You're Not Pretty Enough (7 page)

They comforted me and buoyed my strength.

*****************

The rape charges didn’t move forward. I was told that the
victims were afraid to go forward for fear of retaliation or public outing. I understood that completely. So the charge against him was mine alone: gross sexual imposition, which is a felony. My attacker pleaded no contest in return
for the lesser charge of sexual imposition, which is a misdemeanor. Much of this happened behind the scenes, with the police keeping me informed in a gentle, but authoritative way. Part of the plea bargain included expulsion, and that provided enough of a sense of security for me to push forward. He didn’t
know my name, and he’d been in my presence less than ten minutes.
All will be fine,
I thought
.

*****************

Early one morning in January 1992, the partly clothed
body of 19-year-old female UT nursing student Melissa Anne Herstrum was found at a remote site on UT’s Scott Park Campus. She had been handcuffed and shot 14 times.

Campus police received a phone call just after midnight
Jan. 27 from a cab company reporting a woman had called to inform them one of their vehicles in a parking lot on the Scott Park Campus was being robbed and that she heard shots fired about 15 seconds later.

Officers Jeffrey Hodge and Jeffrey Gasiorowski arrived
near the scene, but did not see anything suspicious. After deciding to conduct a foot search of a wooded area near the Engineering Technology Laboratory Center, Gasiorowski found Melissa’s body. Hodge wrote the initial report. They
found Melissa’s body face down in the snow, her pants pulled down, her shirt pulled up, cuts on her wrists, and wounds from the 14 bullets fired into her back, legs and head.
^[4]

Violence on campus solidifies a community and shines a spotlight on the victim. Every one of us could recognize our relatives, friends, or acquaintances in Melissa. We wanted to know her and go back and
protect her. We wanted to reach out to her family and her sorority sisters and enlist as a vigilante army. We wanted to know why and how and who. We wanted to not be fearful.

It was the second quarter of my junior year, and I worked
early mornings at the parking office on campus where students paid parking tickets and picked up permits. From 7:30 to 9:00 a.m., I worked the office alone. One morning just days after the murder and more than six months after my assault, my attacker entered the office. I was at the fax machine when he
entered, and when I turned around to greet him, my throat closed up. I was grateful for the thick, tall wooden barricade with a flat-top surface that separated us and thankful that the door to get into my office space was locked.
We looked at each other.
Please don’t let him recognize me,
I thought, but I still didn’t speak.

“I need to pick up a parking permit for the quarter,” he said.

What the fuck? He’s still a student?

“OK…” I moved slowly and meticulously so that I could always see him in my periphery. “It’s sixty dollars…”

He wrote out a check. “I need a receipt.”

I went behind another door where I could still see him but
where he could not see my hand shake while writing. I came back around and passed him the items.

“Thanks,” he said and walked out. Still shaking, I called the police and spoke to an officer who had been on my case from the beginning.
He was gentle, suitably surprised, and told me he’d follow up immediately. When the full-time workers arrived at nine, I feigned sick and went home. I got a call from the officer the same day.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but it’s a case of red tape.”

“What happened?”

“It’s just a formality, but expulsions have to be signed off by the Student Judiciary Committee…”

“Mmm hmm…”

“The paperwork never got to them.”

“And no one caught it? Until now?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

“What do we do?”

“They told me you would have to meet with the dean of
students directly. Can you do that and let me know it goes?”

“Yeah, OK, thanks….” Of course I stewed and ranted. But I also made an appointment with the dean for the following week. He welcomed me
into his expansive office and engaged me in small talk for about five minutes before getting down to business.

“So, I’m sorry for what happened to you,” he opened.

I thanked him. “What do we need to do to rectify the
situation?”

“Well, what do you envision?”

Knowing why I came to see him, I was surprised there wasn’t already a plan. “Expelling him,” I said.

“Oh, well, it’s a bit too late for that…”

“Why?”

“Well,” he said, “we can’t really go back and make it retroactive.”

“Why?”

“Well, time has passed, and he is in counseling now and
seems to be doing fine…”

I stared at him.

“He was having family problems at the time,” he continued.

“Sir, with all due respect, a lot of people have family problems, but it doesn’t make them go out and attack women.”

“No, that’s true, but again, he’s in counseling now, and he’s not allowed to live on campus, so it just seems like the best compromise…”

“You’re not going to do anything?” I pressed.

“Well, it’s just…”

“You have an unsolved murder on your campus and a known criminal who has assaulted women, and you’re not going to do anything?”

“Again, I am so sorry for what happened to you, and we have
numerous people working on the murder case, and you can always call me directly if you need anything.” No matter what lever I pulled, he directed me back to his key messages: too late, counseling, sorry.

“I just hope no one else gets hurt. And if they do, I hope
you can live with yourself knowing all these things.” I walked out, feeling the momentary rush that comes with having the last word before going back to being stunned.

*****************

Melissa’s murder was solved. Renowned forensic scientist Henry Lee—key witness in nearly every high-profile murder case from Nicole Brown Simpson/Ron Goldman to JonBenét Ramsey to Laci Peterson—happened
to be teaching a seminar in Toledo that summer and worked with the investigators on the case. They hypothesized that the murderer was someone in law enforcement, and in early March 1992, one of the two first officers on the scene confessed. Hindsight being crystal clear, there were many signs he was
acting out before he committed murder.

Through sheer luck or coincidence I never ran into my attacker again, but he was with me throughout the remainder of my college years. I looked for him in every classroom, every walk home, and behind each
tree—the proverbial boogie man under my bed.

Melissa didn’t have the chance to talk. But I did, I do, and I will.

