SUBTLETEA (POUR IN SPIRIT)

Claudio lives in Catanzaro, Italy.  Visit his site.

Questions You Might Ask
 
How do these lizards know they live
on such a small mesa top
not much bigger than the public
library below in Chinle, and if
they venture too far, they will drop
1200 feet to the hot canyon floor
where they would undoubtedly be
crushed, food for a passing magpie
 
and how do they know that thirty miles
of desert floor surround their tiny
island, so that even if , miraculously,
they survived the fall, they would
never complete the walk to the next
sheltering crag before plunging night-
fall froze them in their five-toed tracks?

Emily is a semi-retired English teacher who lives in California.

present

present: to deliver
present: a gift
present: being there
 
Arrived damaged, barely unwrapped, return to sender.

Alayne lives in New York City.

“I like raw sugar sprinkled on my nipples,” Heather said, smiling, her lips glistening with maple syrup from her pancakes. Her voice matched her name, subtle flowers covering a hillside. Her last name was Honeysuckle and her perfume scented the air around her like the flowers in spring. She took another bite of pancakes and chewed. People at work, including Jonathon, who sat across from her in Weber’s Diner, wondered why she wasn’t morbidly obese. She ate whatever she wanted whenever she wanted it; chocolate maple bars, fresh baked cinnamon rolls, banana splits overflowing with whipped cream. Instead she was a tall waif who eschewed flaunting her looks.

Heather had a nighttime obsession. Once the sun dropped behind the coast range, she’d disappear into the darkness and run for miles, only to be seen by the occasional flash of passing headlights: thin legs, reflective shoes, skinny top showing off her pierced bellybutton. She wore a crystal in it the size of a marble that sparkled when the light hit it right.

Heather really liked Jonathon. He laughed at her jokes and made her laugh in kind, and he was cute in a pudgy sort of way. Everyone at the bakery where they both worked was pudgy. It came with the job, a nibble here, a nibble there. What’s another croissant with your coffee in the morning or during your afternoon break? Another pastry, or a donut, and your belly button sank deeper and deeper until it swallowed up whatever you had it pierced with. But not Heather, though Jonathon was pushing past pudgy. She was trying to think of a nice way to put it. She wanted one of those phrases that said fat but meant important, like his weight gave him gravitas, but Jonathon didn’t have gravitas. She would’ve thought he was gay if she didn’t know he wasn’t. He was the jolly fat man who loved to tease.

“What about your nipples? Are they sensitive, too?” she asked.

He was thinking about Heather’s nipples and how sensitive they might be. He didn’t care about his own. As far as he was concerned he didn’t have any. “Oh yes, very sensitive, the slightest breeze and they—” but he wasn’t talking about his own.

“Shut up! I can’t help it.” Her nipples always drew glances and comments in the bakery. The ovens kept the room warm, so when she’d step outside to cool off, she’d return with grapes in her shirt. “My mother used to make me wear Band Aids. Until even she gave up and stopped noticing. Well, are they?”

“Sensitive?” He sipped his coffee. “I don’t have nipples. I was abducted by aliens as a child and they stole them. I wonder what they needed them for. Maybe they collect them.”

“Collect them?”

“If I were you, I’d be running scared. You’re sporting the jewels of their collection.”

“People don’t sport nipples.”

“Ah yes, but not everyone is you. Believe me, you sport them.”

Their conversation paused as they ate, and then Heather asked, “Have you had any more of those weird dreams recently?” She tore open a packet of sugar, poured it over her moistened finger into her coffee and stuck her finger in her mouth with a wink at him. “Well?”

“Not since the silver Elvis.” He’d had a string of vivid dreams lately, all of them entailing small, two-legged creatures running about his bedroom. He’d wake up and in that state between being asleep and not yet fully awake, the little devils would scatter and try to hide, but then as he became fully awake they would fade into the dim light and were no longer there. He didn’t know what to make of these experiences so he used them to entertain his friends. Silver Elvis was a small guy wearing a shiny silver suit, like Elvis used to wear for his Las Vegas shows, that Jonathon had woken up to sitting on his bed. When Silver Elvis saw that he’d been spotted he jumped off the bed and hid at the foot of it. He wasn’t very good at hiding, but he was saved by Jonathon coming fully awake.

