Abuse

By about midnight on Sunday night, everyone else had pretty much gone to bed. Kevin is downstairs and I don’t really know what he is doing. I guess it didn’t matter much to me, because I was working on a hugely important lesson plan.  I never gave him any indication that I wanted him to stay overnight, he never asked if he could. I assumed that he would go back to Bettendorf or Davenport or wherever he lives or stays or…whatever he does. 

Then about 12:30, my friend, Beth, came over. I had met Beth a few weeks ago at the River House, a coop-living arrangement that, similar to my place, took over a house belonging to a yet another fraternity that had been temporarily kicked off campus. What’s different about my place is that there is no effort to live communally.  She is not excessive about keeping her hair all spiffy, and she wears mismatched, rumpled clothes from the second-hand store that are probably clean in most ways. Some might say she is a bit of a hippy—just the kind of person you would expect to be living in a coop house.

The first night we met, we ended up necking in her room. The speed at which we moved from hello to dry humping was enough to make you forget where you put your glasses. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see where we might have ended up that night because right in the middle of our play, someone came upstairs calling out a warning that if anyone had a car in the parking lot, they had better come quick because there were three tow trucks doing that which they are designed to do. Since then, Beth and I had run into each other a couple more times, but we never took the train to the Promised Land.

On this night, I’m amazed because as much as I love to talk, and have people to talk to, usually, I have no one. Then comes this weekend, I meet Kevin, AND Beth appears—completely unexpectedly. It’s just my stupid luck that I have a bunch of work to do.  She comes into my room and starts talking.

I’m grunting responses with no overt rudeness, eyes on my work, but she keeps talking.  Then my slow-wittedness calms a bit and I realize that even though we aren’t super close, she wouldn’t keep talking if it wasn’t something important. So I quit and go over to her and give her a hug as a greeting. At this time in my life, I seldom give hugs as greetings, but there may have been some kind of subliminal vibe coming from her that told me I should. Or maybe I wanted to be more of a physical friend. Maybe.

When we embraced, Beth began to sob. “So this IS serious,” I thought. I decided I could take a break for a friend. At any rate, this should score me some points in the whole ‘good karma’ tally.

“Let’s go downstairs where there is a couch. Everybody else is asleep,” I suggest.

As we got down to the bottom of the steps, there was Kevin standing in the dark.  He was putting something in a bag.  “Kevin, whataya doin’?”

“I’m packing my car.” Then he went out without another word.

Beth and I sat down and she told me some stuff. We talked about her problems and my problems and the world’s problems.  While we were talking, I heard Kevin drive out of the parking lot. I was surprised that would leave so abruptly, but I was concentrating on Beth.

Then, after 5 minutes, I heard him drive back in.  I hear him come into the house downstairs. I can follow his progress by the creeks in the wood trusses and floors. He walks up the back stairway, past my room, and through another long hallway, and down the steps.  Now he’s at the other end of the big recreation room that stretches 30 feet from one end to the other. Beth and I have an unobstructed view, right at him. The light from the stairway is at his back and I can see his crisp silhouette.  He is stands for a second like he is sussing out the situation in the dark.  His head turns toward me and he says, “See ya later, James” as he walks out the door.

I tell Beth that I have to say goodbye, and I run outside.

“Hey, Kevin!  See ya later. You got my address, so, ah... Whenever you have time, let’s get together.”     

“Yeah,” he said.

It was kind of awkward, but I gave him a big hug.  I said, “What are you doing tomorrow?  Don’t you have to work?”

“I have some stuff to finish up.  I’ll probably be in the computer lab until 10:00 tomorrow morning.”  Then he added, as kind of an afterthought, “What about you?  What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Oh, I have class.” His face fell a bit. He got in his car.

I stood in the driveway, watching him go.  I waved as you do when you’ve talked to someone for a long time and they are leaving for good. To tell the truth, I was actually glad to see him go.  He’d hung around a lot longer than I thought he ever would.  It wasn’t actually one of those, “Don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out” situations, but I was ready for him to leave. 

This was the opposite of how things usually seemed to go.  I want relationships to last longer than they do. People are usually done with me much sooner than I’ve had enough of them. Well, maybe I’d see him again.

