Chapter 5
Hiro wasn’t terrific at public speaking, but he was more than a little used to it by now. He’d gotten used to it during his final years at SFIT, and he regularly exercised that ability by presenting his latest and greatest inventions to his colleagues and employers every few months or so.
The thing he wasn’t really used to, however, was speaking in front of kids. Well, not kids. Teenagers. Did it really matter? They all sort of looked like babies to Hiro now – even though a lot of arrogant people he worked with claimed he was still gangly and baby-faced, like a teenager. All Hiro’s life he’d been used to talking to people who were so much older than him. It was a staggering change to be faced with an expansive crowd of adolescents for once. They must’ve been… Hiro couldn’t quite say. Seventeen, eighteen?
And, as if speaking in front of kids – sorry, teenagers – hadn’t been enough of an intimidating notion on its own, he was supposed to be speaking to them about sexual abuse.
Oh God. He shouldn’t have eaten. He was going to bring up his lunch.
He was nervous. He was so nervous. Others around him claimed that there were nervous, but then they always went on to do something productive and useful, or they made an expression that was more in line with excitement and preparedness. Hiro had neither of those emotions to mitigate just how goddamn nervous he was. All he had was Lucy’s hand in his own sweaty hand, and a cup of water in his other that he drained too quickly each time it was kindly filled up for him.
There were in a lecture hall, and a large one at that. He watched with wide, fearful eyes as row after row after row filled up with a rowdy mix of uniformed and un-uniformed high school students. Hiro did some quick math to distract himself and counted three hundred and twenty chairs. Almost every seat was being taken. There were a lot of people. And they were all laughing. Hiro knew that there was no conceivable way that they were collectively laughing at him, but that was just how he felt. Like three hundred people had congregated just to laugh at him.
He made a small whimper in the back of his throat that only Lucy could hear. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Lucy grabbed his chin and forced his face back to her. She was so stern in her support. “You can do this. We’ve rehearsed this a hundred times before. You did your little speech in front of me and it was perfect every time. You’re gonna do fine.”
“Am I?”
“Yes,” she promised, and she was so sincere that Hiro wanted to believe her. “I know you will.”
“What if they laugh at me?”
“If anyone laughs at you,” she said, hiking her voice right up so that a few teachers sitting in the front row could overhear her, “then I will dive into that crowd of raging hormones, and shove my hand down their throats,” – Hiro covered his mouth as he laughed at the sudden horror on the eavesdropping teachers’ faces – “and beatthem to death with their own windpipes. OK?”
He trusted that she would and nodded jerkily. “OK. Thanks.”
“Stop worrying.” She gave him a smack on the cheek, even though the time to dramatically cure his hysteria had come and passed. “Go and lend hope to all the little Hiros out there.”
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It was the second half of the seminar that Hiro was scheduled to do his short speech, along with several other survivors who Hiro considered a lot braver than he was. He was to talk right after Andy, who was another male survivor like himself. Andy was only nineteen, but he talked a hell of a lot better than most of them did. His story was that he’d been trapped in a severely abusive relationship for two years. He was there to tell queer youth that they didn’t have to be afraid to speak out if they’d been hurt by a same-sex partner.
Hiro couldn’t listen to the seminar. It was going well, he assumed, but he didn’t know. He clapped when he needed to, he chuckled when others did, but he didn’t listen, which was fine considering he’d been through a full rehearsal and heard everyone speak before. He couldn’t focus on anything; he kept going over his lines in his head, like a broken music file, just skipping constantly and jumping back and forth at random. He told himself to breathe, when he really meant to tell himself to calm down, and he ended up getting into stupid factious debates with himself.
Time got away from Hiro fast, and then he was suddenly being prodded up out of his chair because it was his turn to speak. Andy’s applause was just dying out, and Hiro was handed the microphone as he stiffly moved to the centre of the stage. Except that it was a lecture hall, and he was staring up at his audience rather than down at them.
It was terrifying. But he kept his ground. He didn’t ran away screaming like he wanted to.
“Hi,” he greeted, nodding once. He forced his dry throat to swallow and hoped that the microphone hadn’t somehow picked it up. “I’m Hiro. I’m twenty-six. I’m a robotics engineer. And, when I was fourteen, I was sexually abused by my aunt.”
He paused, pinned under the crowd’s enduring gaze. If anyone had laughed then they’d gone a damn good job of being subtle about it. Or maybe Lucy worked fast.
He wandered around the floor a little, one of his hands deep in his pocket. His reasoning was that if he made an effort to look casual, maybe he could trick himself into being casual. He tried to talk as if it were still just him and Lucy in a small room.
“My parents died when I was quite young and, my brother and I, we went to live with my aunt. Things were normal for a while. I don’t mean to brag but,” he cracked a smile, “I was a really smart kid. By the time I was thirteen, I had already finished high school. But I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I kindof wanted to be a professional bot fighter, but uh… my brother thought I could do something more with my big brain. So for a while I just sort of… hung around the house all day, doing my own thing, building this and that. I thought I was alone, but I wasn’t.”
He held the shaking microphone away from his mouth as he took a deep breath.
So, this is happening.
“I can’t really remember how it started. My aunt had been acting… weird around me. It started out with hugs that went on for too long, and questions that made me uncomfortable to answer, and kissing that moved to the lips instead of the cheek, where it had always been. I didn’t really know at the time what she was doing. Because I just accelerated through high school, I never got to go to events like these.” He gestured the set. “I was too young. So no one ever told me about safe sex, or STIs, or anything like that. No one ever told me to watch out for the creepy babysitter who tickled kids under their clothes. I guess people just sort of assumed that I already knew all that stuff. But, I was naïve. And that made me vulnerable.
