I want to tell you about something that I’ve always remembered, once every few years, but never for a long period of time, and that I didn’t think about again until just last weekend.
It was 1985 or ‘86; I couldn’t tell you the date, or even the month or season. I only know it was one of those years because I was in the eighth grade. I have no clues to help figure out a date close to the incident, as I don’t remember what the weather was like; but I remember my teacher’s name and what class period it was.
What I do remember is the name of the boy, who was likely 14 or 15 at the time, taking his pants down and flashing his unmemorable junk at me while she was gone.
I say “unmemorable” because I couldn’t pick his wang-doodle out of a police lineup with a gun to my head, but I sure remember seeing it - mostly because I didn’t ask to. In fact, I was making a concerted effort to avoid the boys in class at the time, because they were all teasing me about something or other, and I had my head down reading.
The teacher had left the classroom to see the principal, or go to the bathroom, or smoke out back, or practice her magic spell opening a vortex to the Bahamas in the breakroom - I don’t know, whatever teachers find to do in the space of five minutes here and there. I don’t know if I was being quiet, or running my mouth - me at 13 was likely to be doing either one - but as the talk inevitably did at that age, anytime adults weren’t around, it turned to something to do with sex.
Now my young self wasn’t such a prude that I would turn down free information about this still-mysterious taboo, but I had standards for my illicit conversations. For one, other girls had to be around, partly to take the focus off of me and partly to help counter what I didn’t know (which was a lot). If boys were there, so be it - but other girls talking about sex never made me feel threatened. Sure, there might be some teasing, but it was largely a data-sharing effort. Most of us were fairly ignorant of the details, despite having some state-sanctioned sex education in health class.
(To kids forced to undergo abstinence “education” in the 21st century reading this - yes! We had sex-ed in 1985 in school! The Old Days weren’t all overcast with belching factory smoke and filled with dinosaurs and steam trains.)
In this particular instance, I was either the only girl in the room or one of just a couple or three (but I seem to remember being the only one), and there were a number of boys. This sort of ratio hardly bothered me on a regular basis, but there was something about the topic of sex with such an imbalance that made my nerves that day stand on end. THAT, I clearly remember - it was the reason I was ignoring them and trying not to engage when Mr. Happy was exposed. The only reason I opened my eyes is I got tired of hearing my name and was going to tell them to shut up - when I looked up, there were all the boys in a semi-circle facing me, with the boy they’d either elected to be the flasher or who had volunteered for it. I’ve never understood how junior assaulters carry out their decision-making; it might be pervert telepathy, for all I know.
We’ve had in the news for a few weeks a woman accusing a man in the public eye of doing more than just flashing her when she was roughly the same age I was during my incident. She’s been asked how she can remember any details of the assault and the identity of her attacker she speaks about, but not other details. In fact, this is a BIG point of contention among people I can tell really don’t want to believe her anyway. (I call this “crocodile concern” - much like crocodile tears, it’s fake concern, but it’s always phrased in a manner to suggest “well, if you meet this exact narrow field of criteria, and it doesn’t personally discomfort my point of view, I might feel compassion for you.”)
Because it’s memorable when somebody tries to force you to do something you really don’t want to. That’s why.
I remember the name of the boy who decided his penis was so wonderful that it had to be shown off without solicitation, just as I remember where it happened and the rough timeline, though there are many smaller details I don’t remember. It’s the same way I remember a lot of things that boys and men have done to or called me that somehow involved sex or appearance, that I don’t remember on a daily basis, but these memories do sleep in the back of my mind and they’re not embellished or fabricated.
I remember walking through town in my bathing suit and towel when I was 12 or so, each summer, and having to listen to teenage boys and men older than them lean out their cars and holler lewd remarks at me or the cuter, more developed girls I was with. It was nasty and gross, and it still is.
Seriously, dudes - nobody has ever gained a sexual encounter from doing this that didn’t involve a business transaction.
I remember the guy in college who was a customer at the Subway where I worked, who decided after I waited on him and smiled and talked with him for a minute while I was making his change, that I must be hitting on him instead of just being the basic friendly my $4.25 an hour required me to be to all customers. I remember a LOT of guys like this.
Here’s a hot tip: If someone is paid to wait on you and they’re being nice and you equate that with amorous interest, consider that the only alternative may simply be them telling you to take your sandwich and get the hell out - and they could lose their job over that.
I remember all these because they stand out, because they were unusual and awful in some way, and not normal behavior I experienced in the company of most men and boys. It’s like the news: An incident is probably in the news because it’s unusual or against “the norm,” and a lot of the news seems bad because bad is supposed to be abnormal. I’m not going to remember for a long time the man who discussed a project at work with me perfectly reasonably, or the young man who waited on me at O’Charley’s and did nothing unusual, or the friend’s husband who talked with me about the best way to make barbecue. Because these are normal and reasonable, and these attitudes and treatment should be commonplace.
Sometimes I wonder what became of that boy who was nominated by the other boys in class to be King of the Flashers that day in class. What he did was in no way acceptable, but I recognize he was probably a product of his environment and upbringing - somewhere along the way, he had it drilled into him it was all right to behave toward girls that way. And he got in trouble with the teacher and principal because I was brought up not to keep quiet if I felt endangered; a lot of girls aren’t raised that way.
And the thing about stories like these and worse coming out in the wave of #MeToo, besides how voluminous they are, is how normal they sound to a lot of women. The chorus of “yes, that happened to me as well” is loud and it’s annoying - but are you annoyed by the sound of mostly high-pitched voices, or by the fact the situations happened in the first place?
October 6, 2018