The other day, a memory came to me from high school. It came out of nowhere, unbidden, a situation I had completely forgotten. It's a sad story, and I've done a lot of thinking in the past few days over the situation itself, the aftermath, and my reactions to the whole thing, then and now.
First, the story:
There was a girl at our school who earned herself the nickname "Tequila Sheila". I don't remember her last name or much about her, she wasn't a particular friend of mine although we had mutual friends. She seemed funny, a bit wild but nothing too extreme and anyway, I wasn't one to condemn a wild streak. I do seem to recall I thought she got a little out of hand at times, and also that she wasn't particularly bright. But these are dim recollections at best. If it weren't for what happened, I probably wouldn't even remember she existed.
Tequila Sheila went to a party. There were, from what I heard, about 12 - 15 other people there. There was a lot of alcohol. Everyone was getting pretty hammered. At some point in the evening, Sheila passed out in one of the bedrooms. At some point after that, one of the guys found her back there. He took advantage of her condition. And then he went out and told the other guys. And they took turns, in some order, one or more at a time. I wasn't there and don't know. But I do know they pulled a train on her. I heard there was bleeding by the end. I also know that although a few women were present, no one intervened. I heard all about it on Monday from some people who had been there, and from a mutual friend. The first account was contemptuous and smart-ass, the second concerned and angry. Sheila wasn't in school that day, or any of the days that followed. Her family moved and we never saw or heard from her again. No charges were ever pressed, no aftermath or retribution occurred.
And me? I was curious to see Sheila, curious to see how she was dealing with it. I was disgusted with some of the guys at the party, a couple of whom I generally thought of as fun to party with, and who I'd expected better from. For Sheila herself, I felt a bit of objective pity, primarily since her reputation was shot. But my main reaction was contempt, how stupid she'd been to pass out at a party like that with no one to take care of her. Why did she drink so much? Why didn't she have a friend who had her back and got her out of there, or at least stayed in the room with her and made damn sure no one else bothered her? Dumb, dumb, dumb. I didn't think she deserved it -- even in that callous state of youth, I didn't think people deserved that kind of treatment. But I did think she'd been really stupid.
And now, I'm revisiting the situation as an adult, and sorting through not just what I feel about what happened, but about my reactions.
First of all, you need to understand the environment. I grew up in a resort town with a small local population and hordes of transients of all types coming through winter and summer, tourists and drifters. In our town, our school, most people partied on weekends. Parties consisted of booze primarily, with some percentage of drug use going on around the fringes. Some people got really wasted, some just caught a buzz. The ability to "party like a rock star" was admired by many, saying that you could drink people under the table was a compliment.
Your social status in that group was determined in large amount by how you handled your liquor and how you behaved. People who got drunk, sick, stupid and belligerent were not admired; those who got drunk, funny and maybe a little crazy were. People who passed out came in for any amount of abuse, that night and in the days that followed. Everyone knew this and everyone expected it, and the victims of the abuse were expected to take it gracefully and admit they'd asked for it by getting out of control. This abuse ranged anywhere from throwing water on them, stripping them down to their underwear and spraying shaving cream on them, taking markers and writing things on their forehead.
And on one occasion, as it turned out, something much, much worse.
I was a member of the party group. I could hold my alcohol pretty darn well, thank you very much, and rarely got to a point where I wasn't in full control. My parents waited up for me, so I had to make sure I was coherent when I got home, which ensured that I limited my intake to whatever I knew I could process out before then. Still, I gained a certain respect for knowing my limits, pushing them but rarely if ever going beyond them. I demanded the same from others. I had contempt for people who got "shitfaced" and made asses of themselves, and no pity for them if something bad happened afterwards because they should have known better.
Harsh? Yes, probably in some ways. But also realistic. In the real world, many people are not nice. Many people have no problem taking advantage of someone who is weak or in some way unable to protect themselves. Therefore, smart money says you watch your own back and don't give them an opportunity to stick a knife in it. There were a lot of backstabbers in my high school and they taught me well: I have precious little sympathy even today for people who whine and complain over problems they created for themselves by being stupid. Sorry you're in trouble, now shut up and deal with it and don't be that dumb again.
