Return of the Heidi

Earlier today a friend asked on facebook if women get tired of the trope of “abuse survivor” in the same way a black person, such as himself, might get tired of some often mined stories such as civil rights and slavery. He asked if women struggle, like he does, to balance the value of the importance of the story with the frequency it is used as source material. This question, along with yet another sportsball playing rapist getting a minimal punishment so as not to get in the way of his “college experience”, found me in a very wordy place. The result is below.

A bit off topic perhaps, but I have a very visceral response to rape survivor stories and it speaks to your question, I believe, eventually. It often feels to me like rape is used in a story line to make the raped person unique and give them a reason to rise to greatness through revenge fantasy blood and gore - or to (more often) give the male lead "hero" character something to get righteously indignant about and set off a chain of brutal and violent events. Because nothing says growth as a person so well as a brutalized and all but forgotten - bonus points if murdered - woman in your recent past, double bonus if she was in a compromised position explaining how the rape was a result of her own actions in some way, triple bonus if she is a woman of color or outside the mainstream of gender "norms". The truth is nothing like that, with the rates of sexual assault being as high as they are if it were true there would be far fewer humans walking this earth after all the revenge killings.

So, I went to my Krav Maga class yesterday for the first time in several weeks. Not unlike the amount of time that has passed since my last post…

What? I’ve been busy.

But, I sucked it up and went. Even got there late and still went in. Forgot my gym shoes had to clean up my street shoes to even walk on the mat but walk on it I did. And still, after all those distractions, after finally jumping into the class I found myself once again taking pride in comments about the fight in me. Taking pride when the new class instructor (one of the gym’s founders) complimented my attention to form. Taking pride in finally finding a socially acceptable place to be a fighter. To be angry. Because seriously, I’m angry. And I’m hurting. And I’m lost. But I’m fighting.

It felt good. I beat the hell outta some punch mitts and body shields. Failed gloriously on a form and whacked my head about. Tried the form again and again and got it right. Had a fierce headache, hurt like hell today but feels like the most productive thing I’ve done in weeks. Why is that? I’ve been busy. I’ve organized a launch party, held interviews for positions at my job, I’ve shot scenes in four different projects, prepared for another, auditioned for more, spent time with family, spent time with friends, attended theater, slept, ate and the rest of the usual stuff but I get in a room and start hitting things and at long last I am doing something productive. Why? Because I’m scared. Scared of the dark, scared of men. Scared to trust people and scared I’ll end up alone. Every day I listen to the radio, read the news, read my Facebook feed, talk to people who are hurting and angry and I realize I am drowning in the hate that fuels that fear. Drowning and so little that I do, that I have done, matters. At all.

Not unsurprisingly, these don’t actually get easier to write. I have always been one who needs to learn lessons repeatedly. In relationships of a romantic nature I have been especially slow to learn. Who can be trusted, when to give a second chance, when being labeled a bitch is better than the alternative - complete mysteries to me.

I was not an attractive kid. People scoff at me when I say that, thinking they are being kind I guess, but it actually feels like an attempt to diminish my experiences, and therefore me. So let me say right here, when someone tells you something about their childhood, just listen. Anyway, I didn’t get attention from boys when I was young. At all. I was a tomboy, I mean I had boys who were ‘friends’ but nothing remotely romantic in intention until I was in 8th grade, but that really just confused me. The first boyfriend who I thought of in that way was in 9th grade and then we went from zero to 100 in no time flat. We never had sex, I don’t mean that, I mean I was in over my head from the word go. And while things ended badly, and with more than enough blame to go around, all in all it was what I imagine a pretty normal 9th grade relationship looks like.

