It's the first night out on the town, second semester of my senior year of college. We are huddled in our favorite dive bar, Coronas in hand, Guns N' Roses blaring in the background - my eye spots a recognizable face at the door, suddenly my face turns red, my body turns cold. It's my rapist at the bar door. I was date raped after a night of drinking my freshman year, in my dorm room, by a guy I knew well. Now, almost four years later here he is, and suddenly it all comes back.
He is on top of me, having sex with me as I fall in and out of consciousness repeating no, commanding no, no! In my nightmares his eyes glow a kryptonite green as he glares above me. He has become a cartoon figure of evil - the demon in my dreams.
The morning after it happened, I showered after rolling my head over onto a broken condom wrapper. My inner thighs ached, my crotch throbbed. I felt dirty and alone. Even with my clothes on, I felt naked.
In hysterics, I went to the Student Health Center and got emergency contraception the day after. I told the staff member what I remembered: that I had been drunk and he had sex with me even though I had said no. She told me if I was going to have these loose moments again that I should go on birth control. I shriveled in my chair.
Weeks later I confronted him after piecing together what date rape meant. When it first happened I didn't think that I had been raped. I wasn't accosted in a dark alley by a stranger in a ski mask. My rape did not look or feel like the after-school clich? Lifetime movie scenarios that I had seen so many times before. I'll be fine, I thought, just one day at a time, I thought, no one needs to know.
But I started losing weight and not sleeping, and I was drinking more than ever. When I came home for the traditional turkey and stuffing, the bags of exhaustion under my eyes told my parents instantly that something was wrong. They sent me to a psychologist who diagnosed my flashbacks and tears as date rape.
The night I came back from break I confronted him. I told him that he had raped me and that he would have to live with that. He admitted to having sex with me while I was passed out, acknowledged that I had said no, but he said despite my repeated protests, he "knew" that I wanted it anyway. My virginity and innocence dissolved with that confession. I hope that the nightmares follow him the way they stalk me almost four years later.
I'd have flashbacks of him violently pouncing on me during my freshman year intro law class. I remember him, pieces of his face; he didn't care that I said no. He didn't care that I was a virgin, and I was waiting for true love and fireworks. My virginity is a blur.
While at bars or playing round three of "Never Have I Ever," the stories of "first times" often come up. I have two stories; my chosen virginity and my stolen virginity. It's important to me that men I sleep with or seriously date know that this happened to me; it helps me feel like they understand where I am coming from sexually. Although I haven't had flashbacks in months, if I were to wake up crying or in a cold sweat they would know why, and that it was OK.
When I wanted to publish my date rape story, many of my friends thought it would be best if I stayed silent. My mother said, "you are not the poster child for date rape." If this guy were to come after me violently, she didn't think I would be able to defend myself against his threats, against his power. And as many rape victims do, at first I became sad and then that sadness morphed into anger.
How dare he get to censor what I say, what I write? How dare he exert his power over me years later? Still, with my mother's full-hearted request I decided to bury the column. But then women on campus who knew I had been raped started contacting me. Without signing myself up as the university's date rape reference, I soon became that girl. As I sat with one girl sipping tea and munching on Twizzlers, her eyes filled up with tears, her face framed in fear. I felt my story needed to be printed.
Once I started talking about my experience, I had women coming up to me confessional-style sharing their stories. Men saying that they could relate to my pain - they had known a girlfriend who had been sexually assaulted, it had happened to their older sister in high school, their mom when she was in college. Suddenly, these statistics had faces, these faces had pain.
I talk very openly about my rape experience now because I want people to know that this happens, and know that it can happen to anyone. Denial is a powerful weapon, and denying the legitimacy of these women's pain and trauma often happens when rape is understood as something only read about in textbooks or seen on the news somewhere far away. I want women and men to see that rape is not a faceless crime, and rape can happen anywhere, even in the safe haven of our flowery AU campus.
Shortly after seeing my rapist again, in the casual sweat and smoke of a college bar, I wanted to yell and scream. I wanted my friends who know to be outraged, to yell and scream and cry with me. But few acknowledged what I saw or felt.
Almost no one knows his identity, and to me it isn't important - making sure people know the prevalence and legal ramifications of date rape is important. If a woman is intoxicated and can't say yes or no, it's rape. If she says no and you think she wants it anyway and you go ahead and penetrate, it's rape. It's vital that men and women know their legal rights so that no one can say that they weren't aware.
After what happened to me, I researched date rape. According to the D.C. Rape Crisis Center, one in three women is raped in her lifetime, and 77 percent of rape victims know their attackers. What happened to me happens to one in three other women.
No one should have that experience, and to improve statistics, men and women need to acknowledge that sexual assault happens and that it is intolerable. Once we start talking about sexual assault and get it out into the open, we find out how many women have suffered and how many men want to help stop this pervasive problem.
Most men support victims, they are lovers and friends, and they are safe. Surviving rape has not made me paranoid of men. I still date, I write a sex column, I don't have trouble trusting or sharing with men. But I am very cautious of what I have been taught are signals of men that may be perpetrators; men that are sexual aggressors, have violent tempers or are overly power-hungry. But staying on the lookout for a few profiles of what date rapists may or may not be won't keep women safe - knowing their rights and speaking out will. And a supportive environment will enable that.
If you know someone that has been raped the best way to help them is to listen, to believe and to leave judgments and blame at the door. I have been lucky that I have two amazing roommates who support me. During a weekend class about women and violence I was watching a movie with a violent rape scene. In the film, the bed was banging hard against the wall as the victim, a young girl, cried quietly. I started feeling my heart race, I couldn't breathe, the tears were coming and I couldn't stop them. I had to leave the room, I had to disappear. I stood outside the Ward Building and called my roommate and she sat on the phone with me while I cried hysterically until I caught my breath.
I wait for the day when I wake up and no longer feel hyper-sensitive to seeing a rape scene in a movie or reading about wartime rape in The Washington Post, but for now those stories are still too close to home. I can never get my virginity back. I can't make the nightmares stop. But I do plan to leave AU as a date rape survivor, and not a date rape victim. I am a much stronger and more self-aware person because I have spent the past few years struggling with my experience, deciding that I wanted to be a survivor - someone who doesn't surrender to the pain, who takes a bad experience and makes the best out of it to help others. If nothing else, by talking, by writing this, at least I can give a face to the statistic. I am the one in three - I am a survivor.
eaglepantsdown@yahoo.com
Jessica Bacharach, a senior in the School of Communication, writes Caught with your pants down for The Eagle every Thursday.