He walked into the college house party as if a spotlight
shone on him at all times. People immediately turned toward him, their brightened faces reaching out to pat his shoulder, slap his hand, hug him, or talk to him. It’s not like the partygoers weren’t having fun before he arrived;
it’s more like the fun became…elevated—like being at a concert and digging the music but hoping and waiting for the band to play the song you
really
want to hear—the song that turns the amp up to eleven. When Leo walked into a place, he turned the amp up to eleven.

I was a freshman then, hanging out toward the back of the main room when he arrived. “Who is
that
?” I asked Natalie, a friend from high school who went to the same college.

“No idea.”

I watched as Leo walked slowly through the crowd, taking in his olive skin; his dark, thick hair; his warm blue eyes; and his strong Roman nose. Now that I think about it, he resembled Ray Romano—and let me tell
you, everybody loved “Raymond.” He was average height, about five-ten and had a build that was perfectly suited to my evolving tastes: broad but not overly muscular. I was drawn to him. I saw him making his way toward the keg, so I grabbed Natalie’s hand and headed in the same direction. I did my best to act
nonchalant as I filled my plastic cup and nudged a mutual friend to introduce us.

“You guys don’t look like country girls,” Leo said with a broad smile, referring to the small, rural town in Ohio where we grew up.

“And what are country girls supposed to look like?” I asked in a tone that contained equal parts challenge and flirtation.

“Well, they’re supposed to wear overalls and braids,” he
said, “and drive a pick-up truck with a bumper sticker on the back that says ‘I’d rather be tipping cows.’”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve never tipped a cow in my life.”

“What about you?” he asked Natalie.

“Oh yeah, sure,” she said, proud.

Leo and I spent the rest of the party talking mostly to each other. People approached him frequently, and he’d introduce them to me and tell a funny story about how the two knew each other. Then he’d give them an
unspoken signal—the one that says,
Good seeing you, but I just met this girl, I like her, and I’m doing my thing…

At the end of the night, he walked me back to my dorm. He
didn’t try to kiss me. He just asked, “When can I see you again?” And when I replied, “Tomorrow?” he didn’t flinch.

I turned to give him one last look before I closed the door behind me, and he was right there waiting and looking back with that same broad
smile on his face. As we later recalled, in that moment we knew we were going to be a couple.

We were inseparable until he graduated a few months later and returned to Cleveland to find work in the private sector. We’d write each other
at least once per week and talk on the phone every couple days.

“I’m in the library right now getting my job search organized. I’m surrounded by law students and so much law talk that I think I could pass the bar exam. I wish I could give you an answer if I’m coming up to
Toledo, but unfortunately I can’t, so as soon as I hear something I will correspond to you a response. See? I’m sounding like an attorney already.”

“When are you coming home, honey? I‘m going through
withdrawals! Just remember that I miss you and I’m always thinking about you.”

“Jen! Hi beautiful! How’s it hangin’ over there in Toledo? Oops! I forgot you’re a girl and girls don’t hang. I just want to tell you
again how great it was to see you this past weekend and how much fun you are to be with! OH MY GOD! I just remembered! Thank you for the underwear you left in my pseudo suitcase. Lucky, I checked before I walked in the house, or Mom would
have given birth to a calf when she did the laundry! Don’t worry, Jen, they’ll go good with my miniskirt and high heels. Tell Natalie I said hello! Miss you!”

“OK, down to business. Your mom wants to bond. This could be interesting. Sounds like a lot of fun. What am I saying? Every time I’m with
you I have fun, why would this be any different? You just tell me what you want and we’ll do it.”

“I just want to thank you again for spending Easter with me and my family this past weekend. Everyone likes you
a lot
(but I
love
you Jen, don’t forget that!). All I can say is you made history in my house! And I hope it continues! I just thought of something. Since I met you I haven’t had a weekend that was not fun (except when we didn’t get to see each other).
Why the hell didn’t I meet you sooner? I’m counting the minutes till we meet again.”

“I love you! It was on my mind, so I just thought I’d say it. I realize we still see each other almost as much as before, but knowing
that you’re not minutes away sucks. But we’ll still manage anyway, because I just love everything about you, and I hope that you’ll have me around for a long, long, long time. OK, now that your beautiful head is really big, I’ll cut
out the mushy stuff. By the way, it’s really fun taking the time to write letters. I really enjoy this. See what you did to me? I never even wrote my parents let alone a girlfriend. You’re a good influence. I am a little fish on a BIG HOOK in love with you. I really did get the BONUS plan when I met you,
honey. You are truly the most beautiful person I have ever met (inside and out), and I hope that someday you will be my wife and we can share the rest of our lives together.”

He gave me butterflies. And for most of those long-distance
years, our relationship was really great. We traveled back and forth between his place in Cleveland and mine in Toledo on the weekends and took vacations together during winter, spring, and summer breaks. During the week when the
university was in session, I could focus on school, part-time work, and my friends, and I was
fully
focused on those things because my love life was settled
and
my boyfriend wasn’t up my grill every five seconds. I
had clear, open highway in my head to engage elsewhere, which was such a gift.

Note to self: You are your happiest, romantically, when you are with someone who makes you feel wanted, secure, and supported, yet who
also encourages and appreciates your independence (free to be you and me!).

Got it. Noted with a gold star.

Thanks.

The long distance helped keep the excitement alive: we had
stuff to talk about, we had great sex, and we had fun. This comfort and happiness made me embrace everything, including food, and slowly but surely, I gained eighteen pounds. Then suddenly the fun stopped and so did the sex, and then letters and the closeness.

I confronted this weirdness, and at first he avoided the topic but then came clean. “I just think back to that party when we met. You were such a stunner.” That hurt, but I refused to cry.

“Do you want to break up?” I asked.