He’s still there. I have had someone following me for ten years. Every time I look over my shoulder, he isn’t far behind. The more I learn more about him, the scarier he looks and the more uncomfortable I feel around him. As I age, he ages, too. I can see the maturity in his face. Is it maturity? No, it’s that fake kind where the person tries to convince you they are mature by getting piercings and tattoos. He wreaks of cigarette smoke and dirty laundry. He always wears a snarl on his face that makes me want to not even look at him. If I do, I just sneak small peeks so I can try to describe him to a trusted friend. I wouldn’t want him following someone else, so I try to keep the details I see to myself. However, beneath this rough, intimidating, and repulsive outward appearance, he still has a piece of innocence in him.
Over the ten years, I have actually been trying to find a small piece of innocence that coincidentally left me at the same time that I first felt his presence.
The memory is a bit foggy, but I can still remember the first time I saw him. I was at my aunt’s apartment because I had the day off from school, and my parents both had work. I was engrossed in a book while the chatter of cable TV passed over me. My aunt was either cleaning her bedroom, taking a shower, or doing laundry; I was always a good kid, so she didn’t have to worry about me getting into trouble. My cousins are Irish twins, both roughly five years older than I am. To my knowledge, they were playing with G.I. Joe’s in their bedroom. I much preferred reading my books over playing with their “boy” toys.
I was in the middle of a chapter when I heard one of them call me into their room.
“We’re gonna play a game.” Ooh, a game! “You’ll go into the closet, close your eyes, and open your mouth. Then, we’ll put something in it.” Maybe it’ll be a toy truck? I love to guess, and my naive, simple second-grader mind’s first thought was a toy truck. I did what I was told and stepped into the darkness. One last rule to the game was given to me before the door shut: “Oh, and don’t bite down!”
I don’t know exactly how long I stood in there. Long enough for me to question how fun this game actually was. Of course, something had been in my mouth the entire time, but I didn’t know what it was. I did know, however, that it was definitely not the hard plastic of a toy truck. This is where the fog is heaviest—I can’t remember what exactly made me freak out and run out of the closet. But as I did, I heard the laughter of two thirteen-year-old boys. I ran to the bathroom and gathered water into my mouth like I hadn’t tasted it in years. As I finished rinsing out my mouth, I looked into the mirror, and that’s when I first saw him. He wasn’t as scary then as he is now. He looked like a man who knew success in his life, but he was just a little dirty. His hair was a little tousled, and he looked like he could use a coffee. His face wasn’t mean, but still had some authority to it. He followed me around for the rest of the day, but when I woke up the next morning he was gone. And so was this memory.
It was several years until I saw him again. I was walking with my friends from the playground to the school building at the end of recess. We were almost to the door when I caught him from the corner of my eye. I jumped when I first saw him, but I couldn’t place where I knew him from. He was so familiar to me, but where had I seen him before? Soon, the foggy pieces of the memory started coming together, and the first piece was the reflection of him in the mirror. Because I was not exposed to a lot of popular culture and was not a rebellious child—and because I was a child—it took a decade to fully understand why this man was following me. After the flashback in fifth grade, I knew something wrong was done to me, but I didn’t understand the magnitude of it until my junior year of high school.
It wasn’t until today, the middle of my second semester of my first year in college, that I started demanding answers from the man who has been following me for a decade. I balled up the courage to look him directly in the eyes and express my distresses and confusion. Why are you still here? Why can I not look at you? Why do you make me so uncomfortable? why? Why? WHY? No one in my family knows about what happened ten years ago, so life has gone on normally. Whenever we had family gatherings, big or small, the man seemed to get a little closer to me. The older cousin has become known as someone who is kind and helps out our family when he can. Because I see this goodness in him, too, I coped with the memory by telling myself that what they did was something stupid thirteen-year-old boys do. They didn’t know better and were just playing a joke. There are people who believe that “boys will be boys,” and we should just accept their vile behavior and move on. They believe we can not change the nature of male behavior. However, I don’t believe in the idea that “boys will be boys,” so am I contradicting myself? I understand both sides because I have lived both sides. I have seen my cousin grow into a nice, young man. It is possible to come back from a mistake, and people make plenty of mistakes. I love my cousin, and I can forgive him his stupid action. However, that doesn’t mean I am taking the wrongness and violation away from what happened. When you say that “boys will be boys,” you take away their accountability. This brings shame, guilt, and embarrassment to the victim when it wasn’t their mistake. This way of thinking takes away the fact that we are all human and we all make mistakes, but there are still consequences for those mistakes.
I grew up in a time where such behavior was not a common topic of discussion. Only recently have sexual assault and rape started to be brought into light in a mainstream way. When trying to process my experience, I had no way of knowing that what happened to me was not my fault. I felt embarrassed and ashamed for a long time. When I started learning about sexual assault in high school, it generated strong feelings towards the accountability of perpetrators; but I still did not give myself the permission to absolve myself of the consequences. At that point, I had already distanced myself from what happened. But the distance didn’t rid me of the ramifications the experience had on me. There are many women, girls, men, and boys who do as I did. They try to shove the experience into the farthest corner and lock it up because they are ashamed of it and don’t want to think about it. We shouldn’t live in a world where people who did not consent to these experiences feel the need to lock away the memory and pretend it doesn’t exist because they don’t think they can be helped. Of course, they will still be affected by these experiences, but they should not hold the burden of someone else’s consequences.
We can not pretend that we do not see the man following us. Not acknowledging that he is there makes him grow scarier and more powerful. However, putting accountability to the reason why I first met him has seemed to release that innocence that was hidden in him. It radiated out and it seems to have allowed him to become humble. The man that has been following me now looks like he is cleaning himself up. His face is starting to relax into what I’m tempted to call a pleasant look. He’s started taking some piercings out, and I think he even got a haircut. We’re not friends, and we never will be. But I do acknowledge him with a little nod now and then.
