The Incident
Which is what I call what happened because nobody told me what else it should be called.
By Anonymous
Illustration by Heather Benjamin
[This essay was written by a college sophomore who has chosen to remain anonymous, because, in her words, “I don’t want this to define me moving forward.”]
In high school there was a teacher named David Webb. Webb was mysterious and fun and popular in the way that certain teachers are. Sometimes he would predictably like the cool kids, but sometimes, charitably, he’d choose to like the ones who needed to like themselves. Webb got his degree in gender studies, and he was the head football coach. It was a confusing combination. I called him a raging feminist, and he was. It seemed like he wanted to negate this unavoidable female oppression despite the fact that we young females weren’t aware such oppression existed.
That same year, Chris Rudensky rated me the third-hottest girl in the class. When I straightened my hair, I moved to two. I don’t know who granted him the authority to determine those things, or what criteria he was basing these decisions on, but I certainly wasn’t going to question it. At the time, I was engulfed in my own anxious tailspin, navigating my first month of high school with few friends and zero sense of self. I feigned offense when I told that story to my friends, but I told that story to all my friends. And I straightened my hair more.
That was when I prided myself in putting down the idea of feminism, saying: “It’s so stupid, this isn’t the 1800s, no one cares,” and I believed it. Maybe it should be a point of pride for my previous educational institutions, places so deeply concerned with counteracting societal flaws that I really didn’t see this one. When I got to college I held tight to these views and to my independence, thinking “feminism” was a made-up term exclusively used in reference to “the workplace” and marital disasters that did not apply to me, and that I would never let apply to me.
The first week of college, some new friends encountered these promising freshman guys, and wanted to continue visitation in their room across the hall. Amidst my independence and default standoffishness—employed in situations unfamiliar and new—I met a guy whom we’ll call “he.” He was circling the room, introducing himself to all things female, handing out his number like business cards. He introduced himself and got everyone’s number. I didn’t bother adding his, because I knew I wouldn’t need or want to contact someone so socially and sexually eager.
He lingered. “You have a lot of freckles.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“My sister has a lot of freckles.” He smiled, drinking a beer. “It’s not a bad thing.”
This was what I remembered, the impression I filed away in my internal Rolodex of new acquaintances. A mismatch apparent even then.
We had one big lecture class together for each of the first three semesters. He’d always come in disheveled, and I thought it was funny. One time he was eating a Caesar salad next to me at 10:30 in the morning. It was gross but oddly endearing. Once his freckled sister came to visit, and he introduced her to my friend and me before class. She seemed nice. I doubt he remembers any of this, and I can’t decide if it’s a valid backstory or if it’s only relevant to me.
I guess I started to like him late in the spring. A lot of it was because he seemed to like me, and not in the “you’re there and easy” way. Not in a way that implied a deep appreciation for my soul either, but it didn’t seem like his usual. Of course it was the usual, but I didn’t see it that way at the time.
“I wanted you all summer,” he said.
Me too, I thought. But I wasn’t after some brag-worthy sexual conquest. I was drunk in his room, and I realize now that wasn’t a smart place to be, but none of that fully registered at the time. Because when you’re a waning teenager and the nights are clear and warm, you aren’t worried about any of that.
Logistically speaking, I guess it all started when I drank with friends and went to a big party in short shorts and a crop top because one of those friends decided the already skimpy shirt I was wearing wasn’t skimpy enough. So she cut half of it off. And I let her. Then I went home with this guy I had liked all summer. And he wanted me. And I guess I wanted him in a different way. I wanted him to like me, which may have been hard because he never knew me. I wanted him to be a good guy, who was good to me, and I’m really not sure what he wanted, because it certainly wasn’t me.
For the record, I don’t really go home with guys on Saturday nights. In fact, I don’t go home with guys on any nights, because I think that’s a pretty ineffective time to get to know people. Greg Vaughn called me a lesbian in high school for my notable and apparently mysterious lack of sexual activity, and I was really insulted that people would make these general assumptions, as if they knew me better than I knew myself, when they didn’t know me at all. But for a day I thought, What? Does that mean I’m a lesbian? Greg said I was.
Henry, Alex, and Johnny called me the goddess. They said I was too good for everyone, and sitting down at lunch, they’d smile and say “It’s the goddess.” And apparently then I was a goddess. But whenever I saw Greg, suddenly I was this closet lesbian. So there I was, anxious and 15, trying to understand whether I was a lesbian or a goddess. And I don’t think I’m either.
The next morning, we sat on the couch with his roommate and the girl he had brought home the night before. They smoked weed and made fun of us for not. Then they showed us this dry erase board with nicknames of all the “psycho girls” they’d been with, and laughed, asking if we recognized any names. I did, and with a weird sense of pride I named one, like I wouldn’t end up there within the week. Then he drove us to Dunkin’ Donuts. He hit a curb on the way.
At the counter, he paid for his double-cheese sausage croissant bagel or whatever he wanted, and walked away. Literally walked away. I would’ve loved to demonstrate some self-sufficiency and buy myself a bagel, but I hadn’t foreseen the prior night or the resulting morning. So I was without means. With some help from the friend, he figured it out, and returned with an arid smile and a debit card. Thank God I’m here. I put a bottle of water on the counter, too annoyed and embarrassed to get anything else. He dropped me off and I went to get myself breakfast.
Two weeks later, on an unsexy Tuesday morning, he requested his sweatshirt back, via text. He told me “I came to school with 3 and now I don’t have any haha.” This was the second week of school. I guess some people are used to having multiple adult sleepovers in a given week, but it was foreign to me. I couldn’t tell if he was being an asshole, trying to get rid of me, completely oblivious, or D: all of the above.
