I really didn’t want to go to class that day. I took one look at my Sociology of Women syllabus and wanted no part of today’s discussion. I sat in the library a half hour before class and anxiously twisted the pages in my notebook. When I stood from my table I managed to spill my tea all over the floor.
“Are you going to clean that?!” The custodian appeared out of nowhere. He was older with stringy gray hair and a smoker’s cough. No one ever saw this man unless someone spilled something. Or dropped something. Or did something that created a mess of any sort. He didn’t care if people were noisy. Noisy students didn’t affect his job. I once watched a guy roll around the Quiet Room on a skateboard while two of his friends cheered him on. The custodian couldn’t care less. But if I had walked by and dropped a book I would’ve gotten barked at.
“Of course I’m going to clean that,” I told him calmly. I shuffled into the bathroom and grabbed a handful of paper towels. I looked in the mirror and took a deep breath.
The topic in class that day was Rape, Sexual Assault and Violence Against Women.
The topic in class that day was the topic I had desperately avoided for three and half years.
I wasn’t sure whether or not it was wise for me to go. I meant to talk to my counselor about this a few days earlier. I think I talked about Beverly Hills, 90210 instead. She’s a Brenda fan. I prefer Valerie. We both like Dylan.
That was my problem. I avoided this subject with everybody. Even my sexual assault counselor - the one person whose job it was to help me. We once spent an entire forty minutes talking about Oz. I’ve never even watched the freaking show. Yet I somehow managed to ramble about it for nearly an hour. Anything to avoid talking about it.
She did everything she could to get me to open up to her.
But I was too afraid.
So I’d go in there and joke around when I should have been asking her what to do about situations like these.
I walked out of the bathroom. The custodian was scolding another student a few desks away. It was like we were all fifth graders to him.
I bent down on my knees and wiped the lukewarm tea off the periwinkle colored carpet. I stood up and tossed the wet paper towels into the trash.
As I gathered my books and walked through the dusty aisles of the library, I remembered the study room I used to hide in when I lived in Boston.
Boston.
That’s where it happened.
My second week of college in Boston.
His name was Andy. Is Andy. I talk about him like he disappeared the day after it happened. I know he didn’t. I guess I just like to pretend he did.
His hair was blonde and buzz-cut. His eyes were blue. Stormy blue.
I thought about those beady blue eyes when I walked to my classroom.
I sat in my chair, opened my notebook and started drawing absent-mindedly across a sheet of paper.
“You wouldn’t go on the roof with me.”
That’s the first thing he said after he finished.
I shook my head and told myself to stop thinking about it. I looked down at my notebook to see what I had sketched. A monster with bulky arms chasing a screaming face.
Gee, that’s normal.
I slammed the notebook shut before anybody saw it.
My professor strolled to the front of the room and shuffled through some of her papers.
Maybe she would change her mind, I thought. Maybe she’d take one look at the topic for the day and decide she didn’t feel like discussing it.
Instead, she clapped her hands together with a smile. “We will be having a class discussion about the issue of rape and violence against women.”
Oh, jeez.
Maybe it won’t be that bad, I told myself as she grabbed a piece of chalk and started writing terms on the board.
And it wasn’t that bad.
It was worse.
Before my professor even opened her mouth, a male student blurted out a story about his friend who, he claimed, was falsely accused of rape.
I waited for the mostly female class to rip him apart. Like, how dare he decide to take the topic in that direction right off the bat?
Instead, something remarkable happened. One by one the women in the class raised their hands to agree with him.
“Girls can be nuts like that,” one female student said. “They get mad and decide to pretend they were raped.”
I cringed when I heard echoes of agreement.
A male student raised his hand. “What I can’t stand are the college girls who go to parties, get drunk and then are upset when they’re raped.”
I heard a ringing in my ears. My entire body trembled with an emotion I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in a long time.
Anger? Was that what that was?
“I almost don’t even count it as rape when drinking is involved,” he said.
I was drinking the night it happened to me.
I remember Andy handed me a red cup filled with alcohol. I drank it, not thinking anything bad would happen.
