CONTENT
WARNING: #Triggers #Graphic Language #Raw #Graphic
Sexual Language #Trigger Warning #Rape
“…we must also remember
that we need to leave the darkness in order to find one another. In the fight against injustice, it helps to
hear truths about women’s personal lives.” (Mona Eltahawy,
Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution)
Introduction:
In
this fabulous book (go buy it and read it!!), Mona Eltahawy shares about how a
group of women in Cairo had set up an open mic for sharing their stories in a
garden of an arts gallery.
One
young woman took the mic and said to the women present, “I can’t tell you this
while facing you so I’m going to turn around and then share my story.” (p. 177)
Then the young woman, with her back to the others, shared how she was sexually
abused by a cleric at age 11.
When
I wrote the initial draft of She Put Some
Makeup On It, the story that follows this introduction, it had been about
35 years since I was brutalized and raped by a Houston businessman.
I
didn’t have the courage then to tell the world what happened to me, to come
out, to put my name on my own story. But much has happened, and I’m now ready
to give my story a home in my
personal garden – Shaalom2Salaam.
One
of the factors that made it so difficult for me to stand up and count myself
among the survivors of rape was that I internalized guilt for what happened to
me.
Why? Because my rapist didn’t come through my
bedroom window in the middle of the night.
My rapist didn’t pop out of the bushes, or grab me while I was walking
alone to my vehicle in a parking garage.
My
rapist invited me to my nightmare, and I went willingly.
At
first.
But,
I always knew somewhere deep inside that it isn’t okay for a man to beat up a
woman and then fuck her - no matter what the circumstances of his relationship
with her.
It
wasn’t until decades after my own rape, when I heard feminists discuss terms
like “date rape,” “stranger rape,” and “marital rape,” did I begin to
understand what happened to me.
And
it took a few more years and some counseling for me to process that I didn’t
deserve what happened to me.
Even
though I’ve disclosed to a few other women from time to time that I was raped
in the past, I never shared the details with anyone. I stuffed them.
It’s
time to tell exactly what happened to me, to share the details. I also deserve to tell.
During
the writing of She Put Some Makeup On It,
“my” voice surfaced in the third-person.
I decided to leave the manuscript just like that. When I first put it all down to computer
screen, it was easier to write as if it all had happened to someone else.
But
it happened to me.
So
I hope you don’t mind if I share my story with my back to you by not changing my draft to a first-person account.
She Put
Some Makeup On It
is my Truth. My attempt to leave the
darkness. My Hope that Others find
me. That I find Others.
She
Put Some Makeup On It
By
S. E. Jihad Levine, Copyright 2015 All Rights Reserved
For
the most part she forgot about it, refused to think about it, stuffed it, was
in “denial” as therapists would claim, mentally put it away somewhere, but
every so often it would surface, demand to be noticed, tug at her conscious
mind, like now for instance, when night after night, she watches woman after
woman appear on her television screen describing how Bill Cosby “allegedly” drugged
and raped them, how many of them suffered in silence for decades, and how, when
many did break the silence, they were judged and doubted, or outright accused
of telling lies.
She
remembered that time in Houston, Texas, waaaay back in the day, more than three
decades or so actually, when she was a dancer in a gentleman’s club, and this
handsome man used to come in every night, accompanied by this equally beautiful
woman.
The
couple would watch her dance and tip her nicely. Made her wonder … didn’t see many couples in
clubs like this, usually only saw men - young ones, old ones, in-between ones,
businessmen, college students, men on shore leave, tech workers, oil rig
workers, undercover cops, guys looking for a trick, guys just fantasizing, all
kinds of men, but rarely young couples.
Maybe they were looking for a ménage-trois partner?
One
evening the man came into the club without the lady. He arrived early, bought the dancer drinks
all night, and graced her with lots of big tips.
At
the end of the evening, he asked to take her home. Where
was the woman he was usually with? she momentarily wondered, and who was she in his life anyhow. Did they break up, and now he was interested
in her?
No
matter. She decided not to ask. She was definitely interested in him.
When
they got to his place, she was surprised to see there were about 10 guys
playing cards around a large round table in a smoky dining room in the middle
of a well-furnished townhouse. He took
her hand and swiftly led her upstairs to one of the bedrooms.
They
relaxed fully clothed on a king-sized bed, and he, lying on his back, and her
propped up on an elbow, exchanged stories of how they had come to arrive in
Houston, sharing their dreams for the future.
