October 21, 2005

• More than the usual measure of violence and grief:

  This is a newly revised repost of my outlaw biker episode #5, done for a Featured_Grownups challenge: My Worst Experience Ever.

  (The rest of the biker story is here:  #1 Hells Angels Mama, #2 ripped off, #3 my trike, #4 captive gourmet, #6 show bike, #7 ripping, running and gardening, #8 the best weekend, #9 a desperate break, #10 the needed help.  These have NOT been rewritten, and I’m sure some of them could benefit from it.  Later for that.)

  I have tried to present a balanced view of the time I rode
  with outlaw bikers, balanced in terms of the various things I
  experienced and perceived. Thus far, I think I’ve accurately related
  the way that the bikes themselves and our riding and mechanical work on
  them predominated, with partying coming in second. Alcohol and other
  drugs were ubiquitous, and violence erupted suddenly at times. The
  violent incidents stand out in my memory although the number of
  occasions and their duration were not great when compared to riding,
  wrenching (mechanical work, turning a wrench) and partying. This entry focuses on the violence. If graphic
  descriptions of violent acts disturb you, read no further.

  For me, one of the worst things about those biker years was the
  rapes.  Not just being raped, but being present when other women
  were raped.  For years afterward I ran and reran the mental tape
  loop of the
  night I was raped, and it still takes no effort to recall screams heard
  in the night and the sights and smells of a bunch of grody bikers
  gathered around a sleeping bag spread on the ground at a campsite on a
  Labor Day Run where some Hells Angels
  were “turning out” two teenage girls who had slipped past the police
  roadblocks, which were meant to protect the public from us, to party
  with us.  A couple of weeks after that, I was the one being turned out.

  Trouble started for me around midnight, right at the very beginning
  of my 23rd birthday, September 18, 1967. Almost out of the Air Force and an official member
  of the Vallejo Black Ravens, my husband “VW” was processing out of the military and preparing to
  move back home to the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Grace and his ol’lady Linda were
  going with us. Linda and I went ahead to Springfield, where a high
  school friend of VW’s and her roommate had a big enough house for Linda
  and me to stay with them while we looked for jobs and housing.

  In the Black Ravens, ol’ladies wore property patches. In most other
  clubs only mamas wear property patches. Ravens didn’t have a mama, and
  each ol’lady had the club name and her ol’ man’s name on the back of
  her cutoff levi jacket. We’d only been there a few days when one of the
  girls said a friend of hers whose ol’man rode with the Gypsy Jokers had
  seen them with us on the street, noticed the property patches and asked
  her about us: who we were and what we were doing there.

  That Saturday night, before my birthday on Sunday, our hostesses
  invited over a few of VW’s old friends for some beers, and the Gypsy
  Jokers crashed the party. There were five of them. They asked about our
  ol’men and their plans. They made themselves at home, drank and
  schmoozed. One of them, Cherokee, the chapter’s president, focused on seducing
  Linda, and another one homed in on me. His name I don’t remember, despite many efforts to call it to mind. It was
  one of those ubiquitous invidious epithets they stick on each other, an
  adjective, not a proper name. He, I learned later, was a former
  classmate of VW’s, too. Maybe his interest in me was something personal between him and my ol’ man.

  I kept pushing him away and telling him no. I got up and left the room. He got up and
  followed. He wrapped his arms around me, and I ducked
  out of his embrace. I moved away.  He followed and grabbed me again. I
  headed for the door and he caught me and pulled me back. We struggled,
  I got loose again and made it to the door.

  I pulled the door open, but before I could make it out the screen
  door, he grabbed the waistband of my jeans and pulled me inside. Before he
  could shut the door, I screamed as loudly as I could, “Help! Rape!”

  He put his hand over my mouth and I bit it. I was whacking him with
  my hands and elbows, head-butting, kneeing anything I could reach.  My
  martial arts training was still decades in the future, so I didn’t do
  much damage. I got out of his embrace again, but he was holding the
  back of my unzipped and slipping pants and as I pulled away, we both
  went down. On my knees on the floor with him holding onto my pants, I
  wriggled out of them.

  I ran out on the porch, where I could see lights in the house a few
  yards away, and people inside.  I yelled for someone to call the
  cops, saying clearly that I was being raped. The only thing that came
  of that
  yelling was that the two young women who lived there were evicted
  because instead of
  calling the cops, the neighbors called their landlord to complain about
  the noise.

