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)

  We laugh.

  I like the way you’re thinking, I say, but I could use more scenes for the book. Though I don’t know if I can really see him.

  So don’t, she says. You don’t have to see him. I care about your reflection.

  I ask my editor what she thinks.

  It’s up to you, she says. Putting concerns about the book aside, I think seeing him would be good. It might provide closure. There’s something about speaking in person that’s different from speaking on the phone.

  IS THAT THE RIGHT WAY TO LIVE?

  Ever since Adam mentioned that I have grandiose tendencies, I’ve been second-guessing my intentions.

  Do you think there’s something grandiose to writing? I ask Adam. To think: Complete strangers will read this because I have something to say.

  To some degree, Adam says, there has to be something in you where you feel worth it. Where is that typically? Hundreds of thousands of people have already done this. To not write a book at that point might feel like low self-worth, or lack of confidence. Instead of a writer, think of a doctor or a therapist. Does that mean that a doctor or therapist is grandiose because they think they can help somebody? They’re meddling in other people’s affairs. Or a cop: I think I’m the right guy who can supervise everybody in my town. But if we were Laverne and Shirley at the walk-in brewery, putting caps on bottles, is that the right way to live if we felt like we had something different to give the world?

  That makes me feel better, I tell him.

  And why do I believe this project is worth it? Because so many perpetrators of sexual assault are regular guys, and I want to show that. I also want to show how I made—back then and even very recently—excuses for Mark, even though I know better. I really thought I’d handle my interviews with Mark differently. I thought I’d interrogate him. So much for my If He Says No/Yes boasting.

  HE USED HIS FINGERS TO RAPE HIS VICTIM

  Mark and I email back and forth, trying to figure out when and where to meet. My emails to him are crafted without seeming crafted. I am going for casual. I don’t want any more overwrought messages about the most impregnable emotional barriers and desperate self-preservation. I want to reach him, not the guy trying to say all the right things.

  I ask him to recommend quiet restaurants or cafés, and in his email reply he writes, I feel like there’s a definite shortage of listicles offering to tell me what the 15 best places for this would be.

  I laugh and feel uncomfortable about laughing. I want to access anger. I should move the emails in a business-casual direction. But what’s the tonal equivalent of black slacks and a nice blouse?

  I watch a movie about a woman who realizes, decades later, that she was raped as a teenager—and it scares me, this premise. She blocked the rapist’s actions. But I never really blocked Mark’s. All along I could say that he carried me into his basement room, undressed me, put his fingers in my vagina, and told me to be quiet. I just can’t bring myself to acknowledge that his actions fit the definition of rape.

  I tell Chris, I still have trouble labeling it, what Mark did to me, rape.

  Chris asks, Are there different degrees of rape?

  It differs by state, I tell him. There are all these confusing overlapping codes because laws keep getting revised. And a lot of states don’t even use the term rape.

  Have you looked into that Brock Turner case? Chris asks. I think he used an object to rape his victim.

  He used his fingers.

  In January of 2015, Brock Turner used his fingers to rape his unconscious victim, referred to as Emily Doe, on the ground behind a dumpster. The judge sentenced Turner to only six months in county jail. Turner served three. Politicians, media outlets, and his victim referred to him as a rapist. But in California, at that time, using one’s fingers to penetrate a victim was a less serious sexual offense. More than a year later, in response to public outcry about the case, the California State Legislature unanimously passed two bills: one bill would update California’s legal definition of rape to cover digital penetration, and the other bill would provide a mandatory minimum three-year prison sentence for the sexual assault of an intoxicated or unconscious person. The governor signed them into law in September of 2016.

  And this, I realize, is why using the word rape matters. Because Emily Doe used the word rape, I now feel comfortable using it too. And if I can use the word rape to describe Mark’s actions, maybe some readers of this book—who also have been raped in the same way—won’t diminish what happened to them.

  Mark raped me.

