My family had planned a delightful three days in Paris, our only scheduled jaunt from London during my stay, where we would see the romantic city in all its glory.
But I made this enchanting trip very, very challenging for anyone to enjoy.
After spending New Year’s Eve partying with the Americans, I could barely hold up my head while trudging through Heathrow. Everyone was rushing but I lagged behind, my duffel slamming against my exhausted, horribly inebriated body as I dragged myself forward.
My parents kept turning around and yelling, “Kirsten! Hurry up!”
I was barely conscious of their existence. Somehow, we managed to get onto the plane in time for takeoff. Wasted beyond repair, I passed out immediately.
Within 20 minutes, I jolted awake to sudden nausea – a reaction to the flight, maybe, but definitely a reaction to the alcohol. There was no time to get to a restroom.
So THIS is what these are for, I thought, grabbing an air sickness bag from the pocket in front of my seat. I fumbled to open it – why the heck are they made like this – then I wretched several times into the bag trying to keep the vomit contained. I dry-heaved for a few minutes, then sat there holding it, wondering what to do with a bag full of puke.
Too tired and too sick to think for very long, I crumpled the top of the bag, tossed it on the ground next to me, and passed out again.
Mere moments later, we landed in Paris.
My family woke me up before it was our turn to get out of our seats, and I screamed at my parents: “Why can’t you just let me sleep?!”
I was fun.
They shrugged and started walking toward the front of the plane. Eventually and begrudgingly, I got off the plane, too.
The airport was enormous. After disembarking, we had to walk a million miles to get to wherever we were going. “Look, everything’s in French!” my mom said, pointing at signs, excited to share this experience with her children.
I didn’t care where I was, and I sure didn’t care that the signs were in French. I dragged myself and my duffel through the airport behind them, my feet slow, my brain foggy, my muscles aching, feeling like I had so often felt at home – like I’d been hit by a dump truck.
The feeling was so familiar, but the timing so inconvenient. I knew what I was doing to my family; I just couldn’t fix it. Instead I trudged forward, trying to keep up.
Having landed in a new country we had to go through customs, so eventually we stopped walking and stood in a line. I didn’t have the sense to notice how long the line was, or to pretend to be happy about Paris. I couldn’t talk or enjoy my surroundings.
I was physically incapable of doing anything except staying upright, feeling the blood sloshing aimlessly in my head, stunned into complete mental emptiness. It took all of my strength to just remain upright in the line for customs, staring at the ground, kicking my duffel along.
I stood and waited and waited some more. It felt like I’d been standing there forever, no thoughts, no feelings. Just a blob trying to turn back into a human.
And then quite quickly, without any warning and for the first time in my life, I thought: Oh, I’m going to die.
My head spun wildly, and then everything went black.
Back at the hotel, I pocketed a couple of tiny bottles of rum before heading into the hallway “to smoke.” I took my trip journal with me to write poetry, and plopped myself down on a landing in a stairway of the ritzy London hotel.
These were not my normal drinking circumstances.
Two tiny bottles weren’t going to last long, and I was completely alone, though I could feel New Year’s Eve in the air, even in the stairwell. Doors opened and closed, people occasionally bounding past me in the stairwell yelling “Happy New Year!” in the most adorable accents ever.
The writing in my journal was despondent. I had one tiny bottle left to last me the rest of the night, so I snuck back into the hotel room, leaving my journal on a table. It was dark; everyone was trying to sleep. I didn’t know if it was safe to take another bottle so I quietly grabbed another pack of cigarettes, and went back to my spot in the stairwell.
A guy leapt over me with a smile yelling “Happy New Year!”
American, I thought. “Happy New Year,” I replied somberly.
The guy leapt back up the stairs to where I sat. “Are you American?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You should come to our party!” he said. “All the Americans are partying on the fourth floor!”
“A party?”
“A party! It’s NEW YEAR’S EVE!” He started running down the stairs again. “I’ve gotta get some ice,” he yelled as he disappeared.
He left me there.
Even after two beers and two mini-bottles, I was not walking into any party alone.
But when the same guy bounded past again with two buckets full of ice he said, “Are you still here? C’mon! We’re on the fourth floor!”
“Okay,” I said – and I followed him.
Within two minutes, I was in a hotel room with a hundred of my new closest friends, and enough free alcohol to feed all the people in London.
Finally. I could drink the way I wanted to drink!
So I drank and drank and drank and somewhere in the middle of my holiday blackout, I started making drunken phone calls to Larry.
