Page 78 of Letters From A Stalker

Julia exhales slowly and looks down at her hands. “I didn’t tell my parents.”

“Why?”

“Because by then I already knew what conversations about sex sounded like in my family.” She gives a small shrug, but tension draws her shoulders upward despite the attempt at casualness. “My mother had spent years dealing with my father sleeping around, and by the time I was a teenager she sometimes talked to me like whatever he was must be inside me too.”

My jaw tightens again. “What do you mean?”

“She’d make comments. If I liked a boy, somehow the conversation would turn into whether I was sleeping with him. If I went somewhere with friends, there were warnings about not needing sex to make boys like me. Sometimes when she was really angry, she’d tell me I was just like my father or that I’d probably sleep around too.” Julia’s fingers move restlessly against each other. “I couldn’t go home and tell her I had been at a party, got into a man’s car, went into his house and then ended up in his bed. I already knew what every part of that story sounded like when you removed everything I couldn’t explain.”

“You said no.” Her eyes lift to mine. The words come out harder than I intend, so I soften my voice before continuing. “You said no repeatedly. You were impaired enough that you couldn’t control your body properly, and he continued anyway. Nothing about getting into his car, entering his house or knowing him changes what happened after you withdrew consent.”

Her lips part slightly.

I can see her fighting the urge to look away again. “I know that now.”

“Did you know it then?”

“No.” The answer is almost immediate.

She looks down. “I told someone the next day. A girl I went to high school with. We weren’t best friends or anything, but I needed to tell somebody, and she was the person I thought would listen.”

I already know I’m going to hate this woman. “What did she say?”

Julia lets out a quiet breath through her nose. “She said it didn’t really sound like rape.”

There are sentences I encounter in this job often enough that I should no longer be surprised by them. I am still surprised. No, I am fucking raging.

“Why?”

“Because I knew him. Because I went inside willingly. Because he didn’t beat me or hold a knife to me. I didn’t have bruises. I wasn’t tied down. I didn’t scream or scratch him or run away afterward.” Her voice gets quieter as she lists them, not because she believes those things now but because at eighteen she clearly did.

“She told me maybe I regretted it. Maybe I had been more drunk than I realized and changed my mind afterward. She said if I was really being raped, I would have fought.”

My fingers tighten around the pen I picked up at some point that now seems I don’t even remember doing it. I set it down before it snaps.

“She was wrong.” I blurt out too fast.

Julia looks at me. Completely and unambiguously. I don’t care whether saying it with this much certainty violates some therapeutic preference for allowing patients to reach conclusions themselves.

“She was wrong,” I repeat, slower this time. “Rape does not require a weapon. It does not require bruises, screaming or a stranger in a mask. You told him no. You were impaired. Your body’s inability to fight him does not turn what he did into consent.”

Her eyes become glossy, but she doesn’t cry. Something about that feels important.

“I know.” This time the words sound different.

Not defensive, but almost tired.

“I know now. It took a while.”

“How long?”

“A long time.” She adjusts one leg beneath the other, grounding herself more firmly into the chair before continuing. “I talked about it with therapists before. Not in this much detail every time, but enough. I had to, because for a while I kept reacting to men who looked like him.”

“What did he look like?”

Julia’s brow creases as though the question is almost absurd after everything else. “Plain.”

I wait.