the ides of march

i was the victim of a violent crime 22 years ago today.

that's what i used to tell people. that was all i could get out as i teared up and got choked up in shame and embarrassment. i told a couple people i was mugged, but their response was "you're lucky it wasn't worse." well, i wasn't lucky, and it was worse.

i was in Acapulco, Mexico with my parents during spring break. spring break has its "fun in the sun" connotations, but i was with my parents! it was two days before my 20th birthday. my parents were getting a tax write-off on some rental property, and i escaped a midwestern winter. we were dining outside as you often do in tropical climates, when a couple of upstanding white college-age men approached our table and struck up a conversation. they charmed my parents, and charmed me, and eventually my parents allowed them to take me dancing later that evening.

we took a cab to the club (it was probably called a disco back then) and had plenty of drinks and dancing. we lost the blonde in the crowd, so it was just the two of us. then night went long, and we decided to leave the crowd, and music, and lights, and the relative madness of the club and get ourselves home. we unwisely decided against a cab, and equally unwisely decided to walk back on the beach.

we were met on a side street by four locals in a pea green four-door sedan. they put a knife to the throat of the male in our party, and aimed a gun at me. it was a small gun, but a gun nonetheless. several people have asked me if the gun was loaded. i don't know, and does it really matter? we gave up rings, watches, chains, and wallets, but the four locals decided that wasn't enough so they abducted me in the back seat of their sedan.

they drove away from the hotels, through downtown, and up into the hills to places i'd never seen before. i had been in Acapulco several times previously with my parents, so i tried to keep my bearings, to no avail. they took turns. they used their hands. they made me use my mouth. and one of them just plain raped me.

they left me in the street of a residential area. why they left me, i'll never know. i still had my "early birthday dress" (a t-shirt dress that was a gift from my mother), but i don't think i had any shoes. i began to wander in the streets, trying to find a major thoroughfare, calling out for help in the limited spanish i knew (from high school). some residents turned their lights on. some residents turned their lights off. i cried out and yelled and wandered. and a man in a white t-shirt hailed a cab for me. and the cab driver took me to my parents' condo. he said he would wait for payment, but he did not.

my parents were awake and up and worried sick, alerted by my dance partner. my mother's first words were "that is what happens when you stay out late." i'll never forget that, with all the pain that i was unable to feel at that moment, that she was able to make it worse. my mother was a nurse a hundred years ago, and my father was a practicing physician at the time, but they let me take a bath. and throw out my under wear.

my parents accompanied me to the police station to file the report. they listened as we went over the story several times, to make sure the translation was accurate. they heard me admit to not being a virgin. my father accompained me to some place for a medical exam. we had to stop at a pharmacy first to buy our own rubber gloves. and we couldn't leave, we wouldn't leave, until our "vacation" was over. my parents filed an insurance claim on my missing property (watch i had bought with proceeds from a summer job, jewelry from my high school boyfriend). eventually i got a new substandard watch, but that was it. i couldn't help but feel they made money from the claim.

i got lots of therapy. i dropped my classes and finished them up eventually in summer school or the following fall semester. i stopped functioning for quite awhile. i couldn't shower, change my clothes, brush my teeth, or leave my apartment for anything other than therapy. i couldn't look anyone, male or female in the eye.

one day, i brushed my teeth. and that was the turning point.