Almost every time the next step in my work to raise awareness around the Global Rape Epidemic appears clear to me, I disagree. When I realized that I would choose to use my own body, of my own volition, almost as a billboard, I was, quite frankly, horrified. The Slutwalk phenomena had not yet started (this was late Spring 2010) and I'd been writing (theatre, screenplay, literary) and working in and around the rape subject for nearly thirty years. But wearing the words? This seemed a new level of "... No. This I will not do ..." Still, as is most often the case when work 'comes' to me, and as you can see, I made the first 'Rape Talk' Tee shirt. And then I wore it. To Home Depot. Where I had a most wonderful conversation with a woman who, while helping me locate a particular stainless steel, finish screw I needed, let me know that she'd been raped. She also let me know that reaching across - perhaps more gently than this first shirt seemed to her - would probably be more generous. I told her about the Documentary. When she heard it was to be a film that journeys with people who have lived through rape, people who have raped and people in the extended families and communities of both, she thanked me. I was elated, which helped because fear kicks off my own PTSD and under the Tee shirt, I'd been sweating. Quivery. Tremulous.
This woman helped a lot. I went home with the screws, a few other tools, and food for the project and my heart.