Larry was playing with his band at Paul’s Place for New Year’s Eve, so I called the bar. “Happy New Year!” I screamed into the phone. “I’m calling from London! Can I talk to Larry?”
Since it was earlier in Pennsylvania than it was in London, the band hadn’t even started playing yet. Larry got on the phone; I drunkenly screamed “Happy New Year!” at him.
The night is a blur, except for endless phone calls made from a stranger’s hotel room. In 1987 – or 1988, as it was in London – long-distance charges were astronomical, and even more expensive when using a hotel phone.
I did not pay for these phone calls. As the night progressed, Larry kept hanging up on me, so I kept calling back. I called maybe forty times.
After the sunrise, I wandered into my family’s hotel room. They were awake, showered, and wondering where I’d been.
Obviously I was wasted and hadn’t slept one minute. But I insisted on calling Larry again.
“I’ll pay for it!” I slurred. “I just need to tell him Happy New Year!”
As if.
“We’ve got to go,” Mom said. “Get your suitcase.”
“I have to call him!” I demanded. “Just give me five minutes!”
My parents were not happy to wait.
And five minutes cost me $50.
Then I slung my purple duffel over my shoulder and followed my family to the airport.
New Year’s Eve was always a reason to celebrate, and my dad knew that if I’d been at home, I would have been drinking somewhere. So he truly believed he was helping me by ordering those two pints at the British pub. He thought we’d have some bonding time, a real daddy-daughter experience, right in the heart of London-proper on one of the biggest nights of the year.
I felt conflicted. Part of me wanted to drink more than anything in the world. The other part really, really didn’t want to drink with my dad. My parents never drank when I was growing up; this was something I did independently, knowing it was frowned upon by my family’s upper echelon. I wasn’t sure how to go about drinking with my dad – but the desire for alcohol beat down that thinking pretty quick.
Two gulps in and my brain sighed with calm. I felt that familiar pleasant buzz.
I tried to sip my pint of “lager” the way my dad did, but my dad drank so slowly! My beer was gone before he was even half done with his.
“You don’t drink very fast,” I said.
“Do you want another one?” he asked. He flagged down a guy with a tray, who brought me another pint. By the time my dad was done with his first, I was done with my second.
I was ready for my third.
Dad said, “This was fun! We’ve got a flight to catch in the morning, so let’s head back to the hotel now.”
It wasn’t even 10:00. On New Year’s Eve.
My thoughts raced, screaming: I’m not even drunk yet! The new year doesn’t even start until midnight! I thought we were going OUT! Two beers??! Why would anyone drink two beers??! I drink more than that just to get ready to go out! I want to stay at the pub! I HAVE to stay at this pub!
My dad cutting me off after two beers felt like a severe punishment, and I had no idea what I’d done to deserve it. Hadn’t I sat quietly enough in the bar? Hadn’t I tried to sip slowly? Was the beer too expensive here? What if I offered to pay? Could my dad could go back to the hotel and come and get me later?
I wanted to be screaming with the throngs in Trafalgar Square!
Really, I just plain wanted to scream.
“We can’t go back now!” I tried. “We just got here!”
“We’ve got to leave at 8 a.m.” my dad explained. “We’re going to France! We’ve got to get some sleep so we don’t miss our flight.”
Non-alcoholics don’t generally understand the “phenomenon of craving” in the alcoholic, since non-alcoholics literally don’t have it.
But I have it in spades. One drop of alcohol in my system makes my entire being – soul, body and mind – beg for more, as though my very survival depends upon it.
And I’d had two whole beers. I wanted to keep drinking – as I usually did – until I passed out.
“Okay,” I told my dad. What choice did I have?
My manipulative mind was racing when I remembered the tiny bottles of alcohol I’d seen in our hotel room. Surely no one would know if I took a couple of those when we got back to the hotel.
Whew. I felt slight mental relief.
Then I sulked as we made our way through crowds of ecstatic celebrators doing exactly what they wanted to do … as I was dragged away from all the excitement so I could “sleep.”
The first few days in London were rough for me. They were substantially rougher for my family.
I hadn’t been without a drink in a very, very long time. A day hadn’t passed in two years that I didn’t imbibe, so as I withdrew from alcohol I was – to put it mildly – a bit irritable. I snapped at anyone who tried to interact with me. I complained about everything. I detested everything we did, everything we saw, everything we ate, everywhere we went. I griped incessantly. I whined and moaned.
And while alcohol withdrawal was a major portion of my poor attitude, I believed to the core of my being that my family was responsible for all of my problems, so I believed they deserved what I was spewing.
