I'm back home for a brief blip before taking off to the wilds of Montana for - wait for it - luxury camping. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. Apparently I will be horseback riding, fishing, repelling, and then eating gourmet meals before settling into thousand thread-count sheets. You can imagine my dismay.
Toronto was a whirlwind of wonderful. It was way too short a visit, and I didn't get to see everyone that I wanted to (or spend enough time with the people that I wanted to.) But the reading itself was really an incredible experience unto itself. And that's because for the first time ever, I read about the rape.
In all the readings I've done thus far from L.A. to New York, I've always done something light-hearted or mildly intense, but nothing close to the nitty gritty of the book. And the god's honest truth was I shied away from it because I didn't want to scare anyone off from reading it. So after some wine and Thai food with Renee and her paramour, after I was prattling on about how I'd read the part where I got tattooed shirtless in the front room of Way Cool, or when I considered becoming a paid escort, or a phone sex affair gone wrong (which I'm planning on reading tonight at In The Flesh), Renee made a face that let me know she didn't approve at all of my reading choices.
"What?" I asked.
"I think you should read about the rape," she said simply, fixing me with an intent look.
My immediate instinct was to hide my face in my hands. "Really?"
"Really," she replied evenly. "Carly, the whole message of the book is that you can have a happy, healthy life despite the trauma. Only reading the good times cheats readers out of the whole experience, and misrepresents what the book is about. You have to take them there with you."
I knew she was right. As much as I hated the thought of doing it, if I was going to walk the walk, I had to talk the talk. So I asked her if she would be game for letting me do a dry run the afternoon before the reading. She agreed.
The thing you have to know about my writing the rape out was that what you read in the book is the first time I've ever consciously pieced everything together in chronological order. I'd remember bits and pieces of it here and there, then shove it down so I didn't have to think about it ever again. But the night I wrote about it I was very much right there, watching it happen all over again. And I was numb when I wrote it. I was channeling every emotion I felt through my fingertips into my keyboard, out onto the white Word document in front of me. And when I finished, I never reread it. Not even during editing.
When I read it in front of Renee, I crumbled.
That's the only way I can describe it. I was actually doing quite well up to the point where I described what it was like to walk into that shitty condo in Whitehorn... and as the words were coming out of my mouth, I was there again. I was looking at the dingy walls and the sad sacks sitting on the floor. I was feeling his hand leading me up the stairs to the room that would prove to be my undoing. It was all I could do to choke through the words as I read them aloud. I had no idea if I was going to be able to handle that kind of emotion should it come up during the reading.
And as it turns out, that reading - at the Toronto Women's Bookstore - was the best yet. Roughly 25 people showed up. I started with some funny stuff, I transitioned to some more transitional work, and then I read it. I read the rape. For a while I would look up at the audience and see what they were doing, but when people started to cry - right around the time I started to explain what was going on in my head as it was happening - I couldn't look up anymore. I could feel the emotion welling up and I wanted to keep it mostly in check. I wanted to be strong.
When I finished I took a deep breath and asked, "How many of you know someone who has been assaulted, raped or abused?" And nearly everyone in the audience held up their hand. I don't know where the words that tumbled from my mouth were coming from, but I told them that I hoped this helped them understand what it was like, and how I felt so useless afterward. How I searched for love from the wrong people, and tried to find comfort and peace in all the wrong places. How broken I felt. How ugly. But also, eventually, how determined I became to work through it.
After it was all done I took a moment by myself in the back porch area to collect myself enough to be able to go out and hang with people. I signed books, hugged and shook hands, and then a woman approached me and asked, "When he choked you... did it leave fingerprints?"
I shook my head.
"I think that when you're with someone who knows how to choke, they can do it in a way that doesn't leave a mark. And I think the body remembers." She paused, and kind of smiled. "I kind of checked out when you read about your experience. It's because I'm just now coming to terms with my own rape. He didn't leave fingerprints, but I can still feel his hands on my throat sometimes."
Then she held up the copy of the book she just bought and said, "Thank you for this. I want to learn how to heal."
That made it worth it.
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