I didn’t tell the story for over 20 years and when I did, it was after a school shooting to say “if he’d had a gun instead of a knife, he would have fired before he had a chance to change his mind and then been unable to take it back. If he’d had a gun instead of a knife that moment of clarity would have been realizing that his life was ruined. He would have shot me next.”
There But for the Grace of God, Go I
So many men have written articles about the mass shooting. They tend to go “I too was lonely and rejected.” Some say “it’s a good thing that I didn’t stumble into the ‘Men’s Rights Movement.’ He could have been me.” Some say that the problem isn't misogyny, it's feminism; women have the right to say no now! Some say that the problem is that he didn't purchase the correct Pick Up Artist lecture; "come buy mine!" I keep telling them: “This isn’t about you not being popular with girls in high school. This isn’t about how terrible it is to be a male virgin. This isn’t about the shooter's rationalization for his misogyny but about his misogyny itself."
This is about a culture that encourages ideas in men that women owe them and any of us should be physically harmed if men don’t get what they want from each of us. This is about a culture in which it's acceptable for men say that rejection by one woman should result in punishment for all women because we are all the same; however, if someone points out that some men are violent and women can’t tell which ones, the same men yell ‘not all men are the same!’” I keep telling them “that you think that this is about you and not the women who were targeted for a mass killing simply because they are women? That is the problem.” Frankly, I think they should be saying “There but for the grace of God, Jen hasn’t punched me in the nuts, because I totally deserve it.”
“I could have been him.” They say. I respond “but you weren’t and there’s a reason that you weren’t.” This boy actually could have been him, but not because of misogyny, not because I owed him like every woman owed him. Because he was lost.
“There But for the Grace of God, Go I”
I’d tried to explain but he wouldn’t listen. I realized that he felt hurt and betrayed and heart-broken. Then I realized that his reasons for feeling that way were valid. Maybe it didn’t matter to him what the reason was because it shouldn’t matter to him. He was allowed to feel that way. He was right that I’d betrayed him. I didn’t really have a choice but why should that matter to him? I accepted how he felt and I played my role in a teen drama.
He didn’t know much I cried because of what I did. I started crying even before I did it because I knew I had to do it and I knew that this boy that I liked would probably hate me. I knew that I would lose my friend. I don’t think he even knew I liked him. I never told him and I’m not sure he could have figured that out himself, at least at the time. I was the Prom Princess and he was a scrawny nerd with huge glasses and no money. He probably thought I was out of his league, but he was smart enough for me and that was rare. He didn’t bore me. I was easily bored and irritated by people. Someone had to be just the right person to make me not fall regularly into derisive fits. In math class, I routinely had outbursts in which I yelled that everyone else in class was an idiot; I was in a program for children with high IQs. I hated people but I liked him.
I hated to walk away but he wanted me to and he deserved at least that. And he deserved for me to engage sarcasm mode and give him an out. I don’t know if he realized that I did it on purpose; that I saw that moment; that I wanted to help him; that if what it took to help him was to remind him that he wanted to kill me, that’s what I’d do. Maybe that would show him that I meant it when I’d said I was sorry. He stayed angry. He called me a whore and a slut, not because he hated women—because I betrayed him and that was the only way he knew to hurt a girl with words. Because I hurt him. Me.
I wonder if they would have known that his rage was directed.
There But for the Grace of God, Go I
He hated his mother. I don’t know what she did to make him hate her. Maybe she was just a mother to an angry teenage boy. Maybe it was more specific. He talked openly of how much he hated his mother. I never heard of any other family members. My hatred was muffled, silenced, buried. No one but me knew it was there. When I was 7 I told my mother that she should divorce my father because “he’s an asshole.” It might have been my first curse word. They didn’t get the divorce. I had to spend more time with Dad so I would know that he’s likeable. Likeable? Not if you’re related. It was the last time I confronted my mother about his behavior until the divorce ten years later. My sister and I offered to throw her a party when they separated but our parents decided that we were in shock.
Dad was very appearances-oriented, and not just physically. He was under the impression that what’s really important in life is that people outside our family admired us. He was also under the impression that anything that he did to us was acceptable because we’re family and that means that we’re stuck with him. People definitely admired him. He was so nice to everyone else. He was smart and handsome. He had a PhD and had worked as a golf pro. He was dedicated to encouraging liberal arts majors to switch to STEM.
