12/18/02 - 11:01 p.m.

It took reading someone else�s experiencebefore I could comprehend my own.

Looking at a personally repulsive experience with a logical eye.

Some background. A few years ago, at a cast party, drinks flying, tongues loose. A friend starts this rather appropriate game. I�ve Never.

I�ve never gotten drunk. Take a sip.

I�ve never seen The Godfather. No sips.

I�ve never taken the time to explore the deep regions of my soul and found it terrifying. Take a confused half sip.

Basically if you have then you sip, if you�ve nevered, you smile as your companions become more inebriated.

As more liquor is ingested the questions go into two directions. Darker or Sillier. I�ve never floated on a purple cloud. I�ve never intentionally hurt someone.

And then we have Jim. There are questions he has about Kerri that he is afraid to ask under normal circumstances.

I�ve never been forced to have sex, he says and he watches Kerri closely because we all know there is something horrible about her first time. And she sips and she notices the look on my face because I hesitate. I Hesitate.

In? She asks because I am paused between sip and confusion. Everyone just looks at me. Because they never expected this from me.

I pull my beer back.

Ron says, you were raped?

I say, it wasn�t rape. It wasn�t vaginal.

He says, but he made you?

Yes.

Then it was rape.

I didn�t agree at the time and I tried not to think of it. Ever.

Sometimes when I am washing the dishes or reading a book, there are flashes and I see fingers or other pieces of him and it makes me ill. I push it away, in my head I take the photos and the files and I rip them to shreds. Bury them deep in some memory drawer that has a lock on it. No several locks. Hundreds of locks. It�s buried in locks.

But still the images come back.

I�ve been ripping them up since I was eight years old.

Reading another girl's account sent me into an analyzing spin. Not that our experiences were similar, they were not. Only that it made me question the definition of rape and what acts might fall under that classification.

Like Jeni, I didn�t call it rape, I never brandished it with some formal label. But now that I am here, away from those hideous nights I can finally concede that it was rape.

And that I am still struggling to rip those little pictures in my head into small enough pieces so that they can not ever come back.