Sex Slavery

Writing. You were always writing, my wife, especially when you’d sit on the bank of the river, across which I would one day follow you.

The August sky was clear and the late-summer sun illuminated you from above. You could feel the blades of grass against your skin. You had no need of a blanket, and your legs browned in the light. You were alive but very much alone.

Having taken a job teaching high school in a small Wisconsin town – a job for which you weren’t suited – you were on your own for the first time. And what you wrote in your notebook belied the day’s beauty and the promise of your young life.

You wrote of suicide, of the unwanted attention of a passing man, of loneliness, of your desire for women. Every time you filled a page, you noticed that the writing had become more frantic in both appearance and substance. You had pressed the pen so hard against the paper that your ink had become useless. Your words were indelible etchings that fingers could read: the braille of your pain.

You returned to your apartment to make yourself a simple dinner. But you couldn’t shake the desperation of your thoughts, and when you looked down at your legs, you saw tiny rashes reddening your brown legs. You felt marked, not just by the grass, to which you perhaps were allergic, but by the two men who had raped you.

You took some meds and made yourself a drink. You needed to calm yourself, and you told yourself again and again that it wasn’t your fault, that your family and therapists couldn’t really help you, that they didn’t know what it was like, that they couldn’t know what it was like, that it really was your fault, that you had it coming for your abnormal desire for women and questioning of the dogma of the Catholic Church and your mother.

You were alone, in a small town, trying to numb a pain that wouldn’t cease and discover a reason for what had happened. Images of your college roommate’s boyfriend grabbing you as you showered, of him trying to enter you after he had pulled your tee-shirt over your head as you slept after you’d thought he’d gone home, of fighting him off, of telling no one about what had happened, of heading off to work the next day – images such as these flooded your mind and fatigued your soul.

You waited for the drink and meds to kick in, but they just wouldn’t, and your tears streamed from your eyes, reminding you again of the shower and how he’d come at you from behind and tried to bend you over so he could stick his penis inside you. The tears and shower water were endless, just as your roommate’s boyfriend’s face wouldn’t leave your mind.

You thought, “If only I hadn’t been there.” “If only I hadn’t decided to take a shower.” “It was my fault…my roommate said so.” “I’m crazy.” “I’m a slut.” “I’m a pervert for liking girls.” “I’m going to Hell.” “My mother hates me.”

You thought, “Why did I get drunk at the office Christmas party?” “Why did I let my manager walk me to a place where I could safely sleep off the booze?” “Why did I let him buy me so many drinks?” “Why did I wake up with him pulling off my pants and putting his mouth on me and fingering me, causing me to bleed?” “What’s wrong with liking girls?” “Why couldn’t he accept that?” “Why did he call me a carpet muncher?” “How could I have passed out?” “What happened after I passed out?” “Did he ejaculate inside me?” “Why did my mother blame me?”

You wanted your mother’s love. You knew you were a bad person, and you wanted your mother’s love. You wanted to love what she loved. You wanted to love the Catholic Church. You wanted salvation from your own impure thoughts and from the rape trauma, which drove you to drink and made it impossible for you to sleep.

You took an extra pill and had another pull of vodka. You fell and continued falling into an ever-deepening hole, crushed under the weight of your loveless history. You’d just turned twenty-three.

The following Sunday at church, you saw the man who had approached you in the park. He seemed nice, so you talked to him. He, after all, was at a Catholic mass, and, you quickly learned, he was intelligent too. He attended graduate school at a Big Ten university, a science student on the Ph.D. track. You’d always loved science and wished you’d majored in it. But teaching in the Humanities seemed to be your true calling. And working as a beginning teacher at a small town in the north of Wisconsin seemed the way to go, even if the job was only part-time.

You visited your parents for the Labor Day weekend, and the nice young man offered to give you a ride back to your small town. Before he’d picked you up, you’d told your mother and father about him. Your mother approved and allowed you to be alone with him in the car for the three-hour journey. He was Catholic, attended mass, was about your age, and had a lucrative and respectable career ahead of him. She met him in the driveway and liked him on the spot.

Your friends also approved. They didn’t know anything about your suicidal thoughts – neither did your father and mother, for that matter – but they thought that you should give guys a try. You, keeping your fears and loneliness hidden, agreed with them.

As you sat next to him in his pickup truck on the three-hour drive, you asked him about all the paraphernalia from his Big Ten school that adorned the cabin. He talked about being a cheerleader for the school, his scholastic awards and achievements, and how he was voting for John McCain in the fall. You agreed with him, pointing out that McCain had more experience than Obama. He told you that he’d been to a McCain rally and to church at a beautiful cathedral in Detroit. You revealed that you were trying to be a better Catholic. He said that he was as well and that he’d like to attend church with you. You agreed – and also agreed to meet him to play disc golf.

