WARNING: This chapter will cover topics that will be troubling to some.
Again, I need to thank Adam Phillips, author of Crosscurrents (http://archerland.disbelieve.org/adam.htm) for his help with this chapter. Thank you also to Bill for his editing help.
Finally, as always, thank you to my partner. I love you more than words can ever express.
Chapter 15
They
say if you put a lobster in a pot of cold water and set him on a hot
burner to cook him, things heat up to life-threatening so gradually
that the lobster doesn't even register any awareness...and before you
know it, he's done.
I'm here to tell you that I totally get
that.
Neal was from my hometown. Brian had known him back in
our high school days, but I hadn't. After summer was over, he moved
back to town and got an apartment. I was spending most of my free
time with him; it was just kind of the way things developed. He
seemed to want me around all the time. That was a pretty huge
ego-boost for a guy who didn't understand that he was the least bit
worthwhile.
I'd gotten home from work early one afternoon, and
I'd made plans to spend a little time with Diane and her boyfriend. I
hadn't seen her in weeks, except at work; she'd talked to me earlier
in the week and we set a date to hang out over a beer or two. As I
came through the door, Adam looked up and said, "Well, howdy,
stranger; how come you aren't with your man?"
Annoyed, I
said, "I'm not glued to the man."
"Coulda
fooled me," he muttered under his breath. I bristled, looked at
him sharply and said, "What did you say?"
"Nothing,"
he replied quickly. "So what's up?"
"I just
came home to clean up a little bit. Neal's working late and I'm gonna
hang out with Diane and Grant."
Adam smiled. Actually, he
was beaming. Finally, he said, "Excellent."
"What's
it to you who I hang out with?" I asked, annoyance rising in me
again.
Before he had a chance to answer, the phone rang. I
picked it up. It was Neal.
"Hi," I said, after he
identified himself. "Still working late?"
"Yeah,"
he sighed. "I'll probably be another three hours. I just called
to say hi and see how your day's been."
"Hectic, but
pretty good," I replied. "Actually I'm headed out."
For
a moment there was silence. Then he said, "Oh? Where are you
going?"
The tone sounded vaguely accusatory. The tiniest
little flash of resentment passed through me.
"Since you
had to work and I didn't have too much school stuff, I thought I'd go
hang out with Diane and Grant. I haven't seen them hardly all summer,
so I thought it would be a good chance to catch up."
"Well,
okay," he said, "as long as you aren't fooling around on
me." He laughed dismissively, but the comment made me feel
uneasy.
"Hey, why would I fool around on you when we
haven't even fooled around very much?" I tried to joke, but
there was a subtext. Physically, things were still a little weird
with us. Something in me wasn't ready to push things physically. I
could tell he was getting a little frustrated by that, but he'd been
great about it so far.
"Well, that was my point," he
said. "Maybe you're getting all hot and bothered because I'm not
makin' enough moves on you."
"Who could I found out
there half as hot as you, Neal?" I laughed again; it was
true.
"You got that right," he said. This time he
didn't laugh.
I didn't know what to say in response, but
before I had a chance to figure out something, he said, "Well,
have a good time. I'll see you later."
"Uhh...yeah.
Okay. Bye."
I had a good time catching up with Diane and
Grant. They always made me laugh, and I loved hearing about what was
going on with them. Spending time with them reminded me that there
were other people out there who meant something to me. I told myself
I'd have to touch base with these two more often, and while I was at
it, it would probably do me good to repair some of the damage my
neglect had done in my other friendships.
*
* * * * * * *
Physically,
I guess you could say that my relationship with Neal wasn't exactly
ideal. He was so hot, and he turned me on a lot, but I was pretty
messed-up emotionally,and not inclined to push things. For his part,
he claimed never to have been in a relationship with a guy before,
although I began to sense some rising frustration in him on that
score. I noticed he was getting increasingly impatient with me when I
didn't want to move things along beyond hand-holding, some extended
mutual back-rubs, and some kissing. I really liked all of that, but
it was about all I was ready for. Of course with Bryan, the guy I'd
met through Diane, I'd done a lot more, and didn't really have a
problem with the whole sex-with-a-guy thing anymore. Something
was holding me back with Neal, though. Whenever we got physical I
kept having those same kinds of feelings I'd had when my cousins had
assaulted me sexually. Somehow it didn't register that I had never
felt that way with Bryan and that maybe I should realize that my
feelings about sex with Neal weren't about my rape-induced fear of
sexuality. But that never did register. I never considered together
the separate facts that I had enjoyed being sexual with Bryan and
that I was afraid to be sexual with Neal. I wish I had, but that's
not how it played out.
