But Richard pushed all his weight on me so I couldn’t move. He threw the condom across the room and was suddenly hard again. “Richard, no!” I said—much louder this time—while he pulled my arms above my head and held me down. Then he penetrated me, harsh and defiant, detached and violent.
I whimpered, “No,” for the final time.
The rain outside seemed to come down harder—the thunder rumbled again and again, building. I closed my eyes and imagined I was outside staring up at the sky, with rain falling all around me but miraculously not on me. I was immune to the water, to the weather, to the storm. In my head, I simply observed the raging rain and growling thunder in every direction—above me, around me, inside me.
Richard finished, then let go of me. And though I could have run, I lay there instead. Finally I broke my own silence by quietly reiterating the cold, hard fact. “I said no.”
His back was to me, and I saw it tense up. He got up and put his jeans on, then left the room.
My arms hurt where he had held them down. I got up, too, and quickly got dressed. Richard was in the bathroom, and as I put on my second shoe, my eyes briefly stopped at the photo of his family I had gazed at earlier that evening. “You’re all strangers,” I whispered to them as I caught a glimpse of myself in a small hanging mirror I hadn’t noticed until then. There was mascara running down my cheeks. When did I start crying?
I bolted down Richard’s stairs and outside, but as soon as the front door slammed behind me, I realized I had forgotten my bag. I had no choice but to go back for it, since it held my car keys. When I turned around and faced the front door, I spotted a sign hanging there that I hadn’t seen before: U.S. Army: Forever Straight.
I rang the bell, and Richard—still shirtless—opened it. I didn’t make eye contact with him at first, but I tried to play it cool. “Sorry . . . I forgot my bag.”
I waited there, on the porch, in the pouring rain, as Richard went to retrieve it. He came down and handed it to me, and I smiled as best I could. “Thanks,” I said, nonchalantly, wondering how I was supposed to act after something like that happened.
And in a moment so brief that anyone else would have missed it, Richard’s eyes finally met mine. They looked tired and sunken in, and I remember briefly wondering what ghosts he might have hidden in there. The rain poured on my head as we each stood there silently, in those final seconds together, and I tightly clutched my bag like it was my parting gift. I opened my mouth to say something inconsequential—not that I had any words left—but Richard beat me to it. “Well,” was all he managed, before shutting the door and leaving me and my own ghosts, the ones I now know all too well, on his front porch.
It was two A.M. now, and the rain was unrelenting. I had no idea where to go—I could hardly go home like this—and so I drove around New Brunswick, crying openly, wondering what had just happened to me.
Stopped at a red light, I spotted out of the corner of my eye a disheveled but cute young guy on the corner, smoking a cigarette, waiting for the light to change. Even in my hysterics, I wondered why he didn’t have an umbrella. I looked closer and realized something about the young man was familiar. Wait . . . was that . . . ? I could hardly believe it—it was my brother! I rolled down the window and shouted, “Jeremy! Jeremy!”
Let me reiterate, it was the middle of the night and pouring rain. New Brunswick is indeed a small city, but running into someone you know like this was highly unusual—having it be your brother, whom you see but a few times a year—seemed downright impossible. But then, this whole night felt impossible, so all bets were off.
Jeremy was just as perplexed as I was. He stared into my window, puffing on his cigarette, trying to make sense of the strange girl in the 1986 Toyota Camry. I saw the moment of recognition land on his face like a revelation. “Jazz?” he finally said, as he ran toward my car and got in the passenger side—no doubt wondering why his nineteen-year-old sister was driving around New Brunswick at two A.M., weeping.
The rest of the night is a haze to me. We drove back to the Purple House, where Jeremy and I remained sitting in my car, and I told him everything that had happened. He smoked cigarette after cigarette. We were both drenched from the rain, both freezing. I put the heat on, and we just sat there in silence warming up, thawing our hands and our hearts. After about twenty minutes, Jeremy asked me—quite chivalrously and calmly, actually—if he could please get a bunch of his friends and go beat the hell out of Richard. I managed to laugh, suddenly—perhaps inappropriately—finding the whole thing very Sharks-and-Jets. I touched Jeremy’s knee and thanked him, then said no, absolutely not.
“I could, Jazz,” he told me, slowly shaking his head left to right, staring determinedly out the window.
“I know, Jer.” I wasn’t crying anymore, but a fresh devastation nonetheless settled in. I knew full well that things would always be different now, and that a piece of me would forever remain on Richard’s porch, and in Richard’s story. “I know you could. But . . . don’t,” I told my brother. “He’s probably crazy. Who knows if he has a gun?”
And so Jeremy didn’t beat him up. But the fact that he even asked—that he wanted to—was something that I would always remember as the moment when I knew that my brother absolutely loved me.
And that was all I was really looking for.
SIX
where the whole world seemed to start
The next morning, I went to Planned Parenthood to get the morning-after pill. I sat in the waiting room and overheard one young woman talking to another. “This is, like, my ninth abortion,” she said, then guffawed.
Where was I?
“Singer? Jasmin Singer?” The young woman with a tight ponytail working behind the desk called me over and asked me why I was there. I was standing in the middle of the waiting room, still very much in earshot of the other people there.
