currently (re)reading: Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl by Jeannie Vanasco
books bought
Us Two Together by Ephameron
Last Night in Nuuk by Niviaq Korneliussen, trans. Anna Halager
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
The Hard Tomorrow by Eleanor Davis
Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl by Jeannie Vanasco
books received
The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe (e-galley, out 4/28)
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener (out 1/14)
Weather by Jenny Offill (e-galley, out 2/11)
The Exhibition of Persephone Q by Jessi Jezewska Stevens (e-galley, out 9/3)
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (e-galley, out 12/3)
book i got from the library which i’ve finally fucking been using
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
books finished
The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe
Weather by Jenny Offill
She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
Us Two Together by Ephameron
Axiomatic by Maria Tumarkin
Hey you,
I don’t really talk about it because it doesn’t feel like a big deal. I don’t mean it wasn’t a big deal in a self-deprecating way, in a “well it wasn’t rape so it doesn’t matter that much” way. I mean simply that I don’t usually still feel it, I don’t usually think about it. I don’t really talk about it because I don’t know how to say “it wasn’t a big deal” without sounding like I am dismissive, and that is not what I mean, not what I want. Certainly I wouldn’t want anyone to agree with my assessment, not aloud. I’d want them to believe me, of course, but hearing, “you’re right, it sounds like it wasn’t a big deal” would be, I think, very hurtful. I suppose what I am trying to say is that it doesn’t feel all-encompassing, or much encompassing at all.
And—or—I don’t really talk about it because I don’t know which words to use, I mean literally, I guess I am supposed to say breasts? Do I say mouth or oral? If I say dick instead of penis, doesn’t that change things, make me crasser, less sympathetic, less believable?
I don’t usually feel compelled to write about it, but here I am, writing about it, trying to prove I have the right to.
When she was 19, one of Jeannie Vanasco’s closest friends from high school, Mark, raped her. In Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl, she interviews him about it.
ME: If it helps you to know, I’ve already written about forty or fifty pages of fond memories of us. That wasn’t hard to do, actually. I really want to write about us, about our friendship.
HIM: If you feel strongly about it, I think you should.
ME: Is it okay for us to talk? Would you be okay talking again?
HIM: Yeah, I mean, the hard part is over, or the hardest part.
ME: You have no idea how happy this makes me. I want to understand the larger question of how it’s possible to be a good person who—
HIM: Does terrible things.
ME: Well, and it was one thing, and I think that’s what was kind of heartbreaking for me. It was this one night. And otherwise, though, we were such good friends.
Later, transcribing their first phone call, she writes,
Hearing myself thank Mark for talking to me about sexually assaulting me, I don’t know how to describe the feeling it induces. Mortified isn’t strong enough.
I laugh when transcribing him saying, And I’m glad it’s gone this way.
Of course he was glad the conversation went the way it did. I repeatedly told him he’s such a good person. And why did I need to convince myself of this? Or him of this? Does it go back to needing to believe I was never wrong to trust him? Or do I simply want my friend back?
I first read Things We Didn’t Talk About a few months ago, in the spring, and I have been trying to figure out what to say about it since then. The problem is that everything I can think of sounds hyperbolic. Everyone is saying “this is the book everyone needs to read right now” about every book. But! I don’t know! A book’s not left me speechless like this in—maybe ever. Trying to tell people about it, I end up saying something like, “It’s just—it’s—I…I mean…”
What is there to say that doesn’t sound like an exaggeration? Is it good enough just to tell you I’m not exaggerating?
After the Kavanaugh hearings, I reached out to a guy who owed me an apology, a different guy than the one above. I was so desperate for a reckoning. Like maybe if he apologized it would be some kind of evidence that things hadn’t gone quite to shit as I thought they had.
It did not go well at all!
At one point in his conversation with Jeannie, Mark says, No, it was a huge deal. It was a huge betrayal. I read the line over and over and thought about how badly I had wanted him to say that to me, thought about how I would’ve felt if he had, if it would’ve made things OK. Then I turned the page, where Jeannie wrote:
I rewind and listen to the recording again:
No, it was a huge deal. It was a huge betrayal.
No, it was a huge deal. It was a huge betrayal.
No, it was a huge deal. It was a huge betrayal.
This is what I wanted. So why do I not know how I feel?
A while later, after a few more conversations, Jeannie travels to meet Mark. In her hotel room, she writes in her notebook:
I feel ____________________
I feel ____________________
I feel ____________________
I feel ____________________
I feel ____________________
I feel ____________________
I feel ____________________
I feel ____________________
I think this book is one of the most significant works published in my lifetime, certainly one of the most significant I’ve ever read.
I’ve been trying to think of what my staff pick for it would read if I were still at the bookstore. Probably it would just say, Very simply one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever read.
When I finished reading it for the first time I was in my bed with the window open. I closed the book and sat there sort of dazed, sort of stunned, and I stared at the wall in front of me, and outside my window in the back alley someone started singing to themselves, something soft and sad and sweet.
I’ve not spoken to him since it happened, which was almost a decade ago now. “Since it happened,” I write, as if it was an accident. Since he held me down and assaulted me, I mean. I think I might send him a copy. I hope he reads it. I hope you read it, too.
Your friend,
Smalls