The Post 1

The reason I went running to Lemmy* was to put a dividing wall between myself and the Doctor. The last time I saw him, he had arrived at McDonald's with his friend. It was one of the few times he left behind his ex-girlfriend, Yvonne. I was still in a daze over the effects of being raped and choked. This would be the day I began to snap out of it.

I can't remember exactly what he said. He criticized my dress and looks. I recall that he claimed I was too serious and political in a conversation. I remained silent and looked at him. There was a look in his eyes. It was the same look he had before he assaulted me at the movie theatre, as The Unforgiven was playing. It was just before the scene where the hooker has her breasts cut off.

It was a very alienating, animalistic look. His light blue pupils turned black and spots ran across his iris. I saw a dark cloud form. It was at that moment that I realized he was going to do something to me. My gut reaction was to leave. I made up some excuse, took the bus home, and wrote down my shifts. Then, I called up my ex-boyfriend Mike, who had introduced us.

"I want you to break up with him for me. You owe me a favour," I told Mike.

"All right. You say he humiliates you and has a bad temper. Well, I introduced you to him. I will call him on the phone and end things between the two of you," Mike said.

"Thank you. I am afraid he will lash out at me," I responded.

Mike called him later that day. I never heard from the Doctor again. For someone who claimed he was devastated and suspected I dropped him after using him for sex, he neatly forgot that he was a rapist and we had dated post-traumatically for two months. This was a situation of abuse and post-traumatic reaction, not a real relationship. People who suffer from PTSD and Stockholm Syndrome tend to identify with their abusers, rapists, and captors. It is well-documented and has been recognized since the 1970s.

The Doctor did not seem to miss me much. I did not receive the barrage of phone calls, letters, and visits that usually occurred after I ended a relationship. I consider such behavior to be stalking. Mike certainly refused to leave me alone. It was in his character. The first time he dated me, he had relentlessly called me thirty times in forty-eight hours.

The Doctor and his friends began a campaign of defamation against me. He claimed that I had used him for sex when he was incapable of having sex due to his rare condition of sexual priapism.

I met Lemmy three weeks before I broke up with the Doctor. He showed up in early April of 1993. A friend of mine arrived with him and introduced me to him. He was driving the car.

"Come on, get in on the side. This is Lemmy. He is a friend of mine," my friend said.

She sat in the front passenger seat. Cigarette dangling from her hand out the window, I smelled the Du Maurier wafts through the car. I was allergic to cigarettes, so I asked them to turn on the fan.

"Why do you want the fan? It costs money to run the fan," Lemmy said.

"Oh, I see," I said. "Well, turn it on, anyway."

"It will drain the gas tank," Lemmy insisted.

"It doesn't affect the gas tank. It gets over thirty degrees here in the valley," I told him.