Your frame holds me down as I wake with you on top of me, having been let into my locked house by a concerned grandmother.
Your game is a fucked up, fear based, 1995 ancient history lesson which is now clinically insane.
Your name is Gene Warrick and I met you in September 1994, months before you raped me, expecting this would cure me of any doubts I had in your love for me.
There is no statute of limitations on pain, no easy way to describe how I can forgive but still fear you… yet my words are just as true now no matter how many years it took me to say them.
His name is Gene Warrick and if it bothers you that I’ve told you so and you hold my rapist in such high regard then follow his advice and stop struggling: it will hurt less if you don’t struggle.
Written by Jason Wright November 28, 2017
Inspired by Erica Mapp
This was not written as part of the #metoo movement, but in response to someone who believed that women choosing to speak up years after the fact were wrong to do so and that using their rapist’s names was offensive. I was so angered that I wrote this response and read it directly to her in front of a group of people that heard her express these views. I’ve been working for nearly 2 years on an essay about my experiences with rape; this is but one example.
I can feel tomorrow’s intensity like a sunburn that kisses my skin and stings my denim blue eyes.
Those inexperienced events wash over me, somehow more real than anything happening right now.
Tomorrow, two long held desires may reach fruition and my reactions are impossible to calculate yet just try telling my overstimulated and compulsively analytical mind.
I’m held prisoner here in the present, denied experience, answers or closure.
“Please let me go.”
“I’ve waited long enough.”
“I don’t care if it hurts!”
But nobody answers, because some things need to be endured.
Perhaps the February furnace is cold but I won’t learn how alone I truly am until 36 hours have passed and leaves me to reconcile in the aftermath.
When man disappears and returns as another… Remember his name as if he were your lover… For names hold more meaning than Juliet queried… The essence is dense despite Vampire Theory… And he deserves better than a name that’s not his… Worth more than a score for his compliment kiss… And now that I’ve met him I’ll always remember… At least long enough to survive this December.
I’m sitting right across from you when you tell me how much you want to hurt me, how much it will pleasure you to humiliate me, how much you want to take what is mine, use it for your own gain, and leave me to wander cluelessly, ashamed and defeated.
I’m sitting right across from you but what you don’t see is that I’m not the man you thought I was, and all your schemes were mine before they were yours.
You think he’s sitting right across from you but I’ve taken his place and the words that were meant for him; the words meant to conquer me and raise you up have given me the greatest satisfaction I can imagine.
I am afraid, but it is the fear of an entertainer about to take to the stage where my most impressive performance (which I’ve trained for my entire life) is about to begin at last.
You are a liar and a manipulator. You are hurtful and obscene. But I am something you could not see coming. And though you wish to hurt me I thank you from behind my disguise for you too have an integral role to play.
You, with the help of my co-conspirator, will push me beyond those boundaries I have never dared to traverse, even though the core of who I am has always ached to cross that line.
And in that gleaming treacherous climax where all masks lead to the truth, we will be transformed…
And you, in plotting my downfall, will bring me to my utter salvation.
A childhood nursery fantasy has become an obsession of late.
Everyday I become someone else that I love so that I can have some hope of witnessing what was once deemed impossible.
Love & trust make this elixir attainable but I’m driven completely by sex: a walking hardon.
Always a sexual creature…
Always willing and able to gladly explore any kink that struck my fancy…
Those demons were expunged upon arrival.
All but this impossibly complicated riddle of a contradiction.
This place is beyond anywhere I’ve ever willingly been.
This unexplored erotic nightmare of flesh is: urgent, vital, joyous at finally receiving my attention.
This dream cocaine has made me into a liar, an enthusiastic victim, a nearly celibate slut who yearns for desolation… a chance at reconnection with that hardly humiliated farm boy in those locker room communal showers.
As a child I held such unfulfilled desires but put them to bed (where I have now joined them).
By assuring him that everything is and always will be okay, I have traveled full circle – returning through time to bless his lust, circumvent shame, encourage exploration, and guiding him to disregard their influence; to tame the monsters that would otherwise haunt him until the day that he once again completed this paradox puzzle.