He described his start-up business and claimed that this would be the
year he would finally make a “go” with his idea. While they were talking, she slipped off her
silver spiked heels, and they drank Jack Daniels “Black” whiskey and smoked
joints.
Feeling
drunk and high, in a haze of sweet marijuana smoke, they began to softly kiss
and slowly undress each other. She,
feeling off guard from all the intimate sharing, began to naively think that
maybe this could go somewhere, that
maybe he actually liked her.
When
they started to make love though all her fantasies about him were shattered.
Once
her panties were off and he became excited, he grabbed her arms so hard that
they hurt. He rammed himself into her,
and fucked her so hard that she thought her skinny hips would fracture. Squeezed and twisted her tiny tits until she
thought they would snap off. The pain
was incredible. Bit her lips and face
until blood trickled down the sides of her mouth. Blood!
She was bleeding!
“No,
no! Wait, stop!” she cried out. But he wouldn’t.
Instead
he attempted to go down on her. More
biting, pinching, cracked fingernails …
In
the middle of this nightmare, one of the card players barged into the bedroom,
went to the small closet, and removed a pillow and blanket.
She
struggled to cover herself up, but her “lover,” who didn’t seem to notice they
had company, kept trying to force her legs back open.
Before
leaving the room, the card player paused and glanced at the pitiful sight on
the bed. His eyes and hers locked for a
second, and she wasn’t sure if he was thinking to join in or to help her, but
all he did was throw his head back, let out a weird laugh, and leave the room.
Oh my God! Was this HIS house? His room?
What had she gotten herself into?
After
the business man finished and rolled off her, he passed out. While he was snoring loud enough to bring the
walls down, she got dressed, and plotted a way to escape. But she was still a little drunk and
disoriented, didn’t know what part of town he’d brought her to, and realized
that she’d left her stuff, including her purse and money back at the club. And this happened in the days before the
advent of cell phones or anything like that.
Then
there was the matter of the card players downstairs.
He
came to and wanted to fuck again. When
she said “no,” that she had to leave and get back to the club, he jumped on
her, ripped her dress, and began to “beat her like a man” as the saying goes. He punched her in the face so hard that she
thought she was going to pass out. Her
head was spinning, and her body went numb.
At
that moment her mind kicked into survival mode.
She thought about the card players downstairs. She could hear them making noises. If she started to scream would one or more of
them come upstairs to help her? Or to
join in?
She
went limp, surrendered to rape … to stay alive.
Miraculously,
he offered to drive her “home” when he was done.
That
morning, she went to the free clinic for medical treatment. She explained to the staff that she wanted
help in reporting the rape to the authorities.
After
tending to her injuries, the doctor sat her down for a “talk.” He advised against reporting the businessman
to the authorities. Why, after
everything she had been through, did she also want to put herself through that,
he wanted to know? After all, he is a
respected member of society, and she is a dancer in a gentleman’ club.
“No
offense, dear, but how would you be able to prove anything?” the doctor
offered. “Surely the card players would
be witnesses for his side.”
Yes,
she should forget about it. Forget about
it, and learn a lesson from it. Don’t
pick up strangers and go home with them in the future. She couldn’t believe what he was
suggesting: that she merely had a bad
experience with rough sex and even if she could get someone to take her case,
it would practically be impossible to get a jury to believe that what happened to
her was rape.
“Doctor!”
she pleaded with him, “Yes, I did go with him and agree to have sex with him
the first time, yes, but the second time?
I
told him no. I said I wanted to leave, and asked him to
take me home. And then he beat me up and
took it anyhow. I’m begging you to help
me.”
She
began to sob.
The
doctor just looked at her with sad eyes.
She was getting nowhere.
What
did she do? What could she do? She was trash. She deserved it. Didn’t she willing go to the apartment with
the guy? And now she was crying foul? Did she have a right to justice?
She
had so many feelings she couldn’t identify them all. She went home, got real high, put some makeup
on her facial injuries, and went to work at the club that night.
The other dancers and the club manager stared at her, but no one asked what
happened. They knew. She wasn’t the first.
She
never saw her rapist again. He and his
lady never returned to the club. She
blocked out his name and his place of employment. She blocked it all out.
To
this day, it’s tucked away somewhere deep inside. Most days it stays there … most days. Maybe some day she’ll tell someone exactly
what happened to her.
Truth
is the most beautiful cosmetic!
