by Holly Brown
“Make small talk where you don’t have to pay attention to their answers. Then listen in on the person next to them, who doesn’t think they’re being heard. Soak it all in. Be sure it’s where you want to be before you sign anything. Ask for more time if you need it.”
Another knock. “One more second!”
“Listen,” Dad says, “whatever happens, you’ll keep going. I don’t care what Aaron Sorkin thinks; I’ll tell you why this is the greatest country in the world. The lenient bankruptcy laws. People go broke, and then they start a new business. They start again. Because this is the country that rewards risk-takers. You always get another chance. You’re my brilliant, talented daughter. That’s how I know you’ll do the right thing. And if you need to, you’ll start again.”
“Thanks, Dad. I love you.”
“Love you too.”
I unlock the door. It’s showtime.
Chapter 3
It was meant to be just another think piece, like all my other videos, which got little attention. It never occurred to me I had the power to hurt people I’d never met, or could be hurt by them myself.
I sat on my bed and filmed myself talking, with my research materials nearby for handy reference. That day, I read from “A Probabilistic Framework for Modelling False Title IX ‘Convictions’ Under the Preponderance of the Evidence Standard.” Hardly salacious, though lots of men later pointed out that my tight T-shirt could make any conclusion palatable.
Respected UCLA researcher John Villasenor had discovered that on college campuses, when the disciplinary councils for sexual assault used the “preponderance of the evidence” standard rather than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard of the legal system, as many as one in three accused were wrongfully convicted. One in three! While I understood and supported the aim of making the process more comfortable for the victims, that wasn’t justice. There had to be a better way, for everyone involved. So I advocated a thoughtful, evidence-based reexamination of the system, with fairness for all.
The video hadn’t felt radical, but afterward I was excoriated online by young women who wrote that they’d been sexually assaulted and then victimized by a legal system that put them on trial for their conduct. To do away with the college disciplinary route would be shortsighted and dangerous; it would leave women with no recourse but a justice system nearly as traumatic as the crime itself. I responded that I was very sorry about what had happened to them, and that both systems—legal and university—are in need of reform. I said that I was no journalist, it was an opinion piece, and I welcomed dissent. A few back-and-forths, and that was supposed to be the end of it.
Only it wasn’t. The video was spreading, with the presumption that I was some sort of right-wing tool, sent to undermine women’s rights. “She’s the next generation,” one person wrote, “the way she can sound reasonable, espousing conservative propaganda while looking like a porn star.” There was an offshoot debate about whether my tits and lips were real.
Thousands of comments, too many to respond to, even if I’d wanted to. I stopped answering, hoping that if I took the high road and ceased to engage, it would die down, but instead it progressed from accusations of me being as red as my home state of Wyoming (though I’m from Montana), antifeminist, and a slave of the patriarchy to my being a whore. Then there were all the people saying I’d posted something inflammatory on purpose just to make a name for myself, that it was my attempt to be the next Tomi Lahren. My style might have been different, some said, not so overtly vitriolic, but that’s what made me all the more dangerous.
My defenders added fuel to the fire. There were conservatives who felt they’d found their next pinup girl and were clearly making me the object of their masturbatory fantasies. They were only too happy to claim me as their own. Then I found out about the existence of “pro-rape activists,” and when they voiced their support for me, I had to answer back.
Asserting my independence just meant that everyone was now against me. I’d gotten on the wrong side of some truly scary people, and I was treated to gleeful talk about how I needed to find out what it was really like to be raped. The scenarios were lengthy and detailed, sometimes with grisly supporting GIFs, my head superimposed on other women’s bodies.
At that point, I turned off the Comments section, but they continued unabated all over the internet. “Viral” was all too accurate. I felt sick.
The controversy carried over into real life. I was booed walking into my classes. All over campus, there were whispers, stares, and averted eyes. A woman confronted me in a restaurant, yelling that men were raping right now, thinking they’d get away with it, because of me. I sat, frozen and horrified, before I scurried out. Someone took a video of it with their phone, and that went viral too.
Chase suggested I post an apology for my insensitivity, a recommendation that felt like a betrayal. He’d initially said it was my best work. Now he’d done an about-face. Apparently, a unicorn couldn’t have a pariah for a girlfriend.
It was a tense time in our relationship. Chase said that he was just trying to protect me, but it felt like he wanted me to give in to the haters. I couldn’t bear the idea of living in a society where people who disagree can threaten one another into submission. Whatever happened to free speech? I hadn’t shouted fire in a movie theater. I hadn’t shouted, “Free the rapists!” I’d been calling attention to a damaging overcorrection, that in attempting to address mistreatment by the justice system, universities have perhaps unwittingly created another unjust system. Rape is a heinous and brutal crime that should be punished. Period. Convicting innocent people is unacceptable. Period.
