My story begins in late July of 2007. I was working over the summer for the Housing and Residence Life office at my university. I woke up in my dorm room in the middle of the night, and a man with whom I was acquainted was on-top of me, raping me.
I was severely intoxicated and possibly drugged. I woke up several times to him penetrating me, but I couldn't fight him off before passing back out.
It went on for several hours, but the only things I know for sure are those stolen moments when I again became conscious and felt him, saw him, tried to get him to stop.
My clearest memory is of awakening to a light coming in through the open door. A second person had opened it, and my attacker was standing naked in the middle of my room. He said, "Oh, shit, she's going to wake up."
Someone knew. It was planned, and I fully believe that it was planned because I identify as a lesbian.
Everything that follows is because of this dual-sided attack: premeditated rape and hate crime.
I am telling my story because I know how many times this has happened and want it to stop.
02 May 2009
23 May 2008
What About Sex?: How to Find an Enemy in Anyone
LESBO(UN)TASTIC
For awhile, I told myself that my sexual orientation made the situation better for me than for most people. Even though I both was and am well aware that one cannot qualify or compare. It comforted me, however, to think that being a lesbian made being raped by a man much easier. It seemed safe, because my sexual orientation wasn’t based on a quality I might or might not possess: strength, determination, courage, whatever quality it was that rested in so many expectant expressions I got from people. My sexuality has nothing to do with my character, so it was the perfect and only candidate for delayed response.
So I imagined what my subsequent sexual encounters might look like or how I might feel about them. I told myself I was lucky that I wouldn’t have the chance of incident(al) flashbacks… that certain sexual acts wouldn’t be even remotely comparable. Completely different methodology and physiology. Therefore, that automatically meant that I could start dating and sleeping with people right away, because I was safely nestled deeply within my shroud of sexuality, right?
Wrong.
It was one of the ways I falsely convinced myself of my own safety. True to form of that time, I found a way to worsen the situation.
A horrible, malignant falsity. That oozed, followed me. Acquired its own specific countenance that decayed and plastered itself on the most private parts of my body as I walked through the streets of New Orleans. Grew and lived within me as I endangered myself beyond comparison and hungered for a sexual experience positive and powerful enough to erase this. An orgasm or a caress that doubled as hydrochloric acid.
I went looking for them… “them” being the situations and women posing as a savior and, more importantly, serving as another plunge with which I could distract myself from my rape.
There was the German girl in a bar on Decatur Street licking drugs from the back of my throat. Long, blonde hair down her back. Tight jeans several washes lighter than is fashionable here. Laughed as she tasted the trickle of cocaine. We went to the bathroom and had sex. She laughed and whispered German phrases in my ears until she had licked all of the cocaine away and we had removed our clothes.
The meth addict with whom I went on a date… everything went quite well until she stole my purse and all of my money. Lapdances and naked people sprawled across the top of the bar. Someone’s rough hands on me. Her apartment teeming with drug addicts and dealers. Meth more prominent and suffocatingly thick than the air or the flickering lightbulbs.
The woman I slept with who tried to bring a man into the bedroom to dominate me. It was a game, you see. Another one of those jokes no one told me about. He walked into her bedroom unannounced wearing nothing. My identification as lesbian, which is unwavering, became an invitation somehow. As he moved towards me, I closed my eyes and saw scripted letters printed meticulously on stationary with pressed flowers. To my surprise and to the woman’s disgust, he, unlike my attacker, accepted “no.”
And the resulting wave of serious self-mutilation so that no one would ever want to look at my body again and never again find me sexually attractive. Broken pieces of glass and razors. Cut breasts, slashed legs.
A few blood-soaked pieces of clothing I stared at for hours each day.
THE METH BITCH
The worst was the woman I ceremoniously label “the meth bitch,” who was an example of how I could just as easily make women sexual partners my enemy. The first and most supreme example.
I met her at a bar, and everything went wonderfully. We went had a lovely date and connected perfectly. She said she really liked me and wanted to do something “sweet” for me, and she then planned a beautiful day for us in the city. We would pose as lovers and tourists and do everything I could never afford to do. She clasped my hand tightly, but not aggressively. The way her smooth fingers interlocked with mine was the way I had identified desire in so many of my wayward, potently false narrativizations of previous experiences.
She was stunning and looked almost exactly like another person I know from school. I was so drunk that I called her by that woman’s name the entire evening, and maybe that’s what comforted me. Coarse light brown, shoulder-length hair. Dark, low-rise jeans. It was cold in New Orleanian terms then (meaning probably about fifty-five), so she had on a thick faux-fur black jacket that reminded me of those I had seen so many “stylish” women wear. It grazed her slender knees and rubbed against her clearly muscled thighs. Seemed to compete with me and, along with the city and my state of inebriation and desperation, to whisper the devious things into my ear I was supposed to do.
We kissed in the cab on the way to her house and held hands. She said that we didn’t have to talk about sex, because we would be together long enough for that to happen when I was ready.
She took care of everything. I met her uncle and some people at her house.
One emaciated woman. A heroine addict, as it happened.
Sitting in her house around a dingy coffee table as drug dealers filtered in and out. All of this completely alien to me.
She warned me about them and told me to hold my purse close to me. She said they might try something. She postured as my protector and did so for so long that I believed it. I wanted to.
Back in a cab, and back to a bar. At this point, it was 11:00 AM, and I had been out since about 9 PM the day before.
She asked to use my phone, and I agreed.
I began talking to a beautiful, in-transition woman. She told me stories about what it was like to be in-transition and the varied difficulties she faced sexually and socially. Ten minutes later, she asked where my “girlfriend” had gone.
Back into the Marigny with my purse, charges of about $400 on my card, my new phone, and my glasses is where she had gone.
I had to walk home. The trans woman bought me a bottle of beer and a pack of cigarettes to take with me as I trudged brokenly through the French Quarter, staring maliciously at the tourists. Walking in the road. Stopping the horse carriages and blocking large groups of people. They looked into my eyes, and, at that moment, they were inexplicably terrified of me. I looked at myself from afar and was both terrified by what I saw and comforted by the viciousness I saw within that person.
Crawled between two cars of a momentarily stopped train. People gasped and begged me to stop as the gravel crunched under the expensive pink sneakers I had gotten out of a donation bin. As I approached the halted train.
Couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. This betrayal, though I knew it would happen on one level, was too much. Too much. Words failing to form. Failing to have meaning. Shapes losing their definition. Lights dimming as I thought I would faint.
I simply didn’t care anymore.
I ended up walking all the way to the water. Found myself next to an abandoned warehouse I had never seen and had no idea where my own home was. Not because I was drunk, because, by then, I certainly wasn’t. But because a horrible realization was eminent. One of those overarching, capital-letter-noun Joycean epiphanies:
Because of the attack, I had made my body and sex my enemy in Every. Single. Way. I knew that my body would try to tell my story for me before words could, so that pesky other half of me short-circuited the words that wanted to write themselves across my entire body in bold, capital print.
I threw my bottle of beer against the side of the warehouse and picked up the largest shard of glass. I somehow found my way home, where I then screamed and threw at least ten bottles and glasses against the side of my house.
I slashed parts of my body to ribbons with my favorite piece of broken glass and a razor. It was just before Mardi Gras, and I had seriously considered getting a job in a bar for the week. I’m attractive and knew I could get a lot of money in tips.
Cutting myself was my way of insuring that I could not apply for those jobs and that I wouldn’t be inclined to flirt and try to sleep with another woman for quite some time.
Bleeding, I walked five miles up-and-down the street she lived on, trying to make sense of the inebriated memories from hours before. Trying to find her house and to explain all of this away. Maybe I was just too drunk and didn’t stay at the bar long enough for her to return. Maybe she didn’t mean to do this.
But I knew she had. Everything was hazy because of my missing glasses and the surging, violent waves of realization and perceived degradation warming my body far beyond the temperature. It didn’t occur to me that confronting a drug ring would be a bad idea. The part of me that refused to speak about my rape encouraged it and had a pre-defined notion of how it would look linguistically and narrativistically, of which, again, I was not informed.
I never found it.
So, the deepest recess of my mind formed a new plan it didn’t deem me worthy of knowing about.
One night, I engineered a situation from which I COULD escape.
THE FILM PRODUCER
There was a sketchy older man. No shortage of those in New Orleans. He was a film producer who lived on the border of the CBD and the French Quarter, just past the interstate. A dramatic, stereotypical studio apartment submerged in video screens and equipment I envied. I’ve always wanted to make documentaries.
I met him at Spotted Cat the first night I went out without my, at that time, most recent ex-girlfriend, and he gave me his card. Overweight, glasses, beard. Grey longish hair.
I confuse his image with so many people while simultaneously seeing it with arresting clarity.
I spoke with him a few times over a span of a couple months, and we decided to meet at Apple Barrel one evening. He was back in town.
He knew the bartender at Apple Barrel, and we sat at the bar for hours alongside Coco Robicheaux... who was, as always, a fascinating mixture of Crocodile Dundee and a purple mountain’s majesty drag queen. Voice so marred by cigar-smoking not a single word he says is clear or intelligible. He was fascinated with the Latin American sterling cuff at my arm and told me stories of archery.
The producer invited me back to his apartment by text message after we had parted ways for the evening.
“Don’t tell anyone, and cum alone.” Yes, “cum” alone. I kid you not.
I knew he would try to pull something. I had known from the moment I agreed to see him that evening, though I hadn’t flirted with him and had made my sexuality known. Even the way my eyelashes moved when I blinked announced my vulnerability to everyone.
So I agreed.
He gave me directions to his studio, and I met him there. I left my car door unlocked. He ushered me in. Locked the door. As he turned around, however, I unlocked it quickly and quietly so that he wouldn’t notice.
Unlocked car. Unlocked door.
I deliberately engineered a potential assault-situation from which I could escape. Since I hadn’t found the solution with chosen female sexual partners, I thought it would be comforting to re-simulate the situation on a very literal level and figure out a way to get out of it. A way to escape it. A way to avoid the violence and the horror. I thought that avoiding one situation would mean eradicating the other and that I could walk away with a sense of pride… a sense of my own power… if everything went as I imagined it… I might be able to tell myself that I was powerful enough to withstand any violence and any situation.
A fit of mania, a manifestation of the darkest workings of my mind… those fragments of my personality made darker and more nebulous by my rape.
It worked. He offered me drugs and alcohol. Showed me all of his film equipment.
Then he tried to force me to strip and masturbate for him. Pressured me. Told me to take off my pants and caress myself.
But, yes, I got away, just as I knew I would.
And it didn’t help.
Ellen got a call from a campus area director at around 4:30 AM that morning. I managed to make it back to campus, had yet another assault flashback, this time startlingly anatomical and visceral, and collapsed, immobile and sobbing, in the middle of the sidewalk. The campus police “safe ride” wouldn’t come get me, even though I was lying in the sidewalk right in-front of the police station, so, as I worked for housing, I called the area director on duty. She hoisted me up and led me back to my own dorm with her dog.
I begged her not to call Ellen, but then I got my call from her, and a heated forty-five minute conversation-debate ensued. I told her it was clear to me she had no idea what her own job was. I didn't say that to her because I believed it; I said it because I knew that she wanted to help me and didn't know how to let that happen.
A NEW UNDERSTANDING
Nothing makes this situation easier. A woman raped by a man or vice-versa, women or men raping their same-sex partners.
I found that people are people. Responses are responses and have very little to do with orientation. Actually, they have nothing to do with orientation. If someone vies to find an enemy, that person will create one in any individual or situation possible. In any plastic bag of drugs, drink, bar, restaurant, living space, professional setting… ANYTHING. At that point in my life, I probably could have found a way to make a piece of yarn an epic adversary simply so that I could forget my rapist’s image for a single second. A second hour or group of moments. Just to SEE anything else. To think about anything else. To spend one moment of energy on something other than preparing for the judicial hearing the school would use to re-victimize me in the most insidious ways possible.
When someone takes a part of yourself from you, that void screams desperately and invites any single infectious agent that exists to inhabit it. The part of you that is missing emanates a stench that any insidious person or situation can sense from miles away, and that stench is refashioned into something that seems inexplicably sublime. It isn’t that you are weak; it’s that those holes distract you from the functioning of your own existence.
Nothing provides a shield or a barrier for a human response to trauma. I’ve studied trauma, trauma narratives, and the intricacies of responses for five years, so I knew what was going to happen to me. That made it easier and harder on one level. My ability to apply fancy terminology and processes didn’t help the other part of me, the real most inner part of me that wanted to speak but was, ironically, silenced by words I had used a million times before… in countless formal essays, informal essays, discussions, and presentations.