Back in the house, Beth was feeling better, and she went home.  This fact is testimony to the fact that I worry much too much about school work. Here was a woman who came to see me late in the evening—after midnight, in fact. She was feeling down, and looking to me for solace.  I successfully cheer her up, or at least get her mind off whatever was troubling her, and then I say good night, and let her go. Such a move is terribly unchivalrous—true, we were in Iowa City, not exactly a hot bed of crime and assault—but also a terrible waste of an opportunity. A person might say that if I had invited Beth to spend the night, I would have been taking advantage of a woman who was in a tough situation.  Anything that came of that night, might have been explained away as simply a man capitalizing on the diminished feelings of a woman. Well, I don’t think it would be the first time that happened.  Maybe the first time in MY life, but certainly not the first time in history.  At least not from what I had heard. 

After saying goodbye to Beth, I went back upstairs and I did a couple more things on the computer before going to bed at about 2:00.  I climbed up in my loft and fell asleep.

Later, about 3:30, I know what time it was because I looked at my watch, I woke a bit. I was face down on the mattress. I had been dreaming. I had been moving through stages toward some goal. The goal is kind of fuzzy, but I wanted to get there. It was something like clearing the bar in a high jump, or launching myself from one side of the river bank to the other.  Something with exhilaration involved.

I wasn’t so awake that I had opened my eyes, but I became aware that I was pressing really hard on my penis—as I usually do when I masturbate. The goal business in the dream was not one of my usual fantasies, and I’d never before woken up and discovered myself masturbating, but, well, yes, I did have hair on my palms.

I quickly fell back to sleep. I wanted to reach that goal. This time, as I was getting close, I felt a couple more points of external stimulation; I didn’t know, or care, why. When a person is in that state of arousal, any kind of pressure or stroking feels fabulous. I was still too asleep to wonder about the source. Again I moved closer to the goal. The stimulation came again. Now I understood. The goal was ejaculation. What a shock, the goal of masturbation is ejaculation, not precipitation.  A genius I was—and I wanted that goal.

A minute later, I was nearing the goal again when the stimulation came again. I was still in that hazy space between sleep, and not sleep.  This time, I was awake enough to get the drift that something was not normal.

I realized that Kevin was in the room.

He was standing on the wooden ladder. 

He was fondling my genitals.

“Kevin, what are you doing? Kevin, leave the room.” I didn’t have to think about what to say.  My base elements were disgust and revulsion. But my innate politeness didn’t allow me to let these emotions out of their resting places.

            “James, you were thrashing around and screaming. I could hear you down the hallway.”

            “Kevin, leave the room.” I spoke calmly. I stayed in the loft. I was remarkably cool about the whole thing. I was in a state of extreme sleep deficit, so my body didn’t allow me to take action. Or maybe it’s because I live in what amounts to a Pollyanna dream world. Whatever the reason, I immediately tried to go back to sleep. Oh, how I wish for those days. I dude had just touched me where a dude should not touch me, and I went right back to sleep. Now, I can’t often can’t buy sleep.

I was almost asleep, but through the grogginess, I sensed that the atmosphere of the room held more than one person. I realized that he had lain down on the floor with a blanket and pillow. His blanket and pillow—he’d used the washer and dryer earlier.

            “Kevin, what are you doing? LEAVE the room.”

            “James, what is going on, James?”

“Kevin, leave the room.” I just kept saying, “Leave the room.” I guess my subconscious was telling me not to leave anything up for misinterpretation.

He got up. Standing there with his bed clothes in his hands, he looked a like a little boy asking his daddy for a glass of water. Then his face took and evil turn.  I know this sounds really ominous and threatening but I wasn’t threatened at all.  He said, “James, you will pay for this.  You will pay.” He walked out.

I know there are macho dudes who say they would bust the guy’s chops for something like this, but I couldn’t even be bothered to get up.

Was it something that I expected? No.

Had I enjoyed it? Yes.

Did I want more? No.

