Wisps of Smoke

Wisps of Smoke1

By M. Korostoff2

It was about one week from Thanksgiving when my life ended forever in the arms of a stranger.  I came to my mother’s house on the east side to make plans and shopping lists for the banquet that was to follow, but never did.  We laughed and tasted the red wines, which were never quite as red as they were on Thanksgiving.  We divvied up the recipes and various other items of cookery to our precise desire until the script of our meal had been written and edited many times over.  It was here that my last memory exists, residing in the halls of my mother’s home until the end of my life.  I can only visit my memories, I will never live the life they seem to advertise.  But how rightful a spot to have left my memories, for it was on this day, because of this place that I have lost my capacity for life as a person.3

I was walking home from the planning session, adaze with gravies and pumpkin pie not minding my step, though who would take care when presented with such a smooth path.  I stopped to view a magazine at the corner stand before the subway stop, and as I did so I was nearly giddy with myself for planning such a perfect evening and then having the courage to read a magazine without paying for it.  I put the magazine down and gestured my disinterest to the clerk and walked on.  It was a biting November night, and for every step I took I could see my breath in perfect sync.  The chaotically swirling puffs of smoke spiraled and wisped around in random order and soon they faded only to reappear with new gusto a moment later.  I arrived at the subway stairs and began my decent, each heal clacking in the way heals tend to do on hard floors.  I arrived at the bottom and turned to approach the token machine when I lost everything.  A deep pain seized over my head and I found myself on the floor, confusion subsided to fear as I felt a hand on my right arm.  The pain I had felt was that of a lead pipe, the hand was that of yet another sex starved individual who couldn’t be bothered to pursue love.  He pressed my shoulders down into the ground and situated either knee on top of my thighs.  Only as he started ripping at the buttons at my shirt, in the awkward sort of way that was required in order to hold me down and tear at the same time, did I realize his true intention was rape.  He had clubbed me and now was partaking of his catch.  If this doesn’t define sexual predator, I don’t know what does.  He successfully removed the bulk of my shirt, leaving just one sleeve in place.  I felt the cold concrete against my back, and attempted to wiggle away from the frigid touch.  He reached his hand up my skirt and with one hand tore off my panties, and I froze as his hand glanced against my vagina.  Then, as all rapists must, he put himself inside me, and I knew I had lost.  He began to thrust, and every thrust was more real than the last.  With every thrust he panted more and more, and the clouds of smoke from his breath grew closer together and larger in size.  But through the whole of the encounter I lay breathless, the clouds no longer jetting from my lungs; he would have to breath for both of us.  A twang could now quite visibly be seen in his eye and soon his whole face.  Not long after this he finished, sighed one last puff and then ran away without so much as a goodbye.  Whether I came or not was not even a question.  I had been meat; a thing to be fucked at hearts contempt and then left to rot.  I lay there afterward in puddles of sweat and blood and jizz facing upward, eyes fully opened but certainly no staring at anything in particular.  Trying to bring the puddles together in order to get my life back would have been pointless.  I could only hope for survival anymore.4

After some time of laying there it occurred to me that no one was coming to rescue me, no one was going to help me.  As long as I chose to lay on the ground was as long as I would go undisturbed.  If I wanted help I was going to have to get it myself.  I probably would have preferred to deal with the rape on my own terms in my own mind, but it was the massive head wound that was forcing me to see a doctor.  I stood and neatened up my shirt, pulled up my panties and dusted of what blood I could from my skin.  Ironically the quickest rout to the nearest hospital was by subway, so I still had to take the train.  I walked into the ER, as if some visitor who happened to have a massive head wound.  They saw me and rushed me away to the back were they could work on me.  They sat me down on this long white table, and stitched up my head.  “Shh, nothing has happened here” they seemed to say with each stroke of the needle.  I breathed one letter of the word rape to the doctor at the hospital I was talking to the police.  Though I certainly wanted my attacker caught, I just didn’t think the police would do it, and their search provided me no security.  His being caught wasn’t going to help me anyway, I just needed to get my life back together.  Now, Unless you tell them not to, every doctor will do what’s called a ‘rape kit’.  They swab you for fluids, screen you for pregnancy and diseases, than file the whole thing away incase it’s ever needed in court.  The ultimate purpose of this is prosecution, but in my case it lent itself to something else entirely.5

