Anniversary of The Worst Day of My Life

WARNING: THIS IS A VERY PERSONAL POST. IT CONTAINS WORDS THAT SOME PEOPLE MIGHT FIND OBJECTIONABLE AND IT DESCRIBES A SEXUAL ASSAULT. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

This is what the car looked like when it pulled over to pick me up.

Thirty-five years ago on September 17, 1970 at 8:30 in the morning, I stood on the corner of Topanga Canyon and Ventura Blvd. and stuck out my thumb hitching a ride to a job I'd had for less than a week. A 1963 Chevy Impala convertible pulled over to pick me up. Before I even opened the car door I knew it would be a disastrous journey, but I dismissed the intuition and got in anyway. I was wearing blue jeans, a short-sleeved teeshirt, a blue corduroy workshirt over that. I was 18 years old, had been in California less than three months, and was carrying the book The Master Game by Robert DeRopp .
On that day in 1970, the war in VietNam was raging, and I was sincerely grappling with questions about the meaning of life. Somehow those two things led me to The Master Game. The book provided a surprisingly original organizing principle about life, a coherent description of the games that people played. Not psychological games, but the way one lived, focused, and directed his or her life. A description I found online said:

We all ask, at one time or another, "What do I want to do with my life?"
On the one hand, we all want to do something that matters in some way, that makes a difference, that is meaningful, that is fulfilling. Something that's worthwhile, something real.
On the other hand, when we phrase the question "what do I want to do with my life?" - and sit with it - it often seems like such a huge, vague, looming, slippery, cloud of fog, like trying to catch a cloud in a milk carton - a frustrating experience.
But one chap, Robert S De Ropp, has offered a few pointers, which might help us get a more sturdy handle on the matter.

When I think about it now, DeRopp was trying to balance some scientific and spiritual thinking, and it was all pretty heady stuff for me. That morning, I stood on the corner wondering: What was my game? Would I devote myself to art for the sake of beauty, or to science for knowledge? Could I be spiritual, live on an ashram? My mind was full of these contemplations when I got into the car.

The man driving the Chevy was every girl's nightmare. He was an angry sexual predator, and I sat naively next to him. The car headed up into the winding stretches of lonely canyon, where my new job in an art store was located. As soon as we left the the last few houses behind, and all that lay before us were the coastal mountains separating the valley from the Pacific, the driver violently grabbed The Master Game out of my hands and tossed it into the back seat-- I never saw the book again. And so our savage encounter began.

I have never written about the encounter, so I have to admit this is my unsatisfactory attempt at condensing the experience into a poem:

The stranger's name was
like the blade
he held against me
as he fumbled with his zipper

He screams commands for my mouth
sweet place of poems and laughter
and slams my timid smile
again and again with a rage most foul

I flee my own flesh-- la petite mort
in a flight of ear-rushing fear
retreat, inward further inward
to a place that he cannot annihilate

On a vastly beautiful fall day
I become a witness
to the state laws
he breaks with my body

(months later)

Deputy DA coaches me,
say "vagina" and "penis"
he thinks I'll trash-talk slang
even though I never do

A jury of the defendant's peers
scrutinizes me on witness stand, dismissive-
sees hippie-girl hitchhiker whore
too free for her own good

I sense they hate my serious brown face,
my smart and shamed mouth
oh yes, they too slam me unjustly
this jury is hung hung hung

So, shy victim-girl who was me
loses her laugh her song and poems
instantly displaced by a crime,
a knife, a fist, his cock his prick his dick

(a few months after that)
DA office calls, they want me back as a witness for another trial. His violence has escalated, and he has seriously injured someone else. I am ambivalent, tortured, inconsolable. They call again. He has confessed to his crimes, including the one he perpetrated against me. They won't be needing me afterall. My mother asks, will they call those jurors to tell them how wrong they were? No, they will not.

(many years later)

I realize that had I lived in another country or been of a different culture, I could have been stoned to death for bringing such shame to my family. So the suffering I experienced in this light is less by comparison.

I often remember that when I arrived at the police station (which is quite a tale in itself) and told my story to the officers their first question to me was this:
"Did you learn your lesson?"
Shocked, I never answered them, but I will now.
No, not at first, and now yes, but not the way you would think.
I am not fearless, but I never cower.

(Today)

I am a survivor.