Her Charmed Life

This does describe a sexual assault. Trigger warning. I’ll also add a warning before and after the description so you can skip it if you want to.

My job has a Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) program. In April they will host a “What were you wearing?” exhibit and they asked for volunteers to anonymously share a description of the clothing they had on when they were assaulted. SAPR is going to put similar clothes up to show as an art piece. Part of me thinks that’s kind of morbid because why the hell would I want people to look at the clothes and think of something bad happening? But that’s the point of the exhibit right? To bring awareness. The other part of me kind of hopes other people do it too so I’m not the only one in a museum of hurt. It’s silly to bring SAPR awareness to the military populace. The members already know. The awareness is there already. Some of them just don’t care. I guess. I’m still trying to figure it out.

What I was wearing

It’s hard for me to believe in God when these kinds of things happen. It’s like… What the fuck man? You mean to tell me this happens on purpose? It’s planned?? Evil plans things like that. Not God. But God didn’t stop it. That thinking leads me down trains of thought that I hate. They scare me. Anyway, this happened to me.

I think I was 11 years old when I first realized that people viewed me sexually. I was in my house around dinner and sitting at the dining room table. I had school the next morning so I had already showered and put on my pajamas- a pair of flannel pants and a black tank top. I was very uncomfortable with my changing body and always wore a bra then, even to sleep. My parents were having a party and the man from next door came over. I know my mom didn’t like him. She always avoided him when we happened to be outside at the same time (which was suspiciously a lot, I mean how many times do you really need to mow the lawn in a week). My dad really enjoyed the man’s company (which tracks now that I think about it). The man hung out in the dining room with me and my mom that night. I remember making eye contact with him once and feeling very cold. My ears started to ring. He looked down at my breasts. His eyes stayed on my chest until my mom called him into the kitchen. She came back without him and said to me “Gabrielle why don’t you go put on a longer shirt, it’s a little chilly.” It was May in Tennessee. The house was so warm from the oven being on and the people that we opened the windows and even the back porch doors.

When I first joined the military I was 17. I needed to get out of my home situation so badly that I felt if I waited the five months it would take for me to turn 18, I would die. I really did. I thought I’d actually die. When I graduated basic training and was officially out in the workforce, I was 18 years old. I was still a child honestly. I didn’t have any credit history, I didn’t have a cell phone, I had to buy my own towel, I lived in my car. I was a baby. Unfortunately, that meant I was naive to the ways of men. I had this supervisor, Jacob, who really stepped up to help me get my shit together and start my life. He helped me get a phone. He somehow got someone to donate a WHOLE kitchen set to me for free. He gathered funds to help me with my security deposit and he was ready to co-sign on my apartment with me. He helped me with my insurance claims when I got into my first car accident. I respect him and still think about him to this day. He doesn’t know the depth of what he did for me. I also had another supervisor, Shane. Shane was above Jacob in our command chain and 40-something years old. Shane did nothing for me and often ridiculed Jacob for helping me. He turned the other people in our work center against Jacob by bad-mouthing Jacob’s fight to get me an apartment and his work ethic. While I was worried about where I would be sleeping and when I’d next be able to eat, Shane started his advances towards me. Shane would stand around me every chance he got. He brought up topics that we both had in common (what the fuck does a 40-year-old have in common with an 18-year-old?) and asked me a lot about my personal life. I didn’t think anything of Shane always being in my peripheral vision. I wanted to impress him because he was my boss. Who doesn’t want to impress their boss? Shane often found ways to touch me at work. His hand on my shoulder when he trained me on something, his foot brushing mine in the crowded breakroom, his fingers fixing the collar of my uniform top that was somehow always askew. We often had unit morale events (that really sucked but maybe I had more important things on my mind than unit cohesion). There was often alcohol at these events. I don’t think I’ve ever been to one that didn’t have it to this day. Shane was stuck to me like fucking glue at this particular event. He would not leave my side (or maybe he wouldn’t let me leave his). In line behind me to get food, playing the same lawn game as me, talking to the same people, outside the bathroom when I exited. It was a little weird. I was a little on edge. I brushed it off.

Being the youngest and the lowest ranking of the unit is hard. I felt left out and wanted to be part of the in-crowd. They had all been working with each other for years, they had been on temporary duty assignments and deployments together. I wanted to be a part of the group. We all hung out in the shop after the morale event, Shane was still stuck to my side and kept offering me alcohol. I thought it was a trick or something because I was 18 years old and he was my supervisor’s supervisor. I could have legal action taken against me if I drank it. He was the highest ranking and stated that no one would “tell” on me because he’s the one they have to tell; he wouldn’t do anything to get me into trouble, I should enjoy myself. I did not enjoy myself. Shane cornered me later on that afternoon in a storage closet. He was my boss. I really didn’t want to feel more like an outsider than I already did and I didn’t want another label. People in the unit already had labeled me as the Drama because I didn’t have a place to live or a working car and needed a lot of help out of the gate (you assholes know who you are). I couldn’t handle anything else. It was already so hard for me.

