Kathleen Hale Is a Crazy Stalker

by Kathleen Hale

  Just because people on Twitter call you brave doesn’t mean the world has changed.

  * * *

  When word got around the English department that I’d propositioned the boy who’d one day become my husband with a handwritten note in English 1A—“I am incredibly attracted to you,” it said. “Want to have a 24 hour affair?”—one of the administrators called me into her office to ask if I had been sexually assaulted. The Duncan Purdy rape charges had been reported in the press, but as a victim, my name had been left out of it. She didn’t know me and had drawn her conclusions solely from gossip about my sexual advances. Apparently in the wake of sexual trauma, many women seek to restore a sense of agency by becoming wanton. It makes them feel like they’re controlling their bodies, even as it also opens them up to more abuse.

  I didn’t want to fit the stereotype. I told the rape expert to stop “slut-shaming” me.

  “It’s risk-taking behavior,” she said.

  “You’re being sex-negative,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  Then I walked to the library, where I used a stolen key to trespass onto the roof (something for which I could have been expelled) and smoked a joint (then very much illegal) and drank from a water bottle until the campus below swam from vodka and I nearly toppled off the edge to vomit on some trees. I called my mom, and when she asked, “What’s wrong?” I told her I felt sad about the dodo bird, which became extinct because of its tameness, that friendly tendency to walk up to human strangers and expect the best.

  * * *

  I quickly developed such an incapacity for being alone, even while unconscious, that my roommates and male friends who had girlfriends would often wake to find me wrapped around them in their beds in the morning. They became justifiably angry, shaking me off and saying stuff about “boundaries,” and I’d be like, “What are boundaries?” and then they would tell me to Wikipedia “boundaries.” I wanted to tell everyone about the trial. I lured people in with my helplessness, exploited all their resources, slept with everyone I knew, and hurt people who trusted me. By graduation I would alienate almost everyone and burn out from self-sabotage.

  On a visceral level, I also began to associate talking about what had happened with a certain degree of dissociation. The more I told the story, the more it was like I was talking about someone else. So was I still telling the truth of what had happened?

  After Duncan Purdy was sentenced for prostitution, we had almost a year to build the rape trial against him. But instead of practicing my testimony in front of a mirror, as Melinda had instructed, or thinking about what I might wear on the stand to wordlessly convey my victimhood (I ended up impulsively ordering an ill-fitting beige polyester pantsuit from eBay and giving the matter no additional thought), I took out books from the library on fanged deep-sea creatures and memorized animal attack statistics (twenty-eight people in the United States died from dog bites in 2005).

  When it came time to tell my story under oath, I put my hand on the Bible, spelled my full name for the court transcriber, and promptly panicked that the jurors in my peripheral vision would respond like my TAs when I referenced rape to get extensions and see my testimony as discomfiting and crafty. While the judge warned me to limit my remarks to “yes” or “no” when possible, I sweated copiously inside my little pantsuit, deliberating over how to make the jury believe me. As far as I could tell, most people’s negative reactions to my confessional tendencies hinged on how uncomfortable I made them feel and to what extent they blamed me for that discomfort. So I steeled myself to give my responses frankly and without emoting, to be more convincing by appearing less invested. I didn’t want to look like I was letting myself cry to sway them. I felt that any supposed performance on my part would be akin to lying under oath. So I answered the attorneys’ questions casually, stony faced, and between each of my remarks I silently counted the number of constrictors I could remember offhand.

  In other words, I did a horrible job.

  Eleven out of twelve jurors believed Jillian and me, but one thought we were lying, which meant a hung jury, which meant a mistrial, which meant another whole trial, which could take one year or two, depending.

  Boston was conservative enough that people yelled “faggot” and threw garbage at the movie screen when male actors hugged each other. I’d been stupid to operate under the assumption that by virtue of their East Coast residence, these strangers were somehow more sophisticated than my neighbors back home and knew better than I did. Invariably the next jury would have another unflappable skeptic—some guy who ostensibly harbored the same bigoted social defects of my high school’s men’s hockey team, a group of boys that had been known to categorize girls in terms of vaginal odor (“Was she fish or cheese?”). I knew how to talk to those people. I’d spent four years having sex with them.

