Thanks, Jesse.

It took me two days to report my rape and three more to get to Victim Services. In the office, Michelle bustled around, looking up business cards. “It’s your legal right,” she said, “to get reimbursed from this fund for any bills. Counseling, to a certain point. Work missed because of effects of the assault.”  While she was away at the filing cabinet, I leaned over her desk to peer at my file. Jesse Young, it said. So they had been to his house. It was the first time he had a last name for me.

Next to his name, the box had already been checked: prosecution denied.

I reported on a Saturday night. I was supposed to go straight from work to a wedding. Instead, I waited in the empty police station until a young officer escorted me across the street into the court building. There, we stared at each other in a too-big room.  He didn’t know what to make of me. I had every detail down.

“I have never taken testimony from someone with such a specific memory,” he said.

I nearly laughed out loud.

In the tub, pressed against the edge until my neck bled, I’d ascended above myself for a split second. Watched myself, the girl in the pool. Then some part of me hissed, “Get the fuck back in there.”

You will remember everything, I told myself. You must remember everything. It will be all you have.

And did. I told the cop evenly, carefully, without hope. Watched him blink at points at the language I had to use telling it.

At the end, he put his notebook down quietly. “Why did you report this?” he said. “Two days after. You’ve showered. There’s going to be little we can do.”

“So you will go to his house,” I said. “I know nothing will happen. I knew that before. But I want him to open his door to the police. I want him to be fucking scared.”  The cop nodded.  “He deserves a policeman at his door.”

“Okay,” the officer said. He looked at me evenly, with something like respect. “That’s all.”

He gave me the brochure for Victim Services. The next week, I found Michelle, in the office with yellow walls, sarcastic and sad as she recommended therapists specializing in “this sort of thing.” She was the first person to tell me what I needed to do.  The Community Safety Network. Western Wyoming Family Planning.  A plan: relief. Then she gave me more than that.

“It’s a shit, isn’t it?” she said, all of a sudden. “Wyoming law. It’s archaic.”

“I’d have been better off on my college campus,” I admitted.

“Yes, you would have,” she said. She slipped a rubber band around the brochures. “And when you take your six-month HIV test, you know what you can say? Thanks, Jesse. When you can’t sleep at night. When you’re trying to explain this to your next lover. Thanks, Jesse.” She was grinning. There was an edge to her that was almost hysterical.

“When I have to see his friend at work,” I said.

“Thanks, Jesse!” she shouted, grinning giant and fake. “You should make a fucking shirt,” she said, and then we were laughing, holding the desks.

“Coca-cola lettering, that’s what I’m picturing,” I said, through tears, grinning, crying. “Thanks, Jesse.”

“Yeah. Big fucking thanks for this,” Michelle said. Then, “C’mere, hon,” and her hug was giant and warm, and the last one I’d feel for a long time.

I meant to go back there. She was such a comfort to me. But I never did. At Western Wyoming Family Planning, I tried to tell them what I needed and burst into tears. The receptionist, unsure of herself, guided me into the back room. I peed in a cup, took deep breaths. When I came out, she told me the tests would be free, and gave me a big box of Trojans. They sat in the car that whole year; as though if I were raped again, I could at least get them to use a condom.

“Thanks, Jesse,” I said quietly, in my car.

Alice Sebold wrote something like, “Rape is that which ruins everything.” Since I heard it, I’ve never been able to find the quote. There are days when I am less lenient with myself. When I tell myself, you could have fought harder. You could have climbed that fence. You could have kicked him in the goddamn junk. Then, out of nowhere, I taste what is ruined. Last week, the man I sleep with leaned over me without a condom. I asserted myself once, then twice. On the third time, I burst into tears, and he lay back aghast, apologizing profusely.

It’s not you, I tried to say.

I thought it was hot when you asserted yourself, he said.

Even aware of my history, there’s no way he could have known. There’s no way I could have known.

The body carries stories sewn into its skin, pulped into the organs, traced onto the lines of its limbs.  Rape is that which ruins everything, secretly, in sudden ways. Out of nowhere, the feeling rushes in: you asshole. How could you doubt. You were raped.

It’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month. I’ve been silent, thinking of what to say. The month slowly ticked by. 1 in 4 of us—if not goddamn more—do not want to think about it. But it lives in our bodies. We give thanks, from time to time. We lift up our hands. We live the giant Fuck You.