I’m conflicted about publishing this. It’s long been hidden in the drafts section of neevita, offline since phuqed.org slipped quietly into the night, like most of the stuff I wrote about back then. There are rape triggers and erotic elements. It’s difficult subject matter and I expect that isn’t limited to how I am reacting to finding it again, and it will probably bother people.
However, it’s timely. As our social media begins to question and speak out about rape culture I’ve been thankful that I hadn’t ever been taken advantage of like the young women I’ve been reading about, many who died of suicide later.
The stories I’m reading are horrible. But, it doesn’t take the extreme of being video taped and physically abused by men who then brag about their deeds to cause real damage. I would argue that few rapes are so cut and dry and easy to identify. Mine wasn’t.
One of the main points I am hearing that I wholely agree with, is the lack of education surrounding what rape is, and how to recognize it.
Mostly, I hear this being called out as needing to be explained to men. And clearly, that’s true – the facts and actions of the perpetrators of recent crimes like the Steubenville rape show that, and most of the literature and advice surrounding preventing rape lies in the hands of the women.
But there are so many women who limp, injured and violated, for years, without understanding why, or what it is that happened. There are so many people who don’t understand coercion, manipulation, bargaining, or what consent means, or even if they’ve given it or not. Don’t understand that curling up in a ball and being pestered by someone to fuck them while they’re half drunk isn’t ok, isn’t their fault, and isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, no matter who you are.
In fact, though I’m incredibly connected to the results of the transformation that came about from this experience, which I had when I was 16, I’d completely fucking forgotten about the actual incident. For a long time afterwards when I did remember it, I was an apologist for my own rapist. Feeling for him was more natural than feeling for myself. Because my rapist wasn’t a monster. He didn’t stalk and hunt and tie me down and beat me up and hold a knife to my throat like I was taught rapists do.
I wrote this nearly 10 years after the incident, once I had finally discovered psychotherapy, and began to recognize that the manner in which I had weaponized and harnessed my sexuality was hurting people I cared about – and also damaging me. I wrote because I’d found where my sexuality had shifted from seeking intimacy and caring to a wielding of power and a hatred, from exploration and connection to a deep subconscious violence.
Maybe there is another kind of rape, that we aren’t talking about as much when we warn people about bad touching and fighting back. The kind that’s learned like abusive tendencies that continue as unconscious obliviousness and corrode and damage us. The kind that encourages us not to see or be seen like any other subtle form of abuse.
Even 10 years later, I still couldn’t see what had happened to me as rape. Even now, I struggle to call it what it obviously was. Because that means I will have to look at it.
That means I will have to stand in the possibility that rape can be something unconscious, something that sometimes, people don’t even realize is happening. The possibility that rape could be faultless and subtle. It means I will have to look at what all the other times were. All those other times I laid silently, feeling deadened inside, skin flushing in heat and anxiety, paralyzed, hiding, responding by staying limp and quiet, hoping they would notice..
and stop.
What if I told you I was awake
Written by courtnee on June 9, 2006Note: I created a playlist which accompanied this time in my life. You can listen via flash here.
I can tell something’s wrong. You won’t look at me, your face is sour, you’re slouching more than normal and that vein on your head is real obvious. If I had the fucking balls to stand up for myself, I’d confront you right here and now. Right here in the train station. If I had the balls I would pin you down and make you admit what you did to me. Make you apologize. Make you fucking suffer.
But I don’t have the balls. In fact, I’m such a fucking doormat that I feel sorry for YOU and what a horrible fuck you must feel like. I’m afraid that if I stand up for myself you will leave. My best friend. My only close friend.
I go home and think about what I will say to you when you get back on IRC. How will I approach it? Should I scream at you, be angry? Am I supposed to be sad and afraid? Am I supposed to call the cops?
I know I am supposed to do something. And I know it’s supposed to be something strong and amazing and smart like everyone says I am.
But all I can do is mourn the loss of our friendship and pine for things to be the way they were before I woke up from a dead sleep to feel your hand down my pants. Before I felt the hot flash of adrenaline course through my body and paralyze me with fear and disbelief. Before the thought of stopping you flashed through my head but dissipated instantly when I considered how badly and pathetically you would react. Before I heard you whisper ‘grow’ while you clutched my breast. Before I thanked fucking god I had a tampon in.
I ache for the person I once knew, who was into books and parks and speed walking who didn’t like to be touched. The person who used to love when I would play guitar and sing, whose piano playing amazed me, the person who had tasted my tears after brushing them from my cheeks with his finger. The person who was so disgusted with human contact I thought I would never have to fear him like I did others. I ache for his regret, his pains, and that he has to live with what he’s now become forever.
I know I should hate you for what you are now. I know I should want to kill you, hurt you somehow, and sometimes I can manage enough anger from other places to pretend, but I just don’t. I am so sad for you, so scared for you, and still posses so much love. It makes me feel weak and powerless, and I find in you another reason to hate myself.
