By April Vázquez
My rapist’s name is John.
I say it in the present tense because, though the rape took place years ago, John will never not be my rapist. I carry him with me, a tree ring marking a drought year, Longfellow’s cross of unmelted snow. He lurks when I see a rape scene in a movie or read an account of yet another powerful man accused of sexual misconduct. He’s there when I warn my daughters for the umpteenth time, Men are dangerous; you can’t be too careful. I even warn my gay daughter, because a rapist won’t care that she’s gay any more than John cared that I was crying and begging and saying, very clearly, No.
My rapist’s name is John.
That’s most of what I remember about him. The rest is just impressions: dark hair, dark eyes, a little shorter than me, a decade older. The me I was then seems so young now, so unsuspecting. Fearless, and full of blithe, unsullied trust. Though I never saw them, I knew that John had a wife and baby daughter. The latter must be about the age I was then, when her father forced himself into me and took my trust and fearlessness away forever.
My rapist’s name is John.
I carry him with me the way people carry a deformity, a tumor: something secret, alien, sickening. I remember him at odd moments, checking papers, washing the dishes, tying my shoes. It isn’t because something reminds me of him. More that he’s always there, underneath. Something not quite right, like a dental cavity, or a bruise.
My rapist’s name is John.
If I saw him now, I doubt I could pick him out of a police line-up. Not that there was anything like that at the time: no accusation, no report, no kit of evidence and swabs. Like a majority of rape victims, I didn’t report what John did to me. I was drunk, and he gave me a ride home from the restaurant where we both worked, a friend offering his services in my hour of need. He was popular, the center of that social circle, whereas I was shy and geeky, ill at ease around hip new coworkers. How could I accuse John? Anyway, I felt responsible, and my mother agreed. Who told me to get drunk after my shift on the tequila shots that John served up, one after another, to celebrate my graduation? “I should have known better,” “I was asking for it,” and every other trope that men, and some women, use to explain rape and take the onus off the rapist, the only guilty party in the crime.
My rapist’s name is John.
And if I could see him today, I don’t know what I’d say to him, because there’s nothing to say. He damaged me in ways that I can’t put into words. He made me a different person, irrevocably, permanently. I felt tainted long after the STD tests came back negative. Circumspect. Vulnerable. Ashamed. He’s the reason why I force my daughters to look at Natalie Holloway’s Wikipedia page and read out the facts in the case of Ariel Castro. Don’t feel like you have to be nice to men, I tell them. You don’t owe them anything. Never get into a car alone with a man. Stick together, in pairs. I can’t let my guard down, because if the evening news makes anything clear, it’s that things are no better now than they were two decades ago, when John raped me. Twenty years: long before I knew about the crimes of Bill Cosby or Brock Turner or Harvey Weinstein or Brett Kavanaugh or the serial sexual assaulter who managed to get himself elected president of the United States.
My rapist’s name is John.
And like most rapists, he was in the “friend or acquaintance” category. I knew his name. I still do. Because, although under normal circumstances John would have passed through my life with virtually no impact, his name long forgotten, the reality is that I’ll never forget John’s name. It will be with me till the day I die.
April Vázquez is the winner of the William Van Dyke Short Story Prize and the mother of humans Daisy, Danni, and Dahlia, dogs Severus, Sugar, Peanut, and fish Sunset and Ocean.
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