Starting in high school, I had three doctors who had been liberal arts majors until they took his class. They switched to science and ended up in medical school, then ended up at the same clinic. Who knows how many doctors credited my father with their careers. Every time I went to a doctor’s office, I got at least one nurse or doctor who had been his student. Every time, someone asked about him, “how’s he doing? It must be so nice to have him as a father.” My favorite was when women told me that it must be so nice to have a father who is so supportive of women in STEM.
He disallowed me to study science because my goal as a woman was to find a good husband and I’ll never find a good husband if I keep letting guys realize that I’m smart. He refused to let me have science toys as a child. I wanted KNex. I still want KNex. He got a chemistry set and blew up the garage as a child. I got "pipette practice" with straws. In college, he insisted that I switch to “a good major for a girl, like English or Education.” I got yelled at if I fixed something that he couldn’t. He threw a tantrum when my IQ test came back with a score higher than his. Most parents would be proud; his superiority was threatened— by a girl. His own daughter! How dare she!
It took until I was 25 to respond to those people who said it must be so nice to have him as a dad: “that’s because he’s not your dad.” The breakthrough with my mother was when students excitedly asked if she was his wife and she smiled and cheerfully said “not anymore!”
That boy was angry with me. He told me that my life was perfect. I lived in a 5 bedroom house in the city and my parents were teachers. My life was so easy. He made cracks about my (metaphorical) white picket fence. I wanted to tell him “sometimes, monsters hide behind white picket fences” but I had to stay silent and seething. I didn’t have the right to be angry, ever. That’s what I was always taught. Besides, people might realize our family secrets. The façade would be broken.
“There But for the Grace of God, Go I”
I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately, that broken, brilliant boy. He’s my Facebook friend now. One day, he sent me a friend request and I accepted. We carried on with our lives as if that was a totally normal thing, just friends from high school. We didn’t talk to each other at all. After a few years, I tagged him in something and I responded to a couple of his posts. He started responding to mine. He helped me with a programming question. I didn’t know how to feel about him helping me. I spent days wondering if I should tell him “I know that you won’t understand how I could have done what I did if what I’m about to tell you is true, but you know I liked you, right? Do you at least know now that I liked you?” I wouldn’t have turned him down. I couldn’t even read his last post in the thread because I couldn’t figure out what to feel. I’m certain it was helpful.
We’re dancing around elephants in the room. We’ve never spoken about what happened in high school, but he’s chimed in on articles claiming that the correlation between psychiatric medication and mass killings proves that psychiatric medication causes mass killings. He pointed out the correlation is not causation fallacy; I hit “like.” No one pointed out that every example was male, and almost all were white. Those correlations are meaningless, of course.
In times like these when he has more insight than people realize, I see few posts from him. Maybe I’m not on the list of people who would get the messages that he’s sending out. Or maybe he’s retreated from the internet so he doesn't expose that secret, silently saying
“There But for the Grace of God, Go I.”
He ran away to my house. I told him that his mom would think to look for him at my place so he should go around the corner to another friend’s place. When his mother called, I told her that I hadn’t seen him since school and didn’t know where he was. She told me that he doesn’t have his medication; he needs his medication. I said I hadn’t seen him. She said “Fine. I’ll call later and ask for your dad and tell him that when you were over here, you stole a piece of jewelry from me, a necklace.” I said “But that’s a lie! I’ve never even been over there! I don’t even know where your house is!” She said “I know. But who do you think he’s going to believe? One of his star students or his daughter?”
I knew the answer to that and sadly, it wasn’t me even though I’d be telling the truth. If he’d confronted me with the theft allegation, he would have gone into monster mode and my only defense would have been to say that she was lying because the boy had run away and she wanted me to tell her where he’d gone. He would stay in monster mode until I gave that boy up and then he would stay in monster mode, thinking that I’d stolen from her. "Where is the necklace? Don't lie to me and tell me you don't have it! You need to give me that necklace so I can return it!" My room would have been searched and my parents would have found things that would get me in even more trouble. She would find out either way; the only difference was the amount of damage to me in the meantime. I told her who to call, maybe he would be there. When she called she said that I’d told her for certain that he was there and she’d drive over to check if she had to.
I wondered if she saw through Dad’s disguise. I wondered if she recognized that under that “impressive” appearance was an unstable, narcissistic asshole. I wondered if she understood the position that she put me in by threatening to lie about me. I wondered if things like that were why he hated his mom.
In the end, we made it through. He didn’t go on a school killing spree and I escaped the white picket fence. I haven’t spoken to my father in over a decade. I don’t know if that boy speaks to his mother. But we made it through and now we’re dancing a silent gavotte with secrets and elephants.