I couldn’t write or present my way out of my own trauma, and that knowledge split me into exactly two opposed pieces.
Studying how people tell their stories and trying to figure out how they CAN tell them enraptured me to the point that the side of me that tried to completely abandon the other deleted any story that could have been told. Maybe it seems like I am placing blame, but you must remember one thing: I am blaming one of the most essential parts of MYSELF for my response… which is equally problematic.
For my only formal college course in trauma, I had an exceptional instructor. A kind, brilliant woman with a voice that is both sympathetic and demanding. The same concepts she gave me “A+s” for academically inspired absolutely no confidence in those who observed my personal behavior. Everyone waited anxiously as the hours passed each night, waiting to see what I would do to myself next, and all I could think about was that wonderful instructor asking me how it felt to know that I was producing work that would live and precipitate change. I had the inability to apply it to myself. I became my own case study.
And then the dam my university built to withhold testimony broke, and, after laughing at me and practically rewarding my rapist, the administrators are getting the wrinkles and sleepless nights they very rightfully deserve.
Nine months later, the only enemy I have is anything that could distract me from raising awareness for other assault survivors, first at this school and subsequently in any situation. It could be an extraordinarily large dinner that puts me to sleep at 9 PM as easily as it could be any of the people at the school lying to save themselves even now by damning me.
My enemy is no longer a person; it is a pattern of behavior I will no longer indulge.
06 May 2008
Making the Move: From Crime Scene to Timeshare
BOARDING THE PLANE
Once my dorm room became a crime scene, I tried a couple more university rooms on for size before I officially moved to the Ninth Ward… one in an adjacent building and one in a freshmen dorm in which I was a Resident Advisor. I found neither agreeable, though Ellen helped me redecorate by buying me new bedding when the New Orleans police took mine and my purple flowered coverlet became part of an “evidence bag.” The new bright pink faux-satin comforter and pink-and-purple swirled sheets both pacified and amused me. They illuminated the ceiling and the walls, thereby allowing me to sleep with one fewer light on.
I nearly died in a car crash on my way to visit my parents after the incident (my tire blew, and my car went into a spin at 70 mph in the middle of the interstate), got my third concussion in a matter of months, and, with everything else, it was too much.
I collapsed further into shock. Every color became too bright, and every person and conversation seemed too far away. The distance that grew between the rest of the world and me after the assault became insurmountable after the wreck and resulting temporary loss of most of my vision.
So, after a horrific evening that marked the “height” of my post-assault decline’s escalation, Ellen understandably suggested that I go on vacation.
Ever the structuralism-inspired university administrator, Ellen was kind enough to suggest the institutional vacation spot AND to drop me off at my timeshare condo late that evening. My clothes were soaking wet from having stood in the rain for hours sobbing and screaming through flashbacks, I was drunk, I had lost my shoes somehow, and I had to wear an eye patch from the minor wreck injury. Though I wasn’t “dressed for success,” I was still thrilled to partake in the life of an intrepid traveler.
Aspen?
Panama City?
An airport so that I could catch a connection to a swanky European bed and breakfast or eat Bratwurst in Prenzlauerberg, Berlin’s version of the Ninth Ward?
A ski chalet, perhaps?
A clandestine location whose version of camouflage is bowties and snap-brim caps?
No!
MUCH better!
MUCH fancier!
One of those snooty places where everything is a la carte and there’s no continental breakfast. Or Dr. Pepper, for that matter, which is my soda of choice…
If Rome was the whore of Babylon, this place is the whore of NYC’s Plaza Hotel…
***The University Hospital psych ward in the middle of downtown New Orleans***.
Third floor. A small room with an armed police officer guarding the door indifferently. Curtain partition separating the small beds that aren’t more than an arm’s length from one another. Florescent lighting and a “nurse’s station” across from a bathroom that doesn’t lock. Everyone gets to walk around absently until it’s time for pills, anonymous injections, and full-body restraints!
Definitely not a location that is EVER going to end up on the Travel Channel. I’ll just regard it as a secret few have the distinct pleasure of unraveling.
IN-TRANSIT INCONVENIENCES
Unfortunately, my arrival was delayed.
She dropped me off at the wrong location first and drove away before ensuring I was successfully enjoying the lavishness of my new timeshare. The man at the first timeshare turned me away and sent my friend and me back outside
She’d had too much faith in travel agents for it being the middle of the night in a horrible part of town. Best to double-check the availability of flights before jumping a ship that’s terrified of its own location.
It was lightly sprinkling when we went back into the street, but I was already soaking wet. Ellen had given me her pink flip-flops because she said I would be on vacation for a lot longer than the one day I agreed to if I walked into the timeshare without shoes. So at least the bottoms of my feet weren’t wet. My friend and I carried a blanket and a Dostoevsky book and walked down the largely-deserted street… under the interstate ramps, past a group of homeless men, searching for the where we were supposed to be. We were terrified and cold, so we sat on the steps of a locked-up Catholic church and called her to come back.
She returned very quickly to get us so that we could take a second stab at allowing my vacation to reach fruition!
Second time’s a charm!
Though the hospital is so rancid even the sign is missing letters (“y” is an expensive letter to tack onto the side of a building, as Ben sagely pointed out), she was dead-on about the desirability of the location and the overall vacationing experience when she left me. She knows that I don’t like rewarding myself excessively, so, though she anticipated my vacation lasting QUITE some time, she lied to me. She told me I would be there a day simply so that I would agree to go.
Though she had no idea what she was doing or where she was sending me, she was THAT invested in my relaxation! Lying to ensure everything went smoothly. Lying so that I would voluntarily go and be “out-of-sight.” Lying because she didn’t know what else to do.
THE LAYOVER
They let me in, took away my eye patch (because I could “hide something behind it” in a Saw I fashion, I suppose… those pesky rings of restraint keys I hide in my cornea!), put me in a crazy suit… I found it very disagreeable that they removed the eye patch, because then the gash above my eye was exposed for all to see, and my eyes could no longer focus.
But, when you are at the University Hospital timeshare, dress code is everything! Cadet blue paper suits are the epitome of haute couture, while eye patches put on to protect damaged eyes after a wreck fall safely within the realm of TJ Maxx bargain bins. Move over, Coco Chanel! Anna’s runway rocking the psych ward get-up while gracefully performing the Timeshare Two-Step. A fancy French disengage onto the runway, a belly flop off of it.
I spent the evening plotting my escape from the ER, but it turned out that the orderly I had been waiting to fall asleep for hours was actually a pillar. If I had only had my eye patch…
Though they took all of my own things, they let me keep Ellen’s pink flip-flops. While being admitted, I tried to take comfort in that. They made me feel safer for a moment and kept my feet from the filthy, caked floors the few times I was able to leave my bed. They were a reminder of her kindness.
A nurse came over to watch me change out of my clothes… in case I were to “hurt myself.” Being there certainly made me WANT to. She leaned forward confidentially and whispered, “So, the nurses and doctors have a bet going as to why you’re here. We think it’s because your boyfriend broke up with you and you’re just overreacting.”
Charming. I suggest this establishment find itself a new valet. I wouldn’t let that bitch park my car for a million dollars.
I turned around, pasted a huge grin on my face, and jovially proclaimed, “Actually, I was raped, and I’m a lesbian. I’m a bit upset about it. Looks like you all lose this round! You all managed to bargain hunt and scrounge up a two-for-one miss! CONGRATU-FUCKING-LATIONS!” And pulled the curtain with equally exaggerated cheer.
They were laughing and BETTING on me. I still had my phone at that point, so I texted Ellen frantically. She, naturally, didn’t believe me and seemed to take this as further proof that I was “crazy.”
Thanks. Equally charming. New valet and new travel agent requested by the young incarcerated woman in blue.
After texting with Ellen for quite awhile, I fell asleep in my ER hospital bed and woke up to my cell phone ringing at around 6 AM. My housing supervisor told me that someone hadn’t shown up to sit at the front desk and that I needed to do it. I told her that I was currently occupied. “Anna, you need to start contributing more to your fellow staff members. Get dressed and come downstairs.”
Deep breath. Just imagine her getting sour milk enemas five times a day for the rest of her life. I’m lactose intolerant with a compulsion for multiples of five.
Calm.
“Actually, I’m lying in a hospital bed waiting to be committed to a psych ward. Maybe next time! I’m looking forward to being as productive as possible for you! I’ll be back as soon as I ditch the paper suit and get a new eye patch!”
End of conversation.
Sour. Milk. Enemas. Five. Times. A. Day.
I chuckled to myself a bit too soon.
In walked the doctors and the armed security guard to escort me to the third floor.
It WAS true! I’d officially won a timeshare vacation, which I pulled off without having been even remotely crazy a day in my life!
I believe we call that “having skills.”
THE VACATION
State mental facilities or “timeshare condos” are often free, because it takes almost nothing to cure you. The entire treatment facility is a scam, a theatrical farce whose only expense is soggy food and the pills they refuse to name that serve as a lovely nightcap. I always gave my next-door neighbor my milk cartons. Lactose intolerant.
The hidden expense, the greatest and most mysterious of all, is the cost of the talented actors everyone appreciates and no one recognizes. There’s the woman with tousled hair passionately proclaiming, “Lick my motherfucking ass. Lick the cum coming out of my ass, you stupid fucking honky bitch” with heart-stopping, applause-worthy zeal. Her performance is so grand that the doctors let her pair a white tank top with the cadet blue standard-issue “crazy person suit.” The lesser actors and audience members have to wear a three-quarter length matching top, but not our resident Meryl Streep! I’m guessing the landlords here have a different idea of what it was Sophie was making a choice about… my take was that it had nothing to do with a vomit-stained white tank. But who in their “right mind” trusts people in a timeshare, right? Property OWNERS have the key to life!
There’s the hulking man in restraints who chose this vacation spot because he ripped a fire hydrant out of the ground and threw it through a window. He had a vendetta against a stranger on the sidewalk. He is the newest installment in American Psycho: deep voice, chatting about jogging, morning hygiene routines, literature and insufficient company letterhead as they strapped him down... “took his keys,” if you will. Not even a swipe card gym key for that nefarious nutjob.
Thank God he lived two doors up. I had horrible images of the property value suffering. When you get the corner lot for your vacation spot, you have to think about these things.
There’s the emaciated man who cannot speak and wanders across the ward vacantly. His idea of a vacation is simply opening and closing the lockless bathroom door. He likes opening the door on my Meryl Streep neighbor when she’s in there, but she doesn’t mind him staring at her urinating quite so much as she minds the idea of me existing. After they both peed on the bathroom floor, however, she always saved a little bit for my condo’s yard. The length of your stay shouldn’t impact your attention to shrubbery!
The nurse who speaks loudly, too cheerfully, that woman with the seedy, mousy brown hair down her back who played the bank teller last week on that TV show you cannot remember. She’s the one the other performers find the most disagreeable, the biggest strain on the production’s grandeur and award potential. Ever her costuming seems out of place.
And the doctor. The Man, if you will. Long white ponytail. White beard. Misplaced accent that is most assuredly faked so that he can feign a sense of the dignity he will never deserve. A fake accent that will not save him when he’s in his most damning hour for his self-righteous barbarism.
Ellen had sagely left me in a timeshare in a diverse, vibrant neighborhood with a dash of “Inside the Actor’s Studio” for the full vacationing experience. I was ungrateful enough to look fondly back on the days of being in third grade and experiencing this type of thing through R.L. Stine’s “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, which my mother always bought me when I came home with a good report card.
Ellen taught me that you should never let someone else choose your adventure. They don’t let you flip back a few chapters and pick the better option when everything falls apart. The pages don’t exist anymore, and the chapters take the form of cardboard meals.
SETTLING IN
So I had no choice but to get to know my neighbors.
When my hulking fire-hydrant neighbor two doors up lost his house key, I was notably relieved. He never left the house afterwards; the landlords had locked him in indefinitely. I didn’t mind, nor did I miss seeing him; his death threats grew exhausting, and the landlords took no interest.
Beloved lived on the corner. We only heard from her occasionally. Just a bit of unobtrusive, sporadic gurgling. I pissed off Toni Morrison when she came to lecture at my university, and she certainly got her revenge. Never AGAIN will I imply she’s senile in front of thousands of people! Memory like an ELEPHANT, that one, and I don’t want Pecola Breedlove to pop in on my next personal day (let’s not even go near the fact that I have blue eyes). The emptiness of Beloved’s eyes bothered me, but that was my only complaint. I heard one landlord say something about a “withdrawal” of some kind, but they were probably talking about the pricey ATM withdrawal the aesthetically awe-inspiring puss in the corner of her cracked lips must have required. She is as brilliant off-screen as on-screen, which is rare, indeed! Then again, compared to Oprah, the Ninth Ward Okra Man is a cinematic gem.
