1. At the FBI conference, a poet studies sexual sadism
Case study one: A fifteen year old, before she was a runaway. Her sun dress, bare shoulder length blond hair so fair it almost matches the pale screen. A polka-dot birthday hat sits crooked, as she braces herself on the table, blowing hard against the pink roses flaming the cake's surface. The humidity freezes the frizz of her bright curls to almost beyond the picture's edge, past her eyes that disappear in a squint. This is all we get of the 'before' of her life, one slide. The 'after' begins with a slide show made from three rolls of film, evidence confiscated from the 18 wheeler's cab, from the man who held her captive in the front seat of the truck, naked, up high.In the full Wednesday or Saturday daylight, her eyes are inkblots in a skinnying skull, but alive with the bright pain of seeing new trees rushing past, cars with children eating ice cream, other women scheduling soccer on cell phones, men on their way to work, flicking nervous ash out the window, all blind to her new exposed life. Head shaved and naked, a black studded dog collar attaches her to a long chain, allowing her not much in the way of anything and nothing other than what he allowed. In one frame, her legs spread, labia pierce swollen; small breasts bitten and beaten black. But you can tell those bruises aren't recent, the instructor says, because the purple has begun to green and yellow, creeping up her chest, away from the nipples, kudzuing quietly over the heart, so as not to crack or wake anything that might have curled into itself and frozen over. Frame by frame we watch her become something between worlds, seemingly invisible to rescue in one, in the other gradually accepting this new reality that shrinks her into a self of former self of former self. In the truck stop shower, in the body no longer hers, she looks back over her shoulder, to the camera, away from the door. In the middle of nowhere, straddling a rough log, again, naked blaring in daylight, doing things to herself, hands full of his direction; what to do with this or that flesh colored object, this or that stick or limb, how to look like you like it. Her face says she has left this place awhile ago and even the self-inflicted pain is having a hard time bringing her back. The frame bleeds the bare trees into colors of watery bile. The next slide, middle of nowhere again, she role plays his final fantasy, walking toward death in a black dress and heels. An abandoned barn, she peeks through rotted boards with innocent, Nancy Drew-like curiosity. Smiling in red lipstick, one frame posed like a beauty queen, the other in mock fear, hands thrust out at the camera like wide, dry starfish. Then, her face registers the change in him, a decision we are blind to, but one she understands very well.What he has said swallows us, pinholeing our view to dread. A resistance in the chest builds and with each clicking slide, we wonder why we have come to this place, hearts backpedaling from each frame that moves us closer and closer to the inevitable. It is sure knowledge that we are in over our heads, that every episode of Court TV, every case file, every true crime novel was a ruse. We fantasize a sudden trip to the bathroom, an urge for coffee that can't wait. The temptation is great, Melanie Graham |