Content warning: discussion of sexual harassment and assault
I’ve heard that the faces we see in dreams are always ones we have encountered in our waking lives. Human faces are far too complex for our minds to simply create one from scratch. But it’s amazing how detailed the ones that we have seen before, even briefly, can remain in our memories.
He frequents my dreams whenever he pleases. This is when they turn into nightmares—nightmares that I can’t shake, even when my eyes snap open because they’re all too real. I pinch myself over and over because I want to wake up and forget, but I can’t because I’m already awake. By that time, it isn’t a dream anymore. It has crossed into conscious reality.
I’ve tried so hard to forget him, but that’s exactly the problem. The things you try the hardest to force out are often the things you remember most clearly. For years, I’ve tried to forget the way he walked up to me, thinking I wouldn’t know what he was trying to do. I was eleven years old, yes, but I wasn’t foolish. For years, I’ve tried to forget how the foot of distance between us felt like millimeters and how the minutes he remained beside me felt like an eternity. His rough voice echoes through my ears and rattles through my ribcage to this day. His words are tattooed across my vision, like a smudge on my glasses that won’t come off, no matter how hard I rub. You’re pretty, you know that? Why are you here all alone? Where do you live? And the most memorable of them all: If your dad doesn’t come back soon, I can give you a ride home.
Something like that is hard to forget. I remember the way my dad’s face dropped when he finally showed up, how he stood taller than I’ve ever seen before. I remember realizing that this was the first time I’d ever seen him scared. He didn’t have control and I was at the center of it. But there are also details that fade. The scene has looped through my mind so incessantly and so frequently that it’s become distorted. It resembles more of a dream at this point. His face is fuzzier; I no longer remember the color of his eyes. I don’t remember how deep or how scratchy his voice was as he interrogated me. I don’t remember exactly how long I was trapped there. This man, slowly but surely, slinks out of my memory.
But just last week, I was walking home with my best friend after a night together—one of those nights where men like him seem insignificant and far, far away, like more of a hazy nightmare than a harsh reality. I hugged her tight before we parted ways. I walked down an empty sidewalk lined with flickering lamp posts that loomed overhead. Distracted by a text on my phone, I took my eyes off of the sidewalk for a moment. Then suddenly, I was not alone. Not at all. One hand gripped my crotch, the other, my butt. I spun around, pushed him off of me, and sprinted the last block home. I remember looking into his eyes for a split second. No more than that. He was so unfamiliar, but at the same time, so familiar. This was years later, separated by half a country, but he was, at his core, the same man. It didn’t matter that he had a different name or that he grew up in a different state or that he had no idea the other man existed. They were the same. His smirk as we made eye contact is something I will never forget, hard as I try. He will forever exist in my mind, whether I am awake or asleep or somewhere in between. And the worst part is, he doesn’t just exist in my memory. This man is everywhere. That smirk is stretched across so many pale, flushed, hairy, clean-shaven, round, bony, old, and young faces. He exists out there, he exists in our minds, and he will live on, in the light of day at a family park and in the dark of night when everyone is fast asleep and you want to scream so loud that they all jolt wide awake.