For Your Consideration: Letters of Thanks to my Rapist

For Your Consideration: Letters of Thanks to my Rapist

I am reluctant to write about you raping me. Rape is the type of thing that puts people so very on edge; edge of their seats, clinging to the edge, need a drink to take the edge off kind of edge.  

      Before you raped me, I was vibrant in the worst kind of way. I moved like I was a dancer and danced like I was terrible in bed. But I was not a walking contradiction, because to say that would be cliché, and I was no cliché.  

      It's true that most of the time I was being watched, a little vibrant spec in the middle of a sea of black umbrellas and suits, a spec that was undeniably seen. If you were looking at something special then, something that seemed to rise to the top in a bubble, then you may have been staring at me. I wonder now if you chose me for this reason.

      Those days, before you raped me, I had a smell so very few ever forgot although they never even really knew it. I left my scent wherever I went, my bakery-sweet sweat to linger in white cotton curtains that blew in gusts, in silk tablecloths spoiled with red wine, sheets dirty with sex juice. It was a scent that reminded people of the worst kind of girl, one who lies and cheats and has found the perfect rhythm and swing of her gait - because she's figured out the power of her own hips. It was this scent that allowed me to attract and collect people like flies to sticky paper. Then I'd disappear. No warnings, no letters. Nothing at all. That is how it was with me, then. In time they would all get over it, like a death or a birth or all those things that happen in between, but every so often a gust of wind would pass, or a fork would drop to the floor, and it would somehow stir up a memory of me that they thought was settled. An atom of me, a fraction of a drop of my sweet sweat would soar in suddenly and cling to one hair right inside of their nose. And it would be enough to make them blow up, it would be enough to make them throw up, it would be enough to make them get up and...