Rape Fantasies

Rape Fantasies Summary | Detailed Summary

The story opens with one woman remarking on the fact that magazines are carrying on about "it," as if it were a new discovery or wonderful invention. "It" is rape, and the topic has caused a group of four co-workers to talk about it.

The narrator of the story says that the topic of rape is so prominent that you can't escape it, even though she has more enjoyable ways, (like watching a June Allyson movie on late night television,) to spend her time than talking and thinking about it. At the lunch table, a group of women who play bridge during their noon break take up the topic. Chrissy, the beautiful but cool receptionist, has looked at the magazine and asks if her cohorts have rape fantasies. The narrator makes a bid, hoping to escape the subject, and also hoping that her bridge partner, Sondra, will understand the hidden meaning of her one club bid.

Sondra is at first nonplussed, and then asks if Chrissy means fantasies like being accosted by a man in an alley. Darlene informs the group that she believes it's important to be safe and not to go out alone at night. The narrator explains that Darlene is actually forty-one years old, a fact she knows, because she investigates information in the company files that she has access to. Greta's response is that "it's only Toronto," the implication being that it's not nearly as bad as Detroit, where she used to work. The narrator of the story again points out that Greta has a superiority complex, because she used to work in such a tough city. In reality, she lived in a much nicer suburb and didn't actually live in Detroit. Therefore, her superior attitude isn't really valid.

Chrissy is not to be deterred and asks again if any one of them has rape fantasies, The speaker surmises that Chrissy is only asking because she wants to relate her own fantasy. Darlene's disgusted reply is that she absolutely does not. She leaves the table to get out of the discussion, as the narrator explains that Darlene is divorced and has been for a long time.

Greta admits her fantasy, while the narrator notes that the two people who want to talk most are Chrissy and Greta, both blondes. The narrator thinks that since Greta wants to get out of the filing department and become a receptionist like Chrissy, there's a sense of competition between them. Greta's fantasy is that a man all dressed in black, including gloves, comes over the balcony of her eighteen floor apartment, as she's relaxing and watching television. She doesn't lock the door, since it's so high up, and the man comes in. After they have sex, the man admits that he does this all over the building, using the balconies for entrance. Then, he lowers himself down his rope and is gone.

The narrator cracks a joke comparing the man in Greta's fantasy to Tarzan, but nobody else is amused. Chrissy, finally able to tell her story, reprimands Greta for the mildness of her fantasy and goes on to share her own. Chrissy begins by saying that she imagines herself bathing, with no clothes on, naked in the tub filled with bubbles. The narrator cracks another joke about not many people taking a bath with their clothes on. However, Chrissy continues. A man comes in.

Greta asks how the man got in, and Chrissy says it doesn't matter. The man just comes in, blocks the way out of the bathroom, and slowly takes his clothes off and gets into the tub with her. Darlene, who has now returned to the discussion, is much more interested than she was initially. She asks Chrissy why she doesn't scream. Chrissy responds by saying that she's read articles advising victims of rape not to resist.

Once again, the narrator interjects a joke, saying that if Chrissy did try to scream, she might get bubbles up her nose. None of the narrator's colleagues are laughing at any of the jokes, feeling that she's making light of a very serious matter. The narrator, however, admits that she thinks life is too short not to laugh occasionally.

Finally, the narrator makes a serious comment. She points out that both of the fantasies that have been shared aren't really "rape" fantasies, because the women aren't threatened violently and are not forced to do something they don't want to do. The stories shared by Chrissy and Greta simply involve handsome strangers, and the women were willing.

Chrissy addresses the narrator, calling her "Estelle" and asking about her fantasies, probably because she was mad that Estelle had just poked holes in Chrissy's story. Sondra is mad, because Chrissy has asked Estelle before her, and Sondra wants to share her version.

Estelle, the narrator, agrees to share one fantasy in which she carries a plastic lemon in her purse, because an article had advised it. She says she doesn't really carry one in real life, but in her fantasy, she does. A man comes at her on a dark street, and she calmly asks him if he's going to rape her. When he answers "yes," she begins to dig in her bag to find the lemon, but can't. At that point, she asks the man to hold her stuff while she looks. So, the man ends up holding all kinds of miscellany found in her purse. When she finds the lemon at the bottom of her bag, she can't get it open and hands it to the man to help her. He gets the lid off the squeezable container, and she squirts him in the eye.

Chrissy can't believe Estelle's story, and Darlene admits that Estelle is "a card." Darlene and Estelle have been working at this same company longer than anyone else, and they know things about each other. Estelle admits that Darlene saw her behavior at the company Christmas party, when Estelle danced UNDER the table instead of on top of it. In a Cossack-style, she jumped underneath the desk and hit her head, knocking herself out. Darlene has good reason to refer to Estelle as a "card." Even though the story is true, Estelle would rather Darlene didn't repeat it.

