by Renee James
At ten I get a call from Cecelia. The salon had called to cancel her Thursday makeup appointment. The girl was very murky on why.
“Are you okay, Bobbi?” she asks in her no-nonsense voice. As in, don’t bullshit me.
I want to say yes and get rid of her, but as I try to form the words I erupt in an uncontrollable crying jag. Every time I try to talk I cry again. I manage to squeak out a “No,” then I hang up. I can’t talk. I’m a total mess.
All I really want to do is kill Strand and then myself. But I won’t go until I get that inhuman bastard.
***
Andive is the perfect foil, he thinks as the man describes the alley scene. A pro bono client, two time loser with a penchant for ultra-violent sex.
He’s the only one between Andive and two or three decades in a dark cell. Andive’s freedom depends on his loyalty. And even if Andive tried to betray him, the man is such a scumbag his word would mean nothing in court. No DA in the state would be stupid enough to build a case around Andive’s testimony.
Life always works out for the planners.
He makes Andive relate the alley scene again and again, pushing him for more details each time. Andive is embellishing a little now, he can tell. Still, it makes his dick hard when Andive describes the tranny squealing as he sticks his cock in her ass. And he likes the part about Norcross grabbing and twisting her tiny balls when they’re done with her. And the hits, the deep smacking sound they made when they slugged her afterwards.
“The only real downer,” says Andive, “she crapped all over when Norcross hit her that lick. . The place smelled like shit after that. . Fuckin’ disgusting queer!”
He could smell the shit, the urine, the blood. He could hear the tranny crying and mewling. It was intoxicating.
“I wish I could have been there,” he thinks. “But my day will come.”
***
MY SOLITUDE LASTS exactly twenty minutes, which is how long it takes Cecelia to get from her place to mine. I don’t answer her knock, but she doesn’t let that stop her. She pounds on the door and shouts my name, not caring what the neighbors think. Or anyone else for that matter.
I give up and open the door. Her hands fly to her face and her eyes get wide as saucers.
“Good Lord, Bobbi!” she gasps. “What has happened to you?”
I hold up my hand for silence and close the door then move painfully back to my living room and lay on the couch. My butt is too sore to sit on.
“I was beaten and raped last night,” I said.
“My God!” she exclaims. “Where? What happened?”
It’s like going through the rape interview again. I have to hand it to Cecelia, though. She thinks of everything, even details the cops didn’t have on their sheets. For twenty minutes we go through every excruciating detail. I don’t want to, but Cecelia is relentless.
At one point she asks me what they smelled like.
I look at her like she’s crazy. “What can you be thinking, Cecelia?”
She opens her mouth to lecture me but stops, mouth agape, looks at me, and laughs. We both laugh, she more demonstrably than I since my lips are stitched and swollen.
“Good girl,” she says. “I know a little about this stuff. I know how you’re feeling. Someone has tried to dehumanize you in the most humiliating and violent way possible. It makes you feel like human waste. You want to die.”
Cecelia lets her words hang in the air for a moment.
“It will pass.”
I glance at her. She nods her head slightly in the affirmative, as if to say, yes it will.
She wants me in counseling immediately. She pries Marilee’s number out of me and calls her while I listen. She sets up a meeting for this afternoon. Marilee will come here. She goes to the kitchen and makes a lunch, lecturing constantly from the other room.
Have I talked to Officer Phil? No. Let’s call him now. No. Why not? Because he never solves anything. We go back and forth.
“Here’s the truth of the matter, Cecelia,” I say when I just can’t stand the topic anymore. “I didn’t see my attackers. I can’t identify them. If you brought them in here right now with two other guys and gave me a gun I wouldn’t know who to shoot.”
“Well, honey,” says Cecelia, “If we could get it down to four I’d just shoot them all.”
We laugh again. Tranny humor. A little bit male, a little bit female.
But I’m not cheered. I’m focused. From the moment those bastards debased me, my life has taken a new direction. I will not have a life of my own until I wreak my revenge on John Strand.
