How many times could Olive have gone home? One hundred? One thousand? How many times did her body alarm at the prospect of teetering out the window? How many times did Olive ignore it? The only answer is: many.
The other question always posed is why stay under the circumstances that other women would call problematic at best? Dangerous at worse. Those other women, all of them with someone to go home to, are the first women to discount the reasons why Olive stayed. Because to stay there and let what happened happen is not something they can understand. They had rarely felt the kind of loneliness that Olive feels and so cannot comprehend how being alone would be a scarier option.
Suddenly alone and drunk after the evening going polar to all expectation and hope, that was Olive’s real worry when Calv grew restless and reached for his coat. She would be left to reconcile it with herself. The truth of what had transpired would be really very painful.
And it was quick, Calv’s determination to leave, it came from the side. It was a periphery decision made immediate that she barely caught at all. He would have left without saying goodbye had she been in the bathroom. Even saying goodbye to her would be admitting that she was somehow there with him, which he could not admit because then he might be culpable in some way for this evening.
He needed to not be there.
Something about Rog touching the lace hem of Olive’s dress had set an alarm off in him.
Calv had without warning grabbed up and pulled on his coat. The zipping sound had ribbed tremendous inside Olive’s ears. The outer layer had startled her. Olive had tried to readjust. She had tried to ask questions now of this man she had never asked questions of. Unasked questions could not go unanswered. This was a lesson Olive had been taught long ago. She almost never makes requests. She hates asking for help. Or clarification. Hates it. But she tried. She stood though Rog pulled her back to sitting. She asked where Calv was going. She had hoped for an inviting answer but Calv said he was going home. He was suddenly not in the mood for this. He said he could drop her off. Saying that he could drop her off implied that she was not going with him to his final destination. Later he would tell himself that she wouldn’t leave. This would absolve him. He had asked her.
What was he supposed to do, drag her out of there?
But the truth is, he didn’t try very hard. Because he suddenly didn’t want to be in charge of Olive who he didn’t want to be in this room with even though he had brought her here. He was distant. Shifting in desire. Already stepping out of this evolving disaster.
In his mind, he had moved on to never speaking to her again. He would pretend he did not know her altogether if he walked by her on the street. Or any of the b’ys. Especially Roger. Amanda and Donna were right about him. Keeping company with the likes of Roger Squires was why Calv couldn’t get ahead in life. Why he thought it acceptable to keep company with some slutty young thing he met in a dive bar. Bring her to a party. Do a swarm of blow.
None of this was right or good and Calv wanted no more of it.
So when Olive asked if he wanted to hang out at her apartment for a bit, he snapped vicious at her. She had said this right pathetically and in front of all the guys, too. Like they were friends who hung out at her apartment. Like they were on the go.
And it was barely words that came from her, a mew of desperation. He was repulsed and afraid of the need. She might need someone. That someone might be him. The realization made Calv panic.
No, he was not going to hang out, he was going the fuck home out of it, wasn’t he? That’s what he said, didn’t he? Home to Donna. His girlfriend. He would get the cab to drop her off if she didn’t want to stay but she had to come on right the fuck now. Right now. This instant. It was a super-fast proposition made just to have said he had made it. Olive knew a real offer when she heard one and this was no real offer. It was barely an appeasement. Olive would not appease him. And so she didn’t go. But she should have.
The whole discussion about leaving took less than five minutes.
From the moment Calv picked up his coat, to Olive alone in the room with these strange men, four minutes had passed by her. She could see the night table alarm clock flick its numbers over. Slightly deviating strokes making their way toward the future. Bringing it into being. She could see them now and then forever. The digital red stick figures slowly turning all through the holidays, ushering her into the new year, every time she stepped into a hotel room or spotted a cheap clock in a discount department store, this kind of technology would mark her passage through the world. Olive wished away her bargain time. This time and each time. With each new person. Wanting it all to be over and done with. But being home alone high during the holidays was the scariest thing Olive could think of when Calv said he was leaving. Worse than being there with those men. So she chose to stay.
Olive does not make her best choices in an altered state.
And not long after Calv’s departure a harder fault shifted. It was introduced by the television, which was as expected as it was unexpected. The fifteen-dollar movie with its cascading volume occasionally cresting the human chatter of the coked-up group of laid-off riggers advanced a strident tone. The woman’s moans knocking the wind out of Olive as she examined the grey-green carpeted floor that might lead her out of here. The rutting from the actor bounced off the wall sconces and back into Olive’s face. She felt anxious and ill. Trapped. Well and truly caught up in this version of a holiday party that was like no Christmas movie she had ever seen on CBC. This would not be deemed appropriate viewing by the public broadcaster, which found a lot of everything to just be too much.
That’s much too much of everything. She’s really just too much.
