I purchased new CD's today. Very few things are as satisfactory as new CD's. Today's purchases were: Poe's new one, Suzanne Vega's "Solitude Standing," Low's "Long Division," Delirium's "Semantic Spaces," Emerson Lake and Palmer's Greatest Hits, and the "Wild At Heart" soundtrack.
All in all, it's going to be a fantastic week to be Helena's stereo.
I walked to work playing Emerson Lake and Palmer.
I smiled the whole way, thinking about cowboys and harpsichords. Emerson Lake and Palmer inspire some strange images in my head, but always pleasant ones.
There was nothing to do at work when I got there. There was a small rush, and then I sat down to read the paper and wait until it was safe to pick up my book and get fully absorbed in it.
I read Ann Landers' advice. It sucked.
I read the comics. They sucked.
I read about a plane going down and some trains (busses?) hitting each other in Arizona. That sucked too, but I'm morbid and kind of like reading about that sort of thing, so I cheered up after my Ann Landers/funny pages disappointment.
I read...
"POLICE: CITY WOMAN ESCAPES ATTACKER AFTER RAPE."
I almost didn't read the article. You read that kind of thing and you think, "hm... weird domestic violence type thing," and you get depressed about how sick the world is, and you move on to reading about Gore/Bush, but for some reason, this article caught my attention and I read it.
Partially clothed, a Binghamton woman broke away from an attacker she said raped and beat her early Monday and made her way to Rte 17 where she flagged down a passing truck driver, city police said Tuesday.
Okay... The story reminded me -- at least one paragraph into it -- of a case that happened when I was a kid: this woman was raped and murdered and the killer tied several hundred rubber bands around the wrists of her body. My brothers and I decided we were going to solve the crime; the police had said the suspect drove a white van with New Jersey license plates. For weeks, we were on the lookout, and I still feel a little weird about white vans, particularly ones with NJ plates. I read on:
...Binghamton detectives are searching for the perpetrator of what police describe as a particularly brutal attack...
Okay...
Police said the attack came after the woman accepted a ride from a stranger.
Ohhhhhhh..... Shit.
...The woman was raped, sodomized and beaten over several hours before she was able to break away from her assailant...
The woman, described as in her 20's, was taken by ambulance to Lourdes hospital where she was treated for her injuries and released.
According to police, the woman lives in the city's West Side, and was walking near North and Murray Streets at about 1 am Monday when she accepted a ride from the man...
Holy shit.
North and Murray. That's THREE BLOCKS from my house. I walk there EVERY DAY.
It was AT THAT INTERSECTION where a man in a van offered me a ride less than two weeks ago and when I refused, got an attitude, waved a dollar-bill out his window, and leered, "are you sure?"
THIS COULD HAVE BEEN ME...
The description of the assailant matches EXACTLY to the description of the man who accosted me. The description of the vehicle is different, but the description of the man is IDENTICAL.
THIS COULD HAVE BEEN ME.
Needless to say, the Emerson Lake and Palmer high had worn off.
Sometimes I want to be like that Arnold Schwarzenegger-looking dude on X-files. The one who, when threatened by the Black Oil, can somehow cover his entire face, and -- presumably -- all of his bodily orifices with a layer of thick, impenetrable flesh.
I want to not HAVE parts of my body that can be violated in this way. I want to be completely shielded. I'd be AlienSkin Girl. And nobody would fuck with me. If they tried to fuck with me, I'd simply close off my eyes, ears, mouth, vagina, belly-button, asshole, and nostrils. How's that for frustrating a perpetrator?
I was angry all night. I began to have these violent fantasies, something that has rarely happened to me before. I am not, by nature, an angry or violent person, at least not in this way. Tonight, I had visions of a rapist coming after me, and of myself hitting the rapist in the face with one of the fryer-baskets in the kitchen. I was actually testing the weight of the fryer-baskets, even went so far as to touch it to test the temperature of it. Hot, heavy metal, right across the face...
I was afraid. Not of rapists. I was afraid of my hatred. I do not know how to hate violently. I do not know how to wish injury and death to people.
This could have been me....
I'm glad the bar was empty most of the night. I couldn't concentrate on anything. I couldn't get rid of the article in my head. I imagined myself walking home in the dark, at one in the morning, near the very intersection where the woman was picked up and subsequently raped. I was terrified. I imagined myself walking home with a cup of hot coffee in my hands, ready at the slightest sign of anything wrong, to toss the coffee at someone and run like hell. I imagined bringing a beer bottle home on my walk, and cracking someone over the head with it. I imagined holding a handful of hot tabasco sauce on my way home -- it would be sticky, but I could hurt somebody bad if I rubbed it in their eyes.
I realized I REALLY liked thinking about this. I felt an overwhelming urge to take revenge on the world. I felt like killing people. I felt like neutering rapists, and not in a pleasant way. I felt like doing some fucking damage.
Why? Because I'm a 20-year-old female who lives on the West Side. I'm young, I'm attractive, I don't have a car and I walk to and from work every day, I'm a night owl and am often out and about at 1 AM. Because I am all of those things -- all of the things that this raped-and-beaten woman was -- and I DON'T DESERVE TO BE HURT.
And I don't deserve to be afraid. I don't deserve to be confined to my house because I happen to be young and female. FUCK THAT.
Because I shouldn't have fantasies about closing myself into my own body as the AlienSkin Girl. I should be able to love and celebrate my body without fearing that by HAVING genitals, those genitals will be taken advantage of.
Because no one deserves to be brutalized.
And so I therefore could not hold back the images of hurting, of killing, of lashing out. I envisioned myself as a scared little kitten trapped in a corner by a huge scary dog or a bear or something, and lashing out, not caring if I hurt my predator, not caring if I killed him, and in fact HOPING I killed him as a matter of my own survival. My fight-or-flight instinct was anxiously standing just behind the curtain on stage-right, waiting, just waiting, to be given an opportunity to arise and fucking KILL somebody.
