You're Gonna Miss My Loving

I knew him.  He was black.  I was white.  He was street savvy.  I was naive.  He grew up in poverty.  I grew up in a different kind of poverty.  He got me a dashiki.  It was back in his room.  I went there with him.

I screamed.  I bolted for the door.  He overpowered me.  Threw me back on the stained mattress.  I thought he was going to kill me.  The boombox in the background.  "You're gonna miss my loving."  I faked the third orgasm he was demanding before he let me go.  I wasn't conscious that I had had the first two.  The first time should not have been like that.

He said, "I had to do it" and "I'm sorry" and "I'm afraid I will never see you again."  He insisted upon walking me to my car, the car you gave me to drive around in so I wouldn't hitch rides with strangers.  "So you will be safe," he said, "I don't want you to walk alone."  I had no choice.  My rapist walked me the ten blocks in a seedy neighborhood to my car.  It was not a tearful goodbye.  I cried after he was out of sight, after I had started the car and turned right onto the street that would take me to the bridge.  I didn't know what to do.  Should I go to a police station?  A hospital?  I didn't know where those places were.  I drove home hysterically crying.

"Where were you tonight?" you asked.  At first you were furious with him.  You wanted to hunt him down.  You wanted to press charges.  You were unable to ask what I wanted.  I was in shell shock.  I had already showered.  I felt dirty, disgusting, filthy.  I had been afraid for my life.  I thought he was going to kill me.  Yes, I knew him.  Not too well.  Not well enough.  If there were any signs, I didn't read them.

You sent me on a shopping trip the next day.  She was wanting to understand.  I could not talk.  I did not talk about it for a very long time.  I bought a shirt.  We had lunch.  I called work from a phone booth at the mall.  Told them my uncle died.  "My uncle did die," I told her, "Several years ago."  She didn't laugh.  Maybe after lunch, there was more clothing-- I can't remember.  I do remember the shirt.  And yes, I wore that shirt afterwards.  I never thought of that shirt as the post-rape shirt but that is how I think of it now.  A shirt could not heal the pain.  I understood about distraction.  It was a way to get away from myself.  But not really.  I kept getting high.

I went to see a friend at work.  She was the first person that I told, after you.  "Are you going to change again?" she asked.  "I don't know," I said truthfully.  I didn't change that summer.  I didn't stop running for a long time afterwards.  Even after I had found the study in the University library that said fifty percent of the rape vic's families blame the rape vic.

You went to your lawyer.  Without me.  But I had already taken a shower.  I hadn't gone to an emergency room or even to a doctor.  You hadn't known to or didn't think to take me.  The lawyer shrugged.  "Because of the drugs," he said, "the charges will never stick."  That, and any evidence that I had compulsively washed down the drain.

I used to eat breakfast with you in the mornings.  But then you started.  "About what you did this summer," you would begin.  I held the fork in the air, thinking about driving it into my stomach.  I thought about the splattering of eggs, yellowed in the pan.  I thought about the white garbage can, the color of my throw up.  You didn't seem to notice any of those things.  About what you did that summer.  It sucked.  I stopped eating breakfast with you, sleeping in instead until I heard you leave for work.  The lectures stopped too.  There was no other time that we could talk.

sapphoq on life