A SIP OF BLUSH-COLORED WINE

I am notorious for being an excellent friend to people unworthy of my kindness.

On an idyllic campus in Hampton, Virginia, I learned some "friends" are not friends. Surrounded on three sides by water, Hampton University overlooks the Chesapeake Bay. Outside my dorm window, a waterfront lined with sailboats and Maynard ducks and lovers became the screen I stared at every morning and every night before bed. Much like Instagram is today, the view outside my window served as a feast of moving and still imagery to which I either responded or not. 

On my first day on campus, after my mother and younger brother headed back to New York on an eight-hour drive along Interstate 80, a few girls approached me outside the main cafeteria. A lanky girl with drawn-out features, another girl around my height with a nasal voice and bowed legs, and Celeste. At 4’11”, Celeste had hair down to the floor like Cousin IT. But because her hair was so long and heavy and she rarely bathed, Celeste smelled awful most days.

“You’re that cheerleader from White Plains, right?” the tallest girl said.

"Yes," I replied.

“You’re pretty like us," the bowed-legged girl said. “We should be friends.”

And so we were. Corny, but true.

I later learned those girls were from my part of the country, White Plains, an hour north of New York City. But to be clear, they hailed from the town of Greenburg, which is not White Plains. Still, they'd used the White Plains connection as a bonding mechanism. So when Cheryl asked if I’d accompany her on a date with some guy she’d insisted was "the cutest guy she’d ever seen," I said yes because that's the kind of friend I was.  

On that unsuspecting evening in late October, Cheryl and I taxied to an apartment complex in a less idyllic part of town, a mile from campus. We climbed two levels of the dank stairway before an unattractive guy greeted us at the door. Cheryl's idea of cute bordered on short and thick with a funny haircut. Cute never factored in. A broad smile spread across Cheryl's face as she screeched, “Hey!!!!!”

Aside from smelling bad, Cheryl had a painstakingly creepy, high-pitched voice that was as annoying, if not more, than those munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. 

I digress.

Inside the apartment, her unattractive date asked that we sit down at the dining table, which he'd set for two if, in fact, plastic mats next to plastic utensils count as a table setting. There, he poured wine the color of flushed cheeks and summer clouds at dusk into plastic wine glasses. His pour proved weightier than his looks, and I stopped him at just a sip. I did not wish to get drunk in a dingy, foreboding space with a girlfriend I barely knew and the strange, ugly guy she'd soon forget.

Back then, I was ironclad and discerning with my safety. Though no one knew it, I'd already been through a lot. My clarity, my time, and my vagina were things I held and still hold in the highest regard. I have always kept those things out of reach of any random grab or solicitation. Even now, perhaps one might require a bomb or a bullet or, as it were, a sip of wine to break through my walls.

We toasted and sipped cheap wine from brittle plastic when, out of nowhere, Cheryl’s date called out to his roommate, whose voice I heard but whose face I could not see. The roommate responded with a hello, but it freaked me out that the entire time we were inside the apartment, another person lurked in some backroom like a crazy cousin or an unstable grandparent. Suddenly, silence filled the room while Cheryl and her date morphed into fuzzy images turned sideways. No longer sitting erect, but instead, lying face down, my left cheek mashed against the sticky placemat, I'd lost all feeling in all parts of my body. Cheryl and her date laughed an evil laugh, flicked off the one dreary overhead light that hung above the table, and exited the apartment. 

I'd only taken a sip, but I felt drunk beyond measure, my body hanging from the chair like pieces of pasta. My eyes, no longer fuzzy, focused on a spot of light creeping in from under the door, but my body remained like a noodle. A man, the roommate, emerged from the backroom, dragged me by my armpits off the chair, and across a splintered, wooden floor. Splinters and scratches would soon be the least of my worries. 

In the living room, he lay me on my back, my head turned toward the window and away from his vicious glare. Heavy breathing and what I would soon recognize as the undoing of my zipper. The apartment grew darker as I experienced what it is to kick and scream from inside yourself when something sinister fights to hold you back. Similar to the feeling you get when a dentist administers numbing drops to your gums, I could only sense his ravaging my body. Something in that wine kept me from feeling his sharp, stabbing pumps in and out of my vagina. Unable to move and unable to breathe at a certain point, I focused my gaze on the window. The fading street light and the trees' tops swished side to side just as my body kept my breath alive. Date raped on another girl's date. A reality that took its time to settle in. To think Cheryl conspired to leave me in that apartment with that monster and not for a second consider my well-being still strikes me like a mighty blow to the chest. To leave me alone like roadkill while the roommate from the backroom raped me remains unforgivable.

