Technical Difficulties

I am tired of not talking about this, so I am going to talk about this.  It will not be an easy post.  Abuse survivors, this may be triggering.

I hate the lead-up to Saint Valentine's Day.  Every year, when the candy-filled, heart-shaped boxes come out, there is invariably some moment at which some part of me goes completely off the rails.  I begin to vacillate between alternate states of crazy, between totally emotional and totally cold.  Simple as it is, rational me goes on strike and all my broken glory conquers all.

I can't remember his name.  I wish I did, it would make the telling easier if I did.  He was from Sarajevo.  I don't recall if he was an asylee or refugee or just a regular immigrant.  This is not a detail lost to the ravages of time, it is one I never knew.  All I knew was he was smart, and he seemed nice, and told me I was pretty and that he wanted to be my valentine.  

He lived in Manhattan, just south of Grand Central Station, and at the time I lived at Columbia.  We made plans to meet at his house.  The original version was we'd meet up at his place, we'd go to dinner, and then whatever happened, happened.  I showed up at his apartment.  It was beautiful.  He had phenomenal views of midtown, ample space, the sorts of things that identify a Manhattanite as a member of the upper echelons of society.  A few glasses of wine turned into the bottle, and plans of going out turned to plans of staying in.  

I remember at one point in the evening thinking to myself perhaps I should not go all the way.  Perhaps it was late into the evening. Maybe I had led him on.  I was drunk, I was half naked, I was already there in his apartment, of course he would think as any man would that I wanted for all of this to happen.  So when I told him no, he wrapped one arm around my neck, and one around my waist, and paid me no mind.  

I didn't fight back.  I buried my face in the pillow, scarcely able to breathe, my throat clenched in the crook of his arm as it were.  He whispered in my ear, told me I was so good, to just let him finish, that he wanted this so bad.  I have no concept of how long it took.  When he was finished and got up off me, he told me it was my fault, that I had come to quickly (which was untrue, I had not come at all), and next time I should try and hold off.  I said nothing to him.  I gathered my bearings, dressed myself, and told him I had to go.  He offered to call me a cab - and I just left.  He made no effort to stop me. 

It is four and a half miles from Grand Central Station to Columbia.  My heart, mind and soul had left my body.  I was nothing more than two feet, walking up Broadway.  I wanted to be dead, and in a sense, I was.  I got to my dorm room, took the elevator up, and by some freak occurrence my friend Robby was up and online.  

I didn't have it in me to tell him what had happened.  I could not summon up the appropriate words.  I asked instead if I was a bad person, if I were a slut or a whore.  I asked if I had done bad things.  Was I a tease?  Did I lead men on?  I'm not sure how he saw through my bullshit but he did, and he zeroed in on what I wasn't saying.  Somehow, and I still don't remember how, I got in contact with my friend Samrong, who lived in NYC, and walked the mile further uptown and slept like the dead on his hardwood floor. 

I never went to the authorities.  I probably could have had him deported, could have exacted if not justice at least vengeance, but I never did.  I stayed silent.  I was - am - so horridly ashamed that as a man I was too weak to have prevented this from happening.  Of course, as a gay man, as a bottom, it was all too easy to envision being painted the vengeful bitch.  I couldn't fathom being questioned on this.  We'd had the conversation of what he and I were into sexually.  If that's what I liked and told him it's what I liked how should he know the difference?  To him, I was a slutty gay boy looking for some dick, and that's what he gave me.  

This is the part that for me, thirteen years late, still breaks down.  It's not about the sex - it's about control and violation.  Every time I have not been able to talk about it, it has felt the same.  Every time I have been dismissed as unable to understand the issue because I am male, it has felt the same.  The misandry that follows this whither it may roam feels no different than his arm around my neck, choking me, silencing me, controlling me.  It makes the world a very difficult place to live in.

I am still not fighting back.  On this, the fight has gone out of me.  All that remains is an enfeebled voice, learning to once more speak in the hopes of comforting somebody else.