  UNDERWATER

  Classes end, and I submit grades—and I just want to relax. But it’s almost June, and I still haven’t bought the plane tickets to visit Mark.

  I ask Chris if he’ll help me book the trip.

  Sure, what do you need help with? he asks.

  I just want you to stand near me while I handle it. That’s all.

  Chris watches me pick flights and type my credit card number.

  Isn’t this fun? I ask him.

  I load the Airbnb site, and Chris says, Why don’t you stay at a hotel?

  Because in my funding proposal to the English Department, I said I’d use Airbnb. Though I really don’t want to deal with plug-in air fresheners and a bad mattress.

  Stay at a hotel, Chris says. You’ll be able to relax more easily.

  There’s a chance I won’t get reimbursed, I tell him.

  But I take Chris’s advice, splurging on a room at the Hilton.

  Now I really feel anxious about seeing Mark. I swim laps, thinking that might relax me. But each time I go underwater, flashbacks of the rape come at me. Only one other swimmer is in the pool, and he’s several lanes away. The next time I go underwater, I scream—and it feels good. And nobody heard. I didn’t want anybody to, of course. I wonder if any gender studies academics have explored reclusive screaming. I should ask Leigh-Anne.

  BRAVE?

  I’m on an Amtrak train to New York. I’m supposed to give a reading there tonight, but really I’m using it as an excuse to see friends. Nina insisted I stay the night with her. And Sarah told me she wanted to discuss my project because she knows I’m seeing Mark later this week.

  Across the aisle, a man and a woman, both in suits, share a laptop. She tells him that she feels guilty for not doing more. He tells her how useful she’s been to the team.

  I just don’t want the others to think I’m not pulling my weight, she says.

  This fear, so many women have it: I’m not doing enough. I should be doing more.

  Jung texts me while I’m on the train, asks if I’ve booked my trip to visit Mark. I reply that I leave in four days. You’re the bravest person I know right now, she texts back.

  Brave? I hadn’t considered this brave. I don’t feel brave.

  I’m nervous.

  But I remind myself that Mark probably feels way more nervous.

  At the bookstore, an hour before the event, I consider reading from this project, but decide that could be upsetting for anybody in the audience who’s been raped. So I read from the beginning of my first book. I likely could recite it from memory by now.

  Afterward, I head to Nina’s apartment, and she tells me how helpful this project has been to her.

  Ever since you started working on it, she says, it’s gotten me thinking more about my ex. That’s a good thing. I’m confronting the rape. I’ve really been thinking about how manipulative he was. He listed all the ways he was going to ruin me. First, he said he’d send this sex tape to my master’s program. He said he’d send it to my internship boss. And I was like, Fine, go ahead. Send them the video. I don’t care. But then he threatened to send it to my parents, and I freaked out. He knew they were my weakness. Having their view of me stay intact, that was important. I told him he couldn’t send it to them. Then he pushed the threat harder, said if I didn’t have sex with him again, he’d send the tape to my parents. I think he recognized the cultural difference. He was white, and
he knew I came from a traditional Indian household. And I never wanted to tape us having sex. That was all for him.

  How much older was he? I ask her.

  Seven years older, she says. And I figured, Okay, this is what adults do in a relationship. I was still in undergrad, and I wanted to seem more adult. So when he threatened to send them the tape, I agreed to sleep with him again. There was no point where I said, Stop.

  How are you feeling about it?

  I feel like I’m still in the process of understanding my feelings, she says. How about you?

  Same, I tell her. Would it offend you if I used the word rape when describing what Mark did?

  Nina laughs.

  No, she says. Of course not.

  Are you sure?

  Yes, I’m sure. Oh my gosh. Of course it wouldn’t offend me.

  And then we’re both laughing.

  Before I catch my train back to Baltimore, Sarah and I meet for coffee near Penn Station.

  When do you visit Mark? she asks.

