A girl wakes up in bed with an
older man, who is sitting up and cradling her head in his arm. She assumes he
seduced her. She jumps up. “I need a rape kit! What happened to me? What did
you do to me?”
He says nothing happened to her.
“Why am I here?”
“Because you’re not anywhere else.”
“I don’t remember anything.”
“You wouldn’t. I was in the bar at
the casino downstairs last night. I saw someone slip something into your drink.
Soon you got woozy and your escort ‘guided’ you toward the elevator. So I
followed and got in with you. As soon as the door closed I told him that you
were my daughter and that the police were on their way here. If he wanted a
quick fuck and a dump in an alley, he’d better go someplace else. You weren’t
worth it. I suggested he get off at the next floor. He did. Men who drug women
are notorious cowards.
“I took you to my room. By then you
were convulsing. You were crying. You were crying out in pain. I was afraid you
might choke on your own vomit, so I put you in bed and lay down next to you. I
waited until you were at peace.”
“I suppose you’re going to say that
you did something wonderful? That you saved me?”
“No.”
That you did something awesome. You
kept me from being raped?”
“No.”
As it were, she had been raped the
night before. He saved her this night only. He suspected as much.
“Did you rape me today?”
“Do you feel raped?”
“No.”
“Then, no.”
“I can scream rape!”
“I can scream ice cream!”
“So, what are you gonna do? I go to
the bar. Men buy me drinks. Some give me drugs. I wake up in a ditch. So what?
What the fuck is it to you?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“I’m on top of my life.”
“Of course you are.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Of course you do.”
“Why are you fucking doing that?”
“What?”
“Agreeing with me!”
“I’ll stop if you want.”
“What happened?”
“You were drugged. I saved you.”
“If it wasn’t for you...”
“If it wasn’t for me you’d be in an
alley somewhere. Or, if you were lucky, a clinic treating your overdose with a
quick pound of plasma and you’d be on your way, primed for another night.”
“Fuck you. Who are you? Some kind
of preacher? I suppose you’re going to tell me I’m a sinner or something.”
“No. I’m the guy who scraped you up
from a drug fueled molestation and brought you here. You’re free to go back to
the rape blackout any time you want to, of course. Don’t forget your kit.”
“Really. Who are you?”
“Nobody. Somebody. Just a man.”
“You’re not just a man. I know men.
And they are nothing like you.”
“Then I should be pleased to be not
one of them.”
“Who asked you to get involved?”
“Nobody.”
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then fuck off.”
“OK.”
She ran to the bathroom. Then she
realized she was still fully clothed. So was her rescuer.
She came back.
“You didn’t do anything to me?”
“Yes, I did.”
“What?”
“I convinced a pathetic cocktail
lounge rapist to leave you alone. Then I guided you to my room and put you to
bed. You were in danger of choking to death on your own vomit so I lay next to
you and watched until you were at peace. Is that a crime?”
“I’m fully clothed.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Why didn’t you undress me?”
“Because you are not my daughter.”
“Where are my cigarettes?”
“You’re out.”
“Can you get me some?”
“I can. I won’t.”
“What did you do to me?”
“Rescued you. You mind?”
“Yes! I’m a big girl. I don’t need
any do-gooder Midwest preacher running my life.”
“So when you wake up in the alley,
barely any cloths, no purse, ID, cigarettes, what do you do then?”
“I’ve got a locker. I keep my
important stuff there.”
“Clever. Efficient. Where do you
keep the key?”
“UP MY CUNT!”
“At least it’s not lonely.”
“That was funny. God, I need a
cigarette.”
“Wrong deity to ask.”
“Will you…! I suppose you locked
the doors somehow. You’re a psycho killer with a limp dick who just gets off on
grabbing girls and fucking with their heads like you can’t with their twats.”
“Door’s unlocked. And, no. You’re
not in a cabin in Montana. You’re not in the basement of some picture perfect
house in suburbia. Noone’s going to call and say, ‘Quick. Get out. He’s in the
house with you!’ I won’t ask you to put on any lotion. You’re in Las Vegas. In
the same hotel as the bar you went catting around in last night.”
“OK. So what? Now I suppose you’re
going to tell me I’ll get pregnant or catch some disease or shit like that?”
“I assume you already know all that.”
“You know what I did last Saturday?
I went around to all the bars starting around 2:00 in the afternoon to see how
many times I could get fucked. What do you think of that?”
“How many?”
“I don’t remember.”
“OK. So instead of a fuck buddy you
have a fuck battalion. Do you want me to judge you? Or be impressed?”
“You haven’t said it.”
“What?”
“The name.”
“Name?”
