At Least They're Committed

Hahahahaha! Well, I was true to my word last night anyway. Devious. Christ! I guess I won’t have to worry about Scott or Casey or probably even Anna wanting to hang with me ever again! Bwahaha. It IS curious as to why it would upset me that much that we burst in on that poor woman on a Friday night who was watching a George Clooney movie by herself save for her chihuahua Barkley and proceeded to drink her beer and then — without so much as asking her along — left so the three of them could go dancing. It seemed rude, but it’s not like I shoulda gotten that bent out of shape about it. Right?

So, I layed there last night, after my long-suffering husband hauled ass downtown to get me cuz he didn’t want me riding the bus at midnight, and questioned whether and why I might have overreacted.

The first thing that came into my mind was that it was NOT related to the college incident in my studio apartment off campus. The time I was in bed on a school night when there was a knock on the door. The time when there were five men on my porch at 11 p.m. and at the lead was this guy who was, like, 8 years older than me with whom I thought I was in love.  I thought it was so cool that they came over! I was 19! Of course I let them in!

Instantly, Gary had me pinned on my bed, his body pressed on top of me his mouth all over me, one hand holding me down, the other grappling with the sheet to pull it over us. He smelled of old beer, of someone who’d been drinking for days instead of just hours, his breath was hot and stale. One of his friends hopped onto one side of the bed and just lay there talking it up with a third guy who flopped on the other side. Gary on top, one on either side. They were flanking me and I couldn’t move. The fourth guy was swinging my baseball bat while the fifth, Dobriner, passed out drunk on the yellow beanbag chair Santa had given me six years before.

I was dazed. Was this what I wanted? I loved this guy but this was not right. I tried to wrest away from his touch, his weight. I tried to talk to him, to turn it into something right, I told him I cared about him and “could we just . . .  ?” He pressed down harder, his chest pinning me so that his long fingers were free to claw under my T-shirt; his button-fly Levis pressed painfully between my legs. His writhing and pushing rose to fever pitch. I wondered if I could just sink into the mattress and disappear. And then he lept off of me. He ran into the bathroom. Yeah. Heh. See, already anyone reading this got it quicker than I did.

Anyway, his buddies were confused and so was I. While I attempted to cover myself and recover my dignity, they rummaged through my lingerie drawer and put some of my slinkier stuff on Dobriner’s head. Gary emerged from the bathroom, screaming at me because I was a slut and a whore and a few other choice things. His minions hopped to his side and they were out the door. All except Dobriner who was flayed out with lacy panties and such draped over him.

It was quiet. And as I tried in my shock to assess what had just happened, I was overcome by the stench of beer and sweat and beer in sweat. It was all over me, all over my hair, all over my sheets. The small apartment reeked of it.

I didn’t have a phone, I was too poor. It fit, ya know? I was a stupid slut and a whore who was too ignorant and low to even be able to afford a phone.

I couldn’t stay there. Humiliated, I didn’t know what to do and I had nowhere to go. So I decided to jump off a bridge. You know, I couldn’t even cry. I was that far gone. I walked in a stupor across the street, two blocks down and stood pressed against the cold, gray concrete ledge on the bridge. I stared at the water for a good 20 minutes, with nothing but a T-shirt on, panties and a light coat I’d grabbed as I’d run out. After awhile, with the night wind tossling my hair and crawling up my legs I realized I wasn’t shaking because I was cold, but rather I was scared. The fear was good. It was something other than self hatred and disgust. I walked robotically off the bridge and to the all-night convenience store across from my apartment. I dialed 9-1-1 on the payphone and told the dispatcher I was scared and wanted to die. She was so kind. She was on it. She talked to me until the squad car arrived and two policemen helped me into the back.

They got me to talk. “I let them in. I should have fought him off harder, but I didn’t. It was my fault.”

The police didn’t think letting them in was such an uncommon thing. They also said that if I look at it realistically I didn’t have much of a choice and fighting harder to get Gary away from me probably would have incited him more and I could have ended up with something worse than emotional damage. They said it wasn’t my fault. They said I’d done nothing wrong except trust the wrong people.  They said they were going to spread the word that I was one of the cops’ nieces and nobody, but nobody was going to mess with me like that again.

After about an hour, they asked me if I was OK to go home. I said, well, sure except Dobriner was passed out on my beanbag chair. . . I might as well have told them there was indeed a Santa Claus. Their billy clubs were out, they lept like steeds into my apartment dragging out the unsuspecting Dobriner and teaching him a hard, wooden lesson in manners before driving him back to the dorms.

I locked the doors behind them, opened the windows to air out the apartment, stripped the bed and went into the bathroom to bathe. In the toilet were wads of TP clotted with foamy semen. I laughed and I cried. There you have it. I avoided rape by a man who until that night I thought I’d loved. I was spared because he had a hair trigger, creamed his jeans, prematurely shot his wad. Heh.

A few days later I ran into Dobriner, face red and bruised. He said he was sorry, he didn’t know what was going on (though I’m quite sure it wouldn’t have made a difference, he was the guy who would come up and hit on me in bars every time my date would hit the head) and, “Geez. I didn’t know your uncle was chief of police.”

Yeah, so that’s what I thought of first after getting so angry at what I perceive as us taking advantage of that girl last night. Hmmm. Nah. That can’t possibly have anything to do with it.