Isaac Byrne - Tolerance

“Keep talking,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

“Well, he came into class a couple weeks ago and… well, I guess he thought he’d gotten an unfair grade on a paper, and I guess I could have been more open-minded about his ideas, considering… and anyway, he got upset and decided to punish me by stripping me naked and fucking me from behind on my podium in front of the whole class, and then he took me for the tattoo, and then he made me change my wardrobe and dress like a big slut around campus, and I guess someone complained to the dean about it…”

He just stared, livid and horrified and disgusted. This was insane. “This little bastard… RAPED you in front of your class! And nobody stepped in to help? You didn’t go to the police?”

She responded in a small voice. “It wasn’t rape—I actually, um, begged him to. After he spanked me a little.” She blushed somehow even deeper.

“He… you…” He just stared, horrified that he could have ever imagined him spending the rest of his life with such a complete and utter slut.

“Please don’t be mad. I didn’t want this to happen. He was just upset, and I didn’t want to be intolerant,” she pleaded.

“We’re done,” he said. He threw his engagement ring at her and stormed out.

The following Monday at school was the most difficult of Taylor Strehan’s young life. She was used to being eyed and ogled, the center of male lust and female envy, but today, for the first time she could remember, she’d dressed specifically to avoid attention. Baggy jeans borrowed from her chubby sister (ugh, size 6), a comfy hoodie she usually only wore for bon fires or other outdoor fall occasions.

If anything, the conspicuous shift in her wardrobe only made things worse.

Word was all over school of what had happened in the locker room during the game, and at the party after. One didn’t get to be as popular as Taylor Strehan without making one’s share of enemies, though, and the girls she’d stepped on to ascend were only too happy to share all the details they knew, and others, not just details but photographic evidence. Whispers and giggles followed in her wake. She only caught snippets here and there.

“…heard she had an orgy with…”

“…totally lezzed out with Kylee and Evelyn and…”

“…was bare-ass naked at that party…”

“…no, she had on a leash , lead around like a…”

And so on. She put in her headphones to block it out. Some of the cat calls still intruded on her consciousness, though.

By the time first period was over, someone had written “bitch in heat” on her locker and drawn a picture of what was clearly her, taking a dump on a lawn at the end of a rope in a stick-figure’s hand. She reported it to the nearest teacher; from the look on the elderly journalism teacher’s face, she had already heard the rumors that precipitated the vandalism, and gave Taylor a commensurately disapproving frown.

And so the day went, an endless barrage of stares, whispers, jeers, and taunts. At lunch, she cut right to the front of the line (ignoring Derek Wildermuth as he called out “weird seeing you way up front, Taylor—I heard you preferred it from the back” to the raucous laughs of his idiot friends). She sat at her usual table, but none of her friends joined her. She caught them pointing and laughing—deliberately, as they saw her returning eye contact. Rather than keep sitting alone, she saw a group of other girls who she was sure had been having similar days—girls she’d seen in various states of undress at Lauren’s party, along with poor dim-witted Kylee. (Evelyn was with her usual crowd of sluts; apparently for her, there was no such thing as bad publicity.)

No one at her new table spoke, but they all seemed comforted to have someone else in their shoes.

After what felt like an eternity, the end of the school day came. When she closed her locker, she saw Lauren standing there, giving her the smuggest look she’d ever seen on a bitch’s face. “What the fuck do you want?” she demanded.

“Wow, can’t a girl just want a little quality time with her dog?” Lauren replied, smirking.

Taylor hissed back at her. “Fuck you, cunt—you fucked him just as hard and twice as eager as I did.”

“Really? ’Cause that’s not what my video shows,” Lauren said in mockingly feigned confusion. “Anyway, go talk to Miss Nguyen before you head out, K?”

“Why’s that?” People nearby in the hallway watched; the tension was palpable.

“Oh, sweetie, you’d really better hear it from her,” Lauren said, her voice full of condescension. She went to put a mockingly comforting hand on Taylor’s shoulder, but she batted it out of the way and shoved Lauren aside as she stormed down to the cheerleading coach’s office. She’d hoped to at least get an angry taunt or a grunt of pain as she retreated, but Lauren just laughed.

It was a short conversation. Lauren had told the coach about a hazing incident staged by Taylor during Friday night’s game, in which Taylor had made other squad members join her in performing sex acts on Lauren’s own brother. Lauren had even shown her part of the video, though Miss Nguyen had turned it off after only a few seconds.

Taylor insisted that’s now how it had been, she’d just been putting up with DJ, that Lauren had been the one filming the whole obscenity—but it was to no avail. Miss Nguyen said she didn’t want to make a big investigation out of this if she didn’t have to and risk a media fiasco that might result in the video getting out into the public and doing untold damage to Taylor’s and the other girls’ lives. Besides, none of the other girls involved had wanted to press charges against Taylor, thank goodness. Still, as the person who was clearly in a position of power, she held Taylor responsible, and was removing her from the squad.

(As runner up, that would make Lauren the new captain.)

Trembling with impotent rage and bottomless shame, Taylor made her way out to her car. Someone had attached the front bumper to the fence with a leash.

Her scream could be heard for a mile.

Emily felt lucky she had such an understanding manager.

“Start at the beginning,” Katja said. She was a Finnish national, and her accent was usually something Emily found soothing, though now, she was too strung-out to be consoled so easily.

“Well, I know you heard about those photos that got out—DJ and I on rounds last week…?”

“Ja,” she said. She really said “yeah,” but the accent made the monosyllable sound more Finnish than English. “I remember.”

“Yeah. And I appreciate you following up on that, too, verifying what I said and not firing me.”

Katja nodded. DJ had come to her, actually, a few days after the incident. He’d come to dump a lot of his shifts and rearrange the ones he kept to be with Abby and Emily. As she’d penciled in the changes, she asked why, and he replied that they were the two most attractive women on staff. Concerned, she had tried some gentle counseling that this might not be the most productive way to attract positive attention from women, or to secure a glowing recommendation from her, but he’d told her to mind her own business. DJ had, however, answered her brief inquiries about the incident with Emily and the VanDoren girl, saying it had all been his doing.

Anyone else on staff Katja would have fired for having intercourse with a student in the lounge and then forcing his naked colleague to parade through the building with his semen on her face, but teaching tolerance was one of her core passions, the real reason she’d gotten into this field. She considered it an excellent opportunity to put her principles into practice, and had promptly excused Emily for her part in things.