Shower Scene

There is an intense shower-rape scene in the flim, "American History X." The protagonist, Edward Norton, is the charismatic leader of a white supremist group. After killing a pair of black men who were attempting to steal from his property, Norton is sent to prison. While incarcerated, Norton comes of age as he realizes that his fellow Nazis aren't truly devout in their commitment to the uplift of white people. Ironically, as Norton attempts to cleanse himself in the shower, he is raped by his cohort of hypocrites...

I was once the victim of bullying. At the time I was a pre-schooler in Montreal. Twenty-five years later, I still remember getting stomped on by a group of my five year-old classmates in the schoolyard as they called me "blackie" in French. That experience has lead me to always sympathize with the kid everybody sees as being different. It has also caused me to deal with white people cautiously.

I have a healthy resume of outcasts on my resume of past acquaintances. The most interesting of these individuals was Red. He was a short and stout, red-headed white dude who lived on my floor when I was a freshman in college. He didn't have any friends. We never hung out, but I often tried to engage him in conversation. Unlike the other guys on my floor, however, I never made fun of Red despite the fact that he'd watch all sorts of porn on his computer with his door open. Supposedly, his roommate caught him masturbating more than a couple of times.

Midway through freshman year, Red started responding to my greetings. Once in awhile, he'd even come into my room when the door was open to watch my crew play video games. The guys started joking that Red would develop a crush on me because I was so nice to him. I thought that was ridiculous. He didn't strike me as being into guys. I joked back that if he ever decided to pull a Columbine in the dorm that I would get away unscathed...

As that school year drew to a close, a few classmates I got to know fell by the wayside. A couple of them were raped and another one left due to some serious emotional issues. Going into my freshman year I never considered that a college campus could be a place where people regress--like prison. Aside from dealing with life after my father's stroke, things were going pretty well for me until I stepped into the shower one evening. As I was washing my face in the shower, I was stunned by somebody drawing the shower curtain open.

Me: (hurrying to rinse my face) What the fuck?!?!
Red: (staring at me) Have you seen my keys?
Me: Are you fuckin serious? Your keys?! Why the fuck would I have your keys? Close the fuckin curtain!!!
Red: Oh. Sorry.