Posted by Rache on July 07, 2001 at 23:09:33:
(m/f,non-cons)
Interview with a rapist
Fiction by Rache
I wasn't sure I wanted to be here at all, at the party. A friend got an invitation from a friend of a friend, all of which only means that we would not really know anyone there. Of course, sometimes that's not a bad thing. My date, my ex-ex-boyfriend to whom I had come crawling back a few weeks before. Self-abuse is hard to stop.
Did I tell you how much I hate Halloween? That's what this party was about. Halloween, a chance to be someone or better yet, someTHING else for a night. Tonight I was Eva Braun, a German Paulie-Girl looking dress and a neat almost-real bullet hole in my forehead. Not very politically correct I guess and not everyone got the joke, but I didn't want to be just another vampire in a crowd of vampires. You know what I mean.
Like the one my ex-ex was talking to. An Elvira look-alike complete with breasts over-inflated by about 30psi. I couldn't help but look down, why do I do that? Even my 45-dollar Victoria's Secret push-up satin wonder-bra didn't help very much. I thought about canceling my check, but settled for a rum and coke from the erstwhile Frankenstein tending the bar. He at least didn't talk, just grunted and groaned a lot. Not like the leprechaun to my left. Who invited him? He was drunk and putting on the fake Irish brogue, putting his hand on my hip too. What he's saying will forever be mercifully lost to the passing of time and that thought gives me some comfort at least.
Elvira is very very close to my ex-ex, he's a vampire. Just another one, but it suits his personality and so I can understand why Elvira is rubbing her breasts against him, he looks over at me. Almost apologetically and I raise my glass in a silent toast. Bon-voyage, I mouth with exaggerated lips. Good riddance. It will only be a few minutes before they're out the door. It's like deja vu all over again. What was her name? Oh yeah, Jenny, my best friend. She didn't mean anything he told me, so that made it okay. I guess, I was the one who called him, remember?
My friend, my ride home is with her husband, looking wifely. Like Wilma Flintstone, she decided to be a cave girl. She had visions of Raquel Welch in that old movie, but she looks like Wilma. At least they're happy, but it's only been 5 months. They still have sex everyday. Oh! Bad thoughts, I look down again, a little lower wondering if it really is like riding a bicycle. I can't seem to remember at the moment. But Lucky the Leprechaun isn't helping, I have to get away.
And so I ended up on the terrace, if you could call it that. With all the people who can't smoke inside. The sweet smell of death surrounds me and I inhale deeply. I used to smoke; now I just get close to people who still do. One gentleman is kind enough to offer me one, care for a nail? I decline and look at him underneath the orange lights. Halloween. Orange. God. He tells me it's the socially accepted form of suicide, but not in this country. Not anymore. But it's sufficiently clever enough that I look at him, being a bitch all the time is hard work.
There's something out of place. I put my finger to my lips as if shushing him; no I'll figure it out. Suddenly it strikes me, he's not in a costume. No props, no mask, no mascara. Ok, I give up. What are you supposed to be, I ask. Because we are all supposed to be something, aren't we? Why am I wearing 20 pounds of dress otherwise?
"I'm a rapist."
'Excuse me?" I ask in a slow clear voice. That's the way I speak when I hear something I didn't expect, like English from a taxi driver for example. It's like a foreign language and we all know how to speak to foreigners: slowly and clearly (louder works too...Well, not really, but it feels good).
"A rapist, you know...Sex. Violence." He looks at my face. "Don't you watch TV? It's all the rage."
And that of course makes me laugh because he is laughing too. "Yes, I've heard of it. I'm not sure about your costume though."
"Why not? Most rapist look like the guy next door. You could be living next to one and never know it."
"I suppose." I wasn't entirely convinced. My neighbor is 72 and wears an oxygen mask. But I got the point.
Jim pointed to another guy, like him in his mid-twenties, wearing a suit. "Guess what he is."
"Ummm...A funeral director?"
Jim laughed, "No. But that's very good! He's a serial killer. His wife is around someplace, she's wearing a big milk carton."
Yes, I'd seen her. It was a good costume, but it looked like she belonged at the county fair.
"Oh, you didn't look close enough. She's a missing person, her bio is written underneath the hole for her face."
"So who's he supposed to be Ted Bundy or somebody?" He looked like a shoe salesman I thought.
