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

 



    

A Dead Guy and a Live Fake

un-Dear Elliott,

You are dead now.  I was not particularly sorry to see you go.  Some people need killing.  You were one of them but your profession protected you.  Instead, we had to wait for the passage of time and natural causes to take you out.

I say "we" Elliott because I was not your only vic.  You were a prolific rapist.  Most outsiders-- your co-workers in particular-- thought you were a teddy bear.  They gathered around you shielding you from the glares of those evil mentally-ill bitches who dared to accuse you.  You were a grandfather.  You played the part well.

We recoiled in horror as co-worker after co-worker took the stand promising to tell the truth the whole truth but damn if they could remember anything much at all.  Who knew that all of them would be hit with a collective amnesia?  Indeed.  How wonderful for you that undeserved gift of loyalty they gave to you.  They violated their oaths to give that to you. 

The insiders knew though.  Your wife knew.  I met her once, yes.  She told me that she knew you were guilty.  She didn't recognize me for who I was.  Like an obedient wife, she showed up at the last day of the hearing, in spite of what she knew.  She had to.  She had to put up with you and your rages until your dieing day.  She was there when you dropped your pants without shame in front of everyone.  No one was going to stop you that day.  For an old sweetie, you were certainly ruthless in a slick sick charming sort of way.  All she wanted was her freedom from you.  Since you died several years before she did, at least she got her wish.


I was one of those evil conveniently-labeled bitches.  Yeah, I was a vic too.  It was a time when I was young, impressionable, vulnerable.  People argued over how much of this I owned.  I decided for myself and I took responsibility for my part.  You never did.  We were wicked children and it was all our fault.  We compelled you.  We showed up at your residence, on your telephone, in your office, at your lunch table with your co-workers uninvited.  We kept showing up.  We forced you to write postcards to us during your vacations.  Your peers bought that story.

In the end, you got a write up inserted into your file.  In the end, you were an old man gasping for air.  In the end, you had to quit that last job-- the part-time one that gave you continued access to a fresh pool of vulnerable vics.  You didn't want to.  No matter.  You had your reputation to protect.  And your pension.  And the kicker-- when you finally did die, the nice minister made you a nice sermon so your co-workers could remember you-- was quite the finale.  There was scarcely a place to park on the road by the Unitarian Church.  The parking lot had filled up fast.  Glory be.

Some years later, I became an investigator at my job.  I was good at it.  I remembered the things I had learned.  Just because someone is thought to be an extralegal by virtue of being an outsider, they just might be telling the truth.  Some years after that, I got schooled about the so-called troubled teen troubled industry and I remembered the things I had learned.   Just because someone is thought to be an extralegal by virtue of being an outsider, they just might be telling the truth.

Yesterday, I stumbled across a fake.  I panicked at first.  I wanted to believe the fake.  But I found that I could not.  Like you, the fake claims no responsibility at all.  Everything and everybody was and is out to get the fake.  Unlike you, the fake was not hiding under a fuzzy exterior.  Unlike you, the fake continues to loudly seek out the spotlight.  Like you, the fake uses half-truths to make the lies convincing to outsiders. 

I don't expect this blog post to magically reach you beyond the grave.  I don't do New Age woo-woo.  I don't forgive you, Elliott.  You didn't have regrets.  You had no conscience.  "Forgiveness" is not something that concerns me.  I am not compelled by religious belief or by other ideologies to offer you a forgiveness you never sought.  I am no mystic.  You are dead.  I am alive.  I have integrity.  That is something you never had.   When you died, I knew you could not hurt anyone anymore.  Your death was a thing of far more value than any fake peace proffered by the forgiveness crowd.

Feck you and all the other fakes who get away with abuse, rape, and murder,

sapphoq on life  


P. S.  To the one and only co-worker of Elliott who absolutely refused to testify on his behalf, I thank you.