I suppose I was simply in a difficult mood, because even my Meryl Streep neighbor who took down her pants and fertilized my lawn for free disturbed me. She was actually the worst. “Suck my black pussy, motherfucker.” Though I support local business, I suggest calling Chem-lawn for all of your yard-related needs. There are some tasks better left to professionals, which she decidedly was not. The landlords didn’t mind her efforts. They didn’t even look at her.
Guess that’s what the university student vacationing on the corner property DESERVES, right?
When I realized that, somehow, I was in yet another situation in which a representative of an institution reveled in what was happened to me and legitimately found it amusing, I planned my timeshare community meeting comments:
“Please stop fertilizing my lawn. You’re just making it smell worse, though I appreciate your efforts. Please stop threatening me. Doctors, please stop laughing at me.
I think I’ll just pull down my blinds and pray that none of you, like Tom, find me in the dark.”
I didn’t have time to deliver my meager sentences for the doctor to find me there
“Hello, little Miss English Major. Have you had enough? Do you have enough to write your little papers and stories about, or should I give you more? Can you take some more? Want me to make sure you get it?”
“What?”
“Release your medical records.”
“No.”
“Okay, it’s your choice. You should know that, if you don’t, I’ll keep you here and make sure you have plenty to write about. I’ll make it worth your while.”
I wondered if he was talking about being raped, falling apart, nearly dying in a wreck, a string of concussions, or being manipulated by one of the only people I trusted into a horrifying psych ward. WHICH one was supposed to be “worth it”? Fantastic feats performed for fruit snacks or Camel lights are “worth it,” not any of this nonsense.
He left and chuckled.
It’s okay. I could figure a way out of there. People were coming to see me soon, and I could tell them everything. Though I must point out again that very few people believe anything that comes out of a timeshare vacationer’s mouth.
I desperately asked the nurse every thirty minutes for six hours what time it was. I was waiting for visiting hour, because Ellen and some of my friends said they were going to come visit me. I knew Ellen could fix it, could make all of them stop.
I tried to think of a way to make myself look presentable for my “guests.” Yeah, right.
I made my bed. Smoothed the sheets and the blanket. You aren’t permitted to bathe, so I ran my fingers through my hair. Washed the blood from the gash above my eye. Smoothed my paper suit… flattened out the arms. Readjusted my paper pants. Put on the pink flip-flops.
And waited for six hours whilst my neighbors threw a block party of sorts. Screaming
No one came.
And, when no one came, I felt like an abandoned child. I pulled the covers over my head and sobbed increasingly loudly for every tick the clock made past the end of visiting hours for that day.
They forced me to take my nightcap, and I awoke the next day to Ellen standing in the timeshare. She had a huge gaudy purse, laughed, and said she could smuggle in something for me.
HILARIOUS. At that point, I seriously tried to understand why everyone had been laughing at me through this entire situation. From the rape to the timeshare, everyone was in on some joke that I haven’t been privy to or perhaps am not sophisticated enough to understand.
She told everyone I would be in the awhile. She lied to my best friend at the university and told him she would bring him to see me. She blew off my best friend and told him to go to sleep and not to worry. She told the friend who was in the ER with me that night to go home. She told a friend who was there to visit that she shouldn’t believe most of what I say about my family and that I have romantic feelings for said friend, which isn’t true. According to her, of course, it’s all just a “misunderstanding.” At that point, I told her how unfortunate it is that she speaks a language no one seems to understand.
I shuddered when I realized she would never be able to help me. I released the records.
Vacations aren’t meant to last forever, right? That’s why people identify a “honeymoon” period in intimate partnerships.
Ellen came to pick me up, brought an outfit for me to change into, and bought me a pack of cigarettes before dropping me back off at my residence hall without a word or apology for what had happened.
THE AFTERMATH
After this travel destination mishap, I could never bring myself to trust Ellen again, though she was one of the only people I trusted from the minute she canceled her meetings and took me for the rape exam. From the minute she bought me my new bedding and again when she swore that I could never drive her away. Though she has told me countless times that she supports me and has dealt with quite a few of my breakdowns, I could never bring myself to believe a single word she said after those days.
My friends said it was her casualness about the entire situation that made them write her off for the rest of their lives.
She said numerous times that my level of intelligence bothered her on one level and that no one could ever “trick me.” Well, she succeeded. She “tricked” me into a state psych ward that was nearly worse than the incident itself. Almost six months later, I still dedicate a significant amount of energy to forgiving her.
Those Flying Spaghetti Monster Motherfuckers.
Ellen is a sub-par travel agent. She wisely chose the wrong size tires for the lets-help-Anna-get-over-her-rape caravan.
Death threats, bodily fluids, and a flat tire.
Yes, Doctor. I have plenty to write about.
Once my dorm room became a crime scene, I tried a couple more university rooms on for size before I officially moved to the Ninth Ward… one in an adjacent building and one in a freshmen dorm in which I was a Resident Advisor. I found neither agreeable, though Ellen helped me redecorate by buying me new bedding when the New Orleans police took mine and my purple flowered coverlet became part of an “evidence bag.” The new bright pink faux-satin comforter and pink-and-purple swirled sheets both pacified and amused me. They illuminated the ceiling and the walls, thereby allowing me to sleep with one fewer light on.
I nearly died in a car crash on my way to visit my parents after the incident (my tire blew, and my car went into a spin at 70 mph in the middle of the interstate), got my third concussion in a matter of months, and, with everything else, it was too much.
I collapsed further into shock. Every color became too bright, and every person and conversation seemed too far away. The distance that grew between the rest of the world and me after the assault became insurmountable after the wreck and resulting temporary loss of most of my vision.
So, after a horrific evening that marked the “height” of my post-assault decline’s escalation, Ellen understandably suggested that I go on vacation.
Ever the structuralism-inspired university administrator, Ellen was kind enough to suggest the institutional vacation spot AND to drop me off at my timeshare condo late that evening. My clothes were soaking wet from having stood in the rain for hours sobbing and screaming through flashbacks, I was drunk, I had lost my shoes somehow, and I had to wear an eye patch from the minor wreck injury. Though I wasn’t “dressed for success,” I was still thrilled to partake in the life of an intrepid traveler.
Aspen?
Panama City?
An airport so that I could catch a connection to a swanky European bed and breakfast or eat Bratwurst in Prenzlauerberg, Berlin’s version of the Ninth Ward?
A ski chalet, perhaps?
A clandestine location whose version of camouflage is bowties and snap-brim caps?
No!
MUCH better!
MUCH fancier!
One of those snooty places where everything is a la carte and there’s no continental breakfast. Or Dr. Pepper, for that matter, which is my soda of choice…
If Rome was the whore of Babylon, this place is the whore of NYC’s Plaza Hotel…
***The University Hospital psych ward in the middle of downtown New Orleans***.
Third floor. A small room with an armed police officer guarding the door indifferently. Curtain partition separating the small beds that aren’t more than an arm’s length from one another. Florescent lighting and a “nurse’s station” across from a bathroom that doesn’t lock. Everyone gets to walk around absently until it’s time for pills, anonymous injections, and full-body restraints!
Definitely not a location that is EVER going to end up on the Travel Channel. I’ll just regard it as a secret few have the distinct pleasure of unraveling.
IN-TRANSIT INCONVENIENCES
Unfortunately, my arrival was delayed.
She dropped me off at the wrong location first and drove away before ensuring I was successfully enjoying the lavishness of my new timeshare. The man at the first timeshare turned me away and sent my friend and me back outside
She’d had too much faith in travel agents for it being the middle of the night in a horrible part of town. Best to double-check the availability of flights before jumping a ship that’s terrified of its own location.
It was lightly sprinkling when we went back into the street, but I was already soaking wet. Ellen had given me her pink flip-flops because she said I would be on vacation for a lot longer than the one day I agreed to if I walked into the timeshare without shoes. So at least the bottoms of my feet weren’t wet. My friend and I carried a blanket and a Dostoevsky book and walked down the largely-deserted street… under the interstate ramps, past a group of homeless men, searching for the where we were supposed to be. We were terrified and cold, so we sat on the steps of a locked-up Catholic church and called her to come back.
She returned very quickly to get us so that we could take a second stab at allowing my vacation to reach fruition!
Second time’s a charm!
Though the hospital is so rancid even the sign is missing letters (“y” is an expensive letter to tack onto the side of a building, as Ben sagely pointed out), she was dead-on about the desirability of the location and the overall vacationing experience when she left me. She knows that I don’t like rewarding myself excessively, so, though she anticipated my vacation lasting QUITE some time, she lied to me. She told me I would be there a day simply so that I would agree to go.
Though she had no idea what she was doing or where she was sending me, she was THAT invested in my relaxation! Lying to ensure everything went smoothly. Lying so that I would voluntarily go and be “out-of-sight.” Lying because she didn’t know what else to do.
THE LAYOVER
They let me in, took away my eye patch (because I could “hide something behind it” in a Saw I fashion, I suppose… those pesky rings of restraint keys I hide in my cornea!), put me in a crazy suit… I found it very disagreeable that they removed the eye patch, because then the gash above my eye was exposed for all to see, and my eyes could no longer focus.
But, when you are at the University Hospital timeshare, dress code is everything! Cadet blue paper suits are the epitome of haute couture, while eye patches put on to protect damaged eyes after a wreck fall safely within the realm of TJ Maxx bargain bins. Move over, Coco Chanel! Anna’s runway rocking the psych ward get-up while gracefully performing the Timeshare Two-Step. A fancy French disengage onto the runway, a belly flop off of it.
I spent the evening plotting my escape from the ER, but it turned out that the orderly I had been waiting to fall asleep for hours was actually a pillar. If I had only had my eye patch…
Though they took all of my own things, they let me keep Ellen’s pink flip-flops. While being admitted, I tried to take comfort in that. They made me feel safer for a moment and kept my feet from the filthy, caked floors the few times I was able to leave my bed. They were a reminder of her kindness.
A nurse came over to watch me change out of my clothes… in case I were to “hurt myself.” Being there certainly made me WANT to. She leaned forward confidentially and whispered, “So, the nurses and doctors have a bet going as to why you’re here. We think it’s because your boyfriend broke up with you and you’re just overreacting.”
Charming. I suggest this establishment find itself a new valet. I wouldn’t let that bitch park my car for a million dollars.
I turned around, pasted a huge grin on my face, and jovially proclaimed, “Actually, I was raped, and I’m a lesbian. I’m a bit upset about it. Looks like you all lose this round! You all managed to bargain hunt and scrounge up a two-for-one miss! CONGRATU-FUCKING-LATIONS!” And pulled the curtain with equally exaggerated cheer.
They were laughing and BETTING on me. I still had my phone at that point, so I texted Ellen frantically. She, naturally, didn’t believe me and seemed to take this as further proof that I was “crazy.”
Thanks. Equally charming. New valet and new travel agent requested by the young incarcerated woman in blue.
After texting with Ellen for quite awhile, I fell asleep in my ER hospital bed and woke up to my cell phone ringing at around 6 AM. My housing supervisor told me that someone hadn’t shown up to sit at the front desk and that I needed to do it. I told her that I was currently occupied. “Anna, you need to start contributing more to your fellow staff members. Get dressed and come downstairs.”
Deep breath. Just imagine her getting sour milk enemas five times a day for the rest of her life. I’m lactose intolerant with a compulsion for multiples of five.
Calm.
“Actually, I’m lying in a hospital bed waiting to be committed to a psych ward. Maybe next time! I’m looking forward to being as productive as possible for you! I’ll be back as soon as I ditch the paper suit and get a new eye patch!”
End of conversation.
Sour. Milk. Enemas. Five. Times. A. Day.
I chuckled to myself a bit too soon.
In walked the doctors and the armed security guard to escort me to the third floor.
It WAS true! I’d officially won a timeshare vacation, which I pulled off without having been even remotely crazy a day in my life!
I believe we call that “having skills.”
THE VACATION
State mental facilities or “timeshare condos” are often free, because it takes almost nothing to cure you. The entire treatment facility is a scam, a theatrical farce whose only expense is soggy food and the pills they refuse to name that serve as a lovely nightcap. I always gave my next-door neighbor my milk cartons. Lactose intolerant.
