By J. Aaron Sanders
I’m staring at the garage where I was raped forty years ago. It’s 2019, and I’m 46-years-old. Not a day has gone by since when I haven’t thought about what went on behind the garage door. Turns out, seventeen-year-old Cory made quite an impression. What’s weirder than what I know is what I don’t know—like, say, what the fuck happened to Cory?
The last few years I’ve had this fantasy of doing a radio documentary for which I find Cory and interview him. Maybe he has a wife and a few children. Maybe he’s respectable. I’ll show up and totally expose him for the child molester he is. Call it a revenge fantasy. Call it whatever you want.
My car window is down, and the warm Salt Lake City spring air rolls into the car. The split-level house looks the same except for the bush on the front lawn. That’s been planted in the interim, as if a monument to where I was abducted. It was right there, on the sidewalk at the edge of the bush’s shadow where he took me.
I’ve come here many times over the years. I take 3900 south to 500 East, and each time I turn right onto 3635 South, my stomach drops through the floor. I pass our old house, the first place our family owned after my parents graduated from the University of Utah. That chain link fence? My father installed it. And you better believe the rest of that yard was immaculate. Not at all like the photograph I got off of Google Maps. Indeed, I remember driving by this house as a family several years after we moved from Salt Lake City to Cedar City, and my dad just shaking his head. “How could they let it get this bad?”
I continue on from my house to the end of the street. This is where Roman and I ran into Cory, and it was the first time I remember ever seeing him. Clearly, he knew Roman well—introduce me to your friend—and it seems obvious that what Cory was about to do to me he had done to Roman many times.
So Cory sends Roman home. What was Roman thinking as he walked away? He knew what was about to happen. What did he say to his mother when he walked inside? To his father? It occurs to me I don’t remember Roman’s house at all. I must have gone in several times. He and I played together more than once, but I don’t remember any of that either. I remember that one day. Walking together along 3635 South to 610 East where I lost my virginity by force in a garage. It’s a strange realization that I don’t remember anything about Roman other than this one event. Where is he? What happened to him? I don’t know his last name. I’m not even sure his name was Roman.
Thank God for the neighbor across the street who saw Cory take me. I don’t know who she was. I know that somehow word got back to my mother. I know that my mother was quilting with her sister, Rose, and I know that my mother eventually saved me. Had she not, Cory would have sent me on my way with the warning not to tell anyone, and he would have no doubt taken me again.
So Cory sends Roman home, and he drags me from the sidewalk into the garage. I don’t remember if the door was open or not. The feeling I remember more than anything else is being overpowered. I wanted to get away. I tried to get away. But I could not. And that feeling sticks with me. Not being able to get away completely rewired my head. Afraid of commitment. Unable to follow rules. The feeling of being boxed in or overwhelmed and having to break free.
You know what happened next. I’m not going to say it again. Once was enough.
*
The day after Cory kidnapped and raped me, the police brought him over to our home. Even now I get shaky thinking about it. Again, it’s a memory with no before and no after. It’s just a flash.
Through the screen door, I see him flanked by two policemen. Someone is bringing me closer to the door when I begin to panic. Kicking and screaming and thrashing. I didn’t want to see him but I was being forced to. Again, I was overpowered.
I always thought the purpose of the visit was so I could identify the man who raped me. Deep down I needed to believe this. It was a version of the story I could live with. But during a recent visit with my mother, we were discussing the event and when this detail came up, her face dropped. “They didn’t arrest him,” she said. “The police brought him over to apologize to you.”
For some reason, this new reveal crushes me. I felt “okay” with the idea that they arrested Cory even if he didn’t “do time.” But the idea that they just let him go after what he did to me is more than I can bear.
That mother fucker. They let him go.
I’m nauseated. It’s 12:30 a.m., and I can’t sleep. I’m doing my breathing exercises. I’ve eaten an English Muffin. I’ve taken my meds. I’ve used essential oils. I’ve prayed. I’ve meditated. I’ve watched something happy. I’ve had a brilliant day. I have family and friends that love me. It should all be enough.
And I feel like I’m going to puke.
