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Ten years after leaving high school my
only friend from those days ran into two girls we went to high
school with in a Toronto Deli. They did not remember him, but when he
mentioned my name the women could not hold back from indulging in
their 15 minutes of hate. I was fascinated by their reaction because
I did nothing to them, I could not even put a face to their names,
but still, their hate for me lived on long after I left their
reality.
I did not start out being the most
hated girl in my High School but it was what I became. In fact, my
last year in Cameron Heights Collegiate started so well. Six weeks
into the school year I gave a three part presentation for Canadian
Law on ‘censorship’. I delivered it while wearing high heels,
nylons, garter belt, panties and a corset. I had a very young
teacher who was very unsure of herself and more interested in being
our friend than our teacher. This was why I believed I would get away
with it. After the presentation, I had a circle of girlfriends, the
phone rang for me non-stop. There was not a party I was not invited
to attend. My school ‘creds’ were made as the uber wild child.
A funny thing about those parties;
there always seemed to be one girl who drank or smoked too much and
ended up in a room surrounded by predatory young males. Countless
times, it was me pushing my way into the room and drawing a line of
'NO” around the girl. I do not remember a single party where I did
not drag a semi-conscious female out the door and into a cab.
Amazing what a little bit of chutzpah and ninety pounds of
determination can pull off when there is someone willing to say no
and call evil by its' name. Only one girl objected into being put in
a cab because she was afraid of what her parents would say. I told
her if her parents raised objections she should ask them if they
would rather she was gang raped. She got in the cab.
Why was I never that girl who was out
of control and caved completely under the influence? I had a Bubbe
who warned me from the time I was young that I could never afford to
'let myself go' in a party. According to Bubbe, there was always a
predator waiting to pounce the minute you were not in complete
control. This was the reality of her day, and I realized early, I did
not want to take a chance to find out if she was always right. Not
everyone has a Bubbe, and even if everyone did, why should a few
drinks mean you are open season?
But this wasn't why I was hated. I was
hated because I took a stand against my best friend and all round
popular girlfriend Linda. Linda came from a privileged WASP home,
three years of private school and all the trappings great wealth
provides. Linda was ashamed of her privilege and was in full
rebellion against her parents and everything they stood for. . Linda
loved my 'chutzpah' and envied my life with my meshuga mother, broken
home, and ethnic background. This was the end of the Seventies when
the cult of victim-hood was born and Linda was one of the first
victims I met. And me? I wanted to live her life – sans
rebellion.
Linda had bright eyes and the most
beautiful laugh. I have never heard anyone laugh quite like her, it
was pure music. She ended up shacking with the high school basketball
star a few months just before winter break. I had met her boyfriend
three years before at a different high school. We were both ‘niners’
together. Chad was always trying to get me to come practice to watch
him play. I just was not interested in sitting on the benching going
rah-rah every time he got the ball. I just was not that kind of gal.
By spring break, Linda had dropped out
of school to support her and Chad. Chad would not drop out of school.
He had to study hard and concentrate on his basketball career. He had
high hopes of being drafted or winning a scholarship to a US college,
and hence, a second shot at being drafted into the NBA. Linda was
being the 'good' woman and standing by/supporting her man. Near the
end of the Spring break I met up with her and the other girls in our
circle for lunch. I was overwhelmed and needed a break from editing
a short film I had shot for my 'mass media' class.
It started off like any other time with
the girls. We were all laughing and telling stories, and then Linda
took centre stage with a tale of jock groupies. She told us, when
Chad was at KCI, he and the other players on the team would 'invite'
girls to watch them play. Afterwards, the guys would pick one or two
'groupies' and force those girls to do have sex with the whole team
in the basement locker room of the school. It did not matter if a
girl said no – once a girl came - she was open season. This was the
price of being admitted to practice. Linda claimed everyone knew the
rules but I didn't. I thought an invite to watch practice was simply
an invite to sit on the bench and not lie on it.
I had never heard anything so appalling
and was in complete shock. All the other girls at the table went
along with Linda and were laughing about those stupid slutty
groupies. I was stunned at how close I came to sharing the same fate
as those faceless, nameless girls being pilloried as jock groupies,
and by implication; defective human beings.
Eventually, I found my feet and stood
up to tell my friends what I thought of their morals in no uncertain
terms. I gave Linda - and everyone else in the restaurant - an earful
on the real deal about her serial rapist boyfriend. I left in a rage
and huff to stew in my own self-righteous fury. I was so busy with
the film that I did not notice my phone stopped ringing. Nothing
prepared me for the first day back at school after March break. No
one would talk to me. No one answered my 'hi's', wave or even nod at
me as I walked down the hall. By the time I turned the corridor
towards my locker a strange silence reined among my peers.
I saw why as soon as my locker came
into view. A red lipstick message was left for me and the student
body. Hell, even a blind man could not have missed that message.
Someone had drawn a picture of me felicitating an anonymous penis
with my home telephone number written in red lipstick. It was the
first time my locker was vandalize, but it wouldn't be the last. I
was called all manner of choice epitaphs from the time.
In the matter of a few days, I was a
'pariah'. Stories of my alleged sexual prowness went around like
wildfire. I got suspended for three days for turning around and
punching the guy who sat behind me English who started to make
disparaging comments about me in class. No one took my side, in fact,
everyone in the class claimed he said nothing...I was cut
everywhere...my phone never rang except for crank calls and there
were no more parties for me. I was gropped as I made my way in the
stairwells between classes.
No one would sit with me in the
cafeteria and often people would throw food at me. No one would stand
with me outside in the smoking section. Within days, I could not
even smoke in the designated smoking section and instead had to make
my way to a hill which overlooked the football field. My peers would
throw their cigarette butts at me if I stayed in the official
section. My one and only friend from that period could not handle the
bounce I was getting. He had a enough troubles of his own so I never
judged him for only seeking me out in private when the risk was
discovery was low. Not one of the girls I had 'saved' stood with me.
In fact, they became my harshest and most vocal critics. I was
completely person non grata. I had three months of this treatment,
and when school ended, I left the city and never looked back. There
are no 10th, 20th, 25th or even 30th year High School reunions for
me.
What happened in Steubenville is not just a one-off scenario - a perfect storm of colliding circumstances
but a very old tale which crosses borders, cultures and transcends
time. My story is as Canadian as it comes, and it happened over 30
years ago. Steubenville has been happening for a very long time in
the lives of girls and women.
I wish I could have been there to cart
that little girl home before anything happened to her. I only wish
there was someone who felt it was more important to do the right
thing and take a stand to protect her when she was least able to
protect herself. It is easy to blame the victim for over indulging
and her parents for a lack of supervision, but the reality is, we
continue to fail to be our brother's keeper and so our children
continue to fail to keep each other safe.
There are predators surrounding us
every day of our lives and at any age, just waiting in the corner for
that one moment when we lose control so they can pounce and feed off
our misery. What we can do is to teach our children that any act
which degrades, humiliates or exploits another human without their
expressed consent diminishes all of us. We can teach our children
that passing on nude pictures and/or videos of the worst moments of a
human life via social media has no place in public discourse and is
an act of appalling moral turpitude.