“The name they always call people
like me. Slut. Whore. Scuzzy pussy. Fucking cunt. Bar virus. Go on. Call me a
skank.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“I don’t know. Guys love to do that
shit. They’re more than happy to sniff around our snatches and scuzz them up
for us, then we’re rotten meat. You’re all hypocrites.”
“I can’t argue with you there.”
“Will you stop agreeing with me!?”
“No.”
“Guys have it great.”
“Do we?”
“Yes, you do. You can fuck all the
women you want to and never be called a man-slut. Never humiliated on the
school ground or talked about around the office It’s always the girls fault.
And shame. It’s like, guys don’t count anyway. Who cares where you stick your
dicks? Male? Female? Animal, mineral, vegetable? Nobody gives a shit. But
women? Woah! Don’t damage the merchandise, missy. Some man might not want you
if your flap is broken.
“The Cove.”
“Hmm?”
“The Cove. When I was a little girl
I lived on a street going down to a cove. There were boys and girls on the
street. We used to come out after dinner and play. Down by the cove. Along the
water. In the woods behind our houses. In the streets with chalk and games of
hide and seek.
“Little boys. Little girls. We were
all friends. The girls giggled and thought the boys were funny. We liked being
around them. It was fun. I’d fall asleep remembering some silly antic of one of
the boys or other. Walking out on a fallen tree branch over a muddy pond. Falling
in. Getting us all dirty and scaring us. Acting all clean and pure and yelling,
‘Gross! Get away from us!’ Trying to scare us and put toads on us. Stupid
tricks. We loved them.
“It all changes when their dicks
ripen.”
“Cunts don’t ripen, too?”
“Cunts ripen. Yes.”
“When the cat’s away, the mice
dance.”
“Hmm?”
“An old proverb. Do you really want
to get back at men? Is that what an unknown number of fucks last Saturday are
all about?”
“What do you mean? Yah, why not. They
fucked me. But I can’t fuck them back. We can never fuck guys back the way they
fuck us. Those are the man-rules in the Maniverse.”
“No. You can’t. You can only choose
to put your crotches in their paths as a lure and watch them jump like frogs on
a log.
“You mentioned the Midwest. But
here we are. Las Vegas. Where are you from, originally?”
“Oh, God dammit. Do you want me to
get all weepy about where I grew up and how much I hated my fucking mother and
shit like that?”
“Shit like that. If you like.”
“Sure. I grew up in Scott City,
Kansas. The belly button on the beer belly of America.
“I thought you grew up by a cove?
Not too many coves in Kansas.”
“We moved a few times. Cove time
was when I was little. Kansas time was later.”
“And was it better?”
“Fuck. Junior high varsity.
Cheerleading. Jesus Christ, chess club champion. I played the flute. Oh, I was
in the photography club, too. Back when it was all chemistry. Well, enlarging
photos, at least. The pictures were digital. Developer. Stop bath. Fixer. All
that old school stuff. Photoshop is overrated. If you don’t know how to do it
manually, you’ll never be good at it digitally. Our advisor, Mr. Darkson…”
“Yes? Mr. Darkson?”
“Never mind. God dammit. God
fucking dammit. Why are you fucking making me do this? What did I do? What did
I do to you?”
“So, what else was memorable in
Scott City, Kansas?”
“The pool. In the center of town.
It was a place to go in the summer. Me and my friends would swim around. Get a
soda. Or a tonic, I think they called it there. Flirt with the boys.”
“And?”
“And play games. Geesh, you know?
Spin the bottle? Feel up the girl? Accidentally brush against her pubes. Pull
back and act all shocked while giggling? Teen age sex, alright?”
“Alright.”
“Not like you never did that shit.”
“Never said I didn’t.”
“It was fun. It was… enticing. It
was, uh…, I liked it, OK?”
“OK. Forbidden fruit. You still
liked the antics of the boys. You still liked to act scared by a toad and squeamish
by the mud. No harm in that. So what brought you from teenage sex play to
seeing how many times you can get fucked on a Saturday?”
“God. I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Door’s over there.”
“And what do you expect from me?”
“Not to slam it on your way out.”
“And what do you want to take from
me?”
“Nothing.”
“Honestly? Everybody wants something
or is selling something or is stealing something. What the fuck are you?”
“A friend.”
“Ha. Well, friend. Just mind your
own friendly fucking business, will you?
“I wouldn’t be much of a friend if
I did that, now would I?”
“Fuck. I do it to forget.”
“Forget? Forget what? What do you
do?”
“Drink. Get drugged. Pass out. Wake
up in a ditch with a sore pussy. I guess the fucking is payment for the free oblivion.”
“And what do you want to forget?”
“Everything…
“Julie.”
“What?”
“My name. Julie.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Julie.”
“I thought it was important.”
“Thought what important?”
“To tell you my name. I don’t tell
anybody my name when I’m…”
“Yes.”
