Don't You Forget About Me

by Mhairi McFarlane

  Mrs Pemberton taught me the word for what I’m feeling. Catharsis.

  Now all I have to do is find the courage to read it.

  41

  A stage. A microphone. A long walk to the stage. A quiet in the room that feels greater and more intimidating than any quiet in any room I’ve ever known. I can’t do it I can’t do it I can’t do it.

  I can do it. I have to prove it to myself by starting speaking. Deep breath. Jump.

  ‘When I first tried to prepare something for tonight’s show, I knew what my worst day at school was, without a moment’s hesitation. But I didn’t write about it. Instead I was going to tell you about the time me and my friend Jo drank a bottle of Malibu and pineapple and pierced each other’s ears with ice cubes and safety pins. Jo got a staph cocc infection, hers swelled up to the size of The BFG and I was grounded for a month. Only one of mine actually worked so I went around wearing a single large hoop, like a pirate.’

  A ripple of laughter. And breathe.

  ‘I’ve never told anyone about my worst experience at school. Not my best friend, not my sister, not my mum, not any boyfriend, then or since. Not the counsellor I saw in my twenties. But I’m going to talk about it now.’

  I glance up. I shiver when I see Lucas, standing against a wall by the bar, eyes fixed upon me with intensity. I knew he might watch, knowing the subject matter, but the confirmation gives me a thunderclap of the heart. I have no time, no space, to be more terrified.

  ‘It was the night of the sixth form leavers prom. I went to that do on a cloud of excitement and hormones, shoe-horned into a red dress I’d saved up for. It cost £55, which seemed a fortune at the time. I was reeking of vanilla and tonka beans, whatever they are, having snuck three large squirts from a perfume bottle in my older sister Esther’s bedroom. And I had Durex in my handbag, hidden in the zipped compartment. I bought them in a pub vending machine, and had never felt so grown up in my life. I hadn’t told anyone but I’d started seeing a boy, another pupil. We planned to stay together after the party, for the first time.’

  I glance up at riveted faces and gather myself, careful not to look at Lucas this time. I see Jo, her eyes glued to me, frowning. Talking about condoms feels so personal that I question whether I should be doing this. Too late. I turn the page.

  ‘I wasn’t popular, exactly, at school. I was popular enough. I didn’t get picked last for netball, I wasn’t bullied, the cool kids knew my name. I felt as if popularity was something you had to work for, and rigorously maintain, and I spent every day aware of it. I clowned around when I thought it would win me approval, I didn’t always admit to knowing the answer in lessons. I made sure if I got A grades, I didn’t show off. I knew who not to cross. And I knew who I had to impress.

  ‘At the party, at first, it felt as if those years of striving were paying off. The most popular boy at school told me I was “fit”. He was That Boy – I’m guessing every school year has one – who carries himself like he’s Jim Morrison. He is revered and desired. His word is God. When it came to girls, he only consorted with queen bees, the handful deemed attractive enough to be worthy of him. I didn’t fancy him, and I didn’t expect him to fancy me in a million years, but I wanted his approval, above all others. Everyone did. His opinion of you could make you, or break you.

  ‘And he’d complimented me. This was unprecedented. This was a coronation. It was like being in a daytime soap, and being nominated for an Oscar. Then he added: You look like a high-class prozzy. “That’s your thing, right?” Everyone laughed. I laughed too, to show I wasn’t stuck up. If I laughed, I was part of the joke, not the object of it. I wanted to believe he meant I looked seductive, when in fact I knew he wasn’t paying me a compliment at all. He was making it clear I was viewed as a girl hopeful for that sort of attention, and that I was actively inviting being treated a certain way. He was saying you’re cheap, and I was enthusiastically agreeing.

  ‘He told me he wanted to “show me something”. When I think back to that moment, much as I wanted to believe me and this boy were friends, I knew I was being mocked. Remember those times in life, when you sense everyone is on something, and you’re not? The holding of breath while they see if you fall for it, the murmuring, the giggling they catch in the throat, so they don’t ruin the prank? It was that. Nevertheless, I said “Ooh OK …” with a stupid grin on my face, wanting them to accept me, wanting to be game Georgina who was up for anything and so, so likeable. Above all, be likeable. Never stop smiling. Keep smiling, laugh along, and you can’t go far wrong.’

