Yes, a white woman with blond hair, light hazel eyes, and light, freckled skin. Ten years ago, she used to walk through Osborne Village at all hours of the night unafraid, and not because she was naive, but because she was safe. The shadiest character out at 11 pm on a Thursday night was a 10 year-old kid riding a bike around the Mac’s parking lot, asking customers, as they went in to buy scratch n’ win tickets or whatever they call slurpees at Mac’s or cigarettes if they wanted to buy a dime bag of weed.
That was before the City of Winnipeg built an iron fence around the area known as “the circle”, a large, circular brick of concrete covered in graffiti tags, where teenagers could purchase small amounts of weed if they did not know a dealer. Once the fence was put up, almost every time I sat at the bus stop in front of the new “circle within a square”, I was offered crystal meth or ketamine or some other chemical. Then, the coffee shop, Fuel, that had always been a meeting place for my best friends and me at the end of a tough day at school or work during the summer, where we could sit on the patio and look at beautiful girls forever – really beautiful girls, girls that did not looks a thing like any other girl, girls with rainbow hair and ripped stockings, girls with skirts made out of their grandmother’s peridot-coloured drapes – it was next to meet its demise. In the fall of 2003 Fuel closed, and soon a Starbucks rose across the street, in the Safeway parking lot, really (there is another Starbucks inside Safeway, of course). This Starbucks location is literally always packed with customers, though they lack Fuel‘s amazing samosas or their reasonably priced lattes. I am not one of those customers. I think the Village’s gradual death came to a climax when several locally owned shops were closed to make room for an American Apparel, which is now the focus of Osborne Village. The locally owned shops that still remain have for the most part stopped selling locally designed clothing as they used to, and now sell the same uniforms that you can buy at the mall.
Yet, in spite of the death of the last places that remained in Winnipeg where you could purchase the creations of regional designers and grab a cup of fair trade coffee at a decent price, I never expected that it would be in the Village that I was dragged down an abandoned staircase – at the Osborne Motor Inn/”The Zoo”, directly in front of the beer store, distracted by a large First Nations man who offered me a warm place to stand, away from the rat race for beer at 11:00 pm on a Thursday evening. The truth can be a bitch, though, and it certainly was on December 22, 2011.
I have, unlike most of the residents of my hometown, which I’m visiting for the holidays, never uttered racist words about the First Nations people that make up close to 50% of our city’s population. Very liberal individuals that one would never expect to be ethnocentric or xenophobic often tell some pretty damn disgusting jokes about the folks that settled this area, where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet, long before the white man came, bearing rifles and liquor and smallpox-infected blankets. Thus, I’ve never had a problem with anyone whose skin is a little darker than mine in this town – not until two nights ago.
The man, whose name I still do not know, dragged me down the metal staircase and demanded that I strip. He was about three times my size and very menacing, so I reluctantly pulled down my skirt, brand new black leggings, and underwear.
“Show me that milky white ass.”
I turned around.
“No, stick it in the air, bitch!”…”Higher!”….”Arch your back.”…”Arch it more”…”More!”…”There we go.”
He entered me from behind, which made me gasp in pain. I do not enjoy penetration, and I haven’t had sex with a man since April.
“Oooohhhhh, you are so tight!” Though I was not facing him, I could feel the look of excitement on his face and visions of exploitative sugarplums that danced in his head. I knew this was not going to be over anytime soon, but not even I could predict that it would continue for two hours.
After some time, he stuck his rather large penis up my butt. ”NO!” Then he tried to do the same with what felt like fingers, as well as a pen. ”NO, NO, NO!!!” I’m quite proud off the fact that I managed to squirm enough not to let him stick it in my “milky white ass”, though he made a valiant effort, attempting to (this is my assessment of anal sex) shove the biggest, hardest piece of fecal matter that I have ever expelled back where it came from. I find this practice utterly disgusting – I have nothing against those who enjoy it, in fact, I’m a little jealous, as I’m a sexual(ly liberated) person, and have been since I was about eleven years old (just masturbataion, then) – actually, scratch that, my first sexual experiences (mutual masturbaion, not to the point of climax, as far as I know) were with other girls when I was five and six years old. I still remember my first orgasm – I thought I peed my pants, though all I wanted was to do it again. By seven I started to get in trouble; someone blamed everything that went on in the girl’s change room before gym glass on me (and I certainly was not the only participant in our “I’ll show you mine if you show me your’s”-type games) but I was, nevertheless, the first girl ever to be doled out the punishment of changing outside, in the bathrooms, for the rest of the semester. I digress, more than ever before. Apparently, I’m not enjoying writing about what happened to me under that concrete staircase, on the concrete under the staircase, against the concrete walls under the staircase…I anticipated that this would be healing, but rather, remembering the monster that did this to me is making me sweat, making my throat close up, making me feel like I have to urinate urgently – the classic symptoms of a panic attack.
But, I refuse not to tell the story here, so I will go on. The man, let’s call him “Bear”, was obviously not turning me on at all - not just because of his lousy looks (and I probably find First Nations women more attractive than those of any other ethnic group – well, at least a very close second to African women: recall, I’m a dyke, but I even find First Nations men rather good-looking from time to time) but because of his obvious love for violence against women as well as racism.