*
I have questions. What happened to Cory after they let him go? What was that night for him like? Did he feel bad? Was he relieved? Did he listen to music? What did he have for dinner? Where is Cory now? Prison? With a family? I realize that after all these years, and after all the after-effects of trauma, I never thought to Google him. Or find out his last name.
He was obviously abused by someone. He inherited this fucked up-ness from somewhere. And it won’t be popular to say this but I’m not angry with him. I have all kinds of emotions about what happened, but being angry with him is not one of them (I wouldn’t say I’ve forgiven him either).
My feelings about my rape become more complicated. The event affects more than just me. Or Cory. Or my parents. That’s part of the shame. I want to talk about it, but I’m simultaneously aware that to do so hurts those around me. And yet I want to be heard. I want others to know what happened, that I tried to stop it, that what happened doesn’t make me bad or dirty–even though it feels like it did just that.
The first time I told anyone what happened to me was when I was a freshman at Southern Utah University. I was assigned a group project in my Social Problems course, and when our group was given childhood sexual abuse for our subject, I knew what I was going to talk about. How strange that this was my response. Haven’t said a word to anyone, and then all of the sudden, tell a group of 100 students, including your then girlfriend. I held back on some of the specifics but the implications were clear. I had come clean.
After, the professor asked to speak with me. She was this cool hippy from the east coast that looked like Annie Dillaird. “Have you discussed this event with a therapist?”
I shook my head. “It only happened once.”
She looked like she might fall through the floor.
*
Since then, I’ve struggled to find other moments to disclose what happened to me. I want people to know, but I’m also afraid of what they’ll think of me when they find out. No one has ever been cruel or dismissive, but I most often come away feeling like I haven’t been heard.
Indeed, when I told Linda for the first time, I wasn’t sure she had heard what I said. She didn’t say anything at all, and later, she confessed that, as someone who knew nothing about trauma, she simply wasn’t able to even process what I said, let alone take it in.
Later, Linda was also the first person who really heard me.
Somehow, when the wheels came off a few months into our relationship, she was able to make a distinction between the Aaron she fell in love with and the “trauma-Aaron.” I’ll be forever grateful.
Even now, when I’m struggling, she’s able to remind me what’s happening. With love. And without judgement.
She honors my trauma by giving it space. To be worked on. To be wrestled with. For the four-year-old me to poke his head out from the maze of shame and guilt. For the four-year-old to be remembered.
“The stress hormones, cortisol, norepinephrine, that are released during a terrifying trauma tend to render the experience vivid and memorable, especially the central aspect, the most meaningful aspects of the experience for the victim,” says Richard McNally, a psychologist at Harvard University and the author of the book Remembering Trauma. That’s because a high-stress state “alters the function of the hippocampus and puts it into a super-encoding mode,” says Hopper, especially early on during an event. And “the central details [of the event] get burned into their memory and they may never forget them.”
From “How Trauma Affects Memory: Scientists Weigh In On The Kavanaugh Hearing”
I have a lot of wonderful memories from my upbringing. They come to me in warm flashes, sometimes with waves of nostalgia.
Our family vacations at Lake Powell are among my favorites. The extreme heat, which I loved, the cool water, sleeping under the stars, water skiing in the mornings and evenings, soda pop and Gatorade, and laughing like hell with family. I love these memories, and they’re right there, whenever I want them.
But they’re not intrusive. They don’t have a hold on me.
Cory is always with me no matter what I do. His red face as he gets off. His shiny dick against my face. And his tongue down my throat. My first sexual experience. My innocence gone. He sucked it out of my four-year-old body and implanted himself inside me, taking over my neural pathways, leaving me with a brain stuck in fight or flight, a brain doing its best to help me navigate the world—and doing a real good job too until the center can no longer hold, until I fall apart in front of the love of my life.
Shortly into my recovery from childhood sexual trauma, I called my mother to ask what Cory’s name was. Oddly enough, for all those years, it never occurred to me to ask. To my surprise, she had it right there. She told me, and within a one minute of that phone call, I had found Cory on the Internet.
