Stay Silent

Hiro walked through the door to what was most definitely a dive bar. The place reeked of smoke and booze and sweat. There were more burly labourers at the bar than there were the overworked businessmen that Hiro was used to seeing, in the kinds of places his colleagues sometimes dragged him off to after work. He saw Lucy behind the bar, and he tried to catch her eye and wave for her attention, but she looked… busy. She’d just put down a couple of shots, and someone other than who must’ve paid for them swooped by and drank them because now she was shouting at them to drop dead.

Hiro looked at the time on his phone. He supposed she had another five or ten minutes before her shift was over, so he found a crummy booth at the back of the joint and slid into the seat. Well, not so much as slid – that implied that the seat was smooth. Even the table was sticky, even as he tried to wipe it down with a napkin. He had a glass of water from the jug beside him and Hiro wondered how something so foul tasting – it tasted like dirt mixed with dust – could look so clean.

He texted Lucy which booth he was in, and then he waited. He wasn’t hungry, so he didn’t order any food. He was still just a little bit overwhelmed with the events that had occurred that Sunday afternoon. His stomach still got into a tight knot whenever he thought about his boyfriend.

“Hey,” Lucy greeted, and Hiro jumped to see her suddenly standing over him. She nodded over to a mysterious closed door beside the bar that Hiro had assumed was a bathroom. “Come on, I’ll show you to an even nicer table.”

Well, it definitely wasn’t a bathroom. Hiro followed her into what was just a cosy little room with a hanging light, plush red seating around the perimeter, and a table in the middle. He laid his hand on the table surface and there wasn’t a thick un-sticking noise as he pulled it away again. Lucy motioned him in and she sat down opposite him, setting down a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses.

Hiro stared at her like she was joking. “Um,” he began, raising a hand to indicate stop as she filled both glasses. “I uh, have work tomorrow.”

She shrugged at him, like what was his point. “So do I.”

“You don’t have to get up at six, though.”

She tossed her glass back and Hiro didn’t toss his. She stared between him and the glass, like she expected him to finish it, like it was a plate of broccoli or green beans he didn’t want and he was a stubborn kid all over again.

“Just one,” she abruptly cried. “C’mon, I work in a bar – what was the point in meeting me here if you didn’t want a drink?”

“I just wanted to talk to you,” Hiro protested. “You were the one who told me to come here.”

She groaned wearily, but drank his shot for him anyway. She filled up her own glass again and flicked the second one to the side. “So,” she said, looking up and smirking. “What got you so spooked today that you just had to see me?”

“I didn’t get spooked, I just…” Hiro checked to see that the door was firmly closed. But he lowered his voice anyway. “Can I tell you something in absolute – complete confidence?”

She shrugged. “Sure.”

Hiro would’ve liked her to be a bit more convincing than that, but he supposed that was the best he was going to get out of her. “You’re my friend, right? And I can trust you with uh… sensitive issues?”

She raised a slim eyebrow at him. “Are you going to tell me there’s something wrong with your junk?”

Hiro thought about it for a second. “The… opposite?”

“There’s something right with your junk?” she asked, intrigued, and Hiro nodded. Lucy had another shot and leaned back against the wall, shaking her head and smiling to herself like he was just so ridiculous. “Go on then.”

“Uh…” Hiro tapped his fingers against the table. He was bouncing his leg, a little excited and a little nervous. He’d never really had anyone since his therapist he could discuss these sorts of thing with, and it was great. “Well… So… You know how we’ve been going over and over all of those safe and consensual sex procedures for RST, right? All that ‘ask me first’ stuff?” She nodded, but she was also rolling her eyes with the memory. “I think it had a… really huge effect on me. Like, I’ve been in a lot of relationships, but I’ve never really done anything… sexual with anyone before. I never wanted to.”

“That’s not uncommon,” she muttered. Her eyes were closed now; she looked like she was sleeping, but she was still responding to him. She sounded only mildly drowsy. “So, what… You got laid or something?”

“Or something,” he said. He grinned when she peeked at him with one eye. He knew that his cheeks were very pink right now but he was going to try to chalk that up to the fact that the small, airless room was getting very warm veryquickly. He took off his hoodie to exemplify that. “I got to first base.”

