Breaking the Surface (20 page)

In explaining his work and the finances of the whole thing, Tom was very logical and methodical, much like my dad. He was very articulate, and it sounded to me like he knew what he was talking about. I appreciated that he took the time to explain everything in a way that I could understand. That required a lot of patience, because I had trouble following what he was talking about. Finances were a mystery to me, and I wasn’t all that interested.

After our first date, we started seeing each other three or four times a week. Very quickly, he made himself indispensable to me. I’d talk about how the yard needed cleaning, and he’d do it. I needed to paint the kitchen. Done. The wood next to the house needed stacking. Done. When I moved to El Toro, a half hour east of where I’d been living in Laguna Niguel, Tom had the gas turned on and put in my name. He had the phone connected while I was at a workout. I didn’t intend for him to do so much, but every time I mentioned something, like, “Oh, I’ll get to that on my day off,” it was done before my day off. I thought he was wonderful. I could concentrate on my diving and not worry about anything else.

Tom also helped Megan and me with diving. Tom seemed to care what happened to us, and he encouraged us to stand up for ourselves. Sometimes he served as our advocate, especially in anything that had to do with business. He was a big help to Megan when she won the world championships and had a number of different offers to consider. Megan and I were young and naive. Neither of us was very verbal. To us Tom seemed smart, charming, and self-assured.

As Tom spent more and more time doing things for me, I began to wonder how he could take so much time from his own work. When I asked him, he told me that he had money saved up from his last real estate deal to carry him until the next one. He told me not to worry about it, that he was happy to do it. I just assumed that he did all of these things for me because he loved me and wanted to take care of me. That was my fantasy: to be loved and taken care of. And I loved Tom all the more because he showered me with so much attention.

Tom had a lot of personality. He was a quick wit. Whenever we were at dinner parties, he could be witty and articulate and I didn’t have to say much. It took some of the pressure off me to carry on a conversation or entertain people. He created a comfort zone for me—once we got through all the standard dinner conversation about my training and my diet, he would pick up the ball no matter what direction the conversation took. He was great at challenging people on their ideas and their views. I didn’t know very much outside of diving, so with Tom there to carry the conversation, it saved me from having to pretend that I knew what people were talking about. It also saved me from having to pay attention to anything beyond my work. That turned out to be not such a good thing.

During the first several months of the relationship, Tom made things so easy and was so agreeable that we didn’t fight a whole lot. Everything changed one day, in the fall of 1983, over the fact that Tom wasn’t the only man I’d been sexually involved with during that time. We had been seeing each other for about a year and we hadn’t made any sort of commitment yet. I’d been enjoying my freedom after having been involved in a demanding relationship with Kevin. Tom and I never set any sort of ground rules, so I just assumed that it was okay to date other men, which I assumed he was doing as well.

I can’t remember exactly how Tom found out, but I think he asked me about someone whose name I’d mentioned, and I told him that it was someone I’d gone out with a month or two before. He was absolutely calm and then casually asked if there had been anyone else, and I said yes. I didn’t think to hide the fact that I’d been seeing other men, because we’d never talked about making a commitment. I thought we were about to have that conversation now.

Tom got very angry. He called me a slut, and then went off on a tirade, calling me all sorts of names. My instinct, as it always had been, was to feel guilty, as if I’d done something terrible to make Tom so angry with me. But I was confused—I’d had no idea Tom thought we had an exclusive relationship. I felt dumb again, as if I had missed something important.

Tom demanded that I tell him who the other men were. He made me write down their names and telephone numbers. I wrote down the names of the five men. I really thought I was losing my mind. I didn’t recall ever talking with Tom about being in a monogamous relationship, but I wasn’t going to question him, because he’d done so much for me and been so good to me. How could I have disappointed him? How could I have cheated on him? And how could I have cheated on him when we didn’t have an exclusive relationship? Now I wonder what made me instantly assume that it was all my fault, but I guess I’ve always reacted like that. I blamed myself for everything, even for my confusion. I was so afraid of losing him that I would have given in to almost anything he asked me to do.

Tom made me call each one of the five men and tell them that I was sorry, that I’d been in a relationship, that I hadn’t been honest with them, and that I couldn’t see them again. It was humiliating. I’m shy to begin with, so to have to make those calls was terrible for me. But I felt like I had no choice. Tom stood there right next to me watching me dial and making sure I said everything he had told me to say. He was right there, his head next to mine, listening to each conversation.

After I made the phone calls, Tom grew even more enraged. He kept calling me “slut,” and “lying whore.” I was paralyzed with fear. All I could do was stand there and take it. Then he said, “I’ll show you!” and he went into the kitchen and grabbed a knife. I was terrified.

Tom grabbed me from behind, held the knife to my neck, and forced me facedown onto the bed. With the knife at my throat, he tore off my clothes. To keep control, he grabbed one of my arms and held it behind my back. Then he raped me.

All I can remember saying to him while it was happening was “Please don’t.” I was crying and begging him to stop, but he told me I deserved it and didn’t stop until he was finished. Part of what made it so terrifying was that I didn’t know if Tom would go a step further and kill me.

The whole time, my mind was racing from “How do I get out of this?” to “I deserve this and I better keep my mouth shut.” I didn’t see any way out, and I just lay there crying quietly. It wasn’t the physical pain that made me cry—it was the shock that he wanted to hurt me.

