The Author

I can hear your thoughts. That's a stupid title for a story. You're scratching your head and pondering such a unconventional way to start a tale. But this isn't a story, it's a memory, my memory. I'm telling you because I can't talk about it and they told me to write it out. Tell someone, they said, so I'm telling you. You won't believe it, but that's okay. You don't have to. To you, it's just a story to read and forget. That's okay too. I wish I could forget it so easily.

I am a published writer. I have twenty-one books out already. All of them have been on the best seller list, four of them for more than ten weeks. They made movies out of five. I won't give you my name. You don't need to know it. I won't tell you the names of my books or the names of the movies. You don't need to know them either. Don't try to guess. It won't do you any good. Who I am is no one's business. Too many things have happened that should remain private. 

It started in December of 2001. My feet hurt all the time. I would get horrible cramps in my feet and legs. I felt weak, from my stomach down to the toes. I would often lose my balance and fall. Before it was discovered what I had, people thought I drank. I didn't but I heard the rumors. One day, my own agent faced me with it.

"You have to stop drinking," Harvey said. We were sitting in the living room that day, discussing my new book, the movie rights of a different one. "You've got too much to risk losing and the studios will stop dealing with you."

"I don't drink." Angry, I rose. My legs felt enervated that day. Was I getting the flu? Had I sat at the computer too long? Turning, I lost my balance and fell. Harvey was there immediately. He helped me up, sitting me back down on the sofa.

"If you're not drinking, then something is wrong. Go to the doctor."

"There's nothing wrong," I argued. "I just need to exercise more."

He sniffed my breath. His eyes grew grave. "Listen to me," he said gruffly. "There's something wrong. Go to the doctor."

So I went. The first doctor told me I had Lou Gehrig's disease.....Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. I didn't believe it. I went to a different doctor. But the message was still the same and I still had Lou Gehrig's disease. I was dying. It would be slow, painful, terrifying. Eventually, my breathing would become affected. Ultimately, I would need permanent ventilatory support in order to survive. It wouldn't affect my mind or my heart, my eyes or hearing, but it would seek out and destroy all my voluntary muscle actions. 

It wasn't fair. I was only forty-five. Why me? God, why? Haven't I always loved you? Of course, I realized later the simple truth was, why not me? Was I so important, this shouldn't happened to me? No. Was I so valuable that this couldn't befall me? No. So I realized, why not? Why shouldn't it? I tried to make sense of it, but there was no answer to why and no answer to the why not.

I learned to live with it. I had to; it wasn't going away. I was given medication to slow it but there was no cure.

Eventually I ended up in a wheelchair. Of course, I needed help with the mundane aspects of life. I hired a housekeeper, someone to cook and clean, help me to and from the bed. His name was Monroe. I liked him a lot. He reminded me of a puppy, a very friendly, life loving puppy. Of course, I never told him that. He was too nice and that might have hurt his feelings.

He was honest with me from the start. "I'm gay. Is that going to bother you?"

"No. I'm not gay. Will that distress you?"

He laughed; his eyes sparkled. "No!"

We got along just fine. When he took a week for vacation now and then, I had a different man in to help me. I missed Monroe; I missed him a lot. When he returned from his last week off, I greeted him in great joy.

"I think you like me," he teased.

"I think I do," I agreed, a huge smile on my face. "But I'm still not gay!"

He snapped his fingers. "Darn!" Laughing, I wheeled away from his beaming face. "Are you sure?"

"Yes!" I called over my shoulder.

Monroe was going to Fire Island, New York on this vacation. He was going to stay with a friend, and this year, God help me, this year, the employment agency sent a man named Sanford. He arrived fifteen minutes after Monroe left the apartment. 

"So," he said after I had let him in, "You're a writer."

"Yes."

"What do you write?"

"Just normal, day to day stuff." I didn't like him. Why didn't I like him? His eyes were cold, unemotional. Was that why? He gave me the creeps. I tried to hide my reaction from him. I had to be with this man for a whole week and I didn't want to antagonize him.

"Oh." He turned and went to his temporary room.