  The room is so still, I could hear a pin drop. I continue.

  ‘Onlookers outside his gang watched in envy and wonder as he led me away from the party, by the hand. A huge public gesture, being prepared to be seen with me like that. I was being anointed by the king. Georgina Horspool just got a major promotion. If he wants her, then she’s made it.’

  I shuffle and turn my sheets of paper and in the now sepulchral silence, the rustling sounds painfully loud in the microphone.

  ‘The Boy took me into the disabled toilet. He locked us in before I really comprehended where we were, and put himself between me and the door, a smirk on his face. Suddenly, I knew I was out of my depth.

  ‘“What are we doing here?” I said. He pushed me roughly against the wall and tried to kiss me. I pushed him away and tried to laugh it off. I heard the noise as if it had come from someone else, strangled and false-sounding.

  ‘“What’s the problem?” he said. “You like me.”

  ‘It wasn’t a question.

  ‘“I do like you,” I said, quickly, because I wanted this boy to think that, and I wanted him to like me.

  ‘“Then what’s the problem?” he said.

  ‘He pushed his mouth against mine again. It was sloppy and aggressive, teeth first, and tasted of Strongbow. But he was That Boy. This was an extraordinary honour, if he wanted to kiss me. So how could I stop him?

  ‘Nothing in my life so far had equipped me for this. School teachers, my parents, getting on and fitting in – my experiences had taught me nice girls say yes please and thank you, we oblige people, we meet their expectations, we don’t hurt feelings or offend. We don’t say no. This boy wanted something from me, so I should reciprocate.’

  I glance up again and see Jo, tears now coursing down her face, her hands gripping Clem and Rav’s on either side of her, both of whom look pale and shocked. I look away again before I catch Jo’s tears, still not able to look back to where I know a man with dark hair and dark eyes is watching me.

  ‘He went to kiss me again, and tugged at the front of my dress, trying to wrench me out of my bra. Fortunately the fact my dress was a size too small meant it was tight as sausage skin, and he barely moved it a centimetre. “Don’t!” I said.’ Here, my voice breaks for the first time. I swallow it down and continue.

  ‘But I tried to say it in a light, playful, coy way. A don’t that was supposed to translate as: Don’t, but of course DO another time, only maybe not right now, because I am a Good Girl. An instruction, that was begging.

  ‘“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said. I hated myself for not succeeding in deflecting him. I was funny, cool Georgina, and I wanted to prove I could cope. I wanted it to turn out well. I didn’t want to upset him. That shouldn’t be beyond me. Yeah, what the fuck WAS wrong with me?

  ‘He might not have managed to pull my clothing down, but he was exposing a terrible truth. I wasn’t what I seemed. I tried to fool everyone I was this bouncy fun girl who nothing fazed. But I was inexperienced, and scared, not at all cool. I still thought that this being found out was the primary threat. I had been plunged into the psychological warfare of trying to work out how to reject him, without him thinking I’d rejected him, because rejecting him would go very badly for me. He wasn’t worried about how this story would play, but I was. He would be the storyteller.

  ‘“I’ve got a boyfriend,” I said, gambling that a prior claim wouldn’t wound his mascu
linity.

  ‘He said, “Hah no you haven’t! Who’s that?”

  ‘I didn’t want to drop my boyfriend in it. I didn’t want to sell him out, and have outsiders storming in and trashing what we had, which was more precious to me than anything. He was blameless, and he was mine, and he must be protected at all costs.

  ‘I said, “You don’t know him.”

  ‘“Bollocks, Georgina. Everyone knows you’ve never been with anyone and you’re gagging for it. Going on about romance all the time like an old biddy in English class.”

  ‘This was like a series of precise stab wounds to the major organs. The worst thing imaginable – everyone smelling my desperation to be liked. This boy telling me it was common knowledge. I was hideous, gauche, needy, pathetic.’

  I’m crying too now, but only tears, my voice is still steady.

  ‘He tried to kiss me again and I pushed him off saying, Let’s go back to the party, let’s get some of that punch, and he said, to show he wasn’t buying my casual deflection routine: “Are you a virgin?”

