of the houses were inhabited. It was all new and sterile.
The houses were demarcated by a kind of alphabetic apartheid. If you had a Plan C house you had more wealth and prestige than someone with a Plan B or Plan A. There was this ridiculous competitive element in the neighborhood.
My disappointment grew when I figured out that Nellie Gail Ranch was in Orange County, a good hour on the 405 freeway from Hollywood, which meant that it might as well have been the moon.
My mom was so sad there. Divorce was in the air. It didn’t manifest itself until I was eighteen and already long gone from the house but you could tell that my mom would never forgive my father for moving to Texas; their eventual breakup was a slow-moving, unavoidable avalanche. I used to try to cheer her up—I’d stick all these little frozen Tex-Mex delicacies in the microwave and then bring them out and serve them up like I was a robot, which always made her laugh.
Not long after we moved my mom got a job, and then I pretty much became a latchkey kid. She was working at Saks Fifth Avenue in the swanky “designer salon,” which was great, because she was able to bring home beautiful clothes. But it meant that every day I’d come home from school to an empty house. Dad worked late, Jimmy had moved out of the house by the time I was twelve, and Vincent and I weren’t particularly chummy; our age difference of four years meant we didn’t have much in common. He was out studying all the time and worrying about what college he’d go to. I’d read or roller-skate around our little cul-de-sac wearing shorts and a tube top. I wasn’t a rambunctious child who needed lots of attention; I was a loner, which made it hard to work out how to fit into my new life.
School only complicated the process. I attended Laguna Hills High for my freshman year. I felt completely out of place because I was from Connecticut and very tomboyish, and all the other girls dressed like hookers in tight jeans, high heels, and makeup. I quickly adapted and copied them. I could see that my parents were surprised; they wanted to know what had happened to their little girl in top-siders and polo shirts. I was in the midst of transforming from the awkward-looking fourth son with short hair and braces into a young woman.
I went on my first proper date around that time with a young guy who picked me up in an old Dodge Dart. My brother Vince had a ball making fun of me because I wore a purple and red neon disco dress with Minnie Mouse high heels. I even had the Farrah Fawcett hairdo with the sausage curls down the sides and more eyeliner than Tammy Faye Bakker; it was just awful.
The only other people who lived in our cul-de-sac lived right next door: an airline pilot, his Asian wife, and their three-year-old daughter. He used to come over and be buddy-buddy with my father, and I guess that in an innocent, adolescent way, I thought he was handsome.
One day we were in our Jacuzzi with my father and he stuck his foot on my leg and started rubbing it up and down. It all happened under the bubbling water so you couldn’t see it. I thought that was really weird so I got out of the Jacuzzi and went inside.
Not long after that I was walking home from school and he drew up beside me in his van and offered to drive me home. He was my neighbor, and anything was better than walking, so I jumped in. The van had a plaid interior, with horrible brown fabric on the seats and two little round bubble windows at the back. They were thick and opaque; you couldn’t see in or out of them. The second I closed the door I could tell he was drunk. He said he had to stop somewhere on the way home, and I didn’t argue. He pulled up outside a liquor store, and when he came back he handed me a can of Coke that had been spiked with booze.
I felt pretty grown up, so I took a few sips and not long after started feeling really woozy. Maybe it was because I wasn’t used to drinking, or maybe he’d put something else in the can besides liquor. He drove to an empty parking lot, and the next thing I knew he stopped the car and made a move on me. I panicked and tried to push him away, but he was a big guy, 200 pounds and at least 6'1'. He just grabbed me and threw me into the back of the van. I tried fighting him off but he pinned me down and sat on my arms and told me how much I wanted it.
I knew how babies were made and I’d walked in once on my parents having sex, but there’s nothing that prepares you for a grown man crushing you with his weight, grunting, his face turning red, and realizing that you’re not strong enough to stop him.
I caught sight of those bubble windows set into the back of the van and that’s when it occurred to me that no one could see me and that I might actually die. Another part of my brain was trying to rationalize things—this is my neighbor, he knows my parents, he can’t kill me, but if my parents find out they’ll kill him and probably me as well. That’s when I went limp, because I thought, “Oh boy, I don’t want to die in this van, I’d better get this over with.”
He took my virginity. There was a little blood and a lot of pain. Then he drove back to Nellie Gail Ranch and dumped me outside the front of my house. He knew that neither of my parents would be home.
It was the first time in my life I was confronted with the fact that I wasn’t invincible. I called a friend who picked me up in her mom’s station wagon and took me to a free clinic. The doctor sewed me up and nodded unquestioningly when I told him I was eighteen years old, had forgotten to bring my driver’s license, and had been on the bad end of a jungle gym accident. At that point, I began to fear that I’d be blamed for what had happened. My friend took me home, and I went inside, bruised and defeated, and showered off. If my parents asked why I was limping and shaken, I intended to say I’d gotten into a fight at school. They never asked.
Forget my virginity. What that man took was my trust in other people and myself. Before that, I’d had real confidence, instilled by an encouraging mother and a tough, intelligent father. After that I had doubts. I withdrew from school activities. My grades got bad. I retreated to my room and never went outside. I certainly never roller- skated again. I guess my parents blamed the change in me on adolescence and hormones.
I wonder now how he rationalized the rape to himself. I wonder why he got drunk in the first place before doing what he did.
Alcohol abuse is a demon that comes in many forms. I’d already felt the impact of the one that makes us so stupid that we can’t operate a vehicle safely and the one that kills through overconsumption, but here was a new creature, the demon that excuses evil behavior. I’m sure that if he’d been hauled before a judge the first words out of his mouth would have been, “I was drunk, I don’t know what I was thinking. And so was she. We’d both been drinking. It was consensual.”
I changed in the weeks after the rape. I could feel myself withdrawing from life and I realized that I needed to do something. I couldn’t let him win. I still couldn’t bring myself to talk to my parents about it, because Patrick’s death had delivered a nearly fatal wound to their marriage and in my fourteen-year-old mind, I guess I was worried that my news might deliver the killing blow. And I was scared. There was the constant threat that it would happen again. He lived right next door, and we’d just moved in. I would have to see him again, see his house and that van every day that I lived in Nellie Gail Ranch. I needed to get away, so I talked my parents into letting me get out of Laguna Hills for the summer and headed up north to visit my cousin Caroline, who was about my age. I made a decision that I wasn’t going to let the rapist ruin my life or take my virginity, even though he had, so I promised myself that while I was away I would choose a boy and have sex, and I’d pretend that it was my first time.
So I went to the state fair with my cousin and I met this guy who was about twenty. He was really tall with long blond hair, a country boy, very nice and sweet. After a couple of days of going back to the fair and flirting we went out on a date, while my cousin covered for me by staying at the fair. I told him what had happened to me. I told him I’d been raped and that I didn’t want that to be my first experience and I asked him to help me. He was the sweetest guy. He made the softest, most gentle love to me and he kissed me and he held me. I needed to do that to try and get the effects of the rape out of my system. I needed to convince myself that not all men were assholes, and psychologically I needed to reclaim my virginity and some of my inner strength.
When summer was over I headed back to Laguna Hills. I knew that the rapist would still be there but I’d learned one thing about myself that allowed me to keep it all together. I had learned that I was a survivor.
3. BAIT AND SWITCH
Rather than dying down, things got much worse with the rapist next door. He started throwing pebbles at my window every night, trying to get me to come outside. I would lie in my bed petrified, praying that my parents
