A moment. Mother and son, home, alone and together, on a Saturday night. So rare. So dear. My only son, my eldest child. Almost 12, he is as if suspended — still child, yet flirting with manhood. There we sat; a packet of strawberry shortbread creams, two long glasses of milk, between us. We dunked and we discussed. Discussed a sexual assault. It took place on the film we were watching. No nudity. He wore pyjamas, she a nightie. No violence. Just a man, a husband, mounting a woman, his comatose wife. I wouldn't have let him see it, had I known it was coming. But it was so sudden, so unexpected. Over in a flash. Its brutality blunted by the magical realism employed to tell the tale. Oh gross, he said, is that like sex? No, I said, that's rape. It makes no difference she is his wife, and unaware of what he's doing to her. He doesn't have her consent. And that makes it rape.
While my son remains a boy, he is in peril of being sexually assaulted. One day soon, though, unless, touch wood, he ends up in prison, or is terribly unlucky, hopefully he should no longer be a target.
But neither I, my 8-year-old daughter, 61-year-old mother, nor 100-year-old grandmother will ever outgrow our risk of being raped. It is unlikely my son will ever have to modify his behaviour — not walk home a certain way or catch a certain bus, not jog because the only time he can is early in the morning or late at night, not drink too much or dance too provocatively — in order to avoid being raped. He will never live with the fear every female I know does, teetering on its rim, its edges coming in and out of focus with the company she keeps, with a loud noise in the dead of the night. Safely married, seldom exiting nightclubs in dark alleyways, it's been some years since I've felt the full force of that fear. But finding myself alone recently one night, in the middle of the country, I slept, if you can call it that, fully clothed, shoes on, keys and cellphone in hand, planning my escape route. Tormented. When I told my husband, he laughed. He didn't get it. Couldn't.
On Sunday afternoon, stupidly, I went to Countdown. The aisles were teeming with tense trolley-pushers. In front of the frozen fish fingers I bumped into a friend. A friend who always gives me cause to view a thing in another way. Did you see? she asked. Did you see that piece on dodgy health practitioners in the paper? I had, and had been mildly disturbed by it, before putting it aside. You know, she said, how it listed them. Osteopath licks breast. GP fondles vagina. And so on. Well, it never gave their gender. But then, she said, it wouldn't, would it? Because, of course, they were men.
