by Victoria Lynn Smith
March 2024
Dear Rich,
I’m sure you’ll remember me, and what you did. At least I think you will, but maybe you won’t. After all, memory is a complicated system of encoding, storage, and retrieval. Forty-five years have gone by, and your memory about me is probably hampered by disuse, which leads to decay, then inaccuracy. You may never think of me because, in the end, the human ego wants to forget about actions of which it should be ashamed.
So, let me set the scene for you. I was nineteen. You were about twenty-five.
Forty-five years ago on a hot, sticky night in a bar that lacked air conditioning, our circle of friends played pool under florescent lights and shook dice at the bar for shots. We took turns dropping quarters in the jukebox and buying drinks. We joked and laughed. Remember that rundown, grimy bar in our tiny town? The floors were always dirty, covered in dusty footprints, spilled drinks, and grains of sand; the air exchanger did little to siphon away the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke from the day before. But we didn’t care. That bar was our home base – the place we all met before deciding where to go, the place we all returned to at the end of the night.
On that particular night, when the bar closed and our friends filed out of the battered front door, you took something that wasn’t yours. I stood outside next to the flagstone exterior, talking to my best friend, probably about going to her house to play cribbage. I wore a tube top, and over that, I think, I wore a gauzy short-sleeved shirt, which wasn’t buttoned, but it covered my bare shoulders. And here is where my memory has decayed because I don’t remember if I was really wearing that shirt. It was so hot. Maybe I hadn’t worn it, or maybe I’d stuffed it in my purse. I wasn’t comfortable dressing in skimpy clothes, like tube tops. Perhaps, I’m imagining that shirt because I don’t want it to seem like I was asking for it because of how I dressed. Somehow, fair, or not, right, or wrong, even I believed I needed to justify why I was the ‘wronged’ and you were the wrongdoer.
I can picture your bald shiny head under the floodlights outside the bar. With the clarity of a flashbulb memory, I see you and me in that moment. You, slouching (because you were so tall) as you walked by me. Your hands reaching up, grabbing the highest part of my tube top. Your swift yank downward. Pulling it to my waist. Leaving my breasts bare; lit up by the same lights that bounced off the top of your bald head.
You ran to your car. Jumped in. And locked the door. You laughed at your triumph.
I remember lots of laughter from the other guys. I’m fuzzy about the reaction of the women – maybe nervous giggles, maybe stunned silence. When a person is deeply embarrassed, they notice only the laughter at their expense.
I’m not going to ask you to explain why you did it. I know why. Power. Control. Spite.
You wanted me to go out with you. Not because you liked me as a person, but because you wanted to screw me and then brag to your friends that you’d been able to get it on with me, while they couldn’t. I declined your worthless invitations. Your answer to my rejection was that I must be frigid. After all, what woman could spurn the mighty Rich and his friends? It must be her; it can’t be us.
Six months before you yanked down my top, claiming something I wouldn’t give you, our circle of friends had a Christmas party at that same bar. Do you remember?
We drew names and bought gifts for each other. A couple of nights before Christmas we gathered at the bar. A Christmas tree stood in the corner, festive despite being sparsely decorated with chintzy ornaments and old colored lights. A pair of tables pushed together, held small gifts wrapped in paper and covered in ribbons and bows. After everyone arrived, we opened presents. The gifts were small and humble, but each person got something nice, something bought with the idea that they might enjoy it. Something they could take home and show their parents and say, Look what so-and-so gave me.
Then I opened my gift. Only later did I realize that all the guys were paying too much attention as I unwrapped it. The box of my gift had a picture of a woman rubbing a long, narrow ribbed device over her neck as if trying to rid herself of an ache. An ecstatic smile filled her face as she moved the vibrator. And we all knew the phallic-shaped gadget wasn’t used for a kink in the neck. Laughter. Loads of laughter.
