Jay: So, it’s a pretty little campus, I think. But… Okay. But, as I was telling Autumn, I could understand why, because of its size, she had such a deep and personal connection to it, but was also equally repulsed by it.

 

Autumn: Do you smell the lilac bushes?

 

Jay: Yeah.

 

Autumn: That’s like the bush… I was up late with my friend Kayleigh, we were out late together, and we picked one of the lilac things because it reminds her of her grandma, and I slept over at her house and in the middle of the night we heard a buzzing, and she like. Umm, and, we heard this weird buzzing, and her dog was freaking out. The next morning I watch a bee wake up from one of the flowers I was drying on her wall that I had picked. It was just a big bee. It was so cute. It like stretched out. It was so cute.

 

Jay: Yeah.

 

Autumn: I don’t see any in bloom right now.

 

Jay: Yeah.

 

Autumn: Lilacs are fickle. This is the science-y building, with the greenhouse on the other end.

 

Jay: Not as pretty from this end.

 

Autumn: No, not quite.

 

Jay: But yeah…

 

Autumn: Well yeah, ‘cause it’s like. Naming abusers as abusers is important but also, you can’t keep them from still being human.

 

Jay: Yeah.

 

Autumn: And like, it’s easy, I feel, to negotiate with abuse when you kind of upturn them as a person, and kind of write them as this abuser. This abuser and only this abuser. And I don’t mean to say this in an apologist way, but like… It, umm. It complicates things when you are reminded of the fact that, like, this is a person who deals… Who has a psyche, like I do. Umm… It like tangles all that shit up. You can’t just, like, unthread them as an abuser and then, like, throw out the rest. ‘Cause. You know. That’s just not how people are. You know… He got a lawyer and then I, you know, I didn’t get a lawyer because I can’t fucking afford that.

 

Jay: No one else is gonna do it for you.

 

Autumn: No one else is gonna do it for you, I was still technically enrolled in classes, even though a bulk of them I was taking independent study. ‘Cause I had to. Because, ya know, he was in a lot of my courses. You know, they had their university lawyer there and it was framed as if she was there to protect me from him having his lawyer, but the reality was, and I didn’t really come to terms with this until I was sitting, basically, in the room. And the first thing his lawyer did was introduce himself to me, umm, which is explicitly. They are not supposed to speak to me at all. His lawyer was meant to be there as his advocate. Which, for me was my therapist. An advocate is not meant to really speak at all. But he did the majority of the speaking during the hearing. And in that moment, that first moment I walked into the room, and he walked over to me and introduced himself to me—the way a lawyer would for a case—puts his hand out for a hand shake. I didn’t address him at all, I said nothing to him, I looked right at him, I didn’t accept his hand shake. And I looked right at the lawyer, the university lawyer, and I said to her “He’s not allowed to speak to me.” And she looked at me cluelessly and said “Are you sure?” and like, that was the moment that I realized she’s not here for me. She’s here for the university. She’s the university lawyer. Yeah, I mean like, it was kind of naïve for me to think that she would have represented me in any meaningful way, but also like, I know why I had to do that for myself.

 

Even the time, like the morning after, I remember I went with my friend to look at the first apartment that I rented, and umm, we were looking at it together because it was a Craigslist posting and I was like “Hey, you’re a boy, come with me.” He was another friend of mine. And he came and I met him there, and we parked in a Taco Bell parking lot and walked down the street to get there, and we looked at it and you could tell something was off. When we were together, I played that one song, “All My Friends.” And when we were together, he could tell something was off, and I wound up telling him what happened between sobs in my fucking car, where he was supportive. He did what I needed in that moment, which was kind of just listen. It was maybe a Saturday. I came in to meet with the head therapist, you know she wasn’t my psychologist. She told me to go get a rape kit done at OSU East Hospital, which is just up the road. Which, my friend that went with me to the apartment came with me to do that. He wasn’t in the room during the examination, but like he stayed the whole time. And, she kind of figured, I had showered the next morning, she was like “I don’t think I’m gonna find anything, but it is good practice to do this.” And, looking back on it now, it’s good practice to have it on file that I did that as a means to legitimize it. Which is a whole legal fuckery. Umm. But what I didn’t know, is that it is OSU hospital policy to contact police. And so that was kind of done without my consent. And then, the cop came, basically after the exam.

 

It wasn’t ever very clear to me, in the exam room if, when I gave the name of the student, if a ball would be set into motion that would be out of my control. And I think that’s one of the reasons I did it through the university instead of, like, you know, quote true legal proceedings. So, after the examination, I spoke with that cop for about three hours. And I didn’t give them a first name, I didn’t give them a last name. Um, I don’t know if I gendered the student the entire time. I didn’t tell them his year. That was partially as a way to protect him because we were both drinking underage. Which is another thing that I don’t know if that would get tacked on. To me, I just like, I was not concerned with like trying to fuck up this dude’s life. I didn’t want him taken out of the university, I didn’t want anything… umm. Like, I don’t wanna say life changing, but I didn’t want this to fuck up the path that he had made for himself. And so. I took careful measure to… The only things I asked during the campus hearing was that he be removed in the classes I was in with him, which were two. Like I was taking two courses with him. Virtually one person was the correspondent between me and him, constantly. She was the person who was in charge of all of the RAs on campus, and she did sexual misconduct things. It’s a fucking labor. It’s a labor for everybody. I mean, he experienced, just like how I experienced emotions and general expectations. Not general expectations, but ya know, I went through a series of emotions that he never felt, likely, like, he did too. He experienced things that I couldn’t really imagine in the position I was in.

 

Jay: You’ve talked a lot about, um, caring and being concerned for his safety, because from my understanding, he was a friend beforehand. Which complicates shit a whole lot. Um, did you find yourself having to, in that moment or during the semester, having to defend him from others who did want legal action or something like that?

 

Autumn: Oh yeah. Definitely. I would say the one person who was supportive of every single thing I did was my therapist. But that’s also kind of partially what she’s trained to do. Um, but you know.

 

Jay: What got me thinking about it was, you mentioned how you said you didn’t consent to have the police officer sent to you at the hospital, so I was thinking about how other people in this whole process, including the university and stuff, weren’t really concerned with what your needs or wants were.

 

Autumn: No. Learning just like more why this culture exists and like understanding that like, you know, he has been, just like every other, typically dude, have been indoctrinated into this misogyny and patriarchy. Yeah no I just had to back down a lot of hate from my friends. And which it never turned into me defending him outrightly, it sort of like, hey, the stuff you’re talking about right now is not helpful for me. Can we consider… Can you consider toning down the emotion you’re feeling, because I know you’re feeling a lot right now, because your best friend was hurt extremely badly by someone who she thought was her friend. Um, but like, understand the emotions I’m dealing with are far more complicated right now. And also, that like, you need to let me call the shots on how we talk about him.

 

Jay: How you feeling right now?

 

Autumn: I’m not doing too bad. Considering.

 

Jay: Mhmm.

 

Autumn: I’m a little sleepy.

 

Jay: Yeah. I know this isn’t the first time you’ve told this story. And it’s not the first time you’ve told it to me either. But I appreciate you sharing it. And I appreciate you showing me the place where it was very much lived.