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Parking

Deirdre Fryer Baird

    I hated it. Living here. I hated fucking West Hollywood, the sterile apartment, the people in the other apartments. One guy turned out to be I chap I had sex with after meeting him at party and never wanted to see again. He knocked on the door after I saw him while bringing in groceries.
    “Hey babe, what da’ya know? I gently closed the door in his face, not wanting to make a scene. I should’ve have taken this as an omen. I’d only been living there for a week.
    That night, I didn’t want to go back to that apartment in “Boys Town” that I’d been roped into by my best friend.
    “Pleeeeease” she pleaded. “I’ll be great. You’ll love it. It’s so much bigger than that shoebox you’re wedged in now.” But she was bigger so she needed bigger. Lori looked like a stand in for Christie Brinkley. She was smart, going to UCLA, she had a charmed life and could manipulate a skin off a sheep, and I was an easy mark, a target on my back. I was struggling to be an actress, but I felt like Teri Garr in Tootsie. All I did was buy shit for auditions. But I liked my shoebox in West LA across the street from the Mormon temple. It fit my mouse-hole stature. Now I was living in this barren place. At least the guys in the neighborhood didn’t swipe my butt all the time.
    There was only one parking space per apartment, first come, first served. Naturally Lori got it. Every night, I roamed the adjacent streets like a stray, searching for parking at eleven-thirty at night after my acting class, which was a no-go. Both the class and the parking. I ended up on a side street, across from a construction site. A half-built apartment building with nobody home, only empty eyes for windows. The raucous noise coming from the gay bar on Santa Monica Boulevard down the block, blared the familiar lyrics of Macho Man. The street was deserted.
    Through the windshield I saw a guy walking down the street, probably coming out of the bar to find his car. By the time I turned from locking my VW bug, he was gone.
    He’d come around behind me, clamping one hand over my mouth, the other up my shirt. He threw me against the car door, pushing up my bra to feel my breasts and nipples. I couldn’t struggle, trapped between him and the car. He didn’t seem tall, but stocky and strong. His hand moved down, but I knew he was undoing his pants and I was wearing a skirt. My mouth went dry and my mind blanked out. I was so panicked I couldn’t think. I could smell his breath on my neck, something spicy or onions maybe. Stinking. Or was my own fear stinking?
    Then, I was looking down from above, time slowed. Watching myself and him, with no fear, no worry, just watching this guy trying to rape me, from a different perspective. His pants were open, and he was lifting my skirt, trying to enter me from behind, his hand still clamped over my mouth. It all seemed so clinical, as though I wasn’t happening to me but to someone else, like I was trying to figure out a difficult math problem.
    “What you need to do, my out of body self told me, is get his hand away from your mouth and scream. But just don’t scream, this other self logically advised, everybody screams around here. You must scream something that will bring people. Loud from your diaphragm, you know how. Make them pay attention.
    
    I was back, it was happening, my panties down around my butt, my skirt up. He was pressing against me trying to get in and invade me. His concentration wavering from his hold on my mouth while trying to fuck me.
     I jerked my head hard to the left, making him loose his grip. He tried putting his hand back over my mouth, But I opened my mouth just enough to find a finger. Then I bit him as hard as I could, tasting something salty, feeling a crunch. It must have hurt, because he yelled and let go.
    “Help me, help me.” I screamed over and over. So loud, I could feel the vibration in my ribcage. He threw me to the ground and ran. He must have seen them first.
    It seemed like a scene from a movie, when riotous crowd approaches, or zombies attack. There were probably ten guys, but it seemed like a hundred. It was hard to tell lying on the ground looking at them upside down, the way I was. They were all coming from the gay bar to rescue me. They gently picked me up and started talking in soothing tones, but I couldn’t really hear what they were saying. Babble, babble.
    How nice these guys were treating me; brushing me off, saying words of comfort. I started shaking, trying to talk but making no sense. They were making no sense. I think someone asked what happened and maybe I said a guy tried to rape me. One of the guys ran down the street to give chase. Two other guys took me by the arms to guide me back to my apartment. My purse appeared from nowhere. I kept looking at these guys wondering if this was a trick and they were going to take me somewhere and finish what the other guy started. But they gave me kind looks and held my arms like I might break into pieces. I was probably crying.
    We went to the first building which I thought was my apartment, but when I got to the gate, it wasn’t. I felt confused, disoriented, all these buildings looked alike. Everyone looked alike. One of the guys said he thought maybe I got hit in the head. By the second try, it was the right building. I pushed the number for my apartment.
    They walked me to the door, meeting my roommate’s shocked face. Someone must have called the cops because they showed up when my saviors saw them and disappeared back into the night, avoiding questions. I forgot to thank them.
    Lori and cops took me to the apartment where I sat on the couch. Just wanting to lie down and go to bed. Forget about it, forget about acting, get a life. I looked down at my knees and began picking the gravel out of the bloody scrapes.
    The cops were accusatory like this was my fault and maybe it was, for parking in the wrong place. But I already knew this was the wrong place.
    “Where did the blood come from?” Cop one asked, a surly, tall dude with a shaved head, and beaky nose. He was pointing at face.
    I didn’t know what they were talking about.
    “There’s blood on you face and your shirt.” My sweet, roommate explained. I looked down and yes there was blood there. A lot of it. Good. A slight smile.
    “I bit him.”
    “Did penetration occur?” Cop two asked. She was too pretty to be a cop. I wondered if she was a failed actress.
    “Huh.”
    “Did he penetrate you with his penis?’ Cop one said with an interrogation tone.
    “No, I bit him and screamed.”
    They seemed mad, disappointed maybe.
    Rage shook me, in body and experience, worse than anger, I felt twice debased, humiliated. ‘Hey assholes some guy just tried to rape me and you act like this was my fault and you ask these bullshit questions.’ I would have loved to scream at them. I’d met the spectrum that night; the bad guy, the good guys and the major assholes. But, I wondered if fear or anger made me look at things differently, from a new perspective.
    My roommate gave me her parking space. Welcome home.

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