Where In Hell Am I? - Foreward and Chapter One
Post date: May 18, 2012 7:46:12 PM
FOREWARD
This is the longest piece I’ve ever decided to post on my website. So I’m going to post it in multiple parts.
It is also the heaviest. And it all happened to a good friend of mine of the last 2 ½ years.
I was headed to volunteer with EQCA a week prior. My friend sent me this very document. I had seen a previous version of it so I knew what it was but I didn’t know what she had added. What she added was essentially a suicide note.
So I called my friend. She told me she was fine. I asked her if she’d let me in if I came over. She said yes. In the midst of tears, she asked me to call her advocate at the rape crisis center (yes, that is how this whole thing begins). Her advocate wasn’t available so I asked to speak to someone else, anyone else. I was transferred to Jane. I explained the situation to Jane and she asked me for my friend’s number, which I gave to her.
I went to EQCA to ask them if I could do my hours the next day. It was really a stall tactic while I figured out what to do. I knew it was a no-brainer but but the no-brainer part of my brain hadn’t kicked in yet as I was still in shock over what I had just read.
My friend is not the emotional type. She has a good head on her shoulders and is one tough cookie. She had to have been going through a helluva of a lot to be reduced to pills and wine.
And she had been. But I wasn’t aware of any of it until she told me the week before this event occurred.
I’m glad my friend answered the advocate on duty. She and Jane were on the phone together when I finally arrived to my friend’s apartment after having my own drama trying to catch a bus or hail a cab to get there from all over two miles away.
After a short conversation with my friend, Jane had already decided my friend needed to be hospitalized. She asked my friend if she could speak to me. I got on the phone and Jane told me that the police and the paramedics were on their way and to keep her conscious. Jane also asked that I keep her posted on my friend.
I gathered all the pills that I could find in the apartment and bagged them up for the paramedics. I couldn’t wrestle away the wine, though. She was holding onto that for dear life. A short time later, the police arrived. Then a second pair. Then the paramedics. Then a second team. They talked to my friend. I got the feeling they all had either disconnected themselves from the situation because they’d seen it before, or they just didn’t believe my friend. They were all male except for one female who had a different look in her eye.
The paramedics took her to the hospital. I followed in a cab. My friend had give the hospital my name so I was granted access to her and to updates on her condition. The plan was to determine the cause of the suicide attempt before the counseling and plan of action for recovery.
Then my friend passed out and stopped breathing -- in the middle of the conversation. Though the tox screen hadn’t come back, we determined that she had taken more pills than she told us or remembered having taken.
I spent the rest of the afternoon in the emergency waiting room watching ABC Daytime, reading and talking to doctors about her condition and providing them with as much information as possible about her general mental state. When I showed one of the counselors the end of her note, even HE was taken aback.
I left around 6:30 after another friend of my friend’s came to the possible. My friend was stabilized and waiting for a room for overnight observation before being transported to a facility where she would held for 72 hours.
Or so we thought.
My friend was released from the hospital the next day. She’s in much better spirits. She’s been going to therapy on her own and checking in with us several times daily. When we don’t hear from her, we check in. I told her that she’s on a 30-day hold with us and that we are going to be the biggest pains in her ass.
I told her about the moment I nearly broke down outside the emergency room at the thought of losing a good friend. I wanted her to feel bad. I wanted her to know that she was loved and cared for. And while I understand suicide, it’s still the most selfish thing anyone can do to the people who love them. The moment where the decision is made is about you. You care about nothing else. But the moment after is all about the people that are left behind.
All this because a so-called man decided to have his way with my friend. This is her story as told by her.
Chapter 1
It’s hard to know where to start with something like this. There are so many levels of just plain crazy, that if I wasn’t in the middle of it, I probably wouldn’t believe it myself. I have told a few people, and I am honestly scared at losing their support as this situation only seems to get worse. I can’t tell many people because it’s a difficult thing to talk about and because it’s an ongoing investigation, and because the barrage of questions is so frustrating. I feel in some way I have to protect the man that did this to me because I can’t risk not putting him on the stand, or loosing my day in court, over one heated moment. Not like I haven’t weighed the pros and cons of getting this piece of shit off the streets and protecting other women out there since the service from the LAPD has been less than overwhelming. I like to think I am a good person. I like animals and children, have bought food for homeless on the street asking for money, fought to make my neighborhood a better and safer place. I work hard and want to make sure clients actually have an enjoyable experience at the studio. I pay my taxes.
I guess I can start at the beginning. That one precious moment when the drugs had started to wear off and I came to. When I didn’t know yet what happened or just how screwed up my life was going to become. That one precious moment when everything was as I thought it should be and I was still safe. I’ll never have that moment again.
I came to on my bed. I was naked and my legs were spread apart. I was aware of a bad taste in my mouth. I thought, this is strange, we are still at the bar so how can I be here? I was so convinced that everyone else must still be at the bar that I got up to put my clothes on and go back. It was literally like closing your eyes for five seconds after dozing off and then opening your eyes and being someplace else. Like you do when you have a desk job and it’s after lunch. Imagine when you start to shut your eyes waiting for a big attachment to download onto your desktop and you didn’t even realize your eyes had shut for five seconds. Except, when you open your eyes, your not at work. You could be in your own bed, in an alley next to a dumpster, in the back of a car. And the worst part is, you’re naked.