“It’ll help you get over being frigid.” I don’t recall who said that, but I believe it was you. You were the culprit behind the gift. Memory fails. But when you led, the rest of your lackeys followed, that much I knew.
My cheeks burned like hot coals. You, and the other over-aged juveniles, had ruined the party for me. I cried.
“Have a sense of humor,” someone said.
“It’s just a joke,” another said.
“Don’t be such a baby,” came another voice.
I was the one with hurt feelings. I was the one you and your friends chose to humiliate. Yet, I could say nothing. Why did you care about my sex life? Why didn’t anyone ask you about your inability to get over it? What in the hell gave you the right to think you understood me? To think you had to “fix” me? And why did most of our friends stick up for you, both that night and on the hot summer night that followed?
Isn’t it rich, Rich, that I can conjure your name, first and last? I can see your soft face, ruddy cheeks, high forehead, and narrow lips. I can picture the green army jacket with large pockets that you often wore. It was too warm for you to have been wearing it on that hot summer night, but in my memory, it’s what you’re wearing because I can’t remember what you wore. I don’t do it often, but sometimes I play that night in my head like a clip from a bad frat-boy movie. The scenes have faded and many faces have blurred, but the emotions remain strong, vivid, and raw.
I haven’t seen you in over forty years. I moved away about two years after you thought you had the right to humiliate me. Yet, I think of you now and then. During the MeToo movement, I thought about you. When women’s reproductive rights started disappearing, I thought about you. When I hear “boys will be boys,” I think about you. To me, you’ll always be bound up with people who believe they have the right to subjugate women.
But, how about you, Rich? Do you ever look back and wish you hadn’t done it? Or do you sometimes toss back beers with your buddies from those days, tell the story, and laugh again? Did you ever marry and have children, perhaps a little girl? Do you ever think you should’ve apologized? You never did. You went from being entitled to pissed, but never remorseful.
Forty-five years later, when I picture you at that moment, your image is fused with Snidely Whiplash – the sneer on your face, the unrepenting, nasty glee. You jumped into your car and locked the doors before I could react. And do what? Maybe slap you, maybe kick you in the balls? I think you could’ve stood there a full minute, and my reaction would’ve been the same: to quickly pull my top up, but otherwise stand, unable to move or utter a word. If you were Snidely Whiplash, then I was Nell Fenwick tied to the railroad tracks. However, there was no Dudley Do-Right to rescue the maiden.
It was 1978. Feminism was part of my growing up. I heard about it on the news. I read about it in the issues of Time, Newsweek, and Life, which took turns filling my parents’ mailbox. I grew up with the belief women could burn their bras. The assurance that a woman could get a safe abortion. The hope that women could earn equal pay for equal work. The dream that I could be a doctor or a lawyer or a CEO if I wanted to. That I could possess a credit card in my own name. That I couldn’t get fired for being pregnant. I was supposed to have a say over me.
Yanking my top down and exposing me was insignificant in your mind. You declared that I needed to loosen up. You couldn’t understand it wasn’t the nakedness that humiliated me. Bare breasts filled the pages of the Playboy magazines my sisters and I used to sneak from under my parents’ bed. Paintings of breasts graced art books; they appeared on the pages of National Geographic. I’d seen them, often. I’d gotten used to stripping naked and taking a shower after my high school gym class.
Other things humiliated me that night.
Only later would I reflect that all the guys were waiting outside the bar when you came slinking by me. You were the last one out of the door. It had been planned, and the group had waited to watch. That’s why no one headed to their cars. It’s why I continued to stand outside with my friend. The women in the group hadn’t known, at least I think they did not, because my best friend would’ve warned me.
Over the next couple of days, camps formed. Camp, It-Was-Funny ran with the mission statement: “Get over it. See the humor.” Camp, He-Really-Shouldn’t-Have-Done-It-But ran with the statement: “He shouldn’t have, but it wasn’t that bad.” My best friend, who I still keep in touch with, was Camp NOT-Funny-at-All, and she ran with the statement: “Rich is a complete asshole.” As far as I know, she and I were the only two in that camp.