  At the end of this week, I tell her, and I don’t know how to greet him. I mean, it’d be too weird to hug him. A handshake is too professional.

  It’s like you’re about to climb Mount Everest, she says, but you’re worried about stepping on a bug before you get on the mountain.

  WE HAVE TO KEEP MAKING ART

  Rebekah calls me when I’m at the Baltimore airport.

  When do you leave to see Mark? she asks.

  In an hour, I say. I’m meeting up with him tomorrow evening.

  That’s this weekend? she says. How are you feeling?

  Nervous, I tell her. But mostly because I don’t know what else I can really get out of him. He’s answered most of my questions.

  TV screens are showing the latest news story: families seeking asylum in the United States are being separated at the border.

  It’s hard to focus on this project, I tell Rebekah, when our country is committing blatant human rights violations.

  I understand why you’re feeling that way, she says. But please don’t stop working on this project. We have to keep making art. If we stop, then the other side wins.

  I tell her about my friend Tom’s project, the one he’s doing about ISIS.

  I probably shouldn’t say ISIS at an airport, I whisper, and then I worry that by whispering, I’m actually drawing even more attention to myself. Oh, and I should get going. It looks like my flight is boarding.

  In line for boarding, the man in front of me asks, So what’s bringing you to Ohio?

  Work, I say.

  He’s pale-skinned, thin, looks fortyish but has a kid’s face—freckles dabbing his small nose and big cheeks. He wears a blue polo shirt tucked into dark jeans with a braided belt.

  What’s your work? he asks.

  Writing, I tell him.

  Maybe I’ll sit next to you on the flight? I’d love to hear more about your writing.

  I think, No you wouldn’t. Unfortunately, this airline doesn’t do assigned seating.

  Once inside the plane, I search for a middle seat and apologize to the women on either side.

  The flight attendant said it’s a full flight, I explain.

  Sit, sit, they say—almost in unison.

  We retire to our antisocial airplane props: magazine, movie, book, headphones. I open my notebook, tell myself, Write about your feelings. Instead, I write about booking, when I was twenty-three, a one-way ticket, New York to Paris, to declare my love for a man twice my age. He was a screenwriter. I’d met him at a magazine party in New York. But he lived in London, not Paris. My rationale: If I’m already on his side of the Atlantic, I can drop in casually. I explained this to French border control agents suspicious of my one-way ticket. I told them that I wanted to seem less desperate to the man. I told them that I’d be staying in Paris with another man, a French citizen. The man I was traveling for, I told them, he was an American screenwriter working in London. He divided his time between there and New York.

  What’s his name? the agents wanted to know.

  Which one? I asked.

  The French one.

  Cyril, I said.

  Cyril what? they asked.

  Cyril taught literature at a university in Paris, or maybe right outside Paris. He belonged to something called the Jockey Club (Proust mentions it, he’d elaborated, in À La Recherche du Temps Perdu). He published political satire under a pseudonym in obscure French literary magazines. I knew that much. But Cyril’s last name escaped me. Or maybe he never mentioned it. We’d met six months prior, in a Manhattan bookstore. I’d been reading Apollinaire when he introduced himself. We then spent the weekend together, meandering through the city and discussing books, before he returned to Paris. Come with me, he’d said, but I was already infatuated with the screenwriter (who seemed completely unaware of my feelings, though we emailed almost every day). In the months since then, Cyril and I had emailed. His email address translated to count of the dispossessed, or something like that, in Basque or another dying language. But I didn’t learn that until months after corresponding with him. By then I felt too embarrassed to ask him his last name; it seemed like something I should know.

  You don’t know his last name? one agent asked.

  No one travels like this, the other agent said.

  So I told them, You’re just jealous because I’m twenty-three and unencumbered.

  And that’s when they left me alone in a small room.

  I genuinely didn’t see the problem. I wasn’t transporting cocaine or firearms. And who wouldn’t book a transatlantic flight that cost less than $300?

