Seth Speaks To Me

Chapter 20

• Badeta Le Orleato Mar Lon Tor Far-Ata •

by Rich Kendall

Every once in a while I would spend a few days in Elmira with friends, and this week I took advantage of such an opportunity. I arrived in Elmira on a Thursday afternoon, and with class not scheduled until Tuesday I had plenty of time to relax. I then remembered that on Friday nights Jane and Rob often had informal gatherings at their apartment. I called and asked if I could join them and was given the okay. Besides myself, only a few other people showed up, none of them regular class members. Seth rarely came through during such occasions but Jane was still Jane; meaning “small talk” lasted only so long. I wasn’t working at that point in my life and casually mentioned the fact that I had gone on welfare to help me get by.

Like anyone, Jane’s buttons could be pushed at times and my welfare comment did the trick. Jane had been on welfare for much of her early life, charged with taking care of an invalid mother, and receiving little help from a father who took off for parts unknown shortly after Jane had been born. For Jane, being on welfare was not a minor footnote one tosses out with the same nonchalance with which one might mention a movie they recently saw. After expressing her anger and displeasure in response to what I had just disclosed, informal gathering or not, Jane went into a Sumari trance and spoke the following words to me: Badeta Le Orleato Mar Lon Tor Far-Ata. She then translated them into English— “The bread is stolen from the seagulls.” This innocent little get-together was turning out to be more than I had bargained for.

As the evening progressed Jane started reading some of the letters she recently received from fans. Since the publication of her first book a steady stream of letters would arrive at her doorstep regularly. Written by people from all walks of life, some were simply expressions of gratitude for the work she and Rob were doing, while many others contained requests for help from either Jane, or Seth, or both. One of the letters she read that night was from a nun who was discussing masturbation. Jane picked up that I was having a reaction to this letter and asked me what was up. What I really wanted to say was that I just remembered I had a very important appointment in town and had to leave right away, if not sooner.

But we can never really outrun the contents of our own consciousness. I explained that my reaction had less to do with the letter’s contents than the fact that for some reason it triggered a very unpleasant memory within me. Without going into any details I simply stated that in my early teens I had been raped. Hardly a word was spoken in response to what I had just revealed, either by Jane or the other folks present, and as the night ended I thought that was the end of the story. Oh how naïve we can be.

A few days later it was time for Jane’s regular class. What a pleasure it was to be able to just walk over to her house instead of being stuck in an automobile for five hours. During class the subject of secrets came up and not looking at anyone in particular, Jane said, “There is someone in this room who has a secret that if told will help someone else in this room.” A cryptic comment indeed and one that was met with complete silence. She then repeated exactly what she had just said, which was once again met with silence as it seemed no one had any inkling as to what she was referring to. No one that is, except me. I could feel my vocal chords starting to tighten as I instinctively knew she was referring to the secret I had shared a few days earlier at that Friday night get-together.

But there were a few problems here. In the past I had told that story to my friends but sort of changed the ending. In the version I had related to them I was never raped, but hit the guy over the head with some metal object that was sitting on the floor and then ran out of the apartment unscathed, and more importantly, untouched. In the words of my dear departed grandmother: “Oh Vey.” To tell the true story in front of all my buddies as well as all the other people sitting there that evening was something I was not eager to do. But because of the kind of person Jane was, one often felt more comfortable in that room than anywhere else on earth. So I took the plunge.

After I finished telling my story one of the women in class started to softly cry. She then told of how she was sexually abused by her father as a child. Suddenly it was like an invisible hole opened up in the middle of the room from which poured out in rapid succession a veritable potpourri of sexual secrets. Most of these secrets had been living underground for years; and in some cases had been buried for decades. People began to share all kinds of painful details about sexual experiences they had encountered in their life. One of my friends admitted for the first time to being gay. Even though that possibility had been a source of speculation in the past, it took guts for him to volunteer that information, for he could have simply said nothing and continued to hide. When all was said and done and the dust finally settled, we sat in a room littered with “dirty” little (and in some cases big) secrets, but we all survived. Actually there wasn’t one negative or judgmental response to anything that was divulged that evening. As for me, I was relieved to have finally released a secret I had harbored for a very long time. I’m going to share that experience in greater detail in the hope that by doing so someone somewhere might be helped in dealing with an unpleasant experience in their own lives that may at times still haunt them.

When I was fifteen years old I used to hang out in Greenwich Village in New York City. It was quite different from the way it is now.  It was a gathering place for musicians, songwriters, artists, anarchists; anyone who felt they didn’t fit in with the mainstream of society. In other words, it was tailor made for me. So here I am one evening sitting alone on a bench in Washington Square Park, thinking I had some kind of street smarts and could deal with anything that might come my way. But street smarts don’t come from growing up in a neighborhood where all you see are middle-class white Jewish families.