I don’t wear it as a mark of pride, but I don’t make any apologies for it, either. The Kinsey homosexuality scale has me firmly in the 100% heterosexual range.  I’m not afraid of gay people. I have gay friends; everyone is free to do their own thing. But imagining myself engaging in sex with another man makes me sick. If that means that I am afraid of gay sex, then I’m afraid of gay sex. Terrified. Whatever label you’d like to put on me is fine.  I’d sooner drink liquid nitrogen than touch another man’s penis. 

            Kevin walked down the hall, and I got down from the loft and locked the door.  As testimony to the fact that I wasn’t really troubled by this event, I very nearly went right back to sleep. I was a bit unsettled though, because after 5 minutes, I thought I should check to see if he had really gone. It was my fault that he had been in the house at all. I went outside and walked around the house.  His car wasn’t there, and I thought, “He’s gone.”

            I went back to bed.  The next morning, I woke up about 8:00 and went down to find Jeff. I knew he was some kind of counsellor, working for Youth Homes or some place. I told him had something important to talk about. 

After I finished, he said, “Oh my. Wow.  I’ve heard about things like that.  I’ve never know what processes someone to do that.” 

“Right,” I said.

“It’s not violence. It’s a call for intimacy.”

“Yeah,” I said, “He had been behaving like the lonely guy all weekend.  What do you think I should do?” I was worried. I had brought an objectionable person into the house, and showed him how to get in.

“Should I get Gary to change the code on the door?” Gary was the manager of the place who did fixit jobs.  When I think about it now, it seems like a no-brainer that we should change the door code. There was a pervert out there who could walk into our house at any moment. But I still had the Pollyanna attitude and I told myself that Kevin wouldn’t come back.

I let Jeff make the decision by NOT making the decision.

“I don’t know,” said Jeff. I let it ride.

            About 3:00 in the afternoon, Jeff came to my room.

“Hey, James. You know I talked to a guy down at Youth Homes.  He said you would be crazy not to press charges.”

“Press charges? What? Oh, man, I never thought about doing that.” I didn’t want to ruin Kevin’s life.  I didn’t have any idea why he did it. I didn’t care what he had done. I guess that was the key, I didn’t care at all.

Press charges?!? I’m not someone who presses charges.  I don’t have anything to do with the police. The police are needed by other people. People who do weird things.  But there was a piece of me, however, that was excited about pressing charges. I’d never been in a court room, and I’d never had more than a one sentence conversation with a police officer. Some people might think that ‘ruining his life’ was a bit extreme. But for me, a person with no experience with the police, being charged with a crime was tantamount to a death sentence.

I called the police and said I may want to report an incident of sexual abuse. 

 “Oh, you do?” said the woman. It was like she was challenging me.  Her default reaction was not to believe me. A man, charging sexual abuse?  Who ever heard of such a thing?

The excitement in her voice was also evident.  I’ll bet few people in Iowa City, a town of 60,000 knew much about sexual abuse.

“Well, what happened?”

Her voice had an edge to it that said, “Oh, really? I gotta hear this.” I could just see her gathering everyone in the room around her, telling them to get on the other phones so they could get a load of this joker. 

She mouthed the words, “He says he wants to report sexual harassment.” Through her skepticism, being trained to get the facts, she asked me for my address. 

“We’ll have an officer come over.”

I imagined a marked police cruiser pulling into the driveway, everyone coming over to find out what was up, and me having to tell them that some man had been helping me shake hands with the unemployed.    

I said, “No I don’t want that.”

I wanted to explain. “I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but I…ah…I have so much to do, I don’t really have time for this.” Everybody seems to have too much stuff to do. It’s a wonder anything gets done at all.

            She answered, “Well, I think if this is really true, and you if want to go through with this, you need to do it right away.  What’s your address?

            I gave it.

            “What’s your name?” 

            “Well, I…ah, I’ll call you back.” I hung up.

I went back to work my lesson plan.  Not long later, I saw Mark around. He’s the landlord’s live-in helper/representative.  He’s a kind of the house parent.  I told him the story.

“Shit, James, that’s messed up. Have you tried to talk to him?”

Talk to him? Another no-brainer! Of course I should try to talk to him. It’s the only thing a sensible person should do.  Why hadn’t thought that before? After all, he’d given me his parents’ phone number and his work number. I went straight to the phone in the hallway.

