Macaroni Was His Name
Trigger warning: This post contains sensitive topics such as rape, assault and abuse.
I don’t know the real name of the man who raped me, even though I’d had consensual sex with him before the night he assaulted me. Even though he was part of my group of friends. Even though I was regularly at his home several times a week. Even though I’d been in his car, to his place of employment and out with him in public.
Because I didn’t know his name, I didn’t report the assault. I was afraid I wouldn’t be believed. I was afraid the police would laugh me out of the station, certain that I was just a stupid girl who woke up regretting a hook up. I was afraid they’d think I had “cried rape” because this guy whose name I didn’t even know didn’t want to be my boyfriend. I was afraid my friends wouldn’t believe me, that my parents would be disappointed that I had slept with someone without knowing his name. I could see no way of reporting the crime that wouldn’t fall apart because I didn’t know his name.
I was just a mess of a girl who had made bad choices. More than fearful, I was certain that everyone would think it was my fault. I thought it was my fault.
I was an 18-year-old high school dropout in Anchorage, Alaska in 2000. I was hanging out with a new group of friends. People who hadn’t known me in school, strangers I’d met I don’t even know where. I was desperate to shed the stigma of “didn’t reach her potential” that came with dropping out of high school at the end of my junior year. I was working as a graveyard waitress at a local Denny’s and I spent a lot of time pretending like everything was fine.
The years between 17 and 21 are all a little hazy for me. I left school, I moved out of my parents’ home, I lived in a series of increasingly shady apartments (some of which I went without things like heat or lights) and I took up with a questionable group of drinkers, drug users and, apparently, rapists.
I met this guy who went by Mac. The story behind the nickname went like this, “I’m Mac, as in Macaroni, as in hung like a noodle.” At the time, this bit of weird self-depreciating humor seemed charming. Mac had a big presence and was a few years older than me. He was funny, sort of goofy, with floppy blond hair and Bob Marley posters on his bedroom wall. He rented a house with a few other guys in what was otherwise an affluent suburban neighborhood. He had a car, which for 19-year-old-me from the trailer park on the opposite end of town, was a big selling point. I met him at a party at his house.
We hooked up a few times but I just wasn’t feeling it anymore, so I told him I was done messing around with him. He took it well, promised he’d be cool and played it off like it wasn’t a big deal. A few weeks later, I found myself back at his house for another party.
I remember a guy I went to high school with pouring me a drink of something blue.
I remember being told I was too drunk and should go lay down.
I remember feeling very heavy and tired and like I couldn’t move my body when and how I wanted.
I remember Mac telling me it was fine and that I said I wanted to.
And then I remember using every ounce of strength or force or chutzpah I had in me to propel myself out of the bed, out of the room and into the bathroom across the hall. I found my friends there, huddled around smoking and reapplying lipstick. I started giggling and crying. I had no pants on. The only truly clear memory I have is those few moments in the bathroom were my situation being assessed by a group of rough, tough trailer park girlfriends and an exit strategy was put into place.
One of my friends, the blonder one of a set of twins I knew, retrieved my pants and laid down some sternly worded threats about ever coming near me again.
The rest of the group got me re-dressed and into a car, deposited home safely where I spent the next three days sicker than I have ever been in my entire life and in and out of consciousness.
Although it was clear that what happened that night was “uncool,” no one ever said the word “rape.” I didn’t. My friends didn’t. No one did. I sort of vaguely knew that what happened was illegal, that I could go to the police if I wanted to. But all I could think about was how very much this was my fault. I did everything wrong. I wasn’t the right kind of victim at all. I was more afraid of what the cops would say to me than of the fact that my rapist would never be held accountable for his crime.
It took me almost 10 years to be able to let go of the fear of being blamed for what happened. It took me 10 years to be able to say I was raped. I never felt like I could say it because I didn’t know his name.
But I don’t need his name. And I’m not afraid anymore.
That man raped me.
