...I believe as each woman tells her story for the first time, she breaks the silence, and by doing so breaks her isolation, begins to melt her shame and guilt, making her experience real, lifting her pain.

--Eve Ensler, for NPR's This I Believe

Sometimes you owe the universe a debt of gratitude.

One of the most painful symptoms of the disease that is sexual assault is the silence. At first, the silence is imposed on you from the outside. Most immediately, your assaulter pretends not to hear your cries for help, or in many cases, creates a situation where cries for help are not even possible, or are stifled. You're told, whether actually or symbolically, "Shut up and take it."

After the fact, things are often not much better, and in some ways, even worse. Perhaps you can not expect that someone who is so fucked up and evil that he or she would think it was okay to rape someone would ever be human enough to pay attention to your basic humanity crying out in pain. But after, you assume that others--NORMAL people--will heed that cry. Often, however, that's not the case. Rape and incest makes people uncomfortable. It rocks the societal boat, upsets the balance of things people would prefer remain steady. Hearing and believing the victim means the hearers have to DO something. Ignoring and silencing the victim means they get to keep living as they're used to, with no discomfort for them. The victim's discomfort becomes irrelevant; an unfortunate but necessary side effect to maintaining the social compact.

So more often than not after a rape or assault, the others around you tell or show you in a variety of ways that they'd also prefer you shut up and take it. They make it known they don't want to hear about it. They ask you questions that show you they don't want to believe you. Even if sympathetic, they rarely offer to help or provide support. You get the message, "You're on your own with this."

So you shut the fuck up. And you take it. And you build a wall around yourself, so you can be on your own with it--because that's what they've told you to do and because this is the only way you know how to survive without experiencing more hurt. You stop trying to get other people to hear you or help you, and you start imposing your own silence on yourself.

When I was a teenager, I once had a waking nightmare. I woke up screaming, thinking an animal was biting my arm and wouldn't let go. Terrified, I kept screaming and trying to pull it off. And the more I pulled on the animal, the more it clamped down tighter on my arm. I finally ran across the room, still screaming and struggling with the animal, and switched on the light. When I looked down to see this animal that had attached itself to me, what I saw instead was my own right hand clasped tightly around my left forearm.

That's what the silence of carrying a sexual assault around with you is like. It becomes a sort of living nightmare for the person experiencing it. Part of you is still screaming for help, but there's a hand over your mouth, smothering you. And the scariest part is that it's your own hand.

This silent scream-suppression can go on for years. Decades. It did with me.

The only way to break free of this nightmare, to turn on the light and see and name what is REALLY there, is to get your voice back. But even when you finally are brave enough to realize this is the only way out, it's still incredibly hard to do. After everyone around you has convinced you your only safety and support will come from keeping quiet about it, saying anything about it out loud is so scary that it almost seems better to keep living in that nightmare world than risk more rejection.

And this is why I feel entirely lucky to have started writing this blog, and through it, to have met Hiromi.

When I first started this blog, I still felt pretty alone with my story, and my survival. I was learning to talk about it, but I didn't have any people beside my therapist who I felt I could talk about it with in great detail--mostly because I was afraid of their reactions. But, through my blog, I met two people who I began to get to know and eventually began talking about it with. One of them was Hiromi.

I am having difficulty writing this entry, because words really can't describe what a gift it is at a time like that--or any time really--to run into someone who is is fun and funny and smart and talented and SO fucking cool that talking to her makes you think life might not suck so much after all. And not only that, but someone who "gets" you in a way in which you don't have to explain things you generally need to explain to other people. And who can listen to you without judging you, and can respond in ways that take your own thoughts to higher and more evolved levels. And not only THAT, but someone who seems to genuinely enjoy your company as much as you enjoy theirs. And not only THAT, but someone who gets what it is to be a survivor, and how hard it is to come to terms with that, and how hard it is to validate your experience to yourself and others--and who helps, through her own compassion and undesrtanding--to allow you to gain that validation.

How amazing is it to run into someone like that? People who embody all of those qualities are few and far between.

Hiromi is all that , and more. Talking to her has, among many other positive things, helped me to slowly but surely peel back finger after finger that was covering my mouth until I felt I might actually be okay if I spoke up.

She's helped me be less afraid. And only another sexual assault survivor can really understand the full impact of what that sentence means.

And she's helped me to laugh on some really, really hard days. And everyone can understand the full value of that.

Today I want to tell her that I'm grateful every day that I know her, and that the world is a better place because she exists. And I want to thank her for being her amazingly wonderful self.

So hey, Hiromi:

Girl, you are the shrimp and spicy mayo to my inari. You're the guacamole to my cheddar cheese omelette. Yeah, people might look at both of us together and think we're weird, but they're the ones missing out on something totally delicious.

