by Kyle Hulbert
CW: csam, prison, violence, institutional abuse
I was thirteen years old the first time I was raped. I was in my fifth institutional placement, a residential group home in Petersburg, Virginia. As the only Caucasian among the twelve residents and physically small for my age, I was an easy mark. Verbal and physical abuse by the other residents was a way of life for me; one of the earliest lessons I learned there was that no matter how willing you are to stand up for yourself, a ninety-eight-pound white boy is no match for three or four older teens. But I was destined to learn a whole new lesson in abuse.
I woke up to a hand clamping over my mouth, the smell of African Crown hairdressing filling my nostrils while something sharp pressed against my neck.
“You make a sound and I'll cut your fucking neck, boy.”
The words seethed into my ears, where they would remain trapped in the twisting halls of my mind, echoing again in quiet moments when my guard would slip.
I wanted to struggle, to fight, but the blade against my neck stilled me.
Time didn't slow down, as I have heard in other rape victims’ accounts, nor did it stop, either. It continued at its same, implacable pace that it has since man first conceived its passage; and I remember every second of it. His grunts heaving into my ear, the electric taste of blood in my mouth as his rough hand crushed my lips against my teeth, the red star of pain in my rectum while he violated me.
To this day, the smell of African Crown hairdressing turns my stomach.
As is common in institutional settings, I didn’t report the rape. The aphorism “Snitches get stitches” wasn't just a catchy tagline during the era of Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac. I'd learned the hard way after the first time I was jumped that telling the powers that be made things only worse when they eventually got you alone later — and they always got to you later. Disclosing something like this, I believed, would get me killed.
So I doctored myself as best I could, using a squeeze-style water bottle as a bidet until the water was clear of blood, keeping wads of toilet paper wedged between my buttocks until I'd healed enough not to worry about soiling myself, and kept my mouth shut.
This moment marks the most likely advent of my personality disorders. There have been questions about things that may or may not have happened earlier in my childhood, but this experience is the clearest memory I have of trauma of a magnitude capable of fracturing my psyche. It was this trauma that birthed the one I eventually came to call Survivor. He didn't manifest as a distilled personality until I was well into my prison sentence, but he was there: a lens that would slide over my perception whenever danger was near, or when I was not strong enough to keep moving forward. Through beatings and loneliness and fear, he was there. Through him, I learned to see the world around me in brutally simple terms: either a thing was beneficial to my survival, or it wasn't. Everything is weighed by its efficiency and its value to survival. My survival. All other considerations are secondary.
Before being arrested for murder in 2001, a scant three months after I was emancipated from the Great Grey Beast upon my 18th Hatching Day, Survivor was a lens through which I watched the world, but he was not a constant factor. He was ever-vigilant, but he was not always needed. It wasn't until I had been convicted of murder and sent to Wallens Ridge State Prison that he took a more prominent role in my life.
The man with whom I was housed was a veteran of the prison system. When classic trap tactics didn't work — the most basic con of offering me food or smokes and then demanding repayment, a tactic I had been well-warned against in county jail — he went with simple brute force. He baited me into an argument that he quickly escalated into a violent confrontation. It was embarrassingly easy for him to overpower me, to get behind me and wrap his arm around my neck. I thought he was going to kill me, a senseless act of violence on par with all the horror stories told about prison.
When I woke up with his hand on the back of my neck, forcing my face into his pillow while he took my ass, I wished he had.
He used African Crown hairdressing, too.
When I realized it was happening again, that horrible violation of body and soul that most only understand in the most abstract fashion — from Law & Order: SVU, or from reports on the news, far distant and far removed from their reality — I felt my perception dimming. Not my eyesight, my perception, my awareness was dimming. I still felt the pain of him inside me, I still struggled to breathe with my face crammed into his pillow, but it was becoming a dim sensation, like a memory of something that happened rather than the immediate reality of the moment.
It was like watching a movie about being raped, not living it.
Alone in my bunk later that night, as I listened to him snoring, I began thinking about how to kill him. But a twenty-year-old fresh into prison owns nothing, and I wasn't in any condition to even attempt to smother him; even with the advantage of surprising him in his sleep, I had no doubt he'd overpower me easily and what came after... It didn't bear thinking about.
