the tRouBLe with rape

A long time back I met a 20 year old drunk attention whore at a party and she disclosed that she had been raped.  Six or 7 minutes after the introduction she gives a rape cry so transparent it made me uncomfortable.  ME!    Being an attention whore myself and, at the time, a devotee of Smirnoff by the half gallon, I was usually the one to make outlandish scenes at parties so that everyone, willingly or not, would have to turn their focus my way if only for 15 minutes or so but claims of rape upon an introduction violated even my loose etiquette.

I didn’t like this girl.  She would (within the year) steal my boyfriend and marry him. I punched her in the face at a pizza joint during lunch rush and let me tell you…sometimes you just have to knock someone’s teeth in to get closure.   But I still had this grudge over her bullshit party rape cry.  It was at a raging boil just beneath my usual irritation and I didn’t know why.

Then the day came that I blurted out – completely unintentionally and to my own horror – that I had been raped.   I hated her for making a mockery of me by using a rape confession as an ice breaker when I had to walk around for years unable to even admit it had happened to me.  

That’s the trouble with rape.  When you’re a loose, damaged drunk girl – you file it under “stuff that happens because you’re a loose damaged drunk girl - WITH  "a side of looking to be loved, no onion".  It also comes - at no extra charge - black dude no English, bass player 1, drummer from beach, boyfriend’s brother, boyfriend’s best friend, dude with corvette, bass player 2, some chick’s boyfriend, diesel dyke who saves you from getting your ass kicked at some bar, mystery guys of 1985,  tattoo guy, married guys 1 through 12, old boyfriend hate fuck, peg leg, faceless kid, boss, boss, guy from boat docks, Jim, port wine stain, 2 guys who picked you up hitch hiking….2 guys who picked you up hitch hiking….2 guys who….

(photo has nothing to do with anything)

The first year I thought I was making it up for some reason.  I wouldn’t talk about it.  I most certainly wouldn’t blurt it out with a handshake at parties.  But the time came when I could talk.  Or at least sing about.  I  worked the entire rape into an awkwardly detailed song as part of a performance piece I was doing in front of an audience that included my parents.    After the show people said “that hitch hiking song was intense!” and “you seemed hypnotized during it!”.  Never did anyone consider that it was a true story but why would they?  Who performs the details of their rape in a Marie Antoinette wig and a fishnet shirt?

Rape is gray, silent, denied when you’re not a good girl.  You become accustomed to sexual degradation so much so that you can’t recognize the crime committed against you.  You push it down and down. I had that fake rape victim acting as a place holder I suppose until I  could release the information to myself.  Thanks bitch.  

But…no breakthrough comes.  No sudden 180 degree change in how you feel about yourself or what you believe is acceptable treatment from men.  It keeps going only in a more sophisticated and obfuscated way: now the guys have names and you know them for more than 12 hours.  

But you’re still bringing that self-loathing, pathetic, love starved, damaged girl to each date and the wrong man will exploit it and all you know are wrong men.  You’re raped again and again in some way but it’s “bad luck with men”  or it’s “experimental, edgy domination and submission sex” or  “a hook up with an old boyfriend” and you’re consenting to your own victimization.  You’re almost worse off when you admit it.

In the movies or on Law and Order it seems like the victim is usually  some uptown respectable girl with a career and a 401k who is attacked while unlocking the door to her penthouse apartment.  It’s not someone like me who thanks her rapists for the ride home after the assault  then buries it for years with booze, coke and angry cock after angry cock while going from job to job, apartment to apartment in cheap shoes and a fake smile framed in lips painted cheaply.

 The worst part was knowing that I should have better shoes, I should have a career, I should be in Chanel make up or at least have one Chanel lipstick by now.  Everyone around me was accomplishing, improving. Thank HEAVENS they were accomplishing and improving in areas I would not be caught dead in.  

Digging out of the ditch when you’ve been sexually victimized is an incremental process where you are only less victimized and then even less victimized and then…you’re out.  But you are different.

Why am I writing this?  I do not like to get too personal on the internet anymore but I am just so excited about my expensive shoe collection and Chanel lipsticks.  Turns out I much prefer Guerlain. I colored my whole face in with their shade "Garconne".  It was like, my way of dropping the mic.

Boom. Motherfuckers.