As Cecelia prattles on, I tune her out to consider whether she is someone I can use as an ally in my war with Strand. For some reason, I keep thinking no. She’s a good friend, devoted, fearless and all that, but for some reason I just can’t let her know what I’m thinking.
When Cecelia leaves, I tell her I’d appreciate her confidence in this matter. I really don’t feel like talking about it for the next two months with everyone I see.
Ten minutes after she leaves, Officer Phil stops by. A sympathy call. He read the report and feels just terrible. They’re looking but I didn’t really give them much to go on.
Well, no shit, Phil, I think to myself. I was busy getting my face bashed in and my ass reamed.
Have I thought of any other details, he asks.
Well, no, Officer Phil. I’ve been working on silly things like when I’m going to be able to work again, or when I can have a bowel movement without bleeding, or how many more times those two will get to shove me into an alley before Chicago’s finest blunder onto them and, oh wow, intercede. Possibly even make an arrest or two. This I actually say. All of it.
Phil drops his gaze and nods his head in understanding. “I’m sorry, Bobbi,” he says. “We all are. If you think of something—anything—let me know.”
For a split second I think about telling him about Strand, but the thought perishes in an instant. If they wouldn’t investigate him in a murder, they surely wouldn’t in a rape that didn’t even directly involve him, not even by accusation. Plus, Phil is a very nice guy and really hot, but he’s no Sherlock Holmes. And his colleagues in the department aren’t as nice or as hot and they don’t solve crimes against transsexuals either.
Officer Phil is experienced, though, and knows when to leave. He departs quickly.
I rest for another hour then my phone starts ringing—and doesn’t stop for the rest of the day. At least a dozen of my friends from TransGender Alliance call to express horror and sympathy. Cecelia’s confidentiality must have lasted from the time she left my door to the time her feet hit the sidewalk outside
That’s why I can’t enlist her help in my revenge. She would never be able to shut up about it. Plus, as I think about it, I realize that Cecelia has a conscience. For all her bravado, she doesn’t break laws. For all her tough talk, she’d never have the anger or decadence to cut a man’s balls off. I do. I will. This is my promise to myself. Before I kill Strand, I will cut off his balls.
Marilee arrives. “Oh my God, sweetie!” she cries when she sees me. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.” She holds me and rocks as she says it over and over. She fusses over my bruised body, making ice packs for the tender places, kissing me softly on the cheek and hugging me carefully. I tell her about the attack, how it happened, what it felt like. It feels good to unload to someone who actually cares. Tears run down her face as I talk. When I stop, I can see the anger in her face. She asks if there was anything familiar about the two attackers. Did they seem to act in concert?
Good point, Marilee. That’s exactly what I’m thinking. They knew I went to the monthly meeting in Oak Park, what El line I take, what stop, and how I walk home. One must have tailed me on the train, or maybe just at the station platform, then called the other guy, who was driving the van. Idly, I wonder if they had it all set up for a previous month and something came up—an untimely truck delivery in the alley, maybe, or bad weather, or a sq
uad car coming down Wilton as I crossed the alley.
“How badly did they hurt you?” Marilee asks. She doesn’t mean my face.
“It hurts a lot,” I answer. “They wanted to hurt me and they did. So I have a lot of bruising and ripped tissues. I bleed when I defecate and will for some time, they told me. But they didn’t think I’d need surgery.”
She asks about HIV and I tell her about the absence of semen.
As we talk I wonder what kind of men they were. They weren’t just thugs, or tranny bashers. They were cruel men who could get aroused at the thought of raping someone they thought of as a man. It was an act of abuse. Dominance. A violent release for them. They aren’t hit men or paid goons. More like kindred spirits in Strand’s perverted world. Strand goes for transwomen with an ounce of eroticism and a pound of hate and loathing. His buddies are cut from the same cloth. It amazes me that they could get physically aroused in those circumstances, but I have to remember, for these kinds of people, it isn’t sex. It’s domination. Prison sex.