I was not at the party the night the incident in question occurred. I really don't know why not. It was a long time ago. Therefore, anything I know is second-hand at best, or built on very vague memories. I remember it took place at someone's trailer, and there weren't really that many people there. My best guess is that there was another party going on that offered more fun for me: more people I wanted to hang out with or whatever. I was a bit selective and didn't hang out with some of the skeezier types who hung out on the fringes of the high school rowdy crowd. I considered them losers. What 25 year old wants to hang out with high school kids? I could barely wait to get away from them! And if the party was being held in someone's trailer, then it was hosted by one of those types. And so, having a better option (almost anything would have been), I wasn't there.
As a potential parent, I shudder to think of my daughter putting herself into situations like I used to routinely. I shudder to think of her drinking, smoking, trying drugs, having sex as a teenager, and hanging around skeezy types. At the time, I considered myself quite old and wise for my age, too smart to get into too much trouble but wild enough to get a charge out of hanging around the edges of it. In retrospect, I consider myself lucky. Damn lucky. True, I had certain self-imposed constraints, but I did a lot more than I should have done and pushed things a hell of a lot farther than I should have.
The adult in me considers the entire situation that night in the trailer deplorable. Older guys providing unlimited alcohol to a group of minors, every single person there getting really drunk -- definitely not a situation I'd want my kid in (to my credit, I didn't want it even then). That the guys, who as I've said for the large part I liked, could get so drunk and stupid and so caught up in guy mob mentality as to pull a train on someone, disgusts me. These weren't horrible evil skeezy "destined for prison" types, they were just ordinary guys who got a bit drunk and a bit stupid at times. That the women there did nothing to stop things or to help Sheila makes me sad beyond compare; even though I thought she was stupid, I probably would have tried to stop it. And considering some of the guys, I probably could have.
But how do I feel about Sheila? Sheila herself? Unspeakably sorry for her, since such an experience is bound to leave scars on you, emotionally at the very least and possibly physically. She must have gone through several kinds of hell, admitting to her parents what had happened and moving in mid-term and trying to put it all behind her. Oh yes, I pity her. As an adult, I am much more aware of the long-term consequences of such an experience than I was as a teenager. As a teen, I thought she should admit she'd been dumb, be pissed at the people who took advantage of it and the ones who didn't help her, and make damn sure it didn't happen again and get on with her life. At that age, I really thought you could do it that easily.
Do I think I should have done more, or less, or should have reacted differently? No. Not even today. I heard about it two or three days after it happened, so there was certainly nothing I could have done to prevent it or protect her. Go to the police? Well, I could have tried I suppose, but it never occurred to me. It had nothing to do with me. I wasn't there, didn't know who all was there, didn't really know what had happened, didn't know who had participated. I'm really not sure, even now, what I could have done, but I doubt there's much of anything.
As for my reactions, they were what they were. Getting through high school is a hardening process, and it's every man for himself a lot of the time. You learn how to deal with other people, good and bad. You learn how to cope with any number of social situations. You also learn a lot about assessing a situation accurately and avoiding the bad ones. Fighting through such struggles myself, I had little time or ability to help someone else find their way. I had been smart enough not to go to that party and if I had, wouldn't have had much to drink, because I didn't particularly like or trust a lot of the people there. By my code at the time, it followed that anyone who did go, and was dumb enough to make themselves vulnerable, was asking for trouble. I didn't think she deserved it, I didn't think it was right or okay or anything like that. But I did think she contributed to making it happen... and although some people will crucify me for this, I still think so. You really can't depend on other people to take care of you and make smart decisions for you, that is your responsibility and yours alone.
But I do wonder how Sheila is, how she dealt with it all, and if she ever managed to come to terms with it and put it behind her and live a happy life.
And I wonder how many more Sheilas there are out there, and how many more there will be. And I'm deeply grateful that despite doing any number of stupid things myself, I am not one of them.
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