            I made a collect call.

His mother answered. I had told the operator that I was a friend of Kevin’s.

“Who are you?” she asked.

The operator said, “Ma’am, I need a yes or a no.”

“Okay, yes, operator, we’ll pay for the call.

“Now who are you?”

“I’m Kevin’s friend and he was here in Iowa City this weekend.”

“Yeah, so? Is he okay?”

“Yes, he’s fine…well, I guess he’s okay.”

“Is there problem?”

“Well, ma’am, on Sunday night, I woke up and Kevin was standing on the ladder to my loft fondling my genitals.”

“WHAT? Are you accusing my son of being a ‘faaaaag’?” She drew the last word out with derision and disgust. She even gave it two syllables as if she were from the South. 

“No, ma’am, I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I’m just telling you what happened.  I’d like to talk to Kevin about it.  Do you know where he is?”

She called her husband over, “Gary, listen to what this boy is saying.” 

“Hello,” came a low, measured voice.

“Hello.  Is this Kevin’s dad?”

“Yes, I’m Kevin’s father,” the voice of comfortable authority.

“As I told your wife, I’d like to talk to Kevin.  Do you know where he is?”

“No we don’t. He doesn’t live here anymore. What seems to be the problem?”

“Well, I let him stay in my room here in Iowa City on Saturday night while I was in Des Moines at a wedding. The next night, he didn’t leave until after midnight, but a little while later, I woke up to find him standing on my ladder fondling my genitals.”

“That’s a serious accusation, son.”

“It’s not an accusation. That’s what happened. I guess I want to talk to him to…God, I guess I don’t know WHY I want to talk to him. Someone told me I should press charges…I don’t know if I want to do that...”

“Press charges?” The measured quality became strained.

“Exactly. I don’t want to press charges. Do you know how I might find him?  I guess I could call the place where he works in Davenport.”

“Davenport?” he said, “What place in Davenport?”

“He said he works at Creative Resume Solutions.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

            I ended up leaving my phone number and asking them to tell me if they hear from him—or just tell him that I’d like to talk to him.

            I went to a late afternoon class.  I realized that I had just been through a traumatic experience, but I was acting like nothing was wrong.  As I walked around town, I felt like everyone could see on my face or by the way I walked that something had happened.  Not necessarily that someone had violated me, it sounds so strange to elevate the experience to something so dramatic, but I felt like there was something different about me than before. I would walk into a room, and think that people were staring at me.  I’d think they knew that something had happened to me. I thought that I should feel something more. I thought I shouldn’t be able to function so normally.  Was this another part of my persona of someone who denies their feelings? 

            At 8:40 on Monday evening, I went to print out some stuff.  I went to the place where Kaitlyn was working.

“Hi, Kaitlyn.”

“Hey, James.”

I hadn’t gone to visit her with the intention of telling her, but subconsciously, I knew I would. At the time, she was a person who I wanted to show my vulnerabilities. There had been a trend lately in the country’s outlook that men should not be afraid of their weaknesses. In fact, it seemed that if men were willing to seem a bit vulnerable, women would find them more attractive.  I wanted to be the kind of guy who was stable in my own skin, who was comfortable enough with myself to be imperfect.  I wanted to show her my frailties. I wanted to show her my insecurities.  By being honest with her, maybe that would inspire her to be honest with me.  Honesty breeds familiarity, which might lead to deeper friendship which would lead to intimacy.  Unfortunately, she did not see us in that way. There was nothing in her plans for us that included a relationship. I wanted to tell her about it because it’s the kind of story you don’t share with just anyone—only with a close friend. I wanted to be her close friend, so I told her.

I said, “Do you remember Kevin, the guy I was telling you about?  He used to be my roommate?”

“Yeah, the interesting one?”

“Uh-huh.  He’s interesting alright.”  Then I told her what happened. I didn’t say much about my feelings.  I just gave the facts. 

“Oh, my,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“Well, someone said I should go to the police.  I’m not sure I want to do that.” I was fishing for some advice.

“Yeah, that sounds serious.”

“Exactly. I wasn’t hurt by it; I don’t even care.”