I was raped at 17. He was my boyfriend. We'd had sex. I didn't always like it, didn't always want it, but never really protested, and never really cared much one way or the other. But things went a little too far. He started doing things to me that hurt -- that hurt a lot. He didn't stop when I asked him to, didn't stop until I was crying and begging him to stop. Then he told me he knew I'd liked it because I was bleeding. He also told MANY people at my college the same thing, and they laughed at me, and thought I was a kinky whore.
After that incident, I didn't try to kill myself. I didn't blame myself. I didn't cut myself or starve myself or shut down emotionally. I hated him, but I knew I'd done nothing wrong. No, scratch that. Of COURSE I'd done something wrong: I was pretty and intelligent and I had a fucking mind of my own and refused to be subservient to my stupid asshole boyfriend. He got off on putting me down. He got off on trying to make me feel stupid, and telling me I was crazy. He got off on hurting a strong woman, on bringing a strong woman down. If he couldn't make me stupider, couldn't make me check into a mental hospital, couldn't get me to beg his forgiveness for being a bitch and disagreeing with him, he'd hold me down and fuck my ass with an unlubricated condom until I was beating on him and screaming for him to stop. Yup, I guess it was my fault. I'm too strong to curl up and die. Maybe everybody who doesn't curl up and die should be raped, just to be taught a lesson that your man knows what he's doing.
I fucking hate you... I fucking hate you so much...
He was the only person I ever lashed out against, violently. I slapped him. It was six months after the incident, but I slapped him, and I felt a fog lift -- just a little bit, but it lifted. I broke up with him almost immediately after he raped me, and although I didn't talk about it with my friends, they all became much closer to me around that time, and maybe saved me from closing my doors to the world.
I don't deserve to be hurt.
I WILL NOT BE HURT.
I discussed with Norman a week and a half ago the idea of carrying a knife with me when I go out. It's a good idea for a couple of reasons. First, I wouldn't be afraid to walk the streets, even at night. Second, if anyone did try to hurt me, I'd have some sort of defense. As it is, I am a tiny person and unable to cause much damage. I fight like a girl.
There are also some downsides. First, the knife I have is illegal, and it's illegal to carry a concealed weapon in New York State, at least last time I knew. Second, I'm not very skilled with my knife, and it could get turned against me, in which case I could very likely die. Third, I wasn't sure if I could use it -- if I could actually pull out my knife and stab someone with it if I felt they were going to do me harm.
I know now that I could use my knife. I could stab, and I could maim, and I think I could wound pretty severely. I don't know if I'd be able to live with myself if I killed someone, and I think -- honestly -- that I'd try NOT to kill, but to cripple, and to cripple severely.
As a matter of fact, I am now only afraid to carry my knife because I WANT to hurt people. I want to stab the whole world for letting things like this happen. For throwing girls to the wolves. For raising men who could do this.
I am angry, and I am having trouble projecting my rage. I am enraged, an emotion I've almost never had, and one I don't know how to deal with effectively. When I am angry, I write, and it goes away. Or I take a walk, and I watch the River, and it goes away. NOW I CAN'T EVEN TAKE A WALK! I am so filled with hate, and all I can think about is cutting people, hurting people, rubbing tabasco sauce in people's eyes, kneeing people in the testes, breaking glass over people's heads and watching blood flow. These are not healthy thoughts, I don't think.
I do not hate men. Most of my best friends are men. Norman, Aaron, David... I would trust them with my life: body and soul.
I do not hate men.
I hate feeling like a delicate little vase lying in the middle of a freeway. I hate people who have the ability to make me wonder about myself, about my worth. I hate people who believe that, as a cute young chick, I'm nothing more than a cunt with some opinions that ought to be shoved a little farther inside so they cannot come back out.
Everywhere I go, people watch me. This is not paranoia; this is absolute truth. I guess I don't really look like other girls. I'm unconventionally attractive, I think. Everywhere I go -- work, walking down the street, going to the mall, going to bars, even sometimes on the freaking internet -- men look at me as if I am a piece of meat. A few in particular: the old guy called Joe who comes to the bar every night, walks into the kitchen, gives me a once-over, and nods disgusting approval while staring at my chest. He calls me his "sweetheart." He can fucking rot in hell. He's old enough to be my grandfather, no exaggeration. The old creepy guy with the long white hair. I think his name is Carey or Gary. He must live near me, because whenever I walk to work, or from work, or just down the street to buy orange juice, I run into him. He calls me "girl." "Hey, Girl, what's up, don't you want to talk to me? Want to come party with me?" Carey or Gary is at least 50, and dirty, and he smells rather offensive. I do not want to party with him. I can't think of much I'd like LESS than to party with him.
I'm not a cunt with a head attached. I'm nobody's blow-up doll. I'm nobody's sweetheart. I don't fuck men who want me to call them "daddy." I didn't grow boobs when I was 13 just so that horrible people could look at them. I don't want to party with people who think I exist for the sole purpose of fucking.
I feel their eyes on me sometimes. I feel Joe's eyes on me. I feel other eyes on me. I hate it. It's as if I can feel them fucking me with their minds. Their eyes crawl all over me. They want to possess me. To possess me and to break me.
"You'll. Never. Have. Me." --Alice, Lost Highway.
Nobody is ever going to possess and break me.
Nobody will ever hurt me. I will never let anyone hurt me again.
And god-DAMMIT, I will not be afraid. EVER.
My knife is in the top drawer of my dresser. As soon as I finish this entry and link it, my knife will be on the inside of my coat.
~Helena*