And there was the small hope still burning in me, the hope of my case being overturned through habeas corpus. Killing him, even for raping me, would kill that hope, too.
Though I was still years away from knowing it, Survivor was taking over.
Thanks to popular media, there is a perception that a split personality — or “alter,” though I call mine Splinters — can be called upon as easily as flipping a switch, or that there's this twitching, agonizing struggle as one personality ascends to dominate and supplant the primary identity. It's not like that at all.
The shift of the lens is subtle, you rarely realize it's happening. It's a change in your thoughts, a change in the way you see things, process them. It's a change in the way you value things and your responses to stimuli. The lens had shifted and the only thing that mattered was survival.
Three days later, my cellmate wanted my ass again. I hadn't healed and knew I couldn't handle being taken again, but there was no fear in me. It was as simple and as impartial as a math problem: he would hurt me if I refused him, but to consent would cause further injury. Giving him the best blowjob of his life satisfied his lust without putting me at further risk. Problem solved.
A week later, when he wanted me again, and he wouldn't accept a blowjob, I applied the African Crown to him and myself. These are the choices you make in order to survive: there are no good options. All you can do is take the one that minimizes risk, minimizes damage, and just survive until tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow...
When he was done, he told me he had sold me to someone else, and I was moving in with them the next day. He stated it with the same casual inflection one would use to announce going to the store to buy a pack of cigarettes. I was property in his eyes, just a commodity for him to sell without another thought.
What he didn't know was that I already knew. The day after I had been raped I had been approached by a guy in the pod who knew about my cellmate's predilections and, through a series of conversations, decided to help me. He approached my cellmate with an offer to buy me, which my cellmate accepted. What he didn't know was that I was the one paying the bill.
My life was worth $250.
The years that followed had only two focuses: to work on my habeas corpus and see my case overturned, and to ensure I was never in a position of such weakness again. Survivor became my sole means of seeing the world. Where I saw danger, I avoided it. Where I saw opportunity, I took it. Everyone who entered my life was a commodity for my survival, or a danger to it. They'd leave as soon as my novelty wore off, so I sought to ensure my energies were not wasted, that I would have something to show for it after they inevitably abandoned me. All that mattered was survival.
If I make this sound simple, easy, you must understand that it wasn't. It isn't. Survival isn't life. It's making it from Point A to Point B in the most efficient manner possible, over and over and over again. He doesn't care if I'm comfortable; he doesn't care if I'm happy. Those don't matter. Words like “honor,” “morals,” and “ethics” are just meaningless noise people make to justify their actions. Meaningless, unnecessary, and therefore not worth wasting energy on.
For ten years, Survivor was the face I showed the world. I was in the backseat while he handled everything. He went from being a lens to being a mask to being who I was. I was unbreakable because he wouldn't allow for anything else.
How I got past the point of needing Survivor to be my primary face is beyond the scope of this narrative. I now exist with my face to the world for the first time, without glamor or obfuscation.
Yet, he is always near. Some days it is harder to keep him at bay. His ways are efficient, and extremely effective, and therefore so very tempting — but they are hollow. His ways are concerned with survival, not living.
But when the storms rage, he is close to the surface, whispering how easily the storm could be bypassed. He points the way and I know if I follow his direction, I will find safety. But sometimes the storms are meant to be weathered.
If I never suffer the storm, how could I appreciate the sunlight breaking through the clouds?
There is a price to be paid for surviving. I carry scars that will never heal, but those are not the price. The price is memory. Because in the night, when I awake from a dream where I hear that seething whisper in my ear, I can still feel that blade against my neck, I can still smell African Crown hairdressing. And with those memories comes the knowledge that I could turn it off. I could let Survivor into the front seat and never feel that pain, that fear, that helplessness again.
And if I did that, I would never feel joy, never feel love, never feel peace, ever again.
Every day when I wake, I pay the price for surviving.
Then I choose to live.
***
Kyle Hulbert has struggled with mental health since he was a child — it ultimately led to his arrest in 2001. He is currently housed in River North Correctional Center in Independence, Virginia, where he is fighting for his clemency. Writing is his passion; recent work has appeared in Mad in America and Asylum, and you can find more at Vocal.Media under his pseudonym, Kyle Cejka. If you would like to learn more about Kyle's fight for Clemency, please visit his PayIt2 page.
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