When you finally come online I waste no time setting the stage. You were odd today, is anything wrong. Did something happen last night. What’s bothering you. Slowly my questions descend into very obvious implications that I know what I’m looking for, yet you still deny. Over and over, you deny.
I don’t want to give up what feels like my only leverage. I don’t want to negate my power position by letting you know that I just fucking laid there petrified and let you fucking touch me and breathe on me and fondle my tits and who knows what else before I woke up. But I am a creature of gratification, and I simply can’t allow this to die without your confession.
What would you say if I told you I were awake?
The same.
How?
Because I have to.
You leave. For months you go away to be head shrunk and cured. You tell your family you raped me, and they don’t believe you. I don’t believe you. Your therapist doesn’t believe you. It was something else. You couldn’t have raped me because I still want your friendship, because you didn’t force your cock in me.
I am waiting for you to come back so we can mend things and go back to the way things were, talking on IRC for hours upon hours about everything and nothing. I don’t realize it, but another brick in the wall is set by your abandonment.
I suddenly come into the habit of thinking about you when I masturbate. I’d done it once or twice before to see how it would feel, but it was awkward and without climax. But now, it’s different. Now I’m angry. Now I am pissed the fuck off. And now I know how to satisfy it.
We are at your parents house in Santa Rosa watching a movie. You’re on the couch, I’m on the floor kneeling in front of you. You tell me no. I don’t listen. Neither does your crotch. I pull all my best moves as you protest between extended periods of paralyzed submission in which you’re too terrified to move. I groan that you wanted this while breathing hot through your pants. Your head falls back onto the back of the couch as you let out a devastated whine before beginning to silently cry.
The way your tears stream silently into your hair is exactly how I cried while at the dentists office with a raging jaw infection that threatened my life after spreading to the back of my neck. After getting a root canal in which the dentist rested his hand on my infection-gorged jaw the entire procedure, I had become entranced from the pain.
There was no motion, no sobbing, no resistance. I laid in that dentists chair while tears silently whispered from the corners of my eyes into my soaked hair in defeated silence while I went through the most painful event of my life. In reward for my will my bottom lip was eventually pulled away from my jaw so a scalpel could be jammed into my chin and tablespoon after tablespoon of yellow cottage cheese was massaged from my face and neck into my mouth and throat while I choked. I have never experienced pain to that degree of transcendence in my life since.
And here you are. Crying like I was that day. For me.
Your tears incite no mercy. Once snaked through your zipper I immediately mount and force you into me, glaring at you. You whisper for me to please stop. Please don’t. I hold your shoulders to the back of the couch and start systematically drilling down, pulling up. You wanted this. You wanted this so bad you decided to take it without asking. You’ll get what you want. And you’ll never want it again.
As your orgasm mounts you fight back more aggressively, like a man being drowned in a body of water, gripping at my face under my jaw trying to push me away from you. I continually outsmart you and pin your hands. Eventually the distraction gets the better of you and you relent to your fate, whimpering and sobbing as I feel you come inside my fantasy as I come in reality.
I feel a surge of power rush through me. It outweighs my hate, my love, my fears, my guilt, my confusion. It outweighs everything. It feels amazing. I feel amazing. I am amazing. And you, are ruined. Ruined forever like I was supposed to be ruined by you.
I don’t feel right about the fantasy. About the hate. But it feels so good to fuck myself thinking of forcing myself on you, I don’t stop. It becomes my staple sexual outlet, and perhaps the way I cope with your absence as well as your deeds.
Your return is confusing, upsetting, distant. You don’t want much to do with me. I feel like I’ve done something wrong, and try to tell you that I forgive you. I don’t care what happened, and over the course of your stay I’ve realized that it was bound to no matter what based on our relationship dynamic. It was no ones fault. Please take me back. So good to see you. I’ve missed you so much. So glad it’s over.
But my friend is gone. What was left of my innocence is gone. I am left with only change, disappointment, and a newfound hate for my always-apparent sensuality and appeal.
My hopeless romance, my quest for someone to love me, my openness and honesty about wanting that, wanting affection, and hoping that some day I will find someone to take my sex and do right by it, already battered and broken from others before you, withers and dies.
My fantasies of entangled limbs, soft kisses, gentle thrusts and whisperings of sweet nothings no longer excite me. Thoughts of being made love to, being brought to orgasm, gone down upon with tender care, are dry and fruitless. Now I have a cock. Sometimes I make myself suck it. Sometimes I fuck dead girls with it. Sometimes I let the object of my affection borrow it so I can feel him come for me, in me, on me.
The power in surrender and trust is gone. I now understand that sex doesn’t have to sadden me, make me feel used, be abusive, be scary, be submissive, force me to allow anyone inside any part of me ever again. My sex is power, my sex is no longer a shameful burden or a curse that makes me feel inappropriate, haunted, exposed. Harnessing it makes me the most powerful person on earth.
Now I have taken control.