Some of the rage I tossed at my family may have been a normal response to growing up. But most of it came from completely avoiding any introspection. I refused to process what was happening inside me during the years that I drank.
I never, ever blamed myself.
Since I couldn’t see what I’d been doing to myself, I blamed my parents for everything that was wrong in my life. My dad had taken a job when I was 14 that required the family to move from my beloved hometown, and I had never forgiven him for moving me one too many times.
It was his fault that I was who I was, how I was, what I was.
I blamed my mom not only for putting up with this obscene injustice caused by my dad’s job choices, but also for continuing to point out all the good in the situation – any situation. I refused to see the good, and doubled down on the crappy hand I’d been dealt. Whenever an upbeat or encouraging word passed through Mom’s lips, I growled at her, insisting that things were much, much worse than she could possibly comprehend.
Without alcohol, all of these childish torments came back with a vengeance. I subconsciously played this relentless blame game every time I was near my parents; it should have surprised no one when my complaining started – and didn’t end.
It was my dad’s idea to include me in this trip to London, though I didn’t know it at the time. I have him to thank for the moments and events that followed – many directly, some indirectly – and I am certain that, by the end of Day One, my dad would have rather I’d stayed in the United States.
I complained constantly while remaining stone-cold sober for five. whole. days.
By Day 6, I’d generally ruined everything we did on our only-ever family trip to Europe. And my dad, who would have done anything in the world to make me happy, had one grand gesture left, one last-ditch effort to make me grateful for everything.
It was the night before we were scheduled to fly to Paris for a three-day French adventure.
And it was New Year’s Eve.
My family was staying in a hotel in London near Trafalgar Square, the “Times Square” of London. Trafalgar Square was insane. I’d never been to New York on New Year’s Eve but now I was enmeshed in a world of wild wonder, where all the young British punks I adored were out in full force to celebrate.
Everyone was drinking.
My dad, who had already provided me with the trip of a lifetime, had one more idea.
He said: “Let’s go to a pub!”
And for me, that was the very beginning of the absolute end.
After living with Larry for two and a half years, I was a bit terrified to be stepping back into the Moore family. I had no idea what would be required. Was I still a child in their eyes? I felt grown.
But my family had never been happy about my way of life – meaning, the way I drank. Would I be able to drink in London since I was a legal adult in the U.S.? Would I have to follow my parents’ rules? Would I be spending time with them exclusively or could I do whatever I wanted?
Fortunately for all of us, I wasn’t moving into their home. I was traveling to London – a place I’d dreamed about seeing since I knew it existed. I didn’t care about Queen Elizabeth or royalty, or Big Ben or ancient architecture. I cared about The Cure, Rod Stewart, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones. And oh, those accents! I could hardly wait to hear everyone speaking British-English.
I was also very, very excited to see double decker buses.
But I was terrified about hanging out with my family again. I didn’t want to live like I’d been living, but I didn’t want to hear about that from my parents. I didn’t want to see the disappointment in my parents’ eyes, or hear it in their voices.
I rode with Larry to the airport. I did not drink. I wanted to smoke as much as I possibly could in the car. No one in my entire extended family smoked cigarettes, either.
We parked the Camaro and walked inside the airport together, Larry carrying my purple duffel. As we approached my parents, I was super-conscious of his sound: the jangling of the chains that held his wallet, the boots ever-clomping on the floor. He was too loud; he didn’t fit.
I kissed him goodbye quickly, wanting to separate myself from him, anxious to get started on this trip. As my parents, sisters and I turned toward the airport gate, a huge part of me was happy to see Larry walk away.
“There goes my one life,” I mumbled to my mom, nodding toward Larry as he strode away, chains still slapping his thigh. “And here I go to my other one.”
I felt like I’d been torn sharply in half, a paper doll with a dotted line down the middle. And only half of me was headed to London.
My mom glanced up, only partially understanding, just hoping we’d all get to our plane on time. With her free arm, she squeezed my shoulders.
“We’re going to have a good time,” she said.
I did not believe her. I didn’t know what to believe. In a billion years, I couldn’t have imagined what was going to happen to me in England.
I had no idea that England would hit me like a runaway freight train … with an angel as its engineer.
Just as I started giving in to the notion of being stuck forever in Pitcairn with Larry, something strange happened.
My mom called.
I could count on one hand the number of times my family had called since I’d moved out. She announced: “Your dad got a Fulbright scholarship!”