But the reaction to the video forced me to see what I’d managed to avoid: that in my years at Stanford, I’d never made any true friends. I had pleasant acquaintances. And then there were Chase’s friends, all of whom deserted me immediately. In the internet free-for-all, buried among all the other insults about me being a closet right-winger and a Tomi Lahren wannabe and a self-hating antifeminist, was talk about how I’d used my looks to get ahead and that I’d “bamboozled poor Professor Trent” into giving me an A that I didn’t deserve. One clever—anonymous—poster said, “Cheyenne’s DDs are clearly a flotation device. Otherwise, she’d be underwater. The Stanford current is way too strong for a little girl from Bumfuck Montana.”
Dad managed to talk me through it all, saying the video was something to be proud of and I should hold my head high. “They’re jealous that you can think for yourself,” he said. “Your job is to exercise your right to free speech and free thought and to outlast them. Bullies move on.”
I was living by that advice until the thread on Tag. It existed just to post my whereabouts, in real time. Initially, it was followed by a few thousand people, then five thousand, then ten, and soon it seemed like wherever I was, someone was there, posting. Not that I could catch who it was; I just saw the photographic evidence. I was following the feed that was following me. It was a postmodern Orwellian nightmare. I was terrified. What if one of the guys decided to turn his rape fantasy into a reality? There were so many of them—those who wrote their porn with me as the star; those who “liked” it; those who might be inspired by it; those who said that would be what I deserve, and that hopefully my accuser would walk away, unpunished.
I reported it to Tag, but the social media site never responded. Meanwhile, I was turning into a hermit. “Are you sure you don’t want to just apologize?” Chase asked.
This was no longer about my views. It wasn’t even about the video. It was about power. Chase is a smart guy. Didn’t he see that they weren’t interested in a mea culpa? They wanted to keep me in a vise. Keep me in my place. Humiliate me. The ones who had initially defended me were some of the most vicious now.
In the beginning, there had been people who’d been genuinely wounded and offended, who thought that a call for justice for the accused would mean further injustice for the victims. I’d apologized to them already, no problem. But now, it
had nothing to do with any position I’d taken. It wasn’t even about the video itself. It was that I was on the radar of the type of people who eroticized and fetishized the violation of women. What sweet irony for them that the original video had, in their minds, been a plea for leniency toward rapists.
Sometimes when I was out, I felt trapped inside the male gaze, a fly in amber. Men didn’t have the guts to approach me, but they were happy to stare. They made me their property without risk of rejection. Without any loss of control.
My clothes got baggier, but it didn’t help. Their eyes were still crawling all over me. I was acting like I had something to hide.
One night, walking home from class, a bulky man began to call my name. I’d never seen him before, and while he wasn’t overtly menacing, I had a feeling. Like he was one of them. A rape fantasist, or a follower. A troll posting my whereabouts, or a follower. Evil, with its followers. They knew where I was that evening, because school was the only place I went anymore. I was only a few months from graduation, and I couldn’t let them scare me off. But every day and every night, it was a struggle to get myself to campus. So far, they didn’t seem to know my home address, but it was only a matter of time.
That’s what I felt, most acutely, when I heard my own name that night, when my blood ran cold: it’s only a matter of time.
When I ran, he ran. I ducked into the library and hid in the stacks, watching for feet on the other side, afraid to breathe. It’s only a matter of time, and there are way more of them than there are of me.
After that, I gave in. The police were close to useless. Their only advice was for me to get off-line. So I did. I canceled every social media account and pulled down every video I’d ever done. For a couple of weeks, it seemed to have worked. They’d beaten me into submission. They’d won. My own version of “Where’s Waldo?” was dying on the vine, with so few sightings.
Then my phone was hacked, and the photos that had been meant only for Chase were leaked, and I didn’t even go to my own graduation. I stayed in my pajamas all day, every day, trying to get every site posting the photos to take them down. Mostly, I was ignored, but even when I could get them to disappear from one site, they reappeared somewhere else like a dam continuously springing leaks that could never be plugged. Eventually, I gave up. Retracted my head like a turtle, and it’s stayed down ever since. Some days, I have trouble making eye contact. Sometimes I stare at people defiantly, like, Oh, yeah? Go on and say something. They never do. Not to my face.
I still have a handle, @fuzzysocksonmyhead, so that I can monitor what’s being said about me, for my own safety, trying to stay a step ahead. Without my online presence to feed it, the threatening memes have mostly fizzled out, so now I just have to accept that they’re getting off on my photos, and on their own power. I picked that handle because it’s from a silly song Dad and I used to dance to when I was little, and just typing it in is a form of comfort. My daddy’s with me. It’ll all be okay.
It’s always been just the two of us. My mother was a radar blip, passing through town, possibly running from something or someone—Dad was never quite sure—and then she was waylaid by pregnancy. She disappeared before I could form memories. There are plenty of pictures of me as a baby, but none have my mother in them. Dad said that she held me so seldom and briefly that he never had time to grab the camera and capture a moment. But I got so lucky in the father lottery that I can’t really gripe about a missing mother.
Except for that constant refrain—Has he seen me naked?—my life is almost normal again. I’m just a college graduate trying to get a job. I can’t say my relationship with Chase is the same as it was before, that I trust him as completely as I once did. I used to think he’d always have my back, and he’ll say that he always has, but I’m nowhere near as sure.
