Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. Warning.
Speaker 1: This episode contains discussion of self harm, grooming, and sexual abuse.
Speaker 1: Listener discretion is advised that summer was full of presents.
Speaker 1: It seems like every time I saw him was a
Speaker 1: celebration of me, of us. There were always drinks, There
Speaker 1: were always boxes, typed with bakery string, sometimes with candy
Speaker 1: or a pair of panties. He thought I would like
Speaker 1: or look gloss or grown up perfume. He said, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't smell like a schoolgirl anymore. One night he sat
Speaker 1: me on his couch and gave me a thin package,
Speaker 1: wrapped in newsprint, red and white bakery string. What's this?
Speaker 1: The gift was light like paper. Open it. I untied
Speaker 1: the string, peeled back the tape. It was a book,
Speaker 1: almost a brown folder, half the size of a piece
Speaker 1: of notebook paper. Open it the right way. I had
Speaker 1: had it upside down. Oh. It had a title, Revised
Speaker 1: Evidence Vladimir Novakov's Collection of Inscriptions, Annotations, Corrections and Butterfly Descriptions.
Speaker 1: I hugged it against my chest, thanking him with a kiss,
Speaker 1: his cats leaping on the other side of the couch.
Speaker 1: I knew you'd love it, he said, smiling at me,
Speaker 1: inches away from my mouth. Of course, I kissed him again.
Speaker 1: You know I love the book as much as you.
Speaker 1: You're my Lolita, he said. That's Alison Wood, writer, professor,
Speaker 1: author of the memoir being Lolita. Alison's is a story
Speaker 1: as old as time, a story of an older man
Speaker 1: in a position of power and a girl who is
Speaker 1: his prey, and the ripple effect of that story once
Speaker 1: that girl escapes his clutches and grows up. It's also
Speaker 1: a story about the peep on the sidelines of the
Speaker 1: secret who may notice, who may see, but avert their
Speaker 1: eyes and mind their own business. I'm Danny Shapiro, and
Speaker 1: this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
Speaker 1: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from ourselves. Tell me about the landscape of your childhood.
Speaker 1: I hate to use the word idyllic, but you know,
Speaker 1: my childhood was pretty great. I was a voracious reader
Speaker 1: from the time when I was very little. Um. I
Speaker 1: was always way ahead of my reading and my writing,
Speaker 1: and my parents were very enthusiastic and proud of me
Speaker 1: most of the time. My teachers, we're also very encouraging
Speaker 1: I remember my first grade teacher, Mrs Tesla, would give
Speaker 1: me like extra spelling quizzes and give me extra assignments
Speaker 1: to keep me busy. But then, of course, when I
Speaker 1: was in the fourth grade, I had this one teacher
Speaker 1: named Mrs gross Um that was that was literally her name,
Speaker 1: and she was very frustrated that I was so ahead
Speaker 1: in sort of spelling and reading and writing, and so
Speaker 1: she began to for half of the day send me
Speaker 1: to the school library. So I would spend half of
Speaker 1: my day alone in the library with no other no
Speaker 1: other kids, just with the librarians. And that was probably
Speaker 1: very impactful to my childhood. Looking back, the librarians adored me.
Speaker 1: They doated on me. They thought it was so great
Speaker 1: that somebody wanted to read. As I continued growing up
Speaker 1: the library in town, I was there every week checking
Speaker 1: out a huge old books. When I was in middle school,
Speaker 1: my librarian was one of my closest confidence and I
Speaker 1: just I always loved reading and writing. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, looking back, there was also I always dealt
Speaker 1: with some sort of depression, even from when I was
Speaker 1: very young. Um recently, I was home over the holidays
Speaker 1: and helping my mother clean out an attic and we
Speaker 1: found all of this, you know, ephemera from my childhood,
Speaker 1: and it included a book that I had written when
Speaker 1: I was ten. So but it says Allison's book on it.
Speaker 1: You know. It has all these stories and poems in there,
Speaker 1: and some drawings and it has this one poem about death,
Speaker 1: like I Wonder what it's like to be dead? And
Speaker 1: drawings of this cemetery and I'm like, what what is
Speaker 1: going on with this tenure old? Those are really amazing
Speaker 1: moments when we when we discover something, stumble across something
Speaker 1: that is ours, something that we did or wrote, or
Speaker 1: or a maide as a child, and you know, the
Speaker 1: feeling is sort of like, who did that? Was that me?
Speaker 1: Who did? Like? What was what was the experience of
Speaker 1: did you have any memory of you know, that little
Speaker 1: girl who was uh, you know, sort of obsessed with
Speaker 1: ideas of of death. I had no memory of writing
Speaker 1: this book or this particular poem. The poem was rhyming,
Speaker 1: but you know it was it was pretty long. It
Speaker 1: was decent I think for a ten year old. Looking back,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, Alison was trying her best. And
Speaker 1: also inside the same book there was of course a
Speaker 1: short story about cats, which is very on brand about
Speaker 1: me still, But I think what it reminded me was
Speaker 1: about that same time, when I was in fourth grade,
Speaker 1: my mother became concerned that I was depressed. This was
Speaker 1: also the same year that I had that terrible teacher
Speaker 1: who was sending me half the day to the library
Speaker 1: and you know, isolating me from the other students. So
Speaker 1: my mother began having me see a therapist, a child therapist,
Speaker 1: And all I really remember is that we talked a lot.
Speaker 1: He had me like right things, like right stories or whatnot.
Speaker 1: I got to have you who, which was a very
Speaker 1: deal because it was I had a very like you know,
Speaker 1: sort of um. I wouldn't say there was like no
Speaker 1: sugar lab, but you know, no sugary seniors, like none
Speaker 1: of that, no cookies, no candy kind of home. And
Speaker 1: I don't remember feeling depressed. I don't remember. I don't
Speaker 1: look back at myself and think, oh, I was really depressed.
Speaker 1: I've been told this and I was sort of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess, But then I find that poem and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess. Ten year old Allison was kind of dark
Speaker 1: for a ten year old, did you experience Mrs Gross
Speaker 1: sending new to the library for half the day as punishment.
Speaker 1: I knew it was to get me out of her hair.
Speaker 1: I knew that was why she was sending me away.
Speaker 1: And of course, as a as a teacher, as a
Speaker 1: professor myself, I fully understand that now, But at the
Speaker 1: time I took it all very personally, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was like what I you know, I'd get frustrated.
Speaker 1: I'd get grumpy about it, um be partially because um
Speaker 1: that teacher was not I was not putting any effort
Speaker 1: into trying to support me more as other teachers had.
