The Abduction

During the months after we’d moved back into the house on 68th Street, I attended a semi-private school for professional children on Manhattan’s West Side called Lincoln Square Academy (LSA). It allowed young actors, dancers, musicians and other professional kids the flexibility to audition and take on a limited amount of paid work, while attending school. Although I wasn’t actively pursuing the biz, I think my father and step-mother hoped that the environment would inspire me to jump in.

Instead, the school introduced me to a new group of peers, many from a housing project in the Bronx, who inspired me to smoke pot, experiment for the first time with LSD, and pursue sex with a passion.

I rode the cross-town bus, to and from school, taking me through the Central Park cut- through known as “the transverse”, with only short walks to and from the bus stops on both ends of the daily journey.

On a near perfect Friday in the Spring of 1967 at about 3:30 PM, I walked alone from LSA to the 65th Street Lincoln Center bus stop with my hi-top gym sneakers, tied at the laces and slung over my shoulder and my new suede Beatle boots on my feet. The sun shown bright and warm on my face.

My mind wandered as I walked. I was in obsessive lust with a girl from the Bronx named Michelle, who I’d seen naked in a bathroom at a school dance the previous weekend. A group of us had gone to the dance and discovered, much to our distress, that the dance had reached it’s limit of boys and school officials were allowing only girls to enter.

My friend Phil and I exchanged clothes – dresses, stocking - with Michelle and another girl, who then applied makeup, gave us their earrings and did our hair with an adequate level of professionalism to get us past the ticket sentry at the door. While in the girl’s bathroom, changing clothes back in to our own, Michelle had let me briefly touch her naked crotch, a first for me, which naturally caused me to fall in love with her. I couldn’t get her out of my mind, as I made my way to the bus stop.

I stood a foot back from the curb under some construction scaffolding, waiting for the bus. I was a relatively street-wise 13-year-old, out of school for the weekend, concerned only with what parties my friends and I would have available to us over the coming weekend and proud to be seen in my new black suede Beatle boots.

The construction site on 66th Street and Broadway would eventually become Avery Fisher Hall, the large theatre and concert facility that would become part of the new Lincoln Center complex. I walked a few steps out into the street, looking to see if the bus was in sight.

As I returned to the sidewalk, no more than two steps under the scaffolding, a large Hispanic man, around 20 years old, stepped in front of me, blocking my path. As I attempted to move around him he countered each step I took with one of his own and put one hand on my chest, moving in almost close enough to touch his whole body to mine. I looked up at him with mild disbelief, and smiled.

I was about say something when I felt the point of a knife poke into my abdomen.

“You feel that? Give me your money,” he said. “and don’t scream or say nothin’ or I’ll fuckin’ cut chou.” I didn’t doubt that he meant what he said. I could see the truth of it in his angry, glassy brown eyes. He was big - huge compared to me - and I felt even smaller, perhaps because of the knife sticking in my belly. The fact that it was a small knife did nothing to assuage my fear.

“All I got is bus fare, man.” I said meekly. It was true. I had nothing more than the fifty cents that would get me home. “Swear to God!”

Having uncovered only the fifty cents, he grew frustrated. He ordered me to take off my boots and socks. I felt a sense of disbelief as he backed me up against graffiti-covered plywood construction barrier. This guy was robbing me at knifepoint in broad daylight at one of the busiest intersections in the largest city in the United States and it was literally as if we were invisible. No one even looked - let alone stopped to help!

Frustrated, he cursed in Spanish, as if having no more money to rob me of was shameful. He covered most of the handle and blade of the knife with his right hand, leaving only a half-inch or so sticking out between his thumb and forefinger. He put his right arm around my right shoulder, sticking the tip of the blade right onto my carotid artery. I felt my pulse throbbing out onto the knife with each heartbeat.

“Walk with me like you’re my boy, and I won’t hurt you.” he said.

I did. No resistance from me whatsoever, as we walked south on Broadway, out from under the construction scaffolding and into the bright sunshine. We passed a police officer, leaning against a support pillar off to our right and I weighed the possibility of trying to attract his attention, but his focus was away from us and I didn’t see a way to attract his attention without endangering myself. Or maybe I could just try to break away from his grip. As I inventoried all of the contact points where he held me, the tension I felt told me that he was alert to any moves I might make. No way to make a break for it.

“Just like we best amigos, little boy, you hear me?” The tip of the blade on by throat guaranteed my compliance; left me no alternative to doing as he wanted.
“Okay” was all I could muster.

Once past the cop, with no warning, he grabbed my left wrist with his left hand.

“I show you something nice, boy, you wanna feel something nice?” I said nothing, having no idea what he was talking about. I continued, desperately now, to look around for an escape route, feeling the tip of the blade poking into my neck. Suddenly he jerked my hand over to his body and pressed it onto the front of his pants. I felt the half hardened swell of his penis as he pushed my hand onto it. I jerked my arm away and winced in total disgust. Now I felt sick to my stomach. Ha laughed and said: “You like that, little boy, eh?”

I managed a faint, whiny “No!”, as I tensed, shrinking away from as much as he’d let me. I was now so frightened, I couldn’t even think.