The hidden expense, the greatest and most mysterious of all, is the cost of the talented actors everyone appreciates and no one recognizes. There’s the woman with tousled hair passionately proclaiming, “Lick my motherfucking ass. Lick the cum coming out of my ass, you stupid fucking honky bitch” with heart-stopping, applause-worthy zeal. Her performance is so grand that the doctors let her pair a white tank top with the cadet blue standard-issue “crazy person suit.” The lesser actors and audience members have to wear a three-quarter length matching top, but not our resident Meryl Streep! I’m guessing the landlords here have a different idea of what it was Sophie was making a choice about… my take was that it had nothing to do with a vomit-stained white tank. But who in their “right mind” trusts people in a timeshare, right? Property OWNERS have the key to life!
There’s the hulking man in restraints who chose this vacation spot because he ripped a fire hydrant out of the ground and threw it through a window. He had a vendetta against a stranger on the sidewalk. He is the newest installment in American Psycho: deep voice, chatting about jogging, morning hygiene routines, literature and insufficient company letterhead as they strapped him down... “took his keys,” if you will. Not even a swipe card gym key for that nefarious nutjob.
Thank God he lived two doors up. I had horrible images of the property value suffering. When you get the corner lot for your vacation spot, you have to think about these things.
There’s the emaciated man who cannot speak and wanders across the ward vacantly. His idea of a vacation is simply opening and closing the lockless bathroom door. He likes opening the door on my Meryl Streep neighbor when she’s in there, but she doesn’t mind him staring at her urinating quite so much as she minds the idea of me existing. After they both peed on the bathroom floor, however, she always saved a little bit for my condo’s yard. The length of your stay shouldn’t impact your attention to shrubbery!
The nurse who speaks loudly, too cheerfully, that woman with the seedy, mousy brown hair down her back who played the bank teller last week on that TV show you cannot remember. She’s the one the other performers find the most disagreeable, the biggest strain on the production’s grandeur and award potential. Ever her costuming seems out of place.
And the doctor. The Man, if you will. Long white ponytail. White beard. Misplaced accent that is most assuredly faked so that he can feign a sense of the dignity he will never deserve. A fake accent that will not save him when he’s in his most damning hour for his self-righteous barbarism.
Ellen had sagely left me in a timeshare in a diverse, vibrant neighborhood with a dash of “Inside the Actor’s Studio” for the full vacationing experience. I was ungrateful enough to look fondly back on the days of being in third grade and experiencing this type of thing through R.L. Stine’s “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, which my mother always bought me when I came home with a good report card.
Ellen taught me that you should never let someone else choose your adventure. They don’t let you flip back a few chapters and pick the better option when everything falls apart. The pages don’t exist anymore, and the chapters take the form of cardboard meals.
SETTLING IN
So I had no choice but to get to know my neighbors.
When my hulking fire-hydrant neighbor two doors up lost his house key, I was notably relieved. He never left the house afterwards; the landlords had locked him in indefinitely. I didn’t mind, nor did I miss seeing him; his death threats grew exhausting, and the landlords took no interest.
Beloved lived on the corner. We only heard from her occasionally. Just a bit of unobtrusive, sporadic gurgling. I pissed off Toni Morrison when she came to lecture at my university, and she certainly got her revenge. Never AGAIN will I imply she’s senile in front of thousands of people! Memory like an ELEPHANT, that one, and I don’t want Pecola Breedlove to pop in on my next personal day (let’s not even go near the fact that I have blue eyes). The emptiness of Beloved’s eyes bothered me, but that was my only complaint. I heard one landlord say something about a “withdrawal” of some kind, but they were probably talking about the pricey ATM withdrawal the aesthetically awe-inspiring puss in the corner of her cracked lips must have required. She is as brilliant off-screen as on-screen, which is rare, indeed! Then again, compared to Oprah, the Ninth Ward Okra Man is a cinematic gem.
I suppose I was simply in a difficult mood, because even my Meryl Streep neighbor who took down her pants and fertilized my lawn for free disturbed me. She was actually the worst. “Suck my black pussy, motherfucker.” Though I support local business, I suggest calling Chem-lawn for all of your yard-related needs. There are some tasks better left to professionals, which she decidedly was not. The landlords didn’t mind her efforts. They didn’t even look at her.
Guess that’s what the university student vacationing on the corner property DESERVES, right?
When I realized that, somehow, I was in yet another situation in which a representative of an institution reveled in what was happened to me and legitimately found it amusing, I planned my timeshare community meeting comments:
“Please stop fertilizing my lawn. You’re just making it smell worse, though I appreciate your efforts. Please stop threatening me. Doctors, please stop laughing at me.
I think I’ll just pull down my blinds and pray that none of you, like Tom, find me in the dark.”
I didn’t have time to deliver my meager sentences for the doctor to find me there
“Hello, little Miss English Major. Have you had enough? Do you have enough to write your little papers and stories about, or should I give you more? Can you take some more? Want me to make sure you get it?”
“What?”
“Release your medical records.”
“No.”
“Okay, it’s your choice. You should know that, if you don’t, I’ll keep you here and make sure you have plenty to write about. I’ll make it worth your while.”
I wondered if he was talking about being raped, falling apart, nearly dying in a wreck, a string of concussions, or being manipulated by one of the only people I trusted into a horrifying psych ward. WHICH one was supposed to be “worth it”? Fantastic feats performed for fruit snacks or Camel lights are “worth it,” not any of this nonsense.
He left and chuckled.
It’s okay. I could figure a way out of there. People were coming to see me soon, and I could tell them everything. Though I must point out again that very few people believe anything that comes out of a timeshare vacationer’s mouth.
I desperately asked the nurse every thirty minutes for six hours what time it was. I was waiting for visiting hour, because Ellen and some of my friends said they were going to come visit me. I knew Ellen could fix it, could make all of them stop.
I tried to think of a way to make myself look presentable for my “guests.” Yeah, right.
I made my bed. Smoothed the sheets and the blanket. You aren’t permitted to bathe, so I ran my fingers through my hair. Washed the blood from the gash above my eye. Smoothed my paper suit… flattened out the arms. Readjusted my paper pants. Put on the pink flip-flops.
And waited for six hours whilst my neighbors threw a block party of sorts. Screaming
No one came.
And, when no one came, I felt like an abandoned child. I pulled the covers over my head and sobbed increasingly loudly for every tick the clock made past the end of visiting hours for that day.
They forced me to take my nightcap, and I awoke the next day to Ellen standing in the timeshare. She had a huge gaudy purse, laughed, and said she could smuggle in something for me.
HILARIOUS. At that point, I seriously tried to understand why everyone had been laughing at me through this entire situation. From the rape to the timeshare, everyone was in on some joke that I haven’t been privy to or perhaps am not sophisticated enough to understand.
She told everyone I would be in the awhile. She lied to my best friend at the university and told him she would bring him to see me. She blew off my best friend and told him to go to sleep and not to worry. She told the friend who was in the ER with me that night to go home. She told a friend who was there to visit that she shouldn’t believe most of what I say about my family and that I have romantic feelings for said friend, which isn’t true. According to her, of course, it’s all just a “misunderstanding.” At that point, I told her how unfortunate it is that she speaks a language no one seems to understand.
I shuddered when I realized she would never be able to help me. I released the records.
Vacations aren’t meant to last forever, right? That’s why people identify a “honeymoon” period in intimate partnerships.
Ellen came to pick me up, brought an outfit for me to change into, and bought me a pack of cigarettes before dropping me back off at my residence hall without a word or apology for what had happened.
THE AFTERMATH
After this travel destination mishap, I could never bring myself to trust Ellen again, though she was one of the only people I trusted from the minute she canceled her meetings and took me for the rape exam. From the minute she bought me my new bedding and again when she swore that I could never drive her away. Though she has told me countless times that she supports me and has dealt with quite a few of my breakdowns, I could never bring myself to believe a single word she said after those days.
My friends said it was her casualness about the entire situation that made them write her off for the rest of their lives.
She said numerous times that my level of intelligence bothered her on one level and that no one could ever “trick me.” Well, she succeeded. She “tricked” me into a state psych ward that was nearly worse than the incident itself. Almost six months later, I still dedicate a significant amount of energy to forgiving her.
Those Flying Spaghetti Monster Motherfuckers.
Ellen is a sub-par travel agent. She wisely chose the wrong size tires for the lets-help-Anna-get-over-her-rape caravan.
Death threats, bodily fluids, and a flat tire.
Yes, Doctor. I have plenty to write about.
03 May 2008
Missiles From Aircraft Carrier Destroy University Rape Case
In the dark, misty labyrinth of the university’s deceptively labeled “Office of Student Conduct,” behind a thick haze of rank air and the smell of old popcorn, rests a mythical creature of significant gait. Several thousand years ago, silly little Greek “heroes” and “scholars” (Euripides and Sophocles might as well have been Dave Chappelle when it came to unraveling and identifying this enigmatic monster) called this creature the “Minotaur,” yet what rests behind one of the office doors is far more harrowing, far more terrifying than the beast that supposedly wreaked havoc and rained thick blankets of terror upon the innocent people of Ancient Greece:
Robert “Aircraft” Carrier.
After he claimed my identification as lesbian was irrelevant to the idea of CONSENT in my rape hearing, as well as my nurse, I made it my mission to find Aircraft’s Achilles Heel, which I daresay rests somewhere in the nonsensical string of words which delegate his “job title.”
I believe his bureaucratic job title is what began his dicey relationship with language.
He gets words confused sometimes, you see. When thinking of a lesbian’s unwillingness to CONSENT to sex with a man, what he really thought I was talking about was lesbian DISSENT, which he probably envisions as a lesbian not only sleeping with a man but selling herself into a rice patty-centered brothel. He is fluent in both English and Ancient Bureau-pod, and sometimes simple things get “lost in translation.” Words have a way of slipping through cracks in the same way unqualified people manage to do so and end up in power positions. Unfortunate but understandable. Of course, then, with lesbian consent and lesbian dissent getting a bit muddled in the five feet of air the words had to travel to reach him, it would make sense to him that Tom was telling the truth and I really did beg him to sleep with me.
When I think of Robert “Aircraft” Carrier, in fact, I think of a grossly exaggerated cartoon figure. A satirical political cartoon with a caricature-esqe head and maybe the lower body of some kind of unsightly beast. Something with large haunches, to be sure. A gaping underbelly with spotty patches of worn fur. The skin under its chin slippery and wrinkled.
Or I think of him sitting in his office chair in a velour purple robe with zebra-print fringe and a burger king crown atop his head, feigning to be a legitimate authority figure presiding with dignity over his little microcosm.
This is the man I believe to be a threat to the integrity of my university, and this is the man I believe to have a great deal to do with the university’s gross understanding of proper sanctions.
But who is this elusive Aircraft Carrier?
This is the man who thought my sexual identification as lesbian, as well as my rape nurse, were nearly irrelevant to my sexual assault hearing. From what I have heard from other affected students, he has a very… unique understanding of relevance, and some students claim that they were serving as WITNESSES in a drug hearing and were threatened by him with expulsion (though I know the individuals, I cannot personally say I know this to be fact, however).
This is also the man who discussed my judicial hearing with another student, regaling said student with his personal estimations about my case. Despite medical records, four strong witness testimonies (one of which came from the rape nurse who was kind enough even to explain the anatomy of a vagina for Aircraft and his band of malevolent-yet-merry monsters. But wait! Vaginas have NOTHING to do with rape cases! *slaps head*), several police reports, the confiscation of many of my belongings by NOPD, and the estimation of many staff members that this was the strongest case they had ever seen, he said to this student that my case was “nebulous” and “lacking evidence.”
Uh oh! Someone slipped yet another page from the Ancient Bureau-pod lexicon into his student conduct manual!
Let’s see what the effect of this mishap was THIS time:
It’s likely that he got the word “nebulous” confused with “onerous,” as they sound similar and both have the nice, crisp “rous” sound at the end, which is all that really matters. And, to be fair, it must have been ONEROUS to deal with that many clear indications of rape and the ABUNDANCE of indicators. He explains they didn’t feel like they should “ruin Tom’s life because of it.” Yes, we certainly wouldn’t want the rapist to feel the burden of his attack. He told the student that I invented things that happened, but, when the student mentioned the fact that, if Aircraft and I have different stories, the tape will clear things up, he changed his story: I “took things out of context.” Like it’s possible to take a faculty member asking a drunk witness what I was wearing out of context.
