Txt
Barcelona
2004
Nos obstinamos en hacer como que la violación es un hecho extraordinario y periférico, fuera de la sexualidad, evitable. Como si no concerniera más que a poca gente, agresores y víctimas, como si constituyera una situación excepcional, que no dice nada del resto. Cuando está, bien al contrario, en el centro, en el corazón mismo, en la base de nuestra sexualidad.
King Kong Theory, Virginie Despentes
There Are Countless Ways to Violate Us. And countless ways to react against agression.
When I was a little girl, I used to read Ragazza. From there I moved to Cosmopolitan. I was turning to “The Institute of Womanhood.” And from there I looked for advice and clues about life.
Some help.
One of the topics that interested me the most was what to do in case of rape. How foolish my investigations now seem! Above all, how innocent.
All this search on a theoretical level, when in reality what would have served me better would have been to learn more about violence on a practical level.
I spent my childhood reading and drawing alone. I never played much; I was a scared child and physical activity as such only came with the mandatory physical education classes of adolescence. But I never liked team sports. I was only interested in solitary sports: swimming, cycling, running.
Nobody taught me how to fight and I didn’t learn on my own either. This would certainly have been useful. More useful than the oh-so-helpful glossy brochures of the “Institute of Womanhood.”
And it happened:
I go out for the night with a girl I have just met that same afternoon. We meet two guys. They are both very tall, one very thin and the other one huge. They invite us to eat at their house and later to go and party with them. We drink a lot. A taxi to go back home. I tell the taxi driver the address of my hotel, but the huge one screams his address and the taxi driver pays attention to him instead of me. We arrive at his house.
Maybe I should add that it was my first night in an unknown city, in a country that was new to me – that I was alone and 20-years-old.
We arrive at the house. The thin one leaves with the other girl, and me, I stay alone with the giant. Later the other girl tells me that the thin one went with her to her hotel.
Me, I stay alone with him and I know what’s going to happen. I don’t escape running. There isn’t light in the streets. I don’t know what part of the city I’m in. Drunk and confused. I try to leave, he doesn’t let me. Physical violence. I remember him as enormous and I’m a tall girl.
He pushes me into a room and locks the door with a key. He throws me onto the bed.
I know what’s going to happen. Everyone knows. I know. You know. He knows.
I think about three things: AIDS, pregnancy, and physical pain. If up until that moment I had been resistant and weepy, I changed dramatically. I said to myself, “Come on, baby. It’s just one guy more, one dick more. Fuck him so that he doesn’t fuck you. So that he doesn’t come inside you. So that he doesn’t hurt you. So that he doesn’t make you pregnant. So that he doesn’t give you a disease.
And so I started to fuck him with all my might. I got on top of him. I fucked him. I convinced him to wear a condom for a while.
And I concentrated so hard on the subject that I even came. One of those orgasms that relieves tension, nerves. One of those unexplainable orgasms. Explain it to the right honourable judge.
When it was finally over, I cried and cried.
When I finally got back to my hotel, I wrote down what had happened.
And I went to the Spanish embassy to get the morning after pill so that I wouldn’t get pregnant. They asked me if I was a virgin. They told me it wasn’t rape because I wasn’t a virgin. They gave me a tranquilizer. I slept 24 hours in my hotel bed.
I still had four weeks left on the island.
I went out into the street.
In all of those horrible magazines, I had read sordid stories of raped women incapable of enjoying their bodies again. I don’t want this to happen to me, I thought. I decided to have sex again as soon as possible to forget the incident.
That night I met three friends. She was lesbian, she said. The two guys, bisexual, they said. That night the four of us fucked. It was the beginning of a great friendship. They showed me their city and made me laugh. I had a lot of sex with them and with all of their friends. I was drinking a lot, and in the morning I didn’t remember anything. We wandered through the city, and people I didn’t know greeted me, when actually I had had sex with them the night before. I was fucking everything that moved. It was a time when I would have fucked god himself.
And I’ll stop here, because I’m not going to tell you my entire life story. I only wanted to speak about the orgasm of my violation, because I thought it might be useful to someone.
Who knows. We have so many stories to tell.
It rains every evening in Havana. A fine and silent rain that alleviates the heat and refreshes you to pass the night.