  The Massachusetts judge would be harder to control.

  But I had a few ideas.

  * * *

  Domestic or “pet” pigs … will revert back to their wild state in a relatively short time. And that doesn’t mean the next generation—the actual escapee will begin to grow hair and tusks in the wild.

  —Eileen Stegemann, “Pigs Gone Wild: Feral Swine

  Threaten New York State,” New York State

  Conservationist, October 2012

  * * *

  In preparation for the second trial, following some advice from Melinda, I threw my Hillary Clinton–esque pantsuit in the trash and riffled through my closet for something “sexy,” settling on what I secretly referred to as my “party clothing”: a fitted white T-shirt and flared jeans that crept into my butt. I knew I needed to wear something formfitting to the second trial to show how small I was—how easily overcome by someone bigger and sicker. I also bought a headband to pull my hair back, since I was planning to cry this time and figured the jury sitting to my left should see my pretty face and bereft expression.

  I wore that outfit to the courthouse many times before the trial actually began; the date kept getting pushed back because Duncan Purdy kept getting sick or falling down on his way to the courtroom. It was his legal right to ask for medical attention.

  Reading the transcripts now, it seems that Justice Diane Kottmyer started to think that he was crying wolf, because eventually she sent a patrol car to bring him in despite his injuries. I remember he looked fine, albeit pale and veiny. I remember knowing he was a liar.

  Here’s what else I remember: camera phones were new then, and I took my first selfie in the hallway outside the courtroom to see what I looked like before going in. I remember, for the first time in ages, thinking I looked beautiful and knowing how dangerous that made me. I remember sitting on the witness stand and identifying Duncan Purdy with the blue-striped tie for the court as the man who’d done it, even though in my mind he was no longer anything more than a fleshless carcass—a sun-bleached rack of ribs eaten by vultures. I remember letting my hands shake on either side of the microphone so that the jury could see, so they would think that I was weak and fragile. I remember reshuffling the structure of my narrative without changing my story—this time, I approached the memory like I was writing it and, without changing the content, made cuts and structural changes for maximum impact. I started with the fact that he’d restrained my arms and that it had hurt.

  Most of all, I remember being able to tell by Duncan Purdy’s bored and blank expression that he didn’t recognize me. (Melinda told me in the wings that although he pretended to know who I was, he kept confusing me with Jillian; she had the feeling that he’d done this sort of thing so many times he could not recall specific incidents.)

  I’m trying hard to remember, because although I know I made myself cry and made the jury cry—and generally stirred the courtroom so that the defense attorney started his closing remarks by saying, “The first thing I want to talk to you about is Kathleen Hale’s testimony, which just seemed very emotional, very heart-wrenching”—there is no record of what I actually said that day. The transcri
pt ends just after my saying, “He gave me a towel.” Comments thereafter read: “The audio abruptly stopped in the middle of direct testimony given by Ms. Kathleen Hale.”

  Q Then what happened?

  A He gave me a towel ––

  (End of audio - 3:26:50)

  COMMENTS:

  The information pages indicate that the case was heard in front of Justice Peter M. Lauriat. The judge was clearly a woman, whose name was not introduced. The cd did not come in JAVS formatting so there was no timestamping. Additionally, the audio abruptly stopped in the middle of direct testimony given by Ms. Kathleen Hale.

  The transcript for that second trial cost me almost $400 (they charge per page) and I’m glad I bought it, even though my words aren’t in it. From it, I learned that more than twenty individuals were disqualified from serving as jurors at my trial because they knew rapists or someone who’d been raped, or had been raped themselves, making the record of those proceedings a tender testament to the statistical likelihood of sexual assault.