“I knew a girl who made it up,” a female student said. “She never admitted it, but we all knew it didn’t happen.”
I wanted to leave right then. Why did I always sit in the front of the class? It was going to be so obvious when I stood up and walked out. What if they saw right through me?
What if they figured out why I was leaving?
I sat there, sticking my nails into the side of my leg, willing myself not to cry. I somehow managed to survive the rest of the class period.
I felt numb when we were dismissed.
“Girls just need to take responsibility for their actions,” I heard two students whisper to each other as we left the building.
It was beautiful outside. The sun blanketed me as I walked back to my dorm. Summer was near. My favorite season.
I wiped two tears that managed to crawl out of my eyes.
I hated everyone I saw at that moment.
The stupid people tossing a Frisbee by the basketball court.
The guys blasting the stereo from their room so loud I could hear it outside.
The loungers on our floor screaming at the TV screen as they played Nintendo 64.
I dropped my bag on my bed as I walked into my room.
I slumped into my chair and stared at my laptop screen, not too sure what I was feeling.
Like someone had torn out my insides?
Yeah, maybe that’s the best way to describe it.
I looked over at my best friend’s side of the room. She was probably at the library, which is where I should have been. There was no way I could concentrate now, though.
I wanted to go to the liquor store and drown what I felt in a shiny bottle of Bacardi.
Instead, I picked up my stapler and chucked it across the room with every ounce of anger I had in me.
I didn’t think I was ever going to get to leave Andy’s apartment.
I sat stony faced on his crinkled bedspread as he slept. The head of his bed was next to the door. He had his arm stretched out, blocking it, so I couldn’t leave.
I stared out of his window and watched the rain beat down on what used to be one of my favorite cities.
I didn’t cry, though. At least not for a few hours. Until I looked at his clock and realized it was nine in the morning and I was still there. But I only allowed myself to cry briefly. And when I did, I muffled the sound. I didn’t want to wake him. I didn’t want it to happen again.
When I finally left his apartment at noon, I stepped outside into a rain storm. Sheets of freezing, bubbly water covered the gravel on the streets. I felt like I was drowning as the raindrops stabbed into every inch of me.
When I went to the hospital to get the morning after pill, I lied to the doctor about what happened. I was afraid that if I told him the truth he’d yell at me. Or wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t even believe myself.
I sat back down at my computer and stared at the screen again.
I probably should have said something in class.
I imagined myself standing up, getting ready to leave.
The professor would have said loudly that it was rude to leave in the middle of class discussion.
I would have turned around slowly. She would freeze when she saw the tears glistening in my eyes. The whole class would grow quiet as they watched these tears run down my face, freely.
“You know what?” I’d say, while walking quickly to the front of the stunned class.
And then I’d tell them off. I’d tell them what happened to me. I’d tell them how difficult it was to go to class that day. And then, after I let this all sink in, I’d tell them they were all afraid. They were afraid and that’s why they liked blaming the victim. It’s just easier that way. It’s easier to believe that people make this up all the time. It’s easier to think only fools get raped.
It was easier for that class of mostly women to believe it could never happen to them. It was easier for the few men in the class to think their buddies could never do something like that. No one likes it when stories like these hit close to home. So they point out what the victim did “wrong.” They think of all the things they’d do differently if they were in that situation.
These people forget that it’s pretty easy for them to stand outside the situation and see what a victim could’ve done differently. My counselor taught me that.
Any Joe Asshole can look at what a person could’ve done differently as he sits safely in his Barcalounger and stuffs his face with Doritos’s. But what about the person who is actually in the situation? In shock.
“Have any of you ever been in shock?” I’d ask the class. “Because if you have, you’d know that you can’t think the same way you would under normal circumstances. You try making decisions when you feel threatened. When you feel like you might be seriously hurt. Or even killed.”
I’d tell them off for a little while longer and then calmly look at the dumbfounded professor and tell her that I was very sorry, but I’d be leaving class early that day.
Then I’d walk out through the side door we weren’t supposed to walk out of.
After leaving, I’d give the finger to the building before turning around and walking back to my dorm.
