The Incident: Part 4

I worry a little that my readers picture me as a fragile, wounded bird this week. The tone of the emails from readers I’ve been getting has been unvaryingly supportive, but there’s just a touch of over-concern for my well-being that makes me suspect that Breeder’s Readers are imagining me sitting alone by candlelight, slugging back strong drink for fortitude, and then pouring out my heart while listening to the Carpenters or Wilson-Phillips and sobbing quietly to myself.

Um, no.

This incident happened a very long time ago. I made peace with it a long time ago, as well. Writing about it hasn’t made me feel sad, or shamed, or angry, save in the most abstracted of ways. I’ve been trying very hard to get it right on paper, that’s for sure. But in a sense, it’s the story of someone who lived a long time ago.

Of course, there’s more to it.

I didn’t leave my apartment at all for at least a week and a half, after the assault. I missed the first classes of the new semester. I let mail pile up in my box downstairs. I ran out of food fairly quickly and was subsisting on the canned goods I never thought I’d eat, peanut butter, and the butts of bread loaves.

My injuries weren’t actually all that substantial. The cuts on my head amounted to a small V-shaped laceration on my forehead and an uglier one on my right cheek; I still have a pale, ghostly fingertip-sized scar there to this day. My right ear had some slices that healed fairly quickly as well. For a couple of days I was off-and-on dizzy and convinced I was concussed, but I didn’t want to have to visit a hospital and explain what happened to me. My hole recuperated. There was no irreparable damage there. It took weeks before I got over the feeling of having been fucked by a knife, though.

I didn’t want to tell anyone, in fact. I wanted the incident to go away, to disappear. Part of me was convinced internally that if it was never spoken of, if it didn’t become a part of my official recorded history, if there were no files, no conversations, no post-mortem examinations of what happened, it would vanish. It would be one of those untold stories that was as insubstantial as smoke or fog, and like those vapors would dissipate and be forgotten.

Even when I did leave my apartment (I was starving, basically, and had to eventually), I’d scamper back to its protection almost immediately after. I shopped in bulk so I wouldn’t have to visit the supermarket more than once a month. I’d dash to a class, take notes and say nothing, then streak immediately back home with no socializing, no speaking. The less talking I had to do, the better. It was a bad month of my life—at one point I woke up one morning and realized I’d literally not opened my mouth to say a word in weeks.

Part of my reluctance to open my mouth was directly Tom’s fault. I had a weird conviction that he’d been right about the FBI bugging his apartment. I hadn’t taken it seriously at all until the day I finally left home to go to the supermarket; when I came back, I found exterminators in my apartment, who claimed they’d been there to spray the outlets. Exterminators in my apartment building weren’t uncommon—the place was a roach motel—but the timing of it was so odd that I couldn’t help but be paranoid for a very long time that they’d been bugging my place, too.

But here’s the codicil to the story that I’ve never been able to figure out.

I avoided the bar and the campus cruising spots for a very long time after that, so I wouldn’t have to run into Tom again. And I never did. I didn’t report him—which I regret now—I didn’t confront him. I was too busy trying to deny that any of it ever happened. One day, about three weeks after the incident, I did see the familiar shock of blond-white hair walking out of my apartment building, when I looked out the window. I waited for a very long time before going to the lobby. In fact, I watched Tom walk two blocks before I dared venture down.

The daytime manager hailed me at the front desk when I passed. “Some guy dropped off something for you,” he said. And he handed me a little package.

I could tell immediately it was a thin paperback book, judging by the size and flexibility of it. It had been clumsily wrapped in brown paper from a lunch or grocery bag and, in a frenzy of “My Favorite Things” cliches, tied up with twine. I pulled off the wrappings and found myself holding a battered, used copy of Voltaire’s Candide. No note, nothing. It wasn’t until later that night that I thought to look inside. Written on one of the first pages was a short note: Read this and you’ll know why.

My first reaction: What the fuck?

My reaction today: What the fuck?

I have never been able to figure out what in the world he meant by those words. Cunégonde is raped in Candide. The Old Woman’s past includes rape. Candide himself learns from the Bulgarians that soldiers feel entitled to rape any woman they can. Was he trying to tell me to keep optimistic despite being assaulted? That my youthful optimism was totally misplaced? That he was a Bulgarian soldier?

Or was he just balls-out crazy? I don’t know. I just don’t. It’s odd and somewhat ironic that Bernstein’s Candide has been one of my favorite musical works for the last ten or fifteen years; when I want to wrap myself in comfort, I’ll put on one of my many versions and let the familiar music surround me. I've no bad memories associated with it whatsoever.

What the original novel has to do with anything that happened to me, though, remains a mystery.

I never saw Tom again, as I said. Eventually I realized that silence wasn’t possible any more, and I sought counseling. I talked about it. I wrote about my feelings afterward—though I've never actually written out what happened until this week.

Little by little, bit by bit, I healed. I really did.

I explained it to a reader thusly, a few days ago: at this point, the assault is very much like having had a severe leg injury, long ago. At the time, it hurt a lot. When it happened, I found myself hobbling for weeks and months. Over time it’s healed, though. I don’t even notice it any more. There might be a wintry dark day now and again when the cold gives the old leg injury a twinge. But it doesn’t prevent me from getting around at all. I don’t limp. I don’t give it preferential treatment. Sure, jab at it with your fingertip over and over again and ask loudly, “Hey, does that hurt?” and I’m likely to kick you in the nuts and say that yes indeed, it does.

But the old injury doesn’t impede me, if that makes sense. The vast majority of the time, I pay it no never-mind. One very bad night didn’t cripple me. I’m not handicapped, or damaged. I don’t hobble, or shorten my stride. I still walk upright.

Despite the odd twinge from time to time, I'm doing all right. I’m a very lucky man.