by Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl (retail) (epub)
ME: What do you think is most interesting about this project? If it’s possible for you to remove yourself and imagine it from an outsider’s perspective.
HIM: I can understand why you would want to write about it. Because it is an unusual situation to find yourself in. Because I feel like most rape victims are not close to the people that rape them. Or don’t remain close, anyway. It’s been interesting, it’s been good, to hear your side of things. I feel like you have very different reactions to what happened than I would have expected, or than people generally would have expected. So that’s interesting. To see what your thoughts on what happened are. That’s kind of a dumb answer.
ME: No, that’s really helpful for me to know. To turn this around, do you have questions for me? Is there something you’ve wanted to ask me?
HIM: Did you feel like you needed to forgive me?
ME: No. I don’t think I ever felt like I needed to forgive you. I’ve wondered about that. Like, Why am I not angrier? I’m supposed to be angry. And I don’t—
HIM: You had to have felt, just—
ME: I was hurt, and sort of surprised. My dad’s death complicates it. Because honestly, I remember when stuff happened with my newspaper advisor, I didn’t want my dad to know. Which is why I didn’t want to tell my mom. I eventually did tell my mom. She told my dad. And when he found out, I was devastated because I knew how much he hated—he couldn’t—a father—
HIM: Sure, he would have wanted to protect you.
ME: Right. So after what happened between us, in some messed-up way, I remember feeling relief that I didn’t have to keep this from my dad, and he wouldn’t have to feel bad, and therefore I didn’t—again, the patriarchy, literally patriarchy.
HIM: Your own emotions are contingent on protecting your father’s.
ME: Yes. And I just was so—I was also, I don’t remember, I honestly don’t remember feeling angry, and this could be—and this is the whole danger of this project. Just as a therapist may think she knows more about the patient than the patient knows, the reader, I’m realizing—and I’ll probably put this in the book verbatim, but I’m realizing that the reader, I am running the risk of the reader thinking or feeling that she knows more about me than I know, in terms of my reaction. If put into the context of a sociology textbook—
HIM: If you’re writing about your fifteen years of rethinking it, versus your immediate reaction at the time—
ME: Right. But I do remember my immediate reaction. I don’t think I was lying when I told you back then, I forgive you, just read Franny and Zooey. I didn’t feel angry at you. I felt angry at my newspaper advisor. I felt angry at the friend who raped me years later. I don’t talk to him anymore, and I would never reach back out to him.
HIM: I wouldn’t imagine.
ME: But with you, we had this history, and I felt conflicted, because I felt you were a good person who did something bad. But also, I think my first boyfriend—there was such an age difference. I was a high school freshman and he was a high school senior. He got me to do a lot of things that I didn’t want to do. And so I think I was associating anything sexual with—
HIM: Right. This is just what guys do.
ME: And it’s up to what the men want.
HIM: That’s a shame.
ME: I know so many women who’ve been sexually assaulted. It’s just so common. I think I also thought, It could have been worse. I don’t know why I can’t feel angry.
HIM: Do you think you weren’t allowing yourself to feel angry? I don’t want to push you on this. I feel gross—
ME: No, there’s been enough distance. I’m asking you to ask me. I’m writing about this.
HIM: There’s a part of me that knows that, and there’s a part of me that just—it just still feels, I don’t know, unseemly to—this is just maybe my Midwestern prudishness.
THE THINGS YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO
I told him: But I do remember my immediate reaction—I don’t think I was lying when I told you back then, I forgive you. That’s not right. My immediate reaction, which I still can’t remember, is one he remembers: I cried and whispered, He raped me.
I’m behind on grading and still need to file my taxes.
I call Nina, ask her, Do you ever not do the things you’re supposed to do—even though you know you should do them and that if you did do them you’d feel happier?
She laughs, offers an emphatic yes.
I just described procrastination, didn’t I? I ask.
Yes, she says. Everybody does that.
I confide in a colleague: My students submitted essays three weeks ago, and I still haven’t returned grades.
I haven’t returned papers that students gave me at the start of the semester, she says.
So I won’t be fired? I ask.
Do you realize how hard it’d be to get fired?
I almost, finally, file my taxes. But before clicking submit, I am offered protection in the event I’m audited. TurboTax is what, a gruff Italian mobster? I then spend five hours researching the likelihood I’ll be audited. I sort of eyeballed my deductions. I mean, nobody actually goes receipt by receipt. Right? Mark used to work at a tax place. But no, I will not ask him to make amends by reviewing my taxes. That’d be absurd. Though the fact that I’m even interviewing him is absurd. But no, I won’t ask him to review my taxes.
. . .
ME: I think also this was the other key piece. It’d been a year since my dad died. And just my whole life, everything, I was so devoted to him. Any time anything bad happened after he died, I just thought, Well, the worst thing has already happened. Nothing will be as bad as that. And therefore, I decided, I’m not going to spend time thinking about anything else bad—
HIM: That makes a kind of sense.