Speaker 1: Um they you know, she didn't see my what I
Speaker 1: looked back now and see, she didn't see my intelligence
Speaker 1: or my being sort of ahead of the curve as
Speaker 1: something positive. So well, I loved the library. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that the isolation and the sort of being made to
Speaker 1: feel different, not in a good way. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: that was impactful to how I understood myself as a child.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm sure that it's not a coincidence
Speaker 1: that that was when I was writing all these times
Speaker 1: about death. Describe your mother for me a little bit.
Speaker 1: My mother is someone who i've always very much looked
Speaker 1: up to, and I've always very much wanted to be
Speaker 1: like because she is very resilient and she's very tough.
Speaker 1: She's a deputy director or a nonprofit in Connecticut. Her
Speaker 1: job for a long time has always been the person
Speaker 1: who fires people. My mother has has no problem with conflict.
Speaker 1: She's not afraid of being direct. She's someone who had
Speaker 1: worked I worked out the same nonprofit at her, and
Speaker 1: I just didn't understand how intimidating she was to other
Speaker 1: people because to me, she was just mom. But she
Speaker 1: was very intimidating to other people at times, and I
Speaker 1: sort of admired that about her. Um. But then on
Speaker 1: the other hand, at my home growing up, there were
Speaker 1: always other kids there, in particular my little sister's friends.
Speaker 1: There would always be other teenagers hanging around who would
Speaker 1: call her mom. I sometimes describe my mother as someone
Speaker 1: who takes in strays, because since I left home to
Speaker 1: go to college, there's always been somebody staying in my room.
Speaker 1: So there's very There's this very interesting dichotomy there between
Speaker 1: who she is I think, and I think the ability
Speaker 1: to be sort of tough and strong and resilient but
Speaker 1: also have this nurturing this very big mom energy. What
Speaker 1: about your father? What your father like? My father as well,
Speaker 1: has done nonprofit work his entire life. He was a
Speaker 1: concert pianist when he was younger, and he's really warm
Speaker 1: and kind and supportive. He was always the person when
Speaker 1: whatever I did, if I did a school play, if
Speaker 1: I you know, it was working on a project, whatever
Speaker 1: it was, he was always there, right in the front
Speaker 1: row um being so supportive of me. Which is funny
Speaker 1: because on the other hand, my mother was someone who,
Speaker 1: so I did community theater for a long time, and
Speaker 1: she was famous within community theater circles for walking out
Speaker 1: if she did not like a play, including if her
Speaker 1: daughter was in it. Yes, she was known for doing that,
Speaker 1: and you know, people were either deeply offended or sort
Speaker 1: of thought it was funny. I I chose to think
Speaker 1: it was funny. But what that told me then was
Speaker 1: when she stayed for a show, she really liked it.
Speaker 1: That meant that when she was staying, I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: my mother really likes this. Whereas my father was someone
Speaker 1: who would always be at the show, always telling me
Speaker 1: how great it was and how amazing I was. So
Speaker 1: it's this, it's this funny difference in the two of them.
Speaker 1: My father was not quite as present in my life
Speaker 1: growing up. He was, you know, in sort of that
Speaker 1: typical way. He was the one who would work late
Speaker 1: and who wouldn't always be home for dinner. My mother
Speaker 1: took on much more of those sort of caregiving role,
Speaker 1: the typical role for me and my little sister. Um.
Speaker 1: She was. She worked part time at certain points to
Speaker 1: support me and Lauren. Where is My father never did that.
Speaker 1: My mother never made any of those choices growing up,
Speaker 1: None of them. Laura and I were her number one
Speaker 1: priority all the time. Allison's childhood may have been idyllic,
Speaker 1: but as she becomes a teenager, she begins to get
Speaker 1: into deeper and deeper trouble. She develops serious issues with
Speaker 1: depression and begins to self harm. People found out because
Speaker 1: in gym class in middle school. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: the lockers you have to change to like your gym
Speaker 1: outfit and whatnot. Two friends of mine had saw my
Speaker 1: arms and brought me to the school social worker. When
Speaker 1: I got home that your school that day, my mother
Speaker 1: had already been notified. Obviously, I think that they sent
Speaker 1: me home early. Um, and that is actually One of
Speaker 1: the only times I remember seeing my mother crying was
Speaker 1: she got on the phone to someone trying to get
Speaker 1: me some sort of services. I'm sure because she was
Speaker 1: always very much a kind of person who when there's
Speaker 1: a problem, she's going to solve it. She was very
Speaker 1: active and proactive in that way, in particular about me
Speaker 1: and my little sister. If there's something wrong, how can
Speaker 1: we make it better, Let's do things. She was all
Speaker 1: about action. That continued throughout high school. It did not
Speaker 1: get better. Um the cutting did, but I continued being
Speaker 1: incredibly depressed. I stopped going to school at certain points.
Speaker 1: I switched my nights and days. I was mismedicated at
Speaker 1: one point and became manic, but was only manic because
Speaker 1: of the medication. Like I had racing thoughts, I was
Speaker 1: hearing voices the whole thing. At one point I was
Speaker 1: having electro convulsive therapy because it was sort of that years.
Speaker 1: It didn't make everything better, but it got me out
Speaker 1: of bed. I was going back to school. I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about killing myself anymore. So it really it really
Speaker 1: did make a difference, a big difference. But nonetheless, streshment
Speaker 1: and sophomore year of high school. I wasn't consistently getting
Speaker 1: to school, getting too classes. I was failing. At the
Speaker 1: end of sophomore year, they told me, the school told
Speaker 1: me that they thought I should not come back and
Speaker 1: that I should get my diploma through night school. And
Speaker 1: my mother was like, I don't think so, because I,
Speaker 1: of course already had of the had all of those
Speaker 1: I p s and disability status, and they were supposed
Speaker 1: to be making all these accommodations and whatnot. So my
Speaker 1: mother fought like hell to get me into a therapeutic
Speaker 1: day school for my junior year. It was great. I mean,
Speaker 1: I felt supported in ways that I hadn't been in years.
Speaker 1: Because one of the bad things that happens, for one
Speaker 1: of the sort of side effects I guess of not
Speaker 1: being in school is that your teachers don't think much
Speaker 1: of you anymore, even if you're smart, even if you
Speaker 1: know the answers in class, even if you you know
Speaker 1: hadn't done the homework just because you know or because
Speaker 1: you read the book already, there's this wariness and the
Speaker 1: classroom and school had always been a place where I
Speaker 1: felt almost always except for that fourth grade teacher, where
Speaker 1: I usually felt very very welcome. It was a place
Speaker 1: where I took a lot of pride, where I knew
Speaker 1: I could succeed, and teachers were really important to me.
