Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl

by Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl (retail) (epub)

  ME: So then this is kind of interesting to me as a writer, and also, just so you know, enough time has passed and I’m able to approach this from a remove. I’m okay.

  HIM: That’s good. It’s healthy. It’s good to hear that.

  ME: It’s interesting because there was a new definition of rape that the FBI put forth in 2013. Prior to that it was very antiquated: the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will.

  HIM: That was the legalistic language?

  ME: Yeah, yeah, within the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting System, that’s what rape was. And that went unchanged since 1927. But then, in 2013, the FBI updated the definition, and that was actually under Director Mueller. The new definition is the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim. So what’s interesting to me is that the actions are the same. In 2003, what happened between us was sexual assault, but now, according to legal terms, what happened would be rape. I’m interested in how we assign or categorize human behavior. I don’t know. What do you think of that?

  HIM: I couldn’t have told you that that was a thing. I’m sort of processing being, legally speaking, a rapist. Which I’m not proud of. Yeah. So, which I guess is fair.

  ME: It’s interesting to me because I, for so long, had trouble considering what had happened, what you had done, as—well, I didn’t want to think about it or talk to therapists about it because I didn’t want to jeopardize my intense grief for my dad. I thought that if I told a therapist, they would focus on this. Because everyone seemed to think I was grieving my dad for an unreasonably long time. They didn’t think my grief made sense.

  HIM: Yeah, and the rape is not what you want to actually talk about.

  UP TO MARK?

  When Mark used the word rape, I felt uncomfortable instead of vindicated. I think that’s because sexual assault (and sometimes I even drop the sexual) allows me to ignore the particulars. The particulars: someone suggested (likely Mark) that I should be carried from the living room into Mark’s basement room; Mark and Jake carried me into Mark’s basement room; Mark told Jake that Jake could leave; after Jake left, Mark undressed me; Mark put his fingers inside my vagina as far as they would go; I cried and Mark told me not to cry; Mark told me I was dreaming; Mark took his fingers out of me and masturbated over me.

  Why would Jake have suggested Mark’s basement room? I can almost hear Mark suggesting it. But I can’t offer proof, and I feel so much pressure to provide proof, which is why I’m interviewing Mark. Yet why should the proof be up to Mark? Why should he get to decide what happened? I think of the detectives saying, Is it possible that his hand slipped? My newspaper advisor never admitted to rubbing his hand up my thigh and between my legs.

  But Mark admitted to assaulting me, to sexually assaulting me.

  Mark admitted to raping me.

  . . .

  ME: I also had trouble deciding whether it was a big deal.

  HIM: I can understand—well, I should let you finish, but I can understand why you would process it in that way, and it just makes me sad. The whole thing just—

  ME: I think I’m okay now. But I was thinking about this new definition and I realized that the reason I had trouble even thinking of it as rape, or even serious, was, Well, he used his fingers, and it wasn’t violent. We’re so used to movie portrayals of violent rape, usually followed by murder, and we barely learn who the woman was. Then I realized I was so focused on thinking about your body, your hands, whatever was being used, that I wasn’t thinking about my body. I was only thinking about what it meant for the perpetrator, and what the perpetrator used, instead of thinking about it from the other point of view.

  HIM: Well, hopefully you’re not thinking that way anymore.

  ME: No, but you know, after encountering the new definition, in some way—it’s sort of silly, but now I can say it was serious.

  HIM: I don’t think it’s silly at all. I think that’s why it’s important that our laws reflect society and reality as best as they can. I don’t know exactly what I’m trying to articulate here, but that is one of the functions of useful laws, to give us a framework by which to form a collective society, to understand these are the boundaries and this is what is not okay.

  ME: I do think structural change happens through laws. Because a lot of people won’t take some actions seriously if the law doesn’t categorize them as such. I was recently thinking about popular movie portrayals of rape. Movies that came out when we were kids. There isn’t a lot of nuance in these movies. I’m thinking of Sally Field in Eye for an Eye, avenging her daughter’s rape and murder. At least it’s a woman avenging a rape. But it’s pretty simplistic.

  HIM: Vengeance is easy to sell.

  ME: It’s why so many people love The Godfather. Vengeance and supposedly family values. I was also thinking about things I heard when I was a teenager. Women just aren’t as funny as men. Or, women just can’t do math and science as well as men. Things like that. I’m wondering—not whether you bought into that—but if you remember those generalizations.

  HIM: I don’t think I personally felt that way. I certainly don’t now. I don’t feel like I had trouble accepting that women were intelligent on their own merits.

  ME: Sure, I just mean like the general mood in Sandusky, Ohio.

  HIM: Yeah, that as a backdrop, you’re dead on that that was a thing.

  ME: I remember Jake explaining to me—Jake loved to explain things.

  HIM: Yeah, mostly badly. [We laugh.]

  ME: Yeah, he would explain women weren’t as funny. I mean, he was in high school. His views have probably changed. And it’s interesting to think about the kids who are growing up with the #MeToo movement, and it’s so much more in the national discourse.

  HIM: When we were in high school, feminism felt like a thing that had already happened. And like we had kind of gotten somewhere halfway around equality.

