I've been
dragging my ass for the last couple days. This is how I start the week; very typical,
if Garfield the fucking cat is any indication. Mondays suck. Mine are atypically bad cuz at breakfast I read a column my ex-editor writes. Don't ask me why; this is the dude who
deflowered me and practically left me for dead, and then
belittled me 'til I simply stopped coming to work. I am the last person to use vague phrases like "
sexual harassment," which might be why it took so long to recognize it. Monday, his now-goateed mug topped a column about how much more liberal and enlightened he is than his
redneck neighbors.
Tuesday, I drag my ass from class to lunch to boring therapy session (my second to last) to class to dinner to Take Back the Night.
My girlfriends dragged me into it, and I was somewhat reluctant and surly (excuses: I had homework yet, my left contact lens was sticky and I planned to leave any minute). It seemed like a silly college thing to do, and it did not help that the singer at the rally sang and talked exactly like Ani di Franco. I scanned the quad for exit paths. Nonetheless. A group of high school girls gets up and performs some sort of cut up of monologues on rape. You hear words like "worthless" and "powerless" in this context, after a very long day and a very long year (the year those words defined me), and your tear ducts open up like a fuckin' fire hose. That was good. But it's not the best part:
The best part is my ex-boss - the misogynist Navy prick-cum-sensitive goatee man, the man who dug my very rut (and can we talk about cervical damage?) - decided to make the world a better place by participating in the Take Back the Night rally. It's not that I begrudge him his newfound liberalism - or any man, for that matter. At least, I wouldn't find it odd at all, if he had looked me in the eye and/or apologized for his previous transgression.
Maybe I should be disappointed that I don't get on the mic and expose his particular hypocrisy, his violence. But it seemed like poor form, and frankly, though that event empowered me beyond anything else that's happened in the last year, I was still afraid to confront him. His body is strong, but worse, his tongue is sharp, has carved me to a nub before.
I forgot to say how beautiful it was: carrying candles and getting kind of gawked at (but at least not harassed) by the frat kids and neighbors, breaking down publicly and getting held, and walking. Walking. I don't do enough. I'm not a victim anymore. I'm present in a way I haven't been for months.