Another time he woke to see a small monkey in a Day-Glo pink spacesuit crawling across his ceiling. When it saw him move in his bed below, it zipped down the hall ceiling like a crab on speed and disappeared into the bathroom, never to be seen again. It wore gold goggles that went well with the suit. These dreams were strange, but they didn’t trouble him, even if they were a little too real. He’d had others that were disturbing that he didn’t use as fodder for his funny stories, true X-Files material that he pushed out of his mind as a result of too much pizza before going to bed.

Heather stirred her coffee, took a sip, and then added more cream. If she was going to drink it, it had to be just right. She sensed Jonathon wanted something from her. He’d been more attentive recently, a little too focused on her. She hoped he hadn’t gotten a crush on her. She didn’t want to lose him as a friend because he thought he was falling in love with her when it was really just because he was horny and she was the kind of woman who gave men wood. She stared at him without saying anything.

“What?” he asked.

Not one to leave it be, she said, “Do you have a crush on me?”

He was hesitant. “If I do, is that bad?”

“I knew it. Damn it.”

“Heather, I’ve had a crush on you since I first saw you. I’m a guy and you’re gorgeous. Every guy at work has a crush on you and at one point or another has said how much they’d love to slip it to you. Something would be wrong with me if I didn’t have a crush on you.” He stopped and smiled at her. “Why? Do you have a crush on me? Because that would complicate things. I don’t like to shit where I eat. You’ve probably confused love for lust.” He put his palms on his belly and gave it a lift. “If I’d known you were a chubby chaser.”

“Slip it to me?”

* * *

The night passed under her feet like a fast-flowing creek in spring. She moved through the fog, an apparition of the night, her footfalls landing almost without sound. The loop at the top of the hill was a different world. She went around it in a meditative state, a feather in the wind. She ran by the houses with their people buttoned up inside, tucked into their beds under their electric blankets, sleeping or dreaming or struggling to do one but not the other. Heather dreamed, but she dreamed when she was awake and rarely when she was asleep. She once dreamed of being a country music singer in the 1950s. In the dream she was in her car listening to herself sing on the radio. She was singing about a guy she exchanged glances with at a bus station whom she thought was the one but who got on a different bus so she never found out if he had been.

Heather didn’t listen to music when she ran. She followed the sound of her feet, her breaths, the wind through her thoughts. She didn’t want lyrics to direct where they went. Her thoughts were her own and she rarely felt like piggy-backing on someone else’s. People’s minds were filled with other people’s thoughts enough as it was; what was popular, what wasn’t, or who. There were miniskirt fads, black nail polish fixations, mullets, metrosexuals. She wondered how much of people’s thoughts were their own and not absorbed opinions of others. Top one hundred lists like “America’s Most Powerful Opinion Makers,” made her wince. That was her gripe with television. Its main purpose seemed to be to shape people’s opinions, and in some cases not only to shape them but to create the thoughts that led to the opinions. When she quit watching television she lost a lot of common ground with people. She no longer kept up with the imaginary people’s lives and couldn’t discuss them while kneading bread dough with the others. When she listened to the others talk about them she had to remind herself that they were talking about people who weren’t real. If people were talking about something that never happened, did their conversation ever happen? She’d tease herself with thoughts like that, which only made her more estranged from the conversation. When she brought up real things in conversation it only proved to be uncomfortable, so she learned to keep her thoughts to herself and talk about sugar on her nipples instead.

* * *

It was true. Jonathon had fallen in love with her and he knew it was bad for their friendship. It was becoming difficult to be around her, and it wasn’t just lust, though he did lust after her. The jolly fat man and the hot chick wasn’t going to happen. People said looks weren’t important but everyone knew that was bullshit. He’d have to be rich and she’d have to sell her soul for his riches. The state of his body revealed a lot about how he felt about his life, about himself and where he wanted to go.

He was at an impasse. He knew he could take out his frustration and his unrequited love in his usual way by eating another donut and packing on a few more pounds—he’d gained thirty-five since meeting her—but he couldn’t con himself with that any longer. That feeling of being satiated on calories wasn’t cutting it anymore. It was time to make a break and he felt it inside, so he put the donut back in the box with the rest of the dozen and closed the lid. He was going to have to find an activity other than eating to take the edge off his frustration and loneliness.

* * *

She ran through the night fog, eddies swirling in the light under the street lamps behind her. She was rapidly overtaking another runner ahead of her, a big man trudging along at a methodical, determined pace. She smiled at the sight of someone else nutty enough to run at night in terrible conditions. As she passed the man a sideways glimpse reminded her of Jonathon, but that couldn’t be, and she was soon far ahead and her thoughts were elsewhere.

