by Emily Walker
"You can't just write a story about me," June said. "I'm not some fictional character, I'm real, and I don't want everyone reading about me.""What if I don't use your real name?" I asked.
"Em, they'll know it's me. Who else would it be?"
"Just about anyone!" I insisted. "Maybe I made it all up. Everyone thinks I make it all up anyway."
"No, Em, they'll know. And I spent three years trying to make them all forget about me."
*** In junior high, June's best friend was the boy who kept trying to rape her. I didn't know her then- I was three states away, a grade younger, just as afraid of boys as she was, but for less reason. If we had been friends then, I would have kicked the crap out of that boy, pulled out his teeth, his tongue, his fingernails one by one. She was a precious, beautiful young girl, and she never again really trusted anyone.
He signed her yearbook, "I hope we're always friends like this. Love, Ryan." The message disgusts her now, but back then she was elated, and it proved to her that he really did like her. He signed on the very front page, where everyone would be sure to see it. Ryan never talked to her in front of his friends, never at school, not in front of the cool people. But the yearbook proved it.
He thought he was all cool. He had greasy slicked-back hair and a pudgy stomach, and was kinda short for his age. But his cousin was that popular blonde guy, so Ryan, by relation I suppose, was kinda cool, too. June thought he was cool. She was always really careful about what she said to him, tried hard not to make him mad. You had to watch yourself around the cool kids. If you did something wrong, you would end up the one who they made fun of on the bus, the one whose desk they put dog bones in and then barked at you all week. And June was so shy, so sweet, she wanted everyone to like her, no matter what she had to do for it.
Ryan decided that what she could do was, well, anything he told her to do. He decided she would be such the perfect one to try out all those things his brother had told him about. She was already used to him being mean to her. They grew up on the same street. He used to hit her all the time, push her around. She would yell at him, "Stop hitting me!" He would say, "That's not hitting, that's punching," or "That's not hitting, but this is!" And keep doing it. For years, and she stopped telling him to stop, since he never did anyway, not until he got bored and went home.
But he walked her home every day. Sometimes they talked about music and school and stuff. So they must be friends, right? Otherwise, why would he risk being seen with one of the brainy kids? June put up with it all, because that's what you do for your friends.
Seventh grade, I think, was when he started grabbing her and groping her inbetween hitting her. She started telling him to stop again. She wasn't quite sure if she meant it, though- she had read all those novels, this is what you were supposed to like. It meant you were in love, it meant you were a grown-up, something like that. It at least meant that he really must like her. And he was the only real friend she had. But it wasn't really like the books, either. It was more like the movie she had seen the summer before about the teacher who was attacked in her classroom late at night by some guy. And in the next scene, she was at the doctor's all bruised and cut and crying, and the doctor told her that at least she wasn't pregnant. June sobbed and paced her living room and chanted, "It's just TV, it doesn't happen; it's just TV, it doesn't happen" until her mother came home, and then she hid in her room. June had never heard of rape before, and she still wouldn't hear the exact word for another year or so. She hadn't bothered to watch the rest of the movie.
She didn't think about that, though, with Ryan. If she had, she probably would have kicked his ass herself, because she decided while watching the movie that that would never happen to her. She was too nice to him. She thought he must only be teasing anyway. And it was still her own fault for not wanting it. Of course, why would she want it, when he would hit her and then call her names, but still try to drag her with him into his house where they would be alone? Or when he would bring his friends home with him, and whisper in her ear, "That guy is the one who's gonna hold down your arms. That other one is gonna hold down your legs, and damn if you can get away then! And you know what we're gonna do then?" And he would tell her every day, all the things he knew about that he could do to her. Every time he tried, she would scream or hit him back, or scratch him really hard until he let her go, but keep walking down the street with him. He was still her best friend.
*** When I met June, she used to go home sick almost every day, her mom would come pick her up on her lunch hour. I thought she was kinda weird. She didn't talk much. We didn't get to be friends until high school. By then Ryan had gotten his driver's license and didn't walk home with her anymore, but I wouldn't know about any of that for at least two or three more years.
She really wasn't a brainy kid, not a nerd, not any kind of social outcast, even in the high school years where everyone was uncool for some reason. June was very smart, very sweet. Later on, she had a lot of friends and she got along with everyone. If anything, people envied her. She never had to worry about making people like her. God, especially not those gross greasy kids who never ended up finishing high school anyway! I can sit and think, "If only I'd been there..." as much as I want. But I wasn't, and all that stuff still happened to her, and all I get to do is hope that Ryan is now impotent and unemployed and still living with his parents, or sitting in prison because of those stolen cars, finally knowing what it feels like to be afraid every moment that someone is about to rape you. But that probably doesn't really happen in prison, and he's likely working in a gas station and getting drunk every night and still not thinking about any of it.
*** When we went away to college, June changed a lot, was a little more sane, a lot more crazy just for a year. She started dealing with all her experiences growing up, became a feminist, read a lot of self-help books, stopped believing in God. She told me she was "finally functional again," that she had gotten over her fear of men. Which really just meant that in some ways, she had stopped fighting, and in others she had closed herself off to everyone. We used to go to parties and get really drunk in order to better foster our newly-functional attitudes toward men, toward being social and "cool." To other people, we were becoming cheap drunks, but we saw it all differently. I realized that maybe they were right when one morning, June woke me up to tell me, remember that sleazy drama major who kept bringing us more beer? He was in her bed, she said.
What a waste, that she spent so many years fighting to keep her body her own, to not let some icky guy take advantage of her, and in the end, she gave it away to someone eerily similar to Ryan. I wasn't about to believe that it was a liberated, functional decision- it was just self-destruction. She was tired of fighting.
*** "June", of course, isn't her real name. I gave her a pseudonym as my one concession. It was never really an argument, whether or not I would write about her. We both know that I always get what I want, and she always gives people what they want. And that I was never actually asking her permission, just warning her. And I knew she didn't really mind, and that "they" don't read my web page anyway.
She gave up trying to dissuade me, especially once I let her read this piece. I didn't expect her to cry. And she didn't. She just turned to me and said, "I never knew you were paying so much attention!" Which is her polite way of saying that, yes, I can recount her stories, but I still don't understand.
This isn't a very good story, is it? There's no moral, no lesson, no victory, no happy ending. She's not fictional though, you know. She's sitting in my living room, and her story isn't over yet.