I got up, not aware of the deep hurried scratches in my back where he had dug his nails into me trying to get my clothes off. I really did think if I went back to the bar, they would be there having a beer saying, “Hey, where have you been?”.
I remembered I had to be to open the studio at 7 the next day. I checked the clock, it was 3 am. I decided that even though the guys were waiting for me, it was too late. I should just go to bed and wake up for work in a few hours. I checked my phone and found the disgusting texts from Ed about sex. I decided I didn’t want to go back to the bar anyway. I went into the bathroom and started to brush my teeth to get the bad taste out of my mouth. I went to take out my contacts. I opened the holder and realized they were already in there basking in saline solution. The two unexplained blue dots looking back at me. That’s when I knew something was wrong. If I had just come back from the bar and passed out, I wouldn’t have taken my contacts out. I didn’t remember taking them out. I looked around the bathroom like the answer would be written on the wall or something. That was when it slowly started to dawn on me. I didn’t remember taking out my contacts, I didn’t remember walking home from the bar, I didn’t remember being at the bar. What did I remember?
I remembered 5 PM. I remembered it because that was when I got my call sheet for the next day. I remembered two beers and one shot, and ordering another round. I remembered Naylor, and Ed and three other guys that came in for a beer and left. They played AC/DC’s “For Those About to Rock” and I exchanged emails with one of them who owned a limo company. I remembered that Naylor didn’t like them. That was all I remembered. What the hell happened to me? I felt the scratch from the dug in nail on my shoulder and felt horror sinking in. I put in my contacts. I drove myself to the hospital. It hurt to sit down. That pain would get worse through out my ordeal of the next 12 hours.
I got to the hospital at 3:30. I was crying uncontrollably. The nurse behind the window asked me to explain what happened. It’s hard to explain when you’re not even sure, especially thru nine little holes in plexiglass. There just to allow enough communication and no contact. “I was drugged and raped” I tell her. My last memory was ten hours ago. “Do you want to press charges?” she asks. I do.
She wants more details. I see the sign that says my patients’ rights are to discuss in private what I feel to be a private situation. This would seem like that time to me. I don’t want to have to talk any louder into those nine holes so the whole waiting room can know what happened to me. I’m taken back to triage by a sweet nurse. I can barely make out her face thru the tears that won’t stop flowing now.
She says she will get me a private room and not a curtained one. That would happen five hours later. I had to sit in that waiting room with crazies and homeless looking for a warm place to sleep for five hours. The precious evidence of the drugs used on me is slowly dissipating. The bottle of water I came in with is taken away from me because it could wash away evidence as the now increasing dry heaves are kicking in even stronger. I would also notice the allergies or head cold I had would return with fervor. It had subsided during my blackout and I could feel the difference between it and the never ending supply of tears from horror and humiliation. Five hours is a long time. Even longer for a “non- acute” rape victim.
I was not allowed to eat, drink, piss, or defecate in case I washed away evidence of the rape. My body is feeling worse. By seven am, I have now been interviewed by four police officers.
I have told every nurse, doctor, and police officer the same thing. I got home from work, went and had a big lunch with Ed. He bought me a Claritin from the store next door, we went to his place, had a smoke and went to the bar around 4 pm. Ed had gotten into a fight with our slumlord landlord. He was pissed off and wanted to have some beers to blow off some steam. I fought thru my head cold/ allergies and said ok. We went to the bar. I still love that place even after all of this and I really do hope I can get back there someday with out the fear of running into Naylor. It was the first bar I ever went to in Hollywood. Its façade beckoned me in. I was part of the family. I miss that bar and the people who go there.
We had a beer and a shot and we were halfway thru the second beer when Naylor got there. It was before 5 pm. He sat awkwardly at the other end of the bar by himself. Ed saw me looking at him. Yes, I admitted, I had slept with Naylor about a month or two prior. I hadn’t been to the bar much and hadn’t seen him since.
“He probably thinks you’re on a date”, says Ed. “Should I invite him to come sit with us so it’s not so awkward?” he offers.
“Yes” I said.
He flip flopped over and invited him back. Naylor looked somewhat relieved I wasn’t with another guy on a date. He sat to my right, Ed to my left. I told Naylor I had a head cold or allergies, I’m not sure which, in response to his question if he will get to see more of me tonight.
“I don’t want to get you sick.”
He doesn’t care. I do. A snot nose isn’t exactly sexy. He is free to sit and hang out with us, but that’s all that’s going to happen I inform him. I guess he didn’t like that answer.
Three loud guys enter the bar. They play AC/DC and Ed poses with them as I snap pictures never leaving my bar stool or my beer. Things started to get a little dreamy. A little far away. Naylor doesn’t like the guys and plays Nirvana thinking it will shut them up. It doesn’t. “Just have fun and who cares what they do” I say to him. Not aware of how much dreamier things were getting. I remember exchanging emails with one of the guys about his limo company. I would love to use one in a photograph. The next shot is ordered with ED and Naylor. I remember putting the shot glass to my lips. Then it’s all gone. Until I come to ten hours later. Naked on my bed with my legs spread apart.