Chapter 5 #3
"It's not, I promise, but I can see why you'd feel that way.
" I think for a moment before continuing.
"I grew up with a mother who treated me more like a roommate than a daughter, especially once I hit puberty and was less of a child and more of a young adult.
I had no rules, Mal. I'm sure that sounds fun, but it's not.
I'd often do things just to see if she'd care.
Came home drunk as a skunk all the time…
nothing. Brought a boy over and hung out with him in my room with the door closed…
nothing. We even made very loud pretend sex noises when I knew she was just out on the couch. "
"Why fake sex noises?" Mal asks.
"Oh, well, because he was a friend, not a boyfriend. The whole point was to see what she'd do. I could do literally anything I wanted. I stayed at my friend Jen’s house for a week once without so much as a word to my mother. You know what she said when I walked in? ‘We're out of milk.’”
Mallory boggled at me. "You crashed at a friend's for a week without telling, asking, or checking in? And all she had to say was, 'We're out of milk?' How old were you at the time?"
"Fourteen? Fifteen?" I think back. "I remember Jen and I rode our bikes to the corner store for slushies pretty much every day that week, and that bike was stolen from school a few days before my fifteenth birthday, so I was fourteen."
Mal shakes her head. "Mom, that's wild. But what's your point? Like, how is that relevant to my question?"
I smile. "The relevance is that I've always tried very hard to make sure I'm not like that.
I'm your mom. It's my job, my entire purpose in life, to protect you and keep you safe, to provide for you, to set you up for a successful and happy life.
Sometimes that means making hard choices, sacrificing, and, unfortunately, it also means making decisions that I know you won't like, understand, or agree with.
That's parenting. I’ve always focused on being your mom, not your friend.
But you're an adult now, more or less, which means I have to start letting you make your own choices and mistakes. "
Mal shakes her head, holding up her hands. "Mom, I don't need all this parenting lecture stuff. I get it. But you're not answering my question—is it me you don't want to talk about your love life with, or everyone?"
"It's both, babe. That's the short answer.
I don't want to talk about my non-existent love life with anyone because there's nothing to talk about.
I don't want to talk about it because there's no point.
I've tried love, sweetheart. Many times, and it's bitten me in the ass every time.
That's the truth. And yes, part of me doesn't want to talk to you about it because we need boundaries.
I'm not your BFF, I'm your mom. I want us to have open communication and be friends and all that, but at the end of the day, you're my daughter, not my buddy.
There are some things we just aren't going to talk about.
Just like there are things you're not gonna come to me about.
" I fix her with a hard look. "Like what really happened that night between you and Heath. "
Her cheeks flame, and she looks away. "I told you what happened."
"You told me most of what happened. Not everything."
"You had a hard enough time with what I did tell you."
"Mal."
"Mom."
"Mal."
"I told you he was pressuring me to sleep with him." She pauses, intently not looking at me. "Which was true."
"But?"
"We started having sex, and I freaked out. He didn't want to stop."
"Mal—" I shake my hands, palms facing her. "That's a totally different thing, Mallory Wheeler!"
“No, it's not! He did stop. Eventually.” A sharp sigh. “I just…I had to get a little aggressive to make him understand I was serious. He thought I was playing a game or something." The last part comes out quiet and shaky.
"No, honey, he didn't," I say gently. "That's just the excuse he used."
She shifts uncomfortably on the chair. "Maybe."
"No, sweetheart, not maybe—yes. One hundred percent. Stop means stop—immediately, no questions asked. It doesn't matter if he was a single heartbeat away from coming—if you say stop, it stops right then."
"I know, Mom."
"No, you don't. Clearly, you don't. You're making excuses for him. If you said stop and he did literally anything other than stop instantly, then it's sexual assault."
"Mom, that's a little—"
"Factual. It's binary, honey. It's yes or no.
You want it, or you don't. You didn't. And it's your absolute right to call a stop at any point, for any reason, and you don't have to give a reason.
Four letters and one syllable is all you ever need, Mallory—stop.
He didn't just pressure you; if what you're telling me now is the full truth.
You may not want to go so far as to call it rape, because you started out agreeing and maybe even wanting to do it. "
"I changed my mind," she whispered. "I realized I wasn't ready. It wasn't…it wasn't long. Like…" she sniffles, shakes her head. "I can't."
