The recent recommended diaries about rape have brought up a huge upwelling of emotion and memory for me. I believe that the diaries and comments are well-meaning, but some display a level of ignorance that is surprising. Ignorance - because I am guessing that they do not know better.
Rape DOES happen to men. Although sexual objectification of women is far more prevalent worldwide and women experience sexual assault at far higher rates - men are also assaulted. Furthermore, although there are a growing number of programs and services available for women survivors - there are few services, often none at all, for men.
Stigma continues to be attached to people who are sexually assaulted. Especially for women in many third-world countries. But there remains a significant stigma for male survivors, as well. In fact, trying to get an accurate picture of the percentages of boys and men who have been sexually assaulted is extremely difficult given the level of nonreporting.
I would like to take this opportunity to share my experience of sexual assault to underscore that this is a crime that crosses all boundaries of sex, sexuality, race, and age. I believe that many women who have been sexually assaulted will be able to identify with what I went through.
To repeat, I agree that women experience sexual assault and live with the fear of sexual assault at a far higher level than do men - but to suggest that there is some categorical difference is inappropriate because it dismisses what male survivors of rape have experienced.
All forms of sexual assault are unacceptable.
All people should be be able to live in safety.
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How Did I Get Trapped?
It was the summer of 1995. I had finished my seminar papers at the University of Wyoming and then got ready for an all-summer bike tour. I drove my Plymouth Valiant out to Lakeview, Oregon and left it behind the Texaco station. The owner said the car would be waiting for me when I got back in three months. I biked south through a corner of California, across Nevada and Utah, to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Then I meandered through Monument Valley, the San Juans, and northern New Mexico. When I got out onto the Great Plains, I was looking forward to a wonderful ride all the way up to Saskatchewan, then over to Puget Sound.
In the tiny town of Cheyenne Wells in eastern Colorado, I stopped at the local high school. It was closed for the summer, but the custodian let me in to practice on the piano. I played three movements of Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt Regards. I never played them better before or since. The custodian asked me if I would come back and do a concert. I smiled and told him that the concert was for him alone.
I headed east into Kansas and spent the night at a little motel in Sharon Springs. While soaking in the bathtub, I read Kathleen Norris’ Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. I don’t know why I did, but I believe that it saved my life. It gave me a center that I would soon need. The next morning I continued east on US 40 to Winona. Then, after lunch, I turned north on an empty county road. Perfection!
As is typical for the High Plains in late spring, the clouds started building up. You could see storm cells dozens of miles away. It really started getting wild. I had a little radio and the local station announced a tornado warning. People were encouraged to seek shelter – so I pedaled as hard as I could for the town on the horizon. Levant was almost entirely empty. Abandoned stores, dilapidated houses. There was only one person to be seen. I asked him for shelter.
The guy I asked was about 35 – three years younger than me. He was tall, muscular, and had long black hair. He said, "Sure!" and led me through a junkyard to an old trailer. I was already thinking, "This is ridiculous – a trailer in a tornado?" But I was already committed. Then he insisted, just a little too forcefully, that I unload my bike and bring everything in – even though I leave my panniers out, rain or shine. I didn’t want to be disagreeable.
When we got inside, I realized that this guy was not all there. There was a half-full bottle of vodka on the table and the place looked like shit. Still, I figured that I would yack with him at the table for a couple of hours and head off. The sky really opened up. Rain came down in sheets and hail pummeled the metal roof. My host offered me a swig of vodka, but I declined and got out my water bottle. He asked me why I didn’t want any and I said that I was in A.A.
He seemed rather pleased. It meant more for him. He began to tell me all his travails. He had been in the Kansas State Penitentiary for ten years and he looked it. Ten years of working out every day and his arms were huge. What kind of sentence would get a 25 year-old kid in the state pen for ten years of actual time? I can’t remember if he told me. But he did tell me that everything in life had conspired against him and that women – women – were evil. I tried to be the sympathetic ear, waited for the rain to end, and planned on buying him a six-pack on my way out of town.