Speaker 1: I always loved my teachers very much, and I loved
Speaker 1: going to the library, and I would spend time after school.
Speaker 1: You know, I was all I was always that kid.
Speaker 1: So when that sort of larger institutional relationship fractured so
Speaker 1: severely for me and freshman and sophomore year, looking back,
Speaker 1: that was really impactful and negatively impactful in ways that
Speaker 1: I did not understand at the time but are pretty
Speaker 1: clear to me now. We'll be right back in her
Speaker 1: new small school, Allison feels accepted and valued. She's reminded
Speaker 1: that she's a smart kid and can do really well.
Speaker 1: She goes to group therapy in the afternoons, takes French,
Speaker 1: catches up on all the classes she'd missed the previous year.
Speaker 1: She gets back on track. Nobody at the therapytic day
Speaker 1: school called me crazy. Nobody thought I was nuts. No
Speaker 1: one thought that because we were all very much in
Speaker 1: similar boats, and school was a place where I could
Speaker 1: succeed again because the teachers weren't constantly giving me a side.
Speaker 1: I you know, if I missed a day. Um, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't come back and get sort of glares, would be ignored.
Speaker 1: The next day, it was like, okay, great, Alison, you're here,
Speaker 1: let's catch you up. So at the end of that year,
Speaker 1: you know you've done well academically, and you're given a choice,
Speaker 1: right to go back to the school that you would
Speaker 1: begun at the public high school or to stay at
Speaker 1: the therapeutic day school. Right. I have the choice to
Speaker 1: go back to my public high school, and all I
Speaker 1: wanted was to be normal, So I chose to go back.
Speaker 1: And obviously, you you can't change the past. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's necessarily a terrible thing that I
Speaker 1: went back, but it is definitely a choice that changed
Speaker 1: them the journey of my life in some ways. So
Speaker 1: tell me about the reception that you received when you
Speaker 1: first went back. I remember that first day back in
Speaker 1: high school, back in my in my high school, I
Speaker 1: remember hearing other students say I thought she died as
Speaker 1: I walked by, because we know how cruel teenagers can be,
Speaker 1: how sort of off handedly, backhandedly cruel. And people thought
Speaker 1: I was in a mental institution, which I had never been.
Speaker 1: I've never been hospitalized. Um, people thought that I had disappeared.
Speaker 1: People thought that I was this crazy girl. People thought
Speaker 1: that I was this slut because I had always I
Speaker 1: don't even even when I wasn't going to school regularly,
Speaker 1: I always had a boyfriend. I felt more alone than
Speaker 1: I think I ever had at that point. And not
Speaker 1: only did I feel completely ostracized from the other students
Speaker 1: and misunderstood and very much judged, but I also felt
Speaker 1: like that from the teachers at school, from the administration,
Speaker 1: from the ladies at the front desk, and to my
Speaker 1: individual teachers. I remember on that first day there was
Speaker 1: one teacher in particular who I felt particularly sort of
Speaker 1: upset about how I was treated, and it was my
Speaker 1: Latin teacher. And I had loved Latin and been really
Speaker 1: good at Latin, and my Latin teacher had always sort
Speaker 1: of adored me. And then that first day of my
Speaker 1: senior year, I got into his class and he basically
Speaker 1: ignored me. And he when he was assigning seats, you know,
Speaker 1: going through role call, saying everyone's name and telling them
Speaker 1: where they had to sit, he did not give me
Speaker 1: a seat, and he told me to just sit in
Speaker 1: the back, and he said, let's just see how this
Speaker 1: goes because he didn't think I was going to be
Speaker 1: showing up to class, so why bother getting me a seat?
Speaker 1: And that made me so sad, and I remember mostly
Speaker 1: being pissed and being like what the fuck? You know,
Speaker 1: like I I didn't say that in the class, but
Speaker 1: like in my head, but now I look back and
Speaker 1: I that's just so sad. Well it's it's sad, and
Speaker 1: it's also I mean, um, to to write off someone
Speaker 1: of that age is not just cruel, but it's pedagogically
Speaker 1: like so messed up. That is something that as I,
Speaker 1: as I teach now to undergraduate students and just my
Speaker 1: students in general, I will never do that to a
Speaker 1: student again, because it's so obvious to me when a
Speaker 1: student is in trouble, when a student is having a
Speaker 1: hard time. So I never question when students say I
Speaker 1: need an extension. I know I've missed class, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get there. I never give my students a hard
Speaker 1: time about that. Ever, I will never fall to student
Speaker 1: for being in a in a tough place. And you know,
Speaker 1: of course in my syllabus I say no extensions, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to come to class. But then an actuality
Speaker 1: I'm a total softie. So within this hostile environment where
Speaker 1: both students and teachers shame and ostracized Allison, her English teacher,
Speaker 1: who's new to the school, recognizes her talent and suggests
Speaker 1: that one of her colleagues, a teacher Alison calls Nick Norris,
Speaker 1: work with Allison outside of school hours to further her
Speaker 1: writing and become a mentor. I came into her class
Speaker 1: and I was really excited about taking her creative writing class.
Speaker 1: And she did not come with any sort of baggage
Speaker 1: or expectations or judgment. I was just a student who
Speaker 1: was doing well and was happy to be there, which
Speaker 1: was obviously, of course looking back, which was something great,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm sure, I'm sure she was excited. It
Speaker 1: was her first year teaching, and she thought that I
Speaker 1: had talent and some you know, possibilities of doing better.
Speaker 1: So she introduced me to Mr North, who was a
Speaker 1: also first year teacher, and she introduced him as my
Speaker 1: potential mentor and said, why don't you two start meeting
Speaker 1: after school and it'll be great because I just I
Speaker 1: just tront of the capacity to do that, but I
Speaker 1: think Mr North would be a great fit. And I
Speaker 1: was over the Moon. I was so excited. The idea
Speaker 1: of having someone a teacher again sort of take interest
Speaker 1: in me and want to support me was just so
Speaker 1: I don't even think I can possibly I can properly
Speaker 1: describe how much it gave me hope that I could
Speaker 1: still be the kind of student, the kind of person
Speaker 1: that I wanted to be and that I used to be.
