Chapter Eight
Daniel
After I leave Trace downstairs, I try to focus on classwork. It even works for a couple hours. But I can’t stop thinking about what Trace said and how much it pissed me off, and eventually I call up another friend—a guy in the engineering department who also goes to our church. He’s on Trace’s side when it comes to a lot of issues, but he isn’t a clueless asshole.
I hope he’s not, anyway. Because I want a reminder that a man can be conservative without telling women how to feel about rape.
“Hey, man. What’s up?” Mac says when I call.
“I have a question for you. Kind of a church thing.”
“Okay.”
It’s not really a church thing, but I call it that because I want God to be part of this. I want to get as far away from Trace’s toxic bullshit as I can, and have a conversation that comes from the better angels of our nature.
So I tell him the whole story. Then I ask,
“What should I do about Trace? I mean, the dude has issues. Should I confront him? Try to get him to talk to Father Mark? What?”
Mac is quiet for a few seconds. Then he says,
“Okay, look. Trace can be a douche, and he shouldn’t be trolling people on Twitter with a fake account. Obviously. But he’s not wrong about those fucking feminists.”
So much for the better angels of our natures.
“I mean, I think he should have the balls to talk to them direct, right? But they’d block him if he tried. You know they would. They try to pretend they’re these brave warrior women or something, but they’re total snowflakes. They can’t stand to have a real debate. You know it’s true. They need safe spaces and trigger warnings to even function. They call us intolerant, but they’re the ones who think free speech only applies to people who agree with them.”
I’ve said that kind of thing myself. Just last night, in fact. After class, I called Tamsin an intolerant liberal. I also called her an anti-religious bigot.
But before I called Mac, I went on Twitter and read her whole thread about abortion. She didn’t call anybody names—not even “Lisa.” She seemed to be interested in what everyone had to say, although she wasn’t shy about expressing her own views.
Of course, it’s hard to imagine Tamsin being shy about anything.
I think that’s what appealed to me freshman year. I loved the way she walked into our dorm like she didn’t give a damn about anything but being herself. She was so sexy, but she didn’t flirt or try to get all the guys to want her or all the girls to be jealous of her. Maybe some guys did want her—God knows I did—and maybe some girls were jealous of her. But Tamsin didn’t care one way or the other. She just cared about Oscar. That was obvious every time she looked at him.
He didn’t deserve her. The truth is, I don’t know if any guy deserves a girl who looks at him the way Tamsin looked at Oscar.
But he definitely didn’t.
Okay, I’m getting distracted. Mac started it with his whole free speech riff, but now I need to get us back on track.
“All right,” I say. “What’s important is the Trace-is-a-douche part. That’s what I’ve got to deal with, some way or other.”
“Do you have to deal with it? I mean, can’t you just let it go? I don’t think he means anything by it. He’d never actually rape someone.”
Because I hang with guys who make fun of feminists, I have an idea of what the feminist answer to that would be.
But never, not in a million years, would I have expected that answer to come out of my mouth.
“Even if he never rapes someone himself, he’s making it easier for other guys to rape. He’s contributing to rape culture.”
In the silence that follows, that phrase seems to echo in the air.
“Rape culture,” Mac repeats after a moment. “Rape culture? Are you serious right now? You sound like a social justice warrior.”
Social justice warrior—SJW—is what guys like Mac and Trace call liberals. I’m no liberal, but I’ve never actually used that phrase as an insult. It’s never made much sense to me. Social justice strikes me as a good thing.
But I’m not about to get into that. In fact, I’m starting to think calling Mac was a mistake.
So I say I have to go and end the call. Then I get up and start to pace.
I find myself looking around my room as if I’m seeing it for the first time. As Tamsin might see it if she came over.
Most of my decorating—if you can call that—is football-themed. Tamsin probably wouldn’t have a problem with that. I mean, she’s friends with Will and Andre, so she knows jocks.
I do have a couple of religious things. A cross-stich my mom did of the Lord’s Prayer, hung up above my bookcase. And a watercolor my minister back home gave me—a picture of a waterfall with a quote by George MacDonald.
I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking.
I stop in front of that picture and read the words a couple of times. I have a book of quotes by Christian writers, and this one is in it. I copied it out and taped it to the inside of my locker during high school, when it was starting to dawn on me that I wasn’t going to be class valedictorian or a star quarterback…or the best at anything, really. I told Father Warren about that realization and how the George MacDonald quote helped me, and he gave me this picture for graduation.
The painting of the waterfall isn’t that great. The frame is kind of ugly. But at least a year after I talked to him about that quote, my minister remembered it and bought that picture for me.
A small kindness. The kind of thing Father Warren does so often he probably doesn’t even think about it. But it means a lot to the people on the receiving end.
There’s another quote by George MacDonald that I like.
There are thousands willing to do great things for one willing to do a small thing.
I like that one because it’s true. People are always willing to do the big stuff—the stuff that gets you attention. But people forget to do the little things. The day to day things. Just trying to be strong and honest and kind and brave when it doesn’t seem to matter or when no one’s looking.
I go over to my bed and lie down, my arms folded behind my head. As I stare up at the ceiling I’m thinking, what small thing can I do right now to make things better?
To be honest, I can’t think of anything that will make the Trace situation better. Not right now, anyway. Maybe I need to sleep on that one.
But there’s something else I can do. I can tell Tamsin that the “Lisa” who’s been popping into her online discussions is a fake account.
I don’t have her phone number. But when I pull up her profile on Twitter, I see that her DMs are open.
There’s something I need to tell you. DM me back if you get this.
Now I’m just here on my bed, waiting. Which is stupid, because it’s midnight and Tamsin’s probably asleep. Even if she’s awake, she hasn’t been on Twitter since last night. Why would she even notice I DMed her?
Refresh. Refresh.
Man, I’m an idiot.
Refresh.
And then…
Ding.
I sit straight up in bed, staring at my phone. It made the notification sound, and there’s also a little red number one on the envelope icon on the bottom right corner of my Twitter screen.
I click on it.
What?
That’s all.
I hesitate. There’s no character limit in DMs, so I can say whatever I want.
You’ve been talking with someone named Lisa on Twitter. The golden retriever avatar. She’s actually my asshole housemate trolling pro-choice girls from Hart. Just block him. Tell your followers to block him too.
Maybe a minute goes by. Then:
Wow. Okay, I will. Thanks for telling me. But I gotta say, in case you haven’t noticed…you seem to be friends with a lot of assholes. It’s none of my business, but I thought I’d point it out.
There’s Shane, who called her a skank. And Trace, who told her rape is just a girl changing her mind the next day.
I type, I’ve got some friends who aren’t assholes, and erase it.
Then I type, Yeah, maybe, and erase that, too.
I stare down at my phone for a few seconds. Then I type,
Sorry.
Her reply comes a minute later.
It’s none of my business, like I said. But YOU’RE not an asshole.
My phone is cradled in my hand, and I move my thumb over Tamsin’s message on the screen. Then I type,
Thanks.
It’s a pretty lame reply, but sometimes a lame reply is all you’ve got.
I just call em like I see em. So are you coming to class tomorrow? Or were all the liberals too much for you? Do you need a safe space, snowflake?
I grin.
I’ll be there. What about you?
I wouldn’t miss it. I’m going to wipe up the floor with you, by the way.
Doubtful. See you tomorrow, Tamsin.
See you tomorrow, Daniel.
It’s the first time she’s called me by my name. And even though she did it in a Twitter DM, I hear it in her voice. That low, sexy, smoky voice I heard for the first time freshman year, when the prettiest girl I ever saw came to my dorm to see her boyfriend.