Not knowing what “Fulbright” meant, I completely ignored my dad’s unprecedented achievement and didn’t even ask why it mattered.
“Okay,” I said, pulling the phone away from my ear so I could reach my cigarettes.
“He’s going to be working at The Open University,” she said excitedly. “Near London!”
Again ignorant, I knew nothing about universities being open or closed. “Uh-huh,” I said.
“So we’re going to England. We’re leaving right after Christmas.”
“Okay,” I said again, frustrated. I had no idea why this should matter to me.
“We’re going to live in Europe for three months, and stay at a little house near the university.”
I lit my cigarette and waited. The trip she was describing sounded like a dream. I’d always wanted to go to England, listen to those cool accents and instantaneously transform into a London punk rocker. She talked about travel and London and a place called “Bath” which seemed like a strange name for a town. I was pondering the lame name when there was a pause long enough for me to speak, but I had no idea what to say so I stayed silent.
My mom took a deep breath. “We’d like you to come with us,” she said.
I was struck dumb.
My thoughts smashed into one another in my brain: I want to go to England! I can’t spend that much time with my parents. When would I drink? I’ve got to get out of here! I want to be part of a family again. I’ll never be part of that family again. I have to work! I can’t stand Larry. I want to go to England!
Finally I said, “Is Larry invited?” Because if Larry was going, that would be a no-brainer. I could never combine my two worlds for that long. I would have to stay in Pitcairn.
“No,” my mom said, prepared. “Tracy and Kelli aren’t taking anyone either. It’s just for family.”
Family, I thought wistfully.
“Can I think about it?”
“Sure,” said Mom. “We’re going to buy the plane tickets this week, so can you let us know by Friday?”
“Okay,” I said.
I thought and drank and thought about my parents’ offer. I talked to Larry about it. (“I don’t know why they didn’t invite me,” he’d said. “I am your fuckin’ family!”)
I talked to my friends at work about it. (“A Fulbright!” they’d said. “That’s so exciting!”) My boss said I could take all three weeks of my vacation time in January if I wanted to go to England.
I thought and drank and thought some more. Thursday after work – which was technically Friday morning – I got plastered.
On Friday I woke up hungover and irritable, as usual. I walked into the kitchen to chug some Diet Coke and stepped on something painful in the middle of the kitchen floor. Fuck! I removed the bolt from my bare foot and threw it at the wall.
I’ve got to get the fuck out of here, I thought.
I called my mom.
“I want to go,” I said.
“That’s great!” she said.
Her chipper voice made me wary of my decision, but it was made. I was going to spend three weeks in England.
A little voice echoed inside my brain: How will you drink?
If anything good came out of my being randomly attacked, it’s that I finally had some sense of mortality tossed into my path of self-destruction and insanity. I recognized for the first time that following the cocaine wasn’t always the smartest path, and that going anywhere with strangers – or even friends – wasn’t a great idea.
So instead of starting fights and storming out to bars by myself, I reverted to life with Larry as Larry would have it. I still had my job, and I still worked three very long nights a week, smoking pot on lunch breaks. On non-work days I still slept until well past noon then immediately started drinking beer.
I sought intoxication constantly.
Weekends were full: band gigs, football at the VFW, burgers and beers, boom box blasting after the bars closed.
I could hardly complain, although I constantly did. Life with Larry was dull. It wasn’t like college. It wasn’t like Bike Week. It was just one long, drawn out day at a very dark bar with nothing to do and no end in sight. At home, I’d wail along to Luka: “Just don’t ask me how I am….”
I thought about what life with Larry might look like in the future and I realized that nothing was going to change. I would be sitting on barstools sucking on long cigarettes and listening to jukeboxes forever. I would be riding on the back of a motorcycle in sunshine and thunderstorms, and I’d have racing stripes on my rusted-out car. I would never get a dog because cats were easier. I would never have children. I would go to bars every weekend, watching Larry play guitar and sing, for the rest of time.
In short, I would become the woman I saw at The Hood during college, who sat in the corner and sang off-key with the jukebox until she walked home alone. I would become ancient and friendless and stuck in a relationship with a guy who was dumb as a rock.
He would hit me if I woke him up. He would blame his mother for his smoking, and me for any cheating, and chase my pets down the street with his clonky boots and spend every spare moment fixing that stupid motorcycle in our tiny garage because we would never have any money and sex would be the only way we would ever communicate.
Worse yet, Larry would never be reassuring or emotionally supportive. After I was attacked, Larry was completely ignorant of the fear in my eyes. He didn’t see any difference in me – the difference that Bonnie saw immediately. With Bonnie gone, there was no one to know how I felt.
