*
Amber was painfully aware of the mismatch between her politics and her desires. She was an intersectional feminist, an advocate for people with disabilities, and a wholehearted ally of the LGBT community in all its glorious diversity. As a straight, cisgender, able-bodied, neurotypical, first-world, middle-class white woman, she struggled to maintain a constant awareness of her privilege, and to avoid using it to silence or ignore the voices of those without the same unearned advantages, who had more of a right to speak on many, many subjects than she did. It went without saying that she was a passionate opponent of capitalism, patriarchy, racism, homophobia, transphobia, rape culture, bullying, and microaggression in all its forms.
But when it came to boys, for some reason, she only ever liked jocks.
It kind of sucked. She wished she were more attracted to men who shared her political convictions—the tree-huggers, the gender nonconformists, the vegan activists, the occupiers and boycotters, the Whiteness Studies majors, intellectual black dudes with Malcolm X eyeglasses—but it never seemed to work that way. She always fell for athletes—football players, shotputters, rugby forwards, heavyweight wrestlers, even an obnoxious golfer, though he was definitely an outlier—almost all of them hard-drinking white guys with buff, hairless chests, marinated in privilege, unable to see beyond their own dicks. And of course they used her like a disposable object, without regret or apology, because that’s what privilege is—the license to treat other people like shit while still getting to believe that you’re a good person.
What was it her father always said? The definition of crazy was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? Well, that was the story of Amber’s love life so far, and she’d had enough. She’d vowed over the summer to stop the madness, to either start choosing her partners more wisely or, if need be, to opt for celibacy and self-respect over empty sex and the self-hating sadness that came with it.
And then, as if the universe were testing her resolve, she met Brendan at the Activities Fair on the very first day of her sophomore year. He was a bouquet of red flags—a handsome, self-confident, broad-shouldered, inarticulate, politically oblivious lacrosse player—the exact type of guy she’d sworn to avoid. But it didn’t matter: her heart did its usual, incorrigible somersault and gave the middle finger to her brain. It amazed her how weak she was, like a smoker who’d vowed to quit, but couldn’t get through a single day without lighting up.
To her credit, she put up more resistance than usual. Freshman year, she would have texted him right away, inviting him to hang out, maybe smoke some weed and watch a movie. At the time, it had seemed like the feminist thing to do—why shouldn’t a woman pursue sex as freely as a man?—but for some reason it always ended up with her staring pathetically at her phone, wondering why Trent or Mason or Royce (the asshole golfer) hadn’t even sent her a thanks for the blowjob! text, as if that would have made her feel any better.
With Brendan, she hung back, playing hard to get, as her mother would have quaintly put it, waiting for him to make the first move. She didn’t text him, didn’t orchestrate a “chance” meeting in the Higg, didn’t even friend him on Facebook, though she did do a fair amount of stalking. He posted lots of shirtless pictures of himself, and, she had to admit, he looked really good without a shirt.
It turned out to be an effective strategy for not hooking up, especially since Brendan made no attempt to contact her, either. But even at a big school like BSU, they couldn’t avoid each other forever. About a month into the semester, she’d walked into the library with the newly formed Student Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality, and there he was, cute as ever, reading a book about climate change.
He’d surprised her in the best possible way. She couldn’t imagine any of her former hookups joining her to protest the shooting of Michael Brown, or weeping in front of a roomful of strangers at a meeting for people with autistic siblings. He seemed like a decent guy, and maybe even boyfriend material, definitely worth taking a chance on.
What are you going to do on your date? her mother had asked.
We’re going to a movie. After that we’ll probably go to a party where everyone gets naked.
Ha ha, her mother said. Very funny.
*
I didn’t hate the movie. It just wasn’t the kind of movie you were meant to like, and not the kind you normally went to on a date. But Amber was really into feminism, and one of her good friends, a Vietnamese girl named Gloria, was in charge of the Women’s International Documentary Film Festival, so there we were.
It was an eye-opener, that’s for sure. The movie focused on a bunch of depressing third-world hellholes where women were treated like garbage. In one African country, young girls got raped all the time and nothing ever happened to the men who did it. There was this one victim—she was twelve, but looked older—who was raped by her “uncle” who was not actually her uncle. He was a family friend, and a very important man in the village. The white people who were making the film convinced her to press charges, but it backfired. She and her mom ended up getting kicked out of their house and the rapist denied everything.
I am not that kind of person, he said, like the accusation had hurt his feelings.
There were other stories—girls sold into prostitution by their own parents, girls forced into sweatshops to support their families, girls who were “engaged” to be married to disgusting old men before they’d even reached puberty, girls who were genitally mutilated while their own mothers held them down. I could hear Amber sniffling next to me and I reached for her hand. She turned and gave me this sad little smile.
After a while I just kinda zoned out. There’s only so much misery you can take in one sitting. Normally, in a situation like that, I would’ve checked my texts or played a game of Hitman, but the girl who introduced the film had made a big deal about asking everybody to turn off their phones and devote their full attention to the screen.
Please, she said. This is important. Please don’t look away.