Viva La Glam
*trigger warning
4/7/15
I woke up to the violent raining hitting the window. The darkness of the sky crept through the drawn blinds and in the distance I could hear a rooster crowing the morning’s beginning. There aren’t roosters where I’m from. Then I saw the body laying next to me. Naked and guilty. I felt my stomach cramp up and a sourness came over me.
"Asa." I nudged him. "Asa, I feel sick."
I sat up suddenly and got off the mattress that lay bare and sheetless and I ran to the bathroom. I leaned over the sink, the cold porcelain resting against my bare stomach as I threw up the contents of the night before, a dangerous amount of Budweiser and phlegm and stomach acid and whatever else had been in my system. A twinge of confusion rushed over me as I walked back into the room and laid down on the mattress.
"Are you okay?" He mumbled.
"I just threw up." I laid my body next to his as he reached down and began to rub my stomach in the most caring way anyone’s ever rubbed my stomach before. I slipped back into sleep.
The weekend before the rape my father took me into the city to see the final weeks of the Keith Haring exhibit in Golden Gate Park. The paintings of capitalism and greed and of Hell and AIDS hung on the walls as my father and I walked through the De Young. Everything was so beautiful---from the sculptures to the newspaper headline collages to the old Polaroid pictures of Keith and Madonna that were displayed proudly behind the glass case.
Before we left my father took my photo next to the Andy Warhol/Mickey Mouse painting. I still have the picture, me in my blue jeans and black turtleneck, a beam of excitement crept across my face as the camera clicked. The face holds a certain type of innocence that will never be returned.
Next to the Mickey Mouse painting hung the bright, cherry red painting of Keith Haring’s depiction of 1980’s Hell. Demons and naked men danced around the massive fires. I stood in front of it for a while and just watched. After we left the museum we drove down to the beach and smoked a joint, watching a few surfers out in the cold winds.
The bath was cold. Probably as cold as the Bay was for the surfers that weekend before. I submerged myself in the water as if I were a mermaid. As if I could wash away what that boy was about to do to me.
Asa and I had went to his apartment to drink 40 ounce beers. It was the weekend before Valentine's Day. I ran into him at the BART station, or rather, he ran up to me and grabbed me.
“Oh my god! You surprised me! Hi, Asa! How are you?” I asked. Asa had been the guitarist in a band with my best friend, Daniel, when we were still in high school. I trusted him.
We waited for the bus together and after I had paid and walked to the back of the bus I turned around and saw Asa begin to sit down but then look back at me.
I shrugged. “You can come sit with me.”
As we talked he asked me if I wanted to hang out, that we could grab some beer. I didn't want to go home, I was in a good mood. I had just gotten back from a day of shopping in San Francisco and wanted a drink, so I took Asa up on his offer.
That last hour or two had been filled with Gangsta rap...Eazy E and others as Asa and I drank the beer and talked. He told me he was heartbroken over a girl and asked me how to make it better. He told me about his father and his abandonment and about how he thought the friends we had in common weren't really his friends.
I had opened up to Asa, too---I told him about how I was molested when I was a little girl by someone my father had known.
Now laying in the bathtub I was in my purest, most absolute vulnerable state...naked and cold and drunker than I'd ever been in my life. Asa asked me earlier if he could "just finger me for practice" but I laughed off what I had thought had been a joke. Now as I stumbled back into his bedroom in the empty apartment of his grandmother’s, I realized this was no joke.
I sat down on the edge of bed and wrapped my denim Beastie Boys jacket around my body. He said something stupid about me taking a cold bath as I shivered so I said, with a small laugh,“Warm me up, then.”
Asa got on top of me then, pushing me on the bed, my back up against the bare mattress. "Oh no....no...Asa I didn't mean like this....no. Asa I don't want to have sex." I said over and over as he pinned my arms down and a struggle ensued. I tried to fight myself away from him, tried desperately to push off this animal that was grinding up against my wet, naked body but it was too late.
I don't remember how he got inside of me but I remember it hurting. Bad. "Asa....Asa.” I looked him in the eye. “It hurts. It hurts. It hurts so badly." I told him over and over.
He looked into my eyes. "Awww just take it, baby."
"Asa---Asa, please." I would plead.
"Call me daddy." He responded.
Finally I said, "Please, Asa, please---just give me a break. I need to piss. I need to piss so bad."
And maybe he felt bad for me or maybe he just didn't want me to piss on the bare mattress, because he let me go.
He looked pulled out and looked down at me. "Well, hurry up," he directed me. "I'm not done yet."
When I went back into the bedroom there was more sex....a lot more. Half unconscious, drunk, nonconsensual sex.
Keith Haring died of AIDS. I thought of this as I sat in the emergency room bed. I thought about the painting of Hell that was hung at the De Young. The way the AIDS virus danced around with the devil himself. Suddenly it was the only painting I could remember. I smacked my lips that were coated with Mac’s VIVA LA GLAM lip color. The lipstick’s proceeds go to an AIDS foundation. I had bought it the day of the rape.
They drew the blood for a HIV test. The scar opens up....it bleeds.
I don't remember much more about the hospital. A lot of it is a blur. My best friend was at my side for most of the time. The rape kit was traumatic enough but I cried when they gave me the chlamydia shot. It was the most painful shot I've ever been given-----both physically and emotionally.
The thing most people have been telling me is that the rape doesn't define me. That's true. Asa doesn't define me, what he did doesn't define me, what I did to survive doesn't define me, and what people think about this doesn't define me. But that doesn't mean it's not very much a part of me.
This is a scar and just like every scar that ever was and that ever will be; it will one day become scar tissue. The scar tissue will show how strong I have become. I will be proud of this scar tissue.
My advice to anyone that is going through this: Don't ever be afraid to speak up for yourself. For your rights and for your beliefs. There’s always going to be people that tell you that you’re wrong but don’t listen to them, just listen to yourself because that’s who you should put first, always. Our voices are very powerful and speaking up even when people tell us not to will really start to get people’s attention. It’s not our fault that the world is filled with rape culture. Let’s try to heal it.