And here's a present for you, which I hope will be the first thing you listen to when you wake up in the morning. Play it real, real, REAL loud. I propose we learn to sing and feel by heart over the coming year, so that when I finally get the chance to meet you, we can dance and sing our asses off to it together.

Or hell, maybe by then, we'll be so over-brave, we'll be able to stand in front of a crowd of strangers and sing it out loud in front of them--literally AND figuratively.

Sometimes you can beat the odds with a careful choice of where to fight. Where to fight counts for a lot...
But there's nothing like having your friends show up with lotsa guns.

--Sin City

I probably wouldn't have ever heard the above quote without Karl Elvis MacRae being around. I also probably wouldn't have felt its sentiment much this year without him being around.

Today is Karl Elvis's birthday. I feel this post should serve as some kind of gift to him, but it's really such an inadequate idea, because there really aren't words that can match the gift of friendship given freely to you.

This has not been the easiest year for me. It's been one where I fought really long and hard to overcome some really formidable foes. There were days when I felt I was at my ebb, so tired I thought I'd fall and just give up. And then suddenly there Karl would be, charging into battle, weapons flying, holding the Orcs at bay for me so I could gain a modicum more of strength to rise and fight again. He does this with such ease--a well-timed kind word, an open ear, an offered shoulder, a quick fix on a blog--that to him it probably seems like nothing he does is worth much gratitude. But he'd be wrong, and I know first-hand that all those who know him would agree with me. His humor, insight, integrity, loyalty, and his constant lustiness (in every sense of the word) are inspirational. I know they've certainly kept me going during some really hard times--and some good times, too.

But I don't want to just focus on what he's done for others. I want to express that, even if he never helped me or anyone else, even if he never hosted my blog, I'd still think he was the shit. It's not his strength or his many abilities that make him valuable. It's just his undeniably badass self. He's simply a fuckin' delight to know. If humans were candy--and aren't they?--then Karl would be an Atomic Fireball, all spicy and sweet and hard. It hurts, but it's so nice, you just can't stop eating it. And hell, at least it's never boring.

He's so bad he's good. So wrong he's right. He's the kind of man girl bands were invented to sing songs about. Sho' 'nuff.

And, to bastardize one of the great truisms I learned as a child, "It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Karl Elvis is both." I can't say this one better or with more impact than E. B. White, so I won't.

So on this the day of his birth, I want to first say thanks, Karl, for being such a great guy and a good friend.

And second, I want to wish you, Karl Elvis MacRae--the biggest and baddest of all host daddies on the planet--a very, very happy birthday. May you live, love, write, and screw long and well, for many, many more years to come.

And anyone reading this, go on over to Karl's place and make him smile today. Pepper his paprikash with birthday well wishes. And tell him I sent you.

My favorite song about good meetings and good memories and fond farewells.

My friend Artful Dodger is going dark.

I'm often wont to say to myself that this blogging world and the connections made on it can't really count as "real"--that they can't substitute for flesh-and-blood communication and friendships.

And yet.

I've never met Art in person. I don't even know his real name, or where he lives. I've never heard his speaking voice. But in the year and a half that I've known him, he has had a very special place in my life, and eventually my heart. The incredible, smart, kind, caring, funny, brave person that he is has had such a significant impact on me--far more than a great number of "real life" friends have had during this time. And probably more than even he knows, because these kinds of intangible things are impossible to transmit in words. But I've tried to share a little of it with him. And just knowing he was around and I could read him every day was always a comfort to me, no matter what was going on.

His leaving and how sad I feel about it certainly doesn't feel like an "imitation" of real life. It feels like real life, and real loss.

I will miss him very much. And those of you who never got the chance to read him will be missing out. But he's moving on to better things and for that I am very glad.

So before he does his walk into his new sunrise with his lady, I wanted to give him two presents. Since words can really not suffice, these are my best attempt at telling him how I feel as he goes.

Art:

Thank you. You were the one who whispered in my ear.

And all peaceful and happy sailing, wherever you may go, for as long as you keep going.

Love and farewell.

Today is the birthday of the Moronorati's big host daddy and my dear friend Karl Elvis.

The man shares a birth date with both William Blake AND Anna Nicole Smith. To me, no statement about him could say more. But you gotta know him to get what I mean. And he's someone worth knowing, so I encourage you to go figure that one out for yourself.

A year ago today, I waxed blogetic about him, and all of that still holds.

This year, I find that I have no big tracts of words, only feelings. So Karl, here's something smaller in word count, but no less heartfelt, for you on your birthday:

The time keeps moving on. Another year gone by. Can you believe it?

Life has sure been weird, honeybucket man. And I'm still very glad you're in it.

I'll leave it to your latest band crush to say the rest for me.

Happy, happy birthday, darlin'. I'll always be ready to show up with lotsa guns.

Go visit the man today, wish him well, and offer yourself up to be given a birthday spanking.