My Last Innocent Year(5)
But really, it was Debra. She had a way of making you believe something, making me believe something.
And so, for the second time that night, I found myself climbing the stairs to Zev Neman’s dorm room.
* * *
AT TWENTY-ONE, DEBRA was already an experienced vandal. As editor of her high school yearbook, she’d embedded messages throughout the pages—Silence Equals Death, My Body My Choice, I Believe Anita—a code of resistance you could read only if you knew where to look. Within weeks of arriving on campus freshman year, she’d organized a Take Back the Night march, but when the reaction to it was tepid, she decided she wasn’t interested in anything school-sanctioned. So one night that winter, we ran around campus putting tacky bras from Victoria’s Secret on every male statue on campus—or, as Debra pointed out, every statue on campus. The next day we watched campus security remove them, doubled over with laughter as they fiddled awkwardly with the clasps. Later that year, a group of us plastered campus with stickers that read Womyn Are Everywhere. We stuck them on everything—buildings, lampposts, soda machines, frat house doors. This stunt was more controversial—some of the stickers, including the one we put on the college president’s car, couldn’t be removed, not easily at least. There was a flurry of pointed op-eds in the school newspaper, talk of vandalism charges, but no one could prove it was us. In the end, I don’t know what made people angrier, the vandalism or the word womyn.
Sophomore year, Debra swiped the ID of a guy rumored to be groping girls at parties and we taped copies of it on the mirrors of every bathroom on campus. The guy’s parents threatened a lawsuit but backed off after a dozen girls came forward to accuse him. (He still graduated with us, became a member of the alumni council, signs his name to cheery annual appeals for donations to the class fund.) It was around that time that we started calling ourselves the “Crushgirls,” a name that made us sound more official—and more menacing—than what we really were: a loose affiliation of Debra and me and whoever else we could scare up on a particular night. Crushgirl activity flatlined after Debra founded bitch slap, Wilder’s first and only feminist journal, but she still talked sometimes about reviving it and pulling off something “big.” I’d always gone along with Debra’s stunts because they were fun and because she was happy to take whatever consequences they reaped. So far, to my relief—and Debra’s chagrin—none had.
All of which is to say, I wasn’t surprised when she pulled a can of spray paint out of her backpack when we got to Zev’s door. It felt strange to be back there so soon, and I distracted myself by wondering if a universe existed where I was on both sides of Zev’s door, like Schr?dinger’s cat.
Debra shook the can, and the sound was huge in the silent hallway. I didn’t know who was still around and who had already left for winter break, so I looked up and down the hall nervously, willing the doors to stay closed.
“Let’s keep it simple, shall we?” Debra popped off the top, and I watched as she wrote the word rapist in big red letters across Zev’s door.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
“Not bad, right?”
After she touched up the letters, wiping off drips of paint with her sleeve, we stood there, basking in the glory of what we had done, what Debra had done. I felt giddy and nervous, my stomach dancing in a way that made it impossible to separate the feelings. The word on Zev’s door was bad and bold but, for a moment at least, felt right. Tears pricked at the corners of my eyes as I thought about what Debra had done for me. Debra, my avenging angel. She looked back at me and smiled, and in that instant, she’d never looked more beautiful.
The sound of a doorknob being turned jostled me out of my reverie. The door opened and Zev poked out his head, blinking into the light. His thick glasses were slightly askew, as if he’d just pulled them on.
“Ladies,” he said with a smile, his eyes darting from Debra to me. He looked pink, newly hatched. “What’s going on? Isabel? Is that you?”
“Let’s go,” I whispered. But Debra didn’t move.
“What the fuck?” Zev said, still smiling as he stepped into the hallway. He rubbed his eyes, pulled at the hem of his boxers. He hadn’t yet seen what we had written, and I wanted desperately to leave before he did. I tugged on Debra’s sleeve, but she had her feet planted firmly on the worn carpet. I watched as Zev turned his gaze from us to the door, watched as it dawned on him what we had done.
He was quiet for what felt like a long time, and I realized I was holding my breath. I sucked air slowly through my teeth, wishing I could disappear. As if it might help, I imagined myself floating down the hallway like a soap bubble, then dissolving into specks of mist and vapor.
Zev’s voice brought me back. “What the fuck?” he said again, louder this time. I yanked on Debra’s arm. She ignored me.
“You can read.”
Zev’s eyes moved in a line from Debra to me. He was fully awake now. Whatever confusion he’d felt was gone, along with whatever certainty I’d felt about the righteousness of our act. In its place was a deep shame that felt familiar and lived in, like a pair of old jeans.
“Is that what you told her?” he said, his voice thick with disbelief. “That I raped you?”
“She just told me the truth, asshole,” Debra said.