I learned early on that having red hair made me inherently inferior. Between the hair and the buck teeth, bullying on the playground was the gift that kept on giving. What the bullying didn’t prepare me for, and how could it, was how sexualized having red hair automatically made me. From jokes about giving blow jobs in my 6th grade classroom (I picked up a pencil for someone even less popular than I was, and I didn’t know what a blow job was at the time), to being asked to sit on a stranger’s lap at a wedding in 7th grade only to be pulled away by my parents when they realized… to my 9th grade boyfriend being asked by my best male friend, if the carpet matched the curtains, in front of classmates in the hallway at school, I was confused and quickly jaded about sexuality. But hormones being what they are, jaded didn’t mean not curious and so the story continues. When my friends told me I should go swimming with the older boys wearing the white swimsuit, without telling me that wet the white swimsuit was see-through, the lesson should have been pretty apparent. After the guy I thought would be my second boyfriend saw that white swimsuit debacle and invited me to ‘hang out’ at his house, which ended in confused fumbling and first sexual - not exactly consensual experience (see I didn’t understand what he was asking me to do, which as it turns out you need to be able to understand the question in order to answer it consensually) never called me again and went on to tell all his friends that I was a lousy lay, that lesson, too, might have been pretty obvious to some. But, when that aforementioned best male friend decided to be a shoulder I could cry on, and proceeded to get me drunk and find out for himself how bad I was in bed, then proceeded to tell me not to worry about disappointing him since he’d already been told how bad a lay I was? Never mind that no attempt at consent had even been hinted at, that no indication of interest had been given or that I was passed out when the activities, such as they were, began, and that the reasons I had to not concern myself with his opinion were myriad… but that is the adult me talking. That. THAT was when I thought I might die. That was when I thought the lesson was learned. That was when that jadedness solidified. Not too much later I tried to run away from home. I’m really lucky my parents came looking for me.

Still. I mean, okay, that was awful, but I was young and resilient, at least now it is done, right? Not so much, I need to learn lessons repeatedly, as you might recall.

Repost from Facebook December 6

Marvel's Jessica Jones is really well done AND is stirring up some intense emotional memory stuff for me. Meanwhile my feed is filled with a lot of responses to the series, among them a, generally male, lack of appreciation for the storyline. While I can appreciate it is difficult to buy into the idea of mind control, not really in the Marvel universe, but ok. The idea that a woman might suffer extreme PTSD after living at the hands of a maladjusted man who made use of it to make her behave as though in "love" with him, basically putting her through a daily occurrence of sexual and psychological rape is so common as to be mundane. It happens everyday in this world. Power doesn't need to be supernatural to be real. It is a fictionalization of a story so many of us know intimately. In fact it is pretty much a victim pattern common in comic book stories, only this time that PTSD suffering woman is the hero. A hard-drinking, short-fused mess of a hero. The kind of hero I might have made, if only I'd had the strength to do more than just wake up, put one foot in front of the other and keep breathing. If only.