"No." Jim laughed a little. "Ted Bundy got caught. He's the Green River killer."
Jim looked me up and down for a second. "I don't think he'd go for you, he likes the birds of night."
I feigned disappointment and wondered what a bird of night was. Probably another stupid vampire, I thought and looked over to the spot where Elvira had made my ex-ex my ex. A headless horseman stood there now, pouring a drink into his shirt.
This was all getting to be too much for me. Jim was cute, sure. And he hadn't asked why I was dressed up like a Bavarian wench with a hole in my forehead. I appreciated that, but I had to say, "Why don't you just admit it, you were too lazy to get a real costume?"
Jim looked hurt and I laughed. "I have one, right here." He pulled a rolled up nylon stocking out of his back pocket.
"No ski mask?"
"Too warm for a ski mask, besides L'eggs are only 2 bucks and I get two stockings!"
We made our way back inside after Jim finished his cigarette. I watched reluctantly as he blew a final cloud of blue dead air into the orange glow. Well, I thought, he's nice. Rather cute and a little clever. So far my choices were down to a frugal rapist or a drunken leprechaun. Did I tell you how much I hate Halloween? And then, at the bar I saw Lucky had disappeared and it was just as well, I'd made up my mind anyway.
Another rum and coke, my third, which is just about my limit. I was determined to drink it slow and find out why "You haven't asked my name yet, Jim."
He smiled. "I don't want to know my victim's name."
"Oh?" he was speaking another language again. "Am I your victim?"
"Not yet, but the night is young." Another smile. I felt something inside and I knew he was wrong; I was already his victim and we both knew it. I felt like a deer in the headlights of a speeding car. I knew I should move, but I didn't. It wasn't that I believed he was really a rapist, who would say such a thing? It was a fear of failing once again, losing out in a relationship and being alone. Or worse, crawling back over the telephone wires to leave a desperate message on an answering machine.
"Do you have an answering machine?"
Jim didn't even blink, as if he'd been waiting for me to ask. "No. I don't even have a telephone."
Do you believe in love at first sight, dear reader? I didn't. Not until he said that. Everybody has a phone I protested, but to no avail. He was quite positive that he didn't. He lived alone, in a studio. Worked an anonymous job at Boeing like everyone else in Seattle. No wife, no kids. He has a girlfriend, but only as an alibi. He's not particularly interested in her in he tells me. But she loves him, so she will lie for him.
"That's the test of love," he says. And we're outside, in the parking lot. It's cold and the wind is blowing up my skirts. Jim wraps his arms around me and I like, God help me, it is like riding a bicycle. Familiar feelings spreading that funny kind of warmth, which can't be explained. "Will you lie for me?"
It's a serious question, he's not smiling. Some kind of test? I wonder and I think it is. But his arms feel good and it's cold outside. The orange glow behind me is casting strange shadows and making me see things I don't want to. "I don't want to be your alibi."
He smiles suddenly and his teeth are white and sharp, coming towards me. Half of his face is dark, in a shadow and I wonder if he knows that. Half a man and the other half? Something unseen, I think I am finally seeing him without of his costume. I open my mouth for his kiss and touch my tongue to his teeth, expecting to feel pain, taste blood. But no, they are smooth and taste of cigarettes and whiskey. Whatever I had been thinking seems foolish to me now, the light is fully on him and he looks so ordinary. I'm disappointed and watch silently as he opens the car door for me.
...people are strange, when you're a stranger,
faces look ugly, when you're alone...
"The Doors?" I ask, watching the lights of I-5 go by my window. I haven't asked where we're going and he hasn't said. It's better this way. Falling into the victim role is so easy for me. I've done it before and learned to enjoy the ride. Yes indeed, nothing wrong with the ride I say to myself and blow a little breath on the window next to me. Two quick jabs with my finger and a little curve underneath. I smile at my smile. When the ride is done, that's when it hurts. Saying yes makes victims of us all. Absently I breathe some more, just enough to draw a bumpy milk carton around my little smiley face.
"Yeah, Strange Days." He stares at the road. It's raining, as usual. "Do you like it?"
...women seem wicked, when you're unwanted,
streets are uneven, when you're down...
