Sister Maple Syrup Eyes

By Ian Brennan

Sister Maple Syrup Eyes is one of the first books published from the historically under-reported perspective on rape: from that of the lesser and oft-forgotten "other victim," the individual's partner. With terse lyricism, this novella radiates the anguish of attempting to repair a love and life shattered by violence. Through a series of deliberately concise and untitled chapters, the story erupts in a before/after chasm, culminating with the main character's facing a tentative peace with his past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pleasure Boat Studio
• Release date: Aug 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310201738

Ian Brennan

Ian Brennan is a Grammy-winning music producer who has produced three other Grammy-nominated albums. He is the author of four books and has worked with the likes of filmmaker John Waters, Merle Haggard, and Green Day, among others. His work with international artists such as the Zomba Prison Project, Tanzania Albinism Collective, and Khmer Rouge Survivors, has been featured on the front page of the New York Times and on an Emmy-winning60 Minutes segment with Anderson Cooper reporting. Since 1993 he has taught violence prevention and conflict resolution around the world for such prestigious organizations as the Smithsonian, New York’s New School, Berklee College of Music, the University of London, the University of California–Berkeley, and the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze in Rome. He lives in San Francisco, CA.

Book preview

Preface

Though this is a work of literary fiction, it is inspired by my own life-altering experience at age 21 when my first love was horrifically beaten and raped in her apartment by a family friend.

That experience destabilized the entire trajectory of my young life, reshaping everything since and, retroactively, all which came before.

In more than twenty years of working as a violence-prevention trainer, I have had to confront my own undeniable male privilege and the consequential and, sadly, nearly inevitable abuses of power that it enables.

Rather than the defensive, 'I am not one of those types of people,’ the expression would more accurately be, 'I am not as bad as some people or as I could be.'

More than learning to be a man, this experience has hopefully helped teach me simply to be human.

Like many major traumas — both emotional and physical — rape is not something that can ever be completely 'gotten over’ (nor should the quest for domination of it even necessarily be the goal), but it is something that can be lived with.

Though in no way intending to diminish or make comparison with the devastation of the primary victim, I can say that from my own experience, no one whose life is touched by this type of tragedy goes unharmed — usually in deep, delayed, and ineffable ways. Among the damages is the revictimization that new acts of violence often vicariously trigger in previous survivors.

There is more than one victim for every rape.

It benefits no one.

Even the perpetrator ultimately suffers and is reduced by the action.

That so many women have to regularly think of the unthinkable (that a complete stranger may want to violate and harm them) is at the heart of a national-security crisis of epic proportions that has far-reaching and incalculable repercussions. This status quo has created a hostage state, where there is no refuge even in peacetime.

We cannot truly be free when more than half of our populace lives in danger and fear, in a culture which tolerates images of disrespect for their very being. True Homeland Security would first-and-foremost ensure that all citizens are safe in their own living space, their own bed, their own community, regardless of gender.

prologue

Your mother named you Dawn because she thought it was the prettiest time of day. Morning was just moments away when you were raped.

Traffic lights outside our window flashed pre-programmed patterns and the poles weaved slightly in the wind.

Once you screamed No just as the light turned from yellow to red, but he did not stop, he only hit harder. A woman in a car below waited for the signal to change, turned her radio louder and drove on.

He'd entered through the bathroom window, the one with the faulty lock that the landlord never got around to fixing.

You awakened to find him on top of you, pinning your shoulders to the bed with his knees and hitting you in the face repeatedly. Your eyes soon filled with blood, until you could no longer see. You were certain you'd been blinded.

The sun was rising as he left. It was through him that you learned to fear each new day.

Chapter 1.

I was standing at my hotel window watching the police roust a homeless man from the gated doorway of the laundromat across the street. It was nearly midnight and I couldn't sleep. In some way, I must have already known.

I’d met this same man earlier that day. He'd been sitting on the sidewalk exactly where he was lying now, and asked me for some change. He had a glass eye. It was lighter in shade than his functioning one. A childhood friend's father had had a similarly mismatched eye, and this man resembled an aged, distressed version of him. I stopped to assure myself that it wasn't him.

His name was Francis. He carried a Purple Heart from Korea with him, one of his few possessions. He'd fought to defend this country and, in doing so, sacrificed half his vision. Now he had no place to sleep at night.

When the phone rang I thought someone had misdialed. I wasn't expecting a call, but how do you prepare yourself for such a call? When she said she’d been raped, it took minutes to react, the first in a long chain of small reactions that would unfold slowly over time. It would be many years before I could fully comprehend what she’d said. The information would arrive incrementally, syllable by syllable, word by word, until one day I would, suddenly, as if through divine intervention, understand, or at least begin to understand, its full meaning.

Our phone conversation bounced off a satellite 50,000 feet above in space. Her voice echoed across that vast distance, disembodied like an hallucination.

Static dropped in and out, until finally we were cut off. I was sent reeling back, untethered, into the darkness of the room. I knew she was falling away from me, towards some opposing gravity. I threw open the window. There was no one on the street below. Francis, the police, everything that had been there just moments before, were gone.

the before

Chapter 2.

Dawn's boyfriend had blackened and closed her right eye. Her upper lip was distended to over twice its usual size, her cheeks were streaked with long, thick mascara tears, and her hair was tangled and matted with blood, yet, somehow she was still the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

He'd beaten her after she'd tried to leave.

'He told me he was going to break my hands so I couldn't write anymore. Stupid asshole! You don't write with your hands, you write with your mind.'

Protocol was, female nurses were assigned to women who'd been battered, but that night I was the only person available.

She was tremulous from cold and adrenaline. It'd been raining when he'd thrown her onto the front porch and locked the door. She had no shoes on and the