One night in September we'd come back
from dinner and a movie. It was actually a pretty good night, and I
was feeling pretty good about him, and us. I was tired and ready to
go home; we both had to work the next day, and we'd decided earlier
not to make too late a night of it. After I'd settled into the car
and shaken off the warm-and-fuzzy feelings of the night, though, I
noticed that we weren't headed toward my apartment; he was driving
towards his.
I figured he was just on auto-pilot and it
had slipped his mind. "Hey," I said. "You're going the
wrong way."
He didn't answer; he just kept driving. The
radio was on, and he was listening to a song and singing quietly
along with it. I figured he was lost in thought and what I'd said
hadn't registered with him.
"Neal," I said, "This
isn't the way to my apartment, it's the way to yours. We were gonna
make an early night of it, remember?"
He just smiled and
kept looking ahead as he continued to drive in the direction of his
apartment.
After a minute or so, though, I pulled back and
repeated myself. "Neal, I really gotta go home and get some
sleep."
Again, he said nothing.
This scenario
repeated itself over several minutes. The first few times, he just
acted as if I hadn't said anything. After a while, whenever I'd say I
wanted to go home--which I must have ended up repeating about ten
times--he'd smile at me and pat my thigh. Now all kinds of red flags
were going up for me.
Before I knew it, we were at his place,
parked outside his apartment. I opened my mouth to protest--I was
getting a little angry, and more than a little uneasy--but before I
could get the words out, he leaned over and kissed me to shut me
up.
It wasn't as though he hadn't kissed me before. But
something about his whole manner was ominous. Worse, it was as if I
wasn't even there, that nothing I said mattered in the least, or even
registered. And beyond that, when he leaned over to kiss me, his body
was over mine, and because he was so much bigger than I was, he was
just overwhelming.
I've never been a huge guy, but I wasn't a
twenty-pound weakling either. I was in good shape, I ran several
miles a day and played intramural sports--mostly soccer and
lacrosse--and I hiked and biked and went cross-country skiing. But he
was big. All of a sudden that began to loom in my mind as
directly relevant to what was going on here. And in an instant, I
began flashing back; flashing back to things that should have made me
wary when they first happened but hadn't:
When he was in a
romantic mood, which he seemed to get into out of nowhere and with no
warning, he liked to trap me against a wall or in a stair-well, and
his kisses were always very aggressive. It felt vaguely as though he
enjoyed dominating me, and enjoyed showing me that he dominated
me.
I never knew what to make of this; I was used to Mary, and
more recently, Bryan, the first guy I'd ever had sex with. With both
of them, it had always been an interplay of equals. On any given day,
one or the other of us might be more aggressive or might take the
lead more, but it was never about power. Mary is no wilting flower
and she certainly had no problem making what she wanted clear, but
she never tried to dominate me like that, and as for Bryan, he seemed
almost to prefer to let me take the more dominant role.
My
only experience with any kind of power-based head-games,
intimacy-wise, had been with my cousins--the ones who raped me.
All
of this flashed through my head as I sat in this car with Neal, being
kissed by him, being dominated by him. Feelings were coming violently
to the surface, and they weren't good ones. They were the kinds of
feelings I'd had when my cousins raped me. Here in his car, outside
his apartment, where I'd practically begged not to be taken, Neal
triggered the same response.
In an awful moment of clarity, I
knew exactly what was coming.
Instead of becoming more
insistent, more angry--instead of letting him know how unacceptable
this scenario was--I discovered that I literally couldn't speak,
couldn't say "no." Just like when my cousins would rape me.
Just like when my parents would abuse me.
Still not saying a
word, Neal got out of the car, came over to my side, opened the
passenger door, and almost forced me out of the car. Not violently;
not maliciously; not in any way to make a casual observer think
anything was amiss here, but there was no question: he had me right
where he wanted me and he was intent on having his way, whatever that
was. His insistent manner had me out of the car and walking, dazed,
into his apartment, where he practically ripped my clothes off once
we were through the door.
Throughout all this, he never said a
word.
I felt like a rag doll. I was totally unresponsive. It
was impossible for him not to notice that, and I took note of him not
noticing, but immediately I rationalized that he was just feeling
passionate and as a result was particularly unobservant. This in
spite of the dread part of me felt, because that part had known all
along exactly what was coming.