  By the second time my attacker slammed the door shut, his biker bros
  had heard the ruckus and come to lend a hand. One of them stole my
  cutoff jacket with the property patch.  At some point along about
  this time, the party that the Jokers had crashed broke up or moved to
  someone else’s house.  I was alone in that house with Linda and
  the five Gypsy Jokers from that time on.

  First, my initial attacker raped me
  while the other four held me down. Cherokee, kneeling on my right arm
  and shoulder, was also holding a butterfly knife at my throat. He and
  the teenaged ol’ lady he had brought with him, who had quite evidently
  been through a similar experience
  herself and was eager to pass it along, were murmuring in my ear,
  making it clear that I could fight, strain my muscles, force them to
  hurt me and maybe end up dead; or I could relax, get into the act, have
  a good time, get laid better than ever before (his words, mind you,
  this is not my assessment of the event), and not get hurt.

  The rest of them took turns having their way with me.  Isn’t
  that a sweet way of putting it, “having their way?” They didn’t just
  fuck
  me. They fucked with my head, terrorized and humiliated me. They played
  mind games, well-thought-out and practiced brainwashing
  techniques.  The goal wasn’t sexual gratification as much as it
  was subjugation.  I
  was hip to some of their tricks, but not immune to them. When
  confronted with a
  choice between anal penetration with or without lubrication, I became
  more cooperative.

  The first one of them to attempt oral penetration got bitten, but
  not very hard. The knife was still at my throat. Cherokee was attentive
  and quick, and when I felt the blade pierce my skin and the blood start
  to drip, I went limp. Biting made them angry, and they took a little
  break from raping me to rough me up, slapping, twisting my joints and applying pressure in sensitive
  areas, a brief interlude of pure torture.  Once they were assured of my docility, they did me three at a time.
  I made it easy for them, to get it over with

   There was some discussion about what to do with me
  afterward.  Some were in favor of taking me as a club mama. 
  At least one suggested just making me “disappear”.  I don’t know
  if that was a serious suggestion or only said for effect. 
  Cherokee was the one with the authority, and his decision was to have
  me carry the message to the Hells Angels that One-Percenter clubs were
  not welcome in Oregon.

  When they were done and
  had gone, taking Linda with them, and the sun came up on my birthday, I
  went to a pay phone and
  called VW.  He told me to go wait at the Western Union office for
  a moneygram, then get on a bus.  The Jokers had taken all the
  money I had the night before.  I went back to Napa,
  to Tex and
  Mary’s place where VW, and Larry and Emily (another couple who wanted
  to come to Oregon with us) were staying.

  Larry Tannerhill was a big man, over six feet, muscular and
  well-proportioned, but always filthy in body and speech, and
  conspicuously missing some
  important parts of his personality.  At the time, he was wanted
  for kicking to death a bartender who had refused service to him and the
  pack of bikers who had stopped into his backroad bar on their way back
  to the Bay Area from a Wine Country run.  Emily was a speed freak
  who had
  been in a leg cast for two years because her bones wouldn’t knit. 
  Her nickname was “Fifty-Fifty” because she frequently and loudly
  demanded a share of the things (especially the money and drugs) she
  stole for her ol’ man and his bros.

  When word got around to the Angels that a One-Percenter’s ol’lady
  had been turned out by Cherokee’s Oregon chapter of the Gypsy Jokers,
  some Richmond, Oakland, and SF Angels volunteered to go north with the
  Ravens to get even. One priority was to get my property patch back so
  that it would not hang as a trophy on the wall of the Gypsy Jokers’
  clubhouse.  The patches showing the clubs’ colors are symbolic,
  like flags.   I had become a pawn in the territorial conflict. So
  had
  Linda.

  She had opted to go with Cherokee, who had
  seduced her with promises and threats, the old carrot and stick
  routine. At the time, he had three ol’ladies, all local teenage
  runaways. When the men were done with me that night, Cherokee took
  Linda
  home with him for a while and then gave her to an independent biker,
  one of
  the local boys who had gone to school with VW, whom Cherokee was
  courting to
  join the Jokers against the new club that the transplanted Black
  Ravens were planning to start. (That new club ended up being known as
  the Free
  Souls.)

  Grace and VW and their two best Black Ravens bros, and eight Angels
  including Tex and Larry, plus Emily and I, would all go to Springfield
  and make things right. We made the trek in a VW bug, the Richmond
  Angels’ “crash truck”, a pickup that trailed along on runs to retrieve
  the breakdowns, and Tex’s old green Chevy station wagon, because riding
  bikes would have drawn too much heat and the
  weather on the passes in northern California was blowing snow. Under a
  tarp in
  the bed of the truck were three bikes: VW’s old black panhead, Grace’s
  new Sportster, and one that belonged to an
  Angel who never went anwhere without his bike.