  ME: Right.

  HIM: But it had kind of stopped. Which, yeah, is certainly not the mood now. Yeah, the #MeToo movement happening concurrently with these conversations is, I don’t know, fitting. Not the easiest thing. It’s just every time I see a #MeToo story, it’s just like it’s Me . . . too.

  HE TOLD YOU THAT?

  I ask Chris how he feels about my talking to Mark.

  I don’t like him for what he did, Chris says. Plenty of nerdy teenage boys are frustrated sexually but don’t assault someone. I was a pudgy kid in high school and frustrated that I didn’t have a girlfriend. I had a lot of friends who were girls. On school camping trips, some of the girls would want to share a tent with me. I remember this one girl saying, I’m going to cuddle with Chris. But I never ever—

  It wouldn’t have occurred to you, I tell him.

  No. Of course not. That’s not what you do.

  A lot of people aren’t going to like what I’m doing, giving him a voice.

  Don’t think about that, Chris says. Not right now, anyway.

  Do you think I care too much about what people think, and that’s why I forgave Mark?

  No. I think you just look for the good in people. And he was your best friend. He wasn’t some stranger.

  That’s what makes this so hard.

  And interesting, Chris says.

  Yeah. We’re not in some clichéd movie. I’m not some anonymous woman who gets two minutes of screen time before she’s raped and murdered by a stranger. But I do feel bad for not feeling how I think I’m supposed to feel. Really, I feel bad for him. He said it was the biggest regret of his life. He doesn’t really have any friends. He’s never had a girlfriend. He’s still a virgin.

  He told you that?

  Yeah. I actually think these phone calls are helping him. Here I was worried about his mental health. But he’s opening up, says it feels good to do.

  You were laughing while you were on the phone with him.

  Did that ups
et you?

  Kind of. I had to leave the house, go for a walk. I hate him for what he did to you.

  . . .

  ME: I don’t know if I would have decided to pursue this if not for #MeToo. I support the movement. But as someone who identifies as a feminist, I feel conflicted because the narrative I feel like I’m supposed to assume, I’m supposed to hate you—

  HIM: Right. And it’d be easier in a lot of ways—I think for me, even—if it was like, She hates me now and this is this terrible thing that I did. The forgiveness or attempted forgiveness or whatever you want to call it, it’s welcome but it’s tricky to process.

  ME: Just because—

  HIM: Because I never forgave myself, so it’s weird. It’s just strange to me, that you have.

  ME: So, what happened, you’ve never done anything like that to anyone else?

  HIM: No. Which I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.

  ME: It’s interesting because I was reading textbooks on perpetrators and the common traits of victims. The victims tend to be open-minded. They’re often in a state of vulnerability. Perpetrators will often choose a victim based on the victim’s good qualities or other characteristics, such as being polite, giving people the benefit of the doubt, being trusting, being shy, vulnerable, or accessible. And I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt. But I don’t like to see my behavior in the context of a textbook. In some ways it can be reassuring, but in other ways, I don’t know.

  HIM: Sure. You are your own individual, not limited to the textbook descriptions of your behavior.

  ME: Right. The word you used earlier, fraught, this whole thing is very fraught for me. And even thinking about all of this and—by giving you the benefit of the doubt and forgiving you and believing it’s possible to be a good person and make a mistake. I don’t know. I feel like a terrible feminist. Progressives, we will set up nonprofit organizations to deliver books to prisoners, prisoners who may have raped and murdered, and I’m not disagreeing with delivering books to prisoners. But I guess I’m confused about where the empathy is sometimes allowed to go.

  HIM: That’s kind of an interesting point. Because in progressive circles, there is an expectation to vilify certain behaviors and people, and how you get from one category to another is sometimes more complicated than we would like it to be.

  ME: It is very confusing. So you had thought all these years that I hated you?

  HIM: Well, I mean—at least that you should.

  ME: So immediately you felt—when did you start to regret it?

  HIM: It was one of those things where I knew while I was doing it that I shouldn’t be doing it, and I just did it anyway. It was strange.

  WRESTLING WITH THIS STUFF

  Rebekah calls me, wants to know how the latest call went.

  If Mark were a meathead, I tell her, if Mark were a bro-y guy, if Mark hadn’t given me exactly what I needed, then I would have an easier time feeling anger. And he was reflective about his role in the #MeToo movement. Also, he doesn’t occupy some high-up position. He doesn’t really have friends. Maybe he’s living the life he wants to be living, but he also seems kind of sad and depressed and lonely. And so I have a hard time accessing anger.

  Your description of the guy, Rebekah says, I mean my God. I would be wrestling with this stuff too.

  Really? I ask her.

  Absolutely.

  That makes me feel better, I tell her. And you know, I think it’s easy to hate someone who’s successful and is horrible to women. If Mark didn’t feel remorse, this wouldn’t be as interesting to me.

  This is the thing that makes the story unique, she says. The story is worth telling regardless, but this is what sets it apart. It’s participating in the #MeToo genre, but also is saying something a little bit different or a little bit new. I’m excited about this for the very reasons that you’re feeling trepidation.