He practically tossed me onto
the couch. Lying there on my back, I distantly watched him undress.
When he was naked, he knelt down on the floor and began licking my
balls and kissing me on the dick. The rational part of me had vacated
the premises; I was almost in a fugue state, and wasn't even sure who
I was or what I was about. As he wrapped his lips around my cock and
began to suck on me, the pleasurable sensations had my body
responding in spite of my decimated emotional capacity. I began to
get hard quickly. My body was responding, while the little bit of my
brain remaining engaged was shouting "No! No!" The result
was that I was sort of semi-responsive.
I was in a state of
terror, but my mind had had years of training to shield myself from
terror by going blank. Still, that distant, vacant part of me--a part
of me rising rapidly to the surface--felt almost physically sick. The
most terrifying thing was that he was holding my arms down.
I
began to panic, but again, I really couldn't speak. And of course, in
this condition of utter mental chaos and emotional paralysis, there
was no way I could cum. He sucked on me awhile. When he realized I
wasn't going to climax, he apparently decided it was his turn. Still
utterly silent, he rearranged me so that I was sitting up. He
straddled me and pushed me back into the couch. He was fully hard,
and he forced his dick into my mouth and began pumping away.
My
mind, my willpower, even my anger and terror went completely AWOL.
They had risen to crisis level, but I couldn't endure the terror. I'd
been here too many times before. So I zombied out.
He fucked
my mouth savagely, and with a groan, shot his stuff down my throat.
>From some remote psychic location, I heard one part of my psyche say
to another, "My boyfriend just raped me."
After he
was finished, he climbed off me and put his clothes back on. Still
wordless, he tossed me my clothes. I dressed, embarrassed and just
short of catatonic.
He led me out the door and to his car. The
drive home was deafening in its silence, but it didn't matter; I
don't think anything he'd have said would have even registered with
me. My hold on reality had taken a long dinner break.
We
finally got to my place. Before I had a chance to pull the handle and
open the door, he leaned over again as he had before, dominating me
with his body.
I was too scared to breathe as he kissed me,
hard and aggressive. I tried to pull myself back against the door; he
finally moved back to his side of the car.
I got my wits about
me and pulled on the door handle. As I climbed out, my mind utterly
devastated and chaotic, he smirked at me and said the only thing I'd
heard him say since the beginning of the drive from the
theater:
"Thanks."
As soon as I shut the car
door, he pulled out and was gone.
*
* * * * * * * *
I
felt like a two-bit whore. Once my brain came back into focus,
anyway. Again, the voice from far, far away--the angry, violated part
of me--kept trying to tell me, "He raped you." But
all that was drown out by another thought: Once he got me naked I
hadn't said no, had I? So I had no right to feel violated. At the
very worst, I told myself, he'd just been amorous and unobservant.
After all, he thanked me, right? You don't thank a person for what
you steal from him, so he must not have realized I didn't want it.
I
went inside, completely exhausted. By the time I was ready for bed, I
had decided that I was just being hysterical. Everybody else was into
casual sex, and I was just a prude, I thought; too damn squeamish and
hung-up for my own good. As for all the alarm bells going off, I
figured that was crap left over from being molested by my
cousins.
By the next day I was ready to see him again.
That's
pretty much how things continued, without variation, in our sex life.
Neal would decide he wanted to get physical, and he'd just go at it.
I'd vacate the premises mentally and emotionally--although never in
quite as extreme a fashion as that first time--and he'd have his way
with me. Sometimes he even got me off. That would just add to my
conviction that I really did want it, and that I was just messed up
in the head for the awful way it always made me feel, because other
things we did and shared together were so good.
Weren't
they?
Of course they were. He seemed to adore me. So much so
that he didn't want me to spend any time with anybody else.
In
any case, I kept telling myself that I just needed to get over my
hang-ups, and every time something happened, it reinforced my
tendency to freeze when he would push me to do something. I just went
along like a limp noodle. In spite of the physical pleasure I had
once in a while, I could never bring myself to participate actively.
I didn't actively try to stop things, either, though. The end result
was that we had an ongoing sex life, and there was not a single time
that I ever felt anything but creepy and devalued after the
encounter.
In September my lease was up. Adam and Megan had
made other living arrangements, because we'd all agreed that while we
really liked each other, the living situation was just too small to
deal with. As I was considering other options, Neal asked me to
move in with him.