What a second! EUREKA! Perhaps the faculty member wanted to take me square-dancing after he and the other panel members let Tom off unscathed. Knock back some Bud Light with the entire panel, bowl a couple frames in between, but only if I agree to wear pants so that we all don’t end up back here next week!
That’s right, Aircraft: he wasn’t implying that I brought my rape upon myself; he simply wanted to know if I was free for an evening of cowboy boots and bowling shoes!
But the “tape” situation is also a dubious one. Every hearing is recorded, and the tapes are destroyed after the appeal period has passed. Aircraft, also a wiz with multimedia projects, is in-charge of making sure the tapes are made and properly dealt with.
But sometimes, you see, his mind wanders back to the old days… when, instead of turkey breast sandwiches, one could always rely on the delectable breast of a pterodactyl to quell one’s hunger. As his mind wanders, the taping of the hearings doesn’t always go so well.
Aircraft chuckles and makes it widely known that he is incapable of operating a tape recorder, but it makes me kind of uncomfortable (we will deal with comfort levels and his thoughts on those momentarily).
My faculty advisor said that he glanced at the tape recorder continuously throughout the hearing to make sure it was still working. In my friend’s hearing the following week, our wanton warrior forgot a tape altogether. Times have changed, so it isn’t his fault that operating a mid-90s tape recorder is decidedly beyond his grasp. In ancient times, you see, secrets took the form of papyrus scrolls or were buried in boxes in the deepest reserves of canyons and lagoons. I suppose he thought that hitting “record” was enough, and that the secrets held within the walls of his crumbling domain could be stored on the plastic revolving disks within the recorder. Valiant, yes, and “old school” methodology has its charms, but it’s more likely that Barbara Eden begins blinking into the hearings than Aircraft, the presiding member over the university’s most important conduct hearings, figures out that record + blank tape= tape recording. Blank tape go bye bye. Used tape have words.
I like pterodactyl egg omelets as much as the next person, but, really… this is a RAPE hearing and deserves some respect and deliberate attention. I mean, really, what’s the use of fantasizing about a breakfast food you can’t even get at Camellia Grill instead of trying to protect the dignity of a rape survivor?
We know about his appetites and his language barriers, but have we really solved the mystery of one of the most powerful administrators on the university campus?
Well, as with all people, the truest indicator of who they are is the way they manipulate language and what the neglected crevices between their statements and proclamations whisper whilst they narrate, question, or argue.
THIS is the man who defines “threat” as anything that makes someone feel uncomfortable. By his definition, I guess I’m building a mighty strong case against the thong underwear moguls of the world. With the esteemed Aircraft by my side, we could, hands clasped in an expression of our unity, perhaps even take down the manufacturers of Vienna sausages, a tiny snack that makes me exceedingly uncomfortable and which also offends my general sensibilities. Spam is next, Aircraft! Chew your vitamins and start knocking back tofu, for our battle against the many “threats” in the world is about to commence!
Aircraft has game, to be sure, but the level of power with which the university blindly entrusts him isn’t the game for him. Perhaps an insurance claims investigator. With his intense love of the word “IRRELEVANT” in the most glaringly RELEVANT of circumstances, someone whose boss deliberately sawed his leg off with a chainsaw wouldn’t even qualify for workman’s comp. CEOs of insurance companies are nearly drowning in thick puddles of discolored, gooey saliva imagining how much money they would make if they allowed Aircraft to board their ship.
Shh! Don’t let the secret out!
Aircraft’s time at this university has passed.
It’s time to shut down the runway lights on this impressive (the Ancient Bureau-pod definition, not the English one) career. He has proven himself to lack impartiality in hearings, sabotages relevant lines of questioning and does so with such great frequency that suspicions SHOULD be raised about his motives and practices, and, in my opinion, will continue to drive the university into the ground without even the most minute iota of care or afterthought. If he wore hats, I would be convinced that, if he hasn’t met the person and therefore hasn’t had time to bring his personal and IRRELEVANT (the English definition, not the Ancient Bureau-pod one) OPINIONS as the “impartial moderator,” he just plucks pieces of paper out of that hat and decides his plan of attack. But he keeps getting the darn lexicons confused, so everything ends up exactly backwards thanks to him: violence is rewarded, and lesser charges are irrevocably damning.
Either way, innocent parties have everything both to fear and to lose when placed under his authority.
Alas, no hat is present, so we will have to search for our answers elsewhere. In the meantime, however, I strongly urge the university to place him under review before he is allowed to terrorize, demean, and re-victimize any more students at this university.
Aircraft’s missiles were just as damaging to me as the assault itself, but they do as much damage to the school as they do to people who simply want to have their lives treated with the slightest bit of respect. As students and as PEOPLE, we are not asking to be given a slice of that juicy pterodactyl breast: we are asking that our voices be heard and our stories regarded. Whether they successfully end up on a tape or not, the grievous wrongs students face because of Aircraft’s office resonate and stay imprinted on the affected individual indefinitely.
Everything leaves an imprint; it’s just a question of where.
We want just sanctions, and we want someone who doesn’t glean his idea of “just” from his boyhood friends, Brutus and Cassius.
Wait.
Do you think he invited them to the bowling game?
Robert “Aircraft” Carrier.
After he claimed my identification as lesbian was irrelevant to the idea of CONSENT in my rape hearing, as well as my nurse, I made it my mission to find Aircraft’s Achilles Heel, which I daresay rests somewhere in the nonsensical string of words which delegate his “job title.”
I believe his bureaucratic job title is what began his dicey relationship with language.
He gets words confused sometimes, you see. When thinking of a lesbian’s unwillingness to CONSENT to sex with a man, what he really thought I was talking about was lesbian DISSENT, which he probably envisions as a lesbian not only sleeping with a man but selling herself into a rice patty-centered brothel. He is fluent in both English and Ancient Bureau-pod, and sometimes simple things get “lost in translation.” Words have a way of slipping through cracks in the same way unqualified people manage to do so and end up in power positions. Unfortunate but understandable. Of course, then, with lesbian consent and lesbian dissent getting a bit muddled in the five feet of air the words had to travel to reach him, it would make sense to him that Tom was telling the truth and I really did beg him to sleep with me.
When I think of Robert “Aircraft” Carrier, in fact, I think of a grossly exaggerated cartoon figure. A satirical political cartoon with a caricature-esqe head and maybe the lower body of some kind of unsightly beast. Something with large haunches, to be sure. A gaping underbelly with spotty patches of worn fur. The skin under its chin slippery and wrinkled.
Or I think of him sitting in his office chair in a velour purple robe with zebra-print fringe and a burger king crown atop his head, feigning to be a legitimate authority figure presiding with dignity over his little microcosm.
This is the man I believe to be a threat to the integrity of my university, and this is the man I believe to have a great deal to do with the university’s gross understanding of proper sanctions.
But who is this elusive Aircraft Carrier?
This is the man who thought my sexual identification as lesbian, as well as my rape nurse, were nearly irrelevant to my sexual assault hearing. From what I have heard from other affected students, he has a very… unique understanding of relevance, and some students claim that they were serving as WITNESSES in a drug hearing and were threatened by him with expulsion (though I know the individuals, I cannot personally say I know this to be fact, however).
This is also the man who discussed my judicial hearing with another student, regaling said student with his personal estimations about my case. Despite medical records, four strong witness testimonies (one of which came from the rape nurse who was kind enough even to explain the anatomy of a vagina for Aircraft and his band of malevolent-yet-merry monsters. But wait! Vaginas have NOTHING to do with rape cases! *slaps head*), several police reports, the confiscation of many of my belongings by NOPD, and the estimation of many staff members that this was the strongest case they had ever seen, he said to this student that my case was “nebulous” and “lacking evidence.”
Uh oh! Someone slipped yet another page from the Ancient Bureau-pod lexicon into his student conduct manual!
Let’s see what the effect of this mishap was THIS time:
It’s likely that he got the word “nebulous” confused with “onerous,” as they sound similar and both have the nice, crisp “rous” sound at the end, which is all that really matters. And, to be fair, it must have been ONEROUS to deal with that many clear indications of rape and the ABUNDANCE of indicators. He explains they didn’t feel like they should “ruin Tom’s life because of it.” Yes, we certainly wouldn’t want the rapist to feel the burden of his attack. He told the student that I invented things that happened, but, when the student mentioned the fact that, if Aircraft and I have different stories, the tape will clear things up, he changed his story: I “took things out of context.” Like it’s possible to take a faculty member asking a drunk witness what I was wearing out of context.
What a second! EUREKA! Perhaps the faculty member wanted to take me square-dancing after he and the other panel members let Tom off unscathed. Knock back some Bud Light with the entire panel, bowl a couple frames in between, but only if I agree to wear pants so that we all don’t end up back here next week!
That’s right, Aircraft: he wasn’t implying that I brought my rape upon myself; he simply wanted to know if I was free for an evening of cowboy boots and bowling shoes!
But the “tape” situation is also a dubious one. Every hearing is recorded, and the tapes are destroyed after the appeal period has passed. Aircraft, also a wiz with multimedia projects, is in-charge of making sure the tapes are made and properly dealt with.
But sometimes, you see, his mind wanders back to the old days… when, instead of turkey breast sandwiches, one could always rely on the delectable breast of a pterodactyl to quell one’s hunger. As his mind wanders, the taping of the hearings doesn’t always go so well.
Aircraft chuckles and makes it widely known that he is incapable of operating a tape recorder, but it makes me kind of uncomfortable (we will deal with comfort levels and his thoughts on those momentarily).
My faculty advisor said that he glanced at the tape recorder continuously throughout the hearing to make sure it was still working. In my friend’s hearing the following week, our wanton warrior forgot a tape altogether. Times have changed, so it isn’t his fault that operating a mid-90s tape recorder is decidedly beyond his grasp. In ancient times, you see, secrets took the form of papyrus scrolls or were buried in boxes in the deepest reserves of canyons and lagoons. I suppose he thought that hitting “record” was enough, and that the secrets held within the walls of his crumbling domain could be stored on the plastic revolving disks within the recorder. Valiant, yes, and “old school” methodology has its charms, but it’s more likely that Barbara Eden begins blinking into the hearings than Aircraft, the presiding member over the university’s most important conduct hearings, figures out that record + blank tape= tape recording. Blank tape go bye bye. Used tape have words.
I like pterodactyl egg omelets as much as the next person, but, really… this is a RAPE hearing and deserves some respect and deliberate attention. I mean, really, what’s the use of fantasizing about a breakfast food you can’t even get at Camellia Grill instead of trying to protect the dignity of a rape survivor?
We know about his appetites and his language barriers, but have we really solved the mystery of one of the most powerful administrators on the university campus?
Well, as with all people, the truest indicator of who they are is the way they manipulate language and what the neglected crevices between their statements and proclamations whisper whilst they narrate, question, or argue.
THIS is the man who defines “threat” as anything that makes someone feel uncomfortable. By his definition, I guess I’m building a mighty strong case against the thong underwear moguls of the world. With the esteemed Aircraft by my side, we could, hands clasped in an expression of our unity, perhaps even take down the manufacturers of Vienna sausages, a tiny snack that makes me exceedingly uncomfortable and which also offends my general sensibilities. Spam is next, Aircraft! Chew your vitamins and start knocking back tofu, for our battle against the many “threats” in the world is about to commence!
Aircraft has game, to be sure, but the level of power with which the university blindly entrusts him isn’t the game for him. Perhaps an insurance claims investigator. With his intense love of the word “IRRELEVANT” in the most glaringly RELEVANT of circumstances, someone whose boss deliberately sawed his leg off with a chainsaw wouldn’t even qualify for workman’s comp. CEOs of insurance companies are nearly drowning in thick puddles of discolored, gooey saliva imagining how much money they would make if they allowed Aircraft to board their ship.
Shh! Don’t let the secret out!
Aircraft’s time at this university has passed.
It’s time to shut down the runway lights on this impressive (the Ancient Bureau-pod definition, not the English one) career. He has proven himself to lack impartiality in hearings, sabotages relevant lines of questioning and does so with such great frequency that suspicions SHOULD be raised about his motives and practices, and, in my opinion, will continue to drive the university into the ground without even the most minute iota of care or afterthought. If he wore hats, I would be convinced that, if he hasn’t met the person and therefore hasn’t had time to bring his personal and IRRELEVANT (the English definition, not the Ancient Bureau-pod one) OPINIONS as the “impartial moderator,” he just plucks pieces of paper out of that hat and decides his plan of attack. But he keeps getting the darn lexicons confused, so everything ends up exactly backwards thanks to him: violence is rewarded, and lesser charges are irrevocably damning.
