That Time With The Kid Across The Street

                Let me tell you about the world in which I grew up.

                It’s either 1980 or ’81, the exact year escapes me.  I’m five going on six, or six going on seven.  It’s July third, nine days before my birthday, an eternity.  I’ve spent the rainy morning drawing flags with my sisters.  Late morning, the sun came out.  I’m shooed outside.  I’m alone in our front yard, the last house on a dead end street. 

                I should have been safe.

                But Billy, my creepy fourteen year old neighbor, ambles over from across the street.  I’d always had trouble with Billy.  My mother had already spoken to his parents about him punching me in the arm after I’d had a tetanus shot that hit the muscle, so I couldn’t raise it for days.  Strange that no one found it troubling that a teenager was hitting a small child.  Anyway, I knew Billy didn’t like me.  He often told me I was a fat little girl, which stung.

                 I wanted him to like me, so when he invited me to come across the street to go into his parent’s camper with him and his friends, I jumped at the chance.

                Right away I had a funny feeling I shouldn’t be there.  Billy’s friends were around his age, much older than me.  Big kids.   I knew them from around the neighborhood.  John, my next door neighbor, was also there.  My memory is vague, but I think they were smoking.  I knew that was A Bad Thing.  I shook off the feeling of disquiet I felt at being alone with them.  After all, Annie, Billy’s older sister who babysat me, sometimes took me into the camper to play.  How was this different?

                  Like most little kids, I had a fascination with campers and tents and the like.

                A funny conversation about bathing took place.  The boys kept asking me questions I didn’t really understand.  They were silly.  One kid asked me if I wanted to shower with him.  I said sure.  After all, I was still at an age where I often bathed with family members. 

                What happened next is blurry, but all of a sudden John, my next door neighbor, was ordering me to go home.  I didn’t really want to go home, I wanted to play in the camper, but he insisted.  I scurried home, frightened.  Something was happening, but I didn’t know what.  I retreated to my basement playroom and resumed making flags.  It had begun to rain again.  I was nervous, but I didn’t know why.  Then the doorbell rang, and it was John and his mother.  They wanted to speak to my mother.  John said he had something to tell her.

                I didn’t know what I did wrong, all I knew was it was something dirty and shameful and awful.  The mother of the boy who’d asked if I would like to shower with him came over.  I knew her; his younger brother was a playmate of mine.  She questioned me about the “incident.” In particular, she wanted to know what I’d said to her son about showering with him.

                The whole thing was very confusing.  All I knew is I had to talk to my father when he got home.  Words spelling my doom.  I went to bed after dinner, before he came home, hoping I’d be asleep when he got in, but he didn’t fall for that.  He sternly told me that under no circumstances was I ever to leave the property again unless my mother knew about it or my sister was the one taking me.  I was never to go with anyone, no matter who they were, no matter what they said.  Then he kept asking me why I was crying. 

                Why was I crying?  I didn’t understand what was happening, all I knew was I’d done something bad and now I was being punished.  Being told I couldn’t leave the property after having always had free reign of our neighborhood was a punishment. As I sobbed in bed, I thought that soon this day would be over, and it would be the next day, and many days would follow, and maybe people would forget the shameful horrible thing I did, the dirty thing I did, that I didn’t even know I’d done.

                It is 1986.  I’m watching television.  I’ve just begun taking an interest in the news.  A teenage girl has been murdered.  Her half naked battered corpse, covered in cuts, bruises, and bite marks, was found strangled in Central Park.  Her killer, Robert Chambers, was painted as a former altar boy with a promising future.  He claimed the girl had accidentally been killed during rough sex, although he was covered in scratches, and her broken fingernails indicated she’d fought for her life.

                At the age of eighteen, this lovely young woman’s severely battered, bruised corpse was found discarded in Central Park, but all the news could talk about was how Chamber’s bright future now lay in ruins.  All because some wild young woman liked it rough. 

                Her name was Jennifer Levin.  She had her entire life in front of her, instead she was raped, murdered, thrown away like garbage, and her name was being dragged through the mud. 

                Initially, Chambers claimed he’d killed her in self defense after she’d raped him. 

                Yes, really.

                In the end, Robert Chambers was convicted of manslaughter.  The jury believed his bullshit story right along with the public.

                While still out on bail, video footage surfaced of him romping with several young women in pajamas.  In one shot, he twists a doll’s head while his audience laughs and eggs him on.  When the head pops off, he tosses it away with an “oops, I killed it.”

                Far from being the altar boy portrayed by the media, Chambers had a troubled past.  He had been kicked out of numerous schools, and arrested for drugs, robbery, and disorderly conduct.   In the months leading up to Levin’s murder, he was expelled from Boston University for credit card theft.

                 He was not a bright young man with a promising future.  He is currently incarcerated.  The reason is unclear.  All that is known is he received 5-15 years for Levin’s murder, but has been in and out of prison since 1986 on various charges.

                Around the same time, the movie Sixteen Candles is being celebrated by teenage girls everywhere as their favorite movie.  And yet a character is depicted as being raped while unconscious by Anthony Michael Hall, and since she’s regarded as one of the villains, it’s supposed to be a hilarious comeuppance.