I know the world in a way that I didn’t before. Of course I’d understood, abstractly, that there was hatred and cruelty. But now I know that I can be targeted mercilessly, and that maybe next time, there will be no shutting down, and no going back.
Chapter 4
Edwin’s office is as impersonal as it is large. He has a phenomenal view of the city through floor-to-ceiling windows, and a whole lot of square footage, but no photos or mementos of any kind. His desk is bare, and his bookshelves mostly are, too, though he has a bar in the corner that’s fully stocked. “I moonlight as a mixologist,” he says.
I sit down on a white leather sectional, which has the same feminine flair as the jet. I’ve been a little on edge all day, but now it’s intensified a hundredfold because I’m actually doing it. I’m willing to take the sizable risk for a potentially monumental reward. I’m going to say yes, with one condition.
Edwin’s half sprawling, his part of the sectional perpendicular to mine, deep in his frost-colored Corpse Reviver. He asks again if he can make me anything, it’s so sad to drink alone. Not now, I’ve got to stay sharp.
He’s willing to blur his edges, though, unless he drinks so much alcohol normally that the cocktail won’t even affect him. Or he’s that confident about my answer. Or that unconcerned.
I can barely breathe, not knowing if this is just a clever negotiating strategy on his part. I’m completely out of my depth.
He hands me the contract. “Let me know if you have any questions.” He studies his phone as I read it through. Well, more like skim it. The thing is enormous. I can’t make him wait while I scrutinize every line. His time is valuable. “It’s pretty simple. No stock options or revenue sharing. But it’s a pretty generous salary for right out of school. Most of the pages are about confidentiality and proprietary interests. We don’t want you jumping to Fox News and telling them our trade secrets.” He smiles.
The pages are full of consequences if I breach the contract. This must be what a noncompete clause looks like. I’ve heard the term, but I’ve never actually seen any sort of contract before.
I never thought I’d be offered $180K for an entry-level job, and that’s just for the first year. There are raises, incentives, and bonuses built in, based on performance, if I’m able to meet certain benchmarks, if I can do what Edwin thinks I can.
“Three years,” I say, trying not to do a cartoonish gulp.
“Yep. It’s standard.”
Locked in for an eighth of my life to date. This could be three years of abject humiliation. Or worse.
The flip side is, INN would be locked in too. Regardless of performance, even if they decided to sack me, I’d be guaranteed a minimum of $600K over the next three years. What that kind of money could buy in Tulip . . .
Not that I’m ever going to live there again, but still. Yes, I want to make an impact on the world and have a mission, but I’m an American. I can’t deny the allure of cold hard cash.
I continue reading. “I’d have to pitch and produce news stories?”
“Everyone on the team does that. This is boilerplate stuff, Cheyenne. It’s to cover all the bases, ours and yours.”
I assume he’s telling the truth, but I have no way to know. I can’t exactly ask to see the contracts of other people at the network. Can I?
Chase would know how to play hardball if someone really wants you. But I chose not to call him when I had the chance, and I don’t think I could do it now.
I don’t think I want to.
If Chase tells me to stall and do my homework, which he almost definitely will, then it gives me more time to think. But it gives Edwin more time to think too. He might talk to his staff and find out that they’re less than thrilled to work alongside a woman with my internet footprint.
I can’t risk this. I want it too much.
“If all goes well,” Edwin says, “and you’re the hit I think you’ll be, then you get yourself a high-powered agent and you fight me for what you’re worth. And if you don’t like it here, we’ll part ways. You can stick anything out for a few years, right?”
That’s exactly what Dad said to me in the bathroom.
My heart drops. I
’ve been surveilled before, and the last thing I want is to go back there, voluntarily.
I’m being paranoid. It’s a holdover from the trolls. “Sticking it out” is a common expression. Edwin can obviously see my hesitation, and he’s trying to reassure me. In a few years, if I want to, I walk.
Why does “three years” sound like so much more than “a few”?
“I feel like I should have a lawyer look this over,” I say.
“Understandable. You have a lawyer?” I shake my head. “You can borrow one of mine.”
I’m not sure if he’s kidding. He takes another sip of his icy drink and returns his eyes to his phone. “I can give you twenty-four hours to review it.”
Is that standard, too, or a high-pressure negotiating tactic? Is he allowed to rescind during those twenty-four hours?
I can feel the shift from when we first spoke on the plane, when I was about to stalk off and he had to woo me back. He has the power now, and he knows it. He sold me.
“It’s a good deal,” Edwin says.
“I believe you.” I really don’t think he’s trying to screw me. He whisked me away from Palo Alto this morning and introduced me to his staff as the next big thing. He’s clearly invested in developing my potential.
Still, you don’t just sign your life away without having a lawyer look things over. But I don’t know how I would find a lawyer experienced in these sorts of contracts on this short of notice, and if I could, it might not be someone whose advice can be trusted. It would be someone who has no stake in me. Not like Edwin, who wants to link our fortunes.
“I can understand your hesitation, given your past experiences. But what happened to you, that’s what happens to everyone who goes viral. There’s more negative than there is positive. That’s what holds people’s interest—their own worst natures.”
“So the goal is for me to get reamed online?”
