British comedian Adam Kay reveals how he was raped by a man in a sauna after he traveled to New Zealand with intentions to cheat on his wife with a man
Adam Kay, a British doctor turned comedian has revealed how he was raped by a man after he traveled to New Zealand with intentions to cheat on his wife with a man .
In his new book about how he left behind a career in medicine for comedy and writing titled Adam Kay’s Undoctored: The Story of a Medic Who Ran Out of Patients, which will be out on September 13, Adam Kay revealed he was working as a doctor and did comedy part-time when he got the chance to perform a 20-minute set at a medical conference in New Zealand.
He thought the event in New Zealand would be his comedy break, and also planned to cheat on his wife there, with a man, then return back to her and continue his normal heterosexual life.
He decided to do his cheating in a sauna because it ‘sounded like probably the most appealing/least appalling option and the best chance of getting what I wanted pronto and incognito,’ he said.
He then gave a false name and put on a French accent at the entrance of the sauna and says what happened to him inside the sauna was so ‘harrowing’ he never told anyone for 10 years.
‘A man in his 40s stood up, took my arm and wordlessly led me to a dimly lit cubicle, where he raped me,’ and then said ‘thanks’ afterwards.
Before he left for the trip to New Zealand, Kay writes, that he thought to himself that ‘Cheating is bad. And premeditated cheating is probably worse than spontaneous cheating, in the way that murder is worse than manslaughter’.
But he also reasoned with himself that what he planned to do was ‘totally fine’.
‘I was going all the way to New Zealand to do it, so she couldn’t possibly find out or get hurt; it was considerate, even. It would only be this one time,’ he said.
‘I wasn’t lusting after anyone in particular, I didn’t know who I was going to cheat with, just that it needed to happen.
‘And I would be cheating on her with a man, so it basically didn’t count.’
His internet searches led him him to settle on going to a sauna as something he had to do to get it out of his system.
Kay likes to give people the benefit of the doubt and later tried ‘to work out if there could have been some kind of misunderstanding, something I did wrong’.
He wanted to be to able to put it down to poor communication on his part.
‘But I can’t – the truth of it is inescapable. I was clear. I said no when it became obvious he wanted this interaction to go a lot further than I did,’ he wrote.
‘I said no, again, when he started. I said no when he overpowered me and pushed my head into a wipe-clean cushion that stank of antiseptic.’
Kay tried to scream, but knew he wouldn’t be heard, ‘not by this man who didn’t want to hear and not by anyone else, thanks to the rhythmical pounding of the music’.
The rapist then said ‘thanks’ before leaving.
‘Thanks. You don’t say thanks to someone you’ve just raped, do you? Was coming here in the first place my consent?’ Kay wrote.
‘Not pulling my hand away when he took my arm – was that a way of saying yes, in a language I’d never been taught, negating everything I would say afterwards?’
Kay said that going to the police was unthinkable.
‘Saying it out loud would make it real; I would never be able to deny it or pretend it never happened, which already felt like my only way of getting through it,’ he wrote.
The police, he thought, would tell him ‘you can’t get raped if you go somewhere looking specifically for sex’.
On why he told no one what happens to him for over ten years he said;
‘Maybe I was too ashamed,’ he wrote.
‘Or maybe I just knew from the moment it happened that I would never forget it: every minute, every second, etched into me in indelible ink, would be with me forever.’