"Tell me, honey. The whole, horrible, uncomfortable truth."
"I liked kissing him. I liked…getting to second base."
"Mal, use grown-up words, okay? Say it how it is. No euphemisms. Don't make it cute. Be real with me. Please."
"We took it slow, for a while. It seemed like he was okay with it. Just kissing. Hand holding. That stuff. Kid stuff more or less, I guess."
“That's not kid stuff, that's new relationship stuff and it's important, but continue."
"I was into it. The touching was kind of weird at first. Like, when we were making out, it was fun getting carried away, y'know?
I was nervous and a little scared when he suggested that we were ready to go all the way, because I wasn't sure I actually was ready.
But I liked Heath a lot. I thought—I…I thought… "
"It's what you were supposed to do?"
She nods. "Yeah. I guess."
"That's a normal way to feel, honey. It's confusing. It can be hard to separate societal expectations from what we really want. Especially as women." I move around and stand behind her, arms around her neck. "Keep going. What happened next?"
She sniffles again, shakes her head again.
"I told him I wanted to think about it. Which was true.
He just…he kept pressuring me. That was also true.
Once we got past a certain point, like…Once I let him touch me under my clothes, he was relentless about going further.
Every time we were alone, he'd get handsy and want to make out and try to get me out of my clothes, and I…
I felt like…" she shrugs, at a loss for words.
“Like you had to? Like you couldn't say no? Like by letting him touch you, you'd given him carte blanche permission to keep touching you whenever he wanted? Like by letting him touch you, you were making him an unspoken promise that you'd have sex with him?"
She nods. “Yeah, exactly. Especially the part about the promise."
"You made no such promise. Did you?"
"No!"
"It's an insidious thing, that unspoken expectation. So then I imagine eventually he just sort of wore you down, basically."
She nods. "I was curious, too. I suppose it's important that I'm honest about it. I started out not…not exactly…like…eager, but not against it. Curious, and hopeful that maybe he'd stop badgering me about it. I feel stupid now. I should've—"
"Stop right there, Mallory. I wish to god I could say that what you experienced was rare, but it's not.
It's honestly more normal than not, which is a goddamn tragedy and an indictment of our entire society, but that's a story for another day.
I hate that you went through that, and I really hate that you didn't feel safe coming to me about it. But I get it."
"You…you do?" Her eyes are wet—a rarity, as Mallory isn't a crier, or an outwardly emotional person in general.
"Of course I do, sweetie. Of course. How do you approach that with your mom? 'Oh, hey Mom, my boyfriend is pressuring me to sleep with him, but I'm not sure I want to. What do I do?’ ” I sigh, shrug. “Yes, I wish you had. But I get why you didn't."
"We were at his house, in his basement. His parents were gone somewhere, I don't know where. We started making out, and things…happened. Clothes came off. I was okay with that. I was okay with him touching me, and I did touch him." She looks at me quickly and then away.
"Mal, it's okay. You don't have to be embarrassed.
Not for being curious. Not for wanting to explore and experiment.
Not for not telling me everything. Not for being attracted to him.
Not even for enjoying it up until you didn't. Not for wanting to stop for what may seem like 'no reason.
'" I use air quotes on that last phrase.
"I did enjoy it…up to a point." She blushes again. "The point where I stopped enjoying it and started feeling scared or nervous or whatever was…"
"Just say it bluntly. You won't shock me, honey. You want to have a real, adult conversation? This is it.”
"When it got to the point of…of putting it inside me, that's when I stopped being so sure it's what I wanted."
"Absolutely normal."
"Were you scared your first time?"
"Fuck yes!" I exclaim. "Petrified. My friend told me how bad it hurt, her first time. Turns out her boyfriend was unusually well-endowed and didn't know how to accommodate for that because it was his first time, too."
"Ew, mom. God."
“Just reality, babe. There is such a thing as too big, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's just that what's too big is subjective."
"How do you accommodate for having too big of a dick?"
I arch an eyebrow at her. "Is that really what you want to talk about with me right now, Mal?" I shrug. “Because we can go there, if that's actually the case."
Her eyes widen. “Yeah, no. Because then I’d have to think about why you know that."
"Exactly. So let's not, huh? Maybe another day."