Anissa's Redemption

by Zack Love

  My relationship with him is so important – not only because he seems like a potential soul mate (if I could just get him to open up more), but also because of what he has done, and can continue to do, to help my family and community. Last night I tried to bring us even closer by offering him a priceless token of my love and gratitude, but he refused to accept it from me, which left me feeling strangely rejected and unsure about him again. I’ve been wondering whether he wouldn’t take my necklace because he’s afraid he won’t stay with me over the long term.

  I just wish that I didn’t feel so much weaker and more vulnerable than Julien. Will there always be a giant power disparity between us because I need his help so much? And I know nothing about him... Am I really falling for a man who is almost a complete stranger?

  There seems to be a gross imbalance in everything about my relationship with Julien. He has far more wealth and power, and I need him infinitely more than he needs me. He is the only one I’ve ever completely given myself to, but he’s probably lost count of his prior sexual encounters. I’ve trusted him with my deepest and darkest secrets, while he avoids sharing his.

  All of these thoughts made it impossible for me to concentrate on anything, and I finally called him on his cell, in the evening. Our call began with our usual, light banter, but he thankfully sensed that something was bothering me, so I didn’t have to make that potentially abrupt and awkward transition from badinage to candid concerns. “What’s wrong, Anissa?” he asked.

  “I’ve just been thinking... about us.” I was a little nervous about sharing my worries, as this could potentially lead to our first official quarrel, but I had to press on. “I just feel like things are very imbalanced between us – especially when it comes to trust.”

  “Is this your way of telling me that you’d like to try holding me up over my balcony?” he joked, trying to lighten the mood.

  I chuckled. “Do students who accidentally kill their professor generally still pass the class?”

  He laughed a bit. “I guess I probably shouldn’t explore this scenario too much, right?” He laughed a bit and a brief pause followed, as he shifted back to a more serious tone. “I’m sorry, Anissa, I shouldn’t make light of your concerns so much. How would you like me to trust you more?”

  “Well, that’s just it. You seem to block me everywhere I try to gain your trust.” I looked out of my small dorm window, and wondered if Julien was looking out of his giant window.

  “You don’t think the fact that I’m dating you while you’re still my student involves a huge amount of trust on my part? By doing that, I’m quite literally trusting you not to get me fired from Columbia University for a scandal that would surely end up all over the tabloids.”

  I rolled my eyes a little, glad that he couldn’t see me. “Well, I’m also risking my reputation by dating my professor. Maybe I’m even violating some official university rule that I’m blissfully unaware of.”

  “Anissa, I can assure you that any risk to you is far smaller than the potential peril I accept by dating a current student.”

  “Is that the best you can come up with for an example of how you are trusting me?”

  There was a silent pause and I could practically hear Julien running his fingers through his hair as he was thinking. “How about if I give you six hours to control my Twitter account? If you wanted to, you could very quickly destroy my online reputation with about half a million followers.”

  “You know I would never do something like that. And even if I were that crazy and careless, it’s in my interest to see your influence enhanced, not diminished – if only for the sake of the cause I’m so happy to see you supporting. And you should know all of that, so that’s not really showing me how you trust me.”

  I heard him exhale in slight frustration. “So what would satisfy you?”

  “How about trusting me with the very basics – like some details about your father, your childhood, etc.”

  “I told you that he was a butcher, and that seeing him at work upset me so much that I became a vegetarian.”

  “There’s obviously far more to tell me than that. Maybe then I’d also have some insight into your nightmares.”

  “Those are details that I haven’t even brought myself to share with my shrink.”

  “Well, I told you about my rape before I told my therapist. She won’t find out until I see her this Wednesday.”

  “I know, and I appreciate that you confide in me so much. But I didn’t ask for that information or pressure you to disclose it before you felt ready. And I’m not ready to share what you want to know. I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head in frustration. “OK. Well, can we come up with some other way for you to show me how much you trust me?”

  “Why don’t we think about it some more, and see if we can come up with something by the end of class tomorrow?”

  “OK,” I replied, hopeful that we would soon make progress on the issue. We said goodbye on good terms.

  Today, a few hours before Julien’s class, I decided to consult with Maya, since she has known him for much longer, and is more socially savvy than I am. I was curious to see if she had any suggestions, but she nearly spit out her coffee when I asked her.

  “Sometimes I think you’re almost too precious, Anissa,” she said in thorough amusement. “Most women in your shoes would be ecstatic just to have Julien as a friend, much less getting to sleep with him. But you’re now trying to get all up in his business!”

  I chuckled, as Maya reminded me that I had lost sight of the bigger picture and what a quasi-celebrity Julien is. “I guess you’re right,” I conceded. “But don’t you think it’s weird to sleep with someone and know so little about him? The basics of his personal life and family history, whether there are other women in his life – you know, that sort of thing.”

