TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE

Let me tell you a story. It’s not a story with a happy ending, and it’s not a story for the weak of heart. It starts with a young man. He meets a young lady, and they hit it off. They date, they kiss, they have sex. They have great sex. They say they’re in love.

Time goes by. The man and the lady still date, still kiss, still have sex. But, as with all things, there is an ebb and flow to the relationship. The young man sometimes doesn’t want to have sex. Sometimes, he just wants to lay next to her, feel the warmth of her.

The young lady, though, has her own ideas. She wants him. She needs him. His body says that he wants her, even though he mumbles something about being tired. When she takes him, he doesn’t say no. He has never said yes, but in the language of need, not saying no is enough.

The first time, he doesn’t see it for what it is. He was tired, but she wanted it so badly. The second time, he blames himself for not being clear enough. The third time, there is a pattern. They still date, they still kiss, they still fuck. Now, though, sometimes it’s her fucking, while he lays back and provides a penis.

He thinks back to his days in high school, a pimply freshman who played role-playing games and read comic books. Who would earn an academic letter in geography, of all things. He remembers health class, learning about the horrors of AIDS and the mechanics of pregnancy. He remembers, as she puts him deep inside her, someone asking how would the cops do a rape kit on a guy? It wasn’t him asking. He remembers, detached from the things happening to him, the teacher answering without hesitation, and with all the authority in the world.

“Men can’t be raped.”

His mind, at that point, does not think of what is happening as rape. After all, his dick is hard, and he comes. Orgasm feels great. Whenever his mind says “I don’t want this”, his body betrays him. He becomes moody, withdrawn. They still date, but they rarely kiss. They still fuck, but he seldom wants to, and never initiates it.

She knows something is wrong. He knows it too. Eventually, they go their separate ways. They no longer date, they no longer kiss, and part of him is ecstatic that they no longer fuck.

He doesn’t consciously realize that he had been raped for a very long time. The realization isn’t stunning, it is the natural progression. He recalls saying no. He recalls asking her to stop. There is never any thought of going to the police. Much later, he asked an officer he had met how he would deal with a man reporting being raped. The officer told him that he didn’t really have time for every homo who was having a tiff with his boyfriend. Not what I meant, he says. What if a guy said he was raped by a woman? The laughter he hears in response will haunt him until he dies.

He is reserved, now. He doesn’t let people in. He is angry, too, though he’s not quite sure who or what that anger is directed at. He goes through the motions in relationships, gets serious, gets married. The divorce surprises no one.

Years have gone by. That anger, that confusion, they’re all buried down deep. He meets a new woman. They date, they kiss, they fuck. Things are somehow different. He lets her in. They love.

One day, ten glorious years later (and five glorious years after their wedding), he reads a comic book. In it, a woman wants a man. She needs him. Though the man protests, the woman fucks him. He is horrified. He is angry. He posts on his blog about it. He talks with people about this comic book. Some say that Batman didn’t look like he minded. He doesn’t blame them. He doubts they ever had the opportunity to look in a mirror while being raped. He has. He knows that once your body betrays you so deeply, you look very much like you don’t mind. He knows that since everyone knows these two have had sex in the past, it stands to reason that it can’t be rape (even though it is).

He has panic attacks the next day. He can’t focus, he can’t think straight. His heart races. He can’t sleep.

He knows that the man who wrote that comic book didn’t realize that he was making a rape comic. After all, what guy doesn’t want to fuck, right? Especially when it’s a woman everyone agrees is hot. It’s what we tell ourselves, in our music, on our televisions, and yes, in our comics.

Catwoman #1 opened up scars that had been buried for over a decade. The young man isn’t young anymore. He has a blog, which he can statistically prove that very few people read, but he needs to tell the world about this. He needs them to know that it isn’t okay, that he still believes that if the gender roles in the book had been reversed, there would be a well deserved boycott. He knows that most people won’t agree with him. He knows that they’ll say that it’s just fan service, just cheesecake.

He knows that he doesn’t care. He knows that rape is rape, regardless of gender. He knows that the day he read Catwoman, he had to drive across town to see her, to be held by her, to make sure that he wasn’t trapped again.

He had to write this, but even now, in a new millennium, he writes about it in the third person. He can’t bring himself to say “I was raped.”

Because we all know, men can’t be raped.