ME: I think it makes sense that this is what I want to write about after writing the book for my dad. When I think about that being out of the way—
HIM: If you already wrote about the most important thing, now you have the space to write about what else happened.
ME: And it’s just now—last week, I was giving a reading, reading from my book, and suddenly I realized, I’m missing my dad. I’d read from the book so many times. But suddenly, in reading it this time, I felt—I remembered: He’s really gone. Though I’m not obsessing about him anymore. Probably because of the book, medication, whatever. He doesn’t obsess me.
HIM: That’s good.
ME: I think one reason this project interests me—after the election, I thought about what happened between us a lot. I also thought a lot about my newspaper advisor and this other guy.
HIM: Having a sexual predator as president, I see how that could bring that on.
ME: I was just so—I was having nightmares a lot. I got mad at this history professor where I work. He said something like, At least with our side, real change will start to happen. I told him that in the moment, it’s hard to see things that way. I told him that women—among so many other groups—are having a hard time processing—because we now have a president, on record, bragging about sexually assaulting women. And the history prof said to me that I’d made an inappropriate comment. I thought, Because I acknowledged that sexual assault exists, that’s inappropriate? But I didn’t tell him that. I felt too angry to speak.
HIM: That’s a strange reaction—on his part.
ME: Trump insulted basically every group. It’s not just women. But I think it was seeing the video come out, and Republicans still getting behind him even though he’s on tape—
HIM: It’s depressing.
ME: And then the way they talked about women: It could have been my daughter or my wife or my mother or my sister. It’s like, you don’t have to connect this to women in relation to you. A woman can be a woman.
HIM: Right, but I feel like that’s how a lot of guys process—that’s the only way they’re able to relate to women’s issues. By the context of paternalism. Not super productive.
ME: So when I thought to write ab
out this, I did wonder if it’d stop the nightmares. And I can take the story from a relatively new angle. I mean, I’m sure someone has done this. But it hasn’t been done that much.
HIM: I haven’t seen too many sympathetic portraits of, you know, my own rapist.
ME: Is it weird for you—the definition?
HIM: I had never really thought about it, associated it with that word, but if that’s the definition, then it is what it is. I don’t like that that word applies to me. But I guess it does.
ME: I’m interested in examining the complexity of all this.
HIM: And if you’re going to write it, you may as well really do the job. Obviously, it’s uncomfortable for me to be the subject, but that’s fine.
ME: I’m glad we’re talking again. If there’s anything—if there’s any way to make it up to me, this is definitely it.
HIM: Well, I’m glad I can do that for you.
ME: I should let you go. We’ve been talking for a while now.
HIM: Like I was saying, I don’t have a huge amount of plans. I don’t know if it’s either here nor there, but when we were close, I was not doing photography. I will email you—I went out immediately after our last conversation, or the next day, I took some photos I like. I don’t know, at least in context. I don’t know if they have some sort of—I’d just be curious to see what you think.
ME: I’d love to see them.
HIM: I work for a camera shop, so over the years I’ve picked up a few things. I’m not a photographer of any great note.
ME: Have you thought about doing professional photography for a magazine or newspaper or—
HIM: To really control a portrait session, you need to have a little bit more of an extroverted personality than I do. I do some product photos at work for our website. Which is fine, but it’s not all that exciting. I do more urbex-y sort of stuff on my own time. You should have just gotten an email with a link. You don’t have to look right now. It’s fine. Just because it was like—they were in some way a reaction to that conversation.
ME: These are really great.
HIM: Oh, well. Thank you.
ME: Oh, wow. Thanks for the metaphors.
HIM: Well, that’s why I figured it might be useful to you.
ME: These are amazing.
HIM: It’s nice of you to say. It’s an abandoned factory maybe five or ten minutes from where I work.
ME: This is so thoughtful. Really, thank you.
HIM: You’re welcome. As best I can figure, it was some sort of power station. It was right next to a railway. It’s in obvious ruin, which is fun.
ME: The contrast—
HIM: Yeah, I was going for a really high contrast.
ME: And I like the focal point. In this one with the tire. I like how the focal point is on the stairs—
HIM: Just go metaphor crazy. It’s fine.
ME: And near the stairs—
HIM: Yeah, there’s a big pile of collapsed ceiling.
ME: Basically, I like where you have the focal point.
HOW DOES THIS ALL END?
I share both transcripts with Jung and Molly. We meet at the same restaurant where we met before. I make sure there are no children sitting near us this time.
I find it annoying that he went out and took photos, Molly says.
Oh. I thought that was really nice of him, I say.
Jung looks at me, like: Huh?
I mean, he’s in a tough rhetorical position, I reply.
Jung and Molly look down at the table. They seem unsure of how to talk about this.
It’s okay, I tell them. I sent you the transcripts because I genuinely want your criticisms.
If the rape is all he remembers of you, Jung asks, then what does that say about your friendship?
Maybe it mattered so much, I say, that the good memories now feel painful to him.
Jung eyes my eyes. I think of Aristotle’s belief that friends provide us with self-knowledge that might otherwise be hard to grasp. We deceive ourselves of our motives, even when we don’t mean to.