It was about one week later and I’m just sitting in bed, I hadn’t left in three days.  What I was doing here superceded crying, it bordered on catatonia.  I would sit in bed, undressed, without any intention of leaving at any foreseeable time.  It was Thanksgiving.  I made no effort to attend the banquet we had so dutifully planned, I sat and watched the clock.  I kept track of the whole meal from the comfort of my bed.  At four thirty I knew everyone would be sitting down to eat.  At around five the turkey would be served.  I was almost there, amber smells of holiday content wafted around me and up in perfect rhythm with the rest of the world.  The perfect planning coming together just once to create so much happiness.  I was a million miles away.  I couldn’t even reach out and touch my own faith.  My mother was probably wondering were I was.  She didn’t know anything about the rape, the head wound or even the searing depression that had seized me.  The day passed by and any opportunity to make amends with myself passed, this Thanksgiving would have to be one I missed.  The day passed by and then a week, by now I had already gone back to work,  I had yet to talk to my mother.  It was then that it happened.  I got a call from the hospital, they wanted me to come in right away.  I made my way down there and they took me to a room labeled “crying room”, it was empty.  The doctor spilled his jargon all over the place and then spoke.  I had HIV.  And I am numb.  “Well than” I said to the doctor, and proceeded to ask a bunch of questions which he answered rather well.  And at the end of it all I thanked him, this is a habit that is hard to break.  He wrote me something on the order of twenty prescriptions, which he said insurance would cover.  That was one of two embarrassing parts: talking to the claims adjuster (who did in fact reimburse me) and going to the pharmacy.  A lot of the drugs would have to be special ordered, no pharmacy carries them, but when you enter a pharmacy with as many prescriptions as I had for the types of drugs I needed, there is no mistaking the diagnosis to a pharmacist, and they cannot help but judge you.  A total stranger finding fault with me for my own mortality, that was hard.  It was one injustice to have my life spin out of control, but to have my death spin away was another thing entirely.  I had no more control of anything, and that is not the sort of thing you can learn to live with.6

At first I just take the pills, every day, more pills than I have counter space for.  At first I’m going to grab control of my life.  My decision is simple, I am not going to acknowledge to anyone that I have this disease, but taking six pills with every meal is a stark reminder to me that there I something terribly wrong.  And in order for me to conceal my condition I can’t bring anyone into my home anymore, because the medication is everywhere.  There are doctors appointments marked on the calendar, there’s a diary of manifesting symptoms (very few so far), there are support group phone numbers (none of which I have any intention of calling).  So in order to resume a normal life I’m going to have to cut out everyone.  I still haven’t spoken to my mother, and it’s almost two months after.  Sometimes I would see her number on caller ID and just ignore it.  Sometimes I just let it pass me by.  The phase of grief that I had entered would be anger, I suppose, but I like to look at it as civil service.  I’m going to give something back to the community of rapists.  I’m going to do this all again on my terms.  So every night I would get dressed in tight fitting clothes, that were more revealing that anything I had owned previously.  I would go to the park and wait.  Come on. Fuck me.  I know your out there.  I know there are more of you.  Were going to do this rape thing all over again, and this time I win.  I would walk through areas that I knew had high crime, areas were rapes had just taken place.  I would walk down dark alleys at night, in all black neighborhoods.  I would walk the streets, like a common prostitute, and every night I would wear less clothing, and every night I could see my breath quite distinctly.  Than one night it happened.  I was in the park, minding anything but my own business when a man grabbed me by both arms and threw me into a tree.  Ah, reopen old scars.  My head hit the tree exactly where I had been hit by the pipe several months earlier.  Than he was on top of me and I do not struggle, not at all.  I lay there stern, barely minding the cold cement on my exposed back.  Steadily breathing, smoke rising from my mouth in perfect pace as it had been.  He pulls off my shorts, and I’m even more excited. ‘You’re going to get AIDS’ I say to him in my mind, ‘I’m going to win’.  Then he is inside me and I am almost overjoyed.  ‘He is going to die in a terrible way’ I think, ‘I’m going to have my revenge’.  It was about then that I notice something, something odd about his style, something wrong with his penis.  And that’s when I realized it.  A condom; ribbed.  God damn it.  And I want him to stop, I want him to get off of me.  “Wait, no” I say almost expecting him to say “What’s wrong baby?”.  “Wait, stop!” I say in complete futility “Stop it! No! get off.”  And I try pushing but it’s of no use, and then I’m screaming, screaming “Rape! Help! Rape! Someone help me!”  Smoke shooting up from my mouth higher with every word.  But no one did, and he finished and ran away.  And then I’m laying there, flat on my back, pants down, exactly as he had left me, just staring  up at the sky, not seeing anything above me.  After a while I had to stand up and go home.  On the way back to my apartment, for the very first time I start to cry.  A trickle at first, but soon an outright sob.  I doubled over in tears until my hand hit the pavement, and then I lay there, sobbing, forever.  To everyone passing by, I was just a broken down prostitute, who had been beat up by her pimp.  By the time I got back at my apartment I was crying making noises from no language, with universal meaning.  I close the door and sob.  I can’t regain control.  The world just wont allow it, but all I need now, is someone to talk to.7

So several months later, I would like to say that I have regained control.  I would like to say it, but it would be a lie.  Ultimately I’m coming to live in a world without total control, and it’s a tolerable existence.  The pills do amazing things, but they could never be everything, they are not the cure.  I may not be happy, but I am surviving, and beginning to see what it will take to live.  I can’t be normal and there will never be another Thanksgiving, but I can give a second chance to the world and see it regain its glory.  I may die, but in the mean time I’m going to live, and live I will.  Now I must start my new life.  Today is the day I call my mother, today is the day I’m moving on.8