“I say I’m Sunshine or Baby or
Esmerelda. You know, A stripper name. I hide behind it.”
“A name is who we are. Or who we
aren’t. Julie. It’s a nice name. Thank you for trusting me with it. You should
use it more often.”
“What time is it?”
“2:00 O’clock.”
“AM or PM?”
“PM.”
“I should be going.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere! Away from here. Away
from you, Bud. To where I belong.”
“Where do you belong?”
“Not here.”
“’Not here’ is not a place.”
“Fuck.”
“So. When you leave here, since you
are not a prisoner. You just crashed here unexpectedly and can now leave any
time you want. What next? Where are you going?”
“God. Jesus. For someone who hardly
ever speaks, you’re an asshole, you know that? Don’t answer! I don’t know. Get
a shower? Buy some cigs? A nap? And then do it all again?”
“Why?”
“Stop that! ‘Why’ is my business.
Not yours. Stop getting all Sigmund Freudish on me.”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“Yes. It’s bad enough my moth-“
“Your mother?”
“I’m tired of being judged. I’m
tired of being told that I am a bad girl. That it’s all my fault.
“When I was 9 I found my clitoris.
It felt good. It was beautiful. I told my mother one night in the bath. ‘Look
Mommy. Look what I have? Look how soft and sweet it is? And what I can do with
it? Isn’t this great, Mommy?’ Nothing was ever the same between us after that.
I was now a wanton woman. She told all her fundamentalist Midwestern Christian
friends so they could pray the sex devil out of me. Her little Jezebel. My
father blamed me for her death years later. Like I have magic powers over
cancer!
“And you! You are everything I hate
about men. And my father who made no effort to conceal that he wanted a son and
my self-righteous mother and the whole fucking world that treats women like
shit while fucking us blind and throwing us over the edge and then expecting us
to wake up the next morning and make you coffee and birth your children and
stay at home while you’re doing who knows what until you come home and want us
to suck your cocks. There was nothing there for me.”
“You liked photography club and Mr.
Darkson.”
“Yah. Liked. Something else a
fucking man took away from me.”
“What happened?”
“He raped me. In the darkroom. How
appropriate. I was wearing a cutesy teenage thing. A little sun dress. Easy
off. Easy on. Well, easily dropped on the floor. I had to put it back on
myself. And everybody knew. Everybody can tell a sex rumpled sun dress from a
thousand paces. And he’d probably done it before but nobody in the school ever
did anything about it. Like the Drivers’ Ed teacher who used to put his hand on
the boys’ knees while they were out driving. Everyone knew what a perv he was.
No-one lifted a fucking finger about it. His father was a selectman or some
fucking thing. Fucking bastards. The whole damn, picture perfect, Bible Belt, Midwestern
Smalltown.
“’You’re my favorite student,’
alright. ‘Real talent. Going places.’ Sure. The real talent was between my legs and
that’s the only place he was going.”
“And what happened next?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t tell my
mother, little clit girl? She already thought I was the village whore because
my body worked. Do you think she’d blame a rapist for a little Lolita?
“Christ. She’d drag me before the
female elders of the village shouting, ‘Cut it off!’ It’s not men that fuck
women. Men are too stupid. Women fuck other women. Men think with their cocks.
Their stomachs. Their mouths. Never their brains. Men think they’re in charge
and calling the shots, but it’s women who make other women miserable, the herd
of viscious cats! Women make a science out of it. We fucking fuck ourselves,
dammit!”
“Mice dream dreams dreamt by no
cat.”
“Another proverb?”
“Hmm. Here. Put this on.” He gives
her a small locket on a chain.
“What’s that? A cheesy locket? A
stupid necklace?”
“It’s a token. Like all tokens,
it’s worth much less than what it is worth. What it represents.”
“And what does it represent?”
“Hope.”
It is midafternoon. Julie stirs
uneasily. She is having weird dreams about coves and darkrooms and mysterious
men she can’t understand. And mice. She wakes in a hotel bed curled up in a fetal
position. She jumps up, confused. This was unusual. Usually she wakes up when
the traffic out on the street is too loud. She’s fully dressed, too. Not just a
dress pulled on over a naked, used body.
She drags her fingers through her
hair and blinks some of the sleep out of her eyes. She comes across the
necklace and the locket around her neck and stares at it. Someone must have
given it to her last night. Someone flirting with her and giving her a tin
trinket which she would have giggled helplessly over and mock given him a
stolen kiss like a bashful teenager on the wreck room floor of a friend with
the boys and the bottle. Pretending it’s love. Knowing it’s a game. A game she
can’t win.
She opens to locket and reads one
word.
Hope.
And then she starts to cry.
She picks up her cell phone and
presses the contact she always had but never intended to use.
“Daddy?”
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