I know, I tell her, I know. I’m defending him.
How do you feel? Molly asks.
Confused, I answer.
I’m curious, Jung says, about where you both end up. How does this all end?
Oh, I intend to cut off communication with Mark when this is done.
That’s so interesting, Molly says. I hadn’t considered.
I just realized that, I said. I hadn’t really thought about where this would all end. I guess because I don’t see Mark and me keeping in touch. Is that bad?
No, Molly says. It makes sense.
It’s not me ending the friendship, right? He ended it.
I wouldn’t feel bad, Jung says. I think it’s strange that he can’t come up with five good memories.
Now I’m really wondering, What was this friendship? I feel stupid for having defended him to Jung and Molly. Sure, I came up with a lot of memories, I told them, but I’m a memoirist. It’s what I do.
But really: How can he not recall five specific memories?
Reminiscing about our friendship suddenly seems like the sun casting a fake specialness on a pile of trash. But I want to find the nice memories that were thrown away.
I return to the audio. I listen to Mark say, It was a huge betrayal.
His voice: assertive, reflexive, matter-of-fact.
His voice, as I remember it when he apologized: hesitant, rickety.
I meet with Adam.
I don’t think my friends believe me, I tell him, when I say that I’m not angry.
Others’ disbelief, Adam says, that’s its own topic.
But what if I don’t know how I feel? Am I wrong? Is this like when therapists think they know more about their patients than their patients know about themselves?
A real therapist is not going to think that, Adam explains. Maybe sidewalk psychology says that. The point of modern therapy is to say anything and to feel anything.
I feel hurt, I tell Adam, that Mark hasn’t sent me five good memories.
Not that I would hope one way or the other, Adam says, but it could be just as good, sort of grist for the mill, if he’s not able to. So much to write about there. I’m almost hoping he doesn’t. It’s just another layer. Also, I don’t know if your books about anger touch on this, but I have found that underneath anger are usually two things at work: guilt or fear. Sometimes it’s both. But one of those is always there. Sometimes you have to dig deep to identify the fear, but it could be anything and it’s usually about us. It’s usually about ourselves. There’s something we’re afraid of. It could have to do with emotional security or financial security. But underneath the anger is usually some degree of fear or guilt.
That makes sense, I tell him. We feel many things at once. Feelings within other feelings.
PART FOUR: THE VISIT
I REALIZE MY HANDS ARE SHAKING
Five weeks after I requested them, Mark sends, finally, five good memories:
Making it through my morning classes to lunch and sitting across a table from you and talking about everything and nothing for 15–20 minutes, and maybe teasing Garrett for having watched Office Space yet again the night before.
Tagging along with friends to go to Steak & Shake while you were working, and eating cheese fries and frisco melts and laughing and talking with you for five minutes between tables and leaving what seemed like extravagant tips for a high schooler with a part time job.
I visited you at Northwestern and we rode the L into Belmont and spent an afternoon browsing through record stores and weird little boutiques, and then I dragged you downtown to go to the observation deck at the Sears Tower only I had us walk a mile in the wrong direction to the John Hancock building which was closed (sorry!).
In the summer after our freshman year in college, Carlos and I somehow talked you into coming to a sportscar race at Mid-Ohio, and we sat on the bleachers in the sun and watched cars go by.
I also rememb
er staying up too late watching weird movies in the little room at the top of the stairs in your parents’ house, and monopolizing that giant papasan chair you had whenever I could.
Until now, I forgot the third memory. And I feel such relief: he possesses a memory that I can’t reconstruct. This seems like proof that he valued our friendship. But if he valued it, then why did he ruin it?
In his email, he explained why it took him so long to send the memories:
I really didn’t intend to ignore this for so long, but I sort of got knocked off my equilibrium, and I guess I needed some time to build up a little bit of mental distance from all this again (is that awful of me?). I suppose I’m also a bit embarrassed at how sparse my own memories—good and bad—of those years have become. I’ve had a frustrating amount of difficulty in recalling specific moments, as opposed to general impressions.
I reply to Mark, thanking him for the five good memories, and we arrange to see one another in June.
I sit at my computer to buy a round-trip plane ticket to visit him, but instead buy tickets for a movie showing around the corner.
I just need to get out of my head, I tell Chris.
The synopsis: a woman unwittingly commits herself to a psychiatric facility where her stalker becomes a staffer. I should have researched this before buying tickets.
Chris whispers, Do you want to leave?
I almost ask why, but I realize my hands are shaking.
No, I’m fine, I whisper back.
After the film ends, I tell Chris: The stalker, he looked like Mark. The facial hair and glasses. It was unnerving.
I call Sarah, describe the movie where the actor resembled Mark.
If I can’t watch a movie where an actor resembles Mark, I tell her, how am I going to visit him?
You don’t have to visit him, she says. Honestly, I don’t care about his take.
Really?
I don’t, she says. His voice, his excuses, none of that interests me.
But then the reader is left with what? I ask her. My interior life?