She scoffed. “Whoop-dee-do.”

“What? No, you don’t get it – that was the… the first time I ever actually wanted it, you know?”

“I know,” she assured him, nodding gently. “I understand. Good for you.”

He beamed just to hear say that. “Yeah, it was… so great. But then I…” He gulped as a pang of embarrassment spiked through him, like it had been doing intermittently all evening, ever since he’d managed to get a grip and tell Morgan again and again how sorry he was. Hiro hoped he could trust her not to make him feel any worse about it than he already did. “I just sort of… cried. When it was over.”

“Oh my God,” she murmured, and she wasn’t doing all that much to stem her sudden bout of laughter. She poured herself out another drink and she almost split it. “You cried?”

“Heeey,” Hiro whined, feeling defensive and still so humiliated, and she wasn’t helping. He rubbed at his cheeks and tried to hide the fact that they were now flaming. “Don’t laugh at me… It was… I just got really emotional. Everything was just so nice, and I thought about all those times I’d just been abused or manipulated, and… I couldn’t fucking help it, OK – I just bawled like a stupid little kid. My partner was so terrified.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” she snorted, grabbing yet another drink, and Hiro wondered how many more of those she was going to have. Then she leaned forward, sighing, and fixed him with a resolute stare. It was the kind of stare that was often paired with her highly valued, worldly advice. “Look, it’s OK. Crying during and after sex might seem terrifying, especially to people like us, but it’s been known to happen. Intense feelings of intimacy and happiness, that kind of thing – you won’t see a lot of people talking about it, but we should, because it’s a perfectly natural response. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Just tell your partner to take it as a compliment and move on.”

It was such a relief to hear. He started to feel a little less weird about it. “I – I tried to explain it, to my partner. But… I don’t know. I didn’t really want to, but I wondered if… maybe I should’ve told Morgan about the abu–“

“No.” She banged her fist on the table, the glasses clanking. It startled him. “No, Hiro. Fuck that shit. You’re not obligated to tell anyone you have sex with or get into a relationship with about what happened to you. That’s not their business. A history of sexual abuse is not like an STI. Besides.” She had such a bitter, twisted look on her face as she poured herself another drink. She barely winced anymore as she knocked them back; she downed them like water. “It just freaks people the fuck out anyway. You just watch – you tell them, and they’ll never touch you. Either that,” she added in a dark mumble, “or they’ll never fucking stop touching you.”

Hiro stared at her with wide eyes for a few moments, shocked into silence. He imagined that she was speaking from her own painful experiences, but he didn’t want to ask. She was looking a little bit slumped on that table, a little bit down, a little bit… unstable.

She reached for the bottle again and he forced himself to speak up. “Hey,” he said quietly, and in the most non-confrontational voice he could muster, “Luce, you’re drinking a lot of that really fast.”

She settled him with a glare. “What? You really think you know what a lot of alcohol is? You – the engineer – are actually going to tell a bartender that she’s not drinking responsibly? Huh? Fuck off.”

“Sorry,” Hiro whispered. He felt a little hurt. For all the people he’d witnessed her yell at to fuck off, she’d never said those words to him without a whole lot of joking and merriment behind them, but there was none of that to be found here. The room was quiet and tense now. He wondered if he should just go.

He shuffled out from his seat and she demanded to know, “Where are you going?”

He moved his eyes around the room awkwardly. “Um... You told me to fuck off. So I will.”

“No,” she groaned, sounding so irritated and frustrated with him. “Sit back down, you moron. I meant fuck off as in get off my case. I don’t want you to go just yet.”

Hiro reclaimed his seat, a little confused, but he tried to smile for her, to show that everything was fine and he was there and it was all good. He had no idea what to say now but, luckily, she didn’t leave him for an extended period of time to think up a new topic.

“The seminar’s in a week,” she sighed, a little dejected. “Feeling nervous?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“Got a speech ready yet?”

“I thought I’d… speak from the heart?” He tried to laugh. “No, I don’t have a speech yet… I should get onto that. But…”

“But what?”