The Gniess
 
The gneiss stands record
to many things
glacial time
the Great Lakes
the tears that fill them
I place my hand upon this rock
and see
Johnny, (eyes as big as pie-plates)
“Are you an Indian?”
as if Geronimo was standing over his bed
a runaway at sixteen
fighting in the Aleutian Islands at eighteen
dying dreaming of Indians
sorrow isn’t exclusive
testify the lakes
logging industries paid the Finns
company store vouchers
cemeteries house the last of the miners
today eagles pinwheel
over a pile of fish guts
from last nights spearing
fire smolders in the east
the rock remains
and I am comforted.

grit

they all want to be artists
they change their majors
from psychology
to sculpting
they change later
from sculpting
to economics
their parents say get a job
save money
you can work your art out on the weekends
most give in
get the job
they sleep around in their twenties
they get pregnant
sometimes for love
usually by accident
they get promoted
they become their refrigerator

some stay on
move to the dominican neighborhoods
move to the outer boroughs
keep hustling
always one contact away from the big gallery
thinking they made the sacrifice
art owes them now
one day it will happen

but it doesn’t
or when it does
it’s just too late
too much time happened
to question, playing
the ultimate gamble
with no chance to return
and get it right
or rewind
and try again

but they bet their life
and the ashtrays never emptied
and the bottles never corked
and they left something behind
good or bad
they wrote their own epitaphs
and the graveyards
and libraries
and art galleries
all filled
because the artist lived
and the artist left something behind.
but whether the dream
was lived out
or sold out
it’s hard to see a family
on a blanket under a free sky
every july 4th
or around a christmas tree every december
or taking a picture
with mickey mouse in the florida summer
and argue
that the love that shares your name
is the only art
worth waking up for

Khem

I watched Khem light the fire.
The first spark leapt from his eyes
& onto the woodpile,
which kindled into being.
Soon, the flames ascended
into the indigo sky
as he fed one item
after another into the blaze;
the handmade cradle,
her wedding dress, their photo
albums, the Ikea furniture,
& then, his beloved
volumes of Shakespeare;
through his fingers clutched
at the collection of sonnets
a nano-second longer
than the previous tomes.
Lastly, he pulled off
his wedding ring,
held it up to the light,
the gold band glinting
a final, agonized plea
before my amazed eyes.
He cast the ring into the fire,
turned to me, smiled,
& whispered, Ut supra, ut infra,
as he became one with the dark.

Marie Lecrivain is the executive editor and publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and is a writer in residence at her apartment. Her latest collection, Love Poems… Yes… REALLY… Love Poems, will be published in 2013 by Sybaritic Press.

Pilot

In the 1940s my father
piloted planes into
the European Theater
dropping troops
like dandelion spores.
The worse thing he saw
was those troops
being shot out of the air.
And another time
a shell came through
his co-pilot’s seat
moments after he
vacated it. My father didn’t
talk about the war much.
He answered questions
but never brought the
subject up. His reticence
seemed humble then
and it seems humble to me
now. Ten years ago
he died of a heart attack
leaving his children behind
in territory both foreign
and familiar. We fight for
him now, our pilot, the un-
assuming man who talk us
how to walk the
world, the common world.

Corey is the author of Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002), We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006), Some Identity Problems (2008), Listen: 29 Short Conversations (2009), The Ballad of the Two Tom Mores (2010), Following Richard Brautigan (2010), Gardner Remembers (2011), Before the Great Troubling (2011), Notes toward the Story and Other Stories (2011) and I’ll Give You Something to Cry About (2011).

The Care Givers

To get from my car to my mother’s house,
I have to step over the chalked body outline of a young girl.
She and her little brother are preparing for adulthood
By tracing each other on the concrete.
 
I am careful not to smear the chalk
And sit down on the porch next to my mother
Who’s watching, rolling her eyes.
On the neighbor’s porch is the grandmother of these children,
 
Red-faced and smoking, flicking the butt of her cigarette
Into the grass where months of others lie.
In the distance, black clouds announce their approach
With a crack of thunder.
 
“Get in here now,” the red-faced woman coughs.
At first the young girl ignores her,
Working her way around her brother’s hand,
Then adding the artistic license of a dropped gun.
 