“Hmmm,” she said.

Then, right at that moment, I remembered something that Kevin had told me. Something he had done in Ames, a couple years after we had been roommates.  It was after he had graduated from Iowa State, and was hanging around town with a friend. They met some guy at the city library—not on campus, but at the Ames city library. 

Kevin had said, “This guy paid us to go around town with him.  We went to a bar. The two of us looked at each other and we decided to take him for all he’s worth.  We drove around and the guy was paying for food, beer, gas, everything. We parked the car and went walking. We ended up down in the weeds by the train tracks.

“Then we de-pantsed him, and took pictures.”

          Kevin and his friend were arrested. At court, Kevin was given 6 months’ probation and court-ordered counseling. He and his friend were charged with robbery and assault.  Kevin said they were not stealing. 

          “Yeah, we took the pants, but we didn’t know the billfold was in it.” The words of a very bright bulb.

          When he finished, I said, “Kevin, that sounds like the most disgusting thing I can imagine.  That is disgusting. That really sucks.”  I was getting worked up.  I had to hold myself back.  Why would he tell me this stuff?  He didn’t seem to be making it up.  He seemed to be proud of it.  It was like he wanted me to congratulate him.  I didn’t want to make too much of it, because I still wanted him to be my friend.  I didn't realize that someone who would do such a thing, and then be officially sanctioned by the police, may not be the best type of friend. 

However, my sunshine and roses attitude thought that maybe Kevin felt remorse. For me to say come down on him after all these years was no good, either. I thought that to have me telling him his actions were disgusting was not what he needed at the moment.

          As I was telling Kaitlyn about Sunday night, and then when I remembered the de-pants-ing incident, I decided to go to the police. 

          “Oh, wow! Maybe he has a problem. If he has a history of this stuff…” I was thinking out loud. “I guess I should go to the police.”

          “You want me to go with?” she said. Well, something good may come from this mess.

I’d never been in a police station before.  The detectives wore suits, just like you see on television.  It wasn’t a long interview. I felt like I didn’t want to waste their time, so I got straight to the point.  I told them about Sunday night, about 20 hours ago, waking up to find Kevin fondling my gentiles.

“Ok, it’s up to you,” was their response. “The ball’s in your court.  You may have to testify, it may take some time.” 

“Well, I don’t really have time for this.”

“That’s the thing.  We don’t want to start this investigation and bring him in if you aren’t going to come through and press charges.”

I held onto my happy, happy life and thought how I would simply look the other way.  I asked them, “Can I have some days to think about it?’

            The next morning, between 10:30 and 11:00, I went in to the computer lab. 

There was Kevin. I immediately felt hot and bothered. A confrontation was in front of me.

“Hi Kevin. We have to talk about what you did the other night.”

“Hey, James.  Good morning.  What do you mean?”

“Well, I woke up the other night and you were standing over me fondling me.”

            “WHAT?  What are you saying?”

            “Hold off, Kevin, we have to come over here and talk about this.” I made a move out of the room, in between the buildings. He followed.

            “What are you trying to accuse me of?” he spluttered. “All weekend you have been putting pressure on me.”

“What? What pressure?” I said.

“When did this happen?”

            “Sunday night.”

            “What?!? What are you saying? You, you, you can call my parents.” Was he trying to deny that he was in Iowa City? …that he was in my house?

“I did. They don’t know where you are and they don’t know anything about a job in Davenport.  ”

            “Well, you, you gotta talk to Bob.  He, he hates you because he hears you thrashing around and screaming.” 

I can’t remember the rest of our conversation. It wasn’t long, I guess he went back to the lab, and I went to class--now my mind was troubled by other issues.

Bob, a sore part of my life, was the only person I knew who actively disliked me; I had no idea why. To talk about Bob leaves me open to huge criticism. The whole Bob story may turn me into some kind of misanthrope. 

I met Bob in the dorm; we both lived in the Foreign Language House (FLH). He was a jolly dude, cut from the same mold as Yogi Bear. Big, friendly and kind of goofy. I think I was his first friend at college, though I was 5 years older than him.

“Hey, Bob, can you help me take some stuff out to my car?”

