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The Unnamed Story

It was Sunday afternoon, 98 degrees outside, and I was sitting in a room with one electric fan that looks like it does not belong anywhere less than 500 miles away from Bangkok. That, along with grey tables and chairs and seemingly collapsible windows, made me wonder that what I had heard must be true. This place was indeed in desperate need of funding. The only thing that seemed out of place in that room was a woman sitting in front of me reading my resume, who, with that pencil skirt and a to-die-for figure, looked like she just jumped out of a fashion magazine. According to a woman who introduced us, her name was Mira, and she was going to be my boss for the next six weeks. We were paired because they thought that, since both of us are U.S educated, we must have things to talk to each other. For the first twenty minutes after the introduction, that still did not happen. This was why I hated meeting new people. I thought to myself. I sucked at breaking ice. But obviously, on that day, I finally met someone who was worse at it than I was, when she started by saying.
“Have you ever been raped?”
“What?”
“I think you heard me.”
“No.”
“Assaulted? Sexually harassed?”
“No. And no. But what does that have to do with anything?”
“The training is different. If you have never been raped, assaulted, or harassed, there will be a few things you need to know.” She said, opening her drawer and pulling out a yellow folder with a black bold print: The Bangkok Rape Crisis Center: Rules and Regulations for Summer Interns, “If you don’t mind me asking. Why are you here?”
“Well, quoting Wole Soyinka, you don’t have to undergo the experience to empathize with someone’s situation.”
That, of course, was a lie, and it was not even a good one. Frankly, I was there mainly out of guilt, but that was my business, and I did not feel like sharing it with my temporary boss. One moment I had an urge to ask her of the reason why she was there, but on asecond thought, I realized that I probably did not need to ask in order to know.

“All the boring bureaucrat stuff, you can read it at home….This file, on the other hand, I want to you to read it carefully…so do that now, and when you’re done, let me know. I have a case for you. And, just so we are clear. You are there to listen. You don’t get to decide for her, o.k.?” Mira said, while she was driving me to the hospital to meet my ‘case’, “Most of the time, we don’t push the victims, but in this particular case, see if you can at least get her real name.”
“They don’t know who she is?”
“She wouldn’t tell us. She was assaulted, but not raped. The police and the social worker have already talked to her, but they don’t have enough social worker to talk to her everyday. And I think talking to someone her age might be easier for her.”
From what Mira told me, I had imagined that my ‘case’ should at least be seventeen, but from what she looked like, she would be fourteen or fifteen at most. She looked out of place, and did not know what to do with her self and scared. But the truth was, as awkward as this might seem, it was easier to be with in this type of situation with a stranger than someone you knew.

“I am telling you for the last time. It’s not your fault.” Said Tanya, my best friend, while I was standing, shaking, in front of the Northwestern infirmary. “It’s not because you left your drunk roommate, and ran home to finish a last minute paper, that this happened. You didn’t know that scum was capable of such thing.”
“I don’t think you know this, Rin, but I was semi-conscious, when you left.” May told me a few days later, “I knew you were leaving, but I was sleepy. I trusted that moron. I didn’t know. I didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did you.”
To tell you the truth, that was exactly what I had been telling myself for several days, but it was sometimes hard to convince myself, especially the first couple of days when she was lying there, saying again and again to herself that she did not do anything wrong.

“Any progress?” Asked Mira, at the end of the day, when she was driving me from the hospital to the subway station.
“She told me to call her Ae. I still don’t know her real name. I don’t even know if that’s a real pet name, although I have a feeling that it probably is.”
“Anything else?”
“She liked the Lanna CD, and Clueless, which I watched like five times already but we will watch it tomorrow on my laptop.”
“You know, you don’t have to stick with her all the time. Give her some space. Just check on her every now and then, in case she wants to talk. That should be enough.”


“May told me….is that true?” asked Prae, my other roommate who was away for spring break. “It happened at his apartment? Is that what she told you?”
“Prae asked me the same thing, when I was on the phone with her.”said Tanya. “And I told her exactly what you told her.”
“What on earth does that mean? She didn’t trustMay?”
“You know what’s worse? She said something like she could not believe it, since one of them was her ex, and the other was her closest friend.”
“What? She thinks that this damn thing has a chance of being consensual? I mean, seriously? With May running home bare feet, with a lot of bruises, and no coat, and now she’s down in the infirmary? Good god.”
“No, I think Prae’s just being her usual self-absorbed self. Her best friend. Her ex boyfriend. It’s all about her. She needs to learn one of these days that not everything is about her, or at least it’s not about her and her alone. Don’t tell May about this, though, O.K.?”

We had a conference in May’s room after she got out of the infirmary. She wanted that bastard’s life completely ruined, and asked if we have any suggestion. I told her she should file the charges.
“You should think about that carefully, May.” Prae said, “You were drunk, and it was an underage drinking at that. First, that definitely will weaken the case. And second, you’ll get in troubles, too, for the drinking part, whether you can get him into troubles or not.”

