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"My ex-sister-in-law, you know what she does for a living?" Pause. Drama, you know. "She's a rape crisis counselor." There's few things finer than a great party story. I seek out people I barely know to tell them, insinuate myself into peripheral conversations about daily events, and then stand up ny I pull out the rapist's story, and we are stand up ny all stand up ny alternately shocked and saddened, sometimes we even laugh at the implausibility of it all, and we share in a moment of mourning for this debased culture, this lost society before heading to the bar, the buffet table, the bathroom. The rapist confessed when he was arrested while on the way to get a stress test. It had been, he said, two years since his last rape, he was, he said, in a steady relationship, he had found, he claimed, religion in his return to Catholicism, he thought he was free and clear, he was sorry for the pain he had caused, he had started raping during his first marriage as it crumbled apart, he was sorry to his own teenaged daughter, he was sorry to the department, he didn't mean to hurt anyone, he was willing to be punished for his sins, he wanted it all over as soon as possible, he refused to
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