“Sure. What are you doing later?”

“Hey, Bob, want to go to the International Student Center?”

“Sure, what’s happening over there?”

I even gave him a haircut once. I think any other person to whom I gave such a hack job would have been pissed off. Bob had ultimate patience for my failings. After a year on the FLH, I moved off campus and then overseas for a year and we lost contact.

I’d been living in the frat house cum boarding house for a week when I came down the stairs to see Bob and his mother standing in the doorway. He moved in probably because he already had a friend in the house, me. For a month, we had a fine relationship. We ate together, shared food, went out, I introduced him to girls. All was well.

I know it sounds like a fantasy, but it happened without prediction or sense. A two-ton safe slammed down on our friendship. He stopped talking to me, stopped smiling—a jovial man turned into a sullen, unresponsive gargoyle.

“Hi Bob? How ya doin’?”  Nothing.

“Hey, Bob, what’s the deal? What did I do?”  Nothing.  

For weeks I tried to engage him and find out what I had done—utter failure.  To a guy like me, perpetually in the state of loneliness, the loss of a seemingly solid friend was a real punch in the gut.

            Then I happened to find him one day playing ping pong with Mark. “Bob, how you doing? Bob, please tell me what happened. I have no idea.”

“Who are you that you need to know everything?” His first words to me in over a month.

I put my hands on the table. “No, Bob, I don’t need to know everything, but when something directly affects ME, I feel that I have the right to know about it.”  He just got a big smart-ass smile on his face and never did tell me what was up.

            I got used to his growls in response to my greetings.  He might not admit my existence, but I was going to admit his existence. 

Then once he said, “James, why don’t you just stop saying hi to me.” 

I jumped at the chance. “Bob, why?  What’s the problem?”  I still wanted to have a friendship. I didn’t have many friends, so…  He didn’t answer.

            Then about 2 weeks after that, and a few months after the ping pong incident, at 3:00 in the morning, I hear someone banging on my door.  I say “What? What?”  I open the door while I’m still in the loft and no one.  Then the banging again.  Then Bob says, “How ya doing, James?” 

            ‘Fine.”

            “Well if you continue saying hi to me, I will take that as indication that you want me to say hi to you at 3:00 in the morning.

            “Why?”  He didn’t answer.

Now, Kevin was telling me that Bob was pissed off at me because I thrashed around at night. So, either Kevin knows where to find my weaknesses, or he’s telling the truth. Had I told him about my seizures? Probably.  The thing is that a year earlier, I had had a seizure while taking a nap in a common room of the FLH. I’d been taken to the University of Iowa hospital, four blocks away by ambulance. A year before that, I’d had a seizure while sleeping in a tent with a friend, and 6 months before that, in a youth hostel. The doctors told me that seizures might occur only while sleeping. So conceivably, I might be having these seizures all the time, but since no one else is in the room, I don’t know it. Now here is Kevin telling me about Bob reporting that I have seizures. I can’t imagine why this would make Bob hate me, but in this cloud of confusion, I didn’t know what to believe.

           

            Did Kevin feel ashamed of his actions? Was he trying to distract me from going to the police? Was he telling the truth about Bob? 

I went home and I couldn’t STOP thinking about it. I had to do something. I wanted to remember everything.  I wanted it to be fresh in my mind, so I decided to make a recording of my thoughts.  I put in a cassette tape in my player/radio. After filling one hour of tape, talking about my weekend with Kevin, I was to the point where I went to the police.

The tape ends with me complaining about the work I have to do. I actually say on the tape, “I don’t even have time to be sitting here right now on the 4^th of May recording all this stuff.  I need to sleep.”  Twenty-three years later, that’s still where the story ends.  I didn’t press charges, I never saw Kevin again.

In hindsight’s 20/20, I understand that I should have pressed charges. It wouldn’t have been a desire to punish Kevin. He needed it. He had some kind of problem. For someone to enter another person’s room, uninvited, in order to massage the person’s genitals while they were sleeping is not okay. This combined with taking someone’s pants off and taking pictures shows some kind of imbalance that was NOT addressed by 6 months of counselling.  I feel sick when I think how I didn’t do what I should have done.