Here’s one reason: if readers consume only stereotypes of rapists, readers risk ignoring the fact that some guy in an Elizabeth Warren shirt could have raped someone, or would rape someone if given the chance. I expect some readers will oppose my book on principle: Why give a rapist a voice? I thought about the ways we’re advised not to give attention to those with problematic viewpoints. I worried that empathy or complexity-or just the act of including his words, by way of transcribed interviews-could sound like exoneration or excuse. I wondered how much empathy I could, or should, invest in his character, and to what degree his character could be complex on the page. I expect some readers will oppose my book on principle: Why give a rapist a voice?īut the writer and feminist in me questioned the ethics, especially when it came to characterization. I missed our friendship, and the memoir was an excuse to talk to him again. Did he even think about it anymore? I could say that I wanted to hurt him by reminding him of what he did, but more than that-and this part I hate to admit-I wanted to hear his voice. Would he consent? Would it matter? Should it matter? Why did I even think his voice mattered? He raped me when we were 19 years old. I wanted his explanation.īut I didn’t know if I should, or even could, interview him. (Though if it had mattered, why did he rape me?) I didn’t want the specifics of my experience transformed into some accepted theory in sociology or psychology. This meant I’d need to talk with him, interrogate him, and hopefully confirm that he felt terrible-because if he did feel terrible, then our friendship had mattered to him.
I wanted to understand what he’d been thinking to know how someone I’d thought of as such a good person could do what he did. To describe my rape with emotional accuracy beyond I felt betrayed and sad and confused (and angry?), I tried to avoid rendering this former friend as two-dimensional-because that’s not how I’d viewed him.
I could easily list my favorite memories of us: battling an alien race from our computers at 2 am while gulping Mountain Dew and complaining about our conservative government teacher sharing a cafeteria table, speaking only in lines from Office Space and The Simpsons trying to act brave in a supposedly haunted forest and then jumping at the sound of twigs breaking talking on the phone for several hours, several times a week, in the months after my dad died. So in January of 2018, 14 years after our friendship ended, I started to write about it for a project that would become a memoir. I didn’t wish him a bad life, but I can’t say I cared either way. Over the years, I’d hear about him-how he’d dropped out of college, moved back in with his parents, started seeing a therapist, became a mechanic. We faked our friendship a few more times, talking around-but never about-what happened. The next day, or maybe a few days later, he apologized. Then, at a small party during winter break of sophomore year, he carried me, passed out, into his basement room and raped me. Throughout high school and into college, we’d been close friends. I tried to hate him, thought I should hate him, but I didn’t hate him-and I wanted to understand why.
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