It seemed like the logical thing to do.
*
* * * * * *
From
the day I moved in, things began to change.
It was little
things, at first. He'd been getting increasingly controlling
concerning my time away from work. He had already gotten into a habit
of wanting to know who I was with and where I was at all times. Once
we were living together, he moved on to requesting that I spend all
my free time with him. Soon he began cajoling me not to leave except
for work, unless he was with me. It all changed so slowly that I
didn't notice the move from asking, to cajoling, and finally to
controlling. He began dictating when I could leave the apartment and
who I could associate with. By November, he was in total control.
That's when the physical abuse started.
Again, it
started as small things. He'd push me too hard, or pin me down, when
we got into a conflict. And always, always, I rationalized, I denied.
I told myself I had misunderstood him, or that I'd irritated him with
my hang-ups. Any excuse I could grab onto. Anything to enable me to
turn a blind eye to what was going on.
By January he was
beating the crap out of me.
As the new year began, he had
total control over me and treated me as he wanted when he wanted.
Physical and sexual abuse were now the norm in our relationship. He
knew enough not to break any bones, and not to leave bruises where
they could be seen. Sexually he no longer even pretended to care if I
was enjoying it.
Somehow, in the course of half a year, I went
from beginning to recover from my traumatic senior year in high
school to becoming psychically numb and incapable of freeing myself
from this psychopath, and it all happened so slowly that I didn't
realize how easy it had been to get there. Every time things got
worse, I noticed...but it wasn't that much worse than before, so it
didn't jar me into doing something about it.
Even when you're
in hell, life goes on and a person goes on about his routine. And I
guess there's nothing in the cosmic balance that says if you're in
hell life can't push you down deeper: That spring, Mary got
married.
She had started dating a guy from her school named
Rob her second year in college, after I had broken up with her and
broken her heart the summer after I graduated from high school. He'd
had wanted to date her for two years and was thrilled when she
finally said yes. I'm not sure how she really felt about him. When
she brought him home for Thanksgiving that year, he wasn't exactly a
hit with the family. No one would have ever said anything, but no one
was enthusiastic about him either.
I stayed away for most of
her visit; it hurt far too much to see her with him. Besides, at that
time I was involved with Bryan, and I figured there was no need in
opening old wounds and derailing what was turning out to be a very
good thing with Bryan. Mary's relationship with Rob continued,
though. I didn't like knowing that, but I wanted her to be happy, and
I certainly didn't have any right to tell her not to see anyone
else.
They got engaged early in the year, and that spring,
they came home to have the wedding. Mary had asked me to be a
groomsman, along with Brian. It hurt, but I was so honored, and I
would have crawled across broken glass if Mary had asked me to. Neal
didn't like it that I was in the wedding; he hadn't been invited. He
fumed around for days, but didn't do anything to stop me. For once in
my life I had been quietly defiant. I told him I was going to do this
and that was the end of it.
As far as I was concerned, that
was just another black cloud associated with Mary's wedding. But
there were still more: Rob, Mary's fiance, didn't like it a bit that
Brian and I were groomsmen. He hated me. I think that he realized
Mary still had feelings for me. I don't know what his problem with
Brian was. He seemed to hate Brian even more than he hated me.
The
wedding was like a knife in my heart. Mary had been the only woman I
ever loved; she'd been the first love of my life, too. Those feelings
had never gone away.
I sat in the church trying to shut down,
trying not to feel, as I watched him place the ring on her finger. As
she began saying her vows to Rob, I started breathing deeply in and
out, focusing on getting through the ceremony without totally losing
it. Mary, the first person I'd ever made love to--the girl I'd once
dreamed of marrying--was saying those vows to someone else, making a
life with someone else.
I went to the reception to be polite,
saying all the right things, smiling, laughing, acting as though it
was all wonderful. But I left the reception as fast as I could.
I
drove home. I knew Neal wasn't there. I went into the bedroom and
sobbed my eyes out.
Time passed. Mary and Brian and old
memories of love faded from my attention, along with the deep pain
those memories brought. But it was in the days following Mary's
wedding that I began, in the quiet background, to get a handle on
what was going on with me and my relationship with Neal. That's not
to say I was doing anything about it, but in the deep recesses of my
thought the wheels of survival were beginning to turn. I came to
realize that Neal was a master manipulator, and that, consciously or
not, he had set out to do this from the very beginning. He had sensed
early on that I was an easy target. I also came to understand how I'd
let things go this far: If he'd ever hurt me in the beginning of our
relationship, or dictating where I could go and when, I'd have left
instantly. But he'd smelled my guilt and fear like a shark senses
blood in the water. He'd played on that guilt and fear and he'd done
it so incrementally that I never even saw what he was doing.
