Me Too

September 27, 2018

My heart is pounding as I write about this thing that happened more than thirty years ago. It has caused me so much stress, so much shame, embarrassment, sadness, and anger. I have shared this story with few people and I only told my own mother about it when women started sharing their own #metoo stories. I am writing this as Christine Blasey Ford bravely testifies about her sexual assault experience with Brett Kavanaugh in front of the whole world.

It was in the fall of 1987. I was a senior in high school. I had no reason not to trust him. He was my friend. In fact, he is my facebook friend, and he will surely read this post. I have never talked to him about what happened or told him how much he hurt me. We went to the same high school and still have friends in the same social circle. We had just come back from a six week trip through Israel with a large group of high school students. We were all friends. I had fallen in love with a boy on our trip who ended our relationship when we got home. I was heartbroken. I began spending time with this friend. He was always there to listen and I confided my heartbreak to him. We played tennis together. He took me to homecoming. He was running for student council and he convinced me to run, too. He helped me with my campaign (He won. I lost.) I appreciated his friendship and his support. When he invited me over to his house for dinner on a weekend night I didn’t think twice. When I got to his house his family wasn’t there and he had made a really nice meal for us, including a bottle of wine. He kept topping off my glass of wine while we were eating and I became very drunk really quickly. The next thing I knew I woke up to him trying to take off my pants. I was lying on a bed and had no awareness of leaving the table. I got myself up as quickly as I could, I got out of his house, and I went home and went to bed. Our houses were only a few blocks apart, but I don’t remember if I drove or if I walked over to his house and I also don’t remember how I got home.

I blamed myself for being stupid enough to go over to his house and for letting him get me so drunk. I was afraid that my parents would be upset with me. I blamed myself for trusting him. There was no upside to telling anyone and I intended to bury it, but it still was not over. On Monday while I was sitting in a class filled with my classmates and friends, another boy who had been my friend since elementary school “served me” with a handwritten bill from my assailant. The bill detailed all of the money he had spent on homecoming, on the dinner he had made me and the alcohol he had used to get me so drunk, and the value of his time he had spent with me. There was no question that he believed he was entitled to sex and he wanted to publicly shame me for refusing to consent. I have no idea why he would do that, but it was cruel and deeply affected me. It was a painful and daily reminder for the rest of my senior year and is something I still cannot completely escape. I assume that people from high school thought that serving me with that bill was a funny joke and I am still asked about it, especially when he and I are at the same event, which was most recently at our 30th high school reunion.

Here’s the thing. There was nothing funny about his stupid joke. It was intended to displace his shame onto me. And it worked for a long time.

✌🏽