He lowered his head and stared at all the little bangs and dings and scratches on his side of the table. He ran his fingers over them distractedly as he tried to put his enormous unease into coherent words. “I’ve been feeling kind of worried lately that… when I talk, people won’t take me seriously. I’m worried that… people will think I’m lying. That I’m just making it up.” He felt his heart tighten in his chest. He’d had enough fucking problems growing up with people thinking that he was lying. “I mean, I’m not very credible. I never even tried to get my abusers convicted.”

“Wow.” Hiro looked up to see that she was even more pissed off at him than she had been a few minutes ago. “So, let me tell you what was wrong with what you just said.”

“What?” Hiro panicked. The very last thing he wanted to do was upset her again. “What, what did I say?”

“Oh, well you pretty much just spat in the face of every victim out there who went to court and didn’t get their rapist convicted. Including mine. So thanks for that.”

“I… I’m sorry!” He raised his hands to defend his innocence. “I’m sorry – I didn’t mean that at all.”

Lucy scoffed and patted his hands back down. She seemed to take pity on him. “Look, Hiro… It doesn’t matter. OK? By not going through the criminal justice system, you just saved yourself a whole lot of humiliation and ridicule that you didn’t need, on top of everything else. If every victim needed their abuser behind bars before they could go forth and share their story then… well, what would be the fucking point in raising awareness? It’s the injustices that fuel the people. You’re not speaking on behalf of everyone who did get their abuser imprisoned. You’re speaking on behalf of all the people who have yet to come forward. Who don’t have a voice. You resonate with them a hell of a lot more this way.”

Hiro nodded, but he wasn’t quite sure. He wondered if it would’ve filled an audience with more hope if he could confidently tell them that he’d received justice, that it was possible for people like him. But what she said made sense, he supposed.

“So… You went to court?” he dared to ask.

“Twice. My step-dad was acquitted both times.”

“Fuck,” Hiro exclaimed. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well… my case was pretty typical, apparently. Before we even went to trial, they were already trying to set me up with someone to console me in the very likely event that I’d lose. God, was it awful. We practically left my step-dad gift-wrapped for conviction, but… Nope. Fuck that. My case fell through for a number of reasons, but you know what the stupidest one was?” she asked, looking straight at Hiro, and he shook his head wordlessly. “The defence dug up all of my stupid posts back from when I was just a stupid kid on the internet. All of my ‘boy, I sure wish I had a giant cock to suck on right about now’ posts that came back to bite me in the ass.”

“Seriously?” Hiro shook his head helplessly. “But… that’s… Those are just jokes.”

“Nope. They were proof of my promiscuity.”

“But that’s ridiculous.”

“Look, Hiro, you have to understand… To get a proper conviction, you’ve got to be the perfect victim, and I was far from it.”

Hiro felt himself shiver. “The… perfect victim?”

“Yep. The perfect victim. Let’s see now…” She raised her hands and looked up thoughtfully as she started to list off all the traits. “You gotta be female, young, compliant, pretty but pure – which as we all know is just code for clueless virgin – and you gotta have a clean history. A very clean history. Oh, and it also helps if you’re from around here too.”

“Wow,” Hiro murmured, feeling just a little bit sick, deep in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t tell if she was just extremely jaded, or… if she was actually telling him the harsh truths of how the world worked. “You… kinda lost me at ‘female’.”

“Well, maybe there is hope for you yet. Was ‘my partner’ code for ‘my boyfriend’? Are you gay?”

“I’m not gay but–”

“Oh, good. That would’ve worked against you.”

“Well,” he tried to correct her, “I’m bi, but–“

“Oh.” She starting shaking her head, like he couldn’t have said anything worse, and Hiro itched with rising panic. “Never let them know you’re bisexual. That’ll hurt your chances at a fair trial even more. If there’s one thing people hate more than gay guys, it’s bisexualguys. Straight guys hate them – hell, I’ve even come across a couple of gay guys in my time who thought bisexuals were diseased sluts who just needed to make up their minds already.”

Hiro’s mouth fell open. He had absolutely no idea that that stereotype even existed. All of a sudden he was thankful he hardly ever bothered to correct anyone who made the blatant assumption he was straight.

“I guess,” he finally uttered, “I’m not a perfect victim then, either.”

“Oh, you can be. It’s possible… If you lie.”