  ‘I said: “No.”

  ‘He said: “Well then.”

  ‘He unzipped his jeans and I stood, pinned against the wall, under the medical-bright lights, wondering why I was here, how to escape. How everything had gone so wrong, so fast.

  ‘It was my fault.’

  I glance up at the room and see a sea of upturned faces. I can no longer focus on any one individual.

  ‘… A cleverer, more charming, better girl than I was, would have the right words to extricate herself and please him at the same time. That I couldn’t find a route out was yet more proof of my idiocy, my immaturity. Of course boys at parties try to get off with girls in loos, what did I expect? I was lucky enough someone so far out of my league wanted it. Ungrateful AND ridiculous. Maybe the cleverer, more charming girl would simply be complying.

  ‘I had lied. I was a virgin. I’d never seen the male anatomy before, not in real life, not like that. Suddenly there it was, liberated from his Levis, like seeing the alien burst from John Hurt’s chest. I panicked. Not only because I knew he’d expect me to do something with it. I knew that he’d gone too far to take this back now. He’d want something in return. There was no way I could leave with the ability to embarrass him, there was no way that was going to happen. There would be no transfer of power.

  ‘He grabbed my hand and I pulled it away, his hand large enough and my fingers small enough I could wrench them through his. He grabbed my hand again, I did the same. On the third try, with a grasp so tight it left bruises, he managed to keep hold of my hand, and put it on him. He let out a huge cackle of triumph, even as I instantly wrenched it away. We both knew he would now tell everyone on the other side of the door that I’d done something with him willingly, something I couldn’t take back. This is how it works. You’re broken down by stages.

  ‘The hand grabbing and pulling continued, my begging to leave continued, ignored. I felt like I’d been in here for an hour, it was probably minutes. I knew in social terms, in terms of my reputation, it might as well have been overnight.

  ‘“You know how to do this, don’t you?” he said. “You’re a sexy girl.”

  ‘Switching to flattery worked, for a second. He’d cut me down and now he was building me back up again. He was throwing me a lifeline that I could leave here with a good review.’

  I look up from my page.

  ‘The moment where you consider giving in, or do give in, that’s the moment you torture yourself about for the rest of your life. That’s the moment where you think it happened to you because you are a bad and weak person, who wanted it really. When in fact, it’s about survival. And whichever choice you make, it wasn’t really a choice at all.

  ‘His hand was over my hand in a vice-like grip and he moved it up, then down, up, then down. “Now you do it,” he commanded. He let go. I did it, once.

  ‘“Yeah!” he shouted, in triumph. “Like that.” I had done it. I couldn’t take it back.

  ‘I’d let all this happen for the sake of the thing that mattered above all else, popularity. The great religion. Being liked. But I wasn’t liked. I looked into his eyes, the contemptuous expression, and I could see he didn’t like me at all. In fact, I could see my capitulation made him despise me even more. Yeah, I knew it.

  ‘Realising this stopped me wheedling him with sweetness, thinking I could bargain. I said: “I want to go back to the party now,” and moved towards the door. He stopped me, grabbing my wrists and throwing me against the wall. Before, he was forceful, this was violent. I was already scared, now I felt something more like terror. My dad used to say you don’t know how impossible it is to move a dead weight until you try to shift one. You don’t know how you can be physically dominated, until someone much taller and stronger than you, really tries. Even in films, I used to think, with the trapped damsel beating dainty fists against manly Tarzan chests, you could push him off if you wanted. You can’t. It comes as a shock. And with the shock, panic, as I knew at that moment that whatever he wanted to happen – it was going to happen. He was pulling at the hem of my skirt, grabbing at my crotch.’

  The room is holding its breath, the tension as taut as a drum, a vibration of anticipation humming through everyone there.

  ‘I thought: Not like this, not with him. I’m not a selfless person, but thinking of someone else nearby, someone I wanted to save myself for, it helped. When I say “save myself” I don’t mean chastity, in a sexual way, the full meaning – I knew he’d want me to save myself. One last roll of the dice occurred to me, a counter intuitive way of getting this boy to let me go. I said: “What are you, some sort of gross rapist?”