  When the agents returned, they searched my bags—heavy with poetry books—and laughed while reading my journals.

  What’s so funny? I asked.

  They laughed harder.

  I knew they were judging my sappy entries about the screenwriter. Yet things could have been worse. I deserved worse. But I was a young, well-dressed white American woman. My only repercussions? The agents stamped my passport with a travel deadline. I had one month in France, which was fine by me. It gave structure to my otherwise disorganized trip.

  And why am I thinking about that trip? I’m not exactly sure. It was such a stupid, probably manic thing to do: flying across the ocean to stay in Paris with somebody whose last name I didn’t know—only because I wanted to drop into London to declare my love to some other acquaintance. And I did declare my love to the screenwriter. Over drinks at a London pub, I confided that I’d actually made the trip to tell him my feelings. And he told me he had a girlfriend. But then he invited me back to the house he shared with her, said she wouldn’t be home for a few hours, and I had sex with him there. I never thought I would do something like that, but I did. And for the next two years, whenever he visited New York, I’d sleep with him.

  The plane lands, and I take a cab to the hotel. I am so glad I followed Chris’s advice. The hotel has a bar, a nice restaurant, a gym, a pool. I sit by the big window in my room, open my notebook, and think about my first paying job: motel maid. My first week there, a man invited me into his room. I was thirteen years old. He must have been at least fifty, though at thirteen it’s hard to guess adults’ general ages. I told him I had to work, and he told me he wouldn’t tell. I slipped into the nearest room and locked the door. He knocked, said, I won’t tell. I called the main desk, said that the man in whatever room he was in needed assistance. Strange that I’m only now remembering this. Or: not at all strange.

  I’m reconstructing scenes from the past—when I should be reflecting on my feelings about now.

  I write I feel and then draw a blank—as in, a line for a blank. I do this down the page.

  I feel _____________________________

  I feel _____________________________

  I feel _____________________________

  I feel _____________________________

  I feel _____________________________

  I feel _____________________________

 
I feel _____________________________

  I feel _____________________________

  I find the hotel bar.

  The bartender asks me what I’ll have, and I tell him a cocktail probably. But I need a moment.

  Do you want something sweet or dry?

  I like vodka-based cocktails, I say. I just need a minute to decide.

  I’m going to make you a pretty in pink, he says and disappears before I can object.

  I open my notebook, tell myself, Reflect on the rape. I write: I know how to order a drink.

  Sports games play on the two absurdly large flat-screen TVs above the bar—except the third screen shows MSNBC. The journalists are covering the child migrants. I’m reading the subtitles—These are prisons. We’re jailing babies—when the channel suddenly changes to sports.

  Hey, the other bartender says. I was watching that.

  The remote is in my bartender’s hand. My bartender disgusts me, or I am transferring my disgust for the current administration to my bartender.

  He returns with some magenta-looking liquid, and I stupidly thank him. I try it, and he doesn’t even ask if I like it. I don’t. I should tell him. But I don’t.

  I write: I didn’t want pretty in pink, and now I’m going to pay twelve dollars for this disgusting cocktail.

  The man next to me asks what I’m working on.

  Work, I say.

  He looks at me, expecting more.

  I’m under a deadline, I say.

  I get it, he says. You don’t want to talk to me.

  It’s a tight deadline, I explain.

  It must be. You’d be crazy to do work at a bar.

  I smile a closed-lips smile. Why do I smile?

  You from the area? he asks.

  Baltimore, I tell him.

  What brings you here then?

  I’m here to interview the guy who raped me fourteen years ago. But I don’t say that.

  Work, I answer.

  I ask the bartender for the check, and he looks at my glass.

  Did you not like the cocktail?

  No, I tell him. It’s too sweet.

  He doesn’t charge me for it, and I thank him. Why thank him for not charging me for what I did not order? Yet I do, twice: Really, thank you.