(part of collection of stories from TheAnorexicsCookbook)
How did the Lamb of God become a chocolate bunny? How did the crucifixion of the Messiah become baskets filled with colored eggs? It was not a sacrificial bunny that died for our sins. And even if it was a bunny, bunnies don't lay eggs. Chickens lay eggs. Was it the Chicken of God that died for our sins? Are the baskets of eggs symbolic of rebirth? Or do they represent the Chickenvs Egg debate? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Is it something in the genetic makeup of the chicken oris it the effects of environment on the egg? If the egg is cracked, damaged or molested as a child, can it ever grow to be a wholesome chicken? On the other hand, can a damaged chicken ever produce a healthy egg? In other words what is the nature of evil? Are all men in inherently evil? Are some women born victims? But most of all, on that Good Friday before Easter was I “asking for it?”
These are the questions that have plagued me every Good Friday since that night in 1969. Every year on that day, I am betrayed, abducted, stripped naked, defiled and nailed. I am crucified by Johnny the Bowler after being drugged at a party on the south side of Detroit. Every Easter Sunday since then, I await my resurrection.
I met Johnny when I was a teenage car hop. The term car hop probably evokesimages from American Graffiti or maybe Arnold's from Happy Days. My car hopping was done in a different era and a different kind of town. I worked at the last white suburban outpost before the Detroit City limits. Instead of middle class ranch houses, my drive-inburger joint was surrounded by factories and industrial shops. Forget the roller skates, I wore tennis shoes. Now fast forward ten years to the end ofthe 1960’s. Do a Fonzie slap on the Jukebox and change the bouncy innocence of"At the Hop" to the dark, sensual, throbbing of hometown hero BobSeger’s "Heavy Music”. Now you’re in my drive-in burger joint.
My little town was built in the 1930’s by immigrants escaping global depression. They flocked to Detroit to work the assembly lines and the steelmills. They were blue collar laborers who did dangerous work in order to support a family. They were Union men because it meant brothers looking out foreach other. They carried lunch buckets and came home dirty and tired. Neighborhoods like Delray, Corktown andSpringwells were settled by one minority after another. As one group succeeded and moved up the ladder a new group would move in and take its place; Hungarians, Irish, Polish,Mexican. Two blocks one way and you were at Marvin Gaye’s infamous inner-city. A slight turn landed you in Greektown. A few blocks north and you were in theland of old money and boys who always went to college no matter how bad their grades. Those boys never worried about Vietnam and they always drove shiny newcars. A left turn and you’d find new housing developments with manicured lawns and family rooms that were purchased with money from GI Bill professionals. Welcome to my drive-in burger joint conveniently located at the crossroads of all these tribes.
Boys came to drive-in burger joint from all directions; home from college, home on leave, home from work, or just wasting time. The time wasters were alwaysimpatiently revving their engines with pent up petroleum lust. I dated a fewboys I met at the drive-in burger joint. And a soldier home on leave from Vietnam. A nice Fraternity Brother College boy took me to the State Fair; a serious University Student took me to a coffee house to hear folk singers, sent me poetry and roses but only gave front door kisses goodnight. It was there too that I met Johnny the bowler, a time waster and a small time criminal.
As for me, I was not quite eighteen, plump and juicy and ready to pluck. I was queen of that parking. I navigated my kingdom carrying trays full of frosty mugs clinking rhythm to the music of the car radios. I delivered cheese burgersand chocolate shakes without ever knowing what shakes the boys were really watching. I was unaware of how each step made my breasts bounce or the way I looked bending over the car to take the tray. My brain was enmeshed with romance not lust. I’d listen to radio playing love songs late into the night and dream of brick houses and adoring husbands. I only heard the sound of the music; thelyrics clouded in testosterone symbolism were a foreign language. A language I learned to speak too late.
Johnny was a scrawny kid with slicked back hair and a black leather jacket. Hethought he looked bad boy cool but he really looked like Fredo from the Godfather. He revved his engine constantly at anything female and tried to dateall the car hops. When he asked me out I told him no without a second thought. Ihad no interest in him. Still, he asked me again and again and again. He plainly would not take no for an answer. Finally he asked me to go to a concert to seethe group “Blood Sweat and Tears”. Maybe he heard me talking about how much Iwanted to see the concert and knew it would be hard for me to refuse. The factthat he did have tickets to this concert made me think I might have misjudged him. I figured him for a Ted Nugent fan. Finally I agreed to go because of the band.
