Survivor Story
The Rape Account
The men at work are recalling the wonderful times they have had in their carefully planned after-office parties.
They are recalling a particular one. Everyone had a blast that
night [todos la han pasado bien esa noche]. The party
ended when you, a man tells another, complained that I was hitting
on [some woman’s name]. I was about to beat the crap out of you,
says the other.
They laugh. There are women in the room also.
They are laughing as well. None of them had non-consensual sex
that night. None of them were the center around which these
events were meticulously planned. None of them were the focus
of their victorious self-assuring conversations thereafter.
It is only natural they laugh and feel included.
The party actually ended when a man who was relocated
to protect him took you home and raped you. He waited
for you to pass out, to then undress you and penetrate you
with his floppy and drunk dick. He kissed you on the lips
and came an easy and short-duration come.
Everyone had a blast that night. Everyone but us.
In the afternoon, when the men play some local latino music to
enliven Friday, the women who weren’t raped or planned around,
and who are feeling welcomed and accomplished, move their bodies
to the music on their safe chairs and chant. They stare at the performers’
bodies —which are not at all like theirs.
One of the men stands up from his cubicle to show another pictures
of some other woman they are intending to invite to their
predictable gatherings. After you recall and narrate that night,
over pisco and cocaine, we make love as if by amicable obligation.