I'd
seen this kind of thing over and over at work. I knew the dynamics:
On the job I worked with people almost every day who were in violent
relationships, counseling them to leave and helping them through
that. Yet in my own life, I hadn't acknowledged that I was in in a
violent relationship myself.
Something about that insight
began to raise my awareness, gradually. I began to see the slow,
insidious way things had transformed. I came to understand that it
was similar to the kinds of things that happen when you have a growth
spurt as a kid: One day you discover you can reach something you
couldn't before, or you smack your head on something you used to be
able to walk under.
Here's how I woke up.
I looked in
the mirror one morning when I got out of the shower and saw the
bruises on my arms. Immediately I began thinking about what shirt I
could wear to cover them. I started thinking through the possible
things I could tell colleagues if anyone else discovered them. The
whole time I was thinking about all that, I was hoping Neal wouldn't
barge in and do something to make me late to work.
All of a
sudden, the insanity of these frenzied thoughts struck me like a slap
in the face. And I saw, with sickening clarity, exactly where I had
gotten myself. It took my breath away.
I was reeling,
emotionally; struggling hard to keep from totally breaking down,
when, sure enough, Neal barged into the bathroom.
I lost it.
For the first time, I tried to fight him. My anger began to unleash
on him, out of nowhere. I began yelling and pounding on him with my
fists.
This got me nowhere; even if he hadn't had eight inches
of height and a hundred pounds of muscle on me, I was certainly no
match for a black belt in anything, and I'd never deliberately hit
anyone before. He managed to defuse that situation by simply
overpowering me, and somehow we both got through the morning able to
stagger off to work.
It changed his tactics, though.
The
next morning at breakfast, we were back to business as usual, and
pretending that the previous morning had never happened, when he said
to me, seemingly apropos of nothing, "You know the other day at
work I was bored, and out of the blue I got to wondering if I could
kill someone without being discovered. I started thinking about it
and pretty soon I figured out a way to do it, so now I know I can.
Weird, huh?" He chuckled a little, as if someone had told him a
mildly funny joke.
I chuckled along, wondering to myself, in
detached terror, when it was that he would kill me.
About a
week later, I called Brian one evening. The conversation wasn't worth
much; I hadn't really kept up with him after I'd begun seeing Neal,
but I just needed to hear the sound of his voice. We made some
inconsequential chatter and hung up.
I went into the living
room to watch some TV with Neal, and after about half an hour he
said, "I was thinking about some of our mutual friends the other
day. My buddy Brian, I guess. I was just thinking about that little
game I was playing in my head at work the other day, and I realized
that if I was some kind of really bad person and I got it in my head
to kill Brian, he'd be a really easy target, and I know for certain I
could get away with it."
I stared at him, open-mouthed,
for a full minute.
He just kept watching TV, casual and
laid-back, as if he'd simply made a comment about the storyline.
The
terror that I'd felt the first time he'd talked this way was ten
times stronger when I felt it this time. And at that moment I
realized, in utter despair, how isolated I had made myself. How
defenseless.
When this lunatic finally decided to cause me or
a loved one of mine serious trouble, there was no one who would know
enough to come to my aid.
I realized I had to get away. I had
to end this nightmare.
I called Brian the next week. He wasn't
at home but I left a voice mail message. Later that week he called
back. I picked up the phone on the third ring.
"Hello,
Sam here."
"Hey Sam, I got your call." When I
recognized the voice I was so happy I wanted to cry.
"Brian!
Good to hear from you, man."
"What's up,
buddy?"
"N...nothin', man, I'm doing o...okay. I
j...I mean, I...well, you know, it's been a while and I wanted to say
hi."
He didn't answer at first. Then he said, "Well,
better late than never, I guess. You doin' okay? I hope you're not
workin' too hard."
"I...I'm not," I said. Five
seconds went by. I had no idea what to say next. It felt like a
lifeline had been thrown out to me, but I didn't know what to do with
it.
Brian continued. "Sammy, I gotta tell you, it's
really started to hurt some that you haven't talked to me since camp.
