We Will Not Go Quietly - Centre Against Sexual Assault

for that. He and I didn’t see much more of each other after that night. You
see, he had gained some insight, so I went to Europe to ind some other hiding
places. David was gone when I returned to Melbourne nine months later. I
didn’t miss him, we never really got that close.
Instead I met up again with Sam. He came back into my life at my request.
He looked the same even though it had been seven years since I irst met him.
His hair is long and blond and frayed at the ends. He stoops a little to try to
hide his height, though it does not work. You can see the Dutch heritage in
him, just like ours; the shapely jaw line and the strong cheek bones.
Sam came over to my white weatherboard home. My housemates were out
and we had the place to ourselves. The heater was turned on to shed the
brisk air outside from us. He took of his black ingerless gloves and scarf and
for a moment we glowed together. He had been back in Melbourne for some
time now, two or three months. We were somewhere between friends and
lovers and strangers. Playfully he pulled me across his lap, like a father would
his child. In cradling position he began singing Rock-A-Bye-Baby. As he did this
my insides snapped frozen. My face screwed up into a tight ugly scrunch and
my emotional faculties bolted into the of position.
Do you remember that song, Papa? Of course you do, you sang it to me a
thousand times. I was a lot smaller then, and my hair was golden brown and
long. My whole slender body would drape across your lap and you could
actually rock me from side to side. Remember how you changed the words? In
the last line, instead of singing “when the bough breaks the cradle will fall, and
down will come baby cradle and all” you would substitute the last cradle and
sing my name instead while you tickled me all over.
It’s such a loving memory dada. Such a pity that the recalling of that image
can make me fall over and graze my heart. I guess every fond memory of
you does that these days. There are so few fond memories; most of them
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are tainted by the fear and ugliness that pervaded our lives. Those memories
have a much worse consequence.
Sam has left now. He’s gone to California. I can imagine him itting in there,
with his handsome looks, muscular body and his bourgonese ways. He’s left
again. He leaves to escape me. It is dificult. I understand his reasons for
going. He aches for stability, for a love that says ‘I will always be there’, for
commitment; for all the relationship wonders I cannot give him.
Sam’s relationship ideals are everything that I resist. I resist commitment. I
resist monogamy. I resist anything that is ixed. And still, after all the years of
counselling, I do not recognise if this strong sense of resistance is a rebellion
or a liberation. Either way, my ways are not Sam’s ways and the diference
between us tortures the love that brings us back together again and again.
I live for freedom – giving and receiving afection whichever way it comes.
Sam craves commitment strummed with monogamous strings. Sam feels
threatened by my luidity of afection, I feel stiled by a sense of duty to
obey a commitment. It appears there is no way out for us, no way to share
love without hurting each other or without wishing that the relationship was
something other than it is.
I read a line in a book about forgiveness and a howl from my heart gallops
out into the loungeroom air – and it’s you Papa I am crying for, it’s you that
I hate and love and am angry at and grieve. But it is the walls that hear the
moans, and the loorboards that soak up the tears. And you sleep in the
country, the walls stony cold, the carpets dry.
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