When he came to pick me up for the concert I introduced him to my mother. He immediately started flattering her. In theold days my Mom would have been put off by his fawning but on this day sheseemed starved for praise. He quickly found out my mother belonged to a bowling league and told her of his own expertise as a bowler. They talked bowling for twenty minutes. She was thrilled at all the attention he lavished on her and by the time we left she was a convert. It only made me distrust him more.
At the concert the band was in rare form and the music was fantastic! I was delighted but quickly realized that it was beyond Johnny’s comprehension. My original opinion of Johnny’s music choices was correct. He liked Ted Nugent, Three Stooges and Detroit rock. He complained all during the concert about the music and the price of the tickets. On the ride home he talked of nothing but sex, of having sex with me. Hepressured me for sex the same way he had pressured me to go out with him. Isaid no as many ways as a human being can. He told me I must be frigid or al esbian and being exhausted, I told him I was both. He was tedious and boring and I never wanted to see him again. As he walked me to the door, he told me that he had invested a lot in those concert tickets and I owed him. Then he said that if I didn’t “put out” he would have to go back to his other girlfriends. I told him that was probably best because I was not changing my mind. I didn’t want to see him again.
Not long after the concert I left the drive-in burger joint. It was a time ofendings and beginnings and I was excited about moving forward with my life. Thenext step, since college was not feasible, was a job. It didn’t take long till Igot a job working for a big insurance company in a downtown office. Each day as I rode the bus into work I imagined myself as Mary Tyler Moore. I even bought a hat. I made new friends at work and was planning on moving into an apartmentwith one of the girls. I was filled with hope and big dreams.
In the meantime I liked playing the career girl, older wiser sister. One Saturday I took sister Kitty out to buy her some new shoes. We had a great day shopping and stopped for lunch. On the way home we sang our hearts out to the radio. When I got home, Johnny the Bowler was in my living room. I was shocked to see him. I hadn’t heard from him since the concert and that was months ago. He was laughingand having a good time with my mother. He had invited me to a party that night and my mother had accepted for me. I didn’t want to go but agreed rather thanmake a fuss. After he left I told my mother that I didn’t like him. I tried totell her about how he pressured me but she wasn’t listening. She lectured meabout what poor judgement I had in boys and how she just knew he was a good boy.It did no good to argue. I couldn’t find a way to get out of going and before Iknew it he was standing in my living room. I decided to make the best of it andtry to get out early.
I knew the party was for some of Johnny’s friends but I didn’t know until I walked in the door that I was in the wrong place. The party was held at one of the local halls, VFW maybe. Metal chairs lined cinderblock walls around an empty dancefloor of stained linoleum. Grim faced girls sat cross armed staring acrossthe room at a gang of slick Romeos. I was way out of my element here, a goody two shoes, a Sunday school teacher at a biker banquet. Some of the girl’s faces I’d seen at school. We’d pass in the hallway or maybe shared a class but we neverspoke, not because I was stuck up but because I was shy. They were not shy. They were the fast girlswho had bleached blonde hair and heavy makeup. They sat staring at me as Johnnyand I walked in and then scowled at me when the boys all turned to look at me. Theirstares made me feel like fresh meat in a prison movie. I wanted to leave but it was already too late. It would have been rude to leave and someone in thisgroup would have taken offense. Johnny and I found seats and he began talkingwith his buddies leaving me to fend for myself. Johnny came back and offered mean open can of soda. I took it withoutasking why it was open. I thought I heard someone say something about a Spanishfly and they all laughed. I didn’t know what that meant. I wondered if that wasSpanish Flu. Not long after the soda I started feeling woozy. I heard someone say “She’s going to fall” in a voice that echoed. Someone caught me and threw me over their shoulder firemen carry style. I tried to focus but everything was upside down. Then I remember the smirks as the faces of the girls slid out ofview. That’s about all I remember until I woke up naked in a strange bed.
I woke with Johnny shaking me saying, “Hurry, get dressed! My Dad will be home any minute.” I tried to drag my consciousness awake but I was still drugged. I struggled to my feet. Johnny handed my dress to me but I couldn’t find my bra or my underwear. I start to speak but I was shushed and rushed out into the frosty pre-dawn of Holy Saturday and into Johnny’s car. Behind the wheel and safe from exposure to his father, Johnny the Bowler is nonchalant. He’s just collected the debt I owed him. Two concert tickets seemed to be the price of my virginity. The price of my sanity.
