Muscle Memory

The following content may be triggering to those affected by sexual harassment/assault. 

 

I quit the local play when I was fourteen, because another cast member sexually assaulted me.

Of course, at the time this wasn’t what I thought. I thought he grabbed my stomach fat and touched my breast because he had a crush on me. Because, I had been told, that’s what boys do. When I told him to stop it, he said, “But you’re smiling,” and he wasn’t technically wrong. After he had taken his hand and bounced my breast up and down, I broke into a nervous smile. I stayed nervous after rehearsal when he walked with me to the parking lot.

“Who’s the boy?” My dad asked when I got into the car.

I was also nervous a week later when this boy asked me to go to the movies with him and I answered, “Okay, but just as friends.”

“Why just friends?”

“I don’t see you that way,” I answered. 

“Think about it,” he said, before ruffling my hair and walking off.

So, I quit the play and didn’t tell anyone why. If people pressed for an answer, I gave vague excuses about having too much homework. I told him I was busy and hung up when he called me. He never called again. I had it all figured out. No one had to know.

I pushed all of this to the back of my mind after it happened. I even went to go see the play. I thought that it wasn’t assault because he didn’t jump out of the bushes and pin me against the side of a building in a dark alley. I thought that it wasn’t assault because I didn’t stop it from happening in the moment; I gave him my phone number; he asked me on a date; I laughed at a joke he told once; he said I smiled when I told him to stop.

*  *  *

A year ago, when the #MeToo movement first began to go viral, it all came flooding back to me… a hot rush of adrenaline and blood to my cheeks as I felt his hand on my breast. The anxious unease that I felt for the rest of the day afterwards. The fear that other cast members would think I was “easy” for spending any time with him at all.

For the first time, I was able to find the right words for what had happened to me. I was also able to forgive my past self for thinking she had done anything to invite this boy to touch her without her consent. But once I had forgiven myself, I boxed the memory back up and stuck it in the back of my brain.

Then Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court.

I wasn’t exactly surprised. I knew he had the votes. But I was devastated, and the memory I had carefully boxed up was once again ripped open. This time, I focused on a new detail: at the time, a friend of mine in the play told me that he had done similar things to other girls. A group of them brought it up to the director, and she said that he was “harmless” and “had a disorder where he didn’t realize he was being inappropriate.”

I can think of a few other men who may have that disorder. One of them is sitting on the Supreme Court. Another is in the Oval Office.

Women have always been expected to ignore the predatory behavior of men, and if that’s not possible, to make excuses for it. Not only that, but we’re also expected do everything we can to prevent men from being creeps in the first place.

I never get in a subway car unless there’s at least one woman there already. I never take the subway alone after midnight, which means I make sure I have cab fare. I pray that the driver (almost always a man I don’t know) will drive me straight home and not be a creep about it. I walk home with my keys between my fingers like claws, just in case I need to fight someone off. I politely smile and nod at men who acknowledge me as I walk past them, terrified that they’ll lash out if I ignore them.

It’s ingrained. I barely even think about doing these things anymore. But I’m fucking tired, and I’m so scared that putting a sexual abuser in this high-power, lifelong position will embolden even more men to assault.

Hours before Kavanaugh’s confirmation, my boyfriend and I sat outside a bakery near my apartment with coffees and pastries. A woman sat on the next bench over, wearing a New York Yankees hat. She looked to be about my age. “You’re a big Yankees fan?” A much older man passing by stopped to ask her. My ears pricked up and I watched the two out of the corner of my eye, the way I always do when I see a man approach a woman he doesn’t know. It’s muscle memory at this point.

They made small talk. She sounded a little bored but not nervous. Okay so far, I thought. He wasn’t raising his voice or saying anything nasty, but I kept listening just in case. After a few minutes, the man went on his way. The woman was looking down at her phone with a neutral expression.

I exhaled.