But He had not abandoned me. Our Holy Father abandons no one, not even wretches who consort with henchmen of the Devil like Jake Kingsley. Interestingly, it was not an attack upon me that finally convinced me to pull myself from this horrid relationship, but an attack upon the Holy Scriptures. Jake dragged me to another one of his awful productions one night and sang a new song that I'd never heard before, a song that was a condemnation of the bible and all it stands for. It was an attack so vile upon the very book that forms the foundation of our faith that I knew at that point I could no longer continue to be with him. I felt Jesus talk to me that night, felt Him in my heart as he told me it was time to come back to Him and leave my wretchedness behind.
Michelle then went on to describe how, upon hearing that she was breaking up with him, Jake had beaten her to within an inch of her life, raped her one last time, and then threw her in the Sacramento River from the back of the boat owned by the evil proprietor of the Devil's music club they'd been playing at. Somehow she managed to survive all of this and accepted Jesus back into her heart, eventually going on to finish her degree, get her teaching credential, and, when Intemperance became popular, to help found the Family Values Coalition of Heritage in order to fight everything that Jake Kingsley and those like him stood for.
By the time he finished reading Pauline had come back into the room. She held a potent rum and coke in her hands. Jake took it from her and downed half of it in one drink.
"Pretty bad, huh?" she asked, sitting down across from him.
He nodded numbly. "This is the most slanderous thing I've ever read before," he said. "I beat her, raped her, and threw her in the river? What kind of shit is that? She broke up with me after I got done eating her pussy out and she didn't even return the favor. And she wasn't fleeing from the relationship, she told me she loved me and gave me an ultimatum. Her or my music. I chose my music and she left."
"I didn't think any of that was true, Jake," she said. "I know you as well as anyone and I know you'd never hit a woman in anger, much less regularly beat and rape one. And I remember when you were dating this bitch. She was madly in love with you. It was obvious to everyone who saw you together."
"But everyone else who reads this is going to think its true," he said. "The media is going to be all over this for the next month at least. And it'll be like the coke in the butt crack thing. They're never going to forget about it. Every article they ever write about me from now until forever is going to describe me as the musician who was alleged to have snorted cocaine from a girl's buttocks and who was is known to have violent and sadistic tendencies with his girlfriends. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if Rachel stopped seeing me when she gets a look at this thing."
"I know," Pauline said. "I wish I had some encouraging words for you but I really don't."
"What about suing for libel?" Jake asked. "Can we do that? Force this fucking rag to print a retraction?"
"We could sue them," she said, "but I don't think we'd have much chance of winning. In a libel suit the burden of proof is on the accuser. That means you'd have to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that her allegations are not true in order to win. That's a pretty tough haul when all she is talking about are one on one encounters from six years ago."
"Fucking bitch," Jake said again. "I wish I would've beaten her ass now."
"Don't ever say anything like that to anyone but me," Pauline warned. "I think our response to this needs to be a statement from me that you emphatically deny ever laying a hand on Michelle that was not welcome. You deny raping her, you deny hitting her, you deny everything."
"Of course I'm going to deny everything," Jake yelled at her. "I didn't do any of it!"
"I know that," she said. "I'm just telling you what our official response should be."
"Maybe we should tell the tale about how she let me eat her pussy out and then broke up with me without so much as a hand job in return," Jake suggested. "That'll let people know what kind of bitch she is."
Pauline licked her lips carefully. "Uh... bad idea," she said. "I think we should just stick to the denials and go no further. Don't say a word about Michelle to anyone. Just pretend she doesn't exist and with any luck maybe they'll let the subject drop soon."
"Can I at least tell them about how she screamed out Jesus' name the first time I made her come?"
"Impressive," Pauline said, "but no. Not a word about anything. We'll acknowledge that you dated her, that you eventually broke up with her, and we deny everything else."
Jake nodded. "All right. We deny everything and keep our mouths shut."
Jake talked to Rachel on the phone that night. By this point the story of the allegations put down by Michelle Rourke (formerly Borrows) were the top news story on every entertainment show and had even been mentioned on a few of the local news shows themselves. There was no way she could have avoided hearing what her boyfriend was being accused of.
"Everything she wrote is pretty much a fabrication," Jake told her. "We actually had a solid, loving relationship up until the last two months or so. That's when her upbringing started to make her question her relationship with me. I never laid a hand on her in anger. I've never done that to any woman."
"I believe you, Jake," she said. "Remember, I've been dating you for almost a month now. You've never even yelled at me."
"I was just worried you might believe what she was writing," Jake said.
"I don't," she assured him. "Did you talk to your sister about those dressmakers? Mom is real excited about helping me pick one out."
"Yes, I did," Jake said. "She said she'll call and make the arrangements for you on Monday morning... if you still want to go."
"Why wouldn't I want to go?" she asked.
"Well, with this whole article thing and the media attention it's getting, the reporters are going to be much more interested in you now. If you show up as my official date they're going to be hounding you, asking you if I beat you, if I make you do drugs, if I rape you. Are you sure you want to subject yourself to all that?"
"Reporters don't bother me, Jake," she said. "When they ask I'll tell them that you're the most loving, considerate boyfriend I've ever had."
"Okay," he said, "but don't lay it on too thick or they'll think you're just protecting me."
"I won't," she promised. "And, Jake... about what happened today. I just want to tell you again how sorry I am about... you know... throwing up after you... you... you know?"
"I know," he said. "And like I told you this afternoon, don't sweat it. Things happen. If you don't like doing that, you don't have to do it again."
"I did like doing it, it's just that at the end... when you... you... uh... squirted that stuff in my mouth, I just wasn't prepared for..."
"Rachel, hon," he said. "Don't worry about it, okay? It's already forgotten."
Chapter 3b
Michelle Rourke became a media sensation over the next week. Her article was reprinted in several mainstream publications and she herself was the most-requested guest on the talk show circuit. She appeared on several of these shows, telling her tale in television acceptable language, always seeming to be the shy, nervous, unassuming little Catholic girl with a horrific story to convey. She always managed to get a dig in about the evils of rock and roll music and how the recent rating system imposed by the PMRC did not go nearly far enough.
"Music such as that produced by Jake Kingsley and Intemperance is nothing but evil personified," she told an NBC talk show early in the week. "It is horribly corrupting upon the youth of America and it should be banned from sale like the pornography that it is."
Pauline released Jake's official statement to the media at a brief press conference held outside the National Records Building. Jake Kingsley denies ever hitting a woman, ever raping a woman, and ever abusing a woman in any way. He acknowledged that a relationship had indeed taken place between himself and Michelle Borrows (now Rourke), and that it lasted approximately fifteen months, but that everything else about the article was a complete falsehood. It was obvious that very few people believed his denials.