“I said now.”
“I will when I’m finished, you old bitch.”
The girl snaps back,
As the first drops splatter on the sidewalk.
 
“You wouldn’t talk like that if your grandfather was here.”
“Well, call his prison cell
“And tell him he can beat me again
“In three years when he gets out.”
 
The rain falls more steadily,
As the grandmother tries another approach.
“You’ll get sick out there.
“Besides the rain will wash away anything you do”
 
The girl stands up straight and helps her little brother off the ground,
Who runs past his grandmother as the lightning flashes.
The young girl smashes her chalk on the sidewalk,
“Only a mean old bitch would say something like that.”

The Lost Princess

Going to his car, he meets two volunteer firemen
Who ask if he saw a runaway teenager from the neighborhood,
Who, high on drugs, banged out of her mother’s house
And ran screaming like a banshee into the woods.
 
“Her mother’s concerned,” the thinner one said,
“That she’ll fall and hit her head
“And freeze to death when the sun goes down.”
But today he was in a foul mood
 
With the young women in his own life.
“The world is filled with lost Princesses.
“How will you know you found the right one?
“Do you know the type of tiara she’s wearing?
 
“If she’s like the rest, she probably lost her glass slippers in 
“Some Prince Charming’s pick-up last night;
“Which is too bad, because you could have used
“One of them to identify her.”
 
“Mister, we’re just volunteers, not relatives.
“We were told she had a grey sweat shirt on.
“You must be thinking of somebody else.”

Ron is a retired English teacher who lives in Pennsylvania.

From the site of the act of rape, consternation spreads outwardly in concentric circles. – Eldridge Cleaver

This has got to be the worst crime that leaves the victim alive, I think every time I’m faced with the fact of rape. It’s the worst non-fatal crime. Rape is a weapon, whether used in the mass rapes during the Bosnian War, the Rwanda holocaust’s obliteration of Tutsi women, the brutalization of German females by French and Russian troops in WWII, the Japanese reign of terror at Nanking, etc., or in a dark alley or penthouse bedroom. Then there’s race-based rape, such as the crime against Betty Jean Owens, a black woman, by four white savages back in 1959, and Eldridge Cleaver’s raping of white women as “an insurrectionary act” before his radical reformation. The demonic act dehumanizes both the victim and victimizer. Since this world-/history-wide crime fills me with both rage and grief, Dustin Brookshire’s debut chapbook, To the One Who Raped Me (2012, Sibling Rivalry Press) touched me instantly. Though I hesitate to use the term “economy” in regard to poetry, Dustin has it. He makes measured but powerful statements on both the rape he suffered and the fallout. The following exchange with the author is meant to inform, disturb and offer guidance at the same time.

DAVID: Dustin, you were raped by a former boyfriend, which supports the fact that so many rapists are ex-intimates, relatives or friends of victims.  A passage in The Truth About Rape said it best: “Violating trust is a form of aggression.”  Tell us about the shock of being brutalized by a person who you once trusted, desired and welcomed sexually – who took care of you after you’d been in a car accident only a week earlier.  Why and when did you decide to write the book?

DUSTIN:  I recently watched Tyler Perry’s movie For Colored Girls. There is a rape scene in the movie, and the scene is horrific through its well-thought cinematography.  The perpetrator, someone the victim had just been on a date with, holds her down and rapes her while she stares at a clock.  The camera focuses on her face, her tears, her watching the clock and how much time is passing.  She’s lifeless in disbelief that she is being violated.  Lifelessness is a common theme among rape scenes in movies.  Maybe the lifelessness is a product of the victim’s disbelief, or because the victim is moving herself beyond what is happening.  I say “she” because I can’t recall a movie that depicts male-on-male rape in this fashion.  However, that’s how it was for me.  I couldn’t believe what was happening to me.   I was in shock.

I wrote poems about the rape because I didn’t feel comfortable speaking to anyone about it, and I didn’t start the cathartic process until six months after it happened.  Poetry has always served many purposes for me, one of those being a place of comfort.  Since one of the cardinal rules of poetry is to never assume that the writer is the speaker of the poem, it felt somewhat easier to put my thoughts, emotions and the experience on the page. 

In her autobiography Zora Neale Hurston writes: “There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.”  I couldn’t keep the agony inside me. That’s how the poems were born.  At the time I wasn’t even thinking about a book; I was trying to find a way to heal.