“One day, my aunt got into bed with me and showed me a movie with a very explicit sex scene. That had been the first time she molested me. I definitely knew by then that something was wrong. I tried to avoid her, but things just escalated, and within a week she had already raped me.”
Saying it aloud, in front of so many young faces made him feel faint; he had to stop pacing or he would’ve staggered.
It took him a little longer than planned to start talking again.
“M… Much later, she would try to tell me and my brother that it was consensual. That I was just a horny teenage boy who knewwhat was happening and didn’t try to stop it, so I obviously must’ve wantedit. That I was a ‘lucky boy’ because on older woman was showing me attention. I know that’s… probably a common fantasy for some of you, but it never was for me. There was nothing fun or enjoyable about it. I was scared and confused, and I felt suffocated, and I didn’t know how I was ever going to get out.
“So this went on for a few months, and I become severely anxious and depressed. I wanted to leave her house, but my brother wouldn’t let me. He didn’t understand why I didn’t want to be in the same room with our aunt. He didn’t even really understand when I first told him that she was abusing me. He kind of thought… but it’s our aunt. Right? She was so nice, and lovely, and people like her just didn’t do those awful things to kids like me. It took pretty much years to convince him that she wasn’t just abusive, but incredibly manipulative as well. Still, I got out. My brother took me out after I threatened to run away, and only then did I start to feel safe again. I tried to get my life back on track. But, even though I didn’t have to see her anymore, what she’d done still… haunted me. Even to this day, it still haunts me.”
He paused to have a small drink. He knew there was just so much more he could say, but he didn’t want to depress and disturb these kids any more than he already was.
“I understand why a lot of people don’t disclose their abuse to others. I really do. It’s hard. It’s… one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my entire life. There were a lot of reasons why I didn’t come forward immediately, many of which I have in common with other victims. But, as I said, I was naïve. I didn’t know I was being abused, or that I could’ve gotten outside help. And I just so happened to be a boy who was being raped by a woman. A woman who was also my aunt and my trusted caregiver… When people hear ‘statutory rape’ they almost always think… what? Creepy, older man preys on a young girl – or maybe that same man preys on young boys. But very rarely will people consider a female abusing a young boy. It goes against the stereotype, right? Women are nurturing, the selfless caregivers, the docile sex. They’re not sexually aggressive or intimidating, and they definitely don’t take advantage of boys. But I’m here as living proof that women can rape boys. And it’s just as traumatic as any other victim’s experience.”
It was almost over. He was so close to finishing. He was so close to just wrapping it all up and getting out from underneath this giant microscope.
“So… As it’s been said before, males can be victims too. But females can be abusers too. Anyone can be an abuser, and anyone can be abused. This organisation is here to give its support to all victims, regardless of gender or orientation or any other circumstances. So, uh…” He looked up to the bright projector screen to see that his own slide had just come up, and he pointed to it. God, he was still shaking like a leaf. “Um… Please use the helplines, they’re great, but… If for whatever reason you’d feel more comfortable talking to me, then that’s my email up there. I’d be more than happy to talk to anyone, or answer any questions about female-on-male sexual abuse, or anything like that. I’m here to help. So, uh… My name is Hiro and, um… thank you for listening.”
He gave a small bow. He could barely feel his body anymore as he calmly fled the stage and tried to make it back to his chair without collapsing first. There were a lot of people applauding around him, and his ears were ringing with their approval, their appreciation, their support.
Alice appeared beside him then. She was kneeling next to him, patting him on the arm, smiling big and proud. “That was very good, Hiro,” she told him, and it was a miracle he could ever hear her. “You did very well. You’re very brave to do what you just did. I’m sure a lot of young men appreciate your courage.”
Hiro sure hoped so.
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The day after the seminar, Alice and Hiyori called another meeting to jubilantly announce their success. The seminar had had such glowing reviews and hefty donations and online positivity that the university wanted their organisation to host more seminars. At least four or five more. For all the top year groups of various high schools across the city to receive rape sensitivity training.
Hiro had people telling him left right and centre that he’d done an amazing job, but he’d never really believed it until Lucy told him that the phones had been ringing off the hook. He pointed out that she shouldn’t have acted like that was such a good thing, but she argued that it was a good thing. Obviously, in an ideal world, their organisation would be of little use to modern society, because everyone would respect each other, and people would somehow manage to refrain from sexually assaulting one another. But, they were starting to help those who had needed help a long time ago, and had just never known where to go. People were starting to reach out.
It wasn’t just the students who’d seen the seminar first-hand who were calling, Lucy said. It was children, it was young adults, it was middle-aged adults who had suffered as children. It was queer and straight people alike. It was females and moremales than they’d ever had before.
After they’d finished their third seminar, Hiro’s email was flooded daily with new messages. Sure, some of them were hoaxes, because his email was out there now, floating around on social media, and that kind of misuse tended to happen. He even got some hate mail every now and again. But, overall, a lot of people were grateful. Curious. Inspired.
He stayed up into the small hours of the night just trying to read and answer as many emails as he could. He was losing so much sleep – but he didn’t care. He was doing something amazing with his time. He was correcting harmful misinformation, he was destroying stereotypes, and he was changing attitudes. He was helping people, just like himself. He was helping sexually victimised boys to realise that they weren’t alone. That they didn’t have to stay silent anymore. That there was hope.
Hiro wished his brother could see all of the good he was doing.