Speaker 1: It sort of seemed like, here's an opportunity for me
Speaker 1: to prove everybody wrong. Here's an opportunity for me to
Speaker 1: get some support and to do better not just with
Speaker 1: showing up to class, but with my grades and with
Speaker 1: what I was writing, and to really kind of bed
Speaker 1: Allison I wanted to be, and which just so happens
Speaker 1: as well. Mr North was young, and he was very handsome,
Speaker 1: and all the girls thought he was like so cute,
Speaker 1: and he played guitar and would play guitar at the
Speaker 1: coffee shops downtown where all the all the high school
Speaker 1: kids also would play guitar and like you know, do
Speaker 1: their little cover bands and things he did that he wore.
Speaker 1: This was nearly two thousands, so Abercrombie and Fitch was
Speaker 1: a very big deal, so you would wear Abercrombie and
Speaker 1: Fitch and those leather bracelets and those button ups with
Speaker 1: a little moose pocket, and very much had this sort
Speaker 1: of dual energy of both a grown up because you know,
Speaker 1: we had to call him Mr North. He was is
Speaker 1: our teacher, but he also had these very strong, like
Speaker 1: boy kind of vibes coming off of him. It just
Speaker 1: sort of radiated off of him who he was, this
Speaker 1: complicated figure, and so the idea that I was getting
Speaker 1: his attention for, you know, an hour after school every
Speaker 1: day was just, Oh, my god, I'm the luckiest girl
Speaker 1: in the world. Mr North is twenty six, a teacher
Speaker 1: charged with protecting and educating his students. This could be
Speaker 1: a great thing for Allison, right, a real game changer,
Speaker 1: a popular and admired teacher taking an interest in her writing,
Speaker 1: except that it becomes really clear, really quickly that Mr
Speaker 1: North has other interests. The first time that I really
Speaker 1: understood that my relationship with Mr North was not any
Speaker 1: other relationship with the teacher I had experienced before was
Speaker 1: right before Thanksgiving. So we had been meeting after school
Speaker 1: for about two maybe close to three months, and in
Speaker 1: the shop class where he was watching study hall, I
Speaker 1: was supposed to be in some class I don't remember
Speaker 1: what class. He would constantly write me hall passes to
Speaker 1: get me into, to get me to meet him in
Speaker 1: his study room, to be in his classroom when he's teaching,
Speaker 1: And looking back, I don't know how that went on
Speaker 1: as it did, because it's just perplexing how sort of
Speaker 1: other teachers would just be like, oh, she has a
Speaker 1: pass from Mr North. It's fine. Looking back, that's very
Speaker 1: perplexing to me. But we were in a shop classroom
Speaker 1: and he wrote me this note, like we had been
Speaker 1: doing for the past few months. He began writing me
Speaker 1: notes in classes, but we were passing notes like we
Speaker 1: were two students, but he was a teacher. And he
Speaker 1: asked me what my brass eyes was and I sort
Speaker 1: of demurred and played coy and in he told me
Speaker 1: that he would trade my BRA's eyes for how big
Speaker 1: his penis was. And that really was the first moment
Speaker 1: where I was like, oh, this really is something else,
Speaker 1: which looking back, I mean, that is shockingly obvious, But
Speaker 1: there had been a lot of more subtle signs. I mean,
Speaker 1: looking back, there not even subtle. But at the time,
Speaker 1: I really, I mean I was seventeen, I thought I
Speaker 1: was in love, as in love as any seventeen year
Speaker 1: old could be. I had the biggest crush on him,
Speaker 1: and I thought that it was maybe just this like
Speaker 1: light flirtation, or that I was maybe like making it
Speaker 1: up a little bit in my head. What were some
Speaker 1: of the subtle quote unquote subtle signs, Because I think
Speaker 1: that that whole idea of making it up in your
Speaker 1: head is something that is so resonant and familiar, and
Speaker 1: I'm mean I relate to it myself, and I know
Speaker 1: so many young women who have that feeling of maybe
Speaker 1: this isn't really happening. Yeah, I mean the relationship started
Speaker 1: with and I don't think this could have happened with
Speaker 1: the match teacher. I think this is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that can only happen with with an English teacher
Speaker 1: or a creative writing teacher. He began reading my journals,
Speaker 1: he began having me he assigning me writing exercises, prompts,
Speaker 1: and then he began reading me his own writing. And
Speaker 1: then he began having me write things directly to him,
Speaker 1: to Mr North. So things escalated, this sort of intimacy
Speaker 1: that happens when you're sharing writing, when you're sharing sort
Speaker 1: of your innermost thoughts and ideas and things like that,
Speaker 1: and being vulnerable, not just emotionally, but also on the page.
Speaker 1: There's this intimacy that happens really quickly. And he would
Speaker 1: comment on me being pretty and sort of on you know,
Speaker 1: my hour glass shape and um, he would make comments about,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, you're really sexy. But I still I
Speaker 1: kept sort of brushing it off in some ways. I
Speaker 1: still sort of thought like, oh, he's just you know,
Speaker 1: he's just sort of flirting with me. And we began
Speaker 1: meeting outside of the classroom. We began meeting at coffee shops,
Speaker 1: who began meeting late at night at diners across town
Speaker 1: in the next town over. And these are all things
Speaker 1: that as a thirty seven year old woman looking back
Speaker 1: on like alarm bells, you know, get out of there.
Speaker 1: But at the time I did not take it all
Speaker 1: as seriously as I should have. I thought that I
Speaker 1: was still kind of in control, like, well, I'm flirting back,
Speaker 1: or I'm the one who's starting the flirtation today. You know,
Speaker 1: I had this idea that, well, I can handle this
Speaker 1: when you were meeting him late nights and across town
Speaker 1: and you know, sort of at all hours you were
Speaker 1: living at home, you were senior in high school. Did
Speaker 1: this raise any questions or eyebrows with either of your parents. No,
Speaker 1: And I've asked my parents about this, and they, for
Speaker 1: the most part, say that they don't really remember what
Speaker 1: their thought process was what I was saying. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that I was saying things like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: just hanging out with a friend, I'm just working on
Speaker 1: my homework. I don't know what I was saying, but
Speaker 1: I think within the context of how serious my depression
Speaker 1: had been for so long, you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: had gone sometimes I went weeks without wanting to leave
Speaker 1: my room, without seeing anybody, without being awake during the daytime.
Speaker 1: I switched my nights and days at times for long
Speaker 1: periods of time, which was very difficult. So I think
Speaker 1: and that sort of as the perspective, I think that
Speaker 1: they thought, well, she's getting to school, she's not suicidal,
Speaker 1: she's doing okay. Let's just let her be, probably with
Speaker 1: some relief that you were, you know, living a quote
Speaker 1: unquote normal you know, sort of senior year of high
Speaker 1: school kind of experience, or so it seemed to them.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that, I mean, looking back, I'm sure that
Speaker 1: from the outside that's what they thought, Oh she's breaking curfew.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you know that that's that's a normal teenager thing.
