Walking out the rotating door

Tonight I want to talk about the rationale for why I didn’t just walk out the door that night. It’s just something I have been thinking about. I know what I was thinking — the rationale was just poor. But I have a few other things to take care of first. Meandering is my new word. It’s better than chaotic, which is how I typically describe my writing. I’m opening with it today, so strap in and try to follow the logic train that occasionally derails and then dances like it’s on Soul Train. I’m glad I missed the 70s sometimes.

First, there is a special someone who has been administratively suspended from the Vermont Judiciary for nonpayment of bar dues. This means very little, actually, but someone is NOT an attorney in good standing. It was confirmed by “disbarment dude” that this does not end their investigation or impede their jurisdiction and ability — nay — duty to seek meaningful action against {D}. So, either he is out of money and/or he does not expect to practice law again, possibly due to disbarment.

I got him a highball glass once that said, “I'm a lawyer, not a fucking magician.” It appears now he is neither. I mean, technically he will always be a lawyer, just not an attorney — but that kills the joke, so forget I mentioned it.

Today was also the day that the public summons came out in the Burlington Free Press for the civil suit since he evaded service. If someone gets that paper, clip it for me so I can frame it. One of my major goals with {D} was public records existing about this. Someone can find it now should he rape someone else and find me in the process — and I should be able to help them get charges. The more of us there are, the more power we have. It could put an end to {D}’s 40-year reign of terror against women.

The main thing I wanted to write about tonight is a woman’s reaction in the moment. So many things were buzzing through my head that night. The question I get a lot is, “Why didn’t you just leave?”

I stated that to my therapist, and my therapist said, “You would never consider leaving.” That was a statement by him. But I did consider it. I was in pain, I wasn’t enjoying myself, I was dreading them continuing to touch me, and I logic’d through what I could do and how I should handle it whilst smoking a cigarette that night. I thought about just ditching them both.

First I went through, “Well, I planned the party.” That was instinct one. Emily Post would be horrified that a hostess walked out of her own coke-fueled group sex party. How rude of me to do such a thing!

Then it was the caring — and by that I mean I cared about both of them on a few different levels. Friendship: what would they think? Would they still want to talk to me if I abandoned them? Then the relationship aspect with both: how would me just taking off affect the long term? Would either still trust me? Then there is the “one of the guys” aspect, where I’m not like a girl guys have to be sensitive about. You can say shit in front of me — and to me — that you would generally not say in mixed company. If I had “girl feelings,” would that change our relationship? Would they still want to hang out with me, and would it be the same?

Then there is the drunk whisperer. My friends always called me that. I can chill any drunk person out. You have a belligerent, angry, sobbing, sloppy drunk that no one can handle? I’m the guy you call. It is almost a gift, but also something that was definitely learned by necessity in my childhood full of belligerent, angry, sobbing, sloppy drunks. You detach emotionally — nothing they say can bother you and nothing they do can shock you. You stand neutral and even and monotone, and you guide them, because nothing starts shit faster than trying to make a drunk person do something; you have to make them think it’s their idea. This is one of my true skills in life. It’s the life skill I have used to get weapons out of hands and to talk cops out of arresting people.

So, I didn’t want to leave two heavily inebriated men who didn’t really know each other alone drunk, because {D} would have started a fight. It would have been {D} — no question in my mind on that. He was my wild card.

Also, it occurred to me — how the hell is {D} going to make it home? He couldn’t. What would he do — spend the night? Get his own room, maybe?

I felt I started it, and I needed to control the chaos. I could have left. I could have gotten in my car and gone to the hospital where I belonged. I could have, while driving {D} home, swung into the police station and at a minimum left him there drunk, which might have contained the chaos of {D}. I was pissed by the time we drove past the police station because he wouldn’t stop touching me while I was trying to drive and not kill us in the process (again noting I did not drink that night; I was okay to drive). Fighting off a grown man physically makes driving a little difficult.

I look at all of these things and blame myself for not leaving. But then I remember the guy whose name I’m not sure of, whom I had met once in group therapy, and I remember I drove him home — all the way fighting him to keep him from putting my hand on his penis — just a month prior to that night. I didn’t kick him out. I didn’t know him from Adam; why didn’t I shove him out of my car? And if I let him get away with it, of course {D} would get away with it.

I also think back to Brian 2. I was not allowed to leave. What he would do is trap me. He would sit behind my car so I couldn’t leave. I would sit locked in my car, sobbing, just wanting to get away from him and him touching my body constantly. But eventually there was nothing I could do, so I always went back in the house and never actually left. So even when I think about leaving, I feel I physically cannot. I’m trapped, and I have to suck it up and deal with it.

I created the scenario, I lost control of the situation, I felt responsible for all parties due to their level of inebriation, I worried they would abandon me if I left — so I stayed and put up with their shit because underlying was the belief there was no way I could actually leave. That sounds insane, and is, I think — except my therapist said it wasn’t. It was exactly what I would do given my trauma history.

Actually getting in the car and driving away would have been akin to riding off on a winged Pegasus named Beyoncé who just happened to have flown into the room with Jesus and transvestite Theodore Roosevelt on a moose. It would have been that bizarre. I totally would have left with TR, though.