Evil Gal Productions

So it’s five days into 2013, and already I’m on Plan B.

Okay, that’s not entirely true.

I’m not technically on it anymore, but I was on January 5.  And ladies, lemme tell ya, what a delightful experience!  Simply a rainbow cornucopia of pleasure!  A veritable fruit salad of Nausea, Fatigue, Dread, and A Longing For Sweet, Sweet Death!

(FYI – Most folks might find this entry contains more than they care to know about me, in which case, seriously, what are you doing here, anyway?  Have you learned nothing?  Go read some Berenstain Bears books and play with your sexless little Kens and Barbies!  Off with you!)

Suffice it to say that on Saturday, the Finance and I were “celebrating” our return home from various family vacations when –

WHOOPS!

He experienced…

…let’s just call it a wardrobe malfunction.

Initially I wasn’t worried.  In fact, given that I’m almost hypervigilant about my cycle (more on “why” later), I already knew I wasn’t in Prime Ovulation Territory.  Not to mention the condoms we use are as thick as kitchen gloves (sorry, hon) and are chock-full of spermicide.  No, as a general rule, we have that thing strapped, tranq’d, and in lockdown, and in the nearly five years we’ve been together, we’ve never had to change the (BLANK) Days Since Our Last Workplace Accident billboard.

But then – shock of all shocks – for the first time in my entire life, I thought, “Well, I’ve already deemed 2013 The Year Of Glorious Mistakes… maybe this is the Universe’s way of doubling-down on my bet!  Calling my bluff!  Ha ha… oh… hrm…”

I reclined there for a few minutes, all warm and vaguely amused, imagining – me!  a mom!  what hath Hell wrought?  but maybe in a good way? – when I turned to the Finance to share all this shit out loud, y’know, have a good chuckle.

Which is when the Finance asked, “Well, but – what about your meds?”

And holy scheisseballs on a Saltine, Brunhilde.

Way to snap me back into reality at Mach 1,000.  My cervical vertebrae are still vibrating.  (Which sounds a lot dirtier than it really is.) (Pity.)

You see, one of the medications I’m on for Bipolar II increases the chances of birth defects.  If I ever decide to actively plan to get pregnant, in order to be on the safe side, I’ll have to stop taking this medication.  So more bipolar crazy, but less birth defects.  It’s a trade-off.

However, as my shrink has reassured me time and again, this medication doesn’t necessarily cause birth defects, it just increases the chances of them.

Now, I don’t know about you, but if someone told me that going to the mall on Tuesdays increased my chances of having my feet chopped off by a psychotic clown, I would definitely find another day to go to the mall.

And thus suddenly that nice warm maybe feeling evaporated like water on the surface of the sun—ffft!  Instantaneous.  And –

“Oh, shit,” I said out loud.

“Oh, fuck,” I said out loud.

“Oh fucking fucking fuck fuck,” I said, and launched myself upright and into the kitchen, still naked, grabbing my journal, where I meticulously keep track of my only-slightly-less-than-clockwork cycle.  Flipping through the pages like an Evelyn Wood valedictorian (look it up, young’uns), I doublechecked my math over and over again.

Seventeen days.  Seventeen days.

If my cycle’s this long, on the seventeenth day, I’m fine.

If my cycle’s this long, on the seventeenth day, I’m fine.

If my cycle’s that long, on the seventeenth day, I’m… should be fine.

Should be.

And that “should be” is what screwed my mental.  So to speak.

See, I can’t abide “should be.”  In my experience, “should be” is the equivalent of  “definitely isn’t.”  Because over a decade ago I took a gamble on “should be”…

…and lost.

Big time.

So big that – to boil it down – “should be” left me sobbing in a corner three weeks later while a man screamed, “You fucking babykiller!” at me.

After that, keeping track of my cycle just felt like self-preservation.

Yet all these years – and SO MUCH THERAPY – later, I realize that this situation is about as far from that situation as you can possibly get while on the same plane of reality.  I can’t even picture the Finance thinking those words, much less screaming them, but all the same that “should be” slammed me right in the fucking gut like a steel-toed boot.  We’re talking flashbacks, projectile tears, pure panic-attack adrenaline.

But never again, I’d said to myself then.  And never again, I said to myself now.

“Should be” is not an option.

So I called the nearest drugstore: they had Plan B.  Check.

Need a prescription?: nope.  Check.  (Thank you, FDA… AS OF ONLY THREE YEARS AGO.)

Check drug interactions with my shrink: and…

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.