But if kept raining and kept raining. I am a weather buff. I know about Great Plains thunderstorms. They are supposed to come and then go. This one didn’t. I began to see that this guy was working me for information. He was an expert. He knew how to ask questions that would either require me to tell more than I wanted or to lie rather obviously. He watched me closely as I responded. He kept asking me about men. He was playing with a bowie knife on the table – spinning it around. And he opened up a new bottle.
By now I realized that I was in way over my head. It was still raining, my things were all inside the trailer, and it was getting dark. I stood up to open the door to check out the weather and he stood up with me – grabbing my arm. It was clear that he could have snapped my arm in two. He knew it. And he knew that I knew it, too. He also knew that I was the perfect victim. Alone, on a bicycle. Although my sister and brother knew I was in west Kansas, they didn’t know where, exactly. He knew it. And he knew that I knew it, too.
I might have been able to have made a break for it then. I don’t know. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to let me leave voluntarily. At that moment, I though the odds were against me. I decided that it was safer to try to keep him happy. I listened some more to his life story, his anger, the women who had betrayed him, and the continued suggestions about men.
Then he decided to take a romantic walk in the junkyard in the rain with me. As encouragement, he held my arm in his vise grip and kept the unsheathed knife between us – kinda casual and not-so-casual. I had no doubts that my life was very much in danger. I have second-guessed myself many times since then, but I chose to de-escalate. I felt my chances were better if the knife wasn’t up against my throat.
When we got back to the trailer, we were soaking wet. He said that we had better take off our shoes and then it hit me. The walk was just a way to entrap me further. He may have been a drunk, but he was an expert. He took off his shirt and started back with his bottle. I stayed in my wet clothes – but now without shoes. He was really hitting on me hard. My only hope was that the two bottles of booze would do their job.
I had no idea what time it was, but I said that I was tired. Really, I had bicycled fifty miles. But I was wide, wide awake with fear. I thanked him for being so nice to me and sharing his house. I pulled out my sleeping bag and stretched out on the sofa. I pretended to fall asleep. He turned out the lights. It was pitch dark. He kept drinking and talking to me.
Then he was on top of me. Feeling me up and kissing me. I again pretended to be startled and asked, "What’s going on?" He went ballistic. He called me a prick-tease. Said I was just like all the women. That I deserved what was coming. That he wasn’t responsible. He had the knife up against my throat. So I changed my tune. I said, "Man, you just startled me. I was asleep. Yeah, I want it."
Is that consent?
I was terrified. Here I was in the total dark in a trailer in a junkyard in the pouring rain with a psychotic maniac who was experimenting with gay sex. I knew the odds and they weren’t good. I made a choice and that choice was to give in to his need for power and control – not instantly, but as gradually as I could extend it. I was playing for time, hoping that he would pass out. I was convinced that to resist was suicide.
Then he said, "Let’s go back to my bedroom." He had the knife. He had my arm ready to snap. And I had to decide whether or not to try to escape then and there or go back into the back of the trailer where my chances were even worse. Plus, I had to do all the thinking while appearing to be horny for this bastard. Maybe I could have gotten out then. It was pitch black. It was still pouring. I had no idea where I was. And I couldn’t think it through. Because I had to stay so completely focused on the present moment, I could not formulate a plan. So I went back with him towards the bedroom laughing – pretending my arm wasn’t ready to break.
What followed was four hours of absolute terror. I didn’t know from one moment to the next whether or not I’d be dead. The bedroom wasn’t quite as dark as the living room. There was a tiny sliver of light from a streetlight coming thru a gap in the curtains. I heard him put the knife on the bedside table on the opposite side of the bed. He started calling me a whore and a bitch. Bad signs. My mind was in a state of white energy. I couldn’t stray from the present for one second. He wanted to know if I thought he was hot. I told him he was while I was rubbing my hands through his greasy hair and over his chest. After all the booze he had drunk, he couldn’t get it up – another reason to kill me.