DAVID: In the opening poem, “I Don’t Like to Say the Word Rape”, the final stanza is chillingly brief: “There was No./Silence./Him coming inside.”  In the next poem, “Soap,” you describe a solemn but desperate act that has become the staple of rape-aftermath scenes: the shower that never quite cleanses.  “The feeling of him still clings,” you write later on.  Rape has a long reach, doesn’t it?  Even “I don’t like to say the word rape” includes the word “rape.”  Is the problem less about cleansing yourself and more about wishing to cleanse the aggressor of his behavior?  After all, in “To the One Who Raped Me” you reveal an impossible desire: “[T]o erase the moment after,/when you looked at me and smiled.”

DUSTIN:  The initial problem, for me, had nothing to do with wanting to cleanse my rapist of his behavior.  All of the emotions were centered on me.  I felt dirty.  I felt robbed.  I felt wrong.  I felt violated.  You think of an adjective with a negative connotation and there was probably some point that I felt it.  I wanted to rid myself of these feelings.  I was robbed and violated, but logically I knew that I wasn’t dirty or wrong.  I couldn’t stop feeling the way I did.  I can’t speak for all rape victims, but from the people I have spoken with and research I’ve conducted, I feel I can say this is commonality we share. 

For so long I wanted that moment after erased.  I had trouble reconciling how someone I once loved could hurt me in this manner and then smile at me after.  Now I no longer waste my energy on wanting to change what happened or that moment after.  Don’t get me wrong – I wish it hadn’t happened.  But I’ve accepted that it happened and that I can’t change the past.  I do control how I let the past affect me, and I won’t allow the rape to waste any of my energy or happiness.

DAVID: In “No Comedy in Tragedy” you describe your physical reaction to the rape scene in The Hills Have Eyes 2: “I twist. Heart races. Mouth goes dry…” The description is more explicit in the title poem:

I cringe now when there’s a rape scene in a movie.  My stomach cramps like a bully has hit me. I turn cold. Beads of sweat form a crown of shame across my forehead.

Doesn’t rape need to be depicted explicitly in order to make a truly sympathetic impact?  Some films come to mind instantly: Boorman’s Deliverance, Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, Craven’s The Last House on the Left, Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, Mia Goldman’s Open Window, Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen, Oplev’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange.  Your intense physical reactions aside, are you ultimately for or against rape scenes?

DUSTIN:  Am I for or against rape scenes?  This question is packed more than one of Dolly Parton’s bras, but I’m going to keep it simple.  My personal opinion is that rape is still too often a taboo topic for discussion, probably because it makes people uncomfortable.  People need to be reminded that it rape is not fiction.  Rape happens.  If a rape scene in a movie keeps people from forgetting that rape is still a problem that we’re dealing with, then I’m for rape scenes in movies.  However, I don’t watch rape scenes.  I still have a physical reaction to them, though my reaction is not as bad as it was the year following the rape. 

DAVID: Therapist Eugene Porter says that “there is no arena in which rape takes place between men and women that it does not take place between men and men,” and clinical psychologist David Lisak claims that “we have a cultural blind spot about this.”  Male-on-male rape is an underestimated crime in both seriousness and frequency.  This is especially true in prisons.  If you’re a new inmate who’s young, passive, diminutive and/or effeminate, you’re a prime target.  Another big rape-resume item in prison is being openly gay.  In “How Can I Tell Them” you write that your father taught you “to be a man’s man,” implying that he wouldn’t have shown much sympathy for what happened to you.  Does your being gay factor into this implied disconnection?  What dynamic does homosexuality play in rape?

DUSTIN:  My father is in his early 60s.  I didn’t think my father would have sympathy for me, and I thought he wouldn’t be able to understand how I was raped.  I feared he would place the blame of the incident on me.  I didn’t give my father enough credit.  After Sibling Rivalry Press accepted my chapbook I had a family meeting with my mother and father to tell them what had happened to me because I didn’t want them to come across my book by accident and be hurt that I didn’t tell them in person.  Telling my parents was such a liberating moment for me.  My parents were amazing. Even though he was trying to hide it, I could tell my father was angry that someone had hurt me.  My mother looked at me and asked, “You never told us because you were hurt and ashamed, even though you did nothing to be ashamed of?”  They’ll never know how perfectly that uncomfortable conversation went and how much I needed that from them.