If anything, Larry saw the attack as a positive thing because, as he said, “It knocked some fuckin’ sense into ya!”
In short, having a surrogate father as a boyfriend was starting to wear on me.
I tried to be fun. I tried to be wild. I tried to remain the rebel I thought I had become. But my soul was losing ground to my addiction without my even knowing it. I’d numbed my pain for so long, I could no longer feel joy. In fact, I felt completely dead inside.
Nobody noticed when the life disappeared from my eyes.
The next night, the police went to Carney Howard’s house and pulled him out of bed where he’d been sleeping, with his wife, when they knocked on his door.
When they handcuffed him and announced the charge he said, “I can’t rape nobody; I can’t even get it up!”
That’s how they knew for sure that they’d arrested the right man.
They took him off to jail and called me to let me know that he was behind bars.
“Carney Howard painted the apartment where he took you,” they told me. “That’s why he had a key.”
That explained why he had trouble opening the door. “But he told me his name was Kevin.”
The officer said, “Kevin is his son’s name.”
His what?
He had a son. A wife. A house.
My rapist was a family man.
And I had promised I wouldn’t tell anybody.
My guilt was immediately overwhelming.
I began having a recurring nightmare.
In the dream, I was walking through a school, or a grocery store, or standing at a bus stop. A little boy appeared – maybe five years old – standing in front of me, staring up at me with huge, sad eyes.
“I’m Kevin,” he would say. “Can you help me get my dad back?”
I’d wake up sweating, terrified, wanting to scream and cry and howl. The guilt scratched at me behind my eyes, sent me into a spiral of not wanting to wake, not wanting to sleep, and not knowing how to fix a wrong I could never right.
I wanted to visit that little boy, buy him toys and food and shoes. I wanted to give him all the things his father wouldn’t be able to give him because his father was in jail.
It was my fault. I’d taken his dad away.
I dreamed this same dream for months, over and over, always waking with the same remorse.
Six months later, I went to court. Bonnie was back in Ohio; Larry was back in Florida. I had to tell my story with the support of someone I didn’t trust, so I was basically alone.
But I showed up.
I was instructed to sit on a bench in an empty hallway: “Your case has been delayed,” they said.
So I sat. I was sober, silent. I thought my shaking hands were nerves, not alcohol withdrawal.
I waited in the hallway for my case to be called. I waited and waited and waited. I relived all the horror as I waited. I was terrified to retell the story; I was terrified to see the man who did this to me, the man whose boy was fatherless.
After two hours, an officer of the court came out and said, “Miss Moore?”
“Yes.” I stood up and he shook my hand.
“I just wanted to tell you that you won’t be needed today; your case has been settled.”
“Settled? What does that mean?”
“Mr. Howard took a plea deal,” he said. “He’ll spend two years in prison for what he did to you.”
“Two years?”
“Yes,” he said. “You don’t even need to testify.”
I breathed.
I hadn’t realized I’d not been breathing.
“Thank you,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How’s his son doing?”
“His son?”
“Kevin? I just feel so bad for his son,” I said.
The man softened. “As far as I know, his son is just fine.”
I didn’t feel reassured.
My rapist was in prison, and Kevin would spend two years without a father.
I went home and drank to celebrate, and to forget.
The police station in Homestead was hopping after the bars closed. Drunks and drug-addled criminals were led between rooms by exhausted, life-addled police officers.
Larry and Bonnie sat on a bench with me until I was told to sit next to a desk. They weren’t allowed to join me there.
A man with beagle eyes and very short hair sat and listened to every detail I could remember, and then asked me about details I couldn’t remember – the address of the place where the attack happened, for example, or the name of the bar. I barely knew the name of the town.
But I told the officer the guy’s name was Kevin – he hadn’t given me a last name – and answered that he was wearing a gray hoodie but I didn’t know where he lived, and I’d never met him before that night.
“Did you go to the hospital?” asked the officer.
“No,” I stammered. “Do I need to go to the hospital?”
“Do you want to go to a hospital?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Then we don’t have a kit,” he said. “But from what you’ve told me, we wouldn’t be able to get any semen.”
I was still stuck on semantics. “Then was it really rape?”
“Did you want him to do what he did?”
“No.”
“Then it’s rape. Go on home, and we’ll send an officer to follow up.”
I walked back to Bonnie who hugged me again.
I looked at Larry. “Do you fucking believe me now?”
