HERE LIES A COKE WHORE
The smell of cafeteria food and industrial sanitizer mingled with the faint smell of shit and decay is the first thing you notice. You’re in the hospital. You’ve been here once before, after the drunken car crash.
You struggle to remember what happened, how you got here, any of it. Your head is pounding, the vision in your left eye is blurry, your ass feels bruised. You feel painfully thirsty, like the worst hangover mornings. Your lips are cracked and dry. Your fingers find your face. It’s puffy, sore to the touch, and there’s a bandage above your right eye on your forehead.
You start to remember last night, drinking at the club with that guy, the one you’ve seen around at other clubs. You’re surprised when he buys you a drink because he’s always with some woman ten years younger than you. When he comes up to you, the little voice in your head screams, “he’s too charming and handsome to want me” but, with liquid courage flowing, you tell the voice to fuck off.
The pain brings you back to now. You reach across your body. Your breasts are tender. Through the hospital gown you feel your aching nipples. The silver rings that you got pierced back in college have been taken out. You wonder if he took them, then you think, they probably did it here. You think, “maybe they gave me an MRI”. You look at your arm with the IV running in it and wonder what’s flowing into you now.
You look out the window next to your bed and guess it’s early afternoon. It’s raining again and the wind is blowing the bare branches on the trees. You start to feel more pain, and it makes it hard to focus on what happened, but shards of images begin to form. You remember the molly tab and how the guy said, “these are the best I’ve ever had, and I’ve taken a lot of molly.” You recall laughing and telling him it looked like a kid’s Flintstone vitamin, a purple dinosaur. Then…nothing. As you close your eyes, too tired to think, you wonder if you somehow overdosed.
##
You wake at dusk. The rain stopped while you were out and little white lights are twinkling on the swaying tree branches. A nurse comes in.
“You’re awake. How’s the pain?” the nurse asks.
“It’s getting worse. Can I have some water?” you say.
“Sorry, you’re NPO…err, no food or water for now. I can give you a sponge swab to help with the dry mouth, and something for the pain.”
You sink back into the bed, the effort of asking a couple questions exhausting you. Finally, as the pain begins to reside, you ask the nurse what happened to you.
“You were found unresponsive in a parking lot next to a club on Garnett early this morning. The paramedics had to revive you… We’re waiting on the toxicology report… Do you remember what you took last night?”
“Drinks…Molly…” you say.
“And vodka…that’s all,” you add.
The nurse raises an eyebrow, and you think she’s judging you. You ignore it like you’ve learned to do.
“Ok. A doctor will be in to talk to you in a bit. Also, there’s a police detective who wants to see you. We asked her to wait until you are a little stronger. You are lucky to be alive.”
You don’t feel lucky or very alive and wonder why the fuck the police are involved. You don’t want to ask but you do.
The nurse looks at you and pauses like she’s not sure she should say anything. She clears her throat, and says, “because you were found with your hands bound, naked, and almost dead.”
It takes a beat for you to comprehend that. You’d assumed some sort of OD or alcohol poisoning. You’ve been down that road before…But this sounds like something much worse.
“I was raped?” you ask.
The nurse looks at you and softens.
“We don’t know but that’s probably why the police want to talk to you…. I’m sorry this happened to you.”
##
You spend the next several hours in and out of a haze. Your mind wanders, alternating between what happened and what is ahead. You worry you’ll get fired for missing more work. It’s a shit job but one you’ve managed to hold on to for more than a year. You try to remember if you have enough money in your checking to pay rent this month. You strain for more details about the man, then remember his blue eyes, sandy brown hair, the dice tat on his beefy forearm.
When the doctor finally arrives, he introduces himself, looks at your chart on the computer next to the bed. All business, he tells you what the nurse told you earlier. Then he drops the speech you’ve heard more than a couple times.
“Ms. Staples… Angie…your labs indicate you have early signs of liver cirrhosis. You are…” he stops and glances back at the computer screen, “almost forty and much too young to have liver disease. Your blood alcohol was .19 last night…Do you drink daily?”
You tell him the truth.
He asks you about how much you drink a day, about drug use, whether you’d consider treatment. You tell him the truth about the drinking and drugs, but you lie when you say you’d go to treatment. He tells you the social worker will help with finding you a program. You think the conversation is over, but he continues.