And yes, it hurts to look at Olive here with these men not unlike her own family. Uncles, cousins, ordinary men who would just as easy pump a strange woman’s gas during a downpour. But it’s not right to selectively see only certain people in focus. Our own people is a thing and it is not a thing.
Because Olive is our people, too. We are all the same people.
And baby it was cold outside. And there were no cabs. No one to wait with her on the side of the icy street. No way to cross town in the snow. Olive, Olive, Olive, her mind ran her name through its paces in her head, the accusations coming even before the deed. Why did you leave the house? Why can’t you just stay home? What will happen to you now?
This was the internal line of questioning taking shape as Olive interrogated herself pre-emptively. No one was as hard on Olive as Olive was on Olive. She knew all the right triggers to step on. Knew all of the buttons to wordlessly push and so she wordlessly pushed them. Though the vocalized line of questioning had become directed at her tastes and experience.
You likes that, don’t you, Olive? You’re into that kind of stuff, hey? Aren’t ya?
And they snickered and declared it another great joke when she stood to move away from the bed. The short guy pushing her casually back down to sitting. Joking. Just joking. Olive’s head a hive of bees buzzing in her mind. Her cheeks tingled. Her hands began to shake. At some point during the evening she had taken off her coat and shoes. She attempted to locate them around the room. Visually locate them. She didn’t want to alarm anyone. She wasn’t even sure if there was reason to cause alarm. Perhaps, this was how it was in the world for her. Perhaps, Olive needed to get used to it. Embrace it. That would likely be better than the constant unrelenting disappointment. And there was a great grief inside Olive for the momentary fantasy she had been harbouring. Even though she claimed to have relinquished them long ago, Olive still had romantic notions.
Up to the porno, she had still hoped there might be something better in store for her.
She pretended that she had no hope but that was to divert the pity of others. Olive didn’t want people to think her pitiful. No woman did. A lot of men don’t seem to mind it much, they repackage it into attractive anguish. But most women had become rather averse to being cast as a damsel in distress. Being hopeless and hard seemed a preferable option. And wasn’t that what all across the kingdom wanted from the hurt and soft-hearted? Toughen up. Take it better. Thicken that skin of yours so you might rub raw less quickly.
She remembers readjusting her eyes to a hand on her thigh like focusing a camera lens on her own limb.
She could not see well while she could see everything. The others were watching too. She wondered what they could see. Could they see Rog kiss her? Could they see him push her onto her back? She was removed from the room already. Could they see that? Did they care? Her absenting was a pre-emptive measure taken by her mind. Her mind decided to abscond from what was unfolding. As it was waving goodbye, it whispered encouragement in the form of options.
It will be okay, you will be okay, we can forget this later.
Her mind put a fair bit of distance between it and Olive’s body so they might not be broken together. Her mind’s suggestions were fading as Rog pulled Olive’s Christmas tights down. Not right off though. Just off the one leg. They would stay like that the whole time. No one would think to remove the dangling tights hanging off her foot because it did not interfere with their comfort and their comfort was all they concerned themselves with. Mind kept track of their whereabouts, these special tights. Mind thought this was an important detail to focus itself on as it hid out of view.
You still have your tights. Your dress is still on.
You’re not naked. You are not naked, Olive’s mind said reassuringly.
But Olive’s dress had been pulled up over her waist. Rog had ripped the lace hem in the process. Later, as he walked out the door, he would say sorry I tore your dress, as if that was what he tore. As if the dress were the thing he had ruined in that room. The statement thrown over his shoulder had made her want to scream. But she had no power left for that. The sight of herself was the horror show. There seemed a lot of reasons for yelling. There were instances where she clearly thought to scream. But no scream came. Or she thought to run. But her legs didn’t move. They just didn’t move. No sound came. People say that she is a consenting adult now. Her childhood has no bearing on her age. It’s all about numbers for people who’ve always controlled the numbers. Olive knows this somewhere.
And she wants it to change. She just doesn’t know how to change it.
So she just let Rog pull her panties down. They matched her bra. She had taken such care. She had tried. And she could hear them remark on her shaved pussy like there was proof in it. Her shaved pussy emboldened them. She wanted this to happen. She wanted it. Them. Olive tried to snap herself again into motion. But the short one held her hands. Another reached around and rubbed her nipple through her dress. He asked her if she liked it, repeatedly, you like that don’t you? You like that, hey? Say you like it. Say it. And so she did. She pretended she liked it because objecting did not seem a realistic course of action. This is why Calv had brought her here. This is what she was here for.
Olive’s body was built for fucking.
So Rog fucked her. He was the leader of this gang after all so he fucked her first. The animation in the room crested and broke when Olive cried out. It was not like the noise from the TV. It was recognizably different and it terrified the room. The room examined itself. The room dropped. The bottom fell out of her. The only sound was Rog finishing what he started. Then he turned the movie back on. Louder, and they argued. There was an exchange of information taking place over Olive. Rog would not be the only one. They had all agreed. Agreed. There was no backing out now. They had just watched him. And he was going to pay her, wasn’t he? It’s why she came. Get it? She’s just a little fucked. Ha ha. Give her a hand, b’y. And so on and so forth until the cartoonishness of the gathering returned to carry them through.