“Yeah, right.” I shook my head as I sat in my computer chair now. “I can’t even talk to my own counselor about it. How the hell could I possibly stand up there and face a classroom full of idiots?”
I didn’t just want them to know that what they said was wrong. I wanted them to know how much it hurt. Robin Warshaw, the author of the book I Never Called It Rape, said that one in every four women is the survivor of a rape or attempted rape by the time they graduate college.
That means I wasn’t the only survivor in that class. There were others. And they had stayed quiet, too.
I felt a sudden surge of energy. I had to do something. I didn’t know what. But something.
Maybe I couldn’t tell the class how today’s discussion made me feel.
But there was someone who could do that for me.
I couldn’t believe I was doing this. I pulled out my syllabus and circled my professor’s e-mail address.
I opened my e-mail account and began typing.
Why did it bother me so much? I wondered as I wrote to my professor. Why was I so sickened by what everyone said?
If I really believed what Andy did in Boston wasn’t wrong, why did a discussion about rape upset me this much?
I wondered this even though I already knew the answer.
A small part of me always knew. But I was too busy blaming myself to notice.
I got a response from my professor a few hours later.
A warm, tingly feeling spread through me when I read it. I felt like I was being hugged through an e-mail.
She apologized on behalf of the class. She told me what happened in Boston was not my fault.
Then she told me I did not have to attend the next discussion. She asked though if she could read my e-mail to the class.
“That’s what I was hoping you would do,” I wrote back.
And that’s what she did.
She told the class to send her their thoughts about my e-mail. She forwarded a few of their responses to me.
And nearly a year later, I still have them saved in my inbox.
The day I sent my professor that e-mail, is a day I will never forget.
It was the first time in three and a half years I made myself heard. And I didn’t even have to open my mouth.
About the Author
Jessica Trusiani recently graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in journalism and media studies. She is both a digital intern at New Video and a freelance writer. She feels very passionate about raising awareness through writing and is currently working on a book....
What a strong, courageous article! I was raped, too, by my husband's best friend, also my best friend's husband when I slept on their couch en route to Manhattan the next day. I never told anyone for over 20 years. I didn't want to hurt my friend. I didn't want to ruin their already troubled marriage (they divorced, anyway). I didn't want to spoil the friendship between the two men (they went separate ways a couple of years later, anyway). The husband later told my friend during a confession session of their indiscretions that he'd had consensual sex with me. She believed him and what was a close sister relationship died that day. We spoke a few times after then nothing. I gained nothing. I protected no-one and I was the only one hurt. Your article meant a lot to me. I know what it's like to hold it in.
It is simply a pattern with women to feel guilty even on behalf of their own assaulter. Thank you for sharing this. The sad part is that I have actually met and heard women who somehow believe that there is a somewhat strong urge in a woman to be raped, though she may not be aware of it but in her depth she craves for it and is therefore responsible for unconsciously attracting the Male. Part of this nonsense is an offshoot of men and particularly Women's conviction that men have a stronger sexual drive and need more sex than a woman does. who said that? desires and urges are conditioned by many factors just as the mind of a woman is conditioned to divert all blame on herself.
Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Paris. And Maryam you said "It is simply a pattern with women to feel guilty even on behalf of their own assaulter." Why is that? Why do we do that?
It takes a lot of courage for you, Jess, and other women and men to speak out about what happen to them. I believe that more women should speak out about what happen to them, so that other victims know that they are not alone and that they are not at fault by any means. People need to become aware so that the ignorance that was seen in your class will cease to exist and people will take this problem seriously. I think that each of you are doing your part to helping make this a reality and I respect you all for that.
My main focus in art is color, design and composition. I have a true passion for color as the art subject itself - how colors fit together, how they communicate with each other within the design, how certain colors combined with one another evoke a certain feeling - this is paramount in my work. I am a social worker, artist and poet living in Austin, TX. Read More...
Jessica Trusiani recently graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in journalism and media studies. She is both a digital intern at New Video and a freelance writer. She feels very passionate about raising awareness through writing and is currently working on a book....
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