Speaker 1: And this was before cell phones, you know, this was
Speaker 1: the nearly two thousands. I mean, cellphones existed, but you know,
Speaker 1: I was a kid in Suberbia. I didn't have a cellphone.
Speaker 1: So something looking back that is very scary to me
Speaker 1: is how this secret put me in so much danger
Speaker 1: and I did not understand or comprehend or acknowledge at
Speaker 1: all at the time. But the fact that nobody knew
Speaker 1: where I was for so much time is frankly very scary.
Speaker 1: Out It occurs to me from time to time when
Speaker 1: I hear certain kinds of stories that these stories would
Speaker 1: not have unfolded the way they did if they had
Speaker 1: taken place now, when everyone's connected by technology. The kinds
Speaker 1: of lies and secrets that happened even twenty years ago
Speaker 1: would never have happened in the same way today. Alison's
Speaker 1: parents didn't have the ability to track her on Find
Speaker 1: my Friends, or a call to check in with her,
Speaker 1: even if it had occurred to them. The other question
Speaker 1: that occurred to me before we move forward, is um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a It's a tricky question in a way, um,
Speaker 1: but did you know that you were very pretty? I
Speaker 1: don't mean looking back now in that way of you know,
Speaker 1: sort of looking at pictures and realizing, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I was really pretty, But did you did you know
Speaker 1: it as a as a sixteen year old, seventeen year old, No,
Speaker 1: I was wildly insecure. I thought that with enough efforts
Speaker 1: and with sort of that kind of sexy, sedectorus flirtatious
Speaker 1: attitude that we saw all over media, all over TV shows.
Speaker 1: You know, this was back in the era of Britney Spears,
Speaker 1: of Dawson's Creek, of sort of all that pop culture
Speaker 1: that's so much about sexualizing young women and teenagers. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that air of the pop star is just
Speaker 1: something so specific and disturbing, um in a way that
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, of course, like the sexualization of
Speaker 1: young women is always disturbing, but I think that was
Speaker 1: really an apex of this sort of specific kind of
Speaker 1: perspective that society had on young women. And I thought that, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not pretty, but if I put on enough makeup
Speaker 1: and I wear low cut shirts and you know, low
Speaker 1: rise pants, which was of course all that was being
Speaker 1: sold at Abercombian Fitch and like all those mall stores.
Speaker 1: And if I could do that, then I could look
Speaker 1: pretty enough. And I saw that as a way to
Speaker 1: be powerful, because, of course, there are so many signals
Speaker 1: in media, in our society and in our language that
Speaker 1: young women, in particulars power is through sex, is through
Speaker 1: their body. I think part of what made me so
Speaker 1: attracted to him was how overt he was about his
Speaker 1: attraction to me, and that sort of experience of being
Speaker 1: seen as sexy, not just as sexy. He thought I
Speaker 1: was smart, He thought I was a good writer. He
Speaker 1: thought that I was a good person. He thought that
Speaker 1: I had just had a rough couple of years and
Speaker 1: that's normal. And he would sometimes say things like I
Speaker 1: don't know why you were so sad, because you're so smart,
Speaker 1: and you're so beautiful, and you are only potential, and
Speaker 1: those are things that no one had ever said to
Speaker 1: me at that point. I just ate that up. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think anyone would have but me at that point
Speaker 1: in my life. He was just under ten years older
Speaker 1: than me. He was the cute teacher in my school.
Speaker 1: All the girls thought he was like the hot one,
Speaker 1: so just that sort of attention from him was just overwhelming.
Speaker 1: So the fact that the asking me for my braw
Speaker 1: s eyes in return for the size of his penis
Speaker 1: was happening before Thanksgiving, I think so, not even three
Speaker 1: months later. I think that says something about how quickly
Speaker 1: there was the relationship escalated too deeply inappropriate, and it
Speaker 1: mostly continued on like that for the rest of the year.
Speaker 1: At one point he felt like people were suspecting things,
Speaker 1: so he he had me start dating somebody and was
Speaker 1: getting these sort of these very specific instructions. At the
Speaker 1: same time, got very jealous of the fact that I
Speaker 1: was spending time with this other guy, this teenager, the
Speaker 1: guy who was only who was nineteen, who was you know,
Speaker 1: my age. Basically he was a friend of a friend.
Speaker 1: And Mr North got very jealous about that and very angry.
Speaker 1: And I was full of guilt because there's other teenage
Speaker 1: boy really liked me, and he said he was in
Speaker 1: love with me, and I was like, I'm just doing
Speaker 1: this because Mr and North he was telling you too well,
Speaker 1: the point should be made to write that you were seventeen.
Speaker 1: So aside from the fact the that he was your
Speaker 1: teacher and that and that he could lose his job,
Speaker 1: and you know that that would be you know, a
Speaker 1: huge deal if if this all was discovered you were
Speaker 1: legally underage. Yes, I was legally under age. And he
Speaker 1: began to bring that up a lot in our time together,
Speaker 1: especially at the diner. I mean once he wrote, at
Speaker 1: the dinner, we would pass pieces of the paper place
Speaker 1: mats or napkins or these pieces of paper from school
Speaker 1: back and forth, you know, writing the sort of very sexy,
Speaker 1: intense things back and forth to each other. And I
Speaker 1: remember once he wrote something about how playmates are only
Speaker 1: eighteen and we are we being society are told to
Speaker 1: look and yet I'm supposed to cast my eyes away
Speaker 1: from you. He's sort of very romantic, but now I
Speaker 1: see it is also very deeply manipulative and kind of
Speaker 1: icky ideas um. But at the time it seems like, Wow,
Speaker 1: she's just so smart and deep and right. We'll be
Speaker 1: back in a moment with more family secrets. Mr North
Speaker 1: introduces Allison to his favorite novel, Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov.
Speaker 1: He tells her it's the greatest love story ever told.
