This is part 2 of my short story School of Wonder. The story begins in this post.
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“Daniel and I never discussed what happened in that bedroom, my bedroom.”
“Oh,” said Dr. Humphrey as he probed a bit further, “Why do you think that is?”
“I didn’t know what we were doing, so why would I be inclined to discuss it with him?”
“Well, you had the presence of mind not to say anything. Don’t you think that constitutes awareness or – at the very least – guilt?”
“I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to make this about him and about sex. It’s not about that. I honestly had forgotten the entire incident until I started seeing you.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know.”
Dr. Humphrey, a psychologist my parents’ had found through their insurance company, was the type of guy that you couldn’t help but like. He was the All-American man with his blue eyes, sandy blonde hair, professorial beard, and athletic build. His demeanor was always poised, and yet there was a pervasive and perpetual glint in his eyes, a hypnotic beam of light that radiated affection; all you had to do was confide in him and he would save you from your demons. I trusted him immediately. I told him things that I could never even admit to myself. He knew about Daniel. No one knew about Daniel. Daniel wasn’t real.
After the summer of ‘87 and the incident, Daniel and I never spoke – we were forbidden to do so. My mom never spoke of the incident or Daniel, my dad didn’t even know about the incident, and I blindly accepted that Daniel was a bad boy and I was a bad girl. What else was I to believe?
Now here I was, 12 years later, with my body in a conflicted state, somewhere between being entirely erect and slumped over on Dr. Humphrey’s blue leather couch. I was wearing my favorite pair of jeans and a translucent white tank top with a bleach white bra underneath – all, of course, specifically selected for this occasion. With my creamy white skin, long dirty blonde hair, perfectly shaped eyes, polite nose, and my soccer-toned legs, I knew that I could successfully distract any man that I wanted to, and today, like every other session day with Dr. Humphrey, I chose to focus all my efforts of distraction on him. He never verbally acknowledged my behavior, but that glint in his eyes spoke volumes to me. Maybe he was using nonverbal cues to give me the attention I craved, or maybe my efforts to seduce him were ignored for the sake of appearances, but either way I knew he feared and welcomed the sexual being inside of me. The reader should note that the sexual consummation of our patient-client relationship was of no interest to me. In fact, at the time, sex was nothing more than a routine act of ego-gratification, a pleasure of the mind only. I wanted him to want me. I wanted the power that comes from subjugating a dominant male.
“Colleen, I believe our time is up, but I want you to think about what happened last month. I know it’s painful to talk about, but I think there’s a connection between what happened and your childhood experiences with Daniel. You have a tendency to internalize the negative and that might be hurting you more than you realize.”
I hated thinking about what happened. What’s there to think about? I was raped, or at least that’s the only word I knew to associate with what had happened. What do you call a date gone wrong, a sexual experience that you don’t want but can’t stop? Is it rape just because you said no? Or do you have to actually fight back? I didn’t fight back. I said no repeatedly, I cried, I tried to push him off me, but that’s it. It happened. Dr. Humphrey didn’t know about this, nor did my parents. Last month I swallowed a myriad of generic advil pills to cope, and now I found myself in counseling at the behest of my devout parents.
“See you next time David.” My words were bespeckled with flirtatious expectation. My tone was suggestive, my body was alert, and my look devilish. I walked away with an air of accomplishment. I drove home, put on my pajamas, and numbed my mind with television. Everything was fine now. Little did I know that I was about to have a dream so life-like that it could only be true. A dream that was to expose all the secrets of that afternoon when Daniel and I played in the sun and returned to my bedroom to explore the unknown.