Today

I was 14 or 15 years old walking down the street in a small town, population about 27,000, in Minnesota. It was warm enough, but school was in session. Chances are we were skipping class, but I could have just as easily been walking with my friend to her house after school. Either way, there was very little traffic on the streets and as we walked we chatted about whatever teenage girls chat about walking alone. Then a boy on a bicycle rode by. My friend recognized him. I did, too, but she knew him enough to talk to him, I’d seen him around but we’d never met. He was one of the cool older kids, with dyed black hair and he listened to good music. He wasn’t like all the other hicks at the High School, I knew that much. I also knew he was smart, everyone in his click was smart, I’d met a few of them at the science fair the previous year and I wanted to be one of them. So when he circled back around to talk to us, I was pleased. Ultimately it was decided that we should go with him and hang out at his friends house. So, he gave us rides, one at a time, on the bicycle handlebars. His friend was even older, not in high school anymore and not in college either. He had a girlfriend that lived with him, and the rumor was that periodically he’d hide her medication so he could get the money offered for committing a vulnerable, or psychotic, person. I thought that was despicable, but it was her life, I told myself, neatly skipping over the part that she couldn’t be a willing participant if he was tricking her into a relapse. But if I thought that hard about it I wouldn’t be able to tolerate being around my new acquaintances, and then where would I be? Besides, I didn’t know either of them so what business was it of mine? My friend went on the bike first and I kept walking, thinking how cool it would be if these guys liked me, maybe I could party with them, maybe the other cool kids would follow suit. When the boy on the bike came back and I settled in for my ride I noticed he was a smaller guy, maybe 5’4” or so, and I outweighed him by probably 20 pounds at my excessive 110. I felt sorry for him as he pedaled. But he was smiling if not very talkative. We got to his friends place, which was the upstairs of a building that was retail or a bar or restaurant or something on the main floor. We had to walk up a wooden staircase in the back onto a deck, term used loosely. The apartment looked rotted and falling apart, typical of the type late teen boys seem to call their first home away from home. Inside it was dark with dirty, sagging furniture, a slightly rotted odor and grime covered walls. Shortly after arriving, my friend and the two boys left me to sit on the couch while they chatted about something. This was not what I expected. I was thinking music, and talking, and maybe beer. But not sitting, alone, on a grimy couch staring into the middle of a dirty room wondering if the female of the house was at work or currently committed. When suddenly hands grabbed both of my arms from behind and I was lifted over the back of the couch and dragged into another room. In the other room 6 hands worked at my clothes, removing everything they could get over my head, down past my feet. Shoes, shirt, pants, bra... Then giggles and an admonition that they had agreed the underwear stayed on, so instead of rendering me entirely nude I was promptly tied to a bed and blindfolded. I don’t know who did what, but I was touched, licked, had hot wax dripped on my nipples and belly. Then there was a pause in action, where they left the room. When I felt people back in the room there were noises that sounded sexual, moaning and a rhythmic sound and then a cool thick liquid landed on my face and chest and everyone laughed. Then they discussed how next time they should warm the dish soap, so it would be more realistic. Then I was left alone again. I honestly don’t have any idea how long I was there. I was in constant internal struggle, was this a joke? Should I think this was funny? Was this normal? Had I given a signal, somehow, that I wanted this? Should I be screaming and fighting? Or if I play it cool, will it be over sooner? My friend kept telling me she was not going to let them do anything “bad”, so did that mean this was okay behavior so far? Was I too square to understand this? In the midst of the mind fog I eventually sensed another person in the room. This time only one. Male. Breathing fairly hard. Then I felt the bristle of very short hair on my thigh. It was him. The one who lived there. He was rubbing his head on my top and inner thigh and up into my groin. My ‘friend’ was not there to enforce the no underwear as a barrier rule. I decided that maybe if he thought I liked it, he’d stop. I had become the butt of a joke and if I wasn’t humiliated maybe that would be the end of things. I moved my leg in a way that could have been repositioning or encouraging, I kept it ambiguous because I didn’t know which way he’d go. He didn’t stop. He moved his head so the part touching me was closer to his face. I started moving my head side to side. I was so afraid to speak. If I made a sound, I felt, it would be real. Shortly, I heard voices, “There you are.” A light turned on. It was deemed enough. I was untied, given a wet washcloth and my clothes and left alone. I don’t think I spoke for the rest of the day. I remember being told later how happy I had made the man who lived there by ‘enjoying’ our ‘alone’ time. Many years later, one of the men apologized to me. He said he had no right to do what he had done and that he was ashamed. I believe him. But I don’t think I can forgive him. Not yet. Not long after, the other man, the one who lived there, now married with kids said, “sorry.” His now wife said she didn’t see what the big deal was, now that they both were born-again that was all need be said on the topic. He was good with God, so it was now my job to forgive him. Period. Then we ate an extremely awkward breakfast at a Perkins. Their kids, all my attackers, and the wife eating our eggs and toast in relative silence. I know I won’t ever forgive the older man. And I feel sorry for his children. But the one that I can barely face to this day is my friend. The one I had been walking with. The one who stayed my best friend for years after that. The one who orchestrated the whole thing. After high school and college we fell out of touch but I would run into her from time to time with her husband, and more recently just him. Distance has given me some perspective on the betrayal, but I always try to be nice. They don’t seem to feel what she did was wrong. And I can’t bring myself to be the one to educate them. They, too, have children. The last time I saw him I asked after her, and he made a point of letting me know how disappointed they both were in me. How much I hurt her by not keeping in touch.

It has been over 2 decades and I still can’t quite process these events. It only JUST occurred to me that my disinclination to sit with my back to an open space is probably because of this event.

I wish this were the only story I had. Some of them result from situations of my own creation. Some of them show extremely poor judgement. And some of them are outright betrayals that stand because there will always be people with power and their actions will always be excused. I cannot walk away from everything I am, so I bear the contact with an actor’s smile.