HOME | DD

Description
You stand outside and smoke and complain that your feet are cold and they tell you to just wear socks.  And you nod and wince inside because you can't tell them that you can't wear socks because you couldn't find them that morning and the little crumbled up note tucked inside your left shoe.  Sorry about last night and a smugged phone number.  You don't apologize anymore because its lost all its meaning.  You're working on that, but it doesn't make it any easier.  You forget how much you hate being touched until you've sent an elbow into someone's sternum.  You think its his breastbone, its his weak, tortured body you are striking.  You wish it was, because then you would have something truly real to be angry at.  But it never is and he was never weak.  You were.  You take a long drag and watch the smoke rise out of you lungs and into the air until there is nothing left inside of you but dust.  The way its been for much too long.

The music never stops but that's normal.  The only normal thing.  Head spins, throat dry, wrists torqued back at an almost but not quite painful way.  At least not yet.  Tape shouldn't rest against skin.  The ceiling paint is cracked, spanning out from around the light.  Following the lines to their ends, patterns in the broken white.
The voice above laughs.  Eyes in spinning head attempts to focus on something just out of sight.  Fingers grab flesh, flesh flinches, voice laughs.  There is a cold breeze from the window , a draft over exposed skin, over the entire scene and the laughter continues.  Oh, it says, aren't we

going to have fun.

You lay in bed, half naked, and remember why you hate mornings.  The sun rests gently on your face and it burns.  You no longer enjoy waking up because you're still alone and your clothes are scattered on the floor and panic sets in.  You remind yourself, this is your bed, not his.  But everything you touch is his now.  Every man you don't trust is him.  You size up everyone that walks past and you try hard not to flinch when touched.  Its harder than they think.  You lounge on, with friends, to teach you body what other people feel like.
You smile sadly when they tell you you're violent, because you wish you were then. Because then maybe it would have ended differently.

The “you” has left the room, floated away, gone south for the winter.  The voice is joined by a chorus of voices and they laugh at the nakedness, spread eagle before them.  The voices sprout hands and faces and they explore their new found conquest.  They discuss the prospects, exchange approaches.  They high five each other in view of the unfocused eyes in the pounding head.  They run their new found hands with their new found courage over and into the soft, quiet, private places.  White flesh flinches and a quiet voice cries out “Please, guys, don't.”  But they don't listen; maybe voices don't have ears.

You don't dance anymore because you're certain that's what drew them in.  You watch the people around you like a hawk, clutching you little red cup tighter.  You don't really drink anymore, it just doesn't really suit you.  You thought at first it would drown the pain, but really it just feeds the fire.  You don't like the way it feels anymore, the burn no longer feels good.  You

wonder if it shows.  If its still fun.  They laugh and dance and you lean against the wall and attempt to keep that fake plastic smile on your face.  You do your make up knowing it might be your undoing.  No lipstick any more.  You stand in the middle of the crowd and wait for the  hands to reach from behind, encircle your stomach.  Drag you away.  You can't see faces, can't remember names, can't hold a thought.  There is no safe place but the empty back porch, but then you're alone.  Always alone.

The hands probe deeper, the flesh fights against the binding, shies away from the touch.  “Please don't” the quiet voice pleads.  The laughter calms until there is only one voice, only one set of hands.  The fingers reach down and in and a quiet almost scream escapes.  “There is more for you,” laughter and a sharp stab in.  “This is just the beginning.”

You cover yourself up except for your cleavage.  Its your one attempt to reclaim your style.  No skirts come above the knee, never wear shorts.  You don't shave because you don't care about your legs.  Because you don't want anyone to see them.  You hide behind layers of cloth, glass, powder and will.  You build a wall, construct a fence, make a dam.  Keep him out and you in.  But no one else can get in either.
You try not to care about the way people look, the comments about you choice of clothing, of personal hygiene.  But you're still a girl, and this is still your body.  This is still your body.  You had to say that over and over to yourself, in front of a mirror, for years, before it really truly stuck.  And the mantra still slips but you smile down at them from behind your protective walls and pretend that your laughter doesn't echo the same way his did.

The voice has a mean streak and the white flesh shivers in fear.  Its all a joke, the voice in the pounding head whispers.  Its all a really dumb joke put together by a bunch of drunk boys.  But the voice comes back and the flicking noise is sickly too familiar.  “I think we're gonna have a little fun, darling” and legs fight against fingers and duct tape.  And the whisper inside the pounding head disappears and the mind hopes for blackness, for sleep, but it never comes.

You pick up the pen and try to find words to explain what has happened.  They say it is the only way to heal, but you don't really believe it.  How can words fix gaping wounds?  You don't really think there is a way to heal.  You are caught somewhere between A and B, where you want to talk but can't seem to find the voice.  There is no way of speaking about the unspeakable, you tell yourself.  But its no way to live, among words with no meaning and images with no words.  There needs to be a new language, you decide, a new set of symbols so you can transfer the information from your mind out through your mouth and into the world.  For now, though, you suffer in cliché silence.  It hurts but its a pain you can't describe.  You tell them things matter-of-factly and swallow the tears.  There is no use crying about anything anymore, its a waste of water.  So you don't cry about anything until you finally explode and something horrible happens.

