I went to college with one of the men in this picture. We were friends. We would go to dinner at 3:00 am. I helped with his school projects. He’d tease me about watching sci-fi shows like Babylon 5 and Star Trek. I set him up with my roommate. He had a crush on her, so I helped my friend. They ended up dating for years.
One night he and I were at school in the edit bays. I had been calling him for hours trying to tell him his computer had crashed and wasn’t rendering. He was stressed about completing his thesis and decided the computer crash was somehow my fault when he finally showed up. While I was preparing a machine to help him, he came up behind me and slammed my head into the desk and keyboard repeatedly. I collapsed on the floor, and he started kicking me. At one point he grabbed my hair to slam my head against the wall then bent down to yell in my face. I have a vague memory of staring up at the window of the door in the tiny room as a silhouette watched. A freshman finally opened the door distracting my attacker long enough for me to crawl away.
I crawled to the room where my best friend was editing a film at the other end of the hall. I told him what had happened and to this day I’ll never forget his response, “He’s stressed. You must have misunderstood.” I wiped away what I thought was sweat from my brow and told him, I don’t think I did. Not one time did my friend look away from the computer. He kept explaining how I had to consider the pressure this man was under. I sat there on the floor crying until I looked at my hands and saw that I’d been wiping away blood. I looked out the window for the edit bay door and saw the freshman who had saved me. He indicated it was safe to come out.
I dashed down the hall to the bathroom terrified I would be attacked again. I didn’t think I could take my head being smashed into a sink. I cleaned up the blood and held a stack of paper towels to my head. I didn’t feel safe, so I took the side entrance outside and walked home. I locked myself in my apartment bathroom and sat in the shower for I don’t know how long.
The next day, I told my roommate I didn’t want her boyfriend around. I didn’t want to be alone with him, and I didn’t want him in the apartment even when I wasn’t there. I told her this while I was sitting on a chair in our living room while holding a bag of frozen peas to my head, wondering when we had bought peas and why. She informed me she had already spoken to her boyfriend and knew we’d had a fight. She “didn’t care what had happened” but needed us to get along for her. I wanted to tell her. I felt guilty. I had set them up. Had I put her in danger? I told her I didn’t feel safe, but before I could explain she threw up her hands and repeated that she didn’t need details about the “fight.” We just needed to work it out. I was having trouble breathing so I told her she should care then threw the peas back in the freezer and took off for the campus clinic. I felt guilty for years for not telling her.
The campus clinic looked at the bruises on my chest and back and told me I should get x-rays at the hospital for any fractures. No one asked how I got the bruises. They put a band aid on my head and told me to keep ice on the lump that had formed on the back of my head. Then made an appointment for me at the hospital which I had to walk to days later. I had hairline fractures on three ribs.
As I stood outside the campus clinic, I remembered there were cameras in the school’s hallways that would have recorded me crawling away from the attack and walking to the bathroom with blood dripping down my forehead. I could show my roommate what had happened. Then she might care. I headed to the campus safety office to ask about the tapes. The officer I had known for two years. He liked to attend parties with the graduate students, he smiled at me while informing me that he was on duty the night before, but the tapes were gone now. I didn’t understand then what he was saying. I didn’t know at the time he had stolen the tapes to protect my attacker.
I walked to the school and visited the vice dean, to report the attack. He informed me that he felt supporting my attacker and burying this incident was a better financial investment for the school. My attacker was going to elevate their name. The vice dean asked if my scholarships went away then would I still be able to attend school? He then began a months long effort lasting well into the summer to have my scholarships rescinded. When other faculty asked why he was after me his excuse was that I brought a Dr. Pepper into a classroom where drinks were not allowed. Not even a joke. The cost of the broken keyboard was taken out of my paycheck from my work-study job. The message was clear. My attacker was of more value than I.
Last night my attacker got to take part in attending the Peabody awards for the Star Trek franchise. A franchise he first watched in my living room after mocking me for watching the show, but he tells everyone that he watched it as a child. He repeats a story I told him about my mother seeing Nichelle Nichols for the first time. My first memory in life is of my parents racing to watch a rerun of the original series. So not only did this man break my ribs, he’s taken a dump on my childhood. I’ve been quiet for nearly 25 years, actively disappearing, changing my name, and moving away, while this man has had opportunity after opportunity handed to him. I know he thinks he put in more effort than others not seeing how many people put him where he is today. Karma might keep receipts, but she certainly doesn’t perform audits.