"I don't know. I never really listened to them." We sit in silence for a few moments and the sad melody moves along with the windshield wipers adding it's soft rhythm. Another pattern, like all the others I think I see. Trying to put order in my life is the least of my sins, but trying to order the world around me may be the greatest. Like silently wishing the song was half a beat faster, or the wipers a split-second slower.
After the song was over Jim reached down without looking and turned off the radio. Seattle was behind us now and we were on a different road, traveling towards Enumclaw and Mount Rainer hidden in the night.
"Have you ever been caught, Jim?"
"No, I'm very careful."
"Don't you worry about catching a disease? Aids or something? It seems to me like being a rapist is a high risk occupation." Like being a girlfriend? I remembered the thrill of being told that Jenny had a little 'problem'...A social problem and she may have given it to my ex-ex-ex (confusing I know, but I refuse to say his name dammit!) and he in turn might have blessed me with a little reminder of his infidelity. I guess it was only marginally better than finding out I might be pregnant, but only just. I at least had the satisfaction of knowing I was clean, although for the 3 days it took to find out I was reading the anarchist's cookbook, just in case.
"It's a risk," Jim allowed, "but I find the girl's I'm attracted to" a look at me, a smile, "are very rarely dangerous."
I didn't know if I should be flattered or not. "Dangerous in what way?"
"In any way." Jim was smiling again, but only at the road. We were driving up, into the mountains and it was a bumpy ride.
Where was I? That thought hit me hard. I didn't know. No more than I knew what I was doing here with a man I'd just met and knew only by his first name. He didn't seem particularly dangerous, except for that moment in the parking lot. He was playing a game, certainly and maybe that's why I'd come along. A new game to divert some thoughts I was saving for when I could be alone and put my face against my pillow and scream.
"You're a rapist, so that means....You're not a murderer, right?"
Jim pushed a cigarette between his lips and then pushed the lighter into the dashboard. We both sat there listening to the wind, barely heard in the tall trees around us. Jim had stopped the car and it had long since stopped raining. Even the clouds had thinned enough to let a shadowing moonlight the hillside with a soft pale glow. The silence was strange and loud, but I was waiting for an answer, the way my father had when I was a child. I could wait all night and that thought gave me some little bit of bravery. I stared at his dimly lit face and crossed my arms across my breasts.
*POP*
I jumped and felt my face redden as Jim calmly pulled the lighter up to his face and lit his cigarette. There was a bright orange glow, more reddish than orange. A warmth which spread over his features. You'll wonder what I expected, sitting alone in a car in the wilderness with a self-professed rapist. It is unreasonable, ludicrous even to imagine it. I told that to Jim, realizing I was not my father and I couldn't wait all night.
"I don't know what I'm doing here, this is so wrong. I'm sorry Jim, maybe..." My voice trailed off. This guy would have to be the nicest guy in the world if he was going to turn around and drive me home after going 50 miles to be alone. That thought frightened me, but not so much. I'd given away sex for less after all. Pride was the going price for pleasure these days. I say that because I knew I would enjoy giving in to him, even though I would be screaming into my pillow tomorrow.
"I understand, but let's stretch our legs and watch the stars for a bit, okay?"
That was too reasonable. Pride? What was that? I wasn't going to let him take me home, not until we'd finished this strange unexpected dance. I confess, I wanted to play the virgin and say "No...Nooo...Nooooohhh...kay....." and keep a little dignity, a shred because I'd at least tried. Now Jim had me, I was out of my league. A simple "I understand..." was all it took and I was going to have to beg to ride that particular bicycle again. God! I hated him in that moment. I looked around for a pillow.
"Go ahead and scream." Jim was leaning on the damp hood of his car. "No one can hear you. If a tree falls in the woods..." He smiled and took a drag of his cigarette.
"Wha...What do you mean?" Did he think I'd try and stop him? The warmth was back and it was spreading quickly. I wasn't sure what this game was now; I don't think I was ever sure.
"I mean, why do you think all those girls end up on milk cartons?" Jim flicked his cigarette away and reached into his back pocket.
"I...I don't know...I..." I watched as Jim slowly covered his face with the nylon stocking, stretching it around his handsome face so that he became distorted and grotesque. It wasn't human and he bared his teeth at me like a wild thing. I didn't recognize him and I realized his was the best costume of the night.
The End
rache@envy.nu