Commodified at 15

It is not my birthday, nor is it my mother’s. But the date Oct. 13, 2013, is significant.

On the night of that day I lost a fragment of my dignity when a pedophile volleyball trainer decided to take advantage of my innocence in a dark alley behind the gymnatorium where my teammates and I were training at the time.

My present self astutely remembers every minute of that night. I sat through the gender environment studies class, with Ms Domingo discussing violence against women and how people should stop blaming the victim.

I listened to my social science teacher talking about how women were victims of rape and harassment. Yet none of those made me feel that I did not deserve what happened to me four years ago.

As a normal amateur volleyball player back then, to defend the ball and to receive spikes were the only things on my mind, and being stripped of the blue jersey shorts that I had snatched from my older brother’s closet was not planned at all.

We were taught to serve a floating ball, to spike from the different spots in the court, or to even relax our bodies when we were nervous. But none of those prepared me for what came at me that night.

As he pulled my shorts down to my knees, cold sweat flowed out of the pores on my forehead and rolled down my cheeks, and I felt my dignity crumbling.

That was when I lost all sense of ownership of my own body. He was in control, and all I could do was shout into the void of silence that I was in.

My face dropped as if I had lost, and I surrendered the fight of my life. My courage took its final bow.

His body clashed against mine as he satisfied himself, but I did not fight my way out of the situation. I did not run, nor did I tell him to stop what he was doing. My shaking knees and my cold face were the only indications of my disagreement.

One could reason that I might have liked it because I did not fight back. But I was 15 years old, weak and submissive. Up until now, I am certain that not one of the trillion cells in my body wanted the things he did to me.

Finally, he cleaned himself up after reaching his climax, and we made our way back to the team and pretended that none of those horrible things had happened.

I managed to live through the experience, and found my way to these words that I have kept for more than four years now.

He is a professor at a private university in Nueva Ecija. My mother is in the academe as well, teaching young minds arithmetic or the human reproductive system.

But even so, I never told her. I cannot imagine her reaction when she discovers that one of her three sons was once molested in one of the dark alleys of our small town of Dingalan.

Today, I resolve to forgive myself for the horrid things that I let him do to me. My biggest mistake is not my weakness but, rather, my silence through all those years.

I feel sorry for the thousands, or millions, of young boys all over the country who have been victimized and muted in the same way I was.

Even the rules of rape have changed in our society. I am living proof that not only women are victims of this crime. It doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is, because in the eyes of the butcher we are all pigs waiting to be skinned alive.

And I have been naked all those years that came after that night, and it ends now. All those years of grieving and of anger helped me prepare the armor made of scars and bruises with which I shall cover my body.

Looking back, I would not have wished for things to turn out differently. That night was one of the wrinkles of my life, and for it I am thankful more than sorry.

Not that I want more people to go through such an experience; it’s that because of what happened, I became more aware of the extent of bad things that could happen to people. It made me stronger, and this is not a cliché, this is a fact.

Lastly, I remember walking back to our quarters on that night. I found that my teammates were still my teammates, jeering at one another and laughing their lungs out in the silence of the night.

On the other hand, I was not myself anymore. There was something different in the darkness that I saw when I closed my eyes. It was not just pitch black, or nothingness, anymore; it was painted with hues of anger, of sweat dripping, of bodies clashing, and of hopelessness.

As I pushed myself to walk the gravel road toward our quarters, I saw him reaching inside his pocket, then subtly handing me an amount: P275. And in that moment, I knew I had been sold.

* * *

Neal Igan G. Roxas, 19, says he is “not a victim anymore.”