“Sorry?” I asked, wondering if this was really happening—if she honestly expected me to announce, in front of a roomful of strangers, that I had maybe, probably, definitely been date-raped the previous evening.
“Why. Are. You. Here?” The receptionist questioned again—punching each word impatiently, making her point even clearer with a punctuated snap of her gum and a widening of her eyes.
“I need to speak to a nurse,” I said softly.
“Why?” she repeated, still at full volume.
“Excuse me?” Was this really happening?
“Why do you need to speak to a nurse?” she asked again.
That was when I whispered, “I think I was date-raped. I want the morning-after pill.”
The woman behind the desk snapped her gum one final time, then just stared at me for a few awkward seconds. She kept her gaze on me, and I found it difficult to read her expression. “Antonia,” she yelled behind her. “We’ve got a girl here who was date-raped.”
My stomach jumped into my throat when I heard her say those words out loud. There was absolutely no question that everybody in the waiting room had heard this receptionist’s announcement. I instantly regretted coming in and eyeballed the door to see if I could make a run for it.
A second later, though, before I thought to sprint, Antonia emerged, a look of concern on her face. “Come with me,” she said softly, and I did.
I decided not to press charges, which Antonia was hardly sympathetic about. And I guess I understand why, given that her job is partly to embolden women to say no and to educate the community that no means no.
“If you don’t press charges,” Antonia scolded, a few minutes later in her office, “he could go out and do this again to other girls.”
Ah, guilt tactics. I was all too familiar with those.
I noticed in my periphery that there was a vending machine out in the hallway. I honestly wondered if it would be rude to excuse myself for a moment and grab a bag of Doritos.
I have thought about my decis
ion not to press charges time and time again over the past decade and a half since that night. I have questioned and then re-questioned my decision, but I have never found the precise moment of clarity that I’ve sought. I realize that what happened was indeed date rape, and I know the harsh statistics on the vast number of people who are victim to this crime. I do not blame myself for what happened, but I can’t let myself off the hook for my poor judgment in allowing myself to be there in the first place, when I had been clear with myself all along that I did not want to have sex with him. Pressing charges would have resulted in a “he said, she said” that I was not mentally prepared for during that particular tumultuous moment in my life.
My future activism would come to encompass women’s rights and awareness and prevention of sexual violence. I would often think back to the night with Richard and feel fueled to educate other young women to take every measure they could not to wind up in that position, and what to do if they found themselves there anyway—or what to do in the aftermath. I would also encourage women to speak up about their own rapes, so that others would realize that they were not alone and that what happened was not their fault. Though I didn’t press charges, what happened with Richard informed the rest of my life, and—eventually, after a lot of healing—it helped to solidify my worldview of compassion and my commitment to speaking up for those who can’t or, for whatever reason, won’t.
On that morning, as I sat at the Planned Parenthood in New Brunswick, eyeballing the Doritos, I was told to go into the exam room. A few minutes later, a middle-aged woman with tiny square glasses and a familiar white coat came in.
“Hello, Jasmin,” she said gently. “I’ll be doing your exam this morning.”
“My . . . exam?” I asked. This was news to me, and I didn’t miss a beat. “Sorry, I don’t want an exam.”
The idea of yet another person, even a doctor, penetrating my vagina was too much to bear. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever be naked again.
“You need an exam if I’m going to do a rape kit,” the doctor explained emotionlessly.
“I don’t want a rape kit,” I said, my voice finally quavering. “Besides, I already took a shower at the Purple House.”
“The what?” asked the doctor, arching an eyebrow.
—
Gynecologists and I did not have a good history. I had gone for my first exam the previous year, at eighteen. Pushing past the scarring memory of my pediatrician’s invasive exam for long enough to make the appointment and force myself to walk in the door, I’d decided that since I was sexually active, I needed to be getting annual checkups. The fact that I dropped my favorite ring in the toilet within ten minutes of entering the gynecologist’s office should have tipped me off to how nervous I was, and, as it turned out, I had every reason to be. Moments later, with my feet in the stirrups and my knees wide apart, a medical student walked in, and my gynecologist awkwardly introduced us.
“Hi,” I said meekly.
So as two strangers looked into my vagina—which was serving as a teaching tool at that moment—and just when I didn’t think it could possibly get worse, my gynecologist told me I could stand to lose some weight.
I didn’t respond. I just stared at the ceiling with the rectangular panels and I wondered how far out of the way it would be to stop at Wendy’s on the way home.
—
I recalled all this on that morning at Planned Parenthood, while the irked doctor—whose time I was apparently wasting—pursed her lips and crossed her arms.
No—I would not be examined. I was tired of spreading my legs.
And so she silently wrote my scrip for the morning-after pill, and I dutifully took my dose.
Years after my debacle, when I was performing in an educational theater company that brought attention to issues such as rape and sexual violence, I confided in my castmates about my experiences. They listened patiently and empathically, and—through offering their shared experiences and helping me to plant seeds of self-love that I never knew were possible—helped me continue my healing. Throughout my process of being trained as an actor-educator and slowly opening myself up again, I learned that, refreshingly, many Planned Parenthood facilities (and similar ones) are indeed wonderful places of learning, havens for empowering women, safe spaces for people dealing with sexual trauma. I found that although some of my experiences at that particular Planned Parenthood were unprofessional and painful, there is, in general, a lot more awareness now, and staff are much better trained in dealing with sexual violence.
