With the abruptness of a tragic accident, my life plunged into despair. Not only was my husband cutting me loose, I quickly learned that he was determined to gain custody of the kids.
His lawyer put it to me with brutal clarity: "Your husband feels that you're a changed woman since your rape. Not the woman he married and who mothered his children."
"But," I protested, "it wasn't my fault somebody raped me."
"Try convincing a judge of that," the lawyer smiled. "As an attorney, I can assure you that the burden of proof is on the woman in these cases. And from what my client tells me, you've come up far short in this area."
"I thought the wife automatically got custody of the children," I said.
"If she's a woman of good reputation," the lawyer rejoined. "The taint of rape, however, automatically changes all that."
"It's not fair!" I wailed.
"Let me ask you something, Mrs. Randall," the lawyer calmly said. "And if you don't mind, I'm going to be brutally frank."
"Go ahead," I sighed, knowing in advance that what he was going to say would be devastating.
"Suppose that you were a man," he began to spin his web. "A hard-working man, putting everything you had into providing for your family. Working long hours so your wife and children can live in suburban comfort."
"Yes, go on," I allowed him to continue.
"And then the wife for whom you've provided so many benefits becomes intimately involved with another man."
"But I was raped!" I excitedly pointed out for the umptenth time.
"Rape is another word for fucking, is it not?" the lawyer delivered the brutal frankness he had promised.
"Yes," I was forced to admit.
"Another man achieved an erection because of your body and then, inserted it between your legs, didn't he?"
The wind out of my sails, I sadly nodded.
"A man other than your husband – a man who contributes nothing to your support – put his stiff cock in your cunt and fucked you, Mrs. Randall," the lawyer explicitly went over the obvious. "Are you going to deny that?"
I silently gestured that I could not.
"Another man's cock was in your cunt and he kept fucking you and fucking you," the lawyer poured it on like he was cross-examining me in a courtroom. "The friction built and built. The man's cock got harder and harder in your cunt. Then, after several minutes of hot fucking, he came."
I automatically nodded.
"Your cunt was filled with cum. A stranger's cum. Your husband had given you two beautiful children, yet here you were with your pussy filled with somebody else's seed."
I felt like he was beating me with his words. His fists could not have done as efficient a job at pummeling me.
"Tell me, Mrs. Randall," the lawyer knifed to the core. "Couldn't you have resisted him? You know that has to be the question that's been haunting your husband. When he's at work, valiantly trying to live up to his responsibilities as a husband and father, you know he's thinking about it. Tell me, Mrs. Randall, how can he do his best when he's thinking about his wife's cunt dripping with another man's cum, knowing that she didn't have it in her heart to stop this man from fucking her?"
The way he expressed it there was no doubt about my guilt. As a divorce lawyer, he was an expert at making a wife feel like a piece of shit.
"And the children," he continued. "What about the children? What kind of mother can you be to them with this cloud hanging over your head? Suppose the rapist were caught and brought to trial – the testimony you'd be required to give in court would be a matter of public record. Don't you agree that it's best they be spared from such stigma?"
He'd beaten me down so thoroughly that I had no choice by now but to passively agree with everything he said. When he gave me some papers to sign, promising that my signature would solve many of the problems he had outlined, I affixed my name without even bothering to read them.
To make a long story short, in my grief I agreed to give up my rights to practically everything associated with my family. The kids, the house, the joint bank account – all of it went to Don. In addition to total isolation, what I received as my part of the bargain was one of the cars and a weekly check – yes, Don was willing to pay to get rid of me.
A defeated woman, I moved into a furnished room in a seedy part of town, the only thing I could afford. My new circumstances were degrading after a lifetime of middle-class comforts, however they were what I felt I deserved. In the final analysis, my rape had eventually robbed me of all my rights and dignity.
At first I longed to see the kids, but letters I got from them changed that. Their messages brimmed with happiness. They were obviously easy prey for the goodies their father was heaping on them to win their loyalty. It wasn't long, of course, before the letters stopped and all contact ceased.
It would have been stupid of me to think I couldn't be replaced in the lives of my children. Ted and Gwen were both such attractive teens that they could find all the affection they needed, if you know what I mean.
Logically I knew that I should find a job, but it was so hard to get up off my butt and face the world. I was so down that I preferred to lie around in bed all day smoking cigarettes, drinking gin and tonics, and watching game shows on television.
Then Don started being late with his weekly support checks. When I complained to his lawyer, I was laughed at.
"If you don't like it," the attorney sneered, "hire your own legal representation and take my client to court for contempt."
That was about like telling me to fly myself to the moon using my arms. Lawyers cost money, and I didn't have any. In other words, the only way I could force Don to live up to his legal responsibilities was for him to finance the litigation.
Then my landlord raised the rent. He, too, told me that if I had any complaints I should take them to court.
The handwriting was on the wall. However much it pained me to venture into the cruel glare of the outside world, I had to find a job.
My vocational problem was, needless to say, apparent. After years of being a wife and mother, I didn't know how to do anything.
My spirits sank so low that I even thought about prostitution as a career. After all, I did know how to fuck.
Then I remembered my one experience in that line of work. That sailor in the alley. In terms of getting any money, it had been a total flop. Given my ability to stand up to men for my rights, I could see myself getting VD or beaten to death long before I paid my bills.
It became clear that my only hope for a job was to be willing to volunteer for something nobody else wanted to do. Something most people would consider beneath them.
Well, how does cleaning up animal shit sound to you? Would you do it? I had to.
A veterinarian advertised in the paper that he needed somebody. After the ad appeared in the classifieds for several days running, I reasoned that the work was unpleasant enough that I might qualify for it.
For once I was right.
"It's really very simple," Dr. Greer told me when he interviewed me. "Your duties would consist of all the tasks relating to animal care that I certainly didn't have to go six years to the university to learn. Do you follow me?"
"Cleaning up after them, I suppose," I figured it out. "Taking the dogs for walks."
"Precisely," he said. "No thinking involved – just simple maintenance work."
Since my private life was one of isolation, to begin with, the animals I cleaned up after became my major contact with the world outside of my furnished room and the game shows. The fact that they liked me was just about the only source of satisfaction in my life.
Because I took them out for nightly exercise, it was the dogs I became closest to. There were always a lot of them in Greer's kennel. Pretty soon I started to relate to them almost as I would to people, except they were superior because they never criticized or betrayed me.
Since nobody was around, I would frequently read their charts. I came to worry about their various ailments, and although I was always sorry to see a friend leave, I was always glad they had recovered enough to go home.
Thor and Spike were different, however. The two Great Danes were not hospitalized because of anything wrong with them – in fact, quite the opposite.
They belonged to some lady living in the poshest part of town who complained that they were spoiling her furniture and carpets with their instinctively masculine habit of staking out their territory by pissing all over everything. Dr. Greer had advised her that this could be halted by having them neutered.
In other words, castrating them. Chopping off their balls. They were such magnificent beasts that it pained me to know they were about to be robbed of their masculinity.
Their operations were scheduled for a Thursday.
On the Wednesday evening before, I went to their cages as though to console them. I felt like a chaplain visiting a couple of prisoners on the eve of their execution.