  . . .

  ME: When did you feel that the friendship between us was coming apart?

  HIM: It was never really the same after that, right? We did talk afterwards. I think basically at the time we decided to try to ignore the problem. I was never really successful in that.

  ME: I don’t remember how things dissipated.

  HIM: Part of that was we were high school friends that went to college in different cities. We didn’t see each other that much, and I don’t think—it was hard—it would have been hard for me to—I don’t know. I was so ashamed of myself, I didn’t—I didn’t want the reminder of what had happened, is I think a large part of the reason why I didn’t try harder to keep the friendship alive.

  THE ASSAULT HAD CHANGED

  In the weeks after the assault, I found it strange that I could answer Mark’s calls in my normal voice. Was I forcing my voice to sound as it did before, or was my voice telling me that the assault had changed, or should change, nothing between us?

  And my voice now? I’m still speaking to him as if I’m over the assault. I even told him, Enough time has passed and I’m able to approach this from a remove. I’m okay.

  Chris is on the couch, reading poetry. Flannery is snoring next to him.

  Am I genuine? I ask him.

  What? he says.

  I’m being nice to Mark on the phone, but really I’m manipulating him.

  You told him you’re writing a book, Chris reminds me. Mark knows that.

  But I’m talking to him as if I’m okay. I also said I’d run the manuscript by him. I can’t do that. But I just blurted it out.

  Don’t show it to him, Chris says.

  Mark did say that he’s not trying to limit what I’m trying to do. I don’t think he really expects me to run it by him. Maybe I should get tattoo sleeves.

  What?

  Like those punk girls at the vegan diner, I explain. Girls with sleeves don’t put up with anything, you know?

  This morning I woke up with my fists clenched and my head far away, back to high school, to Mark’s house, to video games and physics formulas, to leftover Halloween candy and laughter about a hell house.

  I email Mark, asking him for five good memories. I want him to remember more than the assault—because I want to believe our friendship mattered.

  . . .

  ME: Do you think the fact that I was—I mean, it was the first time I’d ever been drunk. Do you think beyond the fact that I was really drunk and couldn’t consent—do you think that because I was at a school in another city—I don’t know how much rationalization crossed your mind, but back then did you think that you wouldn’t see me much, and therefore—

  HIM: I think it was more of being presented with that opportunity in that state—that there was just a momentary lapse of whatever you’d call it: self-control, decency.

  ME: So you don’t remember whose suggestion it was to take me into the basement?

  HIM: I wish I did, but no.

  ME: Do you think Jake knew? You know how sometimes guys will—if they think, These two will finally get together, I’m just going to peace out and leave them alone. Do you think Jake was—

  HIM: I don’t really think so. I think that something had happened came to him as a surprise the next morning, if I’m recalling correctly.

  ME: And then he never addressed it.

  HIM: No, I mean he knew I was upset and you were—that something had happened, but I don’t think we ever talked in any detail about what had happened.

  ME: Within our friend circle, how much did you open up with others—not about this but with your emotions in general?

  HIM: You were the only one I ever really talked to about much of anything that mattered. I’ve not really ever made friends that way. I don’t know. We used to talk a lot. I mean there were a couple semesters there when we were talking for hours. Which I didn’t really do with anybody else.

  ME: And you remember—I was having such a hard time that there are huge gaps in my memory from college. Do you—what do you remember of me? That’s a pretty self-involved question. But did
I talk a lot about my dad?

  HIM: I just remember we were both having a really hard go of it for a while. Because we had started talking more on the phone before your dad had died. I knew you were having a really hard time dealing with it, but I didn’t know the extent to which you were having a hard time dealing with it. It seemed like you were struggling because you had gone originally as a journalism student. It seemed like you were wanting to pursue creative writing, and that was a source of frustration. And then your boyfriend was a source of frustration. And then your dad died. And obviously everything that goes along with that. I remember these long sad phone calls. But at the same time those are good memories for me. Because I was in similar headspaces if not lower, and just to connect with somebody felt good.

  I WAS IN A WORSE PLACE

  When Mark ranked his pain, I instantly thought, No, I was in a worse place. I was depressed. My dad died. But maybe Mark did feel just as sad or sadder. Depression isn’t necessarily caused by an event. Still, I’m mad at him for saying that. Sarah’s right: he kept equalizing our experiences.

  . . .

  ME: I remember feeling conflicted about the journalism school because I felt I was only there because I’d been editor of the high school paper, and the only reason I’d been editor was, I thought, because my newspaper advisor was a creep. His harassing me, it went on for a long time.

  HIM: That’s tough. You didn’t ever talk about being assaulted in high school. I don’t think we ever—that was all rumors that ever got to me at the time. Which I can understand not wanting to talk about it.

  ME: One of the big questions I’ve had over the years is why did you stop when you did? Why—

  HIM: You know, I’ve asked myself that question a lot, and honestly I think I just chickened out. And I’m glad I did, but—

  ME: Why do you think that is? Because you hadn’t been with a girl prior?

  HIM: No, I mean—I think it was the kind of thing where I knew I shouldn’t be doing it.