Speaker 1: Alison later way later learns to her horror and shame
Speaker 1: that Mr North has been mispronouncing the surname of the
Speaker 1: Russian novelist. It's not Nabakov, It's Nabakov. Even in this
Speaker 1: he was a posure, a fake, a charlatan. She couldn't
Speaker 1: see through. He gave me Lolita pretty early on. He
Speaker 1: gave it to me that fall one night at the
Speaker 1: diner in the parking lot, and he had read to
Speaker 1: me the opening already, and he gave me his copy
Speaker 1: and had inscribed it to me. This book is Love, Lust,
Speaker 1: and Lightning, and I just thought it was the most
Speaker 1: romantic thing ever ever. I could not even my mind
Speaker 1: practically exploded at the romance he was offering me. He
Speaker 1: told me that it was this beautiful story about love,
Speaker 1: and that this was a story about us, and it
Speaker 1: was the star crossed loves, and it was this seduction
Speaker 1: by this young woman, and nobody could understand their love,
Speaker 1: so it would had to be a secret, and I
Speaker 1: I lapped it up. I didn't know any better. I
Speaker 1: literally did not even know what an unreliable narrator was
Speaker 1: at that point in my life. So I thought that
Speaker 1: this book was what I was supposed to be aspiring
Speaker 1: to be. I thought that Lolita Dolores Hayes was sort
Speaker 1: of my model, and that by being like her, I
Speaker 1: was being powerful. I was being this sexy Jezebel. And
Speaker 1: I was given the impression because he told me that
Speaker 1: that was the height of sex and love and lust. Well,
Speaker 1: and it was the perfect vehicle for his grooming of
Speaker 1: you because of this combination of what the novel entails,
Speaker 1: and also it's literary, you know, greatness. So he's presenting
Speaker 1: it to as an English teacher and as a fellow writer.
Speaker 1: I imagine when he first presented it too, it must
Speaker 1: have been like sort of the perfect key, you know,
Speaker 1: like the perfect you know key for the lock. However,
Speaker 1: the you know, the open lock. Really that was you
Speaker 1: at that time, very much, I mean even now, I
Speaker 1: mean people still talk about Nabakov being one of the
Speaker 1: greatest writers. There are graduate school classes just devoted to Nabakov.
Speaker 1: And so he put Nabakov on this incredibly high pedestal
Speaker 1: for me and very much introduced it as this is
Speaker 1: the greatest love story of our century. And looking back,
Speaker 1: it was it was the perfect tool for grooming. But
Speaker 1: I never thought of it like that. I thought I
Speaker 1: was so special for him sharing this with me, And
Speaker 1: I also knew it was sort of like a scandalous book.
Speaker 1: I knew that too, because he told me, you know,
Speaker 1: don't let people know that I gave it to you,
Speaker 1: don't you know. It's it's a secret. It's a secret
Speaker 1: between us, like everything was. And so I thought that
Speaker 1: made me special, and that that made it's special, like
Speaker 1: he was risking something to give this to me, and
Speaker 1: that of course made me just want it more like
Speaker 1: any teenager. Looking back, it makes me very sad that
Speaker 1: a piece of literature was used in that way. But
Speaker 1: I also have very complicated feelings about a Bokov and
Speaker 1: Lolita now in that I think it is a beautiful book.
Speaker 1: I think it is a beautifully written book that opening
Speaker 1: light of my life are of my loins, my sin,
Speaker 1: my soul. I mean, my god, it's a There are
Speaker 1: just some beautiful, beautiful parts in that book, staggeringly beautiful
Speaker 1: that I teach in class because they're just such powerful
Speaker 1: examples of the tools of literature, the tools of language,
Speaker 1: and there's all that wonderful stuff. But it is also
Speaker 1: problematic as fun, and it can be both. It can
Speaker 1: be beautiful, and it is also a story about rape
Speaker 1: and kidnapping, and grooming, and we have to be able
Speaker 1: to acknowledge both and pedophilia. Yeah, and pedophilia, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that little thing. Just that. The direction of Allison's life
Speaker 1: is now firmly being controlled by Mr North's. He starts
Speaker 1: talking to her about their future, the two of them.
Speaker 1: He pushes her toward Ithaca College because he has plans
Speaker 1: to attend graduate school nearby at Cornell. This too, is
Speaker 1: about as genuine as his pronunciation of the author of Lolita. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Ithaca College isn't Allison's first choice, but that's where she goes.
Speaker 1: Mr is the master of her destiny and her parents.
Speaker 1: Her parents still have no idea what's going on. And
Speaker 1: the night after she graduates from high school, literally the
Speaker 1: next night, she and Mr North what to say, consummate
Speaker 1: their relationship, begin their affair. None of the words are
Speaker 1: quite right. Let's just call it what it is. They
Speaker 1: have sex. Mr North, or Nick as I began calling him,
Speaker 1: made it really clear that spring that we were going
Speaker 1: to be together, that he was in love with me,
Speaker 1: that by going to Ithaca College, he was going to
Speaker 1: go back to Cornell and get his PhD in another year,
Speaker 1: and then we could just be together. As like two
Speaker 1: co eds in town, and we don't have to be
Speaker 1: a secret anymore. So when I graduated, I knew, okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is this line that we are going
Speaker 1: to cross up. Until then, it had never been physical,
Speaker 1: with the exception of this one time he kissed my ankle,
Speaker 1: and that was the line. And he told me that
Speaker 1: it was because he could get fired, and I did
Speaker 1: not want him to get fired. And I was adamant
Speaker 1: that I would never tell that, I would never let
Speaker 1: that happen to him. But then the night of my graduation,
Speaker 1: at my graduation party, our graduation ceremony afterwards, he gave
Speaker 1: me whenever he told me to call him, and I
Speaker 1: went to his apartment the following night and I got
Speaker 1: very drunk. He got me very drunk. You know, I
Speaker 1: was eighteen at this point. Um, I'd really only had
Speaker 1: like bears at some sort of party on someone's back porch.
Speaker 1: You know, I had had very very little um interactings
Speaker 1: with alcohol. I had never done drugs. And he got
Speaker 1: me drunk on Cosmopolitans because sex in the city was
Speaker 1: cool then, so I was like, yeah, I'll have a
Speaker 1: cost smell. I didn't know what I wanted to drink
Speaker 1: because I didn't know what I liked to drink. But
Speaker 1: I got really drunk and we had sex for the
Speaker 1: first time. And I don't remember all of it, but
Speaker 1: I do remember it was very uncomfortable and it was
Speaker 1: not at all romantic or anything like the fantasy that
Speaker 1: I had sort of put upon what our relationship was
Speaker 1: going to be like. And what are you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote love was. And I remember thinking that it was me,
Speaker 1: that I had done something wrong, and that I wasn't
Speaker 1: good enough, that I didn't know how to have fact,
Speaker 1: you know, that I was doing things wrong. Um, And
Speaker 1: I very very much blamed myself, and the relationship very
Speaker 1: quickly became even more controlling and very emotionally and verbally abusive.
