Down on the stage, my blouse is on the ground. My skirt lies in a puddle at my feet. He fumbles with his zipper, still trying to hold the scissors at my neck. He tells me to take off my shoes and everything else.
It occurs to me—probably not then, probably later—that rape is a clumsy business. It’s nothing like the movie versions. The clothes come right off in the movies, usually ripped dramatically. Nothing gets stuck. The rapist knows what he’s doing and works with efficiency. He never has trouble maintaining an erection. As for the victim, she either fights back and escapes—after kneeing the rapist in the groin, of course—or she dies in horrifying violence that will be avenged by the hero.
I, on the other hand, almost topple over while I unbuckle my shoes. My underwear binds my ankles. The rapist still can’t get his zipper down.
Up above, I decide he really is not the right person for the role of rapist. Not at all. He’s too young, too skinny, barely taller than me. His mesh tank top is the kind favored by men who spend a lot of time in the gym, but he has no muscles to show off, no pecs rippling under the shiny mesh. No, he isn’t right for the role. Not scary enough. He will be something of a disappointment to the audience.
The rapist finally gets his zipper to work and sheds his pants, revealing gray boxers. I wonder idly from above: Are they gray because he never washes them, or is that their original color? I hope, for the girl’s sake, it’s the latter.
He shoves me against the concrete wall and tries to push his penis into me, standing up. But he’s not tall enough, and his penis isn’t hard enough. He turns me around and tries again from the back. The concrete feels cold on my cheek.
When standing doesn’t work, he pushes me down to my hands and knees, kneels behind me. He forces a finger into my vagina, as if trying to locate it, and then presses his semisoft penis into me and starts thrusting. Fast. Faster. He’s pumping away so fast I think it will end quickly, but after a couple of minutes he gets tired, or bored, turns me over onto my back on the stage floor, and pushes his penis into me again, from the front.
He moves with mechanical disinterest, not speaking, not looking down at me. Above, watching, I wonder if he even feels excited. As he continues to thrust, grunting, a small cross hanging from his neck dangles in my face. Lying under him, I fix my eyes on it as it swings, back and forth, a hypnotist’s charm.
He stops, abruptly, and looks me in the eye.
“Are you married?”
I hesitate.
Is this a test? What answer does he want?
Then I realize he must have seen my wedding ring.
“Yes,” I say. Nothing more.
“Have you ever had a black man before?”
Now what should I say? Does he care?
“No.” A lie. I had two black boyfriends in college.
“I bet you’ve always wanted to,” he says. He leans close, his breath hot with the smell of cigarettes and alcohol. This time, I know what he wants me to answer.
“Yes,” I say.
He stands and pulls me up by my hair, then pushes me to my knees.
“I got to get off,” he says, and presses my face to his groin, still holding my hair.
“Suck on it,” he says.
His penis has gone soft again. I look at it, nestled like a small bird in the coarse black hair. I close my eyes and take it in my mouth. Smell and taste hit me at once. Urine. Sweat. Something musky and rank. I gag and try to cover the gag.
Up above, watching, I wait for the girl on the stage to bite the penis. That’s what they do in movies. They bite it. They hit the guy in the balls. They scream. They scratch. They escape.
The girl onstage does not bite. She sucks. He stays soft.
“Harder,” he says.
She sucks harder. She can’t breathe. She keeps going.
Up above, I observe: This is pathetic. Pathetic rapist. Pathetic blow job. If the girl were better at it, this would be over. She can’t even make a rapist come.
He grabs me by the hair and pulls me away from his penis. “Lie down,” he says. I do, lying on a strip of red carpet embedded with the grime of years of entrances and exits.
Time passes and stops at the same time. I do everything the rapist tells me to do. I suck. I lie down. I turn over. He directs me in an automated, perfunctory Kama Sutra.
I understand that the only way this will end is for him to come, so I try to excite him. I move my hips, I thrust back, I kneel in submission. I make noises of pleasure. Oooohh. Mmmmm. I kiss him back.
“Do you like this?” he asks. Three, four times he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
Nothing I do matters. Even as he moves me around, muttering, “I got to get off,” he seems oddly bored by what he is doing.
He loses his soft erection and turns me over yet again, pulls my bottom up and jabs a finger in.
“Have you ever been fucked in the ass?” he asks.
He doesn’t wait for an answer. This excites him. His penis hard, he sodomizes me, pushing in fast and without warning.
The pain stuns me. It burns. I fight for air. My face, rubbing into the dirty backstage carpet, is wet and raw. I have held back my tears, but now I choke on them.
“Does your husband do this?” he asks.
I close my eyes and try to breathe.
“Does it feel good?”
He coos the words into my ear. He’s hurting me; he has to know he’s hurting me. Dirt and carpet fibers catch in my throat. I hold my breath and try to give in to the pain, to make it go away.
“Does it feel good?” he asks again.
“Yes.”
“Does your husband do this to you?”
Then it hits me.
This is a prison rape.
Of course. He’s been in prison, and now he’s doing to me what someone did to him. He’s claiming me as his property.
Then: A noise from downstairs. A bang, like a door closing.
Bang: Someone is here. Bang: I will be rescued. Bang: No. He’ll panic and stab me.
He stops, puts his hand over my mouth, and grabs the weapon, pulling out but still hovering over me.
“Be quiet, now. Be quiet.” I nod and he takes his hand away. We freeze in place.
Silence.
Silence.
Nothing.
No one is coming. I won’t be rescued. He will kill me.
He pushes me to the floor again, and keeps going, posing me like a doll: on my back, on my hands and knees, on my stomach. Then he put his penis in my mouth again, hovering above my face as I lie there. I gag, bile rising in a bitter gush into my throat. I can’t breathe. The penis falls away from my mouth.
He slaps my face. “Bitch.”
Then he caresses the spot where he slapped. Gentle.
“You’re my bitch,” he says. “You do what I tell you.”
He moves down my body and burrows his face between my legs. He licks.
Above, I observe: This is weird. Rapists don’t do this. Do they?
He licks more.
Up above, I decide he really doesn’t