  “My Syrian sista’, let me tell you right now: Julien has other women in his life. Many. That’s just who he is, and everyone who sleeps with him knows that. I’m actually a bit surprised if any of this is coming to you as news. The man is a rock star of finance. He’s on TV – as in, random people often recognize him on the street. He’s an Ivy League Professor. Latino magazines regularly profile him. He’s a billionaire. You can’t expect him to act like some house-trained husband.”

  “I hadn’t really thought of it that way,” I admitted, trying to hide my deep disappointment, if any of this was true. Julien had led me to believe that I was different for him – that he viewed me as special and would treat me accordingly. Thus, instead of somehow reassuring me, or giving me some concrete ideas for how to test Julien’s trust, or just get to know him better, Maya actually increased my general pessimism and anxiety.

  A few hours later, I was in Julien’s class, where he and I maintained our usual feigned indifference to each other, and then I discreetly met him by the intersection where his driver usually picked him up. By that time, I had thought of a good test of his trust – especially in light of my conversation with Maya – and was wondering if Julien had come up with anything better as I joined him in the back seat of his dark sedan.

  He offered to show me his bank accounts – something that very few people have seen – but I didn’t actually care about that (to his surprised amusement) and I didn’t feel like it would help me to know him any better. His other ideas were no better, so I finally told him mine. I wanted temporary access to his Facebook account, which then prompted a negotiation of sorts.

  “Nobody has access to my account. Not even Raegan.”

  “Well, that’s all the more reason to give it to me temporarily – so that you’ve actually trusted me more than anyone else with something personal.”

  “How about if I let you browse my Timeline and photos?”

  “I can do that without your trust or permission – that’s public.”

  “There’s much more stuff that isn’t public and that you haven’t seen because we’re not connected on there.”

  “OK, that’s
a start,” I agreed with a smile.

  About an hour later, I was lying tummy down on his bed, logged into his Facebook account, with him hovering over me in the background. I rolled over to look at him and remarked, “It’s not really trusting me if you’re going to look over my shoulder every second that I’m looking at your account.”

  He tightened his lips a bit in reluctant defeat. “Fine. I will have total faith in you regarding my account, which means you are not to post any status updates or comments, or go into my inbox. Can I trust you to respect those boundaries without me standing here to make sure?” I nodded as convincingly as I could, even though I knew that curiosity would probably overwhelm me as soon as he left me alone. “OK, so I’m going to take a quick shower, while you browse my account within the limitations we agreed upon.” He sounded a little frustrated and uneasy about the whole thing, as if he didn’t actually trust me with this at all but had been cornered into proving that he did.

  In the end, his gut was right: I wasn’t trustworthy when it came to this. I had to know. It wasn’t just idle curiosity – I needed to understand the hidden risks of giving my heart to Julien, especially after Maya’s warning. I worried that his genuine interest in me was causing him to hide facts that he feared would turn me away from him. And what I saw wasn’t pretty.

  As I violated the very boundaries that we had established and went straight into his inbox, I found an endless stream of messages from beautiful women. I saw that Julien responded only to about ten percent of those messages. But when he did respond, he did so in a way that always playfully left his options open, and never in a way that indicated he was now seeing someone or even just unavailable for some unspecified reason. Worse still, I saw that during the time we had started dating – but before we had slept together – he was having sex with several women (judging from the “before” and “after” messages). Those women included: his TA for my class (Elise), Raegan, and some other woman I had never heard of.

  But the worst surprise of going through his inbox was discovering that Maya – yes, Maya! – was also among those women with whom Julien had still been sleeping after he and I had started dating! I felt so betrayed. Here I was stupidly thinking that she was some close and reliable friend. And of course I felt cheated on by Julien, even though I tried my hardest to find some principle that would exonerate him – his fame and stature, the fact that there were no indications that he was cheating on me once we had started having sex, the fact that he’s been so kind and generous, etc. But the angry and pessimistic thoughts kept crowding out the forgiving and loving ones, as I wondered what other secrets he was keeping from me – about his past, his father, and just in general.

  My disturbed and anxious thoughts were interrupted by his voice calling out from the master bathroom nearby. “Find anything interesting?” he asked, as he emerged with a white towel wrapped around his waist. I clicked out of his inbox, still unsure how I would confront him.

  As he walked over, I handed him his laptop. “Here you go. I don’t want to see any more.” As he took his computer from me, he could tell that I was upset.

  Then his expression hardened into the suspicious and angry look of someone who’s just discovered that he’s been deceived. “Does that mean that you didn’t respect the guidelines that I trusted you to follow?”

  I looked away in a moment of shame at so openly betraying his confidence. “No, I didn’t. You can’t expect me to trust you with my deepest and darkest secrets, while you keep everything hidden from me. I could live with that kind of imbalance for a while, as we get closer. But how can we truly get closer when you’re still keeping your options open with other women?”