—
Shortly after the date rape, I called Timmy—who had apparently been waiting for my call ever since I ditched him a year and a half prior. “Jazz . . .” he said to me on the phone, with an exhale and palpable relief. “Jazz . . .” he repeated, not finding any other words, but not really needing to.
We decided to meet in the parking lot of a diner on Route 18. Upon seeing me, Timmy just stared. I suspected then, and later had my suspicions confirmed, that he was taken aback by the amount of weight I had put on since he’d last seen me. He got into the passenger side of my car and gently took my hand. We sat in silence, and eventually I took a piece of his bright blond hair and tucked it behind his ear. He leaned in and kissed me, and we were together once again.
That summer, after finally convincing my mother that New York was safe enough for her quickly maturing and reliable daughter, I resumed college at Pace University in lower Manhattan, continuing for my BFA in acting. Mom recognized the difficult year I’d had and was thrilled to have me excited about something again. Finally, I was a New Yorker! When my stepfather, Wayne, drove me to the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn Heights for the first time, a massive hotel-turned-dorm where I’d live for the next two and a half years, I felt suddenly lighter. Tears lightly streamed down my face as I moved into my new apartment and overheard the unmistakable Brooklyn accents of passersby—I was, I knew then, finally home, maybe for the first time in my life.
The view from my room was a sweeping panorama of the New York City skyline, with the towers of the magnificent World Trade Center front and center, just on the other side of the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn Heights was quaint enough—with the nearby shop-filled Montague Street—and the subway, which was just downstairs, took only four minutes to get to Manhattan’s financial district, where my school was and where the whole world seemed to start.
My roommate, Jennifer, and I became fast friends. She was a recovering anorexic—a teeny tiny slip of a thing—and had replaced her severe eating disorder with an obsession that her teeth were falling out. She’d wake up at night and run to the bathroom to make sure they were still there, intact. In the evenings, she’d ask if I was planning on eating a bag of potato chips—the sound of me crunching away inexplicably comforted her. The loud crunch of the chewing gave her some kind of a high and so I gladly indulged her.
When I moved in, I brought with me several dozen microwavable containers of mac and cheese—each serving in its own little disposable plastic bowl (apparently I was unaware that you could get food in New York). When I think back to the crap I ate then—the nutritionally void, highly caloric, processed, addictive foods, the only thing that horrifies me more than the heart disease I was actively training for is the inordinate amount of wasteful packaging I was throwing away. Each time I ate one of these bowls of mac and cheese, I created an entire bag full of nonrecyclable plastic waste—which I’m sure is still floating around the ocean somewhere, clogging up the world just like its contents had clogged my arteries.
Habit is a funny thing, and we gravitate back toward our well-worn relationships—such as mine with food—for a reason. Though New York gave me the brand-new start I needed, and glimmers of happiness began to glow inside me like the flickers of light that dotted the skyline, I remained completely unconscious about food, and ate it with fervor. I was indeed recovering from the previous year, yet my old, poor eating habit
s didn’t budge. What I ate, even though it was always unhealthy, provided me with the warmth and familiarity of an old friend, and my erratic and disordered eating habits offered a bridge between my old and new selves. Simply put, it was familiar, and so I kept at it.
Each morning, I would either walk across the Brooklyn Bridge or, if I was rushing, jump on the subway and ride one stop to lower Manhattan, heading directly to the Stage Door Deli—located just across the street from the World Trade Center—and get a cheese omelet on a toasted “everything” bagel with a side of steak fries. I would then walk the couple of blocks to school and consume my breakfast quickly and breathlessly.
I recall a friend of mine, Regan, wanting to eat together one morning. We had just sat down in the theater office, where I often hung out. Regan realized she needed a napkin, so she left the office to go to the front desk and grab a paper towel. I was keenly aware that I had a warm bag with my meal in it, waiting to be ravaged. When my friend returned not a minute later, I had already consumed my entire cheese omelet bagel.
I often tried to downplay the amount I ate, the speed with which I ate it, and the obsessive way food constantly circled around my thoughts and my days. I would frequently eat in privacy—as I had as a kid—feeling 100 percent comfortable (thrilled, in fact) consuming bagel after bagel, bag after bag of Doritos, in solitude. I was careful not to let my compulsion show in public. So when Regan came back into the theater office with her napkin and her uneaten breakfast, and saw that I was taking my final bite of my enormous meal, she stopped cold in her tracks—I had been caught. There was no backpedaling this particular moment, and so all I did was look at the floor, mouth full of eggs, and mumble, “Sorry—I was really hungry.” I was also mortified. It was as though she had caught me masturbating.
Then again, perhaps I wasn’t hiding as well as I thought—even aside from what I ate. As much as I wanted to avoid it, my carefully constructed veneer was starting to show cracks. And Regan wasn’t the only one to notice.
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