annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The 70s Honestly, this happened this morning, did my head in. I don't know where things slink off to in the mind, out of sight, forgotten but not gone. On the local Facebook page, someone posted a really short old film of the part of the town close to where I was living at the time. 1987, to show how the town has changed, buildings torn down and replaced over the years. In the last few seconds a man walks past, right up close. His face fills the whole screen, just for a moment. A long moment. In the late 1970s, before I had kids I worked in a pub in the evenings. That bloke, whose name began with K, used to come in early, every session, and sit up at the bar, in the corner. He was one of a large family of brothers who all drank there, the quiet one. The others were known to the people I was getting to know, and liked. K started asking me to go out with him. I didn't want to, so said thanks, but no thanks. He sat there, night after night, watching me, asking me out again and again. The general opinion was that I should go out with him, that I was being mean to keep turning him down. It was not voiced anywhere that he should shut the fuck up, that I'd said no and he should accept that. In the end, after weeks turning into months of this, I said OK, I would go out with him. He said he'd cook me a meal and I should go to his flat. I didn't want to, but again the attitude of those I spoke to were that I was being a bit of a princess, that I should stop making a fuss and go and have the meal which he'd kindly offered to make for me. So I went. It was a horrid flat, dark, damp, smelly, untidy. As soon as I walked in, he jumped me and was really indignant and angry when I pushed him away. I really can't remember what happened, whether I managed to get away or if I sullenly allowed him to have his way, unable to make him stop trying. I'd already been raped twice at this point, twice that I remember. I have a vivid memory of wrestling with him, trying to get him off me, but he was big and strong and I wasn't either. That's the memory - the flat, the darkness and smelliness, and struggling with him, trying to push him away. I drive past that flat often, it's on a main route, and I always have a bit of a shudder, but the reason for that shudder had sunk right out of sight, really forgotten until I saw his face, right up close - I'd enlarged the film to get a closer look at people - no one else came anywhere near that close, that big on the screen. Awful. Like an electric shock. And it scares me in several ways - what else might I have forgotten? I can remember once when I was at uni getting into a discussion abut rape where someone asked me to be careful how I was talking, that she had been raped and was finding my language difficult. I apologised without for a second remembering that actually I had been raped as well, until I got home that evening. What was that all about? And what world was this, where I had no right to say no? No one at all said I didn't have to go out with him if I didn't want to and I didn't claim that right either. Although the next time I worked I did refuse to serve him, which I was told I couldn't do, so I did it with as bad a grace as possible, didn't speak at all and didn't meet his eye. In the end other bar staff served him for quite a few months, but he was always there, in the corner of the bar, watching me, with a malevolent stare after that night. So that was today down the plughole. To get me off playing with my phone I picked a load more rosehips and started making some jelly with it, and also made some more ginger biscuits, but all done with a heavy heart. Now I'm knitting, watching Big Brother and writing here. I'm enjoying Big Brother - still too many people - always better when the numbers go down, but they're back to basics, away from all the plying them with alcohol and giving them awful, exploitative tasks. There's a woman with MS in there, but she's a bit of a nightmare. Apart from that I'm still resting. I slept eleven hours last night. Ready for more any minute now. 10:59 p.m. - 23.10.23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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