 "Date Rape
at the Redneck Riviera"
An
excerpt from Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist
Desire,
edited by Merri Lisa Johnson,
ISBN:
reprinted with permission from Four Walls Eight Windows
Can we realize that women are in danger on our streets
and in our spaces? Can we simultaneously rip apart representations
of women that project them only as victims in need of a protection
that drifts inexorably towards control and repression?
~Catherine Stimpson
I have told some people that I was date-raped in Panama City
Beach, Florida. Big deal. Who hasn't been. What I haven't told
anyone is the whole story.
How he was soooo cute.
How I was soooo lonely.
I never said how we kissed all sexy and sour, tasting each other
like tropical drinks.
I never said there was romance, fantasy, this:
It was April of 1994 when my roommate and I loaded the trunk
of her Celica with beer bought in bulk at Sam's. We were on our
way to the spring break capital of the world. My acrylic nails
painted toxic orange, hair streaked platinum half-way to my ass,
push-up bra bikini packed--I was ready for action. When we reached
the beach, heads turned. Music thudded: "Lemme ride that
donkey, donkey; lemme ride that donkey, donkey."
Girls grinding pelvises in an R-rated version of the hoola
hoop lined the stage for a bikini contest. I wanted to be them.
I wanted to be up there with them-brave, self-confident, provocative-I
wanted to bathe in waves of applause. The next day I drank rum
runners until the emcee called for today's contestants, and,
slightly more blonde than awkward, I placed third. I never felt
so sexy in my life.
That night my friend and I went out to celebrate. We danced,
we drank, and most of all we scanned the beautiful boys. One
in particular caught my eye. I recognized him, a very popular
guy whose attention I'd never quite managed to merit at campus
parties. In the democratic spirit of booze and special occasions,
he finally looked my way. We walked down the beach, night air
raising the hairs on my arms, waves sloshing in and out like
they do in romance novels. We came up on an overturned sailboat-the
perfect make-out spot, a great story for my girlfriends.
His hand was under my shirt, in my pants. I liked it. He leaned
me backwards against the boat, its spine crunching against mine,
and started to unbutton his pants. I called time out--I mean,
I wasn't going to fuck him for Christ's sake. He wanted to have
sex and I said no. (So far so good.) He went down on me. I let
him. And I liked it--what's not to like? (Here's where everything
loses focus. I can hear the voices: "Ohhh, well if you let
him go down on you--what'd you expect?" And the voices make
sense to me, except . . . not quite.) With one hand he held my
wrists together over my head, my hips pinned under his. With
the other hand he got his pants down and his dick in me. I thought:
this is how it happens. This is how boys hold girls down. I had
never been able to picture the strength and coordination required
for rape; my experiences of sex so far had shown me only fumbling
and awkwardness. Yet here he was, penetrating me swiftly, head
and face pressed privately into my shoulder, retreating into
darkness and shadows and orgasm. No, I didn't scream, didn't
kick. I said no and struggled with my legs, but I was too embarrassed
to draw attention from passers-by further up the beach, and a
little afraid, too, of turning his drunk violent. He finished
and we did up our pants. My hair was soaked with sea spray; rivulets
of salt burned my eyes. We walked back to the club in silence,
sobered.
"That was alright with you-wasn't it?" (Preparing
his defense for the lawsuit already, I imagined.)
"Doesn't matter now, does it?" I said, sullen and distant.
* * *
When I got back to the college town where I lived I heard
he'd been accused of rape by two other girls that year, but he
"got off." Well, I reasoned, it wasn't like I'd been
pulled into an alley by a stranger or beaten in the face with
a fist. There was no gun, no knife. No pregnancy, no STD. I was
fine. Ultimately, I figured a quick fuck would be easier to bear
than the wrath of a sexually frustrated frat boy on a week-long
bender, but his act of penetration was utterly against my will.
Call it what you will, but there is no way around that fact.
No words for how thin the line is between desire and domination.
How much is alright for me to want? There is a cultural logic,
unspoken but implacable, that if I want some (oral sex), I better
want all (a dick in me). That's how I lost my virginity, after
all, in another scene that could be loosely categorized as date
rape--trusting the older guy I had such a crush on to stop at
"everything, but" penetration as he pledged, feeling
somehow unentitled to point out that he had reneged on the deal
when I felt him slide inside.
One of the co-authors of Manifesta,
a recently released overview of third-wave feminist activism,
tells a similar story:
When I was a junior, and already a pretty well-known radical
feminist on campus, I had a close, kinda foxy male friend who
had "feelings for me" and with whom I flirted. One
night he came into my room all drunk and got on top of me. He
said, "You wanted this," and the thing was, I didn't
want that--him on top of me, trying to scare me, possibly fucking
me. But I did want him wanting me in less freaky circumstances.
These narratives have no name in feminism, or in mainstream
culture, that doesn't distort the conflict by conflating it with
rape or dismissing it as bad decision-making. Like the Manifesta
authors, I'd like feminism to "help articulate what happened
to [us] when it's not clear whether [we] had a choice."
To find words for the middle grounds of subtle coercion where
women's libidinal drive is used against us, words for that adolescent
place of fingers and tongues and exploration where so much female
sexuality might thrive but, once one "goes all the way,"
is more often frustrated or misused. |
