I was riding home on a scooter. Middle of the day, bright and sunny, road where I have passed by so many times. A man jumped off the hill, where he was hiding in ambush waiting for me to pass on the scooter. He dragged me into the thicket. I think I yelled. Man was strangling me until I stopped fighting. I cannot believe I already wrote 5 lines trying to tell this story. It happened when I was 17, and it only took me 31 years to be able to write down this one page. My fingers are freezing as I am typing. There was a car passing by and I thought I might be rescued. Being strangled was horrible, hands holding my neck and pressing it. I was afraid. I was no longer fighting. Then I was on the ground. Then I must have dissociated. I think I saw the trees. Then I felt pain. It must have been the penetration. Then the man said something bizarre. He said “hug me”. Then I was getting off the ground. Then he said “go home and take a shower”. Then he asked another bizarre question, what is this spot on your skin. I said it is psoriasis. It is not contagious. Even now I cannot believe that I bothered saying that my psoriasis is not contagious. Lookism in my own head. Then I got on the scooter and rode the rest of the rode home. It must have been about 2-3 km left to our house. When I came home my father was already there. I was wondering if he might have passed in that car that passed while I was being strangled. I did not tell my father. I was crying the day. And the night. I was wondering the night in the forest near the house. I remember I came to the ocean and lay in the water. I think I wanted to tell my father and I think I even opened my mouth and no words came. I cried all of the next day. And maybe day after that. I got an eye infection from crying. Before I left the village to go to the city several days later I burned the clothes in which I was assaulted. I hate the word rape. In English and in Russian. I hate the word. “Stranger rape” they call it in English. I am forty eight now. It was thirty-one years ago. And I wrote down this story for the first time. So the words of the story can leave my head and move onto the internet page.