Monday, December 17, 2018

the day my eye was raped

it took me a little while to feel like writing about this.
it was oddly traumatizing- as you can see from my title-and it took me a few days to recover.
but i want to write this, because i want to think more about how i let it happened and why it felt so violating.

so here's the story.

i went to the mall with fermin last weekend.  while he went to pick up his glasses at lenscrafters, i was killing a little time looking around at a couple of other stores nearby.

while i was in "salt attic",  i decided to throw away my drink, since holding it was making it harder for me to look at merchandise.  i tried looking for an employee to ask if i could throw it away, but never saw one.  i did, however, find the trash can, so i tossed my drink in.  immediately afterwords, some guy, maybe the manager or hopefully just a rude employee, picked it out of the trash, handed it to me and said, "uh-no- you can't throw that away here. you'll have to go and use the trash outside the store."  but i felt embarrassed that i had done something someone saw as rude.  it was not my intention at all.  i left the store, and found an outside trashcan and tossed my drink cup.

i tell this part of the story only because maybe that had something to do with how the next part happened.  the trash incident had me feeling weird and a little insecure i guess.

a young man at a kiosk grabbed me and asked if i would like a sample of some eye cream.  i don't remember saying yes, but i didn't say no.  i hadn't even had a chance to process what was happening until the next thing i knew this guy was rubbing creme right around one of my eyes.  he was talking a LOT, in what sounded like a russian accent.  i couldn't get a word in to say, "no, i don't really want you rubbing creme on my face."

he told me just like going to the gym for a work out, we need to take care of our skin.  he showed me a before and after photo of a 75 year old woman that was a smoker.  picture one was super awful.  the after picture was just meh.  like i said, she was an elderly woman- a lot older than me. so i didn't really see my current self in her.  but i felt like he did.  like maybe i was suppose to look at her improvement picture and think, "oh that's awesome!  i can look like her if i use this."

i guess that creme takes a certain amount of time to "work it's magic" so he kept talking and talking, a mile a minute, and asking me questions like if i had thought about botox, and what area bothered me the most- my eyes or my neck? then i became super self conscious about my eyes and my neck, which was probably his intention.

as he was handing me the mirror to take a look at my "after", he said it would look better if i didn't have any make up on- then he hands me the mirror and the eye he messed with looked worse than EVER.  his stupid eye cream had mixed in with some of my make up and it was blotchy and made my lines show up even more.

i looked at my face and felt so ugly.  he asked, "well, what do you think?"


i wanted to barf.  but just said, "well, i look awful actually. i hate this and i'm really uncomfortable and i hate your product..." without even looking at him, i got up from the chair-  (i don't even really know how i got there in the first place) and pretty much RAN though the mall to lenscrafters to grab fermin and get the hell out of dodge.

it was rattling.  i felt completely violated.  this asshole never got my permission to start rubbing crap on my face.  and then his words made me feel so ugly.  it was just so gross and humiliating.

no, my blood sugar wasn't low enough to excuse that i let this guy do this.  i seriously think it happened because i was wondering around, a little dazed, after the other man in the retail store made me feel like a rule breaker for throwing trash away without permission.  (stupid, i know, but it's all i got)

when i tried to explain it to fermin, he thought i was letting it get to me way too much.  and for sure, i was.  i'm still not sure why.  i don't know how it happened, really. and that made me even more upset, that i let this stupid guy make me feel bad.

if we take the sex aspect out of the definition of rape, i think my eye was raped in the mall last weekend.  the dictionary defines rape as "an outrageous violation".    and THAT, it was.

this is the product sample the rapist gave me.  and it's going directly in the trash can.

3 comments:

Valerie said...

Ugh. I'm so sorry that happened to you and that he made you feel that way. You're beautiful and there are no two ways around that! The guy was probably Israeli. Deb dealt with them a lot when she was in the mall business...lots of complaints, lots of breaking the rules. Check out this article: http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2070-the-creepy-scam-industry-behind-kiosks-at-your-mall.html, especially section #2 with the creams. I'm going to search my blog and FB now because I had posted something about this very thing a couple years ago. I can't remember what I said though.

Valerie said...

Found it...here's what I wrote on FB in September 2015:

"I'm laughing because I just went through this over at Union Station. My hands are now smooth and soft and I escaped without buying anything. The cute sales dude guessed I was 35, so I should've bought something just for that, but I know it was just part of his MO."

And I posted this video: https://youtu.be/-f7NYWjunIw

The video is still pretty funny. Doesn't excuse your eye assault, but maybe it'll help you to know you're not alone.

kerriari said...

thanks, Valerie! i'll watch the video. :)