Speaker 1: And over the next six nine months when we were together, um,
Speaker 1: as you said, having the affair. You know, I really
Speaker 1: hate the word affair. But the problem is there's no
Speaker 1: word for what was happening. It's not a relationship because
Speaker 1: that sort of suggested in a equality, and there was
Speaker 1: no equality in our relationship. Um. He was far more
Speaker 1: the person in power than I ever was, even for
Speaker 1: a moment, and we weren't dating because that sort of
Speaker 1: seems too casual and sort of like, you know, you're
Speaker 1: dating in high school. But he wasn't in high school.
Speaker 1: He was almost ten years older than me. He wasn't
Speaker 1: my boyfriend because he was a secret. Nobody knew. And
Speaker 1: something that I think is really interesting and frustrating is
Speaker 1: that we don't have a word for this, which I
Speaker 1: think tells us a lot about what our language and
Speaker 1: what our culture thinks about these relationships, or it doesn't.
Speaker 1: So the relationship continued, and it continued to be a secret,
Speaker 1: and I began to get really frustrated by that. Um
Speaker 1: so it was exhausting to keep this secret because by
Speaker 1: then I had made friends, I had sort of found
Speaker 1: my place as a teenager in my high school. I
Speaker 1: had sort of made more social connections, and I was
Speaker 1: constantly lying, why did it have to continue to be
Speaker 1: a secret at that point when you were eighteen and
Speaker 1: had graduated. He said he would get fired if anybody
Speaker 1: found out, So we had to get a new being
Speaker 1: a secret, and I did not understand that. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm eighteen, it's fine, what's the big deal? But he
Speaker 1: insisted that it continue being a secret, and who was
Speaker 1: I to argue? So it seems like he continued to
Speaker 1: become more and more sort of emotionally and verbally abusive,
Speaker 1: something that he hadn't really overtly been when he was
Speaker 1: grooming you, when he was like a actively courting you
Speaker 1: by grooming you. When I went off to college, that
Speaker 1: was really when things took a turn to the even worse.
Speaker 1: The relationship was nothing like I had imagined. The relationship
Speaker 1: was absolutely not the fantasy and this wonderful, romantic, beautiful
Speaker 1: love story that he had promised me. It was really
Speaker 1: ugly at times. It was full of him humiliating me
Speaker 1: at times. Once he made me key in front of
Speaker 1: him because he said that this was what real relationships
Speaker 1: are about, which just horrified me and I, you know,
Speaker 1: and he forced me to. He put me in the
Speaker 1: bathroom and he would not let me leave. There would
Speaker 1: just be these very humiliating and these deeply imbalanced power
Speaker 1: moves that he would make, and those just began to increase.
Speaker 1: And when I went off to college, he would come
Speaker 1: up and visit me sometimes, but it got really ugly
Speaker 1: really fast. Probably the worst one of the worst facts
Speaker 1: that we had was when was that semester I was
Speaker 1: taking a literature course, and we were talking about short
Speaker 1: stories and PO and my professor had, you know, talked
Speaker 1: about how PO was the father of the short story.
Speaker 1: So I was with him and I and he was
Speaker 1: like house classes and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: we're talking, you know, we're learning about these things and
Speaker 1: I'm so excited and Poe and I was saying all
Speaker 1: of that, and he laughed at me and said, you know,
Speaker 1: your your professor is wrong. You're not learning anything there.
Speaker 1: And I got, you know, upset, and he began arguing
Speaker 1: with me that another writer I think, I think he
Speaker 1: said Nathaniel Hawthorne was the father of the short story.
Speaker 1: And we got into a screaming match about it, and
Speaker 1: we were both drunk, because it did take me much
Speaker 1: to get drunk, and he threw a glass across the
Speaker 1: room and it shattered on the wall and I broke
Speaker 1: down crying. And I mean, these sort of fights happened
Speaker 1: more and more. The more that I began to sort
Speaker 1: of get my own opinions about things and began to
Speaker 1: not see him as this all knowing, all controlling figure,
Speaker 1: the more tension we had, and eventually it became very
Speaker 1: sexually abusive. And there are definitely times in that relationship
Speaker 1: when looking back twenty years later, I would call that
Speaker 1: rape what happened. I would never say that at the time.
Speaker 1: At the time, again, I just thought he'd gotten mad
Speaker 1: at me. I was doing something wrong. It was my fault,
Speaker 1: and I never ever would have used that word. But
Speaker 1: now he definitely raped me at least twice. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: were definite moments when our sex was non consensual. On
Speaker 1: my heart, what do you think allowed you to ultimately
Speaker 1: get out? Because not everyone gets out. I think that's
Speaker 1: very very luckily. I saw that because of keeping him
Speaker 1: Nick the teacher, a secret. And while I was in college,
Speaker 1: I was putting myself back into that same isolated, not
Speaker 1: connecting with people place that I had been in high
Speaker 1: school in my senior year when I first returned, because
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to go out with my friends, I
Speaker 1: wasn't really making friends because it's weird when you know
Speaker 1: you can't go out with them that night. You have
Speaker 1: to stay home in your dorm room waiting for the
Speaker 1: teacher to call you, and you can't tell anybody that
Speaker 1: that's why you're waiting in your dorm room. There was
Speaker 1: just this constant lying and I just somehow I was
Speaker 1: able to see dot that he made me feel shitty,
Speaker 1: that I was crying way too much, that it became
Speaker 1: clear that he probably was not going to be getting
Speaker 1: into any PhD program, much less Cornell's, so we were
Speaker 1: not going to be able to be just two codes
Speaker 1: like he had promised. And I somehow found the strength
Speaker 1: to walk away and to want to have my own life.
Speaker 1: And frankly, I don't know how I did that. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I thankfully was able to. Allison graduates
Speaker 1: from Ithaca College and works at a nonprofit was at
Speaker 1: risk teenagers, perhaps a way of repairing some of her
Speaker 1: own wounds. She eventually enrolls in a Master of Fine
Speaker 1: Arts program and becomes a professor of writing, herself a
Speaker 1: wonderfully false circle moment. When she become as a teacher,
Speaker 1: it truly drives the point home to her. Even though
Speaker 1: her parents should have been able to read some of
Speaker 1: the signs that she was in trouble, it was really
Speaker 1: her teachers, the ones who witnessed what was happening, who
Speaker 1: had to see the way this teacher student relationship had
Speaker 1: gone off the rails, and who said and did nothing
Speaker 1: The first time I walked into a classroom as a professor.
