My Friend’s Husband Touched Me, and I Never Told Her
How growing up in rape culture keeps us quiet about our assault
It was 1990 something, and I had been 18 for a few months. Everywhere I turned, I heard barely legal whispered, sung, and even yelled at me. Does every young lady get to wear this label as soon as they turn 18? I remember a website that counted down the day until the Olson twins hit the big one eight.
I wanted to be an adult and treated as such. The label, barely legal, seemed to mean I was a kid in disguise — a fantasy for older men. I thought that I was too old to feel uncomfortable about sexuality. So whenever someone brought it up — I ignored it, chuckled uncomfortably, or quickly changed the subject.
I spent a lot of free time working with my church. It was a small church with a lot of young people around my age, and I enjoyed most of my fellow church-goers.
Only one of them made me steadily uncomfortable, and he was the one who sneaked barely legal into every other sentence as if it were the funniest thing on earth. He was the husband to a lady I’d befriended in church. She was one of the coolest women I’d ever known. She showed me photos of her in the 80’s flaunting purple hair, neon green Mohawks, and other crazy hair-dos I’d only seen on TV.