When Tom was done, he got off me and stood there, still holding the knife, not saying anything. I was crying and telling him that I was sorry, sorry for what I’d put him through, sorry that I’d pushed him over the edge and made him so angry, sorry that I’d forced him to punish me like that.

Tom didn’t say anything, and left the room. For a few minutes I couldn’t move. I was numb, totally drained and exhausted. I just lay on the bed crying, thinking that what he had said was right, that I deserved it, but also not believing that anybody could do what he had just done to me. How could one person hurt another like that, especially someone he loves?

Once I collected my thoughts and realized he was gone from the room, I grabbed my clothes, put them on, and left. I didn’t shower. I just had to get out of there and get home. I was afraid of him and had to get away. I no longer thought he was going to kill me, but I had to get out of there.

Driving home, it never occurred to me to go to the police or stop at a hospital or tell anyone what had happened. In fact, I didn’t tell anyone for five years.

When I got home, the first thing I did was bring my dog, Maile, in from outside. Then I got out of my clothes and into the shower. After I dried off, I brought Maile into my bedroom, closed and locked the door, and brought her onto my bed and held her.

As I lay on my bed holding Maile, I thought about what Tom had just done to me. I was so confused, because I thought he loved me. I had chosen to be with him because I thought he would protect me, look after me. Yet he hurt me more than anyone had ever hurt me before. With so many thoughts running through my head, I couldn’t sleep, so I tried a relaxation exercise I usually did when I was having a lot of anxiety. I went to a special place in my mind and imagined I was running through a field. This time, I took Maile with me to that field, so it wouldn’t happen again. No one would rape me or hurt me if she was there to protect me. We went to a place we used to go in Costa Mesa, a wetland area called Back Bay. We’d go there and get all muddy and play. That’s where I went that night as I drifted off to sleep.

The next day I had my regular practice session to go to. Before I went, I called Tom. I told him again that I was sorry. I wasn’t being rational. I believed what he had said to me, that I was a slut and that I’d cheated on him. I also thought that nobody else would have me after what he had done to me, so I needed him to love me or I would be alone. I couldn’t risk waiting for him to call me. Rape victims often think they are spoiled forever. I certainly did.

We saw each other that day, and he didn’t say anything about the rape: no apology, nothing. It was as if it had never happened. I didn’t expect him to apologize, because I thought I was the one who was in the wrong. I felt grateful that he wanted to see me again, grateful that he didn’t tell me again that I had deserved it.

I was still scared of him and afraid of what he could do to me. The only way I could justify what he had done was to tell myself that this was an isolated incident, that I had driven him to this. I took full responsibility for what had happened and told myself that as long as I was good, it would never happen again.

I’ve since learned that my behavior is very much like that of battered spouses, primarily women in heterosexual relationships. But abuse occurs as well in lesbian and gay relationships. I wish it didn’t, but it does.

Tom was violent toward me only one other time during our years together. In general I did everything I could to keep the peace. It was a lot like how my mom was with my father, except that Dad never physically harmed her.

The only other time that Tom hurt me, we were in bed one night and I leaned across to his side to kiss him good night. He reached across the bed and slammed his elbow into my mouth. He said that I had startled him, but I find that difficult to believe, given how hard he hit me and that he aimed for my head. I knew it wasn’t an accident. It was, however, an accident that he chipped one of my front teeth. He harassed me about going to the dentist and didn’t stop bothering me about it until I got it capped two weeks later. My chipped tooth concerned him more than anything. Tom didn’t want me being photographed until I got it fixed. He didn’t want me to have to answer any questions about how it had happened.

The Christmas following the rape, still convinced it had been my fault, I tried to make it up to Tom. For months, he’d brought up my “cheating” over and over again, making me feel guilty for betraying him. Also, over the months he’d gone on at great length as to how he’d never had a real Christmas growing up in Mesa, Arizona, because his mother was crazy with so many kids. He had six brothers and sisters. He told me that he’d been reared by his sister and that he was physically and sexually abused by his father. At the time I believed everything, but now I don’t know what was true and what wasn’t. I do know that abuse is a vicious circle, so it’s very possible he had been abused as a child.

So I showered Tom with Christmas gifts. I wanted him to love me, and I thought this would show him how much I loved him. I thought it was a way to keep him. One of the things I got Tom was a gold ring that matched my grandfather’s ring, with a ruby added. I also gave him five teddy bears, as a peace offering. Tom had demanded that he be allowed to sleep with five other men because that’s what I’d done. When I gave him the five teddy bears, I told him that it was okay for him to sleep with five other men. It wasn’t okay, but I felt the need to tell him it was.

Tom always claimed that he was true to me, and I believed him. But Tom held those five men over me long after that incident, bringing it up whenever he wanted to remind me how I had betrayed him. It never occurred to me to remind him that he had raped me.

I don’t know what I expected from that Christmas, but it was more scary than anything, because Tom hadn’t yet decided whether he was going to stay with me. I hoped the gifts would help him make up his mind to stay with me.

Looking back, it makes me sad that I thought so little of myself that I didn’t just walk away from Tom. Like most battered spouses, I just wanted love and approval, and I thought Tom was the only one who could give it to me. I kept thinking, if I’m better, if I try harder, then maybe he’ll love me.

I should have thought, “Run for your life!”