  Emily wisely chose to ride in the same vehicle with the only other
  woman, our bug. Larry would not dream of letting her ride without him.
  He was large, the bug’s back seat was cramped, and her leg cast made
  their part of the expedition painful and difficult. The pit stops along
  the way would have made amusing video. At a gas stop during the night,
  somewhere between Mt. Shasta and the state line, Larry could find only
  one way to get out of the back seat. He let his upper half fall out the
  driver’s door and dragged his legs out after it. Then he had to
  reach back in, grab Emily by her armpits, and pull her out.

  Nobody had a comfortable trip. Tool boxes, gear, weapons, and
  of course a cooler full of beer in the station wagon, made a tight fit in
  each of the three vehicles. The unlawful nature of our mission and the
  fugitive status of some of our party members, added to the tension. We,
  for once, did our best to avoid attracting attention.

  Nevertheless, we were pumped, stoked, well-armed and ready for
  whatever came next. The mood was serious, but far from glum. 
  Excited anticipation was the tone.  I
  started to feel relief when we hit the edge of Eugene and it seemed I’d
  be able to stretch and relax, but I soon learned it was too soon to let
  go. We woke up two households, asking questions about the whereabouts
  of Linda, and of Cherokee. At the second place we stopped, we learned
  that Cherokee lived only a few
  blocks from the house where I’d been raped, and that Linda wasn’t with
  him. We went for her first.

  She and the man to whom Cherokee had
  given her were in a tiny cabin in the woods miles from town. VW knew
  the place and the surrounding area well.  He led the way in our
  bug and the other two vehicles followed along.  We had no trouble
  finding the cabin.  We parked and got out of our vehicles without
  rousing anyone inside. Larry had a flashlight, the only light
  available. The rest of us
  followed him into the house.

  He kicked in the door, strode across the front room and into
  the bedroom. I saw him step up and over the brass foot rail of the bed
  as if it was a ladder. Then he stepped between the two forms under the
  covers, stood over them, shone his light in the man’s face and put the
  pistol he held in his other hand into the beam from the flashlight so there
  would be no mistaking the fact that he was armed. The only words anyone said
  were Larry’s, “Freeze, motherfucker!”

  Meanwhile, some other guys were rounding both sides of the bed.
  Linda was dragged from the bed naked and taken outside. I followed, and
  some of the rest of our party, including his old friend VW, stayed
  inside to talk to… let’s call him “Tom”.

  Linda was showing every sign of being happy to see us, or at least
  relieved and glad in some way that we had gotten there. I suppose
  everyone involved was expecting some reprisal and this had to be a
  climactic end to days of anxiety. Someone (it could have been me),
  asked about my property patch. She said it was inside, that she had
  taken it and hidden it while the Gypsy Jokers were busy raping me.
  Keeping it out of the enemy’s hands meant some big points in her favor.

  I don’t know what ratio of violence to diplomacy went on inside the
  house, but it wasn’t very long before everyone came out and Grace and
  Linda embraced. Tom seemed to be off the hook for his role in the
  affair, but Linda still had to answer for wimping out, selling out to
  Cherokee and letting me be turned out.  I was offered a few whacks
  at
  her and took them.  Then I  felt horrible about it,
  recognizing her as being as much a victim as I was.  I hugged her
  then, and gave her my shirt.
  With Linda bottomless and me topless, we returned to the house to pick
  up my property patch and her clothes.

  Linda’s ordeal had just begun. We all went to the home of one of
  VW’s friends in Eugene, one of the households we had awakened earlier. Linda was
  shut into one of the bedrooms and for the next three days she had sex
  with all comers.  Grace had agreed to that punishment for his ol’
  lady, and Linda didn’t put up a fight.  The first night, it was
  just those bikers who had come north with us.  At some point the
  next day, other men started arriving,
  singly and in small groups.

  I know that several times different contingents of men went out cruising through town in cars,
  looking for Gypsy Jokers. I don’t know how many they found or what
  happened if and when they did encounter the rival bikers. I never saw
  Cherokee again, and I remember hearing that he had moved to Portland.

  When someone in our party noticed that we were being watched from
  behind the drapes in the house across the street, our host said his
  neighbor there was a deputy sheriff. VW’s father was also a deputy
  sheriff, a member of the mounted posse who did mountain search and
  rescue work and rode their horses in parades. Through his efforts, we later got to
  see the file they had amassed on us during that stay. The telephoto
  shots were some of the best photographs ever taken of me.

