Inger’s first appearance on the blog was last August when I started a kurfuffle for tossing about the word “rape” too casually for some. I didn’t name her then. I described the incident in a post titled, “It Was Rape“. I never named the girl who threw herself at the mercy of the guards a manic shadow of her Ivy League self. It wasn’t necessary then. It is necessary now. Also, most of my readership know that I am first a fiction writer who also writes prose. Thus, Inger is not a real person. I have to say that because my PUDFARB minders read a draft and accused me of shaming rape victims and giving undue press to rapists.
Inger, I and my peers need to apologize. We failed to raise you right. We were so concerned about your self-esteem we kept a bubble around you such that you were never allowed to fail. We feared the damage done to you by a dangerous world so you lived in a cocoon where you could do anything you wanted and were never held accountable. Now, grown, your world is a cackling nightmare of anxiety triggering aggression and threats. There are boogeymen everywhere who have hurt you. Men are, on their face, murderous assholes intent on killing you. White men are the worst. White women are agents of the white male devil and thus more evil because of their complicity in the violence and oppression.
We succeeded in protecting you from strife. In Little League you always got a trophy regardless of how well you performed. We beamed with pride when you showed up at your ballet recital in a rainbow tutu, a black leotard and Doc Martins saying you were dancing for the rights of black people and the downtrodden LBGTQ community. We taught you that having a tantrum meant getting a better trophy so you learned to be expert at using anger to get what you wanted. We explained away and excused your troubles in school as the fault of a legion of enemies set against you. It was never your fault.
When you saved our dung in mason jars and used it to finger paint on the walls we proudly took our pictures to the local copy store and had large format images of your art framed. Your use of infant poop was inspired.
We catered to your every whim. Switched brands of locovore soy milk because you told us the son of the family owned business was an evil pig exploiting young girls for profit. We never quite understood what made him so evil but since you were our precious snowflake we complied.
We defended you through to College at Stanford when you spent your first semester occupying the central square as a protest of the presence of white students proving endemic racism on campus. We hired lawyers to help you sue your professors who asked you to write essays that you said caused you duress. We lost but never stopped believing that you were right.
Please come home. We don’t know where you are. We are worried about you. We saw that Periscope video of you yelling, “rape” at work and were frightened. We have attorneys on retainer waiting for you. We support your fight for women’s suffrage in the workplace 100%.
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In the weeks following Inger’s spectacular exit from her internship at a Silicon Valley social media company she lost it. After being examined by the Trauma Center and having a rape kit collected she was nearly catatonic. A social worker and a psychiatrist examined her and had her transferred to the Psychiatric Ward. In California you can only be held for 72 hours involuntarily before they have to release you or have a plan for you. Inger got herself released.
She had the usual kit of a first world citizen of these United States. Purse containing necessities including ID, credit & debit cards and some cash. A scarf, ripped but usable. New cotton panties courtesy of the county since her VS Pink thong was ruined and a lacy thong in a psych ward is not a plan. Her phone, which had everything she needed to get an Uber back to her apartment. Her life was waiting for her. She just had to go home.
She did not. She was released at 8:00pm on a weeknight. She made her way to Calero Park, befriended a goth boy who had a tent and a spare sleeping bag. She was there for a couple days, begging for spare change and eating out of dumpsters. Her last stop in the first world was a visit to FedEx Office to mail her purse and clothes to her parents in Ashland, Va.
We failed you as parents and for that we are sorry. Please turn on your phone and let us know you are ok, ok?
Felina was a classmate at Stanford the school year before the internship and the cry of “Rape!” They were friendly but not close. Stanford was a fail for Inger and the softest landing after a fall was Swarthmore. Inger’s internship was on plan, in her senior year at Swarthmore and bode well for her. Inger and Felina mostly stayed in touch through Instagram and a shared love of creating memes. Then after the rape shout Inger went dark. Felina thought maybe she’d been ghosted by Inger.
That’s some of Inger’s back story. I said in a recent post that she was back in rehab. Getting clean and sober for Inger isn’t simply suffering through cold turkey and a bunch of Fellowship Meetings. Inger has come in to adulthood sporting PTSD and Schizophrenia. Inger, angry, doesn’t know how to self-soothe or calm down. Inger can’t cope with duress without a meltdown. She becomes a babbling idiot at the utterance of three words, “you are wrong.” She’s got some life skills to learn while getting clean.
What happened to the guy? When Inger went dark and resurfaced in rehab for the first time in Martinsville at Piedmont Community Services the cops tried to talk to her but she refused. The rape kit showed signs of sexual battery but the evidence pointed to someone else, not the coworker who was gang tackled by the guards. The police were willing to follow up on the case but Inger’s way of coping with them was a screaming fit in which she claimed that the police had invaded her brain with worms who were telling her that she was carrying the alien baby of a drunken party-goer after an all nighter in Calero Park. The staff asked the cops to leave and it was a few days before Inger returned to group.
Without clear evidence to support the screams of “Rape” the cops were left flat. This isn’t Law & Order SVU. This is Santa Clara County’s District Attorney’s office with the usual challenges. Every Assistant District Attorney has to weigh the cost of prosecuting a case against the likelihood of a conviction. Inger’s accusations of “Rape” didn’t have enough meat on them to justify spending the county’s money on prosecution so the charges were dropped.
Though, in the overheated, totalist mood of the country and of California, the scent of an accusation stuck to the coworker like skunk piss. His indifference to her accusations caused a social media storm of bad press, rumors and gossip which left his employer accused of being a fellow traveler of a rapist. Despite the absence of legal interest in his alleged sins the coworker found himself without a job and blacklisted.
So . . . Inger. I am sorry that my generation’s best intentions became your worst nightmare. The great sadness is that as shitty as it is, it’s on you now. I wish you all the best in this stint of rehab. Piedmont County is a good place to be.