  ‘He dropped me like I was radioactive.

  ‘“Don’t flatter yourself,” he spat. Someone who had locked me in a room and sexually assaulted me, told me I was overrating myself as a temptation. Being raped was too good for me. “You think you’re all that, Georgina Horspool, but you’re bang average.”

  ‘But it worked. I’d said the R word out loud, called it by its name, and he didn’t want to see himself as that. He zipped himself up and curled his lip at me, muttered his disgust as I unlocked the door and claimed my freedom.

  ‘Except I was walking into a different sort of trap and in some ways, one I’ve been in ever since. As I rejoined the party, it was as if everyone was waiting for us. Shocked noises, laughter, hands clapped over mouths, a ripple of conversation, as if our joint exit was somehow also an announcement.

  ‘I looked back at That Boy, and he was making a gesture: tongue pushed in the side of his mouth, fist shaking underneath. Everyone in his clique whooped and wolf-whistled. He gave a bow. I was motionless.

  ‘That Boy put a drink in my hand, saying, “You’re quite a girl, mad technique”, to more hollering. What should I say? Should I shout that I didn’t do it, I hadn’t wanted to do it? Everyone saw – I’d gone by choice into a toilet with him. Then I’d let him kiss me. I’d touched it, when his hand wasn’t gripping mine. I HAD done it.

  ‘And no one was taking mid-league, not-thin-enough, try-hard Georgina’s word over this Rock God, no one. When I’d be lucky to pull him, but he’d chosen me from a pool of eager hopefuls? UGH. Vindictive slag. A slapper, and worse, one with ideas above her station.

  ‘He high five-ed with his mates, who were awed. The queen bees, looking at me, were a mixture of admiration and repulsion. Someone muttered something about my surname should be “Whores-pool”.

  ‘He was That Boy and I was no longer Georgina. I was That Girl who waltzed into the toilets at the party, performed a sex act, and reappeared, bold as brass, to claim my free rum cooler as a prize for a blowjob. Ask anyone I went to school with, they probably know this story. It instantly became part of my official biography.

  ‘My best friend approached me, smiling, slightly scared, but thinking I’d taken some decisive leap across the threshold into adulthood, and decided to do it with the highest status boy there. Go, Georgina.
Wow. How could I tell her that nothing was what it seemed, that I was devastated, that this triumphant night for us was now trauma? I didn’t have the vocabulary to repel this boy, and I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what had happened to me.

  ‘I didn’t run out. I didn’t burst into tears. I didn’t behave anything like a victim. The damage was done. And I didn’t want to be a victim. That’s not how I saw myself, it wasn’t part of my identity. It wasn’t even part of my story for this very evening. I hadn’t been ruined. No. I could choose for this to all be OK. I still had control and choice, the control to make this normal and the choice not to make a fuss.’

  Now, a deep breath, for the last part.

  ‘But this denial, it all fell apart when I looked across at the boy I was in love with. He was kissing someone else. Possibly a reaction to what he thought I’d done, but I couldn’t be sure. I wanted to howl like an animal in pain, at the injustice. I’d lost him. Georgina the casual favour-giver couldn’t also be Georgina the girlfriend. I don’t even remember the rest of the party or when he left, I drank like I wanted to black out. Eventually when I looked around for him, he was gone. Forever. Nothing else mattered after that.

  ‘I’d told my parents I was staying at Jo’s to cover for my hotel room stay and I couldn’t go home instead and face their questions. I went to the Holiday Inn and lay on the double bed in my red dress and cried myself to sleep. I hated myself.

  ‘I have, in some ways, been hating myself ever since that night. I never admitted it, so there couldn’t be any forgiveness. And I needed to forgive myself. Not the boy who did it, he can go to hell. But myself. I have been so hard on myself for not being stronger, for not seeing it coming. For being so weak as to want to be liked. For not thinking of the right words to stop it, sooner.

  ‘Tonight’s show is called Share Your Shame. But this story doesn’t qualify. Because it’s his shameful secret, not mine. It wasn’t my fault. If any part of this experience is familiar to you, then please let me tell you – it wasn’t your fault either. Thank you for listening.’