  For the three days of Linda’s turnout, I was almost as much a
  prisoner there as she was. I did get to go out and buy takeout food for everyone,
  but most of my time was spent inside those walls, and some of it, when
  there were no men in her room, was spent in there with Linda. We had a
  lot in common there and then. We bonded, became close friends for as
  long as we lived near each other. For a while she and Grace and VW and
  I shared a house. It was a bad time for us. We were depressed together,
  feeling suicidal and scared, and unable to help ourselves or each
  other. Then, with time, and lots of euphoriants and amphetamines, the
  memories faded.

  This had not been the first time I’d been raped. My first husband
  had sold me to a friend of his who wouldn’t take my “no” for an answer,
  exactly seven years previously, on the night leading into my sixteenth
  birthday. This one had, however, been the first gang rape that I can
  recall (There might have been one during an alcohol blackout a few
  years previously; see the “date rape” blog)
  and this was certainly the first time I’d been systematically
  tortured by experts. Like the good little clone of Scarlett O’Hara that
  I always tried to be, I put it behind me. “Tomorrow is another day.”  I denied that there were any
  lasting effects.

  I’m not denying it any longer. Of lasting harm I don’t think
  there has been any, at least not at this late date. The harm did last
  for a while. Post-traumatic stress disorder from my earlier experiences
  was exacerbated by the rape. I’ve worked through that in therapy.
  “Worked through” is wonderful psych jargon for having gone over the
  experience, analyzed my feelings about it, told myself it wasn’t my
  fault and that not every man on the planet is a cruel low-life scumbag who
  can’t be trusted.

  Working through traumatic experiences does not heal the wounds from
  the trauma. It can be a start to healing. Healing won’t start without
  it. If it only serves to open wounds that had been closed by denial,
  then working through abuse won’t do any good. One has to take it beyond
  remembering, into forgiveness of self and others, to letting go of fear
  and resentment and, if all goes well, to understanding. I’m okay now.
  I’m over it.

  In doing this blog, the hard part wasn’t remembering the rape. I had
  never really forgotten it. The hard part was going public with it and
  deciding how much detail to write, not for my own sake, but to be fair
  to my readers. If I’ve shocked or offended you, maybe, just maybe, I
  went too far. Be assured that I have not exaggerated, but rather I have
  downplayed the emotions I was feeling at the time and left out much of
  the graphic detail in favor of a simple report of the events.

  Afterword:

  One of the comments this post received initially was this one from blankityblank:

  I do see that you’ve narrated this tale as
  coldly/numbly/neutrally as you could though… is that the only way you
  can stand rehashing it?  Or did you do all your crying over it long ago?

  This was my response:

  I have strong feelings about rape, but I don’t take it
  personal.  On the personal level, I’m as neutral about that rape as I
  am about other institutional madness.  Rape is an institution, a
  symptom of the illness of our culture and any culture where it is
  endemic.  It isn’t personal, though it is intensely intimate.  Those
  bikers would have done the same thing to any woman who gave them an
  excuse.  My property patch was all the excuse they needed, and it was
  forced onto me by a man who said (and believed) that he loved me. 
  Madness, all of it.

  I was angry and wounded in my soul for a few years after that rape,
  but you have to remember that it was the last of three rapes in seven
  years.  I had a lot of wounds and a bewildering amount of resentment. 
  The wounds have healed.  The soul is whole.  I made it so, with lots
  of help.  My anger is gone.  I only got angry when I took it personal. 
  Anger is not the way to combat institutional madness.  Violence is a
  poor way to end violence.

  I was already on the path to healing before I talked about that rape
  in therapy.  I did a lot of crying, screaming, kicking and fighting at
  the time of the rape.  I cried some during the winter after it (#6 show bike).  Crying doesn’t help.  Talking doesn’t help, except insofar
  as it brings buried trauma into the open.  Holding onto anger would
  have wounded me further.  I let it go, and that was what made it better.

  I worked as a volunteer for a time to help establish S.T.A.R.
  (standing together against rape), the first rape crisis center
  in Alaska.  I worked even longer at a crisis hotline where some of
  the
  calls were from rape victims.  A few of the calls were from
  rapists.  I
  think I was equally effective at counseling both the victims and the
  perps.  I also think that rapists are as much in need of counseling as their
  victims are.  Healing the planet one person at a time, I started with
  myself.
  

  UPDATE:

  My response to some of these comments is HERE.
  
  

  • 12:26 pm
  • 85 Comments