I searched his eyes for kindness but saw that I had been right all along. He smiled at me, signaled at his long bag with his eyes and then looked back at me, exploring my face for hints of a breakdown. But I wasn’t going to break for him. Not yet.
As we rode down the dirty streets I remembered how he would watch me play piano. He would sit behind me and reach for to play with my hair, but I would get up and move away without looking at him thinking I could control the situation. Now his smiles only ever meant that he loved being in control of me – and everything I did.
On the streets were naked children, sleeping, dreaming of better things. I am surrounded by ugly hangovers of war poverty and corruption – and yet all I can do is feel sorry for myself. I take one last look at the skinny children and I decide that there are worse things then what I am about to face.
We’ve been driving around for hours in silence; I was screaming in my head, I wondered if he was too. I had an awful feeling that all his inside voice was doing was whistling. He parked his bike in the middle of an empty dirty road; it was dark, wet and dirty. I got off first, slowly moved a few steps back giving him room to place his bag between us.
“Open it” again, I desperately searched his eyes… looking for any humanity, I knew what was in it, I slowly unzipped and opened the bag and there it was, coming back to haunt me. “Excited?”
“Thrilled”
“Good… you’re going to do it to yourself”
I glared at him, and laughed nervously, “I can’t – It’s not possible”
He bent down and took it out of the bag, taking it out of its cellophane cover and pushed it into my stomach, he lowered his head slightly and dropt his vocals one octave, thinking he was being sexy-evil, “try.”
I took it into my hands and looked it at for a few long seconds, I looked back up at him and then at my feet. I ran my hand along its body, counting the inches,
“You’ll have to get your trousers off… honey”

**

“John, I can’t” I said, using every muscle that wasn’t going into my squat into not crying.
“Of course you can, - we’ve done this before”
“Its not meant for this – please, just – just do me yourself if you-”
He scowled and swore under his teeth, “It’s meant – for playing games… and I will do it myself – afterwards”
Only a few months ago my mother and I sat in what was a strangely personal conversation about our virginas where we both realized that like mother like daughter, we had the same gift of having virgin like virgins, despite us both having kids. It didn’t matter what went up or down, the next few days would always make our holes shrink. I felt like I was loosing my virginity to a baseball bat. Suddenly it wasn’t such a gift.
He bent down behind me and put her hands through mine, holding the bat with both hands, I tried to keep my balance, but I fell backwards onto his chest. That was going to be my only fall – I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to break for him.
Slowly, he pushed it inside me, easing it slightly from side to side to get it in. I bit my tongue in attempt to focus the pain elsewhere.
“You can scream” I said nothing. Everything inside me told me to close my eyes and look away… but I didn’t. Instead I watched as this long hard piece of wood slowly disappeared into my body. I was mesmerized by it… I almost stopped feeling the pain… “Does it hurt?” I said nothing. “Of course it hurts, look at you you’re practically ripping your lips off… here, let me help you refocus the pain – hold it in”
He spoke so casually as if it wasn’t just a game but as if I was a little girl who he was teaching it to, I understood the rules – I knew them by heart, John always won the game. That was rule one.
I took hold of the bat and kept it steady as he reached into his pocket, I looked over my shoulder but he grabbed my head. “Curious!?” I said nothing, “Keep pushing it in”
“It won’t go in anymore!”
Frustrated and angry at me he pulled out a knife from his pocket, ran it down my arms with one hand and pushed the bat in further with the other. “I know what you think, I know how you feel about me, crying is the worst thing that you can do – but I’m not trying to break you Duff, you’re already broken, I just want to have some fun”

**