OLIVIA
It feels as though I am doing the man before me, a massive disservice by admitting the immense sympathy I feel for him.
I know he would call this sympathy...pity...
I know how hard it is to recognize this type of emotion as anything other than weakness, but the sympathy I feel is not pity!
Pity is tinged with shame, it has connotations that the person being pitied, is inferior to the one feeling pity...
You don't pity someone who is your equal...
What I feel, for the very broken man before me, instead, is intense sympathy, and a hard earned empathy.
I share his feelings; they are not something I struggle to relate to, that confusion, frustration, shame...is something I have long known.
I am deeply saddened by what he has suffered, both as a twelve-year-old child, and as a hurt adult. In fact, as I start to really process the shocking information I have just learned, I am amazed by his strength.
"You are not less of a man, somehow, because of it..."
My words are whispered, they feel ridiculous, like I am inferring their untruth merely by allowing them pass my lips, but I know how profoundly a sexual assault can shake a man's understanding of his masculinity.
He doesn't seem to realize he is shaking his head, denying the words that feel so unnecessary to me.
I take a deep breath, trying to draw on my years of experience in SVU, conscious of the multitude of mistakes I have already made this morning.
"Brian?"
I call his name softly, wanting to draw him from the memories that are torturing him.
I drop to the floor beside him, when he barely responds:
"Men don't get r...that doesn't happen..."
I am glad that I am already on the floor, as his words hit...
That word is not a surprise...even though it was only barely begun, I've been a cop way too long to pretend that my imagination hadn't already extrapolated his story to its likely conclusion...I know what is all too often hidden behind euphemisms and denial...but I can't fight the shock that once more encompasses me.
"Yes they do..." is my even quieter, tear filled, answer.
It is not elegant, or particularly uplifting but maybe there is something comforting in its brutal truth...
I take his closer hand in mine, despite his half-hearted attempt to pull away.
"Fuck! Brian!...they do...it's horrible, and all too common...and you know as well as I do...men do get...raped..."
He looks sideways at me, and I can see he is thinking of Reggie.
"Liv, I thought I could hold it together...I never would have taken the stand if I thought I would lose it like that..."
I want to reassure him, tell him that I know he would never have consciously risked the trial, but if he is willing to talk to me now, I can swallow the words that will likely have little effect on him anyways.
"That lawyer started questioning me...he...he started bringing up Carissa...then...Riggs..."
He is shaking softly as he tries to explain...
"...I was on the stand, as a witness, on a paedo case...and he was trying to paint me to the jury as a rapist...
I've made plenty of bad decisions...I've done more stupid things than I can even count...but...I'm not a rapist...I'm not like that...like him..."
I can't help the gasp that accompanies the emphatic head shaking...
"I'd never hurt a kid...never...and not like that...I could never do that... not to anyone..."
He has wrenched his hand from mine, clasping them so tightly, his knuckles are white... and for the first time, I really begin to understand what caused his epic meltdown on the stand.
His words, and everything they hide in half shadow, trigger an avalanche of memories in me; in the days and weeks after Lewis' first attack, the man beside me was so gentle, so conscious of how his mere presence may upset me...I'm reminded how he would move into my eye line before touching me in any way...how he would ask permission to enter his own bed...how devastated he would look if I flinched from him...
How did I not ever question these behaviors?
At the time I was so wrapped up in my own suffering, my own fears and grief, I was incapable of recognizing even the most obvious tells...and in the time since, I have never once considered the root cause of that horrible caution, that finally ruined what we once had...
I had just assumed that his all-encompassing carefulness was caused by my ever-changing triggers, it seemed to stand to reason, that when a man had to ask for permission to sleep in his own bed, and woke to his girlfriend having a breakdown because he had a perfectly normal, morning erection, that he would become unnaturally cautious...
I had assumed that I had sexually ruined him...that he was ashamed of his body's natural reactions, and uninterested in sex because of me...and what I went through at Lewis' hands...
But there was more to it...
