fear itself.

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dateline: too close

4 september 1996 9:25 p.m.

One of my neighbors took the liberty of photocopying an article out of today's newspaper and slipping it under the door of every apartment on my floor. Tips sought to catch Ala Wai Canal Rapist Police released a sketch yesterday of an unidentified man suspected of sexually assaulting a 28-year-old woman Thursday on the Ala Wai Canal jogging path. The woman was running along the path near the canoe storage area at 4:30 a.m. when the man grabbed her from behind and threw her to the ground. Despite her struggle and cries for help, he stripped her clothes off and sexually attacked her. The assailant then picked up the woman and threw her into the canal. She was able to swim ashore, locate her clothing and call for help. Even an hour of loud ska, followed by some mindless channel surfing, can't help me shake a whispering terror swimming around in my skull. I can just about see the spot where this happened from the other side of my building. I can close my eyes and recall the musty smell of the air, the fence, the canoes, the trees... the dark. I walk along that path all the time. More than once in the last couple of weeks, I was one lazy-cell away from getting out my 'blades and doing a circuit. Even as I type I'm breaking out in a cold sweat. Not that I'm out at four in the morning, but I've strolled around the canal after dark several times. Not that I've ever felt totally safe, but this was so close. Not that I haven't got an (illegal) genuine mace keychain, or a seventh-grade summer of judo lessons under my belt... but what good are these things when you're jumped from behind by someone who weighs twice as much as you? Literally the stuff of my nightmares. I can't ever handle hearing stories like this. Two of my friends are survivors of aquaintence rape. I even have a male friend who was wrongfully accused of the crime. I've driven to one friend's house at midnight to comfort someone too terrified to simply take her trash to the chute down the hall. I've stood by the other as she tried, too late, to find justice through The System. I even defended the third, losing two friends forever, and I'm still haunted by their doubt even though it was eventually determined he was innocent. I did my homework. I read all of the somberly colored brochures that are slipped each day into trembling hands. I could rattle off endless statistics of how most rapes are committed by aquaintences, "friends" -- even spouses. Why, then, with all that to hide from in our own living rooms, do women also have to run from shadows in parking lots, stairways or even our own neighborhoods? Why is this an ever-present, sometimes paralyzing, gripping fear that only 52 percent of the people on earth have to live with? Fear and rage I feel at the same time. It could have been me, but it shouldn't have been anyone. Rage even at the stoic news anchor on TV just now. Rage because I thought I almost -- maybe, just perhaps -- detected a faint trace of a smirk on his face. Even though I know he must appreciate the seriousness of the story; even though I know that he couldn't possibly have found anything amusing in reporting that the suspect ran off with the victim's keys and panties. Rage, anger, frustration, hate. But directed where? At whom? Neither I nor, I'm sure, the "petite Japanese" victim in this enlarged, circled and highlighted three-inch newspaper story find much solace or satisfaction in hating the world, our society, The System, y-chromosome carriers, or an angry, evil, six-foot tall man last seen disappearing through a grove of ferns besides a smelly stream running along the backside of a brightly lit paradise. No solace at all. And she'll soon find -- wrongly and tragically -- that there is no one she can feel comfortable hating besides herself.