“Angie, given how you were found, we’d like to give you a forensic gynecological exam…Because you came in unconscious, we were unable to conduct the SAFE protocol; we need your consent.”
You look at him blankly and he clarifies, “that’s the examination we give to rape victims to collect evidence for the police.”
You give him consent.
##
The next morning you wake and they wheel you to an examination room. An OBGYN doc examines you. You ask if she can tell if you were raped, although you are certain you were.
“You have vaginal bruising, contusions on your inner thighs…we won’t have results from the DNA tests for a day or two,” she says. All business.
She tells you she’s testing for SDIs, then mentions the bruises on your ass.
“It looks like you were whipped or hit with a stick or paddle or something…is it okay if I photograph the contusions?” she asks.
You give consent, and she helps you roll to your stomach.
Your numbness is now fading, replaced with intermittent anger and humiliation.
You lie still and close your eyes while she takes photos.
##
That afternoon you wake from dozing and the police detective is sitting in the chair next to your bed. She is about your age, maybe a few years older. She introduces herself, asks if you feel well enough to talk.
“Yeah, I feel ok. We can talk,” you say.
“Ok. Ok. Do you remember what happened the other night…” She flips through a note pad, “Saturday, the 21st…the night you ended up in here?”
You tell her what you remember. She takes notes, tells you to take your time and says, “we can take a break anytime.”
She asks you about the man.
“Did you know Justin Phillips before that night?”
You think, Fuck. I didn’t even know his last name. I only knew him as a guy that hung out at all the beach bars.
You tell her, “I’d seen him before several times…maybe we chatted at the bar before…but I never went out with him or anything like that.”
She nods, scribbles notes.
“Do you frequent several of the bars down there, or just the place you were that night…” she flips through her notes again, “The Surf Shack?” she asks.
“Umm…yeah, I guess so. I mean…I’ve been living near the beach since college and…I guess I go to a few regularly,” you tell her.
“And you’ve seen Mr. Phillips at a few places?” she asks.
“Yeah. I’ve seen him at several places over the past year, year and a half,” you tell her.
“Ok. Have you…” she stops herself, then asks, “Do you remember him giving you molly?”
You knew she’d ask that but you are scared to answer and it must show on your face.
“You aren’t in any trouble here. I don’t care that you did molly. No judgement,” she continues.
“I remember. He had a baggie with several tabs. They looked like little kid’s vitamins, different colors and animal shapes. He gave me one at the bar. We’d had a few drinks before that,” you say.
“Ok. Do you recall if he picked one out for you or did he let you choose one?” she asks.
You think about it a beat before answering.
“No…I remember him saying I should take the purple one. It was supposedly the best quality he had,” you answer.
She jots more notes, lets out a short sigh.
“Did the doctors tell you what they found in your tox screen?” she asks.
“Um…they mentioned the molly and, well, a lot of alcohol,” you reply.
“Did you take anything else that you know of? Any drugs from someone else? Anybody else buy you a drink?”
“No. No. I don’t think so.”
She looks at you and offers a sad smile, brushes her blond hair from her face, then continues.
“Do you remember leaving your drink unattended? You know, when you went to the restroom or anything like that?”
You are annoyed but understand why she is asking.
You answer, “Uh…no. I learned never to do that back in college. Why?”
“You tested positive for flunitrazepam and fentanyl,” she tells you.
You look at her blankly trying to process what she is saying.
Finally, you say, “The molly was cut with fentanyl?”
“It seems so. And roofies,” she answers.
You say, “he roofied me” half question, half realization.
“I think so, yes. Do you remember if you had sex with him?” she asked.
Your head spins, your face grows hot. You feel like you might vomit. Your mind screams, He raped me…I swore I’d never let it happen again…I’m a fucking idiot.
“I don’t remember… he raped me?”
She nods, tilts her head, looks back at her notes before she says, “Well, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. He’s come up on our radar before. Two other women have ended up in the hospital after drinking and doing drugs with him. There’s a pattern forming.”
You feel a wave of shame and think I’ve been hanging around the bars long enough to know better. You remember what that therapist said about victim blaming, but that only makes you angry at him as well as yourself.
You tell her you wish you remembered more, and she tells you to call her if you do. She hands you her card and starts to leave. When she gets to the door, she stops and looks at you with a tired kindness.
“I’m sorry this happened to you.”
