Proper Responses and Banality

“This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain”
-Ursula LeGuin “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”

Something weird and awful.

I did a pretty thorough inspection of my body after showering just now, and I’ve still got one bruise. We’re talking barely-there, so-faint-you’d-never-notice-it-if-you-didn’t-know-where-to-look bruise (as is to be expected after three and a half months) but still.

There are parts of my body I haven’t wanted to think much about for a while.

It’s hard for me to express how angry that makes me.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Stop thinking about the bruise for a second (not easy, is it?) and let’s talk about rape kits.

“Right then. This isn’t going to be big on dignity.”

After it happens, you go to the hospital. Probably you go with a friend or two, or at the very least a book. I recommend this. Anyway. You tell the kind lady behind the desk that you’ve been sexually assaulted. They usher you into a small room and you put on one of the familiar hospital gowns, the ones that look like something your grandma would wear, just backless.

And you wait.

You wait way longer than you expected to, and then you keep waiting.

You get bored.  You wonder what’s wrong with you, that you could possibly be bored at a time like this.

After a while maybe your friends – I’m just speculating here – open the cupboard under the sink and try to distract you by stealing packets of lubricant, a disposable speculum and several sets of latex gloves.

Your phone runs out of battery.

You wait some more.

You cry. You talk about what happened. You worry about the questions they’ll ask you. You cry. You really hate the backless granny-gown.

You go into the bathroom (this isn’t one of the normal little cubicle waiting rooms – you’ve got a whole suite to yourself). You try to hop up on the sink so you can see yourself better, and there is a tremendous crash as the sink comes apart from the wall.

Your speculum-stealing friends think this is very funny, but they help you wedge it back into place.

You wait.

You worry that people have heard you laughing, that they’ll think you don’t take this seriously, that you’re not having the proper response, which makes you cry again.

You wait.

You try to figure out what the proper response is.

…I really have no idea, Kaylee.

When the doctors come in they walk you through what to expect. They are as kind as is humanly possible. They tell you that you can stop the process at any time, that you can skip whatever bits you’d like to.

It’d be kind of great to skip it all.

They take a verbal report of what happened (you’re soon going to hate the phrase “in as much detail as possible”) and then they inspect you.

Please understand that this takes hours.

You can’t just strip naked and point out the places that hurt. They try to maintain some measure of dignity by uncovering you piece by piece, but it really doesn’t work. Everything’s awkward and you’re always losing your grip on the gown and flashing them.

They document any marks you may have. They spend a long time trying to ascertain whether that red thing on your bum is a pimple or a scratch mark.

They go through your pubic hair with a wide-toothed comb. They do this with great seriousness, despite the fact that you do not actually have very much pubic hair. You feel as if you’re a monkey being very earnestly groomed.

They’ll check under your fingernails, take samples from your vagina or mouth or anus – anywhere you say he may have touched.

They’ll ask you a lot whether you’d like them to stop, whether you need a break. Some water?

It’s weird and funny and utterly awful.

When they’ve finished, they take away whatever clothing you’re willing to give them. They seal the kit and put it away. It stays ‘away’ until you decide whether you want to go to the police.

That’s what you’re supposed to do.

I didn’t do any of that.

Oh, I was in the room, but I wasn’t in the granny gown. This is what a rape kit looks like from the outside. I was one of the idiots doing what I could to make my friend laugh.

After my own incident?

I called my neighbour to say I’d be late to her dinner.

It seemed somehow vital that I stay in control, that I keep this awful secret from my friends and my family.  I couldn’t stay home, not without telling them the truth or faking some kind of sudden illness.  I didn’t think I could answer the question “Are you alright?” with anything other than tears, so I determined to avoid it entirely.

I went to the party.

I felt so disconnected.  Everything was green and idyllic and laughing, all these people who’ve known me all my life, all these people I love, the late evening warm and clear.  There were moose steaks and gluten free raspberry bars, and I felt like I was containing some great horror.  Like I was protecting them from it.

Was that the proper response?

When I went home I found my rose petal bath salts and ran the hottest bath I could bear. I made a package of instant noodles and I sat in the bath and ate them, and when I got out the translucent rose petals clung to my skin along with soggy stray pasta. It was disgusting and funny and awful.

So this bruise.

If I’m going to do this, I want to do it right. I want to give the police as much information as they need. I want to give the legal system every possible opportunity to come through for me, because I would quite like to believe that it can.

I didn’t go to the hospital right away and I regret that.  But at the same time…I don’t think I could have done it then.

Proper or not, I’ve responded the only way I knew.

I’m still doing that.

So. I suppose I’m going to the hospital to see if they’d like to take pictures of my barely-bruises.

For the record: this is officially less fun than appendicitis.

It is less fun than snowshoeing in the rain.

It is painful.  It is undignified.  It is boring.