Now, where were we. Ah, yes, the attempts at anal sex. Since I successfully refused this, he wanted to have a very good view of my white bottom while he penetrated me vaginally. He made me stand up, and then bent me over. He grabbed my hair for some time, and then thrust me forward, into the corner wall beneath this horrid abandoned staircase. I suppose that was when I acquired the huge bruises that cover the back of my head as well as the sides, making it impossible to find a comfortable way to lay on a pillow. I have been rolling a pillow up under my neck to avoid having to touch head to pillow at all.
“Bend down.”
Sliding my head down the concrete, I bent it down to my waist.
“No, further! What the fuck, bitch, FURTHER!!!”
I bent my head down to my knees.
“Further!!!”
I bent my head down to my toes.
“There you go! You blond slut. I’m going to make a lot of money off you. Ha-ha!”
Sheer terror entered my mind for a moment – this is how Canadian and American women are sold into sex slavery. That terror did not have much time to stew, as my head bent backwards on the floor, and kept sliding farther and farther towards Bear. I was newly terrified that my neck was going to neck I tried to take it for a few seconds before rolling over and collapsing on the floor.
“My neck, it felt like it was going to break.”
Aren’t you supposed to tell assailants in situation things such as these that will make them see your common humanity? Requests to go to the bathroom, worries about broken bones, needs to see a doctor?
“Oh no, you’d be surprised how far it will stretch. Flip over, I want to see your face.”
For the next hour and a half, we flipped back and forth. Each time I started screaming in pain, he squeezed my throat with his huge Bear hands and told me to “Shut the fuck up and enjoy myself.”
“You know you’re enjoying every second of this.” So he was a psychopath who held this belief, just like my first boyfriend, Josh.
Then, a saviour – there was noise at the top of the staircase, perhaps. Bear looked up and…
smiled. Not a saviour. Apparently Bear knew the fellow who appeared on the staircase. Buddy up top laughed in a distinctly congratulatory manner and said the man’s name – but I did not hear the name, instead I heard him shaking his head, along with the institution of a time limit,
“You have five minutes!”
“Okay, girl, you have five minutes to make me cum. Can I cum all over your face or can I cum inside you.”
The thought of the sticky, putrid liquid that would come out of his penis on my face made me want to puke, so I answered, “Inside. I don’t have a uterus.”
I don’t think he heard the last part, or if he did he didn’t care. The next five minutes were filled with a series of demands so that the Bear could get off:
“Suck it! Make it hard!”
“Turn over!”
“Put your legs up! No, up! Fuck!”
“Okay turn around again,,,milky white ass!!!”
“Arch your back. More, more, more. No, arch your fucking back! Okay, like that.”
“No squirming. Just enjoy it.”
And finally, finally, after two hours beneath the staircase, it was over.
I grabbed at my things to get dressed. I had one hundred dollars in my pocket and an iPhone, but he had not bothered to steal anything from me other than my dignity, and the possibility that I will ever I able to enjoy sex. I’ve only been able to make myself cllimax once this entire year. Good thing I started early, hey?
Bear said, “I’m still not done with you. We’re going to your daddy’s house. He got liquor? You think he’ll like me? Wait here – I’m gonna grab a king can.”
As soon as I was dressed, I walked away. I did not run, I wanted to blend in with the crowd, just a woman in her twenties who had a late night at the bar, going to catch a bus home. I walked to Osborne Junction where I kind of hid behind the local community centre, the place where I attended a rave called “Abduction” when I was seventeen, before calling my only friend in this city of death, city of devils, city of punishment, and he picked me up within ten minutes. Nice.
Never before have I been so relieved to slide through the door of a luxury sedan.
I told him, and as we humans tend to do, he blamed himself for what happened to me. ”I promised to pick you up earlier, and I wasn’t there. I made a promise and I wasn’t there for you.” ”Oh, Sam, please, please, do not blame yourself for this. You are one of the few good men left on this planet…”; men that treat women with the respect they deserve, men that hold us for as long as we need to be held when terrible things happen without counting down the seconds in their minds, men that pay the tab, men that tell you when you are wearing a colour that looks particularly 
lovely on you, men that open doors. The next day he took me to the Emergency Room, where I was seen before all other patients. The exam reminded me of my old endometriosis page. Damn. It hurts to sit down, it hurts to walk. What an appropriate ending to a year that has been characterized by living in a state of almost constant fear, that started with homelessness, and will end here at my Father’s house, where I’m scared with every move I make that I will offend someone. Fear of not having surgery, fear of having surgery. Fear of living, fear of dying. Fear that it’s too late, fear that I’m too early. Fear that my family falsely believes I’m doing drugs because of the money I’ve had to spend, paying off shady folks, fear that my ex, whom I will now have in court in June, will never let me live my life. Fear that my garden is dying, fear that my cat is dying. Fear that the car at the bottom of the cliff with my aunt still pinned inside will blow up before I reach the highway to flag down help. Fear the my destroyed credit will prevent me from. Fear that I will always be alone. Fear that my cat will not forgive me. And now, fear that Bear gave me HIV.
Next year, next year, 2012, I don’t want to be afraid anymore…