                This the world I grew up in, where I was made to feel at fault at the age of five (or six) because a fourteen year old neighbor tried to molest me, where a young girl who was clearly raped and murdered while fighting for her life is painted by the media as a slut who liked it rough while her dirtbag murderer gets a mere slap on the wrist then jokes about it, and a movie where the bitchy villainess is raped is everyone’s favorite.

                And men wonder how it could possibly be that every female acquaintance they know has been raped and none of them ever said anything about it? I guess it’s easier to believe we’re all liars, then it is to believe we were systematically brainwashed to accept rape as something that was our fault.  I mean, we went to his house alone.  We were drinking.  Look at what we were wearing that night.  What did we think was going to happen? 

                Seriously, what did that woman think was going to happen, jogging alone?

                Rape is a punishment for not following the rules.  And being too young to know the rules is not an excuse. God knows that five and six year old girls can be seductive, how can anyone reasonably expect a fourteen year old boy not to give into temptation?

                 I had no clue what sex was, didn’t even know what those silly conversations in the camper were about, but damn, I wanted it!

                Years later, I revisited the incident with my father.  He was incensed at my memory of events.  “Your mother went after that woman and was going to claw her eyes out! She threw her out of the house and never spoke to her again,” he said, referring to the classmate’s mother who’d questioned me.  “And she nearly called the police!  We were trying to protect you.  You were taken right out of our goddamn yard in broad daylight, and we were shocked!  Had John not been there, God alone knows what might have happened. We came from the city where we could let you play in the street alone at the age of two because there was someone related to us on every stoop, to a place that was supposed to be safer, but wasn’t.”

                My parents taught me to be afraid of men before I could even ride a bicycle.  All my life, I’d been in fear of men, particularly groups of boys.  I’m so afraid, that one day when I came upon a group of male coworkers…men I know for an absolute fact would never ever lay a hand on me…I turned and went away, pretending I didn’t see them.  Because a woman is never more vulnerable when a group of men are together.  Men together will often do things to a woman that a man alone would never do, because they egg each other on.  It’s instinct to get away, even if rationally I know the men would never harm me.

                That is why I have to laugh when the very idea of young men being scared of women is broached.  You’ve got to be kidding me, Mr. Trump.  That’s hilarious.  These men are worried about being unfairly accused of sexual assault.  Yet we women have been worried about being raped and MURDERED by men all our lives. 

                I keep seeing the same things.  “What evidence is there that these men did this?
                Well, for starters, sworn testimony IS evidence.  For real.  If I swear out an affidavit that you raped me, that is considered direct evidence in a court of law.  It is given the same weight as all OTHER evidence.  Those trials on television where it shows witnesses holding up their hands and swearing to tell the truth?  That’s not for dramatic effect.  They’re giving EVIDENCE.

                So, um, a woman SWEARING she was raped is evidence.  Her STORY is evidence. The inability of the same people who watch Law and Order on an endless loop to grasp this is mind-boggling.

                Second of all, what evidence would satisfy these rape apologists that a woman has indeed been sexually assaulted/and or raped?

                Jennifer’s Levin’s battered, bruised corpse, complete with broken fingernails embedded with pieces of Robert Chamber’s skin, wasn’t considered evidence that she’d been raped.

                Two witnesses coming upon Brock Turner raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster wasn’t ample enough evidence of rape.

                President Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women on tape wasn’t considered ample enough evidence that he was a sexual predator, if not an outright rapist.

                Sperm in a vagina is not evidence of rape.  It just means they had sex.  Even if the woman was a child, you still have people saying…many of them women… “she knew what she was doing.”  Um. No, actually, she didn’t.  That’s why there’s an age of consent.

                Bruises and strangulation marks and scratches are not evidence of rape; it’s evidence that she likes it rough.

                The person bragging about rape on tape isn’t evidence; they’re just joking.  It’s just locker room talk.

                Hmm, apparently the victim should ask the rapist to stop so they can tape the encounter; then of course, it wouldn’t be considered rape because what rape victim would tape her rape?

                Seriously, what evidence would be ample enough to convince a rape apologist that a woman was raped?

                Apparently, to be raped, you must meet the following criteria:

1.       Be under the age of twelve

2.       A virgin

3.       Wearing a dress that reaches the tops of your toes and a neckline to your chin.

4.       Never ever have taken a drink

5.       There needs to be witnesses.  Because, you know, what rapist doesn’t rape their victims surrounded by witnesses?

6.       There must be video and audio evidence that the victim was repeatedly screaming NO from start to finish.  (If she stopped screaming no halfway through it means she started enjoying it and no actually meant yes).

7.       Come from a good family.

8.       Have good grades.

9.       Be some sort of Christian.

Conversely, rapists must meet the following criteria:

1.       Be homeless or transient

2.       A minority

3.       An illegal alien

4.       Unemployed

5.       Already have a record

6.       Smell bad

7.       Drug addict or alcoholic

8.       Have crazy eyes

9.       Be really scary looking

If one or two, no other criteria need to be met before a perpetrator is designated a rapist.

                I hope we can all see this is an impossible standard that we’re dealing with here.  Men have been given a complete pass on raping women.  There are too many Brett Kavanaughs walking around, too many women supporting their position.  We believe men who say they’ve been sexually abused in childhood by members of the clergy; why don’t we believe women?  Why don’t women believe other women, when we know the burden we share?

                I want to make sense of this, but right now, I just can’t.