As always, when I open the door, even a touch, to my experiences with Lewis, I have little control over the memories that force themselves to the fore...Lewis' poison filled words, at what was supposed to be his trial, replay in my mind...taunting me, he said I was just a frustrated and lonely woman who wanted to play with rape fantasy... His trial, became more of a judgment of me...
Even now, the idea of what he claimed I wanted to experience, makes me feel sick...I have spent my life terrified of the violence that is part of my genetic make up...I have always been on the alert for anything that would confirm the sexual depravity I feared I had inherited from my rapist father...
OH...
"Brian?" I hate the tentative voice that breaks the silence... "You know you are nothing like him...?"
He told me, only moments ago, that he is not like the man who hurt him, he said those very words, but it is like he was unaware of their escape...and my confirmation has him gasping and sobbing...
I wrap my arms around the man, holding him as tight to me as I can, while his whole body shakes...
"He told me I was just like him..."
"You are nothing like him..." I reiterate softly...
"But what if I am?"
It is not the first time I have counseled a man, shattered by a sexual assault, and terrified that he now shares the sexual proclivities of his attacker...but this whispered, heartbroken, plea has fragmented all my previous experiences and training into uselessness...
"Never!" I whisper repeatedly until I find language to make a more compelling case...
"Brian, you would never hurt anyone...you didn't rape Riggs, she confirmed that, it was all a scam...you couldn't...I always knew that.
The man who abused you, he preyed on your innocence, your inexperience..."
I'm so shocked by his disclosure, by my jumbled emotions, by the memories that I can't hold back when I lift the lid on that time, even if it is to try to make him understand how my sympathy is based in my own experiences...that I miss the clear anger building in the tense body beside me.
"No! Liv! I wasn't... an innocent kid...I liked pictures...I wanted to look at girls..."
His words are stuttered, his face lowered in shame...
"Brian, look at me..." I refuse to continue until he tilts his eyes up to meet mine, "...you were a 12 year old kid...you were curious...you looked at girls in bathing suits? Playboy fascinated you? Maybe you even got your hands on something a bit racier...?"
The way his face reddens tells me this is what he was trying to tell me...
"That is perfectly normal! You were starting to become a sexual being...exactly as you should...but you were innocent, you were inexperienced...
That man preyed on that...he used that...he twisted your natural, youthful, sensitivity...your body is designed to respond to stimulation, and he made you believe that reaction was a choice...and that it indicated consent...and preference...
It didn't...consent is a choice...you had no choice..."
His head is buried in my chest, hidden from my eye now... but for the first time I feel like maybe I'm behaving the way an SVU cop should...
"I know that SVU wasn't for you...but I saw you deal with those three boys, before the West trial, you were great with them.
You know all this...
There is nothing they did that made what West did to them their fault...
There is nothing they did that made what West did okay...
There is nothing that you did..."
I know how long overdue these words are...but I also know how needed they are...
"...nothing! Brian, sex is supposed to be fun, it's supposed to feel good, but that wasn't sex...it's not sex if it is coerced, if one of the participants is crying or pleading 'no', or frozen in fear...it's sexual assault..."
I let these words settle in before continuing softly...
"I know you know what good sex feels like..." I'm smirking at him now, when he chooses to look up he will see I am not embarrassed... "...we had some really good sex..." his eyes swipe quickly up to mine, "...that wasn't sex..."
If this was some sort of TV show, some idealized, and ultimately positive way to break taboos, and even help people deal with their own experiences, then Brian would open up, he would see the error of his ways, he would understand how damaging the little voice in his head was, the one that has always told him he was no 'innocent', and deserved what happened to...no! what was done to him! But unfortunately, as I look at the man before me, I can see that my words won't have any miraculous reaction today...
He is pulling at his hair, his desperation, his self-hatred all too clear...
I had a relationship with this man, I know him too well...
"I'm not one of your fucking victims Liv! I don't need the victim speech! And I don't need your pity!" the words don't surprise me but they still hurt.
