyother word was 'victim.'
im not a victim. that's why i rarely tell anyone about my experience as it stands.
u say rape & automatically there's a victim somewhere in the mix. u say 'i was raped' and bam.. u just let evrybody know that you ARE that victim.
but im not a victim of anything other than my own silence.
i was 17 & so was he. high school, senior yr. he was the prototype, man. evrysingle girl in the entire class, blk & white, wanted him. 6 ft 3, bright brown flawless skin, "good hair." basketball player. killer thighs. & he wanted quiet, cute lil tracy since freshman yr.
my mama told me no boyfriends til 16 & i listened to her.
he took me to prom. it was a week before my 18th birthday.
we never were boyfriend & girlfriend.
even now it's hard to think about how it all went down, detail for detail, b/c it still hurts, just the crassness of it all. the carelessness. the selfishness. a tacky ass, fake red leather couch in a cluttered room in the suburbs. what a way for a girl to lose her virginity, huh?
if i cld have willed myself to run, i wldn't have known where to go b/c i was out of my element. the burbs. the fuck do i know about the burbs? i cldn't just leave b/c i needed him to get home.
& i didn't wanna leave
or rather, i didn't know that i wanted to leave b/c i didn't know what was happening. i damn sure didn't recognize it as rape, cause get this-
it wasn't violent.
not at all. i wasn't held down, at least not by his hands... i wasn't hit, kicked, spit on, slapped, scratched, cussed at, verbally belittled, nunna that. and that's what rape was to me. it was two big dirty hands pinning your shoulders down, forcing your legs open and ripping into you while snaking obscenities into your ear.
the motherfucker had the nerve to hold me afterwards.
i was naive enough to let him.
my professor said today that so many cases of rape aren't reported b/c so many women who are raped dont know that they've even been raped, nor do the rapists know that they've committed an act of rape.
my case is one of the 75% not reported each yr.
46% of rapes are committed by a woman's love interest.
i saw my name in the space where he wrote those statistics.
i never even told my mama. i'm not yet strong enough to do so.
i found a letter once hidden away in a big folder that my mama keeps all me & my brother's old grade school awards in. i used to love looking thru that folder at how disheveled our handwriting was, counting up my awards & comparing them with his. in that folder, when i was around 10 or 12 or so, i found a letter written in my mother's hand to my father. in it she mentioned being raped. after that she mentioned my brother being a product of that rape.
i cried.
and i never told her i found the letter & read it & cried about it.
i remember asking my mother once before i found that letter whether my brother's father was as big a jerk as he is (me & my brother had had a fight.. he was always pickin on me. to my knowledge, he's never met his father). she got a far away look in her eyes that sorta scared me.
'no,' she said. 'actually he wasn't'
i bet my mama's story lives somewhere in that 46% too, prolly close to mine.
i still cannot say with certainty that she and i will sit and tell our stories to each other and think about them and talk about them and cry about them the way im trying not to cry now.
the first person i told was teddy. dear darling down-for-me-thru-whatever teddy. the second was sean. the third was dave. (<-- all men. remember that. its important)
telling teddy was the scariest thing ive ever done, not because i was ashamed of having been taken advantage of, but because i didn't want him to see me as a victim. rape victims never recover. victims fall & can't get up, don't even try. rape victims have huge therapy bills and hate men and can't enjoy sex and sometimes become lesbians b/c they can't trust men and are ashamed of themselves and their bodies and are meek and soft-spoken and afraid of everything.
that's not me.
i am not a victim.
i love myself just as much as i love men and love men almost as much as i love myself. sex is a beautiful thing to be shared with a beautiful man who thinks and makes me feel that im beautiful and i still know that these men are out there. i'm not the archetypal weak, timid woman who relinquished her entire life to a man in allowing him to make her world collapse. i am not afraid to love & as a matter of fact the better part of my time is now being spent loving a man harder than any pristine woman who's never had a negative male experience cld ever love. i am not frail and dont wanna be treated as such. im happy. he has not taken away my ability to have happy healthy friendships & relationships w/ men. if anything, dealing with such a self-centered inconsiderate reckless disgrace of a man has trained my eye to recognize good men when i meet them and cherish them all the more.
he has not ruined my life.
i wld never give him that much power over me.
i tried to tell teddy all this as i spoke to him about it on the phone that night, but my tongue failed me. i sputtered and stuttered and spat out all the wrong words. it was the most frustrating thing i'd ever tried to do.
he told me 'dont worry. i know u. don't worry about me thinking that about u.'
that was the most relieving thing i'd ever heard.
telling sean & dave was a bit easier. it's still no easy task, let me tell you. i dont even wanna re-read what ive written so far.
i want my rapist to see this.
i wanna write him a letter, first telling me that yes, he did rape me, even though there was no blood drawn or violent words exchanged. i want him to know that that mushy ass letter i wrote him a couple weeks afterwards talkin about how much i liked him was just me trying to rationalize what happened so that it wouldn't become a case of rape in my mind. he needs to know that i regret lying to ppl who asked me about it to save my own reputation when telling them the truth wld have made him look like the asshole he is to all the yes-men surrounding him he probably bragged to. he has to know that im not as naive as he thinks i am or thought i was then and that even though i hated myself for a yr after evrything went down i spent the other three hating him. then i wanna tell him i quit hating him, not because i forgave him, but because such negative energy was fuckin up my chi & i got a life to live that wont allow me to sit around wasting time crying over some pretty ass coward & what he did to me.
i wanna tell him i still think about him & ask myself why the fuck anyone wld treat another human being so carelessly. then i wanna tell him that directly after that i proceed to curse the very egg and sperm cell that spawned him & i take an inventory of the men i am blessed to have in my life and thank god that he is an exception to the greatness that men are intended to become.
yeah, motherfucker, i know the difference.
u ain't every man, no matter how much u prolly wanna believe u are.
in conclusion i'll tell him that im a better person b/c of what happened to me, but i'll beseech him not to get cocky & think that HE is the reason im so fuckin fabulous now.
standing back up was difficult, but i did it.
& u know what? i'm only 5 ft 3, but im a lot taller than him & others like him cld ever dream of being.
if there is a victim in this situation, it's him, not me.
before i move outta ky, i will have written him just such a letter & just IMAGINE the size of my smile on the way to the post office.
