Me too

As a freshman in college I played on the Varsity soccer team. Played is overstating the case but I was on the team. One night I went to an off campus party with a bunch of my teammates. I got wasted even though we had practice very early the next morning. Several hours later I woke up in a bed with a guy having sex with me. I'm pretty sure we had been making out at some point in the evening. I know it was his house because I took a pair of his shoes so I could run the mile to campus in time for 6 am practice. As I ran around the turf I could smell the alcohol coming out of my skin. After, we all went to breakfast and then went to work concessions for the football team. I ladled bowl after bowl of clam chowder for grown up alumni, holding back my vomit. The smell, the texture, the whole experience. It was years before I could eat it again.

I don't know that guy's name. I don't remember what he looks like although I think he had brown hair. I don't know who came with me to that party. I do know the PM Dawn song "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" was playing because to this day I can't listen to it. If it comes on the radio I have to change it because because my body vibrates with NO.

I was drunk. I'm sure I was letting him know I was interested at some point. I imagine I must have laid down in his bed. I don't think I blamed him or even really thought he'd done anything wrong. No one ever told me that it wasn't ok for someone to put himself inside of me when I was unconscious and it didn't seem obvious. I got myself into that situation.

My body knew it wasn't OK though because it kept saying NO to that song. It still does. I feel panicky when I hear the intro.

Many many many years passed before I thought maybe that was date rape? Or something? The conversations around me started changing. People started talking about consent. Oh. My intellectual understanding of what happened started catching up with the physiological trauma that my body had been carrying. Oh.

I don't know if that guy thought it was OK. Did he hesitate? Did he ask himself if it was OK? Was I somewhat responsive? I don't know.

It's embarrassing to admit to getting so drunk that I would let that happen.

Sex is pretty confusing. At least it is to me. Some of that has to do with the fact that I started having sex when I was in high school and none of us knew what we were doing. Although I thought the guys did know what they were doing and that they would somehow teach me. A lot of the confusion has to do with the fact that not many adults then, or now, know how to talk about sex and love making and feeling good and navigating the emotions and the awkwardness and the power of it. Certainly not with kids although now that I'm grown I see that we don't really know how to talk about it with each other either. I was in my 30's when a therapist said "You know men have a lot of anxiety and self-consciousness when it comes to sex too" and my mind was blown. Oh.

When a grown woman is willing to sit in front of a country of people and tell us about needing a second front door to feel safe because of something that happened to her when she was fourteen, that is real. And when many or most or all of us know that in the end the people who decide probably won't give a shit, that is real too.

I can easily imagine scenarios in which a high school boy pushes a girl down and gets on top of her, holds her down, laughing, and then walks away thinking nothing happened. No one got naked. No one had sex. What's the big deal? Add some alcohol to the experience and the whole thing could easily be forgotten by him. Because it wasn't out of the norm. And because we can still have a national conversation around the fact that a woman is saying "You did this to me. You hurt me and you scared me and I can't forget it because my body will hold onto it forever" and the responses are "No I didn't" or "He was only 17" or "All his colleagues like him."

We all make mistakes, at seventeen and forever after. Things that seem obvious now, like "Having sex with an unconscious person is not OK" didn't seem obvious to me then.

The devaluing of women is so pervasive, so insidious, so normal and deep, that I'm still waking up to it myself. Most of my embarrassment about writing this is that I'm still not outraged and hurt enough on my own behalf. That I still give that dude the benefit of the doubt. That I still think he probably wasn't and isn't a bad guy. That he didn't know better. That's still my default.

Imagine a world where there is room for curiosity. Where Brett Cavanaugh, the professional, successful, advocate of women that he tells us he is, could say "I'm so sorry. I don't remember doing that but I believe you when you say that I did. I never meant to hurt you and I will keep working and learning to try to atone for the fact that my actions have affected and will continue to affect you forever. Please forgive me." That is someone I'd be willing to have as a judge--a human who is fallible but willing to be better.

Instead he is a man who complains that he won't be able to coach kids again, even though he loves it so much. He is a man who complains about how long the past ten days have been. We're talking about a lifetime appointment and the ability to make laws that affect all of us forever, sir. Can we have someone better than you?