“Alcohol should have strengthened the case, not weakened it.” Mira said, while we were having lunch with other people who worked at the rape crisis center. “There’s a really wide gap between sex and rape, and I don’t see a point of trying to obscure the damn thing. The only thing alcohol does is making the victims thinking more slowly, making harder for them to escape.”
“May be it’s on the side of the offender, you know” Said one of the intern, “like done under the influence of alcohol type of thing.”
“I think that’s a pretty lame argument. The truth is the morons who’re capable of doing it do it with or without alcohol. If you look closely at their record, all the bastards who claimed that they were drunk when it happened? These scums do it when they are sobered, too.”

I had not seen as many cases as other people who worked there to guarantee the universal validity of Mira’s statement, but I knew one case she was definitely right.
“You know, if May speaks out, it’s a fifty-fifty percent chance they might or might not believe her.” Prae told me one day while we were jogging along the lake. “But if I did, they wouldn’t believe me, because I dated him. And the alcohol induced part? That’s a load of crap.”
“What? Oh, god. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“And what did she say?” Tanya asked, when I told her what happened, and made her swear not to tell anyone.
“Nothing. She just looked at me like I should know. I don’t know. And I don’t get it. Remember that moron’s birthday two months ago?? We went shopping, and she bought a present for him. Why would you… how could you buy a birthday present for a guy who sexually assaulted you? And if that’s true, why didn’t she believe May right away?”
“I know this is going to sound really bad,” said Tanya, “but I have this feeling that she was not o.k. when it happened, and she knew itwas wrong, but she did not realize it was this wrong until May’s case, and everybody, meaning us, was so against it.”
“What? No! How on earth could that be?”

It had been a year and I still could not wrap my head around Tanya’s analysis, but it sort of made me paranoid a little bit. On my third day at the hospital Ae decided to tell me a little bit about what happened to her.
“He was my boyfriend. The guy that hurt me. But if I told anyone, they would think that it’s o.k., because he’s my boyfriend. They’ll think that it’s o.k.”
“Even if there are people who are stupid and insipid enough to think that it’s o.k.,” I said, “you know that it’s not o.k., right?”
“What do you mean? Of course, it’s not o.k. No, it’s not o.k!”

“May’s not filing the charges.” Tanya told me during lunch one day. “She didn’t want to upset her parents, quote and quote. I don’t get it. If something like this happened to me, they’ll be the first people I talk to. What’s going on here?”
“I cannot let my parents know.” May told me later that night, “The underage drinking damn thing was a part of it, but really, I cannot let my parents know. I know my parents. They’ll want to kill that scum, but they’ll also blame it on me. And I won’t forgive them for it. I can’t let that moron get out of it without paying for it. If I do I won’t be able to look at myself. But I don’t want my parents to know. What should I do?”

“Ae’s parents’ names, and their number.” I told Mira, handing her that piece of paper. “She’s O.K. with us contacting them now. But I’m wondering if you could talk to them…that under no circumstances would they blame her for what happened. Not the way she dressed. Not the fact that she hit RCA every night. Unless they want to turn their relationship with her into a life-long hell dimension. Do you think you can talk to them about that?”

May did not want the moron to get away without consequences, but she decided not to file the charges, sowe proceeded to plan B. May was going to call that moron’s parents, told them what happened, and then walked right into the Thai Club party, and told him that she just talked to his parents, and she told them everything. If the plan sounded strange to you, I must admit it was my idea, and that time, I thought it was the best possible plan B. By picking a fight with that bastard deliberately, everyone would know what happened, and I expected a social condemnation, both gaining May her revenge and preventing it from happening to other women.

“So, how did that work out?” Asked Ae, reading my facial expression at the same time, “They didn’t believe her?”

The scary thing, as it happened, was the fact that they believed her. A lot of people pretended they did not hear. Others pretended she was joking. But I saw their faces, and I knew they believed her.
“It wasn’t the first case that happened there. After that day, I found out how many sexual assault cases were shoved under the carpet.” I told Ae. “Seriously. You wouldn’t think it’s possible. I know how stupid this might sound, but you imagine things like this would happen to some women who walked alone at nights, and not this. And call me a classist, but kids who got scholarship from the government are the upper class type. If it happened there, it happens everywhere.”

“This is really severe.” A female friend of mine told me about a week after my Plan B utterly failed, “What happened last Saturday night, I mean, with May, and that whole thing she did.”
“What? It was really mild. I would have done much worse.”
“Come on. That already embarrasses him enough.”
“Let me get this straight. So, you believe May, but you still feel sorry for the guy who assaulted her?”

