#Me, too

I was almost raped by a young man I knew, an acquaintance of mine at Rice University, in the fall of 1979. He was a friend of a friend. 

There had been a recent assault and killing of a young woman near the edge of campus my freshman year, probably not related to anyone at Rice, and the students decided to create this group of volunteers, all males, who would walk the females around campus, after dark, an escort service ha-ha to escort you to your destination. It was common to go to the library after dinner to study, or to the rehearsal rooms if you were a music major, there were plays and movies and other events on campus, people played racketball, foosball or pool, etc in the student rec center, and two different pubs on campus. The common night time destinations each had a desk w a group of guys studying, who would walk you back to your dorm or wherever, if you asked them to. The idea was that these were guys you knew, men you could trust to get you there safely.

I was leaving Weiss, a residential college on campus, where I’d eaten dinner one night w friends, and headed over to the library. Two guys - one of whom was dating my roommate, and the other, his good buddy/ roommate, offered to escort me there. We had no sooner crossed the street from the Weiss college dining hall, where there was a thick strand of trees, when it happened. The one who was the buddy of the one dating my roommate suddenly pushed me down to the ground, hard, knocking the wind out me, and crawled on top of me, pinning me down. He restrained my arms w one hand and used the other to try to take off my clothes. He began roughly trying to unzip my jeans, pulled my shirt buttons off as he ripped open my shirt. I called out for help but his friend, the one dating my roommate, just hung out a few feet from us and looked away. Clearly, they had planned this.....as the guy unzipped my jeans, tried to stick his dick in me, I kept twisting and turning, averting my hips side to side so he couldn’t hit his target. I struggled, worked one hand free and tried to push him off, and kept hollering for help. He put his hand over my mouth, roughly, bruised my lip. He was an athlete and much stronger than I. He started to hurt me. I remember weird things crystal clear : how quiet it was, how absolutely no one was around. It was dusk, not completely dark, 20 ft across the street from where I’d just had dinner with these people. I could see the sun going down over the football stadium in the distance. Blackbirds were gathering, squawking in the trees like they do in the winter dusk. The man on top of me was getting angrier and rougher with me as I struggled against him. Suddenly a group of people I knew walked by. I called out to them, which startled the person on top of me, and he paused for a just a moment. I rolled out from under him, jumped up, and ran over to the group walking by while frantically trying to button up my shirt and zip up my jeans. They just looked at me weirdly. I said nothing. 

I was young when this happened to me - 18. I had never before known guys who were violent, abusers, rapists, or assholes. I was naive and way too trusting. I didn’t know what to be suspicious of, wasn’t educated about the topic, thought it could never happen to me. I thought I’d been careful...I thought I knew these young men, that being acquaintances somehow vetted them. None of us were drunk, it was a weeknight, I was sober and planning to study that night. I hadn’t flirted with this guy, or led him on, spoken to or even interacted with him much at all, previously. The fact that he’d sat there, at a large dinner table, a few spots down from me and acted normally before he did this made it all seem surreal. I felt stupid, like this was all my fault, like maybe I had somehow done something to provoke the attack, like I should have known better or something. I felt relief that luck was on my side and people had walked by just in the nick of time. I didn’t tell anyone, it had been a near miss, what was I going to tell the police? I didn’t want a lecture. I didn’t want to get embroiled in a “he said, she said”. I did not feel I would be believed; hell, I almost didn’t believe it myself. I was ashamed, embarrassed, and felt weird. I also really needed to study for a test that night, didn’t have time to waste. Just dealt with it, all these years. I guess since it was a near miss, I’m not as fucked up about it as if the guy had finished his plan. My attempted rapists name was Karl Hack. His roommate, the enabler, was Steve Connelly. I wonder how many other girls they worked their little routine on?  I never took a campus escort again - figured I was safer walking myself home, alone in the dark.