I prayed that I could stay aroused from a combination of disgust and adrenaline. There were two sorts of adrenaline at work – that of the predator and that of the prey. I hoped that I could keep him satisfied until I had a moment to think of a plan – any plan. I hoped that he would pass out. When, God almighty, would this mother-fucker pass out? Back when I was drinking and drugging, I was sleeping around all the time. Once I got sober, I decided that I would go the route of sexual sobriety, as well. And here I was, after five years, having sex with someone who wanted to kill me. And pretending to enjoy it. I was so pissed off at God.
All during this time the country radio station was playing. I remember two songs back to back. One guy sang about his girl being unfaithful and how he was through with her forever. Then a woman sang about her husband being unfaithful and how it was her duty to take him back. I never liked country music very much before then, but now I detest it.
I had to decide whether or not to make a break for it. While I was humping this shithead and telling him what a stud he was, I had to decide. If I would have made a break – it would have been an all or nothing proposition. But I was prepared. I was prepared to run naked through the junkyard in the pouring rain and lightning – run a mile to I-70 – and try to flag down a car or truck – naked, in the middle of the night, in the rain, in the middle of an interstate.
I didn’t have to. My tormentor told me he was going to fuck me in the morning. He told me that he was going to shave me and shave my crotch and fuck me in the shower. That I was going to do what he told me to do. And I agreed with a pleasant mmmm. I let him think that he was in total control and that I was under his sway because it bought me time. And space. Space to think. The alcohol and sex were working. He was drowsy. But I still could have been dead at any minute. Maybe he had gotten all he wanted from me.
But he finally did pass out – came to – and passed out again. I pretended to be asleep and waited. By now it was dawn. The rain had finally slackened to a drizzle. Very, very gradually I slipped out from under him – every single move calculated – with the need to run ever-present. Then I tip-toed backwards to the bathroom. I waited. He was snoring. I found my wet pants and shoes and put them on – always watching.
A total change came over me – rage and quiet determination. If he had awakened at this point, I would have had the advantage. He would have been drunk and hung-over. I could see. I was ready. I silently set up an overturned chair in the narrow hallway and scoped out what I could use against him. If he would have come at me, I would have probably fled – he could have had a gun. But I could have killed him just as easily.
This is the crazy part. He was snoring away. And I decided to get all my gear for the bike rather than leave it behind. Maybe it was the attitude that I would be damned if he was going to get my stuff. Piece by piece, I tip-toed it all out to the doorway – always watching. Then loaded it on the bike in about 30 seconds and was gone. I think all I left was a water bottle, a hankie, and my underwear.
As I got to the city limits of Colby, I flagged down a policeman and told him what had happened. He took me to the police station and then to the hospital. It was humiliating to have to pull off my wet pants with no underwear and be naked once more. I asked if there was any counselor in town and they sent me a born-again minister. He started asking me whether or not I had been ready to meet Jesus. I found myself being assaulted all over again. It was completely about his needs even though I had just been raped. And the police were clearly disgusted. In their eyes I was a fag who had asked for it.
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I spent the middle of the summer with family east and west, but I vowed to complete the bike trip. So, I flew out to Spokane and got in the last three weeks. It was essential to my healing. There were some good and poor days, but the last day along the Sprague River was simply magical. Soft, gentle, quiet – river and hills and pine trees. When I got back to Lakeview my car was tuned up and ready for me. The owner even gave me a Texaco cap. I wore that cap in environmental history seminars to the chagrin of many, but it had an important meaning to me.
When I got back to Laramie, I discovered that my piano professor – the one who had begged me to play Messiaen – could no longer teach non-majors. A month later the history department chairman called a 4:00 Friday meeting to announce that the doctoral program had been disbanded. The counseling centers at the university and in town said that my situation was unique and that they had no means of offering assistance. I got placed with a bunch of men going through divorce.
I was suicidal for two years. I’m not any more. But I have been completely transformed. I am like obsidian – dark, hard, and sharp. Still, that night in Levant, Kansas took something from me forever. Something changed in me – replaced by a flatness. The debates among academics seem sterile. The fervor of historical analysis has little resonance. I am not sure what comes next.