For the longest time I felt that my father was disappointed that I am gay.  I based this feeling on conversations I overheard as a child and other events.  After I came out he never treated me any differently than he had before I came out.  I think I strained our relationship by feeling uncomfortable around my father because I worried how he felt about me being gay. Rape is about control, violation, and domination.  I’m not sure being gay has much of dynamic in rape other than the fact that a gay man or lesbian is most likely going to rape a person who is the same sex.

DAVID: Here’s a clip from your “Law & Order: SVU”: “I imagine what isn’t: The rapist victimized in prison. His breakdown.  A suicide attempt. A life without redemption.” Another poem, “Living Vicariously Through Extremities,” cheers on the vengeful action of the protagonist in Extremities, a 1986 film starring Farrah Fawcett: “The embers of revenge in her eyes. The loss of power through his hands like water through a sieve.”

Fawcett’s character prevents rape with her aggression, but anyone who has seen the original or remake of I Spit on Your Grave, which involves a sickening gang rape, knows the guilty but cathartic thrill of seeing an actual victim eventually strike back in “creative” ways.  In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo protagonist Lisbeth is raped by her legal guardian.  Eventually she tases and sodomizes the creep, then tattoos “I AM A SADIST, A PERVERT AND A RAPIST” on his belly.  “Godammit, why didn’t you fight?” you ask yourself in “The Flowerbed of Regret,” and you admit in the book’s title poem that “I often think of ways you could die.”  However, you acknowledge that the perp’s “suffering won’t bring me happiness.”  Are vengeful fantasies therapeutic at least?  Can two wrongs balance the scales?  Is there redemption for a rapist?

DUSTIN:  In the months after the rape, vengeful fantasies were therapeutic.  Simply put, they made me feel good.  I eventually realized, though, that these negative thoughts were a Band-Aid that wasn’t allowing my wound to heal.  Even though I enjoyed Lisbeth tattooing her rapist, in real life I don’t think two wrongs balance the scales.  We have a judicial system in the United States that is meant to balance the scales, and if we feel the system isn’t working, then we need to take action to correct it. 

I was raised to believe that we are supposed to forgive anyone who wrongs us because it is what Christ wants us to do.  I did forgive my rapist, but it had nothing to do with any Christian values.  To forgive is to give up resentment.  I gave up that resentment when I accepted that I had been raped and that being a rape survivor would always be part of me.  I did this for me – it wasn’t for the rapist.  I would never tell a rape victim that he/she has to forgive his/her rapist; however, I would the victim he/she has to accept that it happened and talk to at least one person about it.  A silent path isn’t a path to healing and recovery.

DAVID: I think rape of children is the worst kind.  It shatters the runner’s legs before he or she can start the race.  Anyone who watches A&E’s Intervention knows that the majority of addicts suffer from childhood sexual abuse.   And, sadly, most of the parents mishandle, bury or deny what happened.  But, as you write, “when it is done, it isn’t done.”  Do you think that child rape does more damage?  Considering the cover-ups of boy rape by clergy and scum such as Jerry Sandusky (not to mention the rampant forced prostitution in places such as India and Thailand), why is there such a wall of silence in underage-rape cases that involve boys in particular?

DUSTIN:  I knew someone in high school who was sexually abused by her brother when she was a child.  Her brother was also a child at the time.  I couldn’t comprehend why she allowed her brother to be in her life.  Then it came out that  he reenacted what a neighbor had done to him, and it was the fact that he reenacted his abuse on his sister that their parents found out about his abuse.

Instead of seeking out a therapist for them, their parents pulled a Prince of Tides: acted like it never happened.  The brother ended up with a drinking problem, and the girl tried to commit suicide twice.  I think life would have been different for them both if their parents hadn’t ignored what happened.

I think the rape of a child has the potential to do more damage because children are still developing psychologically.  Such an act arrests their development.  I don’t know why there is a wall of silence in underage rape cases involving boys. As I said earlier, the topic of rape is still often taboo, and this is very much the case for same-sex rape.  I don’t know if parents think they are protecting the victims by embracing silence and honestly believe healing will occur with the silence.  I don’t know if parents are selfish and believe people will think they are bad parents because the incidence occurred.

