LITMIR.BIZ

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wasn’t invincible. I called a friend who picked me up in her mom’s station wagon and took me to a free clinic. The doctor sewed me up and nodded unquestioningly when I told him I was eighteen years old, had forgotten to bring my driver’s license, and had been on the bad end of a jungle gym accident. At that point, I began to fear that I’d be blamed for what had happened. My friend took me home, and I went inside, bruised and defeated, and showered off. If my parents asked why I was limping and shaken, I intended to say I’d gotten into a fight at school. They never asked.

      Forget my virginity. What that man took was my trust in other people and myself. Before that, I’d had real confidence, instilled by an encouraging mother and a tough, intelligent father. After that I had doubts. I withdrew from school activities. My grades got bad. I retreated to my room and never went outside. I certainly never roller-skated again. I guess my parents blamed the change in me on adolescence and hormones.

      I wonder now how he rationalized the rape to himself. I wonder why he got drunk in the first place before doing what he did.

      Alcohol abuse is a demon that comes in many forms. I’d already felt the impact of the one that makes us so stupid that we can’t operate a vehicle safely and the one that kills through overconsumption, but here was a new creature, the demon that excuses evil behavior. I’m sure that if he’d been hauled before a judge the first words out of his mouth would have been, “I was drunk, I don’t know what I was thinking. And so was she. We’d both been drinking. It was consensual.”

      I changed in the weeks after the rape. I could feel myself withdrawing from life and I realized that I needed to do something. I couldn’t let him win. I still couldn’t bring myself to talk to my parents about it, because Patrick’s death had delivered a nearly fatal wound to their marriage and in my fourteen-year-old mind, I guess I was worried that my news might deliver the killing blow. And I was scared. There was the constant threat that it would happen again. He lived right next door, and we’d just moved in. I would have to see him again, see his house and that van every day that I lived in Nellie Gail Ranch. I needed to get away, so I talked my parents into letting me get out of Laguna Hills for the summer and headed up north to visit my cousin Caroline, who was about my age. I made a decision that I wasn’t going to let the rapist ruin my life or take my virginity, even though he had, so I promised myself that while I was away I would choose a boy and have sex, and I’d pretend that it was my first time.

      So I went to the state fair with my cousin and I met this guy who was about twenty. He was really tall with long blond hair­, a country boy, very nice and sweet. After a couple of days of going back to the fair and flirting we went out on a date, while my cousin covered for me by staying at the fair. I told him what had happened to me. I told him I’d been raped and that I didn’t want that to be my first experience and I asked him to help me. He was the sweetest guy. He made the softest, most gentle love to me and he kissed me and he held me. I needed to do that to try and get the effects of the rape out of my system. I needed to convince myself that not all men were assholes, and psychologically I needed to reclaim my virginity and some of my inner strength.

      When summer was over I headed back to Laguna Hills. I knew that the rapist would still be there but I’d learned one thing about myself that allowed me to keep it all together. I had learned that I was a survivor.

      BAIT AND SWITCH

      Rather than dying down, things got much worse with the rapist next door. He started throwing pebbles at my window every night, trying to get me to come outside. I would lie in my bed petrified, praying that my parents would hear him. I guess after a few weeks he figured out that the pedophile Romeo approach wasn’t going to win me over, so he gave up and started stalking me at school. He’d sit in his van and wait for me to walk home. I told my girlfriend, the one who’d taken me to the clinic after the rape, and she agreed to help. I’d hide in her car while she drove right past him. When I got home I’d lock myself in my room and wait for my hands to stop shaking.

      Things didn’t stay that way forever. It cost my parents almost every penny that they’d saved, but they found this great house in Laguna Beach and announced that we were moving.

      Laguna Beach was only twenty minutes away by car, but it was one of the most exclusive beach communities in the United States—a completely different world. It was a self-contained city bordered on all sides by ocean, hills, and woods. The closeness of nature reminded me of Connecticut, and that made it feel like home in a way that Laguna Hills never could. There was a thriving arts community, I was at a better school, and, best of all, the rapist didn’t follow me. I hadn’t realized until we moved to Laguna Beach that I’d been carrying this oppressive weight around, as if that guy in the back of the van was still on top of me. Now that weight began to evaporate.

      The boys there walked around in surf shorts, the girls were naturally beautiful, and no one wore makeup or heels, so I had to change again to fit in.

      My new school had a strong arts program; our most distinguished alumnus was Richard Chamberlain, and our football team was even called the Artists. I got onto the junior varsity cheerleading team, and we had little painting palettes on our cheerleading sweaters. We had had to come up with cheers to fit the theme: “Paint them into a corner! Pour turpentine on them!” It was all good fun and I felt my self-confidence returning.

      Soon after we moved I was approached by a contemporary artist who wanted to photograph me for his exhibition in the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts. He wanted to take a series of images of me in a bathing suit, posing up against a wall. I was nervous, but my parents looked into it and heard that he was a legitimate artist, and it seemed like a good opportunity to get some professional photos for a portfolio as well as some public exposure to help my acting career get going. Before the festival I got my own set of prints—I was over the moon with the result. The photos were beautiful, and to this day I count them as some of the best ever taken of me.

      I proudly met my family and friends outside the exhibition on the opening day. The photos were to be printed in large format and hung in a series along a wall. I struggled to see the pictures through the crowd of people that had gathered around them. It seemed as though I was a hit. I nudged my way forward and then stood, frozen in stunned silence. My excitement vanished, and black clouds of humiliation rolled in. The series was titled “Beauty Deconstructed,” and the artist had splattered the life-size photographs of me with his own blood and feces.

      Some of the people in the crowd looked at me and then back at the pictures and then back at me. I turned and ran. My parents followed me back to their car and I cried all the way home.

      It was a horribly disappointing experience, but despite the embarrassment those photos led to a strange and interesting series of events.

      A few days after the exhibition I was approached by a photographer named Pam Bouchard. She loved the images and sent them on to Eileen Ford in New York, who agreed to see me.

      The Ford Agency has represented some of the world’s top models, including Cheryl Tiegs, Christy Turlington, Christie Brinkley, and Jerry Hall. Some have even gone on to be successful actresses, like Elle MacPherson, Sharon Stone, and Courteney Cox. I figured that if I were lucky I could start out as a model and bridge into acting. I was already skinny, but I wanted to give it my best shot, so I stepped up my diet regime to political-prisoner-on-hunger- strike level.

      Pam was openly gay and despite my parents being fairly straight-laced, she somehow convinced them that she would be a suitable chaperone, and off we went to the Big Apple. The hotel was cheap and nasty, but Pam had lined up a bunch of meetings, and once we started doing the rounds I found myself getting invited out to the coolest parties. And Pam was great. She really believed in me and helped me to believe in myself, and best of all she let me go wherever I wanted. I met Scott Webster, who was one of the first male supermodels and was, unsurprisingly, fucking gorgeous, and I found my way to Studio 54, where I saw things that fifteen-year-old girls are not supposed to see.

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