As the days passed, I became angrier and angrier at you. I didn’t want to “let it go” or “get over it.” But I had no idea how to get a slice of revenge. I couldn’t pull your pants down. You were too big and too strong. And I didn’t want to lower myself to your standards. For weeks I thought about how I could take vengeance.
Then it came to me. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. My friend came with me.
We drove to the bar, hoping you’d be there. You were. You sat at one of the tables that had been used to hold those Christmas gifts, talking to a friend.
You probably looked my way when I walked into the bar, but you weren’t afraid of me, so, you would’ve turned back to your friend.
I walked up to the bartender and ordered a drink – orange juice, no ice, no vodka. I wasn’t paying for booze, not for you, and ice would mean less juice in the glass. My heart thumped, quietly.
The bartender handed me a virgin screwdriver. My heart thumped in my ears.
I gripped the tall frosted glass, careful not to spill a drop.
When I approached your table, you didn’t seem to notice me. My heart thumped through my entire body.
I lifted the glass and poured orange juice over your head, not slowly but in one quick torrent. It flowed off your shiny cranium in all directions. Down the back and front of your shirt, into your ears and eyes, and onto your lap. Before you could move or speak, I turned and set the glass on the bar. My friend and I ran out the door, jumped into my car, and locked the doors. We laughed in triumph then sped away.
After my sweet-and-sticky-orange-juice revenge, the Camps updated their mission statements.
“That wasn’t very mature,” someone said.
“Couldn’t you let it go?” another said.
And my favorite: “You shouldn’t have done that. Rich is really mad,” one of your messengers said.
Do you remember what I told your go-between? I said, “He better not do anything. He had no right. If he’s smart, he’ll leave it alone.” I said it with as much menace as I could muster. And that was the end of it.
Years later I learned I could’ve filed a complaint against you with the police. If I had, I would’ve been the one crucified, not you. Most of our friends couldn’t handle my dumping orange juice on your head. Imagine what they would’ve said if I’d held your feet to a legal fire.
A year after your dastardly act, you began dating a very pretty woman. She had blond hair and blue eyes. You adored her, remember? And funny enough, although even your friends wondered what she saw in you, she adored you too. Do you recall the hot summer day when she wore a tube top and sat in the same bar I’d sat in while wearing my tube top? I remember the color of her top as red, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I picture it as red because it’s a color that screams. And on that day, your girlfriend’s top screamed in irony. What would you have done, Rich, if one of the guys had yanked it down?
On that afternoon, I realized that would never happen because she was your girl, and the guy code stated you didn’t mess with another guy’s woman. You were her Dudley Do-Right. But I hadn’t belonged to anyone, so I was fair game. If I’d been someone’s girlfriend, you wouldn’t have pulled down my top. And if you had, vengeance wouldn’t have come from a glass filled with orange juice, but rather from a punch to your face.
My friend asked me in a whisper, “What do you think Rich’s girlfriend would think if she knew he’d pulled down your top?” We didn’t tell her, and I’m guessing no one else did. But if my friend and I thought about it on that day, others must have. Did you think about it?
Well, Rich, I don’t have much left to say, and even if I did, you’ll never read this letter, as I’m not mailing it. So, I’ll never know if you’ve forgotten about that night, or if you would apologize and wish you could take it all back. Either way, I’ll never be sorry for dousing you in orange juice.
On that day, I became my own Dudley Do-Right.
***
Victoria Lynn Smith writes short stories, essays, and a blog. She has been published by Brevity Blog, Wisconsin Public Radio, Hive Literary Journal, Persimmon Tree, Jenny, 45th Parallel, Mason Street Review, 8142 Review, and Rathalla Review, among others. She is querying her collection of short stories. You can find her on her blog: https://writingnearthelake.org/ or on Instagram: @victorialynnsmith_writing
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