And even then we didn't get to say much. I had so much I wanted to
say to you, dude, so many things I have wanted to say ever
since...ever since...since, uhh...high school, and I was all ready to
say those things when you came to camp. Life has gone by so fast
since high school, and I...I miss my friend. I've never been able to
talk to anybody like you and me talked."
The gratitude,
and love, and sorrow, having been bottled up in me far too long, came
rushing out. I could feel my face burning and my eyes were at the
brink of spilling over with tears, but all I could say was, "Yeah,
it has gone by fast. I've been really busy."
"Really
involved, too," he said. "Too involved to talk to me."
I could hear the undercurrent of anger that accompanied the hurt. My
shoulders slumped; what the hell was I expecting to happen here?
After I'd broken my promise to stay in touch? There was no way I
could make that up to him.
Before the dejection had a chance
to settle in, he said, "Hey, I got nothing going on Saturday;
you're not working Saturday, are you?"
My eyes grew wide.
"No," I said.
"Let's grab some lunch together,"
he said. "We haven't really talked in, like, a year, not a good
talk like we used to always have. It would be so great to hang out
some, okay?"
I played that scene out in my head. It would
be like a dream come true; a port in a storm. But how could I?
There's no way Neal would allow it, would he? I wondered if I could
lie to him and tell him I had to work. No, that was stupid. Maybe I
could just say Brian was starting to think something was wrong and if
I didn't have lunch with him he'd start butting into my business.
That might scare him enough to let me do it.
I was going
through scenarios in my head as rapidly as I could, but even so, I
must have not said anything for fifteen seconds.
"Sam?"
Brian finally broke the silence.
"Oh. Sorry," I
said. "I was just thinking..."
"Thinking what?
I mean, you got anything else going Saturday?"
"No,"
I said, hesitantly.
"Well, let's do it then. He
hesitated, then asked, "I mean...you...you do want to get
together, don't you?"
I hesitated myself. For too long.
Finally I said, "Well, okay, I guess. I...I'll check with
Neal."
The next sound I heard was Brian whispering,
"Fuck!" under his breath. He didn't say anything for a few
seconds, then he repeated, his voice utterly devoid of emotion,
"Check with Neal..."
I heard him sigh. The line
went silent again. About ten seconds later, he said, "Fuck that,
Sam." Another pause, and then he said, "Look...I thought
when you called, maybe...I thought you were ready to..." At that
point I heard the anger rise in his voice, as he said, "Fuck
what I thought; it's just the same-old, same-old with you, isn't it?
I heard him sniff. He mumbled, "It was a mistake to return this
fuckin' call." Pain and sorrow dripped off every word.
"Brian,"
I began, my voice cracking, "I..."
"Just forget
it, Sam," he said, his voice filled with disdain. "Call me
back when my friendship means a little more to you." Immediately
after those words I heard a click and the line went dead.
*
* * * * * * * *
In
the weeks that followed, things seemed to deteriorate rapidly with
Neal. I was constantly fearful around him, but I didn't see a way out
that wouldn't result in someone being hurt. For his part, all the
pretense dropped and the hostilities he had for me increased in spite
of his extreme possessiveness. He began saying openly that he would
kill me or someone I cared for if I left; he angrily blamed me for
"turning him gay," saying I'd ruined his life. And when he
beat me, he stopped even pretending to apologize; he knew I wouldn't
leave.
Socially, I barely spoke to anyone. At work, I only
talked about work. If we ever saw anyone socially, we saw only his
friends.
Erica was one of those friends. He'd known her since
high school. Both of them were engineering majors and in the
same classes. She and I actually began spending time together. For
some reason, this was okay with him; I think he forgot that I was
bisexual, because he didn't get as jealous when I was with women, so
he let me spend time with her. She was taking Differential Equations
that spring and wasn't doing well. She had asked Neal to tutor her,
but he'd told her, "I don't have the time to waste; Sam'll help
you, though." So she asked me.
Tutoring Erica was a
small ray of light for me in an otherwise dark and insane world. She
was about the only person I got to spend time with alone that spring
who wasn't a client or Neal. Otherwise, I was in an utterly hopeless,
utterly joyless, frozen void.
I would have killed myself. I
wanted to. I looked for opportunities. But I was never alone long
enough.
When a person is at the end of his rope, though, and
not even suicide is an option, things eventually come to a head. For
me it was on a Saturday, around 8 am. I was making breakfast; Neal
had just gotten up. Erica was supposed to be over at 10 for some
tutoring.