It burns and the flesh collapses and the laughter continues and the mind dies a little.  The quiet screams are worthless now and the voice begins the give up on fighting.  The stream begins and there is nothing to stop it.  The chorus returns and the lights go off and the bed shakes.

You turn to poetry but feel cliché.  People seem to appreciate it, and yet you have sold out.  You have turned your supposed deep inner pain into five word lines that allow others a

single inner view.  You wonder if they pity you and you are angered by that thought.  By the idea that someone would belittle you like that.  You don't want pity.  You want understanding, acceptance, passing over.
You watch for signs that you're getting better, that the theory is working.  That you're healing.  But cuts don't heal if you keep pulling the scabs off.  You tell yourself to just leave it the hell alone, but when have you ever listened to yourself?

Some of them speak, some pretend there is nothing but themselves in the room and gain their pleasures in almost perfect silence.  The head voice comes in alone a lot.  But he doesn't do anything but stand and mock.  Like its his job, his calling in life.  He is no longer a voice, he has a face and hands and a body that weights so much more than the empty, naked husk on the bed.  He speaks to it in whispers, like its still alive.  Like the chest is still rising, the lungs still taking in air.  But all life has ceased, other than the unclosing, all seeing eyes that peer out from behind glassy shields.  He stands before them, lifting the head almost gently to let the eyes see exactly what the empty body is up against.  And the world dissolves into black.

You don't read “survivor stories” because you don't believe you have survived.  You were broken down and reborn, reshaped to fit the new, awkward shell your soul returned to.  Survivors tell their story to make others feel better.  To make others feel like they can have empathy instead of just sympathy.  But you don't want sympathy and you certainly don't want fake empathy.  You want people to forget, to move on.  To keep it in the back of their mind, to explain your quirks but not to define you as a person.

Lamp light never felt so harsh and limbs never felt so have.  The human body is much heavier than imagined, pain is something that has never been experience before now.  Blackness gives way to a whole new light.  Bright, blinding, searing light that makes the head ache and the eyes squint closed.  But the voices return and hands find their way into new interesting places and the laughter gains a whole new, evil twist.  And its not a joke, and it never was a joke and it crosses through the now completely clear mind, that this was never going to be a game and that the voices, whose faces aren't visible but known, knew what they were doing the instant they sprouted hands and began their search for entertainment.  That is all this naked, painfulness is.  Entertainment.  And somehow the mind forces the body to swallow the scream and stop fighting.  Because there is no way to fight this.

You want someone to ask because then maybe you could talk about.  Then maybe it could be made better.  Because you can bring the words up from the bottomless pit of your stomach to the place in your throat where words are formed and sentences find life.  There is no way to ask a friend to let you tell them about that night.  There are no words to open that conversation.  Because no matter how many times people tell you it isn't your fault, the guilt still weighs you down and somehow by forcing your friends to listening you are raping them instead.  You want them to be safe, to continue living as though these horrible things don't happen to people.  At least, not to people you know.  It happens at parties you never went to, and in movies you never saw and to girls without faces, just names in a new article or in hallway whispers.  And no one wants that for themselves.  You don't want to be talked about.  You want to turn back, to rewind and some how fix the horrible thing that happened.  Because it didn't really happen to you; at least, that's not how you see it.  It never happened to you.  Its something that occurred.  Something that, deep down, you know you were involved in, but you insert a different face, a new name, a whole different life and continue living as though it was someone else.  Because how else can you keep on breathing?

Wakefulness is a strange feeling.  Arms shake as they lift the new, pain-filled weight off the floor.  And its a floor unfamiliar in a house unknown.  And panic sets in and clothing is sought for and movement hurts but is necessary.  The room spins but there is no choice.  Shoes by the front door and in pulling them on, a new horror emerges.  Sorry about last night.  And somehow that is suppose to fix this.

The guilt never goes away.  The pain and the panic lasts forever.  You never regain trust because it was people you knew.  This horrible act was done by people who you trusted.  And somehow they found a way to use that against you and you never want that to happen again.  You learn to trust eventually, and you tell people eventually.  But first you are stoic and stonewalled and you never cry about it.  Until fingers find there way into places that have been forgotten and you scream.  Even though this time it doesn't hurt.  Even though this time you want these things to happen.  Because you have found the every beginnings of love.  You will never be the same but you except that as fact and live on.  You surround yourself with people who understand you are different.  Who know that your paranoia may save their life.  And you find comfort, knowing you could be strong so that they don't ever have to be.  You are okay being the guinea pig for this sick social experiment because now this act is real.  You can stand up and say “I was raped” knowing somehow it will protect someone else from being in your shoes.  You are willing to put a face to the names in the news and the whispers, because now you want to fight.  Now you know what to do, how to change what happened.  Even though you can't.
You regret you actions but you do not regret your choice.  It was what had to happen.  You tell people to call, to speak out, to be noticed, knowing that in the end you are a hypocrite.  But this hypocrisy is somehow acceptable, because no one will blame you for it.  No one will call you on it, because you made a split second decision that you hope no one else will ever need to.  You want to stand up, call out, SCREAM, so that people will know what you are all about.  And someday you will, you know that.  Someday it will come to be that your words will protect someone else.  And you sleep at night knowing that.  Knowing that your pain will save someone else.  Its an empty victory for you, but one with great meaning.  And somehow that is suppose to fix this.  And it does.