The narrator protests that she's not pulling their legs. She's being totally honest, a comment the other women believe, because that's how she is. Estelle quips that if they thought that fantasy was strange, they should hear the one about the Easy-Off Oven Cleaner. The lunch hour, however, is over. The next day, the women argue about whether to start a new game, or whether to continue the hand from the day before. The narrator notes that Sondra never did get to share her fantasy.

Estelle admits that the discussion got her started thinking about her own fantasies. Granted, she, too, has fantasies about some handsome guy coming into her room, and she hopes he'll be decent looking like Mr. Clean and not sweaty and short. These, Estelle thinks, are not rape fantasies, because, in a rape fantasy, you have to be frightened and anxious. Her first fantasy is of being on a dark street at night and accosted by a short, ugly, pimply-faced guy, who pins her against the wall. However, he gets his zipper stuck, as he tries to undo himself. Estelle's fantasy includes her conversation with her attacker, telling him that she once, too, had pimples and referring him to her past dermatologist. She feels almost sorry for him and tells him about how lonely she was when she first came to the city, not knowing how hard it was to meet people. Estelle then says, "but maybe it's different for a guy."

Estelle moves on to a second fantasy. In this one, she's in bed, sick with a terrible cold, red nose, clogged throat. When a man comes into her bedroom through a window, she finds he, too, has a terrible cold. Estelle even mocks the nasal voice and congested dialogue of the rapist and herself, wondering why the rapist even got out of bed, when he was ill. She shares her box of Kleenex with him and then fixes him a drink that she concocts to alleviate cold symptoms. They end up watching the Late Show together.

The third fantasy, Estelle admits, is scarier than the first two, because there's more threat. Her rapist tells her that he hears angel voices telling him that he must kill her. The setting for this fantasy is her childhood home, and an axe-wielding man is hiding in the cellar and grabs her when she goes downstairs to retrieve a jar of jelly. Estelle sees herself gaining control of her fear and then asking the man if he's sure the angel has the right person, because she also hears voices. Her voices tell her that she's going to give birth to the Mother of the Virgin Mary, and if the rapist interferes, he'll be messing up Jesus Christ. When the man gets confused and asks her for a sign, she shows him the scar from her vaccination, and he leaves. She can't remember what the man looks like in the fantasy, but she can remember his lace-up, outdated shoes. It's the last thing she sees of him, as he escapes up a coal chute. The fantasy really makes her nervous, and she tries not to think of it much.

Estelle says that she sometimes has short images of similar instances, like when a man grabs her in a store, but she's a karate expert and either sticks her fingers in his eyes or throws him against a wall. She notes what a contrast this is to her in real life, since she couldn't even hit a volleyball in class. Plus, she could never stick her fingers into someone's eyes, which would feel like hot Jell-O. Her comment is that she just couldn't live life knowing that someone was blinded because of her, and she muses, "maybe it's different for a guy."

Different from her other fantasies, Estelle's most emotional scenario envisions her saying to a man who accosts her, "You'd be raping a corpse." She explains that she has leukemia and is out walking the streets to get a handle on her emotions. Estelle theorizes that she picked this disease, because when a fourth-grade classmate had the disease, the class sent her flowers. Estelle, not knowing that the girl would die, wished to have leukemia, too, so she'd get flowers. Her conversation with the would-be-rapist, however, reveals that he, too, is ill and is raping women only because of his rage against the disease. They walk together, get a cup of coffee, and are thrilled, because they've finally found the one person who understands. In her fantasy, Estelle can never decide which one of them dies first. This fantasy, like watching movies, sometimes makes her cry. Estelle points out that her mother, too, cries at movies.

The men in Estelle's rape fantasies are always people she didn't know beforehand, a fact that contradicts what the magazines say. The popular press says that most rapes are perpetuated by someone the woman knows or has met, possibly a boss or a man who buys her a drink at a bar. Estelle wonders how you're supposed to meet people if you can't even be sociable, noting that you simply can't lock yourself up in your apartment or stay isolated in the filing department. Admitting that she likes to go out occasionally for a drink, Estelle says that she goes to certain places, like the one she's at as she's speaking, a bar where the waiters all know her. Estelle admits that she's not sure why she's telling all this, but that it does help to get to know a person. She is not really like the worrywart her colleagues call her. She says she simply wants to plan ahead what to do in case of an emergency.

Estelle claims that in her fantasies, a huge majority of the time is spent talking to the other person, or figuring out what he's going to say or what she's going to say. Her belief is that conversation is the best way. After all, if the man knows she's human and has a life, how could he really do it to her? She twice repeats the fact that she doesn't really understand how rape could happen. She doesn't understand how a man could do that to a woman he'd talked to.