“I didn’t look at the scum. At the party that Aom was holding, he was trying to talk to me, but I wouldn’t look at him, not even once.” Said Kitty, my brother’s girlfriend, two days later, patting May’s hands at the same time. WhenMay went to the restroom, however, I decided to tell Kitty that the least she could do would be to leave the party, and let Aom know why she was leaving. She looked at me like why this was my problem, why what she did was not enough, when May herself did not say anything.
“You know, you better watch out for that tone a bit more. You really are not going anywhere with it” Said my brother, who drove me back to my apartment.
“Don’t worried. Kitty won’t dump you because of me.”
“Oh, that won’t be a problem. I’m sure she won’t.” He said, rolling down the car window. “Exactly how many friends you lose because of this whole thing? Kitty said it might be more than ten. Is that true?”
“Is this what they think they’ve got to lose? People at Northwestern, I mean. I always wondered what exactly holding them back from publicly condemned that scum. Is this really what they think they’ve got to lose?”
“Look, I don’t know those people. I don’t know what they think they have to lose. But one thing. If you act like they are not what they’re supposed to be, they will retaliate. Even if it’s true, they still retaliate. The only thing you can accomplish, with the tone you’re using right now, is convincing yourself that you’re better than the rest of them. But that doesn’t help anyone, does it?”

“You know, your brother sort of had a point. I really appreciate what you’ve done for me, but I must say he’s got a point.” May said.
“I know.”I grudgingly admitted that to myself five minutes after he said it. “But I don’t know how to control it. My tone, I mean. When I’m angry, I’m angry.”
“This is not easy for me to say. But may be you shouldn’t be so mad at them.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Prae told me. She didn’t tell you, but she told me. She didn’t tell me everything. I know now, there’s no such thing as minor sexual harassment. I know that now. But back then, I told her to hit him with her high-heels or something, but I still talked to that scum. I guess you could even say that we stayed friends.”

“You know, I used to believe that most people are born good.” Tanya said, after I told her about my conversation with May “Like Mencius said. If a child is drowning, you jump into the river to save him.”
“Well, I never told you this before, but before my brother was adopted by my parents, he was once almost drowned by his biological father, who was annoyed because my brother kept saying he was thirsty.” I told Tanya, “so, if you still want to believe in the so-called goodness of the human race, I’m not a good person to talk to.”

“I’m sorry if what I said made your world darker,” said May, after I told her about what her confession did to my quite twisted attitude. “But I don’t want to be a hypocrite. At least not more than I already was. May be it is disappointing to you, but, quoting one of my teachers, a lot of us are not born human. We become human.”

That afternoon, I went with Mira to the ministry of Education, our major and only donor, although the money they gave was not nearly enough. The main symposium was about the widespread of pornography, and the degradation of our cultural value it caused.
“Porns are not a problem. At least not with rapes and sexual assaults, but these books are.” Said Mira, when it was her turn to speak, placing a bunch of books onto the table. “He rapes her and they lives happily ever after. Any books store in Bangkok. Please. Be my guest. Five minutes, and you will definitely find one of these on the shelves.”
To tell you the truth, that was nothing new. I, and every other kid in Thailand, had seen countless numbers of this type of stories, when we were growing up. I hated them, but I wondered if Mira was right.
“You know, she could be.” Tanya said, “I think it started with the Victorian crap, which somehow manages to survive until now. Seriously, in our fiction, when a guy kisses a girl, she turns the other way. She never kisses him back and she never kisses him first, when in real life, come on, who doesn’t? It sucks, because when you say no, guys think that it’s just a protocol. They don’t realize that when you said no, you mean no, at least not until you broke their wrists or something.”
“Your theory scares me again. Come on. Any one who has a brain…who would believe those stories?”
“According to my advisor, never underestimate the stupidity of the mass. And it doesn’t just confuse guys, I think it also confuses women…look at Prae. I mean. Seriously.”
“I still can’t believe it. Logically it sounds right, but I still can’t wrap my head around it. Anyway, I got to go. Need to check on that kid I work with. I’ll call you when I get home.”


“What should I do?” Ae asked me, once I got to the hospital. “They said I’ve to decide soon. What would you do, if it was you?”
“I cannot tell you that. It has to be your decision. But my friend, whom I talk to you about? She was not sorry that our plan did not work out. She said calling thatguy what he was in public was the only way to put it behind her.”
“Rin, I need to talk to you for a minute.” Mira seemed to appear out of no where, and when we are out of Ae’s ear shot, she said,”you are off this case.”
“What?”
“I liked what you’ve done up until now. But you need to understand. You are not here to make her decision, not with the stupid Thai law given her only two weeks to decide.”
“And I didn’t do that. I just gave her an example, which she ASKED. And what I said was true. I didn’t lie!”
“Look. We’re talking about a fourteen-year-old kid here. I don’t know if you know this about yourself, but you really are subconsciously…how should I say this? You act neutral, but you will do anything to convince her to choose the choice you want her to, and it’s not good for either of you. Believe me, what you want is what also what I want, but it’s not our call. Her parents are here, and she’s going to be alright.”

That was how the story ended. In fiction,I would probably get to know what happen to Ae, and her case, but in real life, once I got pulled off the case, everything was confidential and I knew nothing. Mira, whom I was angry at back then, but whom I still talk to, once told me that she went back to school, and she was fine, whatever that might mean. As for myself, I felt like I jumped down a rabbit hole, and came out on a different island, and I was not sure if fine was the word.

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เขียนเมื่อ	: 15 ม.ค. 54 23:36:39 A:161.200.26.155 X: TicketID:301426