One
I went to New York City to spend New Year's with my best friends. We stood in Times Square for hours, screamed and danced and drank champagne with the crowds at midnight. We went to the Limelight, a club with a fifty dollar cover. We were sure it would be awesome. The last thing I remember was dancing with my friends at three AM. I woke up at three PM. The sun was shining in the window. I thought, "Wow, its late", and I looked next to me and there was this black guy I'd never seen before. I lay very still and tried to make sure I was really awake. Then for the first time in my life, I pinched myself to make sure. I moved to disentangle myself from the sheets and realized that I was completely naked except for my top pushed up around my shoulders. I was terrified. I jumped up. The guy woke up. I screamed at him, “Where my clothes? Where am I? What happened?” He said he found me on the street in the snow in my tank top after some guy had tried to molest me. He said he had thought I was an escort because you didn't see white girls like me around there. I never found my underwear. My socks were somehow stuffed in my pants pockets, something I had never done in my life, and I wondered what must've been happening when someone removed my pants and put them there. I was in another part of New York City miles from the club I had been at. I was so scared because I didn't know if he had raped me or the man I had ran away from had or both, or what else might've happened that I didn't remember. It was even stranger that the guy lived with his family, so I sat in the kitchen with his father, shaking, until the police came. The police questioned them, and then took me to the police station. I was there for a long time, and then they took me to the hospital. I was there for 12 hours. They did every kind of test on me for roofies and rape. They took all of my clothes away to be tested. It hadn't sunk in. I joked in a twisted way talking to the social worker, "You're not going to send me something that says RAPE VICTIM across the front are you? Haha." They gave me a prescription for anti-HIV medicine to be taken twice a day for a month in case I had contracted the virus. So I did, all during IAP, every noon and midnight. People would ask me how my New Year's was. "It was great, yeah, Times Square was awesome", I would smile... and try to suppress the nausea in my stomach. The side effects of the anti-HIV medication made this a common feeling. I was sick all the time. I had horrible abdominal pains, fevers, chills, nausea, diarrhea. I coughed, sweated and writhed the month away. The thought of dating, guys, or sex repulsed me for quite a while. Whenever people referred to being raped by an 18.03 test, I felt sick. Whenever people talked about sexual assault on the news, I felt scared and sad. I did not feel safe or secure anymore. I felt very vulnerable and very jaded. I had a hard time laughing. Everything seemed dark. I did not trust people. I got HIV tested twice, and I thanked God it was negative. I kept calling the police and the hospital, month after month. Finally over a year later, they told me for certain that I had been drugged and raped. It is something I try not to think about. It is a part of me; it destroyed an innocent faith in the innate goodness of people. With time and love, I have moved on. I have never remembered anything. I hope I never will.
Two
As a young and successful executive was traveling down a neighborhood street, going a bit too fast in his new Jaguar, a brick smashed into the Jag's side door. The angry driver slammed on the brakes and backed the Jag back to the spot where the brick had been thrown. He jumped out of the car, grabbed the nearest kid and pushed him up against a parked car shouting, "What the fuck was that all about and who the fuck are you? Just what the heck were you doing? That's a new car and that brick you just threw is going to cost me lots of money kid. Why the fuck did you do it?" The young boy was apologetic. "Please, mister ... please, I'm sorry but I didn't know what else to do. I threw the brick because no one else would stop..." With tears dripping down his face and off his chin, the youth pointed to a spot just around a parked car. "It's my brother,' he said. “He rolled off the curb and fell out of his wheelchair and I can't lift him up." Now sobbing, the boy asked the stunned executive, "Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair? He's hurt and he's too heavy for me." Moved beyond words, the driver tried to swallow the rapidly swelling lump in his throat. He hurriedly lifted the handicapped boy back into the wheelchair, then took out a linen handkerchief and dabbed at the fresh scrapes and cuts. A quick look told him everything was going to be okay. "Thank you and may God bless you," the grateful child told the stranger. Too shook up for words, the man simply watched the boy push his wheelchair-bound brother down the sidewalk toward their home. Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention.
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