The spring of my sophomore year in high school I was just starting to come out of my first episode of clinical depression. I had basically spent the previous several months behind the closed door of my bedroom, listening to music, crying, and playing with my cat. I went whole days where I didn't speak to anyone, not unless I really had to. But that spring came along and the blackness was just starting to lift and I was developing a new friendship with a girl who was in one of my classes. And then one day my new friend invited me along on a Saturday outing.
This boy she had a crush on, who did not go to our school, was going to NH with a friend of his and his friend's dad, and he had invited her along. She wanted to go, but she did not want to be the only girl. Now, again, I had maybe gone to one or two school dances that fall and/or early winter, but other than that, I had been completely not socializing at all. But I was feeling different. I was okay with meeting some new people. I wanted to go. I said sure.
I can't even remember what the purpose of this trip across the border was. I have some idea that the crush's friend's dad was opening a cottage for the year, and that maybe the guys fished a bit in a lake. What I do remember is that the dad gave us all beer. Now, of course, I see how deeply inappropriate a guy in his 30s or 40s giving beer to 15 year olds was, even by 1978 standards, but at the time, I was not complaining. Eventually we drove back to MA, and went to the guy's house. For those of you who know north of Boston: they lived on North Shore Road in Revere, in one of those incredibly tiny houses that were apparently summer cottages themselves at one time, but which were by then lived in year round. I remember it being kind of dark, and kind of dirty. We had maybe another beer. My friend made out with her crush, and I made out with the kid whose house it was. I was not attracted to him at all, per se, but I was slightly drunk and I liked to kiss boys. Eventually my friend and I went home, and to my knowledge, neither of us ever saw either of those guys again. I still from time to time look for the house on North Shore Road when I pass, trying to remember exactly which one it was.
Skip ahead another four months or so, an eternity in 10th grade terms. It's the end of the summer and I am by then dating and oh so deeply in love and lust with my future ex-husband. I had spent that summer working as a nursing assistant in a decrepit nursing home. On the afternoon in question, I was scheduled for dinner/bedtime shift, 4 to 8 pm. I had spent the morning and early afternoon at S's house, but then it was time for me to go to work. His car was not running, so I was waiting at the bus stop down the street from his house, only vaguely aware of what time it would arrive. Time passed, it was looking like I was going to be late for work, and then it started to thunderstorm. Warm but hard rain. I was wearing my white nylon uniform. You can just imagine. (But don't imagine too hard. I was 15, you bunch of pervs.) An "old" guy--I'm sure a good five or ten years younger than I am now--driving a chip delivery truck stopped and asked if I needed a ride. I was soaked. I was afraid of being late. I said sure.
He asked me a bunch of probably creepy personal questions, but he delivered me to my place of employment, and he didn't touch me.
So. There's just two examples off the top of my head where my own lack of judgment as a not-yet-so-worldly teenager could well have led to my being raped and it's only dumb luck, looking back, that I was not. But I am so sure, so sure, that if I had been, the circumstances (OMG, she was *drinking* with a couple boys and an older man she didn't really know! OMG, she got into a stranger's vehicle and she told him all about herself!) would have made people like that POS DA referenced in the previous post consider that I was, y'know, asking for it.
Seriously, the rage, I can't even tell you.
xoxo
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