Then, as we started moving southwest, across the large plaza area of Lincoln Center, my captor gave me what turned out to be an invaluable piece of information. He turned to me as he guided me along, and with an evil, leering smile, he shared with me his plans for what awaited me.

“Little boy, you and me’s gonna have us some fun. I gonna take you home wit’ me, back to my project. I’m gonna tie ya ass down on my bed and I’m gonna beat cha ass with a chain.” His smile widened. “And then I gonna fuck you in da ass, little boy.” His smile remained, stretched even wider as he licked his lips and winked, as if to seduce me. My heart jumped into my throat. My fear was now so great, my body ached with it. My head tightened as I tried to think of what to do. I imagined him and I in a smelly, filthy, roach-infested room, him standing over me with that horrifying half smile……

We had changed direction as we crossed through the large open plaza area, past where one day a fountain would cascade water, and offer a rest area for tourists and locals. We were almost out of the relative safety of Lincoln Center, and heading for a cut-through to the housing projects he had spoken of. We headed towards the far building of the complex, beyond which the dazzling theatrical pomp and glitter of Broadway gave way to the dark side of this neighborhood. It was this area of gangs and projects on which the tale of West Side Story had been based.

I struggled to think clearly. What can I do? I asked myself. What can I possibly do?

The first option that came to me was: Stay calm and go with him. He said he wouldn’t hurt me if I didn’t cause trouble.

No way. I’ll die. After he rapes me, he’ll kill me, for sure.

Run back to the cop was my next thought. But how could I do it with the knife at my throat? I questioned my ability to pull it off without be slashed, perhaps fatally.

There was an incredibly strong pull just to keep walking and hope for the best, to believe that he wouldn’t hurt me if I didn’t resist. He hadn’t yet.

As we neared the far corner of the plaza, the point beyond which all my options would dwindle to none, a kind of mental lucidity kicked in and I began to think and plan in a linear and analytical way that seemed to appear from nowhere.

I began a sequence of extraordinarily logical, rational and quite astute thoughts that presented to me a plan that might allow me, if executed with precision and perfect timing, to escape.

First, it occurred to me that my sneakers, laces tied together and slung over my right shoulder, were within reach of my right hand. I noted peripherally that, with our bodies aligned side-by-side as they were, he was unlikely to see any small movements that I made with my right hand. I tested this by moving my hand slowly up and down my right side until, feeling certain that he didn’t notice, I hooked my thumb through the laces. I gradually tightened my grip until it was secure enough to control and maintain my grip on the laces. I glanced down toward the spot that he’d placed my hand on. I could judge fairly well the position of the sneaker and length of the laces as it banged on the right side of my back as we walked.

I realized I’d have to move towards him, ducking down and to the left, while I swung the sneakers, before I could break away. I’d have to move explosively fast as well as precisely.

I realized fully and with a degree of calm now, that whatever I chose, it wasn’t going to be easy and that, either way, I was taking a huge risk. But my plan seemed good and it was all I had.

He hadn’t let up the pressure of the knife on my neck at any time throughout our entire walk. He seemed ever cognizant that this was his means to keep his catch from escaping and, seemingly without thought, he kept it pressed firmly on my carotid artery, perfectly poised to stop any attempt I might make to escape.

Just as we arrived at the southwest corner of the Lincoln Center Plaza, almost out of view of anyone who might help, I swung the sneaker attached to the laces in my right hand and simultaneously ducked down and away from the blade. I drove the sneaker between his legs as hard and as fast as I could. The sneaker landed almost perfectly– well enough to double him over and cause him to yell out in pain. I straightened up and ran for my life.

I ran straight back across the large plaza to the policeman, who was where we had passed him. Out of breath, shaking and frightened, I ranted: “Sir that man over there, he robbed me, he has a knife! He told me he was gonna take me to his house and beat me and rape me and do a lot of things to me. Please!! Get him!!”

The officer looked at me, a smile calmly breaking across his face.
“Now son, what did you do to get yourself involved a him to begin with?”

“No, sir, he robbed me. He has a knife. He took my bus fare and then he put the knife on me and started taking me home with him. Look – he’s right there. You can get him!”

Nothing.

“Son, tell you what. Here’s fifty cents.” He reached into his pants pocket, fishing for change. Came out with some. Pulled out a quarter, two dimes and a nickel. “You go on home now and stay out of trouble, you hear?”

I was stunned. I looked at the change in my hand. I started to back away from the cop, unable to believe what he’d just said to me. I turned and walked away, looking across the plaza and watched as the guy who wanted to rape and beat and probably kill me, a grin on his ugly face, turned the corner at the far end of the Opera House, and disappeared.

I took the bus home and sat in my room, shaking for the better part of the afternoon.

I never told anyone what happened that day until nearly thirty years later, when I began teaching women’s self-defense classes. Turns out my story had a lot in common with those of many women who go through the horror of being raped and other trauma.

It wasn’t until I’d told this story in workshops many, many times, that I finally remembered that my abductor had forced me to touch his crotch. I’d simply buried that, way down in the recesses of my memories, as if I refused to know it anymore. The trauma of abuse is huge, a monster that terrifies and injures way more deeply than just the physical scars show. Just when we think we’ve cut the monsters head off, it jumps out laughing from behind a door that we thought we had closed long ago.