  His look of outrage grew steadily worse, as he raised his voice. “So that gives you license to deceive me into invading my privacy?”

  I felt a tear streaming down my cheek. “You’ve already invaded mine by deception,” I retorted. “By making me think that you were more committed to me than you really are. I’m just one of many to you.”

  “I haven’t slept with anyone since you and I had sex.”

  “You say that as if it’s some heroic accomplishment,” I quipped mockingly. “But you also haven’t ruled out the possibility – you’re keeping your options open.”

  “And have you ruled out the possibility of sleeping with Michael?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. He and I were very much finished as a couple – although now I don’t know any more if I made the right decision.”

  “Look, it’s not as if we ever discussed exclusivity – something I haven’t had with a woman in well over a decade.”

  “Well, maybe that tells me everything I need to know about you and our prospects. And your evasive secrecy is super sketchy. I share my deepest, darkest secrets with you – stuff that I’ve told no one else, and you won’t tell me a single thing about your childhood or your father,” I pointed out, as I started to gather my things in preparation to leave. I looked up at him. “What are you hiding from me? I can only imagine, now that I’ve seen what you’ve been concealing, as far as your infidelity to the trust, intimacy, and love that I gave you before anyone else.”

  Julien looked upset and bewildered by our conversation. “This is how you thank me for trusting you as I’ve never trusted anyone else? I’ve never given anyone access to my Facebook account – not even Raegan. You then violate that trust, but I’m the bad guy in this story?”

  “I’m sorry, Julien. But I can’t seem to get you to open up to me about some really important things, and I can’t be the only one who trusts so much in this relationship. And I needed to know what I was getting myself into. And now I know. And I can promise you that I won’t be invading your privacy anymore,” I added, wiping away some tears, and putting the last of my things into my bag.

  I walked out of his bedroom and towards the elevator at the entrance to his apartment. He followed me there as he responded: “The sad irony is that your abuse of my trust just now will powerfully reinforce all of the mistrust that I thought you might help me to overcome.”

  I pushed the elevator button and turned slightly, so that I was closer to facing him but still ready to enter the elevator as soon as it opened. “I’m the sucker who finally trusted a man, only to see it backfire. I gave myself to the wrong man,” I said, feeling a lump of regret in my throat and then burying my head in my hands for a moment, shaking it.

  Julien’s voice softened slightly. “Anissa, how can you say something like that?”

  I finally looked back up, feeling even more upset and regretful. “Michael doesn’t need the charms of a much younger woman to get him to do the right thing. He regularly risks his life to do so because that’s what’s in his nature – it’s his natural impulse. When was the last time you risked everything – your very life – to help others? When?” I repeated, defying him to answer. But he was silent.

  The elevator arrived. As the doors opened, I turned to look at Julien and give him one last, parting statement. “And you may be some big shot celebrity of sorts, but I need someone who doesn’t sleep with half of Manhattan.” I stepped into the elevator, and hit the button for the ground floor. “Goodbye, Julien.”

  Chapter 10: Anissa

  Wednesday, April 23, 2014

  To My Dearest,

  Today I saw Monique and we spent the first half of our session talking about my rape. I told her that I had ambivalent feelings about sex, even though I have enjoyed sexual moments on several occasions. She told me that there are some rape victims who sometimes need years of healing before they can enjoy sex again, if ever. But most are able to have normal sex lives with time, and she recommended that I start attending support groups for those who had been sexually abused or violated. She praised my efforts to view my rape through a positive lens. I had thought about the issue more since telling Julien, and went even farther in embracing it while talking to Monique: “When I view the rape as the price I had to pay in order to live, in my own twisted way I can retroa
ctively consent to that horrific price – I’m still willing to pay it in order to live. And because in the last few months, I have really come to love life and am more hopeful in general, if – God forbid – I once again had to pay that price to stay alive, I would do it.”

  During the last half of our session, I finally revealed to Monique that I had been in a relationship with my professor, and that I had chosen him as my first over Michael.

  “How were you able to bring yourself to have sex, after the trauma of your rape a few years ago?”

  “Well, giving myself to him wasn’t easy for many reasons, including that one. But it just felt right on many levels, and the experience with him couldn’t have been more different from the rape, obviously.”

  “I certainly hope so! But whenever you do anything for the first time, all of the unknowns can fuel your imagination – for better or worse. How did you manage that? Did you do anything to prepare yourself psychologically for the unknown?”

  “Whenever I felt myself worried about the newness of it, I tried to remind myself that, on some level, there was actually something empowering about the whole thing, if only because of who this man is.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s my professor and a famous, billionaire tycoon, yet suddenly we were equals. I was lying in his bed and had something that he wanted or needed. Despite all of his wealth and power, I still – in that moment – controlled his happiness and self-esteem.”