##
That night, you are alone in your room. And the first time it happened to you floods over you again with so much force you feel like you’re drowning. The details have haunted you for years, always lurking in the muddy bottom of that lake of alcohol and shame and regret deep in your soul. You’ve done your best to drown it, keep it down, forget it, heal…but you can’t. When that day comes back, it comes in shards of images, and those images come with the same emotional rawness that you felt way back then. It’s a story you’ve told therapists, a few close friends. It plays in your head like an old movie. That one therapist had you visualize it, said it was “systematic desensitization,” or some shit. Then the next therapist told you that only made you “dissociate” and the first therapist was wrong. Now it’s just the fucking horror movie that plays in your head.
##
It was a hot July afternoon in Johnny Walker’s house. You were the only girl, and three of his friends were there too. You were in his garden shed. You smell freshly cut grass, wet pavement, and gasoline. You are scared and excited too. You feel the scratchy wool blanket between your bare ass and the hard plywood floor. You are making out with Johnny. One of your sneakers is off and your jean shorts and panties are bunched up around your other ankle. He says “this won’t hurt.” You feel the weight of his strong body, smell his musk as he lays on you. You feel it go in and the twinge of pain, thinking how big it felt compared to his fingers. You feel him grinding and moving, saying, “I love you” while desperately hoping you were doing it right because you really want him to love you.
Then you are confused. When Johnny is done and he gets up, tells you to “stay put.” You feel dizzy, a little sick when his friend Tommy comes into the shed and gawks at your half-naked body as he unzips his pants. You want to tell him to stop but you don’t, can’t for some reason and he does what Johnny just did. When he cums in you, you start to get up, reach for your underwear and shorts, but you see William standing in the doorway waiting for his turn. You want to scream and tell him no. You want to leave but you can’t get your legs to move. He pushes you back down and you lay there numb until it’s over.
Then you are riding your stupid purple girl’s ten-speed home, sweaty, in a daze, wondering why your shorts are wet and your thighs burn. You stop to check, afraid you are bleeding. Then, confused again, you try to figure out how Ben Gay got all over your bike seat. You ride a few blocks before it clicks, “they put it there.”
You get home, go into your room, and cry. Eventually, your older sister comes in and says, “that’s just what boys do.” She leaves for a minute, goes to her room and comes back with a bottle of vodka and a can of Hawaiian Punch. She gives you your first drink. You talk with her and start to feel better, and she gives you another drink. Your sister tells you how you need to be smarter around boys, then she gives you some tips.
A few weeks later, you tell your best friend what Johnny did to you. She tells her mom, and her mom tells yours. Your mom is furious with you, not Johnny. She calls you a slut and a sinner. She makes you go to church for confession. You are scared but she takes you and watches you go into the confessional. You are surprised because the priest is kind. He tells you, “Those boys took something special from you.”
Then you see yourself in high school. You have one boyfriend the whole time, and things are better, but you start to drink too much. Every time you see Johnny or the other boys, you want to drink, need to drink…you hate them. But after graduation you go to college and your boyfriend doesn’t.
In college, you drink a lot and sleep around but that’s what everybody is doing. Then, in your junior year, you are driving to a party with your roommate. You’re drunk and she has an eightball of coke. You smash into a parked Volvo a few blocks from the beach. You are arrested. Your dad pays for an attorney to get the DUI dropped to a lesser charge, and the cocaine possession part expunged. But when you go home at winter break, your bitch of a mom is furious with you and she blurts out, “Your tombstone is going to say, ‘Here Lies a Coke Whore,’ if you don’t stop going to bars and partying and being loose.”
Then the movie ends until it starts over…
##
Three days later, they release you with prescriptions for pain and referrals the social worker gave you for rehabs, rape counseling, and support groups. When they wheel you outside, your roommate Kim is parked at the curb waiting for you.
“Jeez, you look like you got hit by a truck. You in pain?” she asks.
“I’m just tired. Just really, really fucking tired,” you tell her.
She looks over at you before she pulls away and gives you a look that makes you feel dirty. You look away, back toward the hospital.
“You hungry or anything? We can stop and pick up something,” she says.
You don’t look at her, just stare out the window. You think, I’ll never be hungry again.
Finally, you look over at her and say, “That’s ok. I’m not hungry…but I really could use a drink.”