Same blonde hair that curls at its ends. Same eyes. His cheeks are chubbier now. Those are the lips that kiss me, and inside his mouth, is the tongue that he stuffed inside of me.
And his dick. I know it’s there too. How many others have seen it? How many others have held it in their mouths?
Even more information exists outside the frame. Matter explodes in every direction. He’s a construction worker. A husband. A stepfather. An uncle. I found his sister on Facebook. I know his father and mother are dead. He was arrested twice for assault. He filed for bankruptcy. Pieces of our share history coming into focus, and yet somehow they raise more questions than they answer. We’re a Jackson Pollock painting. Not a Vermeer.
Linda’s with me now, and we’re driving west, away from the Wasatch Mountains, toward Cory.
I’m wondering what I might say, what I hope to gain.
We pull into the parking lot.
“I’ll go ask,” I say.
“You want me there?”
I want to say no, I got it, but all I can do is nod.
Inside, we ask to see the director.
A tall, solemn man with kind eyes and a dark suit approaches us.
My voice shakes. “Where can we find Cory?”
Cory was cremated after he committed suicide at age 40. I don’t know for sure that he committed suicide, but it is a “suicide” obituary. Died peacefully. No one dies peacefully at age 40. I’m not going to include any more of the obituary here. I’m not going to include his real last name. Like I said earlier, I’m not angry with Cory. I’m sad for him. For us. Someone fucked him up too. Statistics suggest it was someone in his family. Someone he trusted. And that event rewired his brain, just as he did mine. I’m not excusing what he did to me, to Roman, and likely to many other young boys as well. I’m simply choosing to focus on the sadness I feel about the reality of childhood sexual abuse: it doesn’t originate out of nothing. It comes from somewhere.
Linda and I find the plaque. His name is just one among many.
I stare at it. I can’t believe I found him. I can’t believe this is it.
Around us are the sounds of lawn care, and it’s difficult to have the “moment” I had anticipated.
Linda senses this. She leaves to give me some privacy with my abuser.
I stare at the plaque, and I feel nothing.
The sounds of lawn care draw nearer. The weed whacker is right around the corner of the crypt now. The riding lawn mower also moves closer, and the noises are so loud I can’t have my moment at all. And then it occurs to me that there is no moment to be had. Cory’s dead. I’m not. So now what?
I return to the car.
“How are you doing?” Linda asks.
“Good, I guess.” I get in the driver’s side. “You want a coffee?”
She does, and we drive off, back toward the Wasatch Mountains.
This is where I would make that grand gesture at the end of an essay. This is where I would turn a poem. This is where there would be some kind of fictional denouement. But what does one say now? Cory’s dead, but he still visits me every day. Some days it’s like he’s far off, like I can see him next door, through a window; and some days, he’s right close, his face red, his dick in my face, and the best I can do is not to choke.
I meant to leave a comment yesterday and couldn’t come up with the words. Things aren’t much different today. I would want to come up with words to react to finding Cory and his now being nothing but ashes and fragments of bone. I wanted to write how it must feel to feel nothing and how I guess I wasn’t surprised. No release, no catharsis, and how he still lives, bigger than life and you are now older that he was when he died. I sense that slowly working through the pain will gradually diminish his presence. This may be too facile, but I’m kind of thinking David and Goliath or Campbell’s “The Hero’s Journey” I’m mixing stuff up here and rambling, and yea, Carpe Dium!
I think that you’re right when you say, “slowly working through the pain will gradually diminish his presence.” Grief is a complicated experience, I’ve come to learn. One thing I know is that it is cathartic to speak and to be heard. Thank you for hearing.
Thank you for writing this. Just thank you. I will always be able and wanting to hear you should you need another ear/eye. I wish both you and the child-you peace. Love.
So sorry 😐. Never in my life would I want this to happen to one of my children, friends or family. My emotions tell me to beat him up. My upbringing tells me to forgive him. Since it is physically impossible to confront him. Give it to God. Pleading to feel peace. If you can’t forget, maybe talking, writing drawing it out, you can come to terms with it. You’re strong enough, tough enough, brave enough to get through anything!
Hi Barb! Nice to hear from you. And thank you for your kinds words.