DAVID: In the early 1990s, Camille Paglia wrote that “rape is an outrage that cannot be tolerated in civilized society,” but she also made comments that many folks considered offensive.  “A woman going to a fraternity party is walking into Testosterone Flats, full of prickly cacti and blazing guns,” she said in an interview.  “A girl who goes upstairs alone with a brother at a fraternity party is an idiot.  Feminists call this ‘blaming the victim.’  I call it common sense.”  In The Accused, a film you reference in the book, Jodie Foster’s character is gang-raped in a bar – but her well-known promiscuity clouds where the blame lies.  While vulnerable folks should be more vigilant (because “tempting fate” can result in horrors) I insist that all legal and moral force must crash down on the rapist(s) alone.  What are your thoughts on the facts-of-life angle?

DUSTIN: I worried about what others would think when I started being open about being raped because I have never been an angel.  I love sex, and I was never shy about taking an attractive guy to my bed.  I was so worried that someone was going to try to use this fact against me.  Earlier on in my healing process, I wouldn’t have been able to handle that kind of comment.  Now, well, bring it.  I’d chew someone up and spit them out in five seconds if he/she dared tried to use my consensual decisions against me.  The bottom line is that no means no.  Wearing a short skirt isn’t asking for it.  Wearing tight clothes is not asking for it.  Being promiscuous does not mean that a person loses a right to decide who he/she has sex with. 

Many people do not know that The Accused is based on actual events.  On March 6, 1983, a woman entered Big Dan’s, a sports bar in Bedford, Massachusetts, for a drink and pack of cigarettes.  She was gang raped by six men while others watched and did nothing.  Some cheered the rapists on.  No person, male or female, should have to fear living his/her life for any reason.  We shouldn’t have to think in terms of what we can do to protect ourselves around every corner, but the sad fact is that we should think in these terms to a certain level.  I would never say a girl who goes to a man’s bedroom at a fraternity party is an idiot.  My best friend of over 10 years is a heterosexual male who was a member of fraternity.  Any girl would have been safe when alone with him.  That being said, I think erring on the side of caution is never a bad life tactic.  RAINN (the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) has seven categories of Ways to Reduce your Risk of Sexual Assault.  Check the tips out.  Share them with friends.  People have to talk about it.

DAVID: Would you want the one who raped you to read To the One Who Raped Me?  After all, the very title sounds like a dedication.  Having known him once, how do you think (or wish) the book would strike him?

DUSTIN:  The book is dedicated to the one who raped me.  It’s my way of saying fuck you.  I used to think he would realize the book was dedicated to him and burn him with embarrassment.  The rape was about control.  I broke up with him, and he took what he wanted to end it in control.  A year after the rape he sent me an email that read: “Hey. You were on my mind.  How are you?”  Do you think he would have checked in on me if he felt that he had done anything wrong?

DAVID: Sibling Rivalry Press donates $1 to the DeKalb Rape Crisis Center each time one of your chapbooks sells.  Tell us about the DeKalb and how you became involved with it.

DUSTIN: I have always felt the need to pay a penance for not pressing charges.  This penance took the form of doing good, and I wanted my chapbook to do good in my community.  I knew about the DeKalb Rape Crisis Center because they are known in the metro Atlanta area for their amazing work. I reached out to the DRCC’s executive director, Phyllis Miller, to confirm that the DRCC would accept donations from the purchase of my chapbook.  I’ll never forget the phone call with Phyllis.  I was so nervous, but it all melted away because Phyllis was a delight.  She was thrilled that I thought of them.   I met her for a tour of the facility and to have an in-depth in-person conversation with her.

Even though it was evident on their website that the DRCC provides services to all people – no matter their sexual orientation or gender – Phyllis reaffirmed that the DRCC operates on the premise that rape is a human problem, not just a women’s issue. Phyllis and her team do such great work.  I hope people will consider donating to the DRCC or their nearest rape crisis center. 

DAVID: You’ve said that “silence won’t change the world,” and I admire your brave voice, Dustin.  Now that you’ve slain the dragon with To the One Who Raped Me, what’s the plan for your next work?  Any closing words?

DUSTIN:  I have another chapbook entitled I Should Write Soap Operas that I am going to be sending out this year in the hopes of finding it a home, and I’m putting the finishing touches on my first full-length manuscript.

Thank you, David, for giving me this space in SubtleTea.  And I need to say thank you for giving me what I consider my first real publishing credit back in 2005.  To anyone who was raped and is living in silence, tell one person that you trust about what happened to you.  You will be amazed at the relief you’ll experience. 

Buy the book here.

Read some poems here.

RAINN: Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network  http://www.rainn.org/