I can not say how long the rape occurred, but I recall being picked up from the floor like a duffle bag and put in the back of a vehicle face down. Due to the numbness, I could only almost feel the bumps in the road while driving through my rapist's downtrodden neighborhood. We arrived on campus as the numbness began to wear off, and I felt the evenness of Hampton University's smooth asphalt pathways beneath the tires. I tried to speak, but my words erupted like gurgles. My rapist, who by then I noticed was a dark-skinned guy with rounded shoulders and a short, cropped haircut, viciously tossed me out of his car and onto the lawn outside my dormitory like a crumpled piece of paper. Like the Maynard ducks and lovers I'd watched from my dorm window, he must have been watching me all along. He knew where I lived.

Unlucky for him, I noticed his car was a yellow Jeep Wrangler with gray trim and New York plates when he drove away. His car details mattered so much because, at Hampton University, your name, the city you were from, and the car you drove defined you. Therefore, I was sure that when the incident reached campus police, they'd know how to find him.

I don't recall how long I lay on the lawn, but the sun rose as movement returned to my limbs. The clouds were pink and bulbous above the Chesapeake Bay, and a brisk wind wafted the fishy smell of the bay through the air, signaling the coming of fall. But as I lay motionless along the vibrant waterfront, I was the still image no one responded to. 

Upright on the lawn, after being dragged along thorny floors, blood dripped from my thighs, elbows, and hands. I was without my pants and underwear. Woozy and distraught, splinters engulfed my fingertips and buttocks. Once I came to stand, I stumbled into my dormitory. 

There, I jumped in the shower and scrubbed what remained of my rapist's scent and semen off my body. But because soap and water can only clean so much, I would feel the breadth of his heinous act for years to come.

I cried to the point my eyes swelled before I reported the incident to my dorm director, and then she reported the incident to campus police. At least, that's what she told me. Either way, nothing came from reporting the rape other than the shame and regret I carried for years; however, after sharing this with another person: my "big brother" Dawson. And while many "big brothers/big sisters" used their status for easy hookups, my big brother Dawson was the real deal. As the star linebacker for the football team, Dawson protected me, as might a real big brother. So much so, not only had he identified the rapist as Will from New York with the yellow jeep wrangler, he had kicked Will's ass in the science and tech building, which he'd reported back with a smile. Although I appreciated Dawson’s desire to protect me, even a good ass-kicking can only go so far. 

***

Years later, far from Virginia and living in Brooklyn, I waited in my car along Myrtle Avenue with my three daughters while my husband picked up Chinese food from Kum Kau. But as my husband exited the restaurant, a stout, dark-skinned man with rounded shoulders approached him on the corner. They conversed for several minutes before an alarm went off in my head: "That's the mother-fucker who raped me!" 

Everything about that horrible night inside that apartment, on that splintered floor, beneath that window, became as plain as my rapist's image on that Brooklyn street. I wanted to jump out of the car and shout to my husband, "That's him! That's the dude who raped me!" Only my husband got in the car and said, 

"Wow, Crys, that was Will. Remember him? He went to Hampton with us and now works in the schools."

Was I in the Twilight Zone?  Had my husband drawn a blank? As if pleased to stand face to face with the monster who'd ravaged my body, he'd done nothing to help me. But after reminding him of the incident, his face soured, and he grew worried that I wished he had done or said something. He was correct. I wanted him to break Will in two like Will's raping me had done to my soul. Then again, hurting Will the way he'd hurt me was never my husband's battle to fight but my war to win. 

Since then, thoughts of Cheryl and Will have continuously resurfaced. But it's only now I feel an urgency to release my pain into the world in hopes my story prevents another girl from accompanying a "friend" who doesn't consider well-being anywhere for any reason. This and the desire for more women to choose clarity over a pointless toast.

To Will Cooper: 

Will, when this finally reaches you, and it will, I want you to know that you are a weak, pathetic human being. And though it may have robbed me of my clarity for a night, your awful decision to drug and rape me created a warrior for life.