I never said yes; now I say no more.
I had dated him — a senior, a popular football player and star of the debate team — for only a couple of months when he asked if I would have sex with him. I said no; I loved him and everything, but I wasn’t ready. I had just turned 15.
Then the night of the Christmas Ball arrived in all its magnificence. Maw-maw made my dress — black velvet top with puffy sleeves, a tea-length red and green taffeta skirt, and big bow at my lower back. The perm in my hair needed a refresher but I scrunched it the best I could and curled my bangs. They rose like a crown and curled perfectly over my forehead. In the school gym, we danced like it was 1999. The night was magical.
We ended the night at his friend’s house. The parents weren’t home and other guys from the football and debate teams were there, drinking with their girlfriends, also adorned in taffeta and velvet. I didn’t know anyone very well. I stayed at his side, not saying much to the drunk seniors stumbling around, looking for the last bottle of Bartles and Jaymes or passed out on the sofa, cumber bun astray.
After a round of quarters and my own wine cooler or two, he led me across the lawn to the dark pool house. We started making out on the bed. The plaid taffeta came off and then the black nylons. I wanted to say no but before I knew what was happening, he had a condom on and it was over.
He drove me home in his yellow VW Rabbit. We rode in silence.
I didn’t feel like I was raped but I hadn’t wanted it to happen either. I wished I could go back and do something differently. I wished it the next morning when I woke up and I wished it every morning after that for months. It wasn’t quite a prayer but a small, deep pit of regret.
Still, I didn’t break up with him. As empty as I felt, I kept going out with him because I thought I was supposed to. I kept having sex with him because he wanted to. I never felt the exhilaration of a first love; I felt embarrassed and guilty and obligated. I strayed from the group of friends I had had since seventh grade. I believed him when he said I should want to spend New Year’s Eve with his family and I should feel ashamed of my nomination to the high school homecoming court, an immature popularity contest. The thought of him leaving made me feel like I would shrivel up, break apart and blow away. Maybe, one day — I used to think — we would get married.
Looking back on the Christmas Ball night and even the whole three-year relationship, I have often searched for the reasons I made such poor choices. I’ve had enough therapy and facilitated group sessions to know that I have the classic Issue with Abandonment. My father left me and my mom when I was two-years-old and the attention from an older man just felt good. I really value security. I’ve been married for almost twenty years, I’ve lived in the same house for 10 and I’m committed to staying here until they drag me out on a stretcher. He was smart and I could have done worse, I reason sometimes. I was immature and naïve, I think on other days.
I realized tonight, lying awake at 2:30 am — thinking about #metoo and all the other women remembering that groping incident at work or that date that went too far — that I have never once considered that he did something wrong. I have never considered his responsibility. But in fact, I never said yes. In fact, I clearly said no the week before the Christmas Ball. He did not respect my words. Instead he used his power as an adult man and a popular senior to get what he wanted: sex with a barely-15 year old girl.
He has no comprehension of his own role in the incident either. When Facebook first became popular he sent me a message. “Great to see you. I’d love to reconnect and see what your kids look like. Ha ha.” At the time, my oldest daughter was almost 15 and when I read his flippant remark, a wave of nausea rushed through me.
Thinking of myself at my daughter’s age, I remembered the lunch at Round Table Pizza. A few months after the Christmas Ball, we went there to discuss The Broken Condom Incident. We sat in a small booth, the cheap stained-glass lamp made it feel like the bottom of a well tinged with red light. I couldn’t eat my personal-size Hawaiian pizza; it just wouldn’t go down.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
“You can call my sister-in-law.”
I didn’t look up.
“This same thing happened to her and my brother. They got married and it all worked out,” he said.
I really didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell my mom. I never wanted to bother her with my problems; she worked so hard. I had hardly spoken to my best friends in the last few months. I couldn’t tell his sister-in-law; I didn’t even know her. It was dark and lonely in that well.
“At BYU there’s married housing,” he offered. “It could be fun.”
“Just take me back to school,” I said. We went back out into the vast parking lot, back to the yellow Rabbit.
Sitting in that cracking black vinyl seat I knew that if I were pregnant, I could not have the baby. A very small piece of me believed that I could have more than a baby, that I could be more than his wife. No woman on my father’s side of the family had ever gone to college, but I wanted to go. I couldn’t break up with him, but the idea of a baby with him made me realize that I had, somewhere deep in the back of my mind, the idea of becoming a lawyer.
I wasn’t pregnant and ten years later I graduated from Stanford Law School.
I am not a victim. I claim my own poor choices and I’ve made plenty more since the enormous bangs and the night of the Christmas Ball. Silence has been my lasting and relentless mistake. I never responded to his message on Facebook. Even this essay I’ve let sit in my computer for months. I think my story doesn’t live up to the drama or the pain of so many others in the news. Or I don’t want to embarrass him; he is a professional man with a family.
But silence started this mess.
He was wrong. As a start, I’d like him and other men to start recognizing their actions and apologizing. I will teach my daughters to speak clearly and strongly. This will challenge men and women alike because sexualized disrespect, aggression and violence are as American has homecoming. Staying silent about it has been our national tradition. I say, no more.