Neal walked into the kitchen and said, "I woke
up all horny. Quit dickin' around with breakfast and get over here;
I'm gonna fuck you."
On one level the words cascaded
right off me; I could have cared less. But the remaining vital core
of me, alive and defiant and finally determined, stepped up and took
over.
Still stirring the scrambled eggs, I turned my head to
him, and in a calm voice that showed I just didn't care, I said,
simply, "No." Then I turned back and began stirring the
eggs again.
He froze. The whole kitchen was engulfed in his
black, ominous silence. Then he said softly, in as scary a voice as
I'd ever heard from him, "What did you say to me?
I
turned back towards him. "What part of 'no' are you too stupid
to understand?"
It was suicidal and I knew it. I hadn't
done it deliberately; it just came out of me, from that deep, alive
place. But just as the hurricane began, the thought crossed my mind
that now he'd finally kill me and this hell would all be over.
The
thought made me happy.
"Fuckin' tell me no, you
stupid little shit," he screamed. His face was contorted into a
savage mask of fury and hatred. He stomped toward me, grabbed my left
arm and yanked me toward the kitchen table. "You better hope
you'll live to regret this, bitch," he yelled, his face right up
against mine. Then he hit me across the face.
As I fell, I
remember observing, in a detached way, Weird how the table's
coming towards me.
*
* * * * * * * *
The
next thing I remember is lying face down on the floor, my head
pounding with the most intense pain I'd ever felt, and seeing Erica
kneeling next to me.
Tears were streaming down her face.
"Sam," she said. "Ohmygod, what happened?"
I
could only moan in reply.
"You didn't answer the door so
I went around back," she said. "I saw you through the
window lying there. I broke the back door window so I could unlock
the door and get in."
It hurt to breathe; I moved around
just the smallest bit, trying to get up. Pain shot up and through my
body like a skyrocket. Then I passed out again.
When I came
to, she was putting blanket on me. "Don't move, Sam," she
whispered. "Please, don't move. I called 9-1-1. Someone's coming
to help. Just be still." She started crying again, and
that's when I passed out again.
*
* * * * * * * *
When
awareness came back, it was only briefly. Initially, there was only a
sensation of warmth in my hand.
Slowly I opened my eyes. The
first thing I saw was Brian. He was holding my hand and looking at my
face, crying. I looked around the room. His parents were there. So
were his oldest brother Mike, and Mary, and Erica, and my godmother,
and a couple of friends from work. I scanned their faces, faces
filled with love and concern, and then everything faded to black.
I
don't remember much of the next week. After I finally recovered full
consciousness, I learned that my spine was broken in two places in
the middle of my back. Several ribs were broken, and I had a severe
concussion. Additionally, Neal had gotten what he'd wanted,
apparently, and I was badly torn up in the rectal area.
My
parents never came to the hospital.
Neal was arrested. He
confessed to everything, in his own fashion, telling the police, "He
tricked me; I just wanted to be his friend, but he confused me. He
made me do gay things. I thought he was making me gay and I finally
just flipped out."
The prosecutor didn't buy it but
didn't think he could get a conviction either. He was probably right;
they hadn't gotten a conviction on any sexual assault that had gone
to trial in eight years, so a "defensive" assault on the
evil fairy who was out there converting good straight boys wasn't
likely to get very far.
Neal pleaded guilty to simple
assault, and I got a restraining order. He served three whole
months.
I took a memory along with me of those first moments
of consciousness in the hospital, a memory that I just couldn't
shake. It was the memory of waking up in the hospital, feeling the
warmth of Brian's hand as he held mine, seeing the tears stream from
his eyes and the stricken look on his face. It's hard to explain how
that memory both comforted and tortured me.
I couldn't face him
after that; I was humiliated. I felt dirty, wrong, weak, stupid and
guilty. It seemed to me that every time our paths crossed, for what
seemed like years now, I had hurt him. I hurt him by being in his
life, I hurt him by loving him, I hurt him by ignoring him, I hurt
him by not trusting him, and I hurt him by being such an idiot as to
stay in a relationship with an insane maniac who beat me half to
death that I allowed to keep me from him.
In light of all that, I couldn't even look Brian the eye. He tried and tried to get me to trust him, to let him help me heal, to let him befriend me. The torn feeling I felt was unimaginably horrible, and I wanted so badly just let rest in the warmth of his friendship, to let him lead me out of this hell, but I just couldn't. I felt completely ruined and unworthy of anyone's concern, much less love. I wasn't sure how much Brian knew about what happened, but he certainly knew that I had let Neal beat the crap out of me for close to a year. How could I possibly explain to him how I could have done that? I was ashamed to the core. I couldn't face him. I couldn't face anyone. I wanted to sink into the ground and disappear. People would come to visit and I wouldn't even look at them.