"You've done your duty...
The bitterness spat into the final word makes it hard to hold back the tears that I have been fighting, to greater and lesser success, since understanding why Rafael sent me here...
"You're not, and never have been a duty Bri..."
He looks at me with disbelief, "Yeah...Saint-fucking-Olivia..."
I know that he has shut down...that there is no talking to him...he is too hurt to deal with the emotions battering him, so he falls back on his tried and true method of getting by...his self defense...and my emotions are too raw to be able to deal with his self hatred turned into caustic comments...
"I'm here for you...when you need me..." I start to tell him, pulling myself from the floor.
I have no idea how long I have been crouched and twisted uncomfortably, but my body is protesting as I straighten up.
"You came to me when you needed help proving you didn't kill West...this is the same... I'm here, when you are ready..."
He turns away, but I lean in and press a soft kiss to the top of his head, knowing that it can say what I can't find language for...
"I'll call you later..." I whisper, heading towards the door, but his "humpf" makes it clear he has no intention of answering my call...
I just shake my head softly, updating the sentiment with the clear intention of not being dissuaded for too long... "I will talk to you soon..."
Before I pull the door behind me, I see him still crumpled on the floor, he is staring blindly, at the window, more because it is the farthest point from where I stand, than any desire to look further than this room...
I want to go back inside and take him into my arms...to keep trying to talk...but I find I'm exhausted...and unable to separate my own needs from the situation...
I realize with regret, that I am not a cop seeing a vic... god, he would hate me to use that word...I am not a cop talking to ...someone who has been hurt...and recognizing their need for time to come to terms with what they have suffered before they are ready to engage with me...
I am a shocked and shattered friend... who wants nothing more than to help her friend but doesn't know how... and needs time to come to terms with this shocking revelation herself, before she can help anyone else...
For some reason, I find myself thinking of that stupid safety announcement on planes that we all studiously ignore...put your own mask on first, you can't help others if you don't help yourself...
I leave him with something I heard on a TV show that has stuck with me... "Brian, some ghosts can only be banished by speaking their name and foul deeds aloud..."
Walking away from the apartment slowly, it takes an inordinate amount of energy...as my overthinking brain starts to pick through memories of when we were a couple...
Were there obvious hints? Even before Lewis? That I missed?
Or was he someone who didn't really show any of the obvious signs?
If this were a sculpted reality, a scripted version of a childhood abuse story, I would be comforting my ex, my friend...we would be starting to smash down the barriers left behind by such an immense trauma.
But this is cold hard reality. Where his anger, his enforced vulnerability, and years of semi-successful, but yet detrimental coping methods, are stretched beyond what he can deal with...he is hung-over and sleep-deprived, and most probably feels as powerless as his 12 year old self...
I wish this were some TV show.
The ultimate modern day escape...where even our horrors are fixable in an hour long, relatable version of society with a mostly, positive spin...not all the time, because there has to be some sense of reality...but enough, something to grasp on to, when you are drawn in to make sense of your own horrors. People...well, me, would say the right things...and thirty-something years of hurt could start to be undone...I wouldn't be too upset and damaged myself to help him...and he would easily accept my offered and imperfect help...
But reality is harsher than TV can show.
Horrors aren't condensed into an hour-long spotlight with some snippets of follow up, at least there is some follow up in the good ones anyway. Real trauma is ugly...it isn't linear or clean...some days are just gut wrenching pain with no discernible trigger...and sometimes what you want to say is impossible for your mouth to form...the people around you, even the good ones, don't have all the answers...they don't say the right thing...they try to hug you because they love you and want to comfort you when they have no words, even as you flinch and pull away because that touch is tainted by horror...real people don't have a script, they don't have time to plan their reaction...they do the best they can...even when their best is woefully insufficient...I'm not saying that people don't heal, they do...it just doesn't look like it does on the screen...
If only this was a TV show...but then again how often does a straight, middle aged, male, regularly recurring, character disclose hidden sexual abuse from their childhood?