I don’t mention Strand to Marilee. She wouldn’t be able to handle it. She’d think it was her sin for confiding in me in the first place. And she’d never be able to live with my revenge on Strand. I’m not sure I can either, but I can’t live if I let him get away with it either.
Marilee stays for two hours, spending part of her time answering the phone for me. She leaves when Emily arrives. Emily brings dinner from a fine Boystown café that does French-Chinese fusion cuisine. They don’t do takeout, Emily explains, but the owners are suckers for a good story and she told them mine.
Emily stays until seven, when I assure her I’m fine. Tomorrow, someone else from TGA will bring lunch, and someone else, dinner, she says. They’re going to get me to the weekend then I have to come out and face the world.
“You’ll have friends waiting to hold your hand,” Emily says, smiling as she steps out the door. I don’t let her see my tears. How is it that we humans can be so incredibly good to each other, and also so incredibly bad?
***
“HAVE YOU REMEMBERED anything else about your assault?” It’s the rape specialist who interviewed me at the hospital three nights ago after the ER doc deduced I had been raped.
She is middle-aged, about 5’-7,” short hair worn in a simple one-length blunt cut and bangs that fall nearly an inch above her eyes. Practical, but the affect is very severe. She has a cop’s body—sturdy, strong, overweight. She looks tough and mean. She has no bedside manner, either. I wonder how she ended up the rape specialist here. Maybe she's the only woman.
“One guy looked like Bluto wearing a nylon stocking over his head,” I recount. “He was a white guy with Mediterranean skin. He had a dark beard growth, a shaved head, thick and hairy forearms. The other guy wore a tan trench coat and a navy blue stocking cap. I never saw him. One of them chuckled a lot—I think the stocking cap guy. Bluto sniggered.”
I shrug. Nothing new. And the rape sergeant doesn’t really care anyway. Her voice and posture clearly convey that this is pro-forma, something she’s doing because Officer Phil is pushing the agenda.
The rape sergeant looks at me with barely hidden disgust, the way genetic women who find transwomen repulsive do. I remember this look from the initial interview. Eyes that look at me but not at my eyes. Mouth that bites out words and casts them in my direction. A flat, bureaucratic voice, sighs implied at the end of each phrase and sentence.
She clears her throat. “Do you prefer to be called Mr. or Ms.?”
I am wearing women’s jeans, a woman’s top, a woman’s hairdo. I’m wearing women’s boots with two-inch heels. I have C-cup breasts. I’m not in full makeup because of my cuts and bruises, but even with the dab of blush and light eye makeup I indulged in, I am more feminine in my presentation than the officer is. She is deliberately insulting me.
“Bite me, Sergeant,” I say. My voice is at a conversational level of volume, but it cracks with anger. “You don’t want to be here and I don’t want you here. Go do something else.” I stand up and leave the room, looking for Officer Phil.
She follows me, with a flushed face. She catches up just as I get to Phil in the squad room. Her face is grim, her mouth tense. She’s pissed. She’s also inhibited by Phil’s presence. It wouldn’t be good for her to say what she’s thinking in the presence of a viable witness.
“Well,” she says, haughty and defensive, “if you don’t help us we can’t help you.”
“Sergeant, have you ever solved a case involving the rape of a transsexual?” I let my own hostility creep into my voice.
“We’re not here to talk about me…”
I cut her off. “That’s what I thought. You have the same regard for my kind as the rapists do. You’re worthless to us.”
Her face goes full red. She’s ready to blow and I’m ready to strike the match that will do it. Officer Phil stands and jumps between us.
“Ladies! Ladies! Let’s calm down,” he says. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
“It can’t get us anywhere,” I answer. “This nasty bitch thinks I got what I deserved, and so do all of her colleagues except maybe you!” Tears trickle down my cheeks. The tears anger me, but the rape sergeant is even angrier.