Now he definitely felt sick. “Lie?”

“Yep. Lie. Well, let’s not say lie. How about… omitting certain truths? Exaggerating the truth.”

As soon as she said those words, Hiro felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He’d definitely heard that phrase before.

Hiro didn’t know what was wrong with her tonight, whether she really was drinking too much, or it had been a stressful day, or… She’d been so good to him these past few weeks. Not only had she become his new best friend; she had become his unofficial mentor. She had taken him under her wing and taken care of him. She was his pillar of support. But now she was being… brutally honest. About everything.

And she was beginning to sound like a bad influence.

“What do you mean,” Hiro asked very cautiously.

“I mean, hide your orientation. Don’t let anyone know you’re bi – people will just think you’re a slut. My advice to you would be to ditch all of your boyfriends, pretend you never had any. Just settle for a girl.”

“I’m… I’m not gonna dump Morgan.” Hiro started to smile because he just couldn’t take her seriously right now. All of these suggestions were… absurd. “Are… Are you seriously telling me to get rid of the one person I just made a connection with? Wh… What the hell?”

“Look, kid,” she growled, and it came out as such an insult. “One thing at a time, yeah? We’re already pushing our luck with Andy and his rapist ex-boyfriend.”

“Wait – are you talking about the court or the seminar?”

“Either of them. Both. Look – you would lie, wouldn’t you?”

“No.”

She went on like she couldn’t even hear him. “Even if it was for a good cause? If it got you a better shot at justice? If it saved others? It doesn’t even fucking matter what you say sometimes. You could tell people the honest to God truth and they’d still say you were lying. You could tell them that you were held down and punched in the face and told that you were a dirty fucking hoe, and that might get their attention. That might make people think that you’re not lying.”

“Because no sane person lies about that kind of thing,” Hiro exclaimed, incredulous. “You just don’t… fucking lie, Luce. We have enough problems as it is with victims coming forward honestly, and abusers and other assholes turning them away, or… or telling them that they’re lying in some way. And yet you want victims to lieand lose all credibility?”

“Don’t you fucking get it, Hiro?”

She leaned forward and savagely grabbed the front of his shirt, pulling him over the table until he was uncomfortably close to her face. Her red eyes darted between both of his, and they looked… mad. Hiro’s heart thudded in his chest like a war drum.

“Don’t you fucking see? We need this. Those so-called justice officials – they’re already liars. Cops will tamper with evidence to protect their own felons, judges will hold biases just as stark as the shit your racist great-uncle says, and lawyers just want your money. They’ll steal details about your personal life that don’t even have anything to do with the abuse, and they’ll use them to tell you that you are wrong. Cases would go through a hell of a lot easier if all that extraneous stuff was out of the way. Right? Everything is already tipped in their favour. Why can’t we try to tip it back in ours? Why can’t we balance it? Why can’t we play by their stupid rules and make it so that it’s fair?”

Her breath stank of tequila. He tried to pull away from her, but she wouldn’t let him go. Her grip was fiercely tight. He tried to pry her fingers off of him but it was like trying to bend iron. “Luce,” he said, pushing at her shoulders, pushing her away. “Lucy – let go of my shirt.”

“You just don’t fucking understand.”

“Get off me.”

She did let go of him, and Hiro fell back in his seat, knocking his head on the wall behind him. He rubbed at the small painful throb as he stared at her reproachfully. He didn’t know what the hell had come over her.

A sombre expression settled over her features then. She looked she had no idea what had come over her either.

“Sorry,” she said finally, swallowing slow and with a lot of difficulty. There was a wobbling glimmer to her eyes as she stared at him. Her voice was so quiet. “I don’t know why I said all that. I think I’m just… bitter. Sometimes, you wanna see the people who made you suffer… You want to see themsuffer so bad.”

“I… I know, Luce. I know.”

She folded her arms on the table, rested her head on them, and immediately started quivering with tears. Hiro went to her side and put his arms around her, rubbing her back. He felt like shit. He couldn’t think of anything consoling to say. He just sat there with his friend, ignoring the time, letting her get it all out of her system. And then he walked her home.

He laid awake in bed that night for hours, trying not to think too hard about anything she’d said.

Lying was wrong, and that was that.