It’s cold cold cold, bare legs on cold vinyl seats. I’m holding myself together with my arms. I try to curl up into fetal ball. I want to curl up embryonic inside myself. Inside my shell but I am broken. I feel my essence leaking down my legs, drying and hardening like a cracked egg leaking through the carton. I was not always broken. I was not always broken. I was not always broken. The words repeated on a loop. Once I was whole and solid and I lived beneath a fragile outer shell. I lived inside a child’s skin, afraid of the dark, believing in fairies and in happy ever after and good men. But now my goodness is leaking out. My dreams are sticking to my thigh. It’s more than cum that leaked out of me on that cold car seat. My shell broke, my heart broke. My heart leaked onto that car seat. Now I am forever broken. Damaged. And I don’t believe in good men.
Break some eggs to make an omelet. I am no omelet, I was not taken from mycarton cradle and brought together with other eggs and long lost relativeingredients and mixed in celebration. Instead I was drugged, abducted and pierced in secret shame and then dumped at my front door before dawn on Holy Saturday. I stumbled into the house and headed directly for the baptism of the bath. I sat for hours soaking in scaling hot waterto wash my sins away but I could not get clean.
I was already five years into the therapy before I told my therapist about the date rape. I had already told him of my mother’s bartender boyfriend and my step-father. I had even told him about that teenage boy that tried to get his hand inside my bathing suit at the beach when I was seven. But I’d never mentioned the date rape because I thought no one would believeme. I was not a child, I was grown. This was no stranger in the bushes, or the knife wielding man breaking through the window. This was someone I knew, someone who gave me a drink and I drank it. They’d say I was willing and now crying rape to cover my shame. They’d say “She must have been asking for it.” I scoured my soul to see if I was. I was not.Or maybe I have “easy prey” pasted on my forehead, like those animals that are tagged and then captured again and again. My therapist told me that I wasn’t “asking for it” but I was wounded and predators can smell that. The fact that I had a history of keeping quiet made me easy prey.
I thought I left all the perversion behind with my stepfather. I thought I was free but Johnny the bowler gave me a can of soda and proved to me that I have no choice. Until that night, I thought that all I needed was to know right from wrong and do the right thing. I believed I could stay safe. I believed I had control of that. That night Johnny changed all that. I told him no again and again but he didn’t listen. He drugged me and raped me and acted like he’d done me a favor. He took away my choice. He took away the word “NO”. For years after that, I didn’t try to say“NO” again. Instead I decided that if I didn’t value what they took from me then I had lost nothing. I stopped valuing myself. I never really said yes – I just stopped saying no. My body does not belong to me. I must have been asking for it. He took away my “no”.
I hadn’t thought of the Drive-In Burger Joint in years. It was a distant memory. I’d left that little town and moved far away. But today, waiting for a cab, I smelled the unmistakable aroma of a Chili Dogand suddenly I was 18 again. In the past I would have pushed the feelings down deep. But now I have a therapist, a wonderful therapist. This is a breakthrough; I call him for guidance and leavea message. And then I wait. And wait.Like a woman in her 10th month of pregnancy fully dilated, Iwait. I am patient (torture teachespatience) to give birth to me.
My mind wanders. It is all the things I don’t know that haunt me. Who carried me from the party? Johnny was too scrawny to lift me. Were the girls who watched as my unconscious body was carried out really smiling at my fate? Was I getting my comeuppance? Was this when I learned to hate women? Who carried meinto the house? Was Johnny alone? Were there others? What happened to my bra and underwear? Were they trophies? Are there photographs? I will never know the answers and it torments me.
Over the years I’ve thought of many ways I could have handled that morning. Of all the possibilities, going quietly and accepting the shame never makes the list. Instead, when he said his father was due home, I’d wait for Daddy and make such a fuss. I’d get hysterical. I’d call thecops. I’d call an ambulance. I’d call a priest. I’d call a neighbor. I’d run naked out intothe street screaming at the top of my lungs “RAPE!!! JOHNNY The bowler who lives in that house raped me!!!” I would not go quietly.
I hold my breath and wait egg crated in an armchair. Handle me with care. My fragileheart is curled up embryonic inside my broken egg. My skin is easily crackedand my insides will leak out in sobs.
Back to the original question, can this broken egg ever grow a healthy chick? Andin the age old question – Which came first the chicken or the egg?
Will the answer always be the Rooster always come first?