Day 10

Happy Wednesday. There is something poignant about Wednesday. The week is half empty…and half full. You are tired from the days you’ve already worked, and know there are still two days until the weekend. Hump day. On weeks like this, where I am not at work, I forget what day of the week it is, and have to do little tricks to remind myself, but no matter what day I think it is, Wednesday is still Wednesday. I don’t mind; it seems right somehow.

So now that I’ve been all philosophical, let’s get down to business. Tonight a story that will be all too familiar for those who follow women’s issues. The Catch-22 of being a woman. Read on.

ZERO SUM

Danielle lifted her glass; she sipped. She surveyed the group in the bar. Almost all men. The women from the office were noticeable by their absence. She leaned back against the bar and stuck her feet through the rungs of the stool. One shoe slipped off her foot but the amount of effort to reach down and put it back on was more than she wanted to put out after a long day of work.

Most of the men were here, she noticed. They formed little cliques, men sitting with men from their own department, laughing and telling jokes. The men from her department were clustered at a center table, always in the spotlight. She supposed that was a feature of being in PR; you wanted to stick out. To be noticed. The men didn’t seem to notice her any more than they usually did; she listened to them without them being aware of her. They were making jokes about the waitress, and assessing every part of her body. The woman bent over the table to pick up a glass; her eyes were glassy and straight ahead. She clearly did not enjoy her job.

Most of the junior men in the office did not sit still. They visited, moving from table to table, sharing laughs at the expense of the women in the bar, slapping backs, howling with laughter at the jokes of the senior associates. They were networking. They all wanted to move up, and this was where it happened.

Danielle was not networking tonight. Tonight she would observe. She was here to learn so next time she could move from table to table meeting the right people, laughing at the right jokes. She watched who the younger men focused on, who they visited most often, to whom they were most attentive. This was useful information, and she soaked it up to file in her memory banks. That was one of the benefits of a good memory; you never had to write things down, so people didn’t know you were studying them.

Ever since she was a little girl, this was the world she wanted. The world of high powered deals and fast-moving business. She went to work with her father and watched as the men in expensive suits made things happen, and she fell in love. Her whole education had centered around preparing her to enter the world she felt instinctively was where she belonged. Now she was here. Only twenty-five, newly minted MBA, top of her class, with three job offers even before she graduated. She took the one that seemed the best fit.

So far, it had been…disappointing. All the things she had loved about her father’s job were there. The men with the expensive suits. The laughter. The camaraderie. The high powered deals and the fast-moving business. But she wasn’t part of it. She worked there, and had an important position, but she wasn’t one of them. She was always on the edge, on the outside looking in while the young men who started at the same time moved into the office with ease and were welcomed as old friends. They each had a mentor by the end of their first day on the job; she had been there six months and had not found anyone willing to mentor her. Without a mentor, she was unlikely to move up.

So she asked. She asked Kenneth, a young executive who moved up rapidly, and was rumored to be on his way to the top floor on an express elevator. He told her she had to network. “That’s the problem women have, Danielle. They don’t go where the men go. They’re not at the bars when we make deals and network. They’re not making the right friends, building the right connections. You have to put yourself out there. You think it will come to you? No, you have to go get it.”

Now here she was, sitting on the edge, outside the group, but it was different this time. She was learning how to network, how to make friends, how to build connections. She noted one young man who seemed to be welcomed by the seniors with more enthusiasm than the others…Cody, she thought. His name is Cody, he works in Accounting. She knew he was also rumored to be on an express elevator, and she could see why. The men liked him. He didn’t seem desperate for attention; he allowed the bosses to do the speaking while he admired, and inserted cogent comments at the right moment rather than jumping in to show his brilliance and putting his foot in it at the wrong time. She studied his technique. She could do that…if she practiced.

“You want any more, miss?” The bartender spoke behind her, making her jump. She stared into her glass.

“No, thank you. It’s still almost full.” Danielle always ordered a wine she disliked when she went out to a bar, even with friends. She had a natural streak of distrust, and was afraid what might happen if she got drunk. Besides, she hated the feeling of being even tipsy. Out of control, that was how she felt. She hated being out of control of her own body, her own mind. So she ordered a wine she hated…Pinot Noir tonight…and sipped without drinking.

She set her glass on the bar and headed for the ladies room. Even if someone slipped something in her glass, it wouldn’t matter, because she wasn’t going to drink it. She needed to pee. She checked her make up in the mirror, straightened her jacket even though the mirror showed it was straight, and fixed her lipstick. Satisfied, she exited to return to the main room of the bar.

Someone bumped into her in the hallway. Who was he? He wasn’t someone she recognized. He might not be part of their group, but she didn’t know all the men in the office…or even most of them…so he could be one of theirs. She mumbled an apology and brushed by, but the man grabbed her arm.