“You loudmouth pervert!” she yells back. “You make me sick. You sick fucks get all dolled up like two dollar whores then come whining to us when some guy jumps you. You make me sick!”
She slams her file shut and leaves.
Phil sighs and sits down.
“You aren’t helping me, Bobbi,” he says.
I blot up my tears. “Officer Phil,” I say, “let’s face it. You’re the only cop on this force that gives a damn one way or another about me or any other transwoman out there. And you're a street cop, not an investigator. The people who are supposed to investigate these things think a transsexual getting raped is like a mobster getting murdered. It’s a crime with a happy ending. You guys never solve transgender crimes. Not rapes. Not murders. Not theft. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I have to tell you, this was like getting raped again. That nasty hag wanted to puke as soon as she saw me. If she was a guy she’d be a tranny basher herself. . “Let it go, Phil. You can’t help me and your department won’t. It’s over. I’ve learned a lesson. Be prepared!”
“I don’t like the sound of that, Bobbi” he says. “Don’t be planning anything stupid.”
“Like what?” I ask. “Like putting a bullet in the head of the next son of a bitch who tries to rape me? I’ve got news for you, honey. I don’t care what the so-called law thinks. This isn’t going to happen to me again. Not ever!”
I’m crying again. Perfect. A six-foot transwoman with stitches in her lips, bruising on her nose, and tear marks on her makeup. The perfect clown.
We stand in unison and I start heading for the door. Phil puts a comforting hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Bobbi,” he says. “I’m sorry you were raped, and I’m sorry we don’t instill more confidence in you. I’m going to do everything I can, including getting a new case officer assigned.”
I nod. If I tried to talk I’d just break down in sobs. He’s a nice guy and earnest, but he couldn’t make a jaywalking charge stick. As for the department as a whole, well, they don’t all hate us, but we’re at the bottom of the pyramid of their priorities. In a city with lots of rapes and murders, the ones involving trans victims only get solved if the perpetrator is standing over the victim picking his nose when the cops arrive. He drives me back to my apartment in silence.
I’m on my own. But I knew that. I came with Phil today because I needed to get out of the apartment, needed to show my battered face in public and live with the results. What better place to start than a police station, where they see everything every day anyway. Even Rape Sergeant Bitch wasn’t a surprise to me. What surprised me was how little patience I had with her. And how callous I’m becoming to the opinions of people like her.
This says something about me, but
I’m not sure what. Perhaps this is the assertiveness Camille preaches. Whatever, I’m sick of being the recipient of crap from other people. I’m going to get in some licks myself.
***
“HOW CAN YOU LIVE like this, Bobbi?” Roger is spending part of his day off from the salon looking in on me. He brought his partner, William, to install a television set, complete with illegal satellite service. It’s cute and considerate of them, but there’s a problem.
I don’t want it.
“I’m not going to support 200 channels of right wing television stations,” I explain.
“They aren’t all political,” Roger says. “Most of them aren’t.”
“There are only two kinds of stations on cable,” I say. “The ones that take advantage of weak minds and turn them into Nazis, and the ones that create weak minds with bad programs and blizzards of commercials. I’d rather read and listen to the radio.”
Roger and William glance at my pathetically beaten portable radio, then at each other. They smile. It looks like I got it from a garbage can, and I did. What the heck, it gets public radio. That’s all I need.
We go back and forth. It’s fun. At noon, William goes out to pick up some lunch for us. Roger brings me up to date on the salon news. The salon is doing well. My customers have mostly re-booked for next week with the warning that I will still have some scars to show for my ordeal. The official word is that I was mugged and beaten.
I thank Roger for that bit of discretion. Rape leaves a stain on the images of genetic women, it would be ten times worse for me.
Those who didn’t re-book all took appointments with other stylists in the salon. Roger is impressed and thinks I should be too. I don’t have the busiest book in the salon by a long shot, but my people obviously like the experience they have with me and the shop.