This is the Trigger warning. Skip the next paragraph if you don’t want to read a sexual assault memory.

I was in the closet in the first place because of Shane. He and his stupid grabby hands caused me to spill a Sprite I had been drinking. All our cleaning supplies were in this little closet along with some flight clothes and boots for people to use if they needed. It smelled like bleach and feet in there. The closet was maybe 5 ft by 3 ft. there wasn’t room for anyone to stand in there unless you opened the cleaning cabinet and kind of stood inside it. Lucky me, I had the cabinet open. I was bent over getting the lysol wipes and trying not to break an ankle on the 20 pairs of military boots on the floor when Shane walked in. I smelled him first, he smelled like whiskey. Then I felt him put his hand on my back. He was “helping” me in the small space. He’s like 6 feet tall. There was no room in the closet for him especially with me in there too. He tripped over some of the boots and fell on top of me, pushing me into the shelves of the cleaning locker. Shane muttered something that I couldn’t hear and he shut the door. His hand somehow ended up the back of my shirt and I just knew that something bad was going to happen to me. My stomach hurt, from the shelves and the anxiety. His fingers were cold. He started laughing a little and asked me if I was okay. I told him that I banged my head and we should go back out to the bigger room for the medical kit in case I was bleeding. He put his hand on my jaw and pulled my head back to his chest. Shane informed me I wasn’t bleeding, how polite of him. I told him to let me go. He let go of my face. I couldn’t even turn around because of all those damn shoes on the ground and it smelled so bad in there. Feet are so gross. His cold fingers touched other parts of my body and I remembered that Jacob told me I needed to shine the shoes. Shane pushed my shoulders downward, hard. My knees unlocked and gave out beneath me. There are the lysol wipes, we use them so much why are they on the very bottom shelf? I should move them tomorrow. Shane grasped my jaw again and pulled my head back like he had before; he stuck all ten of his fingers into my mouth and opened it. I tasted blood and bit him as hard as I could. More blood. I choked. I didn’t bite him again. Shane’s belt was already off and all six buttons on his uniform were undone. I wonder when he did that. How did he? There’s like no space in here. Maybe he has space behind him. I think I’ll have some ramen tonight for dinner, I’ll get some canned chicken to put in it as a treat. The corners of my mouth stung when he was done- my lips were a little torn. He said thank you to me. He also told me he had a wife still and that he and I couldn’t see each other. I didn’t know we were seeing each other. He left and I hid in the closet until I heard people leaving. I better wash my uniform tonight. I have to wear it again. God, it smells like feet in here. God, did you see that? God, are you here? God, where the hell have you been lately?

Start reading again here if you skipped the paragraph.

When everyone left for the evening I stayed behind because I showered at work and didn’t want anyone to know. Drama and all that. Jacob hung back with me. He told me to stay away from Shane or at least not be alone with him. I was silent. Jacob went on to say that Shane had told him I was “totally fuckable” and that if I was drunk at someone’s house he would “shoot his shot”. Shane told him all this at the morale event earlier that day. I guess he didn’t want to wait.

Later that night I rashly called Shane’s supervisor. I was freaking out, what if he said something to me tomorrow? She was the only other female of higher rank than me. I looked up to her and knew she would help me. I told her a version of the events that unfolded. I didn’t mention Shane’s name and told her a “hypothetical” situation so she couldn’t report my story to the SAPR office. Drama. I also lied to her about what exactly happened to me. I lessened the seriousness of it because I didn’t want her to think of me as the Drama too. She held a briefing about work center appropriateness the next afternoon and Shane stared daggers at me the whole time. I stared right back. I don’t know if I’ve ever been as brave as I felt in that moment again. About two years later she was promoted over Shane and we got to talking about him. I commented how she deserved it more than him and she asked why because she felt that he deserved it more than her. I said something along the lines of he’s a creep to lower enlisted females and she brushed it off. She said, “Well I don’t know anything about that.”

This past year my job got shredded into two different specialty tiers. Each tier gets a code that goes on your qualification report that says what you are qualified to do within your job as a whole. The code(s) you have to make you eligible (or ineligible) to go to different bases or utilize different opportunities in the military. One shred is fighter aircraft based and the other shred is heavy aircraft based. I have worked on both types of aircraft in my career. So I should have both codes on my report. Makes sense right? Well someone (side eye Shane) removed some of the tasks I’ve done in my early career, basically taking the core fighter aircraft tasks that are required for the code. It is not possible for me to get the code now. 

I don’t know if God was with me in that closet or if God was just too late in the form of Jacob’s warning or just not around. I do know that Shane still looks ugly with his big ass bald head. I also know that I’m okay and have (mostly) dealt with what happened to me. I accept that I’m the Drama to some assholes who have nothing better to do at work than talk shit about me. Shane, I hope your ex-wife took you for everything you had in your divorce and I hope your kid still doesn’t like you. I bet you still think about me.