Marissa’s Dysphoria, Bobby’s Rape
Running Toward Hope, Chapter 5
Warning: This chapter contains graphic descriptions of rape and sexual abuse. While these descriptions are necessary in the context of the broader story, some readers will find them traumatizing.
Tomas isn’t hurting Marissa, he’s killing her.
The man has her pinned down, sprawled across the filthy sofa on her stomach. He’s ripped off her robe and he’s raping her, pounding and grunting with all the force his muscular, sweating body can muster.
That’s not what’s killing her, though. She’s used to this. No, she’s dying on the inside, and and he knows it. That’s why he’s doing it.
His hand is wrapped around the part of her that makes her sick just to think about, to remember, to know it’s there. Worse, he knows just how to work it. He’s pumping and squeezing, eliciting waves of pleasure that pull up nausea with every stroke.
“Yeah, boy. Papi make you cum, boy,” he’s grunting. “You friend, Luke? He a hot boy. But you hotter. You got a bigger dick, boy. Papi love that dick, boy!”
He spits each time after he says the word boy, spraying the nape of her neck.
When he pulls out, flips her over and engulfs her with an avid mouth, she wishes he really were killing her physically. It’s the soul killing she can’t stand. This isn’t the first time he’s tortured her like this, and she knows it won’t be the last.
She closes her eyes and concentrates as hard as she can. She wills herself to disappear, to become nothing, to fade into the air like like the wisp of a ghost. Ghosts can’t feel. Ghosts don’t have bodies. Ghosts can’t hurt by seeing the wrong body look back out of the mirror.
They don’t have reflections to betray them.
Her grandmother used to tell her all about ghosts, back when she was a little girl living in a warm brownstone behind the farm market in Spanish Harlem. She’d wake in the mornings to the sounds of crowing roosters, blaring taxis, and roaring delivery trucks.
Abuela would perch on her bed and read her stories sometimes, but the very best stories were the ones she made up, the ones she remembered from back home.
“Marco,” she would say, “Don’t ever forget who you are. Never forget your pride.”
But it wasn’t Marissa who forgot her pride. It was her abuela. She was a wonderful grandmother to little Marco. Oh, sure, she’d firmly pry dolls out of his hands and encourage him to run outside and play with the boys.
She was gentle about it, though. She was sweet.
For a while.
Abuela worked hours on end at the bodega she owned with two cousins. She was never home in the afternoons. Until the day she was.
Marissa and a girlfriend were home from school. Intermediate school. They were 13, trying on clothes and experimenting with makeup in front of the long mirror on the inside of the front door.
Marissa peered at the lovely young girl staring back at her from that mirror. This wasn’t her first time in a skirt, but like every time, the thrill her reflection gave her was better than anything — better than any feeling she ever had at church, better than her abuela’s best cooking, better even than looking at the stars at night up north of the City were you could see them if you went for a picnic and stayed late, lying on blankets and listening to crickets make music.
She closed one eye, peered close into the mirror and lifted the bottle of mascara Isabel had brought over.
Then the the door opened and it was her abuela’s eyes glaring back into her own. Confusion ruled the lined face for a few seconds.
“Oh, excuse!” she exclaimed, sounding puzzled.
Marissa watched, horrified, as puzzlement flowed into recognition and then morphed from anger to fury.
“Marco! Madre de Dios, chico!”
Marissa turned and ran as her grandmother gave chase. She had no hope of escape.
Her grandmother attacked with fierce fury, raised welts and drew blood with a yardstick and a hairbrush. It was her first real beating. It wouldn’t be her last.
When she finally ran away at the age of 16, she had no idea that the beatings were only beginning.
Now, two years later, pinned against a filth-encrusted sofa somebody abandoned in the street, her pimp using and humiliating her, a beating from her abuela might almost seem a nostalgic memory of childhood.
“Guys? We gotta do some real talk now, OK? We gotta figure this out.”
LT glares back at Dan suspiciously. He edges up close to Bobby, who’s sitting up on the hospital bed. Now that the kid’s all patched up, he just wants them out of here. They’ve got stuff to do. Stuff to figure out for real — their own stuff. Its past noon already and night’s coming fast.
“Bobby,” continues the big man with the soft voice,” your ID says you’re from Texas. Says you’re 18 years old. I’m not even gonna ask you if that’s true. OK?”
LT feels rather than sees the younger boy’s timid nod.
“OK, so here’s the deal. We can’t find you in the system, buddy. Texas has no record of you. We’re pretty sure you aren’t the guy in the ID.”
LT presses his body up against his friend’s in a show of protection.
Bobby doesn’t speak.
“OK, fellas, listen to me. It’s not my job to hunt down runaways. Bobby, if you ran away from home, I’m worried about you, but I have bigger things to worry about. Got it?”
Still no response.
“Right, so. Here it is. I’m a dad. I got kids your age, near enough. Two boys and a girl. And I’m here to tell you that I know what 18-year-old guys mostly look like. And you ain’t it. With me?”
Bobby nods.
“Good. So. Dr. Barren tells me you suffered some rectal trauma and tearing. Apparently, you’re OK. He’s put in a couple stitches and prescribed some stool softeners and laxatives so you don’t make things worse when you go.”
Dan’s eyes bounce back and forth between the two boys. “You got any way to pay for that medicine?”
LT nods his head as Bobby’s voice pipes up softly but defiantly. “I got lotsa money. Plenty. All I need.”
LT knows this is true. He’d collected up the clothes off the floor that they’d cut off of his friend when they’d first arrived. He’d found close to 500 bucks tightly rolled up in the right hip pocket of the bloody jeans.
“OK, next problem. You got a place to sleep tonight?”
LT interrupts. “Come on, Bobby. We’re out, man.” He’s scared. He doesn’t like where this is going.
“Problem three,” Dan goes on. “What are you gonna wear? Your clothes are done. You got anybody to bring you anything clean?”
“LT can do it. I got clothes. I can tell him where they are. He can get em.”
“Problem four. This is the big one, guys.”
Dan’s voice drops a tone and grows softer. “I’m pretty sure you aren’t old enough to consent to sex, pal. Not legally. And I think a grownup had sex with you and hurt you. See, I know Luke here a little bit. I know what he does to survive.”
“Hey!” starts LT.
“Slow down, buddy, I’m not judging. I’m just sayin’. Right?”
His soft brown eyes focus on Bobby. “And I’m pretty sure you’re doing the same thing. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry you have to, I mean. It doesn’t make me think anything bad about you. Do you understand?”
LT jumps to his feet, buzzing with adrenaline as Bobby nods.
“But here’s the deal. If you are under 18, and if a man had sex with you, especially if he hurt you, then that was rape. You were raped, Bobby. And there are some cops who need to ask you about it. For your own protection.”
LT feels like the floor is falling out from under his feet. His heart beats so fast he’s afraid it’s going to burst.
“Oh, hell no! Let’s get the fuck outta here!” He thrusts the bloody rags of Bobby’s pants into the smaller boy’s hands.
“Let’s go!”
“Now!”
This is chapter five of a serialized short story dealing with homelessness among LGBTQ youth. Over forty percent of homeless youth in the United States identify as LGBTQ. That’s extraordinary given that queer youth don’t make up more than 3 to 7 percent of the general youth population.
While the details of this story are fictional, I’m writing from my heart and from my experiences. I’ve known these kids. I’ve been there in many ways. The issues are very real and very serious. I’m fictionalizing the stories of real people.
I’m telling their stories because they need somebody to speak for them.
