The Trouble with Alice.

Yeah, I'm ready to swallow my horseshit and all, but there is a kneejerk "Oh, Wait, If that's true, I deserve much more positive note, respect and regard for who I am, and always have been, also! I hold no pretense with you. I'd be a fool not to wish you attempted to treat me with an equivocal dose of honesty and empathy. But it isn't easy to garner fair treatment when a person isn't actually helping themselves and behaving as such.

J was sweet and strange and nurturing the way only an ex-Mormon boy still terrified of his father could be. S was fervent and funny and kind the way someone who fears becoming their violent father can be. R was the first adult love I had. he was a poetic scion, running from his father's expectations. R broke up with me. Needful, just another damn woman, with butterflies in her head, who couldn't understand the work it took to be a man. He was convinced I was having an affair with J, with whom I shared whiskey, The Shield, and loneliness. J's girlfriend had died 2 months before. We made comic collages together over cigarettes, because we could trust that neither one of us would try to fuck the other. J was mourning, I just wanted R to come home. After R left, it took J and I two weeks to get drunk and lonely enough to fuck. We had a sad desperate bond, but we liked each other. We cared for each other as only 2 people exiled from those we actually wanted, could. I went to a bar with him, and saw R. I met J thru his ex, we were friends. M. I thought J would understand I felt I ought to talk to R, acknowledge him. Acknowledge the packiderm sized self fulfilled prophesy in the room. J wordlessly left me at the bar, jealous, angry. Again the warrantless scarlet A across my chest, for reminding a man I had sexual mobility. R drove me to the apartment I was housesitting, he cried in my lap. I told him, No, you can't say you want me because someone else does. You've dumped me twice, and only come back, because you hate other men touching your things. I would later call R 7 times that night. He called me back a week later. When I arrived at the apartment, I thought I would find J waiting. The apartment building lobby took an electronic card, I couldn't find it in my purse, J had it. So, I waited. I eventually called him 22 times that night, it took 3 days for him to call me back. A group of Somali kids came roiling up the steps. My sister's neighbors. I explained I was locked out, they let me in, invited me to their apartment. He didn't speak. He was long and angular and I liked the way he looked at things. The way his eyes lingered and caressed every lamp sillouhette , elevator corner. I never knew his name. I drank a glass of gin, and told them, thanks so very much for letting me in but I ought to go. I had a cat that needed feeding. The nameless long man said, I'll walk you down. I said, I'm fine. I was wobbly by then, I clearly wasn't fine. He followed me, I got to the door. I turned and said, Thank You, with a curt formality. I had to pee since I had been at the bar. I jangled the metal key to the apartment in the lock, expecting him to go. The moment the door released, he pushed against me, forcing me to trip inside. I yelled, he slammed the door. I scrambled, a discordant jumble of limbs, trying to get off the floor, seal myself in the bathroom. He yanked my leg, hard. I tripped again, and then was like a collapsed spider in his grip. He pulled me up, and pushed me against the peekaboo brick kitchen divider. I spit, I scratched, my legs bucked against him and the brick, as he pushed past my panties, pushed past my incoherent tears. He struck my jaw hard, bloodying my lips, and then licked them. He pushed his forearm against my windpipe and I blacked out. Then, I was in the bathroom, the shower was on, but I was wet outside it, I still had my clothes on. I looked at my phone, I had already made 12 calls. I talked to R, told him I was bleeding, I didn't know what had happened. My knee didn't look right, it was too big, the blood wouldn't stop, I couldn't remember falling. He told me to go fuck myself and call J. The bathroom dilated and shrank, I faded in and out of consciousness. I called my first boyfriend M, at 6am, he answered and called 911. They came to the lobby, but never made it up the elevator. I still don't know why. It's not a promising moment to realize that of all the men who vowed a protective fealty in your life, the institutionalized schizophrenic is the only person who has the presence of mind to call 911 for you. I had called S at 4. He came up to the apartment at 7am. He helped me get properly dressed, clean the blood. I was sure nothing had happened. I was sure I fought him off, that's why it was so bloody, I hurt him, I didn't let it happen like the last time, when I went slack, dead, numbly tired from saying no, just letting him take it. I told S, he asked if I was sure. There was a bloody condom on the floor, in the kitchen. There were bloody handprints everywhere, but no blood in the hall. If you hurt him, if any of this blood was his, it would have followed him. S told me, dirgefully. He held up my panties, they had been blue, now they weren't. I wasn't making any sense, by then. I was so confused, there were gaps, but I could remember some things so clearly. I wouldn't have let that happen again. S told me he would bring the car around, I had to go to the hospital, get a rape kit, by then I was crying. I didn't see another person for 3 days. S told me years later, he had shot up in his car and nodded off, the stress just too much for him to handle. I couldn't leave the bathroom the first day, it had a heavy handicap dorm style door, I think I knew I could lock myself in. I slept on the carpet in front of the toilet, I was so upset, that I had upset R and J. I called both of them, looking for answers, looking for the things I was sure couldn't have happened. The second day, I ate a half of a piece of toast, I dragged myself 6 feet and curled in a ball in front of the tv. I couldn't focus, the tv didn't help, but hearing voices was better than being alone in the bathroom. I became convinced I was being punished for being a sinner, a heartbreaker. Every nasty comment that I was a slut or heartless bitch was true, no one cared about my rape, I deserved it. where, one may ask, were any of the women in your life? I only had one female friend I could count on, Liz. She was in Alaska. I didn't want my mother involved, it would have been worse. On the third day, I tried but I couldn't stand on my knee. I ruminated on my well deserved fate, no one was coming to help me, I was terrified to move, to leave. I was so terrified I would see him, the nameless man. The fourth morning I called a cab, I crawled to the elevator. I am still stuck in that bathroom. A huge part of me died there. This is where texting you 5 times, seems logical, this is why the exile of silence and ignoring creates an existential crisis in me. I never really trusted any man from that day, until You. I think a lot of things about our breakup, and the decline of our relationship are "triggering" to me, take me back to something I pretended happened to another person, something I didn't ever overcome, something I did not survive.