Speaker 1: It was a slap in the face. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no other way to describe it. I had been working
Speaker 1: with teenagers for quite a while at that point, which,
Speaker 1: of course, looking back, it all makes sense. It's like, ah,
Speaker 1: this is part of my processing um working with girls
Speaker 1: doing empowerment stuff during workaround consent and dating violence and
Speaker 1: you know, reading programs and all and all the specific
Speaker 1: work with girls. And at the time I did not
Speaker 1: see any of those things. I just liked that work.
Speaker 1: But looking back, it's fall clearly part of my dealing
Speaker 1: with what it happened to me. But then becoming a
Speaker 1: teacher myself was this whole new experience. And it is
Speaker 1: just striking how when you are a professor, when you
Speaker 1: are a teacher and you have a workshop, you have
Speaker 1: a classroom full of students. It is just as someone
Speaker 1: who is thirty seven now so literally twenty years later,
Speaker 1: they're just so young, even even though they're eighteen nineteen,
Speaker 1: maybe they're even twenty, They're so young. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: just no other way to put it. And this is
Speaker 1: not to of course disavow their agency, their maturity, their strength,
Speaker 1: their intelligence, but they are still children too. You know,
Speaker 1: many of them have never lived on their own, they've
Speaker 1: never paid a bill, some of them don't know how
Speaker 1: to do their own laundry or how to cook for themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, in a lot of practical ways, there's still children,
Speaker 1: but also just emotionally, you can tell in their bodies
Speaker 1: that they're still children in their faces. And then it's
Speaker 1: also so obvious when a girl is in trouble in particular,
Speaker 1: there's always at least one student, one girl. It's always
Speaker 1: a girl who is having a hard time and needs
Speaker 1: some support and needs extra attention and care, and this
Speaker 1: need just radiates. It's so her vulnerability is just so obvious.
Speaker 1: And I remember that first day in the classroom, before
Speaker 1: we were just introducing each other, you know, not even
Speaker 1: not even working on writing or doing anything like that,
Speaker 1: sort of starting to get to get to know each
Speaker 1: other in the classroom, and there she was right in
Speaker 1: front of me, and it was me. I saw myself
Speaker 1: in this girl, and it just made me realize how
Speaker 1: vulnerable I was, what an easy target I was, and
Speaker 1: it made me so viscerally mad and angry about what
Speaker 1: happened to me in this whole new way. At this point,
Speaker 1: I had already been angry and I have been frustrated
Speaker 1: about what what had happened. You're like, this is really shitty,
Speaker 1: This wasn't my fault, you know, all of those things.
Speaker 1: But then becoming a teacher myself, and you know, my
Speaker 1: stuents are even a little bit older than I was.
Speaker 1: But to go into a classroom and see your students
Speaker 1: as anything but people that you need to protect and
Speaker 1: do take care of and provide for. To look at
Speaker 1: your students and think, wow, I want to try to
Speaker 1: fuck that one. There is nothing more wrong to me.
Speaker 1: And I just got viscerally angry about what happened to
Speaker 1: me in this whole way. I mean, I think teaching
Speaker 1: a secret, I really do so to understand in this
Speaker 1: new perspective what was done to me. It was illuminating
Speaker 1: because I then better understood myself and what had been done,
Speaker 1: and it also sort of sharpened by anger and also, frankly,
Speaker 1: my resolve to not let this happen in my classroom
Speaker 1: or in any classroom that I had any part of.
Speaker 1: I'm just having an insight listening to you, which is
Speaker 1: that I don't think that shame and anger can occupy
Speaker 1: the same space. When shame takes over, it's not possible
Speaker 1: to feel the kind of white hot clarity, because shame
Speaker 1: means the wrongness is us, and anger is taking that
Speaker 1: wrongness and turning it around a d eighty degrees and saying, no,
Speaker 1: I was a victim here, and you were the person
Speaker 1: who was in power and was in was in charge,
Speaker 1: and who did this. I didn't do this, You did this,
Speaker 1: And you can't get there when there's still are these
Speaker 1: vestiges of shame. And I think it can take a
Speaker 1: really long time to have all of that really peel away.
Speaker 1: It took me a good fifteen years. I have spent
Speaker 1: probably the first fifteen years after this had happened, thinking
Speaker 1: it was my fault, you know, thinking I had seduced him,
Speaker 1: that I was just as much of a participant in
Speaker 1: this relationship as he was, and being in a classroom
Speaker 1: made it so clear that nope, that is not what
Speaker 1: was happening. And I think you're right, this sort of
Speaker 1: white hot clarity of anger of you know, sort of
Speaker 1: putting that blame outward for the first time really in
Speaker 1: some ways. And I like the word victim. I know
Speaker 1: some people don't, and Obviously this is a very personal thing,
Speaker 1: but I actually like the word victim because to me,
Speaker 1: it's sort of the nately suggests a victim of something,
Speaker 1: a victim of someone, as opposed to, you know, a
Speaker 1: word like survivor, which to me is kind of flattening.
Speaker 1: And I mean, you know, all all words can be flattening,
Speaker 1: but I think it eliminates the part of acknowledging the harm.
Speaker 1: And I think that moment in the classroom, and every
Speaker 1: time I stepped foot into a classroom is part of
Speaker 1: me acknowledging the harm that was done to me that
Speaker 1: I did not bring upon myself. I was seventeen. I
Speaker 1: was a kid. This man was an adult. He was
Speaker 1: almost ten years older than me. He was a grown up.
Speaker 1: There was there's no way to excuse his behavior. Maybe
Speaker 1: I thought he was cute, and maybe I was flirting
Speaker 1: with him, but the thing is that was completely developmentally appropriate.
Speaker 1: First devon girl to have a crush on our teacher,
Speaker 1: to try to flirt with adults like that's fine, but
Speaker 1: he should have known better, and he did, and he
Speaker 1: did it anyway. Family Secrets is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Media, Dylan Fagin and Bethan Mcalouso are the executive producers.
Speaker 1: Andrew Howard is our audio editor. If you have a
Speaker 1: secret you'd like to share, leave us a voicemail and
Speaker 1: your story could appear on an upcoming bonus episode. Our
Speaker 1: number is one secret zero, that's secret and then the
Speaker 1: number zero. You can also find us on Instagram at
Speaker 1: Danny Writer, Facebook at facebook dot com slash Family Secrets Pod,
Speaker 1: and Twitter at fami Secret Spot. And if you want
Speaker 1: to know about my family's secret that in fired this podcast,
Speaker 1: check out my New York Times bestselling memoir Inheritance. For
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