I was in the hospital and rehab for close to two months. I was lucky that I didn't lose any sensation or function after the damage to my spine, but it took forever to recover. Throughout the whole period of my physical recovery Brian, Mary, their siblings and parents, and Erica kept trying to convince me to talk to them. They would visit and sit with me, but all I could do was stare off into space.
I was also in the grip of some pretty severe episodes of post-traumatic-stress disorder. Flashbacks had always been an issue for me, ever since my cousins had raped me, but the flashbacks hadn't usually been terribly intrusive on my life. After Neal's final assault, though, I was having one or two a day.
Anything could set me off. Anything that reminded me of Neal in any way was jarring, and everything reminded me of him: the way someone phrased a question, or tilted his head, or touched my hand. It wasn't usually a complete break from reality--during a flashback I still knew what was going on around me--but I still couldn't function, because part of my mind would be gripped by a memory that I couldn't escape.
I hid them as much as I could. I could force myself to control the shakes that invariably accompanied these flashbacks until I was alone. I couldn't carry on a conversation during one, though.
Brian had stopped by once after I'd been through a rehab treatment. He'd been talking a good bit, and I was trying to nod and say a word or two here and there to show I wasn't a total zombie. Then he said something and touched my hand, and I started shaking, reliving all of Neal's "loving" touches by which he had so masterfully hidden the demon inside him. Brian caught my reaction.
"Sam, what's wrong?"
I couldn't answer.
"Sam...dammit, tell me. I'm not asking you, buddy, I'm telling you. You have to tell me."
I looked up at him in utter misery. "You...you touched my hand and all I could...all I could think of was Neal and how he..."
His eyes instantly flooded with tears and flashed with anger. "Mother FUCKER!"
He looked into my face for a reaction. I couldn't stop shaking.
He looked out the window, crying, then looked back to me, totally defeated. "I guess our friendship is fucking dead," he said, his shoulders sagging. He couldn't keep the anger out of his voice as he said, "How could you possibly think I would hurt you like that? For you to think I'm that kind of scum, I..."
"No, Brian," I pleaded...."I don't...It's not your...please, don't be mad at me."
"Why NOT?" he yelled. "What have I ever done to make you think I'm like him?"
I couldn't explain it to him, and I began to cry myself. At the sight of that, a complete change came over his face. He turned as white as a sheet. "Oh, Sammy...I'm so sorry. I know it's not about me. It's about that asshole. Please, Sam, forgive me, I didn't mean any of that, I just want you to trust me, I want you to know I'm here for you, I've always been here for you, I will always be here for you...I'm so sorry..."
I wasn't listening, though. As far as I was concerned, he was right. As always, knowing me had caused a loved one pain. Again.
And it was Brian. Again.
I closed up even more after that. People continued to try, they continued to reach out, but it soon became apparent that their attempts were only driving me further inside myself. In light of that, just about everyone finally decided to give me some space. They would call regularly, but didn't push.
Erica kept coming by, though. She would just sit with me and not say anything. Gradually, she managed to coax me out enough to talk. Minor, unimportant things, really. The weather. Her grades. The hospital food. I helped her with her classes most of the time she came over, and slowly I climbed a little way out of that bottomless pit. Still, I was in a worse place than I'd ever been my entire life.
Brian had moved my belongings out of Neal's place while I was in the hospital and put them in storage for me. When I got out of the hospital and rehab, Brian's family tried to convince me to move in with them, but I just couldn't. I didn't want them to know what awful condition I was truly in.
I was absolutely humiliated: When my cousins hurt me when I was a child, even though I felt some guilt and responsibility for it, I knew logically that I hadn't had much choice. When I stayed with Neal as an adult, however, I had made a choice. A near-fatal choice. I didn't feel that I had the right to ask for help because of the choice I had made. I'd even counseled people in my situation to get away. I knew better, and I had still let it happen. That was the most humiliating thing of all.
The bottom line was that I was just too ashamed to accept help from the one family that loved me the most. I felt exiled from them forever.
Erica had a spare room in her apartment, though, and offered it to me. I accepted, and that was really the beginning of my relationship with Erica.