In class this week, my students argue whether we should share
pieces about sexual assault during workshop. I miss
the first part of the conversation because the words S.A. send me
into emotional blackout. I’m sorry, I explain to them.
You couldn’t hear me for a moment? And that’s my point, he says.
Another student comments she doesn’t want to be subjected
to “all that.” After class, I go to my colleague’s office and tell him
about the interaction. He says it is my fault because I teach
intense essays from an anthology I assigned. None of the essays
have been about assault, I explain to him. He says the one
essay he read, which uses the word penis twice, is what he’s talking
about. I realize I don’t know what anyone is talking about,
anymore. Do you think our other colleague experiences these
issues?
he asks, referring to a poet and prose writer whose office is
adjacent his. I don’t know, I respond weakly. I do not want to have
this conversation. It’s all so dramatic, he adds. Does he mean
traumatic? Because we are, after all, discussing trauma and violence.
No, he says. I think all of that is just drama Can I ever tell him
I was raped? Can I use those words, strung together, a good tone, and
will he believe me when I say them. My rape, to him, might be
a little drama. A stage production with dozens of men. One scene, a
sky.
The other, beneath a gazebo, the third and fourth and fifth in a
house,
a house and a house and a house and a house and then some. I try to
run
across the stage, but it looks like singing. I say no but it sounds
like
opera. I sob and people mistake the sound for birdsong mixed
poorly with
flute. Some productions, I wear a bedsheet cape. In others, a
blazer.
Sometimes I’m in my waitressing uniform (all black, pinstriped
apron and
pants). My hands are free on some occasions, pressed in others.
In one instance, metal. In another, fabric. One time, shoelaces. The
Greek
chorus narrates. They all gasp in unison at my suicide attempts.
My
blood, discarded scabs, swabs, and gauze all make it to Broadway. My
body does not.
There are grandmothers in the audience. I hope my mother isn’t
here.
In the end, the actors drag my body out. This was the year
I was a corpse. The male performers are smudges. Lipstick, honey
circles, sticky buns, red coral, slinkies, lobster tails, my father’s
bedroom reconstructed from scratch, a strawberry condom, and a
wicker
basket filled with blades. All the magazines say how strong
a performer I am. All the men from my past write about what a liar I
am.
My colleague lights the libretto on fire and uses the blue flame
to light his cigarette. He is thrown out by one of the bouncers but
doesn’t
mind. Out on the streets of Broadway, my neighborhood, he
walks.
It is cold and his wool coat barely keeps his neck warm. If he loved
me, he
would have worn the scarf I bought him. He would know when
I say
fiction I mean poetry. When I say poetry, I mean memoir. I mean
non-fiction.
Key terms rattle around in his skull. He purchases a water bagel
with
smoked salmon and chives, eating on the corner of West 107th and
Amsterdam.
The ghost of my grandmother flies by in the form of a pigeon,
coos
at him from a nearby tree. She is pissed; he can’t tell. Mistaking her
voice for
a sign from God, he walks back to my apartment, blessed.