The very same medication I’m on that increases the chances of birth defects?  Makes Plan B less effective.  Apparently it accelerates the rate at which Plan B is metabolized – the bottom line being: you have to take TWO DOSES of the super-potent one-dose version.  That is, take one super-potent pill, wait 12 hours, then take the other super-potent pill.

Twice the side effects with still no guarantee the shit would even work.

But… should be…

“Honestly, you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” I thought.  And not for the first time, “Why is being crazy so fucking inconvenient?”

(Oh, and I should probably note here that if you wanna get all screamy rageful anti-choice in the comments, I’ll be deleting you.  I mean, please, feel free to express your opinions calmly and respectfully – even if they differ from my own.  But be a dickbag, and I’ll chuck you out on your ass.  My house: them’s the rules.)

So within an hour and a half of the first “Oh, shit,” I was taking the first dose.

And then commenced feeling like shit for the next two days, as I followed up with the second dose 12 hours later.

It was like having a low-grade stomach flu, except you can’t throw up or you’ll have to take the pills All. Over. Again.  Which, at fifty bucks a pop, is some expensive fucking vomiting, so you just lie on the couch and feel barfy and gross and have that oversalivation thing where your mouth fills with spit and you think If I have to swallow one more mouthful of spit… which just makes you feel even more barfy, and your stomach grumbles aggressively — aggressively!  angrily!  like, “Fuck your stupid libido, Smith!” — and it’s like you weigh north of 600 lbs. because you sure as hell can’t get up and why can’t you just pee right here? — upholstery can be cleaned! — since the bathroom is miles away and you’re just… so… damned… tired… but you can’t sleep as you’re nauseous and when you do doze off you have nightmares, and even watching TV is too much effort and dying would just be so much easier, wouldn’t it?, because suddenly there are only three circles of hell: Pregnant, Nauseous, and Dying, and Dying is the least worst one by far…

…all this because I was blasting my body with a tera-fuckton of hormones that I barely survived, much less any random cells lying around in my uterus.

Actually, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be sterile for the next four months or so.

Poor Finance, though.

He’s going to be celibate.

[[POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE]]

Due to the graphic nature of the following topic, this entry will, I’m afraid, be brimming over with profanity-encrusted vitriol.

Granted, that in itself is not especially shocking (right now my regular subscribers are going, “Bitch, you know we can read, right?”), but when I found myself on Saturday morning railing about this story to The Finance for almost a solid hour, I realized if I didn’t exorcise my rage through writing, I was going to contract some kind of soul cancer.

You should know that in all good faith, I tried to approach this post with something that at least approximated sanity, but it seems when it comes to this particular occurrence I have no control over my anger whatsoever.

My anger has emancipated itself, and is thinking of getting a neck tattoo.

So if you’re having a bad day and you just can’t take the ugly, or you – very understandably – don’t want your marshmallow harshed, that’s totally fine.  Duck out now and wait for the next entry, where I’ll try to talk about something funny, like…  uh…

(Yeah, turns out when you sit there and just try to think of “something funny,” it’s really hard.  All I kept seeing was monster trucks and koala bears.  Fucking hilarious.)

Thus fair warning: this post is gnarly.

If you’ve come this far, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

* * *

On the front page of Saturday’s Los Angeles Times, I was stunned to see an article reporting that a woman had been raped on an LA city bus.

My inner knee-jerk went something like:

“What do you mean ‘on a bus’?  What the fuck?  Was there nobody else on the fucking bus?  No driver?  Was the bus in park?  Was it hidden in a fucking underground tunnel?”

And the answer is no.

The bus was moving.

During rush hour.

In broad daylight.

With a driver.

And with other passengers on it. 

All of whom claimed not to see anything.

* * *

Returning home from her special education classes, an 18 year-old woman – really, a teenager with the intellect of a 10 year-old – was raped in the back of this bus as it trundled along its regular route, making its usual stops, before finally reaching the end of its line, where the rapist at last disembarked.

Taking into account there are about 12 different WRONGS about this situation — and I’m pretty sure we’d all be in agreement as to what those 12 things are — I’m not going to file the standard list of grievances here.  There’s plenty of fingerpointing that can be done, but I’ll tell you one person who is absolutely blame-free:

That 18 year-old girl.

Let me be as clear as I possibly can on that point:

This girl did nothing wrong.

Reading the first few column-inches, I was filled with the same outrage (and outright rage) I’m sure a lot of you are experiencing right now.  Not an unusual response, I’d say.  Frankly, I’d be worried if you didn’t feel a little sick to your stomach.

However, horrifying as the event itself was, that wasn’t what launched me into a ranting cyclone of fury.

No, that happened when I read this quote by sheriff’s Sgt. Dan Scott:

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“Unfortunately [the victim] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

.