“Yeah I believe you now,” he said. Larry looked almost remorseful as he slung his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Let’s get you home.”
Emotionally exhausted, we all passed out immediately upon arrival at the house.
Only a few hours later, a booming sound jolted me awake. There were two policemen banging on our door.
When they said they’d send an officer to follow up, they meant it.
“We’d like you to take a look at some pictures,” said one officer. “Let us know if you see the guy who attacked you.”
He held out two of the largest photo albums I’d ever seen – full of dozens, maybe hundreds of mug shots.
“Do you have somewhere we could sit?”
Larry led us into the kitchen, where we sat at the table.
I slowly plowed through every page of both books. I stared and pondered, hesitating, scared. I looked at face after face, man after man, all of whom were black, almost none of whom looked familiar.
Finally I went back to the first book, a few pages in, and pointed to a photo.
“This could be him,” I said. “It looks like him but his hair is different.”
“Are you identifying this person as your attacker?”
“Well, I think so, but his hair is different.” I really didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.
“Is there anyone else who might be your attacker?”
“No,” I said. “If it’s anyone in these books, it’s this guy.”
The officer scribbled something and closed the books.
Then he asked me where Bonnie lived.
“She lives in Akron, Ohio,” I said.
Larry chimed in from the doorway: “But she’s asleep in our attic right now.”
The officer perked up. “Can you wake her up?”
“Sure!” I dashed upstairs.
The officer asked if Bonnie could identify the man she’d seen at the bar. She walked into the kitchen without sitting down and flipped through a couple of pages.
She poked the page, hard. “That’s him right there that mother fucker!”
Bonnie was pointing to the exact same picture I’d chosen, with no qualms.
The heavy, stinking man walked me back to the bar. Outside he muttered, “Just don’t say nothin’.”
“I won’t,” I promised. I meant it.
We went straight to the bar together. It wasn’t a large establishment; the bartender was standing right there, staring into my eyes as I tried to order drinks.
All that came out was a choked sob. No words. No tears. I held up two fingers. It was the best I could do.
Larry was still in the corner with the band, singing. The bartender started pouring drafts, still staring at me. I presented a tight-lipped, meek smile.
Bonnie grabbed me from behind and spun me around. “There you are!” she said. “Where the fuck did you go?”
I grabbed her and hugged her tight, said nothing.
When I finally let go, the man was gone. He was not standing next to me, not drinking the beer I’d ordered, nowhere to be found.
Bonnie saw my face and hugged me again. I was a big believer in keeping a promise even to that horrible man, but I’d forgotten about Bonnie. We sat at our table. As I triple-checked repeatedly that he was really gone, I told her what had happened.
“That mother fucker!” she screamed. “I’ll kill him!”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I told him I wasn’t going to tell anybody.”
“I’ll kill him!” she screamed again – just as the band stopped playing. Larry strolled toward us, uncharacteristically without his signature smile.
“I saw you leave with that fuckin’ guy,” Larry growled at me. “Where did you go?”
“I thought we were doing some coke …” I started.
“You fucked him, didn’t you?” Larry said. “You’re fuckin’ lyin’!”
Bonnie lifted her jaw from the floor and said, “He fuckin’ raped her!”
I considered the word “rape.” I wondered, is it rape if he doesn’t actually get an erection?
I considered the many times I’d had sex simply to avoid conflict.
It was easier to have sex than to try to get away from whichever man was “asking.” I didn’t actually want to have sex with strangers. For the first time I thought, If I had said no instead of just having sex with guys, would I have been raped?
I’ll never know the answer.
I looked at Larry. “Well, I don’t know if …” I started again.
Bonnie’s eyes widened. She yelped: “He fuckin’ raped you, that mother fucker, I’ll kill him!”
Larry guffawed. “He didn’t fuckin’ rapeyou,” Larry said. “You fucked him and you’re trying to get away with it!”
I considered the word again. Was it rape?
And then I remembered I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what had happened. I’d promised. He said he’d let me go if I didn’t say anything. I’d be safe. I’d be free.
I wanted to be safe and free, but I felt very, very far from safety and freedom.
“He did rape me,” I said quietly. “I can’t believe you don’t believe me.”
I’d cheated on Larry a thousand times, and he’d never seemed to notice. The one time I chose not to cheat, the one time I’d been senselessly and violently attacked, Larry didn’t believe it had happened.
“Prove it,” Larry said. “If you were fuckin’ raped, let’s go to the cops.”
“I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone,” I said. I was desperately trying to do the right thing, but the line between right and wrong felt very blurry.