Months after he wanted me, and then just wanted his sweatshirt back, I saw him at the gym. I always find it jarring when people exit your life but remain present through sheer undesired proximity. It’s borderline unfair, when every sitcom taught me that people come in and out in episodic bursts and everyone’s listening to your side of the story. You always get the last word. But a lot of the time they aren’t and you don’t.
In my mind he is “Douchelord.” Mostly because he was and is, a capital-D Douchelord, but also because using his name reminds me of the time when I’d hear it and get swoony. When I thought about him over the summer and hoped he didn’t forget about me in the fall. When I was grass green and didn’t believe in feminism because this isn’t the 1800s. And still, his real name reminds me of the swoon, even though the feeling is gone. So he is Douchelord, and I am as far removed from that version of myself as I can be.
I didn’t trick myself into thinking anything was going to happen; “hi” was out of the question. There was nothing to think and nothing to feel, only an eerie sense of calm because nothing could or would ever happen again. The storm was long gone, out at sea, and I was stranded with a bunch of broken things that weren’t broken before.
So, dripping sweat on the treadmill, glaring at CNN while he lifts weights with his “brothers,” all I could be was mad. I’m mad because in this game already stacked against me, he doesn’t get to win. He’s the villain, Cruella De Vil, Captain Hook, Wicked Witch of the West, Dr. Evil villain, but he’s coming out unscathed. And while I’m tethered to this stationary track, he’s free to roam with calculated ownership and satisfied ease.
In moments of accidental coexistence like this, when the eye contact comes, so does anger. And it’ll pull your chair out every time. Then it’s fight or flight — want to fight but will probably flight — as he gives an unsatisfied, lingering look with a charged turn away as if we have some mutual ongoing rift or I disappointed him. And I wonder: Who says you get to give me that look? No, who says you get to look at me? Who says you get to laugh while I defensively sweat, hoping I don’t look like a cow but knowing I do? I want to tell him how happy it makes me that he’s getting fat and that he’s not going to marry someone half as good as me but if I ever said either of those things I would only be wearing the crazy crown he’s already put on my head. So I sweat.
And right now I’m having trouble distilling our brief collective history, because there’s no consistent narration. There’s mine, and there’s his, and they’re not the same. I’d love to forget him, which would be easy, considering how much he was a product of my imagination, except for the one part that wasn’t.
Six months later, I told a friend the full story of the Douchelord. I hadn’t told myself the full story. I mentioned bits and pieces to friends. It was hard to say out loud, and that, I reasoned, was why I hadn’t.
“This is embarrassing.”
“Don’t judge me.”
“Ugh.”
“Okay, okay.”
“Fine.”
And when I finally said everything, I was crying and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know why, four months earlier, I started crying when Drake came on my iPod and told me Nothing Was the Same. I didn’t know why I started crying when my brother borrowed my car without asking. Every time my phone froze and I couldn’t control the situation, I wanted to throw it out the window. And I didn’t know why.
“No. No. That’s not what happened,” I mumbled. My face was in a pillow.
The more I thought about it, the more it scared me. It wasn’t so much what had happened; it was the time when I couldn’t understand it, when I thought I could avoid a dark reality with passion and zeal until it gave up and stopped existing. I had no idea why I felt empty, and slept that entire day. I wasn’t sure why I had made myself get tested for STIs and taken the morning-after pill, but couldn’t accept that something wasn’t okay with that. I guess I thought emailing the Study Abroad Office looking to disappear was a coincidence. How could I be so confused? Why was there so much gray? I told him to stop.
For a while, it was “the incident.” Now it’s krape. Kind of rape. That’s what I call it because nobody told me what to call it. I barely told anybody that it had happened, so maybe that’s on me. Legally speaking, it was entirely rape. Kind of to me, because it makes the term sound less threatening, and turning things into my own personal colloquial doesn’t require me to deal with them head-on. Not because I’m not dealing with them—just because I need to deal with them myself.
Which is hard to do. To my knowledge, there isn’t much literature on run-ins with your ex-crush-slash-assailant in the student center. There’s not much protocol for addressing his semi-regular liking of my Instagram photos. I want an instructional pamphlet on procedure following socially ambiguous and entirely illegal behavior. Is it too dramatic to unfriend? Should I snarl whenever he’s around campus or just pretend it didn’t happen? How do I handle the judgmental glares from his friends? I’m convinced they’re trying to stare me into silence, and I’m not even sure they know my name, but mass mentality and blind allegiance will make you crazy, whether it’s real or perceived. And nobody told me how to deal with that.
These days, David Webb and Alanis Morisette make a little more sense to me.
I still find it difficult to identify as a “victim of sexual assault.” It’s hard to say it without a disclaimer or statement lessening myself. Contrary to popular belief and Law and Order: SVU, the title doesn’t definitively come from a dark figure in an alley. It’s more like a confusing message from someone you vaguely trusted and then it’s largely up to you. You get to choose whether or not to acknowledge what happened, and that’s hard. So I don’t entirely know what I am. I mostly feel like the victim of a Douchelord.
I’m angry that my imagination could cover someone gross with so much glitter. I feel duped by college culture and catchy but degrading music for telling me that it’s fun and empowering to leave big parties with big guys and it’s something that both people want and benefit from. I’m mad at the universe for infiltrating my consciousness and forcing me to deal with the same dumb night over and over, when no one else has to and I didn’t even choose it. I’m pissed off that someone could hijack my year so royally, in just a few hours. And I’m annoyed that I have to swing back and forth—never clear on what happened, even though there’s nothing to debate besides my own perception of the obvious. But mostly I’m mad that I have to be mad. I’m mad that I’m a red-faced, ranting feminist because there’s nothing else I can be. I don’t want to fight, be scrutinized, or have the title. I hate the title; I’m not the title. So for now, I don’t have the title, and neither does he.
