Facebook Suggested This Man’s Rapist as a Friend – And His Powerful Response Shatters the Silence on Male Survivors

When my rapist showed up under the ‘People You May Know’ tab on Facebook, it felt like the closest to a crime scene I’ve ever been. That is if I don’t count the clockwork murder that I make of my own memory every time that I drive down Colfax Avenue. Still, I sit in my living room and sift for clues.

Click. I see myself caught in his teeth. He is dancing with his shirt off in a city that I’ve never been to. Click. He is eating sushi over a few beers with friends and I am under his fingernails. Click. I know that alley. Click. I killed the memory of that t-shirt. Click. This is an old photograph. It’s a baby picture. There’s also an older man, presumably his father. They are both round and bright and still smiling. Click. He is shirtless again and I catch my reflection in the weight room mirror. Hashtag #BeastModeSelfie.

I call him the wolf when I write about him. The wolf, so as to make him as storybook as possible. The wolf when I write about him, which is to say, when my memory escapes the murder or when the internet suggests it. Facebook informs me that we have three mutual friends. Which is to say that he is people you may know. Which is to say I am people you may know. And there are people that know, and people that don’t know. And people that don’t know I want to know and I’m afraid to let know and probably people that know him that know of me that know the word no, no, no.

No is a flock of sleeping sheep sitting in my mouth and now … Now I know the wolf’s middle name, and what he listens to on Spotify, and the all too familiar company that he keeps and he can no longer be a wolf, or the nameless grave that I dig for myself on bad days. We have three mutual friends on Facebook and now it feels like they are holding the shovel.

64 people ‘liked’ the shirtless gym pic and four people have told me that they’d rather I said nothing. Two police officers told me that I must give his act a name or it didn’t happen, that obviously I could have fought back. Which is to say no one comes running for young boys who cry rape.

When I told my brother, he also asked me why I didn’t fight back. Adam, I am right now. I promise. Every day I write a poem titled ‘Tomorrow’. It is a handwritten list of the people I know that love me and I make sure to put my own name at the top.