  One lady described how her young niece had been raped by a neighbor and then argued for her right to serve on the jury despite that, saying she was capable of objectivity despite what had happened to her loved one. Reading the transcript now, I have a feeling she was lying, but I thank her for it. Unbeknownst to me, a whole herd of people could identify with my experience and lost their voices as a result.

  If anything, the absence of my testimony allows me to go on imagining that I contributed in large part to the actual jury’s final verdict: they found Duncan Purdy guilty of rape.

  * * *

  The interesting thing about humans is that we’re the only animals I can think of that collaborate not only for survival but for something we call justice.

  —From my diary, Christmas 2007

  * * *

  At Duncan Purdy’s rape sentencing, my roommates sat on either side of me and watched in horror as he flexed his butt muscles in front of us. He was handcuffed at that point and looked like a tied horse shivering its ass to shoo a fly. The aerobic display lasted so long that the three of us dissolved into snotty giggling messes and had to clutch one another, pretending to sob, so that we wouldn’t look like psychopaths.

  Judge Kottmyer glanced at us over her glasses, looked away politely, and asked if Duncan Purdy had anything to say for himself.

  “Your Honor,” Duncan said, still flexing his butt. “On behalf of myself and my family, I would just say that I regret the circumstances of this case and the burden that it’s caused the Commonwealth and all the families concerned, myself and my family.”

  In the transcript, he then goes on to talk at length about how he can’t go to prison because he needs to sell paintings.

  Judge Kottmyer—whose disdain for Duncan Purdy had become increasingly evident throughout the trial—finally cut him off, responding, “What I see, Mr. Purdy, is that you don’t comprehend and you’re not remorseful—”

  “I am,” Duncan Purdy muttered, and dropped onto his seat like a petulant teenage boy.

  “You don’t comprehend that, in fact, what the evidence shows here, viewed against the backdrop of your entire record in terms of deriving support from prostitution, is that you—you have acted as a predator.”

  “I respect your opinion—”

  “Stand up, sir,” she boomed.

  In Massachusetts at the time, the minimum sentence for rape was probation. But Judge Kottmyer sentenced Duncan Purdy to seven to ten years.

  That night, my friends threw a party entitled, “Seven to Ten Years, Seven to Ten Beers.” Everyone got raucously drunk and made sexual advances that somehow seemed within the bounds of friendship. To us, life was a series of soaring tragedies and once-in-a-lifetime bacchanalia, piggybacked on one another. College is the only human kingdom I can think of, other than prison, where drugs and violence and sex commingle on a single plot of land.

  The next day, it was as if none of it had happened. My friends laughed and quoted popular television shows. I scanned their faces and realized with a lurch that it was over.

  * * *

  A few weeks before I first published this essay in 2014, a representative from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts called to remind me that Duncan would be up for parole. (The representative also encouraged me to update any restraining orders I might have, because Duncan Purdy had recently changed his name to Duke One Blood True Blood—“A.k.a. Mr. Blood,” the guy said, sighing. “So at least anyone who meets him after his release will know he is a fucking lunatic.”) Duke didn’t get out, but years later, when I sat down to revise the piece, again, for this book, my dad dramatically arrived at my front door with “big news.” Again, Duke was up for parole. Again, my parents promised me they’d fight it.

  I learned they’d long ago changed the phone numbers on file with the Massachusetts Commonwealth so that I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone or even think about it. I knew that their persistent involvement, their obvious preoccupation with Mr. Blood’s life and punishment, stemmed from a place of love—but it also riled something in me. It revealed a picture of me in their minds as hysterical and helpless and too easily triggered to be tasked with adult matters. It reminded me that I had, in fact, acted that way for a long time.

  So I told my dad to leave it, to open the barn doors, set free the animals, and let the tigers eat the clowns.

  “That’s quite a metaphor,” he said.

  But going forward he agreed to care as much or as little as I did about this thing, which, although persistent in my mind, felt small to me.