Either way, innocent parties have everything both to fear and to lose when placed under his authority.
Alas, no hat is present, so we will have to search for our answers elsewhere. In the meantime, however, I strongly urge the university to place him under review before he is allowed to terrorize, demean, and re-victimize any more students at this university.
Aircraft’s missiles were just as damaging to me as the assault itself, but they do as much damage to the school as they do to people who simply want to have their lives treated with the slightest bit of respect. As students and as PEOPLE, we are not asking to be given a slice of that juicy pterodactyl breast: we are asking that our voices be heard and our stories regarded. Whether they successfully end up on a tape or not, the grievous wrongs students face because of Aircraft’s office resonate and stay imprinted on the affected individual indefinitely.
Everything leaves an imprint; it’s just a question of where.
We want just sanctions, and we want someone who doesn’t glean his idea of “just” from his boyhood friends, Brutus and Cassius.
Wait.
Do you think he invited them to the bowling game?
Notes From the Ninth Ward
How many people would flee from Uptown to the Ninth Ward for SAFETY? Trade St. Charles for St. Claude, houses needing paint jobs for houses being gutted by Methodist charity workers? Cosmetic hummers for military ones? When my university forsook me after the assault, my hamster, Virginia, and I packed up, moved next door to a former crack house inspected daily by the MPs, and have loved every minute here.
I am a young woman who moved alone to the Ninth Ward to feel secure.
I'm reticent to expose this well-kept secret: the Ninth Ward is the heart of New Orleans. It is honest, raw, and adopts its residents as family.There are weekly meetings with free dinner and questionnaires soliciting testimonies and crime reports. It is so dedicated to regaining its sense of community that it exposes and addresses those who vie to undermine its efforts. There are artists, exquisite musicians, impromptu parades, beautiful houses and parks, a wine garden, and bars (Markey's, anyone?) populated by locals as opposed to drunken underage students (Just. Say. No. To. Maple. Street.). There are, however, a notable number of shootings and break-ins. When you hear loud noises, it's generally either a gunshot or a shocks-devoid United cab... either way, best to hit the floor.
A few months after moving here, a group of teenage boys jumped me in the middle of the road by my house... they hit me in the side of the head and ripped my shirt nearly completely off, exposing my breasts as they tried to pull up my skirt (they are too young to know that skorts exist, which is what I was wearing. TRIUMPH!). It was incredibly upsetting, and I thought that this situation was somehow indicative of my not being meant to live here... that perhaps I was fooling myself by moving and had falsely identified a home that would never embrace me. That maybe there was something about me that encourages violence. One of my friends who has lived here for quite some time, however, assured me that all it meant was that THEY don't belong here.
The Ninth Ward faces its anxieties, and the community's authenticity and courage assuage me.
Flash to the university campus: apparently, this entire situation is my fault...which is the worst attitude to which a survivor could be subjected. Compare the free reign of my attacker and the gall the university ceremoniously bestowed upon him. I, on the other hand, took a medical withdrawal from school at my most pivotal moment, wasn't sure if I would be allowed to return to the graduate program I had worked so hard for, and did a short stint in a psych ward l I sardonically deemed my "timeshare condo" in which the patients threatened to kill me because of my race and the doctors made fun of me (rape is apparently hilarious to everyone these days. I can be a pretty funny person, but rape isn't one of the jokes I have stashed up my sleeves). I started having bizarre seizures/waking nightmares and couldn't sleep. I went through an endless list of addictions and endangered myself intentionally. I watched my dorm door and begged it to remain closed so that I wouldn't again become a sexual marionette, dancing viciously and unwillingly under someone's hands that would be identified but unpunished. On average, a rapist makes fourteen attacks. My attacker could produce an entire Broadway musical with that number of women and sneer at every single one of them as with me in the time during which the university administration twidled its thumbs and practically gave him a high-five (the university's super exclusive rape handshake second ONLY to Miss Mary Mack! I think there is even some heel-clicking involved. Ask Robert "Aircraft" Carrier for details) and a blank music score to work with. Luckily, I've got Philip Glass on retainer. Take THAT. You've got a handshake and a documented sex offense; I've got an award-winning music score and new home where it would be impossible for you to a. find me or b. get anywhere NEAR me if you did.
With that in mind, smarmy situations aren't isolated to the Ninth Ward. There have been attempted break-ins in my apartment, but I would still rather walk across broken window glass than go for a late-night stroll with an Uptown tuxedo-sporting sketchball. My assault made me cynical and judgmental, but I understand that my university is nothing to be demonized... Office of Student Conduct aside, anyway. There are a number of talented students, faculty, and staff. There are people who DO build communities and work tirelessly to support students. Those people, however, are not enough. Isolated individuals cannot adequately battle an an administration that wishes to preserve its reputation through willful ignorance. What these suit-wearing bureau-pods do not understand is that publicly addressing the university's most harrowing issues would provide a beacon and a model for every school in the country. It could move from its current state of NOPD ridicule to one of the strongest examples of institutional responsibility. This type of movement is nearly unheard of, and marginally shying away from the notion of "university-as-business" could imbue it with inestimable esteem.
Issues concerning my university's sexual assault response have reached their breaking point, and the university would be well-advised to take responsibility before the entire nation understands its treachery. There are thankfully more people finding the courage to use their voices, and it would be prudent for the school to begin the long process of increasing safety on its own terms, which must happen now... before it is forced into action by becoming a public spectacle.
As I wait despairingly for my the newest wave of deplorable school antics and dubious tactics, however, I soldier on in the Ninth Ward, get in a couple push-ups when I hear popping noises, and ultimately feel the beauty of this place both soothe and sustain me.
I am a young woman who moved alone to the Ninth Ward to feel secure.
I'm reticent to expose this well-kept secret: the Ninth Ward is the heart of New Orleans. It is honest, raw, and adopts its residents as family.There are weekly meetings with free dinner and questionnaires soliciting testimonies and crime reports. It is so dedicated to regaining its sense of community that it exposes and addresses those who vie to undermine its efforts. There are artists, exquisite musicians, impromptu parades, beautiful houses and parks, a wine garden, and bars (Markey's, anyone?) populated by locals as opposed to drunken underage students (Just. Say. No. To. Maple. Street.). There are, however, a notable number of shootings and break-ins. When you hear loud noises, it's generally either a gunshot or a shocks-devoid United cab... either way, best to hit the floor.
A few months after moving here, a group of teenage boys jumped me in the middle of the road by my house... they hit me in the side of the head and ripped my shirt nearly completely off, exposing my breasts as they tried to pull up my skirt (they are too young to know that skorts exist, which is what I was wearing. TRIUMPH!). It was incredibly upsetting, and I thought that this situation was somehow indicative of my not being meant to live here... that perhaps I was fooling myself by moving and had falsely identified a home that would never embrace me. That maybe there was something about me that encourages violence. One of my friends who has lived here for quite some time, however, assured me that all it meant was that THEY don't belong here.
The Ninth Ward faces its anxieties, and the community's authenticity and courage assuage me.
Flash to the university campus: apparently, this entire situation is my fault...which is the worst attitude to which a survivor could be subjected. Compare the free reign of my attacker and the gall the university ceremoniously bestowed upon him. I, on the other hand, took a medical withdrawal from school at my most pivotal moment, wasn't sure if I would be allowed to return to the graduate program I had worked so hard for, and did a short stint in a psych ward l I sardonically deemed my "timeshare condo" in which the patients threatened to kill me because of my race and the doctors made fun of me (rape is apparently hilarious to everyone these days. I can be a pretty funny person, but rape isn't one of the jokes I have stashed up my sleeves). I started having bizarre seizures/waking nightmares and couldn't sleep. I went through an endless list of addictions and endangered myself intentionally. I watched my dorm door and begged it to remain closed so that I wouldn't again become a sexual marionette, dancing viciously and unwillingly under someone's hands that would be identified but unpunished. On average, a rapist makes fourteen attacks. My attacker could produce an entire Broadway musical with that number of women and sneer at every single one of them as with me in the time during which the university administration twidled its thumbs and practically gave him a high-five (the university's super exclusive rape handshake second ONLY to Miss Mary Mack! I think there is even some heel-clicking involved. Ask Robert "Aircraft" Carrier for details) and a blank music score to work with. Luckily, I've got Philip Glass on retainer. Take THAT. You've got a handshake and a documented sex offense; I've got an award-winning music score and new home where it would be impossible for you to a. find me or b. get anywhere NEAR me if you did.
With that in mind, smarmy situations aren't isolated to the Ninth Ward. There have been attempted break-ins in my apartment, but I would still rather walk across broken window glass than go for a late-night stroll with an Uptown tuxedo-sporting sketchball. My assault made me cynical and judgmental, but I understand that my university is nothing to be demonized... Office of Student Conduct aside, anyway. There are a number of talented students, faculty, and staff. There are people who DO build communities and work tirelessly to support students. Those people, however, are not enough. Isolated individuals cannot adequately battle an an administration that wishes to preserve its reputation through willful ignorance. What these suit-wearing bureau-pods do not understand is that publicly addressing the university's most harrowing issues would provide a beacon and a model for every school in the country. It could move from its current state of NOPD ridicule to one of the strongest examples of institutional responsibility. This type of movement is nearly unheard of, and marginally shying away from the notion of "university-as-business" could imbue it with inestimable esteem.
Issues concerning my university's sexual assault response have reached their breaking point, and the university would be well-advised to take responsibility before the entire nation understands its treachery. There are thankfully more people finding the courage to use their voices, and it would be prudent for the school to begin the long process of increasing safety on its own terms, which must happen now... before it is forced into action by becoming a public spectacle.
As I wait despairingly for my the newest wave of deplorable school antics and dubious tactics, however, I soldier on in the Ninth Ward, get in a couple push-ups when I hear popping noises, and ultimately feel the beauty of this place both soothe and sustain me.
Whoops! Looks like you have a protest on your hands! (Part 2)
My mother, Ben, and I hit Frenchmen Street and drink the night away. We have quite an excellent time… we listen to wonderful live music at DBA and Spotted Cat (Panorama Jazz Band) and finish off the evening with dinner at Mona’s. My mother lives in a different state, and, though I am still in shock over the hearing, trying to move too quickly, desperately, sharing this part of my life with her makes me feel infinitely better.
Saturday. Crawfest, my school’s annual free crawfish boil and music festival. It’s half ridiculous, half wonderful.
The three of us are sitting in the grass on the quad waiting for Soul Rebels to take the stage. As with most performances, it is already twenty minutes past when they are supposed to start, and there is no sign of them. I look up and see someone who looks just like Tom playing soccer with kids across the quad. He is in-charge of a medium-sized group of little boys and girls.
Laughing.
Kids laughing with him.
Adoring him.
Enamored by him.
Kicking a soccer ball.
I nearly vomit.
They assure me it isn’t him. I look again. They say I’m wrong.
Twenty-two hours after the hearing. Saturday, April 19th.
It is him.
I’m right.
When someone has raped you, you can sense him or her from miles away. Your body reacts to the air around theirs and shudders as it touches you. More unwanted caresses. The entire world becomes theirs for a moment, and even the natural world appears determined to betray each waking moment.
Of course I knew it was him, but I could understand why they wouldn’t.
He sees the three of us, smirks, and sees a dog literally twelve feet to our right. He crouches down to pet the dog with his profile tome, smirks again, and pets the dog for fifteen minutes. Twenty-two hours after being found guilty of raping me and not punished, this is what he does. With a no-communication order at my university, there is no distance requirement, you see.
He is laughing at me.
Fuck the Soul Rebels. I’ve got to leave.
We drop my mother off at the airport and go home to spray-paint some wooden boards I have. The idea is to drink a lot of cheep beer and spray-paint nasty messages to/about the administration. Therapy. Drunk spray-painting has served me well in this neighborhood.
Our messages, however, immediately become political. Many of them are “At ___” statements: “at ___ punishment for rape is free therapy.” “At___, assault is a form of administrations.” “At ___, rape is a degree requirement.” “A conduct board member laughed at expelling a rapist.” “U told me to speak up! I did! Why didn’t U punish him?” “At ___, rape + violence=love and promotion.” “___ is deaf to my voice,” etc.
As we drink more, the signs become increasingly intense. Just a simple collection of wooden boards with cheap paint. We paint blood splatters and glue broken glass shards to them.
They are exquisite, and, by this time, it’s dark outside.
We know with every certainty that someone must see them. We also know that they will create their own dialogue, so we form a plan. My story is already threatening to explode, and I refuse to be silenced.
