Saying No, Fifty Years Later

I recognized a face on our Facebook alumni page as a secret I'd kept—the teacher who molested me.

The author in 1972, around the time of the incident “holding a wire sculpture of my soul. Goth before there was goth. They just called it ‘what the hell is wrong with you?’ back then.”

He was a beloved and admired high-school football coach. 

He was a middle-aged sack of testosterone and machismo that pinned me against the lockers and ground himself into me, his barrel chest mashing my 15-year-old barely breasts into my ribs. He held me there. Probably not for as long as I remember or as long as it felt at the time.

My high school Facebook alumni page has been posting photos of former teachers, coaches, and principals, everyone lauding how great this or that one was. I struggled with whether or not to say anything on this rah-rah-wasn’t-high-school-great page (for the record, it wasn’t). I wasn't sure I was ready for the right-wing, patriarchal, John Birch shaming and blaming I’d grown up surrounded by. If it bothered me so much (I heard in the voices of childhood mean girls and bullies) why didn’t I just “unjoin” the alumni page?

He was a middle-aged sack of testosterone and machismo that pinned me against the lockers and ground himself into me, his barrel chest mashing my 15-year-old barely breasts into my ribs. He held me there. Probably not for as long as I remember or as long as it felt at the time.

There was just that one incident with him and times I’d question if it actually happened, if I wasn’t making a big deal out of something that was nothing, something that probably didn’t even register with him long enough to have something to forget. But, the reaction I had to the small black and white headshot they posted was so visceral even fifty years later, that what I’d forgotten or suppressed rushed back: his laughter, stubble, and the moist warmth of his tobacco breath on my face. What I assume was cortisol and adrenaline pulsed through me, again. Bile rose in the back of my throat. The paralyzing fear of a deer caught in the headlights—where I am the deer and the headlights were the boys’ locker room. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to run away from home, or at the very least, close down my computer screen.

I’d kept it to myself. I was tough, resilient and realistic. It wouldn’t have been Us against Them, it would’ve been lower case me and my word against an Adult, a Teacher, the School. I was a straight-A kid who constantly cut school, forged notes from my mother, and ran wild—my word against that of a respected high school football coach? It would have been me against a Bulldog (our school mascot and football team). I may have joked about it to friends as we smoked pot and drank wine in some field when we were supposed to be in class, but that’s as far as it went.

The world was different in the early-mid seventies. It was Nixon, Vietnam and high school sports. You’ve seen Friday Night Lights. We all know how important high school football is in suburbia. I believed my voice didn’t matter. I was a kid, just a girl. I didn’t have the vocabulary or think I deserved to be defended. No one was talking. Sure, there was Our Bodies, Our Selves, Roe v Wade and Helen Reddy belting out “I am Woman,” but none of that had trickled down to high school girls yet. It was fifty years before #MeToo.

I wasn't sure I was ready for the right-wing, patriarchal, John Birch shaming and blaming I’d grown up surrounded by. If it bothered me so much (I heard in the voices of childhood mean girls and bullies) why didn’t I just “unjoin” the alumni page?

I didn’t understand the corrosive nature of secrets then, the way every silence strengthened the wall between my heart and the world. That I would develop a history of keeping silent and keeping secrets, of pushing through instead of processing. In the recovery community they say You’re only as sick as your secrets. It was not my first secret of its kind, but it helped cement a view of myself, confirming I was what those who came before him had said by their actions. What those who would come after would reinforce. His actions and my silence were part of a pattern that molded my belief in who I was and what I deserved in life. 

But why hesitate to speak up now, today, fifty years after high school? Am I not a feminist, third wave, claiming my sexual power and feet firmly planted in my super-power: righteous feminist indignation. Am I still afraid of the mean girls? Afraid of being called a tramp and having someone say I asked for it, or worse yet, that I was making it all up? Was I scared? Maybe. Maybe, there was a part of me that was still frightened. 

Did it even matter fifty years later? He’d been dead for more than a decade. 

It mattered. I couldn’t have been the only one. Seeing his photograph today made me angry in a way I wasn’t allowed to be angry then. I wasn’t going to be chased off Facebook—or out of a room, a neighborhood or a job—or make choices based on someone else’s actions and my old secrets. I posted my truth, without naming him, and held my breath waiting for the abuse that would follow in the comments. 

What followed was more than unexpected. 

My word against that of a respected high school football coach? It would have been me against a Bulldog (our school mascot and football team).

Comments poured in, discussions spun off, from classes before and after mine. Was it this one, because did you know about what he did in Driver’s Ed? Or this coach, that shop teacher? Similar stories came one after another, from men and women. A few had had the wherewithal and support to threaten to go to their families, but most kept it quiet. Some of these “indiscretions” were open secrets—like the regular paddling of elementary school aged boys who weren’t good athletes, or who cried. One man credited that abuse with making him “a man.” Others are still haunted by the memories of humiliation and unwanted touches from faculty, from family, from neighborhood kids, pastors of the local church. Almost one hundred comments, all but one or two supportive in their own way. I didn’t know a single one of the commenters.

What might have happened if I’d had the courage and language to say something fifty years ago? What if I had, and had gotten this support then? Or if I spoke up and was labeled a tramp at 15? What if no one believed me? Even if no one believed me—who would I be today? There might have been no more incidents I’d be expected to keep quiet about. Or the incidents and the men might still be there, but speaking up, like any other skill, gets easier with practice. What might I not have allowed to happen to myself in the years that followed? I trust that people would’ve believed me, privately, but this kind of public naming and validation was not part of the culture, yet. 

Things haven’t changed terribly much. Today, I am one of the fiercest women anyone acquainted with me knows. I’m the kind of person other people stand behind. Yet, I hesitated to say my truth. 

How long does it take for us to learn to stand up for ourselves? 

What might have happened if I’d had the courage and language to say something fifty years ago? What if I had, and had gotten this support then? Or if I spoke up and was labeled a tramp at 15?

In the comments, women talking about the Drivers Ed thigh grab and breast graze assumed the girls who allowed it “must have been one of those tramps we couldn't stand.” 

I hate the word. Some people are groomed from childhood, intentionally or through ignorance, to believe that is their only value, their only tool with which to make a life. Some are frightened or nervous, they freeze or there's nervous laughter. “Tramps” often have a back story with sexual abuse or neglect. How long does it take for us to learn to stand up for ourselves?

It only took a few hours for me to get up on my anti-slut-shaming, Facebook-comment-posting soapbox.