He began to lie about being raped as a baby. After two or three times, already, it was real to him.
He thought about what a beautiful baby he’d been and the tears welled up in him. He liked to sit there and look you right in the eye while he told you about what had happened to him. He liked to imagine you, feeling like you had to return his gaze, you and him, eyes locked, while you pictured him as a little baby, and then him being raped as a beautiful little baby. It’s how he would talk you into going on the date.
He liked to tell you, “I was a victim then, but not now, not anymore.” Then he would smile at you brightly and set down the menu, “Well, have you decided? I think I know what I’m having.”
Later, while you were having sex, he would suddenly ask, “Are you here with me, ’cause you seem like you are a long way away. Are you visualizing what happened to me as a baby? When I was raped.”
He would do this, even if you had not crooned, “Baby, baby,” by mistake.
He would stare intently into your eyes and say, “That was in the past. I am not defined by what happened then. I want you to see me now, as a grown man, as a grown man who is fucking you, not as a raped baby who is fucking you.”
If you were someone who had a child, or children, he would say, “You know: a lot of people that hurt children, they were hurt as children themselves. I’m lucky; you never know, if I had only been raped one, two more times when I was a beautiful little baby, I might have become a monster that hurts children.”
He would say, “If something ever comes up and you need someone to look after _________ (whatever your child’s or children’s names was or were), don’t hesitate to ask.”
After he left, he would never contact you again.
If you saw him on the street, if for some reason you insisted on going up to him, and saying, “It’s __________ (your name). What happened? I called, you never called me back….”
If you did that, he wouldn’t look you in the eye. “Oh, did we have sex?” he’d say. He would look away from you and remark, distantly, “I don’t recognize a lot of people I’ve had sex with; it’s a thing that happens to me now because I was raped as a beautiful little innocent baby. If I could recognize you, maybe I would see the one who raped me. Recovered memory. In the past.”
After you walked away, you, with whatever feelings you got from that, when you were out of earshot, he liked to whisper, “It’s not your fault.”
Photo by Viewminder