We text message people we know, telling them that on Monday morning at 930, the protest will begin.
We take pictures of the signs and send them to Ellen on our phones. We are shocked when she responds, “Wow! Those look really good!” We aren’t sure whether she is an advocate or an administrator, don’t feel confident in her ability to decide, and hadn’t expected her support. It makes us more confident.
Sunday morning, we wake up with hangovers and a general “oh shit” type of feeling. We are tentative when we speak. Was this a drunken whim? Did we allow ourselves to get “too carried away”? In this situation, does that type of response or action even EXIST?
We know, however, that there is no turning back. We also know that the university will not take this lightly and that there will probably be significant consequences to face, but it doesn’t matter.
So we publicize it more. We make a facebook group for the event, a myspace ad, contact local media and the school newspaper. We start at around 2:30 PM on Sunday.
Word spreads with unprecedented rapidity. The plan is to gag and bind ourselves while holding the signs. We are prepared to be the only ones doing it, but it quickly becomes apparent that that won’t be the case.
Monday morning, 9:00. I run into the Housing office through the back door. I make copies of our handout until the copy machine is out of paper. I only manage to make just under 350. Fine.
My friend and I go to the quad with our signs. We tie each other’s hand, gag ourselves, move a police barrier to prop up the other signs on, and wait. A few more people arrive, and one young woman comes to distribute the handouts. Another friend of mine brings cupcakes and cookies, though they do no good for the two of us who are bound. Ben and I do manage to smoke through the gags.
The handouts run out quickly, so the young woman goes to make more. She gives them to some of the parents and prospective students on tours, which are obviously the best people. People filter in-and-out with their signs. An English faculty member whom I don’t know comes to hold a sign for me. She posts the handout on her office door.
Tons of people stop. Stare. Become disgusted by the situation. As I sit on the gravel with my sign, I feel better every single second. Though, at this point, people don’t know that it’s ME to whom it happened, but I am still amazed that SO many people feel so connected to my story and care about it so deeply for any multitude of reasons.
The Times-Picayune reporter gets there almost as soon as we begin.
The university police officers that have helped me through this come by to shake my bound hands. We breathe a sigh of relief, because we had worried about being arrested. Not long after that, however, another police officer comes by and informs us that a student has filed a complaint about us being gagged and bound.
My immediate question is how arduously the student has fought what those bindings MEAN. It isn’t cynical or unreasonable to guess “not at all.”
“I’m just investigating a complaint. This is an unregistered protest,” he says with an elevated sense of self-importance. He’s overweight, sweaty, and, because of his misplaced arrogance and how precisely he reminds of me the Associate Dean, very fragile.
“Prove that it’s a protest,” I counter evenly, removing the gag from my mouth.
He stares at me in shocked silence.
“We are sitting in the grass silently, and we are not obstructing anyone. For all you know, we could simply be a group of students working on a project.”
“I’ll run this by the captain, but you might have to move.”
“The funny thing about that is that I’m not going anywhere.”
Ben has QUITE a few gems, himself, and the officer gives up.
He leaves, drives by several more times, but does not bother us again. He does, however, take one of our handouts.
After three hours, the results of the silent demonstration are in: 700 handouts disseminated, an article in the school newspaper, a local nbc interview, interviews with a local newspaper, four listservs, handouts in classrooms, lots of ideas for spin-off activism projects, etc. I’ve been getting facebook messages and emails from many people offering their support, their outrage, and, in some cases, incredibly brave testimonies of their own assaults. Apparently, the protest was even passionately discussed at a recent sexual assault conference.
This is completely blowing my mind.
All of this from something random two people planned in a day and a half.
Then come meetings with the Bureau-Pod administrators. Badly dressed, faux concern. I dislike them more each time I see them. Likewise, each time I see them and they pull another round of nonsense, I become more confident in my voice, more dedicated to my story and to the stories of others, and know with just a bit more certainty that I will take down their image and politically/non-violently/productively force them into change if it’s the last thing I do. Unfortunately for them, it WON’T be the last thing, and I refuse to let them rest until they can honestly tell me they care about on-campus rape.
After Ben is falsely accused and convicted of a non-violent offense by a woman we could easily label anti-feminist and given a year’s suspension (though she won’t even be in school anymore… whereas Tom and I have a couple more years here “together”), I break down entirely.
New Orleans then denies me a restraining order because Tom is not a significant other. I try to explain that that’s why he raped me, but the woman ushers me out, smiles cheerfully as I walk through the exit, and calls out, “Stay safe, Anna!” Bitch.
I meet with the Vice President of Student Affairs and tell her that, if she sees a student with a machete walk by, she should put her plant in a box and pack up her office, because the school invites and rewards violence… the tinier the body pieces, the more likely it is that the student will be rewarded with her job.
She stares at me with the same look as the police officer. Dramatic, yes, but I’m not entirely joking. Her insufficient underlings make me want to scream.
They can detect the scent of the student body’s and staff’s growing outrage, and I can detect the scent of their very warranted fear.
Because of my hearing, our protest, and the adamant support and heightened awareness, everyone can feel that something is about to break apart at this school.
I believe we can officially call this the beginning of an extraordinarily powerful movement. Maybe the next time they convict a rapist and put the survivor through complete hell, they’ll do more than pat the perpetrator on the back.
Saturday. Crawfest, my school’s annual free crawfish boil and music festival. It’s half ridiculous, half wonderful.
The three of us are sitting in the grass on the quad waiting for Soul Rebels to take the stage. As with most performances, it is already twenty minutes past when they are supposed to start, and there is no sign of them. I look up and see someone who looks just like Tom playing soccer with kids across the quad. He is in-charge of a medium-sized group of little boys and girls.
Laughing.
Kids laughing with him.
Adoring him.
Enamored by him.
Kicking a soccer ball.
I nearly vomit.
They assure me it isn’t him. I look again. They say I’m wrong.
Twenty-two hours after the hearing. Saturday, April 19th.
It is him.
I’m right.
When someone has raped you, you can sense him or her from miles away. Your body reacts to the air around theirs and shudders as it touches you. More unwanted caresses. The entire world becomes theirs for a moment, and even the natural world appears determined to betray each waking moment.
Of course I knew it was him, but I could understand why they wouldn’t.
He sees the three of us, smirks, and sees a dog literally twelve feet to our right. He crouches down to pet the dog with his profile tome, smirks again, and pets the dog for fifteen minutes. Twenty-two hours after being found guilty of raping me and not punished, this is what he does. With a no-communication order at my university, there is no distance requirement, you see.
He is laughing at me.
Fuck the Soul Rebels. I’ve got to leave.
We drop my mother off at the airport and go home to spray-paint some wooden boards I have. The idea is to drink a lot of cheep beer and spray-paint nasty messages to/about the administration. Therapy. Drunk spray-painting has served me well in this neighborhood.
Our messages, however, immediately become political. Many of them are “At ___” statements: “at ___ punishment for rape is free therapy.” “At___, assault is a form of administrations.” “At ___, rape is a degree requirement.” “A conduct board member laughed at expelling a rapist.” “U told me to speak up! I did! Why didn’t U punish him?” “At ___, rape + violence=love and promotion.” “___ is deaf to my voice,” etc.
As we drink more, the signs become increasingly intense. Just a simple collection of wooden boards with cheap paint. We paint blood splatters and glue broken glass shards to them.
They are exquisite, and, by this time, it’s dark outside.
We know with every certainty that someone must see them. We also know that they will create their own dialogue, so we form a plan. My story is already threatening to explode, and I refuse to be silenced.
We text message people we know, telling them that on Monday morning at 930, the protest will begin.
We take pictures of the signs and send them to Ellen on our phones. We are shocked when she responds, “Wow! Those look really good!” We aren’t sure whether she is an advocate or an administrator, don’t feel confident in her ability to decide, and hadn’t expected her support. It makes us more confident.
Sunday morning, we wake up with hangovers and a general “oh shit” type of feeling. We are tentative when we speak. Was this a drunken whim? Did we allow ourselves to get “too carried away”? In this situation, does that type of response or action even EXIST?
We know, however, that there is no turning back. We also know that the university will not take this lightly and that there will probably be significant consequences to face, but it doesn’t matter.
So we publicize it more. We make a facebook group for the event, a myspace ad, contact local media and the school newspaper. We start at around 2:30 PM on Sunday.
Word spreads with unprecedented rapidity. The plan is to gag and bind ourselves while holding the signs. We are prepared to be the only ones doing it, but it quickly becomes apparent that that won’t be the case.
Monday morning, 9:00. I run into the Housing office through the back door. I make copies of our handout until the copy machine is out of paper. I only manage to make just under 350. Fine.
My friend and I go to the quad with our signs. We tie each other’s hand, gag ourselves, move a police barrier to prop up the other signs on, and wait. A few more people arrive, and one young woman comes to distribute the handouts. Another friend of mine brings cupcakes and cookies, though they do no good for the two of us who are bound. Ben and I do manage to smoke through the gags.
The handouts run out quickly, so the young woman goes to make more. She gives them to some of the parents and prospective students on tours, which are obviously the best people. People filter in-and-out with their signs. An English faculty member whom I don’t know comes to hold a sign for me. She posts the handout on her office door.
Tons of people stop. Stare. Become disgusted by the situation. As I sit on the gravel with my sign, I feel better every single second. Though, at this point, people don’t know that it’s ME to whom it happened, but I am still amazed that SO many people feel so connected to my story and care about it so deeply for any multitude of reasons.
The Times-Picayune reporter gets there almost as soon as we begin.
The university police officers that have helped me through this come by to shake my bound hands. We breathe a sigh of relief, because we had worried about being arrested. Not long after that, however, another police officer comes by and informs us that a student has filed a complaint about us being gagged and bound.
My immediate question is how arduously the student has fought what those bindings MEAN. It isn’t cynical or unreasonable to guess “not at all.”
“I’m just investigating a complaint. This is an unregistered protest,” he says with an elevated sense of self-importance. He’s overweight, sweaty, and, because of his misplaced arrogance and how precisely he reminds of me the Associate Dean, very fragile.
“Prove that it’s a protest,” I counter evenly, removing the gag from my mouth.
He stares at me in shocked silence.
“We are sitting in the grass silently, and we are not obstructing anyone. For all you know, we could simply be a group of students working on a project.”
“I’ll run this by the captain, but you might have to move.”
“The funny thing about that is that I’m not going anywhere.”
Ben has QUITE a few gems, himself, and the officer gives up.
He leaves, drives by several more times, but does not bother us again. He does, however, take one of our handouts.
After three hours, the results of the silent demonstration are in: 700 handouts disseminated, an article in the school newspaper, a local nbc interview, interviews with a local newspaper, four listservs, handouts in classrooms, lots of ideas for spin-off activism projects, etc. I’ve been getting facebook messages and emails from many people offering their support, their outrage, and, in some cases, incredibly brave testimonies of their own assaults. Apparently, the protest was even passionately discussed at a recent sexual assault conference.
This is completely blowing my mind.
All of this from something random two people planned in a day and a half.
Then come meetings with the Bureau-Pod administrators. Badly dressed, faux concern. I dislike them more each time I see them. Likewise, each time I see them and they pull another round of nonsense, I become more confident in my voice, more dedicated to my story and to the stories of others, and know with just a bit more certainty that I will take down their image and politically/non-violently/productively force them into change if it’s the last thing I do. Unfortunately for them, it WON’T be the last thing, and I refuse to let them rest until they can honestly tell me they care about on-campus rape.
After Ben is falsely accused and convicted of a non-violent offense by a woman we could easily label anti-feminist and given a year’s suspension (though she won’t even be in school anymore… whereas Tom and I have a couple more years here “together”), I break down entirely.
New Orleans then denies me a restraining order because Tom is not a significant other. I try to explain that that’s why he raped me, but the woman ushers me out, smiles cheerfully as I walk through the exit, and calls out, “Stay safe, Anna!” Bitch.
I meet with the Vice President of Student Affairs and tell her that, if she sees a student with a machete walk by, she should put her plant in a box and pack up her office, because the school invites and rewards violence… the tinier the body pieces, the more likely it is that the student will be rewarded with her job.
She stares at me with the same look as the police officer. Dramatic, yes, but I’m not entirely joking. Her insufficient underlings make me want to scream.
They can detect the scent of the student body’s and staff’s growing outrage, and I can detect the scent of their very warranted fear.
Because of my hearing, our protest, and the adamant support and heightened awareness, everyone can feel that something is about to break apart at this school.