I went back to my computer. The studio wanted me to try my hand at writing the screen play for the current book they were doing.

The first two days, nothing was out of the ordinary and then he squeezed my arm as he placed me in my chair, hurting me. I yelped, jerking. He released me, grinning. "Sorry. Don't know my own strength."

"That's okay." It wasn't but what was I going to do? Fire him? Force him to leave? Beat him up?

And then that evening, after I showered, he stood in the doorway, staring at me in lust. "I'm not gay," I told him calmly.

"I'm not either." That smirk on his face disturbed me.

He flung the towel at me. I draped it in front of me. He picked me up and placed me in the chair...and left. I sat there, shaken. I didn't like him...no... to be honest, he petrified me.

The next day, he picked me up out of the shower, but instead of putting me in my chair, he flung me on the bed, on my stomach. "Hey!" I said through gritted teeth. "You're being too rough." Enough was enough. After all, I paid his salary.

He laughed. "Rough? Yeah, I'm too rough." And then he raped me. I screamed and tried to get away but as weak as I was and with him being so strong, I couldn't. I sobbed in agony and fear. I could feel him tearing me. The pain was immense for he was huge. He finished and left my body. I slid to the floor, weeping. He backhanded me, sending me sprawling on my back. "Rough? Yeah, I'm rough." He stood, looking down at me, laughing. And then he jerked the phone from the jack and left, shutting the door. I lay there, hurting, burning. When I tried to move, I found I couldn't; the pain was too great. I could feel the blood slipping from my rectum, through the tear in my anus. This couldn't be happening. It couldn't. But hours later, he came back in, jerked me up and flung me back on the bed...and raped me again. I sobbed but his breath, hot against my neck told me he didn't care. He slapped by buttocks, over and over, forcing my body to tighten around him. I could hear him grunting, breathing harshly. He finished, spewing his filth inside me. He left me and I slipped back to the floor. The soreness in my rectum screamed at me. I lost control of my bowels and the blood, the semen, the feces, slipped forth. They covered me. They dirtied the floor.

He returned about midnight. "Naughty, naughty," he said in delight. "You've dirtied the floor." He beat me. I could feel my lips split. My left eye would swell shut. He was so brutal, I lost consciousness.

The next morning, he raped me again.

He would sexually abuse me three to four times a day until the day he left, the day before Monroe was due back. Once, he plunged down my throat but I couldn't breath and blacked out. He used me anally from then on. My mind was only half there. It simply couldn't accept what was happening to me.

(My body is cold now as I remember that time. My mind still has trouble processing it. It's been almost a year, but...)

One day,...how any days later?...he didn't come into my room. I waited in terror for him to come and claim me again, but he didn't come through the door. I huddled on the floor, on my side, wrapped in my bedspread, waiting... Then I heard Monroe calling. "I'm home!" He called my name. "Where are you?"

I sobbed, "In here! I'm in here!" I tried to sit up and couldn't. 

He came into my room. The look of horror on his face told me how bad I looked. "What happened?" He bent down to me. He almost touched my face. "Who did this?"

All I could say was, "He hurt me."

Monroe called 9-11. I was taken to the hospital. I would need a colostomy bag from that moment on for they could not repair the damage Sanford had done to me.

"I shouldn't have gone away," Monroe said, flustered. "If I hadn't gone..."

"You deserved that vacation," I murmured from my hospital bed. I was numb inside. I didn't want to think. My screamed, Go away! He touched my hand and I flinched.

"I am so sorry."

"I'm alive," I murmured. My mind screamed again, Go away! Go away! I began to shudder violently. "Oh, God!" Tears fell down my face. I turned my head slowly from him. I was a man; I shouldn't be crying. I was ashamed of those tears.

"I'm sorry." His tone was gentle, understanding. The tears fell faster. 

I heard him leave. I lay there, staring at the wall, trying to understand, but how did a man understand being raped by another man?

The police tried to find him but they couldn't. He had somehow slipped between the cracks. He was out there, hiding. Waiting to return to me? I trembled in apprehension. When I got out of the hospital, I purchased a gun. 

Next time, I will kill you, you son of a bitch. That's a promise.