This black man then appears out of nowhere, sits down next to me and offers to share his bottle of wine. I readily accept and it wasn’t long before the world took on a much rosier glow. At some point he suggested that we continue the festivities back at his apartment. Even in the semi-inebriated state I had slid into, something told me this invitation had strings attached to it that I might not want to deal with. But not listening to that little voice inside my head I got into a taxi with him and off we went. His apartment was located in a part of the city I wasn’t familiar with, and after a short time he started to come on to me. Being fifteen-years old and a virgin as far as heterosexual or homosexual sex was concerned, I started to get pretty damn nervous. I told him I wanted to leave and go back to the village. He said that was fine and he would accompany me back, but first needed to get something from the bedroom.

A few moments later he returns from the bedroom, walks up to me, and in one smooth motion takes out this humongous butcher knife which is now resting an inch from my throat. He then stares at me with the coldest eyes I have ever seen and commands me, “Take off your clothes.” I refuse. With the knife now held right against my neck he proclaims, “I’m not jiving with you, take off your clothes, right now.” I knew this was no idle threat. So I took off my clothes and he proceeded to repeatedly rape me in a most painful manner. The knife sat silently by the edge of the bed, ready to pounce should it detect any movement on my part to escape. When he was done he told me he had to run some errands but that he loved me so much he couldn’t bare to think of me leaving him, so it was best that he chain me to the bed. Somehow I was able to find enough presence of mind to convince him that I loved him too; and there was no need to chain me to the bed for I would gladly be there when he returned. He left the apartment and I waited a few minutes before bolting for the door.

Once outside I started running and running and running as tears streamed down my face. I didn’t know where I was but found a train station and finally made my way back to my parent’s house in Queens, New York, where sex of any kind was not a subject to be openly discussed. I can’t even imagine what the reactions would have been had I revealed what I had just been through. I went to my room and tried to sleep. As the days progressed I struggled mightily with feelings I couldn’t identify, much less manage. This went on for close to a year. When I would sit on a train and a man would sit down next to me, black, white, or whatever, and his elbow or arm would even slightly brush up against mine, I would start feeling this intense anger followed by excruciating mental pain.

I had no frame of reference for the kind of mental turmoil I was in. It took some time before I began to understand that the anger and the pain was being driven by one element more than anything else, and that element was a sense of shame. Perhaps had I gone to some counselor trained in such things they would have pointed that out to me right away, but I wasn’t able to bring myself to speak to anyone about the event, at least not in a truthful manner, until that Friday evening get-together at Jane’s apartment, and then in class a few days later. I was now also able to be more honest in recognizing the part I played in the creation of that event.

It wasn’t that I consciously knew the exact way things would unfold, but at that time in my life I was feeling conflicted about my sexuality. While I was for the most part drawn to women, there was a part of me that wanted to experience sex with another man, though I wouldn’t admit that to myself on a conscious level; much less bring myself to willingly seek such an encounter. So my solution was to create a situation where I would be “forced” into having such an experience; a poor solution for sure.

One of the ways in which my world-view changed as a result of going to Jane’s classes was the way in which I viewed events. No longer were events one-dimensional affairs, but were now multifaceted in shape and design, with each facet holding clues that were meant to lead us to other places besides “Colonel Mustard in the Library.” With that in mind there is a detail related to my rape experience that is worth mentioning. There was a moment when I was with this man in his apartment and asked him his name. He paused in the oddest way and replied, “Just call me Justice.”

Earlier in this book I described the reincarnational drama that took place during my first class, where I was a judge presiding over a trial with the accused having committed what was considered to be an immoral sexual act. The person I passed judgment on during this trial was one of the members of class who was there that evening, and also just “happened” to be homosexual in this life. The justice the judge dispensed during that trial was supposed to have been very harsh, and in writing this chapter I could see how this trial and my rape experience intersected in ways I hadn’t thought of before.

I also think that when highly charged events occur in our lives, aftershocks ripple outward (or better yet inward), and are felt in some way by all of our other aspects. The ripples from my rape experience may very well have served as an impetus for that judge to reexamine his ideas about justice, with both of us over time trying to clarify or expand our understanding along those lines. As I sat on a bench that evening in Washington Square Park and grappled with certain probabilities regarding my sexuality, I think the judge from a different kind of bench grappled with similar issues. Unfortunately in both cases the bread ended up being stolen from the seagulls. For that I am truly sorry.

I hope in sharing this experience I will have in some way returned at least a small portion of what I took from others in other lives.