Letters To My Rapist's Mother

Backstory

 "So let me go

I don't wanna be your hero

I don't wanna be a big man

Just wanna fight like everyone else"

Hero, Family of the Year 2009

      We were children. He was about 15 and I was about 12. Working to make a five dollar milkshake for the freedom of free fair time seemed like a joke. It was 90 degrees and the ice-cream melted off our scoops in the little shack where we were housed for 6 hours. I remember the way he held my sticky hand and made my friends jealous. He was perhaps my first love, but he was certainly my obsession for several years. 

Fast Forward

    I saw Jared at a bowling party. My heart fluttered. I had hit the ripe old age of 15, and he was now 18. His girlfriend had the voice of a aggravated chickadee. I guess it started about a week before they  parted for the last time. We had started talking in the same way we did 3 years prior. Mere days had gone by before we hung out once again. I had known him for years, so I pretended that I trusted him. Something in my mind told me not to. 

Something in my mind said 

"you're gonna be screwed hun, and no one will know." 

     I had always struggled with infidelity, but I was dating a guy I believed was the one at the time so I wasn't really looking to do anything other than be friends. Or of course, relive the days of my innocence. This was indeed the case the first time we decided to ditch our workplaces and hang out. I knew my mother would never approve, and so I lied and told her I was staying at work until 6, cleaning for some extra money. We drove so far away that I was barely home before then. A tank full of gas, I remember the way he nodded his head to the music that was playing from a phone held to the dash by rubber bands and sticky tac. It was decently frigid in February in upstate New York and so we kept the car running. He clicked it into park in an abandoned driveway, our spot. which I would come to forget the location of exactly. 

This encounter had a few moments of lip locking. But otherwise was innocent. It confirmed the trust I shouldn't have had.

     Then the day of March 3rd came. It came with a storm. It rolled over the hills of the town of Chatham and enveloped the people in a furious cloud of ice. The One and I were fighting a lot, and at this point my struggles had caught up to me. I wanted to get away. At my prime, age 15, I couldn't drive, and my only friend that could, was Jared. I used the same excuse, he showed up dangerously late, and we were off. I was appalled when he suggested we go to a playground, and later when I told the authorities my story, I refused to disclose the location. He parked in the parking lot, which was empty with the exception of a rusty plow truck. There were no nearby houses or cars. There was just a big fence.

      For an hour we were just talking and I was venting and trying to ignore how weird the situation was. Then, before I knew it he was kissing me. I remember thinking "I can live my life without Lance, I'm doing great! I can be a free girl." At this moment he pushed his seat back, and pulled me on top of him. I knew that this was not safe, and that I was unable to turn back. Somehow in the time it took me to get a horrible gut feeling and detach from the situation, he had moved me beneath him in the seat. At 6'3 and 250lbs he was a force to be reckoned with and I began to squirm because I could feel myself being overpowered. On that particular day, I had dressed up to look both sexy, and like a lady, for him. I was wearing a skirt, and in these last fleeting moments of sanity, I remember that he pushed it up. And pulled his shorts down. One hand trapped at my side, one hand pushing every part of his warm skin away from my own. I said no once, and he looked me in the eyes and laughed. I saw the devil in those bluish golden eyes. I kept pushing him away, or at least trying to, but I wasnt forceful enough. I was scared. I didnt know where I was exactly and if I made him angry, how would I get home? He held my hands and we kept kissing. I said no. I said stop. He didnt....

One hand on the steering wheel the other on my thigh we sped home. I could feel my body rejecting the experience. Tensing up, hurting, wet. 

"How do you know?" I asked him, as he focussed on the slush coated roadway. "It would've felt really good, I always do this, you'll be fine." 

Great. 

The car skidded at 5:55 and I watched from a distant place as we drifted off the road slightly. 

"Fuck!"

We arrived at our destination, Main St. in Chatham. 

"Okay, get out before she comes, kid."

"Thank you for tonight"

"yup."

And the car sped off. Leaving me in a skirt and a daze in the below freezing temperature. I walked to the parking lot and talked to my mother like nothing ever happened.