“Action” by Guante

There is a conversation that never happen.
Not even a deleted scene, more like a storyboard lost, an idea cut from the first draft.
You are costarring, slouched on the futon while we watch the game. Telling me all about your new girlfriend… or more specifically….. what you are going to do to your new girlfriend.
Action.
Part of me still remembers my lines, even though I never said them. The conversation I just couldn’t start for fear of embarrassment or losing our friendship.
Or just because the commercials were over, that one tiny gesture that might not have changed anything; but might have.
I remember how I never muted the TV, put my drink down and never said...
“Man…. The way you talk about her…. The way you treat her… Your hands are getting too big for your heart. I can smell the future you on your breath… She isn’t safe with you”
And now it is two weeks later and we are standing in my kitchen. That same silence between us…. She didn’t want to press charges. So you are a convict with sledgehammer hands and no boulders to break them on.
And I remember how we used to play football together. Number 55 and 56, both inside linebackers. I am remembering the dozens of conversations that never happened, the words oversleeping in the bed of my lungs. I am the least important person in this story.
And part of me wants to believe that you wouldn’t have listened anyway. That some evil whispered its way into your skull. Part of me wants to believe we didn’t grow up three blocks from each other, that our eyes are not the same color. And part of me is always repeating those lines, always shooting that scene, always reminding myself that despite this guilt…… Im not a bad guy.
You tell me…… How she never said no…… That you’re sorry…… That you’re not a bad guy……
Rape culture… is silence It is being able see the future and not doing anything about it.
It is believing the fairytale platitude that there are good people and bad people and that as long as you are not one of the bad people; that your job is done, your conscience is clear. It is all of us swimming in the same polluted waters of…
Beer commercials policing masculinity and stand up comedians making rape jokes to sound edgy, and the media heads blaming the victim, and music portraying women as disposable sex objects. It is language… encouraging us to think of sex as violence; “fuck… hit… bang… smash”
It is telling our daughters to dress sensibly and not walk alone at night and telling our sons…… It is a conversation that never happens…..

And this… is not an excuse for you…… it is a reminder for me….
That while her silence will always mean no….. My silence… The silence between us….. will always mean yes.