  So I ignored the unknown callers with Boston area codes, presumably phoning with some update about Mr. Blood, because I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. But I stopped fighting his release. As I write this, I actually don’t know if he is free, or still behind bars. I don’t check—not because I’m scared that he’s out, but the opposite: I’m scared he’s in. It’s hard not to feel at least a little guilty for putting another human being in a cage.

  That’s probably not an attractive thing for a victim to say. But I’ve never been the perfect victim—the girl who starts off weak and becomes unwaveringly strong. I believe in Jillian Gagnon, and I am glad we teamed up to fight Mr. Blood, and I support the verdict she won for herself. But whatever part I played, I think I put Duncan Purdy in prison for reasons that had little to do with him, or what he’d done.

  * * *

  In elementary school, a young man, who’d later be arrested for raping and beating women in the neighborhood, crept into my backyard and beckoned to me with his penis. At nine, a teenaged cousin of mine, who turned out to assault members of my extended family, liked to initiate games with me in the back of his parents’ minivan, where we’d place our fingers higher and higher on each other’s thigh. When I was only twelve, I smiled at someone’s dad at Blockbuster, and on his way out, he pressed himself against me, cupping my butt through my gym shorts. I was standing right next to my mother at the time but didn’t say anything because I didn’t want her to yell.

  And those are just highlights. That’s what happened before I went through puberty and turned into a blond babe in a push-up bra.

  For centuries African villagers killed elephants for profit and endured grisly elephant attacks. They took tusks and woke at night to stampedes. Scientists used to think the elephants’ bloodlust came from actual hunger—that human casualties were an unintentional effect of the animals’ desperation to find food or water. But it turned out the elephants weren’t starving. They had more than enough to eat and drink. Over time, humans uncovered the truth: the animals wanted revenge.

  The humans who had murdered their mates and their children for ivory were etched into the elephants’ memories, and under cover of darkness, they trampled anyone who looked like their attackers.

  Perhaps if I’d not been sexualized so young, Duncan Purdy might not have fazed me. Maybe if I’d gone through life untampered with, I would have let this one slide. Instead a lifetime of gross and
confusing experiences—all of which seemed wrong once the opportunity to react had passed—pressed against me like that man at Blockbuster.

  Duncan Purdy wasn’t the first man to sexually frighten me. But he became my first opportunity to do something about all of it.

  It’s impossible for anyone, I think, to seek revenge—to set out to change another person’s life for good—without at least subconsciously drawing on her past frustrations and humiliations. In so many cases the person on trial becomes a proxy for everyone else who got away with it. I think that’s what makes victims so mistrusted.

  And so dangerous.

  THE COURT: I have one more question, sir. Have you, or to your knowledge has any member of your family or close friend ever either been accused of or the victim of a sexual offense?

  THE JUROR: Yes.

  THE COURT: And why do you say yes?

  The JUROR: My grandfather was accused.

  THE COURT: I have another question, sir. Have you, or to your knowledge has any member of your family or close friend ever either been accused of or the victim of a sexual offense?

  THE JUROR: My sister, but she never went to anybody about it.

  THE COURT: All right.

  THE JUROR: That was told to me in ––

  THE COURT: I’m sorry?

  THE JUROR: That was told to me in private.

  THE JUROR: My mother was raped twice. I was a victim of a sexual assault in high school.

  THE COURT: All right.

  THE JUROR: Can anyone say no to this?

  I Hunted Feral Hogs as

  a Favor to the World

  I first became obsessed with feral hogs during my short-lived tenure as an MFA student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, a place where more than a dozen people died each year from pit bull attacks, and brown recluse spiders slept inside people’s shoes (their bites cause necrotic wounds that can take years to close)—and to top things off, every spring a pestilence known as ant season descended on the region. Come April, I found so many ants swarming inside my mailbox that it looked like the metal was breathing. In class, I’d be gesticulating to punctuate some pretentious literary observation and would suddenly notice ants crawling out from my shirtsleeves.