Rog cut out more Hollywoods and gave one to Olive off the end of a car key. And she took it. Of course she did. Everything hurt and she wanted the hurt to go away. She wanted to go away. Does this make it more or less her fault? Is what came after more or less her fault, too? When she made noises to encourage the ending for the youngest one who couldn’t manage to complete, did that make her more wrong? Or when she raised her bum up slightly to ease the encounter as the short one hauled her by the hips in and out, did that mean she was to blame? When they told her to touch herself, and she touched herself, or opened her mouth, or called for one to come, did that make her deserving of being treated like a prop in a fifteen-dollar film?
When the fat one looked down to remark on the blood in his lap, was it her fault for not pronouncing the presence of it when she felt it run? The fat one having moments ago declared himself the one who fucked her best because she was so wet, now horrified that the wet way her pussy let loose was not what he had thought. But Olive welcomed the blood, it had temporarily hurt less. And then they were concerned about the damage deposit on the room. It had been put on a credit card. And the movie too. And buddy’s wife looks at everything on the computer. It would come up. All that shit comes up now. And he would have to go home and change his shirt before they went out. Cause she had started her rag all over him. Fuck. His. Life.
How unlucky was he to get period all over his shirt, he said as he pulled his pants on.
That’s what they told themselves, that it was period blood on the bottom front of their friend’s shirt which he went home to change before meeting them at the big dance bar.
Too bad too, he loved that shirt. His mom brought it home from Florida.
A skirmish would break out amongst the gang when they were ready to go prowl around further. Because Olive was just the primer after all. They’ve stomach for more than this. The world owed it to them. The self-pity they felt over their unemployment would excuse any behaviour at all. And at Christmas, too, got laid off at Christmas, what a sin, no wonder they wanted to blow off some steam, their nans and aunts would say if ever they were found out.
The defence of their choices would be vicious.
Wives would force daughters to carry signs defending fathers. Defending their men. They would call Olive every style of vulgar word. They would make up new ways to verbally hate on her. They would get racist after saying repeatedly that they were not racist. When asked plainly by reporters what racism was, they would say they knew what racism was and then say more racist stuff. These same seemly white women with not nearly white enough grandmothers would now say the worst things they could think of to defend the men in the parade. Slutty jackytar is just a starting point. A warm-up. The first few laps around the gym before you take your hoodie off.
In the Legions, Lions Clubs, at a Rotary or two, they would verbally place their own hands over Olive’s mouth if ever she got ideas about opening it. The women would stifle her better out of fear of the details Olive might share, which were likely horrid. They all know it because they know these men. Or men like them.
If they knew exactly how Rog had flipped her over and pressed his hand on the back of her head, it would be hard to make small talk with him at darts. If they knew how she had bit down on the pillow to manage the pain while the youngest said repeatedly in a panicked voice that he didn’t think he could come with people watching, it would make seeing him at Costco really awkward. Or if they knew that the snotty short on
e shot back hurry on cause the bars would soon be closing, it would make talking to his mother at church some uncomfortable. All the summer BBQs would be ruined, sure ruined, if Olive told on them. Really told on them. The well-versed and well-respected would take to the streets, to the halls, to the newspaper, to prevent the details. They would write a letter to the editor explaining their truth. Which would make it better for everyone but the victim. They would brutalize her further out of a twisted fear for their own safety.
They would remind everyone that women lie.
As if the world were not already working under the pretence that all words uttered by vulnerable women were lies anyway. If necessary, the female defenders would take it to the internet, or at least, the ones who knew where on the internet they could take it would. If Olive at any point fancied telling a medical professional or counsellor or even a friend that she thought maybe something very bad had happened to her, the mothers and sisters, fuck, even random women who liked a member of the gang for a time once, would cry out against harming their male reputations.
They went on a boat ride once, he made them laugh, be careful of his good name.
The men themselves won’t even have to defend themselves. Not that they wanted to. Not unless the camera and recorder was sharp focused on their pain. To wade in with the women folk would be very near emotional labour, which they have spent their lives avoiding. They are not an emotionally energetic lot. Half of them don’t know what the youngsters got for their birthday. The ones who do know, know because of what it cost them in money.
Not that they were all the same. No. There were, there are, lovely fellows about the place.
Dads that watch girl Ghostbusters with little boys without acknowledging that the heroes are women, knowing in their hearts that this will probably make their sons better people. Men who snow-blow driveways for elderly strangers and hardly ever steal parking spots at the mall. There are beautiful courageous Newfoundland men cooking Sunday dinner while their wives read books on the couch. Or just fix stuff. See that it is broken and just fix it.
Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club Page 24