I believe we can officially call this the beginning of an extraordinarily powerful movement. Maybe the next time they convict a rapist and put the survivor through complete hell, they’ll do more than pat the perpetrator on the back.
02 May 2008
The Hearing: Nine Months in the Making (Part 1)
We know about the Incident itself. On April 18th, I had my university judicial affairs hearing after nine months of waiting thanks to bureaucratic failure. A lot of staff members said it was the strongest rape case they had ever seen, and lots of eyes were on my hearing. Everyone knew that it was time for a major change at the university. They thought my hearing would be that change. One of the women’s institute staff members came to my hearing and waited the entire time for the result, which everyone was “positive” would change the school forever.
In a word, “no.”
And a new type of transformation begins…
Charge: Sexual misconduct, my university’s rape euphemism.
Verdict: GUILTY Sanctions: FREE COUNSELING Plot Twist: MY RAPE NURSE IS FRIENDS WITH THE RAPIST’S MOTHER
Cast: Charging party (me) + faculty representative, charged party (him) + faculty representative, judging panel (one staff member, one faculty member, one student), panel head/moderator (Associate Dean of Students).
Setting: a closet-size, dimly-lit room with a table about five feet long and three feet wide around which all parties sit. A model of institutional sensitivity to this issue.
Setup: 1. Charging party’s testimony
2. Charging party is questioned by panel members and the charged party
3. Charged party goes through 1 and 2
4. Charging party calls and questions witnesses
5. Charged party calls and questions witnesses
6. Panel decides whether the charged party is guilty or not
7. If found guilty, each party makes sanctions recommendations
8. Panel meets again and decides on the sanctions
9. Presentations of sanctions.
Not easy. Instead of a nice piece of cake, it’s more that nasty, gigantic, puss-teeming cake from Matilda.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 1:00, but, at 1:15, the student panel member and the perpetrator and his witness have still not arrived. Everyone in my party was at LEAST ten minutes early.
Two panel members, the Associate Dean, my representative, my four witnesses (including my rape kit nurse who has performed over 250 exams and only does it for a living), and I are all squashed into the room. If the perpetrator (“Tom” henceforth) doesn’t come by 1:30, he will automatically waive his right to testimony, and the hearing will proceed without him. My faculty representative, Dr. B., and I are barely breathing, praying he doesn’t show up in time. Dr. B. laughs nervously several times, and it throws me for a moment, for this man is the epitome of evenness and balance… of dignity and accomplishment.
Yet even he is sweating and mumbling to himself.
We speak a few sentences in German to one another, and everyone in the room stares at us. It is my only comfort at that moment. The language itself. Not the words, not the quick gasps. Not anyone in that room or the blind hope that it won’t really happen.
The nurse stands up and begins to massage my shoulders. “You’re going to be fine, Anna. It’s going to be fine. He’s doing this deliberately. He planned this.” She truly believes it, and everyone else looks as though they begin to believe it, too. It would be perfect. His father is literally a 1-800 number lawyer whose commercial I saw at about 3 AM one night on local programming.
Dr.B. continues to mutter, and a few more minutes pass.
Ellen, one of my witnesses, goes into the corridor of the office and comes back quickly. 1:22.
“He’s here,” she says as she sits down, clasps her hands, and stares at the floor. She didn’t wear the several things I asked her not to, but she still looks completely unprofessional. Pink jacket, flip-flops, and low-cut blue polka dotted dress. I’m just being hard on her on the sake of doing so, because she, for some reason, is someone on whom I take out a good deal of my most devastating frustration. Most other parties are wearing suits for the "occasion," and her apparel irritates me, because it is juvenile and haphazard. Despite this tedious yet taxing qualm, she has made the most important announcement of the entire hearing: "He's here."
Tom enters with his advisor and his witness, who is an acquaintance of mine, Will. Will is actually how I met Tom to begin with. Will is wearing filthy jeans and is COMPLETELY wasted. Tom takes the only seat left, which is diagonal from me, and begins to stare at me. Will leans up against the wall in a corner, trying to support himself. The stench of alcohol is overpowering.
The Associate Dean hits record on the tape, and everyone introduces himself/herself as I detachedly watch thick chains of sweat roll down the side of his face. Into two of the many fat creases at his neck. I have abhorred this man from the first time I met him, which was only a few hours before this moment, when he looked at me as though I were the most moronic person he had ever met for wanting a partition to be put in the middle of the table. So that I wouldn't have to sit a few feet from my rapist and look into his eyes as he laughed at me. I know that the Associate Dean will present a problem for my hearing, because he arrogantly makes it clear that he is both unequipped cognitively to deal with his position and is narcissistic enough to believe it gives him unbridled power.
All witnesses are asked to leave the room, and my testimony begins.
We are allowed to give a brief introduction, and I say that, before I begin my story, I would like to draw attention to the fact that I am a lesbian and would NEVER willingly sleep with a man. The Associate dean questions why it’s relevant and asks me if it is “officially documented” somewhere. What, like my own personal dossier in the fucking US census? FBI documentation, perhaps? He dismisses this altogether and gruffly tells me to begin speaking, implies that it’s irrelevant… aka a LESBIAN charging a man with rape. If I had ever slept with a man before or had wanted to that night, my body wouldn’t have been torn the way it was, which my nurse will testify to.
I speak very quickly, and my story isn’t long. I have notes and blast through everything. I glance down at my hands, and all of my cuticles are bleeding. A few sparse drops of blood have soaked into the legs of my suit, and Dr. B. grasps my hands and shakes his head (faculty representatives cannot speak… they can only write notes to the party they are representing). I nod at Dr. B., wipe away the few drops of blood left on my fingers, wrap my arm around the back of my chair, and prop my leg up. Begin to twist my hair to hide the way my fingers look. Casual, right?
Wrong again.
Tom grills me, trying to get me to make claims I specifically refuted in my story. He asks probably fifteen questions, and the Associate Dean dismisses some of the immediately.
Tom tells his story. It’s longer than mine by about five minutes. His first contention is that I was wearing a dress and looked like I was “ready for a party.” GASP. I usually do. He claims I escorted him to my room and asked for a massage. When he agreed to massage me, I apparently ripped off my clothes. He claims to have been locked out of Will’s room (which, logistically, he couldn’t have known) and that he simply wanted to sleep. I, however, “wouldn’t let him sleep” and desperately wanted to have sex with him. He notes that, at one point, he tried to shake me. I was “unresponsive,” but he “didn’t know my sexual norms” so thought that it was fine.
He follows by detailing that, upon penetrating me, I didn’t make any noise. He says that he usually gets “some kind of positive or displeased noise. Something either way when he has sex with a woman.”
Yes, he admitted that I was unconscious. “UNRESPONSIVE.”
He then tries to bring the fact that I have a hamster into the trial. No, I couldn’t make that up even if I wanted to. He brought Virginia, my teddy bear hamster daughter, into a rape trial. If we are being technical, she was a WITNESS.
As a rebuttal to my statement that I woke up one of the times because someone else came into the room and saw him naked and illuminated in the middle of my room, he says that I had turned the lights off and that he opened the door himself. That means that he would have had to have opened the door and gotten across the room in one second flat and subsequently that he would have chosen to be standing stark naked in the middle of the hallway light in an open doorway doing nothing. Just standing. YEAH. RIGHT. He says that he didn’t say “Oh, shit, she’s going to wake up” to the other person who apparently wasn’t there, of course.
And then come my four witnesses. My friend Ben testifies first, because he was at the “party” we were having immediately before the assault. He testifies about my orientation, my level of intoxication, and the wretched aftermath/effects it had on me. How I asked him to walk everywhere with me… all the little things. And the much larger ones my pride won’t allow me to admit.
[The worst thing about the entire situation is that I only realized these things myself a few days before the hearing… about how I always slept naked before and now sleep even with my shoes and glasses on and have a hard time showering because it requires me being naked. I only allowed myself to see a few of the most telling results not long before these people pulled what they did]
My Nurse comes in second. As soon as she arrives, Tom says, “We already established that Anna and I had intercourse. Why are you here?”
The Associate Dean, go figure, agrees, and they question the rape nurse’s relevance to a rape case. They tag team her, and she is stunned. She explains the rape kit procedure, her position, and goes through the medical reports I copied and disseminated to the panel members. One of the pages details an injury Tom inflicted to the interior of my body. She says that it was caused by “blunt force trauma” to my body. The Associate Dean cannot wrap his head around the fact that rape kits are sealed and given to the police if the woman requests, and that, no, my nurse does not have my vaginal swabs in her pocket for his satisfaction.
[Meanwhile, no one should forget that I found out that she knows Tom’s mom while we were chatting and waiting for the hearing to begin].
Third comes Deloris who testifies about the effects. Professional housing staff member of over thirty years.
Fourth comes the real heavy hitter: Ellen, Director of Residence Life, highly-respected and celebrated school pseudo-administrator that should have sealed the case for me even more than the rape nurse. And she’s seen everything that’s happened to me firsthand save the naked bathtub incident. She almost fucks me over entirely by forgetting the timeline, which the whole thing was contingent upon at that point. I can see Tom nearly begin to salivate as she threatens to destroy my entire case. Before the hearing began, I was deeply worried something like this would happen. She manages to correct herself and, though, and everything is fine and exactly as I had said it was. Close call. She then says that she is in-charge of handling these cases and has done so quite a few times, and that this is the most severe disruption she has ever seen to anyone’s life before. Not that I am somehow less capable of dealing with situations, but… you know.
Two expert testimonies, someone who was there, and another professional staff member all saying it was undeniable. Undeniably violent, vicious… premeditated. TRUE what I said.
In comes Tom’s drunk staggering witness, reeking of alcohol.
He cannot remember anything. The only thing he can say for sure is that I “became distant from everyone and really upset all the sudden.” IMPACT OF BEING RAPED, VAGINA MOTHERFUCKER! Though the faculty member asks him what I was wearing, he also cannot remember that. “Do you remember what that guy sitting next to you was wearing three weeks ago, man? I mean, I didn’t think it would come to this. I didn’t know I was supposed to remember all of this.”
The faculty member who implied that I was “asking for it” through his questioning sits back in his chair.
Will staggers away.
Closing statements.
We all leave the room for deliberation. I walk back into the main office, and there are about six people waiting for me. My mother also came for the hearing. I go outside with a few of them to have a cigarette, and, after about twenty minutes, the panel calls us back into the room.
They find him guilty of raping me. A huge weight seems to be ripped off of me instantaneously, and I am positive that this hearing is going to change the university’s outlook on rape and how it should be dealt with judicially. An administrator told me Tom would be suspended or expelled, but almost certainly expelled. Everything seems clear and seems near its end. I am able to shake away images of myself sleeping in my shoes and everything else and congratulate myself on realizing it just before it will be rectified and will go away.
We give our sanctions recommendations.
I summarize the effects this has had on my life and very passionately yet professionally argue for expulsion (which I was assured would be exceedingly easy to achieve for this kind of violent offense). The student panel member laughs in my face. Not loudly enough to be caught on the tape, though, so I had to minimalize it for the university newspaper article. Tom says that he should simply be banned from residence halls. “I’m a reservist, and, if I am expelled, this charge will follow me for the rest of my life.” THAT’S THE POINT! “And, if I am expelled, I will end up back in Iraq, so I trust you to make to right decision.”
Even though the military will kick him if they catch wind of this charge. Logically fallacious and blatantly false.
He also falsely claims one of his witnesses was intimidated away from the trial. I don’t even know about whom he is speaking, but, as he said “she,” I know it has to be one of my two good friends who was there that evening.
The panel kicks us back out so that they can discuss. Everyone waiting for me laughs at the nonsense Tom pulled. “He REALLY suggested that,” they all laugh.
But the panel bought it.
We are called back in, and they announce how they think Tom should be punished for rape:
Our no-communication order (put into effect in July) must remain in effect.
His ban from residence halls (put into effect in July) remains
He has to get free on-campus counseling. Not related to sex offense.
Tom smiles, holds the door for me and exaggeratedly ushers me out the door on our way out. A beacon of polite company.
I cry. Ellen tries to comfort me. I scream at her in the middle of the Office of Student Conduct, saying that she is "full of bullshit" and that I hope she "doesn't believe it and doesn't expect me to, either." I storm out. Cry some more. Everyone follows. Dr. B. wraps his arms around me in an uncharacteristic display of affection.
[Dr. B. walks back to the German Department office and tells the secretary that someone could have knocked him over with a pencil.]
My mother takes my friend and me out drinking all night.
And I know that this isn’t over.
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