On the disc golf course, you were surprised when he approached you from behind – just like your roommate’s boyfriend did in the shower – and tried to kiss you. You told him that you didn’t like men and that you’d recently had some bad experiences that were making it difficult for you to have any romantic relationships right now.

But your head was spinning again. Vodka and antidepressants weren’t available on a disc golf course, and as soon as his lips touched your neck and his arms surrounded you, you were back in the shower, feeling your roommate’s boyfriend’s erect penis against thrusting against your leg as he tried to enter you from behind. You felt like throwing up…you felt like dying.

The nice young man had stopped, however, when you’d told him to stop. Sure, he pouted a little bit and asked you how you could be a lesbian and a Catholic at the same time. You said that you were confused, and he told you that you could always talk to him. You accepted his invitation to have dinner at his apartment the next night. You thought that perhaps this nightmare was coming to an end, that perhaps you’d found a friend – a Catholic friend – who pleased your parents and had made a commitment to helping you sort out your life.

But the images wouldn’t stop when you tried to sleep that night. You etched another entry in your notebook, called me to talk about what had happened on the golf course, mixed vodka and antidepressants to fall asleep and to bury the thoughts of the weirdness of the golf course events deep in your brain.

The next night, as the two of you made dinner together, you told him that you’d been raped in a shower and after a Christmas office party. The nice young man decided to help.

The nice young man stripped you and pulled you toward the shower. He knew that the only way to help you get over your homosexuality and become a better Catholic was to have an orgasm in the very place that you’d been raped. As he frantically removed his clothes, he turned on the water, which was ice-cold but somehow scalding at the same time.

Your mind left your body, and you looked down on the scene. You couldn’t feel what was happening to you, but you could see that there was no way to stop it. Your mouth, therefore, never opened, and you stood stock-still, taking the endless water like it was an endless rain of bullets piercing and reddening your skin, so that you were marked by yet another indelible rash that would set you apart from others forever.

The nice young man couldn’t get his penis inside you, so he harshly rubbed your clitoris, commanding you to come and berating you when you didn’t. He called you a wimp for not letting him stick it in, for being so rigid, for being so cold. He called you a lesbian whore who was going to Hell.

From your position above the scene, you could tell that what was happening to you didn’t really matter, that he was trying to fuck a corpse. And, out of the corner of your eye, you saw the pills waiting for you, the pills that would end this ordeal.

After jerking off on you, the nice young man had you wash off his come and then towel yourself off. He then suggested that you go on a sex schedule for the good of your own soul. He would convert you by teaching you how to hold hands, kiss, give head, and have intercourse. He would make you straight. Your parents despised your sexuality, he reasoned. And, even if they didn’t know about it, it was better that they never find out and that you learn to succumb to a man’s desire.

All of the nice young man’s doctrines were founded on religious doctrine. So condems wouldn’t be necessary. All that was needed was a confession of your lesbian sins to a Catholic priest and a blood test to prove that you didn’t have AIDS. Once you accomplished these two tasks – and attended church with him regularly – he would start teaching you about heterosexual sex. But, he also wanted you to know, talk of love couldn’t enter the conversation. This was about the salvation of your soul through sexually orienting you in a correct way. It was about sex slavery.

And so, my wife, the nice young man raped you repeatedly for a month. He raped you in the missionary position in your own bed and in his, fucking you hard and bringing himself to the point of orgasm before pulling out, jerking himself off, and coming all over your defenseless body.

The nice young man was twice your size; you had no choice. You had to kiss, suck, and fuck. He pinned you down with his arms and entered you. This happened too many times to count, and all the while, he kept threatening you with the revelation of your slutty behavior to your parents and to your new employers. He also called you the very names – lesbian, whore, abomination – which he said he was trying to make sure you were never called again.

The nice young man raped you, my wife. He fucked you so hard it hurt. He threatened to hit you because you weren’t making the noises of pleasure that he thought were appropriate.

The nice young man especially liked to come on your behind, which he praised when he “dumped” you two months after you’d first met him. You were a used-up hole, and he had another girlfriend who knew how to screw a lot better than you did. You were a dyke who’d manipulated him into having sex with him, so that you could find a cure for your horrible sins.

Your mother came to visit Halloween weekend. The pill bottle loomed larger in your mind, now taking up almost all its space. She went out for groceries. You had told her nothing about what had happened. But you blamed her, the nice young man, and yourself. You deserved to die. Your execution warrant was etched not only in your notebook but also on your entire body.

Your mother went out for groceries. You took the pills. You passed out. You were almost gone. Your life was almost extinguished, my wife, on Halloween weekend 2008. Your mother found you and drove you to the hospital. You later told her that you had accidentally taken too many pills. She believed you, and you voted for McCain the day you left the hospital, not because he was more experienced but because your mother wanted it that way.