“Hey sweetie, give a guy a kiss.” He leered at her, his booze breath stinking so much she wished she could faint. “Just a little kiss, here on the mouth. Come on, little kiss for the big guy.” He held her; his grip was strong and she couldn’t get away. She tugged at her arm, but he was stronger than she was. Any attempt to get free could lead to injury.

His free hand slipped onto her breast. He ran it around each breast, then it crawled down her torso toward her crotch. She slapped at him. “Stop it! Let go of me!” He ignored her. She tried to scream, but he clamped a hand over her mouth.

“That isn’t nice. You’ll bring people back here, and they’ll spoil our little party. You really are a sweet one, aren’t you? I saw you sitting there, looking at me, your shoe half off, sipping your drink. I got your message.” He released her mouth to kiss her, but she pulled away.

“I wasn’t sending any message! And I wasn’t looking at you. I don’t even know who you are.”

“Must you know someone to want to get to know them better? Sure, fight a little, it makes the climax a little sweeter.” He was unzipping her skirt. She yanked free and ran through the bar.

“Help me. There’s…he’s…” Her skirt slipped down to her ankles. She grabbed at it, tried to hold it up. “Please. Help. He’s…he’s back there.”

The men laughed. Several of them licked their lips and whistled. They shouted at her, offered to let her sit on their lap. One of the men lurched toward her. Terrified, she shoved open the door and ran as fast as she could. She kicked off her heels and flew down the street, trying to put as much distance between herself and the bar as possible. She ran into someone, and held on, hoping they would help her. She looked at the man who caught her; it was the man who attacked her in the bar. She screamed, but there was no one to hear.

When it was all over, when she crawled to a convenience store and borrowed a phone from the cashier, the police showed up. They took her back to the bar, asked her to pick out her assailant. She identified the man, and they led him away in handcuffs while she collected her phone and her purse. Her dress was torn, her shoes were gone, and her hair was a mess. She didn’t care. She just wanted to go home.

First she had to go to the hospital for an examination. The doctor asked dozens of intrusively personal questions and did something he called a sexual assault forensic exam. He put her name and information on the rape kit. It was in the hands of the district attorney from here. The nurse called her a cab and she was finally able to go home. She managed not to cry until the door closed behind her and she was in the safety of her own apartment. She called her mother. She needed to hear the voice of someone who cared.

“But Danielle, what did you expect, going to a bar with a bunch of men? I thought you knew better.” Her mother was not sympathetic. “Honestly, if you haven’t got any more sense than that, you can expect to be pawed.”

“Mom, I wasn’t pawed. I was raped. He raped me.”

“Of course, dear, but…you have to admit, you did lead him on.”

Danielle slammed down the phone and turned to her cat for sympathy. He was no better able to give her sympathy than any cat, but at least he wouldn’t say nasty things to her. She curled up on her bed and cried.

Over the next few weeks, Danielle discovered why the women in the office didn’t go to the bar to network. Many of them had been attacked, and it was always the same. You shouldn’t be at a bar. You should know better. It’s as much your fault as his. In the end, the man plea bargained to a misdemeanor charge and was given a ten dollar fine. Her name was dragged through sleaze in the newspapers, with most of the comments agreeing with her mother. She should not have gone to a bar.

Kathryn sat beside her in the lounge the day after the plea bargain, the day the papers were the nastiest. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be okay again.”

“I hate to see this happen to you. It…” Kathryn looked around to make sure they were alone. “It happened to me…when I had been here about as long as you. They told me…you have to network. You have to go to the  bars where they do the deals, where they meet each other and form connections. So I did…it wasn’t as bad for me, I only got pawed and groped, but I still had my dress torn and would have been raped if it hadn’t been for one decent human being who stopped to help.”

“But…if we’re supposed to network…go to the places where things happen…or we can’t succeed…” Danielle stammered, trying to formulate her thoughts. “If we get attacked and told we shouldn’t have been there…how are we supposed to succeed?”

“Ah, that’s the dirty secret they don’t tell you.” Kathryn looked sad, then angry. “For a woman, it’s a zero sum game. She is expected to network, to be where the men are, but when she does, and is treated like a piece of meat, it is her fault for going where the men are. I suppose most people think we should remain home behind triple-locked doors waiting for Prince Charming to bring home the bacon while we live a life that…isn’t. A life, I mean. I mean, it’s more like…a death. A slow death.”

“I guess that’s why there are so few women on the top floor?” Danielle understood. This woman saw through eyes slightly older than hers, wiser than hers, but only because she had been where Danielle was. “And they’re all clerical?”

“There has never been a woman on ‘the express elevator to the top floor’ in the history of this company. If the men have it their way, there never will be.” Danielle growled. A decade ago, she had the same dreams Danielle left college with. Her dreams were dust now as she cranked out excellent work in a dead end job as her supervisor put his name on all her reports. “Zero sum.”