* * *

Has your jaw ever dropped so hard it popped?

Well apparently that can happen.

* * *

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“Unfortunately [the victim] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

.

Are you fucking shitting me?

Honestly, be honest now: are you fucking SHITTING ME?

The wrong place?  At the wrong time?

No.

Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is walking under an ACME safe just as it drops.   Wile E. Coyote had a bad case of the wrong place/wrong times.

This girl?

Was ABSOLUTELY NEVER in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it’s repugnant that anyone — anyone — should say that she was.

I want you to look again carefully.

Look closely.

Look at the words:

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 “Unfortunately [the victim] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

 .

The Victim.

Did something wrong.

Which is why she got raped.

 .

Oh, absolutely not.

The heat of a thousand suns’ worth of Fuck You, Man.

If a city bus – what we literally call public transportation – if being in public is “the wrong place” –

If 5 p.m. – rush hour, the busiest time of day, with the greatest number of people out on the streets – is “the wrong time” –

When the fuck is the “right” time?

 .

 “Unfortunately [the victim] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

.

Can you see it?

It’s subtle.

Insidious.

Sure, you could read it as one of those thoughtless clichés uttered by every “Law & Order: SVU” cop ever written: “Wrong place, wrong time.  Wrong place, wrong time.”

And that’s probably what Sgt. Scott meant by it: a seen-it-all verbal shorthand for “This sicko was bound to go off sometime and it fucking sucks, but he went off on this girl.”

But the very laziness of that verbal shorthand turns an appalling (on multiple levels) crime into something the victim was responsible for.

.

Stick with me here.

Because let’s really break down his statement, shall we?

“Unfortunately…”

Nope.  Not a good start.

Sgt. Scott, I know nothing about your experience on the force, but I can tell you there is nothing “unfortunate” about being raped.  “Unfortunate” implies a bad stroke of luck.  Rape derives from intention.  Rape is about anger, and power, and stripping victims of their agency and humanity.

Ding your car door?  That’s unfortunate.

Fight with your spouse?  That’s unfortunate.

A mentally disabled girl sexually assaulted in full view of a public that does nothing to help her?

That’s not “unfortunate.”

That’s a noxious fucking nightmare of physical, mental, and emotional violation that you’ve just reduced to a car ding.

Your word choice?

That was unfortunate.

.

“[the victim] was…”

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And since we’re talking about stripping a person of their agency and humanity, let’s remember who’s in charge during a rape.

Here’s a hint: it’s the fucking rapist.

And if the rapist has all the agency – he’s obviously the one dictating what happens – how is it that after the rape, all that agency, all that accountability, gets shoved back onto the victim?

After all, it’s not “the rapist was…”

It’s not “this fucking psycho brought the wrong place and wrong time with him.”

It’s

“[the victim] was…”

.

So tell me.  When exactly does she get that agency back, hm?

When does she step up and take responsibility for being “wrong”?

I mean, is it optional?  Can she, at some future date, choose to accept the fact that she picked “the wrong time” to ride a bus?  That she showed up too soon?  Or too late?  Or at any point in linear existence when the rapist happened to catch sight of her?

Or is it not a choice at all?  Does her agency just return automatically, say, as soon as the assault is over?  The moment he pulls out, does it suddenly click in her head, “Oh, it’s my fault I’m here, and not at work/home/anywhere-else-in-the-fucking-world right now.”?

Tell me, at what precise moment does a woman become an accessory to her own rape?

The answer, of course, is fucking never – a rape is always the rapist’s fault, and only the rapist’s fault – and goddammit, I’d really like to hear people speak like they fucking understand that.

* * *

Now, do I think Sgt. Dan Scott is a yay-rape! kind of guy?

Of course not.

Even though we’ve never met, I like to think he’s a protect-the-helpless and catch-the-baddies, white-hat Wyatt Earp type.  I’ve always had a soft spot for sheriffs.

But I would also like him – and all men, and all women – to consciously consider how they think about rape, and moreover, to be aware of how they talk about it.

Language has always reflected the beliefs of a society – and no matter how repellent we may eventually find some of those beliefs – i.e., victim-shaming arises from the archaic belief that women who get raped “deserve it” – only recognition and acknowledgement of our language’s reflective connotations (along with the thought, “Hey, that’s incredibly fucked up.”) will lead to changes in our thinking, our vocabulary, and thence to changes in our society.

But first we have to pay attention.

Really pay attention.

Once we stop even subliminally shaming the victim –

 .

“Unfortunately [the victim] was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

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– perhaps we, and the police, and those passengers on the bus –

– those people who swear they noticed nothing –

– will finally open our eyes and see.