Laurie was still in a fog when she got dressed the next morning, sat down (with a wince over her aching derrière) for a cup of coffee and a doughnut, and trudged off to work. There, the first person she metâas alwaysâwas her friend, Tammy Crawford.
Tammy (full name Tamara) was a kind of sidekick to Laurie. They were almost exactly the same age, and they'd become friends at Tufts; Tammy had fallen under her sway pretty quickly. Laurie saw that this young womanâquite pretty in her blonde, doll-like wayâwas inherently a follower rather than a leader. On campus she trailed after Laurie like a lost puppy, and it was no surprise that she followed her friend into employment at the large non-profit that Laurie had set her eyes on. This may not have been Tammy's ideal choice for an occupation, but her presence near her dominant friend reconciled her to her lot.
At times Tammy's meekness and prototypically "feminine" ways irritated Laurie a bit, but no amount of hectoring could make Tammy assert herself, especially where men were concerned. With an unconscious and wide-eyed cunning she sensed that a great many men were attracted to women like her: her seeming helplessness brought out all the primal protectiveness that in some ways could be an endearing quality in certain men, but which Laurie found almost revolting. She wouldn't even let men hold doors open for her, whereas Tammy expected it as a matter of course.
So Tammy had had a lot more involvements with men over the past decade or so than Laurie had, but none had ended in wedding bells or even a long-term relationship. That weighed grievously upon her, and she naturally blamed her own deficienciesâphysical, intellectual, or emotionalâeven though Laurie grudgingly admitted that her friend was pretty (almost beautiful), smart, and perfectly willing to play second fiddle to a man just as she did to Laurie herself.
When Laurie shuffled into her cubicle, Tammyâalready ensconced in the cubicle next to hersâlet out a gasp.
"Laurie!" she cried. "What happened to you? You look terrible."
"Thank you," Laurie said tartly, dumping herself into her desk chair.
Tammy followed her into the cubicle. Looking her up and down and taking note of her poorly combed hair and ill-fitting business suit, she said, "You never look like this. Did somethingâ"
When Laurie uncharacteristically gazed up at her friend with a look that mingled bafflement and a sort of terror, Tammy immediately slid into a chair next to the desk and said, "You need to tell me what's going on."
But Laurie only sighed heavily. "It's hard to explain."
"Laurie, it's me!" Tammy cried, already finding her eyes filling with tears. "You can tell me."
"I don't know where to begin."
Then something Laurie had said on Friday came into Tammy's memory. "Weren't you going to meet some guy yesterday?"
When Laurie closed her eyes and looked away, Tammy knew she had found the root of the problem. She well knew her friend's troubles with men, and was constantly urging her not to be so high-and-mighty ("You gotta give the guys a chance, Laurie!") and so fixated on her own female pride. Bad things might happen...
"You met the guy, right?" Tammy said. Then, her voice dropping to a whisper: "Didâdid he do something to you?"
Laurie looked over to her friend with a vicious expression. "Yeah, I'd say he did something to me."
And she launched into a detailed and unexpurgated account of exactly how Mr. Patrick Williamson had poked and prodded her on an otherwise lazy Sunday afternoon.
Tammy listened to the story with expanding eyes, at times covering her mouth with her hand in sympathetic horror. When Laurie had finished, she cried out:
"Jesus, Laurie, you got to report him to the police! I mean, heâheâ"
"Don't say it," Laurie warned. "Don't say that word." The very thought that a man could have doneâ
that
âto her was enough to send her into convulsions.
No man can treat me that wayâand yet, somehow Patrick did.
"Anyway," she went on ruefully, "it may not have been
quite
like that. After all, he didâwell, you know."
He did make me come.
But that was no get-out-of-jail-free card for some of the
other
things he'd done!
"Did you," Tammy said in an appalled whisper, "really let him go into your butt?"
"I didn't
let
himâhe just did it!" Laurie bellowed.
"How awful!" Tammy cried, in an ecstasy of horror. "It must have hurt like the dickens."
"It didn't feel good, I'll tell you that much." Laurie paused, then eyed her friend keenly. "You're telling me you've never done it?"
"Of course not! I'd never, ever let a man do that to me!"
"Well, I felt the same wayâuntil now." Another pause. "I have to say, though: there was something strangely
intimate
about the procedure. It certainly establishes a bond between two people."
Tammy was now clutching her stomach with her hands, as if someone had just delivered a swift kick to that area. "Ugh! I think you're sick."
"Look, I'm not saying I liked itâor liked
anything
he did. Jeez, I never felt soâso degraded in all my life. But..."
"But what?" Tammy said suspiciously.
"It
has
been a while," Laurie said sheepishly.
"Since what?"
"You know... since a manâput his thing in meâanywhere."
"Yeah, me too. But you surely didn't want it
that
way!"